I was talking with a friend today and he was relating how it was a tough week. Work was stressful and things at home were not much better. On one particularly rough day he received “out of the blue” an encouraging email from an old friend. She reminisced about her husband meeting him and how they talked for only 20 minutes. Her husband later said how he knew my friend was a man of God even after such a short conversation. While he was very encouraged by the email, there was also some tears as he related the story, because he felt like he was nowhere near that place in his life at the moment.
Many times, we tend to assess whether we are having a good day by what we have defined in our heads as really being connected with Christ. That measure can be deceiving or even wrong. When we feel great, smiles on our face, enjoying life and we have a great God ordained encounter, we connect that feeling with where we should be and if we aren’t feeling like that, then God won’t use us or that we are out of his favor.
The better measure is the Lord’s opinion of us rather than our opinion. When we are abiding in Jesus, seeking after Him and trusting in His care for us, then we can have confidence that we are where we need to be and Christ can use us how He sees fit, regardless of our feelings.
When we make it our sole purpose to think more of Jesus and His opinion and desires for us above all other opinions, then we can live life unencumbered by thoughts of inadequacy. This is incredibly freeing and allows us to do His work, even when our feelings don’t want to play along.
This exemplifies the many AGO men who have gone on mission and service trips with the help of AGO Ministries. The stories of their faithfulness being used by God even when things were difficult, shows us how we can be encouraged to share Christ’s love in a myriad of ways.
We want to continue to provide for AGO men to share the gospel and serve others in His name. Please help us to be able to do that for generations to come.
Thank you,
Jim Johnson
AGO Ministries