The car in front of me had numerous bumper stickers and the light turned green before I could read all of them. The one I remember said, \u201cLife is hard. Get over it.\u201d It reminded me of a quote from Sydney J. Harris, an American journalist, syndicated in many newspapers throughout the United States and Canada, who once wrote, \u201cWhen I hear somebody sigh, \u2018Life is hard,\u2019 I am always tempted to ask, \u2018Compared to what?\u2019\u201d Good point. Yes, life is hard, but where were you ever promised it would be easy. You say, \u201cBut I\u2019m a Christian. That\u2019s supposed to make life easy.\u201d Show me that verse! Life is hard whether you are a Christian or not. The advantage the Christian has is a refuge that the non-Christian does not have. J.B. Coats wrote a hymn that was recorded by everyone from Elvis Presley to Emmylou Harris to the Gaither Vocal Band. \u201cWhere could I go but to the Lord . . . Seeking the refuge for my soul. Needing a friend to save me in the end. Where could I go but to the Lord.\u201d The Psalmist wrote, \u201cThe LORD also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble\u201d (Psalm 9:9). Hard times? Sure! But give thanks, Christian! We have a helpful refuge in hard times.<\/p>\n
Join me this week in praying for the following global concerns:
\n\u2022 Pray for Chinese students in the U.S. More Chinese students hold U.S. student visas than students from Europe, South America, Africa, Australia, and Canada combined. They account for 29 percent of all foreign students studying in the U.S.
\n\u2022 Pray for Steve and Noit as they return to Cambodia after time spent in the U.S.
\n\u2022 Pray for Stephen as he leads a storying workshop this week with 4 different people groups, representing nearly 3 million people, who either do not have a Bible in their own language, or do not have a Bible they can understand. Two of the groups have no known believers, and the other two have less than 5% of the population claiming to be believers.
\n\u2022 Continue to pray for missionaries and national leaders in Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The car in front of me had numerous bumper stickers and the light turned green before I could read all of them. The one I remember said, \u201cLife is hard. Get over it.\u201d It reminded me of a quote from Sydney J. Harris, an American journalist, syndicated in many newspapers throughout the United States and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}