9/14/2023 0 Comments Conversations with god in hindi![]() The view is great, the weather is fine, and we can't imagine wanting or needing to be anywhere else. I've done lots of hiking in the California mountains, and this image comes to mind when I think of what I've been through-and what you may be going through: It's as if we're standing on a mountain peak. But when we get to that lowly place we find what the point of trouble is: our ongoing growth in grace leading to a place of deeper maturity. Yes, trouble can make us think we're down to nothing. What matters is that you know what I learned in my own time of trouble: God is always up to something good in your life. In truth, it doesn't matter so much why you feel you are down to nothing-the reasons are as innumerable as the people who name them. Or maybe you've lost the faith and hope and confidence you need to pick yourself up and continue the journey. Maybe you have lost a job or a marriage or an important relationship. You may feel you are down to nothing in one or more areas of life. And if you're reading these words, you've apparently lived to tell about it. If you have a pulse, you've seen trouble. We are "born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward" the book of Job tells us (5:7). I won't insult you by saying, " If you've been through something similar…" because I know you have. What happened to me is what has happened to millions of other people: the loss of a job, the death of a dream, the confusion about what to do next, the questioning of one's value, the questioning of God, and all the rest. It's about God and what He does when we are in the dark corners of life. This book is not about me and what I experienced. And the four months of darkness that followed were like a school in which I discovered that when we are down to nothing, God is always up to something. ![]() It was like an eclipse-something that occurs in a matter of minutes with little or no warning. My sun set, and the dark night began, in July and lasted through October of 2008. ![]() My own dark night began in July 2008 when my superiors-specifically, my parents and other extended family members involved in leading "the family business," decided I was not the right person to continue in the positions they had asked me to fill two and a half years earlier: Senior Pastor of the Crystal Cathedral church and pastoral host of the international Hour of Power television broadcast. ![]() In short, trouble teaches us that God is always up to something in our life. My dark night of the soul can in no way be compared to his except in this way: Trouble is life's wisest teacher suffering is the schoolmaster that leads us to humble submission trials are the tutor that explains the difference between life as we would like it and life as we are given it-and how the latter is the gateway to a deeper knowledge of God. John used his own strained relationship with his superiors to write of the journey of the soul through the difficult darkness of trouble in this life-as do I. While I in no way compare myself to Saint John of the Cross in spirituality, in insights, in suffering, or in contribution to Christendom, the title of his classic poem serves me well as I introduce this book-as do the circumstances under which he wrote. Dying before he reached the age of fifty, his writings have been a comfort to many who have endured their own "dark night of the soul." Because of his work as a reformer, John was arrested by his superiors, imprisoned, and tortured before he escaped nine months later. Today he is perhaps best remembered for his classic work Dark Night of the Soul ( La noche oscura del alma), a poem that describes the trials and suffering the soul goes through in this life. Saint John of the Cross (Juan de Yepes Álvarez) was a sixteenth-century Spanish friar-a member of the Roman Catholic Carmelite order. ![]()
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