God’s Comfort (in times of suffering)

June 3, 2025

“Thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He is our Father and the source of all mercy and comfort. For He gives us comfort in our trials…” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, J. B. Phillips)

Suffering can drive us to God in such a way we make this discovery: God is here, and God can comfort us. When you undergo a life-threatening surgery and you, completely alone, are being placed under the bright lights, remember that God is the ultimate source of the greatest comfort you can experience in this lifetime.

As a pastor I have frequently heard people say that God met them in a supernatural and intimate way while they were going through a medical crisis. Two weeks ago a man for whom I’ve been praying for twenty years wrote from another part of the country to say he has come to faith. God gave him that absolute assurance while he was undergoing a critical life-threatening surgery.

Many of us have known people we loved who are depressed and oppressed. They are nearly always alone, and their pain is so intensely private they do not want the caring people in their lives to be with them. Others believe their suffering is so personal they must place themselves in a self-imposed solitary confinement. If that happens to you, I challenge you to make this discovery: God is there, and God can comfort you!

Father of all mercy and comfort, make me know personally that You are the source of all comfort. Comfort me in my pain, and when I feel alone and depressed, may I discover that You are there, You are real, and You can comfort me. I pray in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Dick Woodward, from 30 Reasons Why God’s People Suffer

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Jonah: Let’s Go To Nineveh!

May 30, 2025

“…The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” (Jonah 3:1)

Jonah tells us that he is not the hero. God is. A paraphrased summary of Jonah’s truth looks something like this: “When I went Nineveh, I was not agape love, but God was. I told the Lord, ‘I can’t love Ninevites, Lord.’ But God said to me, ‘I can, Jonah, so let’s go to Nineveh!’

I told the Lord, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to love Ninevites, Lord!’ The Lord said to me, ‘I know that, Jonah. But, you see, I want to love Ninevites, so let’s go to Nineveh!’

When I went to Nineveh, I did not love Ninevites. When I was in the city of Nineveh, however, God loved the entire population of Nineveh through me.” Miracle of miracles, God saved the entire population of Nineveh through the preaching of this prophet who hated the people God wanted to save.

…To be “prejudiced” means to “pre-judge.” Is God’s work through you being blocked because of your prejudice? Are there people with whom you do not share the Gospel because you have animosity toward them? Or because they are above or below your level of education, wealth and social status? Do you fear apathy, ridicule, hostility or embarrassment? Are you joining Jonah by saying, “I will not?”

When are you going to let the love and power of Christ cut through your conscious and unconscious prejudice and say to God, “I will?”

It’s not a matter of what you can do, but of what God can do. Faithfulness is your responsibility; fruitfulness is God’s responsibility.

Dick Woodward, Jonah Coming & Going:True Confessions of a Prophet

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The Power of Love

May 27, 2025

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love… I am nothing.”  (I Corinthians 13:1-3)

After a devastating battle during the First World War, Canadian army surgeon John McCrae composed one of the greatest war poems. In it he gave voice to thousands of soldiers who lay dead, summing up their lives on earth with one line: “Loved and were loved, but now we lie in Flanders Fields.”

When we come to the end of our lives, we’ll find one of our most important priorities will be those we love, and those who love us. But we should not wait to focus our priorities. The Apostle Paul declared the agape love of God to be the number one priority of spiritual people: “…and the greatest of these is love.”

A PARAPHRASE APPLICATION:

If we speak with great eloquence and even in tongues, but without love, we’re just a lot of noise. If we have all knowledge to understand all the Greek mysteries, the gift to speak as prophets, and enough faith to move mountains, unless we love as we do all these things, we are nothing. If we give all our money to feed the poor, and our bodies to be burned at the stake as martyrs, if we give and die without love, it profits us nothing.

Nothing we are, nothing we ever become, nothing we have, and nothing we ever will have in the way of natural and spiritual gifts should ever move ahead of love as our first priority. Nothing we do, or ever will do as an expression of our faith, our gifts, our knowledge, or our generous, charitable, unconditionally-surrendered heart is worthy of comparison, or can replace love as we live out our personal priorities in this world.

Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Love

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God’s 18-wheeler Deliverance

May 23, 2025

“And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:13)

A young lady was returning from a church meeting at a late hour. When she stopped at a traffic light, a large eighteen-wheeler truck was in the next lane. As the light changed and she pulled away, the large truck tailgated her car blinking its lights and blowing its loud air-horn.

She was very frightened and increased her speed as she drove out of the city limits toward the farmhouse where she lived with her parents. The huge truck followed her all the way, blinking its lights and blowing its horn. She turned into a long dirt road that led to her home. The truck followed her as she drove right up to the porch of the house. When she frantically popped open her door to run for the house, the back door of her car suddenly opened and a man with a large knife bolted for the woods.

When she stopped for that traffic light, the truck driver saw the man crouching behind her front seat with a knife in his hand. Realizing that she was going to be attacked as soon as she drove into the country, the truck driver was determined to save her from that tragedy.

Sometimes, our suffering and limitations seem like that eighteen-wheeler bearing down on us. Actually, however, that suffering can be a vehicle of our loving God, purging out of our lives the evil one who is determined to ruin us.

This is what our Lord Jesus profiled when He instructed us in the disciple’s prayer to ask that we might be delivered from the evil one.

Can you meet yourself in this story?

Dick Woodward, 22 May 2012

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Willing to do God’s Will

May 20, 2025

Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether My teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” (John 7:17)

When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He taught them to say, “Your will be done.” When Jesus modeled this, He sweat drops of blood as He prayed, “Not My will, but Your will be done.” (Matthew 6:10; 26:39; Luke 22:42-44) 

Jesus gives us a principle that shows us how we can know His teaching is the teaching of God. This also applies when we are seeking to know the will of God. The principle is simply this: If anyone wills to do, he or she will know.

Psalm 139:16 states that God had every day of David’s life scheduled before David existed. David writes that God is with him in such a way that it is impossible for David to escape God’s personal interest in every move he makes. This intimacy with God is obviously not only the experience of David but can be the experience of every child of God.

According to Jesus and Paul, knowing the will of God for our lives does not have to be complex. God does not deliberately obscure God’s will. The complexity is not in the will of God, but in your will and my will. 

As Paul tells us how to know “the good, acceptable and perfect will of God,” he begins his prescription by telling us to throw up our hands and offer an unconditional surrender of our wills to the will of God. (Romans 12:1-2) Our unconditional surrender to God significantly un-complicates our quest to know the will of God.

Dick Woodward, 20 May 2013

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The Light of the World

May 16, 2025

“…  I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.” (John 9:39)

 Jesus made the claim that He was the light of the world. He also commissioned His followers with the exhortation that we are the light of the world. From the statement quoted above we learn that the light of which our Lord was speaking is a very strange quality of light. It makes it possible for those who are blind to see and it reveals the blindness of those who think they see.

 When I was a child I lived near coal mines. One day there was a terrible explosion in a coal mine and 20 miners were trapped and isolated for three days in a small pocket of that mine. When they were rescued, there was great jubilation among the rescued miners and those who had broken through to them.

The celebration grew quiet when one of the rescued miners asked the question, “Why didn’t you guys bring any lights?” The rescuers had brought many lights, but the miner who asked the question had been blinded when the explosion happened. He had been blind for three days but in the mine’s pitch-black darkness he didn’t know he was blind until the light came.

The light that Jesus is – and the light He told us that we are – has that purpose and function. It reveals the spiritual blindness of those who think they see, and it gives sight to those who know they are spiritually blind. Jesus did not give us that light.

He told us we are that light. 

Are you willing to let the light of Jesus shine in and through you?

Dick Woodward, 18 May 2010

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Our Relationship with God

May 13, 2025

“Yea, though 1 walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me …” (Psalm 23:4)

The most important relationship we have is our relationship with God. The greatest description of a relationship we can have with God is the description given by David in his Shepherd Psalm. After explaining how this relationship is established David tells us how this relationship works as God leads us through the deep dark valleys of our lives. 

David tells us that God is with him, God goes before him and prepares a table of provision for him in the presence of all his enemies. He tells us that God is like a cup running over within him, and God is like oil being poured upon him. 

He ends his psalm by telling us that God’s goodness and mercy will follow him all the days of his life. This Hebrew word for follow could be translated by the word “pursue.” So, David is actually telling us that God not only goes before him but pursues him with his mercy (unconditional love) and goodness all the days of his life.

By application, this means that when you are going through deep dark valleys you can believe that God is with you, God goes before you, God pursues behind you, God will provide for you in the presence of your enemies, or problems. God is within you, and God’s anointing is upon you as long as you say with authentic faith, “The Lord Is My Shepherd.”

Dick Woodward, 14 May 2010

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Waiting on the Lord

May 9, 2025

“They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”  Isaiah 40:31

We must learn the difference between what we can do and what only God can do. We must have faith to wait on our Heavenly Father until He empowers and enables us to do what He desires. I have summarized waiting on the Lord in Four Spiritual Secrets: I’m not, but He is; I can’t, but He can; I don’t want to, but He wants to; and I didn’t, but He did.’ 

These spiritual secrets affirm that it is not a matter of who we are, but Who God is; it’s not a matter of what we can do, but what God can do; it’s not a matter of what we want, but what God wants. If these first three secrets are in place, we will know the joy of one day looking back and affirming it was not a matter of what we did, but what God did through us.

When I first began learning these spiritual secrets, I’d say, “I can’t, but He can.” Then, as a mover and shaker, I’d look at my watch, “I’ll give God five minutes, and if He doesn’t, I will!”

It took 40 years and a bush to teach Moses how to wait on the Lord, and it has taken 40 years for me to learn how to wait on the Lord the way an eagle waits on the wind.

Waiting on the Lord was not my style until my (quadriplegia) illness forced me to learn why an eagle sits on the side of its nest and waits until the wind currents are strong enough to soar over the winds of a storm.

Dick Woodward, As Eagles: How to Be an Eagle Disciple

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Morning Time with God

May 6, 2025

“Let me hear of Your steadfast love in the morning, for in You I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to You I lift up my soul.”  (Psalm 143:8)

Early every morning the eagle preens its feathers for more than an hour. Sitting on the side of its nest, the eagle passes each feather through its mouth, something like steam cleaning while depositing a liquid that makes its feathers water repellent.

This is important because eagles fish by diving under the water. The fluid deposited on their feathers also locks them together to improve their aerodynamics.  Whether an eagle is planning to fish or not, every morning for an hour they sit on the side of their nest and preen. They are not primping, they are preening – a very prudent preparation.

Like you and me, eagles never know what challenges they may face on any given day. Therefore, they preen in preparation for every possible challenge each day might hold.

Do you wake up holy in the morning? Before you’ve had your coffee? It’s possible for spiritual people to wake up holy, but if we’re honest we will concede that most of the time we don’t wake up that way.

It is very important to make a good beginning each day. When we consider the eagle’s daily practice of early morning preening, we are challenged to begin every day of our lives with spiritual preparation.

Have you preened your spirit with God’s help this morning?

Dick Woodward, (As Eagles: How to be an Eagle Disciple)

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What are You?

May 2, 2025

“… He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas (which is translated ‘Peter.’)   (John 1:42)

When Jesus first met Peter, his name was Simon and his life was characterized by instability.  Yet Jesus gave him the nickname “Peter,” which means “rock” and “stability.”

In Matthew 16 we have an intriguing interview between Jesus and Peter. Jesus had done the “who are you?” question in reverse. He asked the apostles, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter came up with the right answer. The Lord then said in so many words, “You’re not that smart Peter. That answer really didn’t come from you. It came from My Father.”

In this interview Jesus was telling Peter who and what Peter was, and what he was being called to be. In the Gospels Peter’s life is recorded like an unstable spiritual roller coaster. But after Jesus called Peter a ‘rock’ for three years and after Peter experienced Pentecost, we read in Acts that this unstable man became the rock-like, stable leader of the New Testament Church.

When you read the Gospels and Acts, you realize Jesus was convincing Peter of what he could become because he had come to know Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

Do you hear the voice of the Christ Who lives in your heart trying to give you His answer to this question, “What are you?” Is Jesus making you know what you can become and do for Him since He has made you a new creation? Is Jesus making you know what He can equip you to become as He is calling you and revealing what He wants you to be and do for him?

Dick Woodward, A Spiritual Compass

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