A few years ago I snapped an Achilles tendon and was only out of the cast a few weeks when I snapped it again! I was not a happy camper. Altogether I was hobbling around on crutches for much of a six-month period.

Other things were a lot worse at the same time and for quite a while I felt like God had forgotten me.

Times like these have been called “the dark night of the soul.” Most of us go through such periods. Sometimes it’s just life’s circumstances that get us down such as having an accident, getting sick, being betrayed by a friend, or experiencing the loss of a loved one or a job, or because of an unresolved relational conflict. And sometimes we have no idea why we feel so down.

Whatever the reason, the difficulties we are experiencing may be God’s wake-up call for us to put something right in our life, to help us grow, or to motivate us to get into a recovery or counseling program to overcome a depression that has lasted too long or to help us overcome an addiction—or even motivate us to change the direction of our life.

If you are going through “a dark night of the soul” be assured that God wants to use this time to help you grow and become a better and wiser person or to change some direction in your life. For me personally, I don’t think I have ever made a major change in my life or work without it having been preceded by a “dark night of the soul” period. I mean, who wants to change anything when everything is going great? Not me! The “dark night” times leave me open to change and to God’s direction.

However, no matter what we are going through, if our lives are committed to God, of one thing we can be certain, “The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, in any dark night of my soul and anguish of heart, please help me to learn what you are seeking to teach me, to hear what you are saying to me, and/or to know what you want me to do. And give me the good sense and courage to follow your bidding. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Deuteronomy 33:27 (NIV).

Imagine you were an expert mechanic working on your car and along comes a stranger and tells you what you should do to fix it. What would you think and how would you feel? At the very least I’d question the stranger’s reliability.

Maybe that’s the way Peter, James and John felt after they had been fishing all night and caught nothing when Jesus told them to take their boats out and try again. They were experienced fisherman so what would Jesus know about fishing that they didn’t know? They didn’t know who he really was. Nevertheless, they did what he suggested and caught so many fish they had to get help to bring in the nets.

Then there were the religious leaders of Christ’s day who had no idea who Jesus was either, but they were jealous of him and had him crucified.

Unfortunately, it is true that we can’t trust everybody and we need to be on our guard against deceptive and dishonest people. At the same time we never know who the stranger is that has crossed our path. He/she may be an angel unawares. Or he/she may be a person in need of a helping hand, an encouraging word, or just “a cup of cold water.” Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”²

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to sense so that I will know when you have sent a ‘stranger’ to minister to me in my hour of need, or if you have brought into my life a person in need of a helping hand or a touch from you—please help me to be as Jesus to him or her. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Hebrews 13:2 (NIV).

2. Matthew 25:40 (NIV).

In his book, Peace of Mind, Joshua Liebman writes of an experience he had when he was still a boy. “I made a list of the supreme goods in life,” Liebman said. “I went to a wise mentor and I showed him the list expecting to be praised for my precocity. The list went something like this … health, love, talent, riches, beauty, and faith. As I shared the list with the old wise man, he reached for a stub of a pencil, and carefully scratched through all of the things that I had listed. He said, “Young man, you may have all of these—health, love, faith, riches, beauty—but they will all turn out to be enemies instead of friends unless you have the one thing you missed.” Then he wrote on the paper, “The gift of an untroubled mind.”²

From what I read and hear it appears that so many people (at least in our modern society) are plagued by depression, heartbreak, worry, anxiety, fear, and impaired relationships. And (compared to most of the world) we have just about every material benefit and human comfort we want, except so many don’t have peace of mind.

There are two kinds of peace we all need in order to fully live. First, and most important of all, is spiritual peace or peace with God knowing that our sins are forgiven, our guilt is gone, and we have God’s promise of a home in heaven for all eternity. This gift from God is absolutely free and comes from admitting our sinfulness and accepting Jesus as our Savior. For help see No.4 below: “Finding Peace with God.”

The other kind of peace we could call emotional or relational peace. This comes from resolving any and all impaired relationships, forgiving any and all who have ever hurt us, and resolving any and all negative emotions—especially super-charged repressed negative emotions which are destroyers of both emotional and physical wellbeing and extremely destructive of personal relationships. The Bible also instructs us to get rid of (not bury or deny) all feelings of hatred and all negative emotions.³

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to see and resolve anything in my life that is causing me to have a troubled mind. Please fill me with your love and help me to know and experience your eternal peace in the very center of my being. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. John 14:27 (NIV).

2. Cited in Receive the Gift of an Untroubled Mind by Robert H. Schuller.

3. See 1 Peter 2:1-3 and James 5:16.

4. “Finding Peace With God” at: http://tinyurl.com/find-peace.

On one occasion Jesus and his disciples left Judea for Galilee. Jesus wanted to go through Samaria as he had some “business” to take care of there. About midday Jesus was tired so he sat down and rested at Jacob’s well. He sent all twelve disciples off to get some lunch and, while they were gone, a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well.

Without doubt this woman was the reason for Jesus coming this way. But how could he approach her? For one thing she was a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew. In those times it wasn’t socially acceptable for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan. She also had some personal issues that would make it look rather suspicious for Jesus to be talking to her alone. She had lived a colorful life and had had a few men in her day. Because of this she wasn’t accepted by the other town women, so she came to the well alone in the middle of the day. The other women came in the cool of the evening to draw their water.

Imagine the outcome had Jesus approached this woman by asking a question like this: “Excuse me, lady, my name is Jesus. May I ask you a personal question?” And then, without giving her a choice, he asked, “If you should die tonight, where would you spend eternity?”

There are times when it is right to ask such a question, but this wasn’t one of them. Had Jesus done that, she probably wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what Jesus was talking about and dismissed him as being some kind of a religious nut.

But Jesus didn’t approach her with a pat question. Being sensitive to people’s needs he knew that this woman had issues. The fact that she came to the well alone in the heat of the day was saying that. Jesus knew the kind of woman she was and that she was lonely—and had been searching for love and acceptance in all the wrong ways and places. He knew that her pressing need was for loving acceptance. And that’s what Jesus gave her before ever speaking of spiritual things.

Psychologists say that with the lives we touch we either build a bridge to that person or a wall between us. And Jesus, being a great bridge builder, bridged the great social gap between her and this stranger by simply asking, “Will you please give me a drink of water.”

This was the beginning of an interesting conversation. Following a brief discussion about living water, Jesus put his finger on both the need and problem area of her life. Without judging her in any way Jesus told her that he knew she was living with a man who wasn’t her husband and that she had already gone through five husbands.

“You have to be a prophet,” she exclaimed and then turned the conversation to spiritual things herself. She then got so excited that she left her water-pot behind, rushed back to the town and, in essence, said to the men in her life, “Come with me. I want you to meet a man who told me all about myself with all my weaknesses and he accepted me just as I am. He didn’t judge or criticize me. He must be the Christ.”²

Jesus knew this woman’s deepest need—her need for acceptance—and when he met it, she believed in him and automatically became a most enthusiastic witness.

That’s the kind of witness we who call ourselves Christians also need to be. In other words, on most occasions before speaking of spiritual things to people, we need to be sensitive to their personal needs and “scratch ‘em where they itch” just as Jesus did—and minister to their deepest need whatever it may be.³

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be sensitive to people’s needs, and be ‘as Jesus’ to them by meeting them at their point of felt need. And grant that they, seeing Jesus in me, will want you for themselves. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. John 4:9 (NIV).

2. See John 4:1-30.

3. Adapted from I Hate Witnessing by Dick Innes which can be purchased online at http://actscom.com/store.

There’s an old parable that explains how three men were working hard cutting stone from large blocks of granite. When asked what they were doing, the first man said, “I’m making bricks.” The Second man said, “I’m cutting stones for the foundation of a large building,” while the third man said, “I’m building a cathedral.”

All three men were equally capable and doing the same work, so which man’s work do you think would have been the most fulfilling? What mattered was each man’s thinking about the purpose of the work he was doing. It wasn’t his aptitude that made the difference—it was his attitude—his mindset!

One’s attitude will determine the direction and purpose of one’s life. The purpose of one man might be to make lots of money, while the purpose of another might be to help build the lives of the people he is serving. One woman may see housework as a burdensome chore while another does it joyfully because she is doing it for the ones she loves. It’s their mindset that makes the difference.

The reason the Apostle Paul ended his life victoriously was because he had a noble God-given life-purpose and had dedicated his entire life to fulfilling that purpose. He had a mindset that mattered.

If we want to end our life with a sense of fulfillment, it will be our mindset now that will determine how we end.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, Please help me to discover my God-given life purpose and dedicate my life to serving you by loving and serving people. Help me to live in harmony with your will and, with your help, to fulfill my God-given life purpose by living a life that matters—not only for time but also for eternity. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer, gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 2 Timothy 4:7 (NKJV).