From the Heart of the Pilgrim

Please excuse the King James Version language as I pour out my heart to my fellow pilgrims, my pilgrim pals:

Dearly beloved, thank you for your partnership in the gospel, your prayer support for each other and for the encouragement that you extend to our fellow pilgrims. What a blessing this site is for each of us. As I drove to work tonight I was thinking of the circumstances that our sovereign God has allowed in each of our lives, situations that, were we left on our own, would defeat us and cause us to give up. But...the all-sufficient grace of our wonderful Savior has been lavished on us by the Father and continues to uphold us moment by moment through our various and sundry trials.

If we were to list the challenges that each of the Pilgrim Pals have faced it would not rival the battles that the apostle Paul faced but they might come close. Please be sure to read the passage from 2 Corinthians 4 that I will sign off this post with.

Today has been a struggle for me. I can't really put my finger on the cause. It must be a composite of many things. This afternoon I walked through the deep snow in the field behind our home reminding myself that there won't be many more hikes out there. The closing date on the sale of our home is April 30th. Watching Matthew and his friend playing out there for hours brought tears to my eyes. I know that God will provide another place but...this place has such incredible memories.

Tonight I told Carol that I wasn't feeling well and that I hadn't felt up to scratch all day. There seemed to be a thick, dark cloud of depression enveloping me all day. I couldn't seem to shake it and I wasn't trusting God to lift the cloud like I should have been.

Tomorrow I have another doctor's appointment in Toronto and will get a referal to see an opthamologist to get help with the blepharitis that I'm battling. This is an eye condition where the eyelid is dry and scaly and the eyes are swollen. It's a bacterial probem.

Please pray for me as I struggle to walk closely with my God in the face of all that's happening. God is sovereign and He will make a way for me. THANKS!

Here are those incredible verses penned by the apostle Paul:

"For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."