Daily Devotional #1,767

There was a guy who was showing off his big new SUV to a friend. His buddy crawled into the car and saw  how spacious it was inside and said “Wow, you could fit eight people in here with no problems!” The new  owner sighed and said “Yeah, but where am I going to find eight people with no problems?” That is a silly joke,  but I bet we find ourselves nodding our heads and thinking… “You know…I couldn’t find eight people with no  problems!” We all struggle with problems…relational, spiritual, financial, physical…and it just keeps going.  And I bet a lot of us can relate to the Psalmist who wrote (Psalms 25:17 NLT) “My problems go from bad to  worse. Oh, save me from them all!” As I say so often, we live in a broken world with a whole race of broken  people. So what does God have to say about all this? Jesus was pretty clear about how life on earth was going  to play out… (John 16:33 NLT) “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.” There is something in  all this that God is doing. In the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul says that when problems and trials  come…we can actually rejoice! Whaaat? He went on to remind us that those struggles help us to develop  endurance. But that endurance develops strength of character and character strengthens our confident hope.  And that hope that God gives to us will not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts  through his Holy Spirit. So, yeah, we all have troubles in this life. But if you have chosen to follow this Jesus  with your heart and life…he takes that brokenness that has pain and disappointment and uses it to build us and  to fill us with hope. So go ahead and pack those eight people in to that new SUV with all their problems and if  they will give their hearts and troubles to this Jesus…somewhere on their journey, they will be filled with hope.  And so can you! Here’s our Bible verse for today…  
Romans 5:3-5 BSB Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering  produces perseverance; (4) perseverance, character; and character, hope. (5) And hope does not disappoint us,  because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.  
Remember I’m praying for you!  
With love, PJ