Amy Bleuel tried to end her life after years of mistreatment and heartbreak. She was 6 when her parents divorced and her stepmother began abusing her. At 13, she was sexually assaulted and blamed for the crime. At 18, her father committed suicide. Addiction and more personal trauma followed. Yet Amy’s faith in Jesus enabled her to survive. In time, she founded a support group for people with similar struggles—The Semicolon Project. Its message is simple, but powerful: “A semicolon is used when an author could have chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you, and the semicolon is your life.”
Paul once opened up about some intense struggles in his life. He spoke of being “pressed on every side by troubles” (2 Corinthians 4:8). He was rejected and beaten and he suffered from an unspecified illness. He was hunted down, captured, and jailed. Sometimes he went without food and sleep (2 Corinthians 6:5, 12:7).
Yet he wasn’t “crushed” or driven to despair. He showed that we can have hope even when we struggle because of the Holy Spirit’s presence inside of us. Living within us is the same life-giving Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:11). And Paul said we can “overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
Despite the wrong she suffered, Amy Bleuel’s hopeful message today is this: “Stay strong; love endlessly; change lives.” Hope involves believing that God can draw good even from bad circumstances (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28). When we depend on His strength, getting knocked down is different from getting knocked out. Paul said, “We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:9). God provides the hope we need!
NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Psalm 23:1-6
More:
Read 2 Corinthians 1:4 and consider what good can come from suffering.
Next:
Why do we sometimes keep our struggles to ourselves? How might God want to use a difficulty you’ve experienced to encourage someone else?
yanju on May 14, 2016 at 12:01 am
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doctor-perspective on May 14, 2016 at 2:58 am
How we think, speak and act as Christians is greatly influenced by our Christian philosophy. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for us to occasionally stop and evaluate what we believe, and how that consciously or unconsciously forms our Christian philosophy.
Jennifer Benson Schuldt shares the powerful story of perseverance and faith of Amy Bleuel, and who would not be touched by it. In fact, it is hard not to be encouraged, especially when consider how we respond without perseverance and faith to far less difficult circumstances.
The chosen text is 2 Corinthians 4:1-9. In it the Apostle Paul, among other things, refers to the difficulties and challenges that he encountered in ministry. But note the present tense of his conclusion in verse 8: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. 9 We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.” There is no futuristic yearning for God’s ultimate deliverance in response to his present distress. His testimony was not one of hope. It was one of faith and perseverance. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hope has its place, and is ranked 2nd or 3rd in 1 Corinthians 13:13. Love takes 1st place. And in Hebrews 11:1, faith seems to edge out hope for 1st place.
Think of this. In any difficult situation, we can adopt a negative mind-set about our present reality. The result is that the best we can do is “look forward” to better times. But there is another philosophy. We can count it all joy when we suffer. We can in everything, give thanks! We can be like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and be at rest in the burning furnace because God is with us in the flames. We can be like Daniel and stroke the hungry lion’s mane, because God has shut the Lion’s mouth. We can be like Paul & Silas and sing praises while bloody and shackled in the prison. Built into hope is expectation of a future reality, and hope deferred can make the heart sick. Faith converts that expectation into a present reality in which we can operate.
Why only hope for God’s presence, provision and protection, when through faith, we can begin to enjoy it all right now!
hsnpoor on May 14, 2016 at 9:44 am
Indeed, living for the future is a very good way of dimming the lights on the present and missing the richness of it. Need we even mention the arrogance of doing so? Today is the day because tomorrow is not promised. I trust and pray that we all open the gift of this present day with the faith born of the joy in knowing that we are children of the most high God and go forth and act like it!
jim spillane on May 14, 2016 at 12:34 pm
hsnpoor – thank you so much for this beautiful comment. You touched my heart and mind with your insightful reply. Blessings to you today and always.
Mike Wittmer on May 14, 2016 at 9:26 am
Thank you, Jennifer, for this encouragement of the power of the gospel. I love the punctuation analogy. Only God can put a period on our life–really an exclamation point! And even then it’s a run-on sentence, because we who are in Christ will never die. I’ve probably taken the analogy too far–great point about the semicolon.
hsnpoor on May 14, 2016 at 9:47 am
I do too and your your further take on the punctuation analogy was not just creative, but so very, very true! Love it!
hsnpoor on May 14, 2016 at 10:08 am
Why do we keep our struggles to ourselves? Jennifer that is a great question. I think the answer finds it root in pride….not wanting others to “know our business” lest they think less of us. As I’ve gotten older, I find that problem to be less & less of an issue. You’ve approached it from the point of how a honest sharing of our struggles and how we made it through can help someone else and that is true. But, I’ve also been blessed by others, often very unexpectedly, by being open about my struggles. I’d like to give a recent example, but it’s a long story & it may be TMI for the site. It boils down to my not having to pay a tax penalty I was fully ready to pay because someone in my orb knew my situation, heard something on the radio about how I could avoid the penalty, wrote it down & gave me the info on the very day I was getting ready to sign my return! I love, love, love when God shows up in life’s circumstances like that! If he watches over the birds in the air and the lilies of the field….
samgaskill on May 14, 2016 at 1:17 pm
Amen! God does indeed draw good from bad circumstances. The life I have now have with the Spirit of the Living God in me is proof. I have shared here and on the ODB forum some of the personal struggles in my life and hopefully too, a piece of the joy that now lives in me in place of the “messy stuff”! I glean so much as others share what the Lord does in their life in a personal and tangible way. Faith is meant to be shared, this we know……sometimes the best way to share it is to let others see our vulnerabilities, and ask for prayer that we may boast in Christ’s victory in our weaknesses. God has chosen to take me from the miry clay and set my feet upon His Rock; when in desperation I sought Him, He let me find Him and my life will never be the same. He has become my hope, my joy and my peace and I will forever be His. For anyone reading today needing hope, finding themselves in painful or difficult circumstances take hope as for Jesus said to us in John 16:33 “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Nothing is too great for Him. Be confident in your hope in HIM……. you can take God at His Word! Blessings to all!
hsnpoor on May 15, 2016 at 9:53 am
Amen!