Showing results by author "Jennifer Jill Schwirzer" in All Categories

Somewhere along the line, a bond fractured, or at least twisted into a malfunctioning tangle. You regret it, but cannot seem to fix it. If this sounds achingly familiar to you just now, then take courage for God knows how to help the brokenhearted. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would come to give “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3, NKJV). God gave Himself to show us an unimaginable kind of love.

The reason we rejoice, the reason we re-frame the trials of life and even thank God for them, is because reality really is, ultimately, positive. You suffer, have suffered, and will suffer. You know and love other suffering people. God allows the enemy to create chaos, but the sin and the suffering that convulse our aching planet don’t reflect the perfect will and heart of God any more than a messy child’s room reflects the will of a tidy parent. Because of the mess and the pain, you can’t truly experience joy through suffering without supernatural help and divine logic.

So many of us suffer from chronic guilt feelings; we assume that these feelings reflect God’s opinion of us. But then along comes the gospel – exploding the lie with its mind-shattering declaration that not only does He love us, He is the One who “forgives all [our] iniquities, who heals all [our] diseases” (Psalm 103:3). While we tend to conform to our own self-concept, becoming what we think we are, Jesus does something for us that no man can do, He give us a new identity. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have become new (2Corinthians 5:17).