We often discover the truth about ourselves at the very moment we feel most confident. Our commitment to follow Jesus was sincere, yet we fell so easily when trials came! Shame whispers that we’re finished, that we’ve exhausted God’s patience, but God doesn’t abandon us when we fall. He restores what is broken and uses our wounds to deepen our faith. As we learn to depend less on our own strength and more on His, even our worst failures can become opportunities for spiritual growth and a renewed calling to strengthen others.

The Strange Plans of God
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As the first church began to explode with growth and unlimited possibility, one of its brightest and best young leaders–a man named Stephen–was brutally murdered for his faith. Who would have thought that something so awful and unfair would have ever been part of God’s plans for the church? And yet God used this event to scatter the church and spread the Gospel to other places. Often in life God’s plan seem so strange, even unkind, yet we must trust His plans and hold to the promise that God knows what He is doing.



