Dead.....but oh so ALIVE!

Sometimes we aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, are we? I mean, we read the Scriptures. We know what the Good Book says. Yet we get upset and mad at God when things aren't always going our way. We experience a trial and what is our first question? "Why, God?! What did I do to deserve this?" Right????? You know what I'm talking about. If things don't go according to "our plan", we get frustrated and think either God is punishing us or simply ignoring us. Do you sometimes feel like if God really loved you, He wouldn't let these things happen to you or come into your life? I don't want you to feel alone in your confessions of guilt. I feel that way too. I am human and I live in a fallen world. A world that is dripping with sin and evil. We look around and see the wicked prosper. We see people who don't deserve blessings receiving them and "we"...who deserve God's best suffer and live with trials and heartache and health problems and death and poverty, right??? Let me share a few things that really helped me this morning. I am praying at this very moment that it will speak life and hope into you as well. God bless you, my friend!

1 Peter 4:12-14
Dear friends, don't be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad-for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world. So be happy when you are insulted for being a Christian, for then the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you.(NLT)

2 Timothy 2:12
If we endure hardship, we will reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us.(NLT)

John 15:18-19
"If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.(NLT)

Galatians 2:20
My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.(NLT)

Colossians 2:13-15
You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.(NLT)