When Jesus Gets Tough

I compare myself with others. I know I shouldn’t but its something that I do. We all do it. It’s one of the effects of sin in our lives. So often I look around and compare myself with some other friends from seminary who have nice pastorates and are getting paid well. And then I look at myself, an underpaid barista at Starbucks who struggles to support a family of five all the while the knowledge of having a four year masters of theology looms overhead. I see pastors on t.v. or in magazines and I begin the comparisons.

And yet while I wait for God’s timing in opening another door for pastoral ministry, while I sulk and get frustrated {and angry}, while I fight thoughts of doubt and abandonment, even in the midst of {wrongly, or better…sinfully} thinking that He is not listening, He comes and brings me sharp, penetrating, cutting, challenging and yet LOVING words to change me. The words came from Dr. John Piper, on the heels of an overwhelmingly Christ-honoring weekend at Desiring God’s conference on post-modernism. You can read his words, which he received from the Lord out of John 21, and which HE sovereignly passed on to me…’cause I needed to hear them too. Jesus says…