“God uses problems to draw you closer to Himself.”

A thought by Rick Warren, (2012-10-23) from his book, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (p. 248). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

And we all have them and God wants to use them.

The Bible says in Psalm 34: 18 (NLT), “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those who are crushed in spirit.” Are you hurting today? God is close to the broken hearted

Rick says, “Your most profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely be in your darkest days — when your heart is broken, when you feel abandoned, when you’re out of options, when the pain is great — and you turn to God alone. It is during suffering that we learn to pray our most authentic, heartfelt, honest-to-God prayers. When we’re in pain, we don’t have the energy for superficial prayers.”

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1: 9 (LB), “We felt we were doomed to die and saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who alone could save us.”

But that was good. Have you gotten to the point in your spiritual maturity that you can say that in your problems, “But that was good”? The Apostle Paul had a real handle on the negative circumstances of life. He wrote one book in the Bible all about joy and he was in prison.

Please understand this, Rick says, “Regardless of the cause, none of your problems could happen without God’s permission. Everything that happens to a child of God is Father-filtered, and He intends to use it for good even when Satan and others mean it for bad.”

So have you gotten to the point that you can say, “But that was good” even when it was bad?

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