Last week Lindsay Willlis, was the speaker at our church’s monthly women’s worship service, Chick Night. Since I last blogged about why God allows pain, I wanted to share with you some of the thoughts that Lindsay shared at Chick Night. She called moments of pain, and moments of joy in our life “defining moments.” As Lindsay described them she talked about the joyful moments as times when you say “WOW! God!” Then, she described the challenging moments as times when you say, “wow, God.” O.K., the words are the same, but when she said them you could definitely tell a difference by the tone of her voice. I choose to call the latter the “why, God?” moments, because even though I know that God is in control I sometimes wonder if He dozed off while my crisis was in process.
So, here are the four points Lindsay said we need to consider when handling defining moments in our lives.
1. Be emotional but don’t make emotional decisions.
2. Choose the way of Love!
3. Forgive – unforgiveness puts us in a prison.
4. Trust God.
Lindsay also pointed out that when our defining moments are caused by someone hurting us that we are biblically required to love that person, and forgive that person, but the ONLY one we are ever required to trust is God. People need to earn our trust.
I loved what she had to say. We all have defining moments and how they effect us is determined by how we allow them to effect us. If you’d like to listen to Lindsay’s talk, follow this link. You won’t be sorry – it was excellent!
I did think of you when we were home, but when I arrived home I hit the ground running and never stopped. Are you feeling pretty well now? I haven’t forgotten about you. (Saw your husband briefly on a visit to the clinic…)