Embrace

Anyone Who Belongs

Hello once again from all of us in Embrace. Hope this month finds everyone well. June has been an active month for Embrace. Besides several singing opportunities, we've been involved in VBS, church and family trips, and getting the kids through softball and baseball season. It's great fun if you don't weaken!

God has used so much of what is going on in our personal lives this month to remind us of some very important spiritual truths. In the frantic activity of daily life, we tend to forget that He is sovereign even in the details of our existence. God has reached down in the sweetest way to rejuvenate me personally these past weeks. Naturally we expect God to show up and manifest His power in the crises of life but it's when He reaches down into the mundane difficulties of daily living and gives us the encouragement and strength we need to go on that we see His real heart-that of a loving, concerned and involved Father. Anyone who belongs to Him can be assured of His help.

Another truth that God has driven home these past weeks is this: "Anyone who belongs to Christ Jesus and wants to live right will have trouble from others" (2 Timothy 3:12). This was one of my children's memory verses for June and it was not coincidental that we all needed the reminder. Several of the members of Embrace and our families have experienced this truth first hand this month. It can be difficult for even adults, much less our children to accept this fact of life but fact it remains. We will suffer for our stand in Christ. The world cannot understand the choices we make and the God we serve. John wrote in his gospel that Jesus himself said the world hated him because he exposed their sin. Jesus also told his followers that the world hated and persecuted him and would hate them too (John 15:18-21).

Although it can be hard to persevere when the heat is on from those around us, God is faithful. He has provided and always will provide the strength that we need in these situations where our faithfulness to Christ and his teachings bring hardship. Paul put it best when he wrote those powerful, god-breathed words of Philippians 3:10, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…". When we die to our own comfort and desires as our Lord did, we are wonderfully transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into people who bear Christ's image. His mark is upon us and the world doesn't like it but, "Be of good cheer," says the Lord, "for I have overcome the world."(John 16:33)

So we who belong to Christ have assurance-first that he will be with us in all things and that he will meet our needs, and second, that we will be persecuted by the world, but again-be of good cheer; our loving Father, our Savior, the Guardian of our souls has overcome the world.

Bless you all!!

Nora Truhett
Embrace
http://www.embraceministry