About
I was called to be a pastor at the age of 16, but I refused to become one on the bases of my thought of not being a good pastor. Over the years of mistakes and many bad choices, led me to die on Easter Sunday of 2001. It was then I answered the calling of being a pastor.
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Our Attitude About Fear/ Part 3 of Esther
Our Attitude About Fear
Do you remember where you were when you first heard about the terrorist
attacks on 9-11?
Furthermore, do you remember how you felt?
Most Americans felt a lot of sorrow, anger and heartache, not only for
the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families, but also for
our entire nation, because we saw a raw example of how some people on
this planet want to see nothing less than the annihilation of America.
Think of how we felt on 9-11 as a small indication of how Esther and
her people, the Jews, felt in ancient Persia about four or five years
after she became queen.
We're in the third part of this series in the book of Esther.
Last time in this series we learned that lovely Esther, who was as
beautiful on the inside as she was outside, became the new Queen of
ancient Persia. You might mistake what happened to Esther as a
Cinderella ending, if that were indeed the end of the story. Turns out
it was only the beginning.
As is the case in all of our lives, the sun doesn't shine every day.
The storm clouds that begin to appear on the horizon in chapter 3 of
Esther look very ominous for her and her people the Jews. A wicked
officer in the court of King Xerxes named Haman becomes upset with
Mordecai, Esther's adoptive father, because Mordecai won't kneel down
and pay honor to him.
Haman had bribed and blustered his way into the king's favor and had
become a V.I.P. in Persia. But it was mostly smoke and mirrors. He was
an insecure man who needed constant affirmation, even if it meant the
king passing a law that called for everyone to bow down to him.
Nothing wrong with receiving affirmation every once in a while but when
you need constant affirmation it's a sure sign of serious insecurity.
You need to get help. Haman needed help. But instead of asking for
help, he sought approval in the wrong way.
Haman's motto was, "Every time I walk by I want everyone to bow down to
me!"
As a conscientious Jew, Mordecai refused to bow to Haman. He refused to
play his silly game. Consequently, Haman hated Mordecai. Then, when he
found out about Mordecai being Jewish, his hate-filled mind and heart
decides to plot, not only for Mordecai's death, but also for the death
of all the Jews in the Persian Empire. We pick up the story in chapter
3 of Esther.
8 Then Haman said to King Xerxes, "There is a certain group of people
scattered among the other people in all the states of your kingdom.
Their customs are different from those of all the other people, and
they do not obey the king's laws. It is not right for you to allow them
to continue living in your kingdom. 9 If it pleases the king, let an
order be given to destroy those people. Then I will pay seven hundred
fifty thousand pounds of silver to those who do the king's business,
and they will put it into the royal treasury." Esther 3:8-9 (NCV)
King Xerxes, so easily manipulated by money and baseless argument,
agrees to Haman's wicked plan. He didn't even investigate Haman's
claims. He didn't even try to understand the other side of the story.
10 So the king took his signet ring off and gave it to Haman son of
Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jewish people.11 Then the
king said to Haman, "The money and the people are yours. Do with them
as you please."
12 On the thirteenth day of the first month, the royal secretaries were
called, and they wrote out all of Haman's orders. They wrote to the
king's governors and to the captains of the soldiers in each state and
to the important men of each group of people. The orders were written
in the writing of each state and in the language of each people. They
were written in the name of King Xerxes and sealed with his signet
ring. 13 Letters were sent by messengers to all the king’s empire
ordering them to destroy, kill, and completely wipe out all the Jewish
people. That meant young and old, women and little children, too. It
was to happen on a single day - the thirteenth day of the twelfth
month, which was Adar. And they could take everything the Jewish people
owned. 14 A copy of the order was given out as a law in every state so
all the people would be ready for that day.
15 The messengers set out, hurried by the king's command, as soon as
the order was given in the palace at Susa. The king and Haman sat down
to drink, but the city of Susa was in confusion. Esther 3:10-15 (NCV)
Long before there was a Hitler there was a Haman. If you have a grasp
of how evil Hitler was, or how evil the terrorists of 9-11 were, you
get an idea of Haman's disposition. His evil plan saw to it that every
single Jew - man, woman and child throughout the entire Persian Empire
was to be killed on the same day.
Messengers crisscross the empire to publish the news and a collective
gasp can be heard throughout the land.
1 When Mordecai heard about all that had been done, he tore his
clothes, put on rough cloth and ashes, and went out into the city
crying loudly and painfully. 2 But Mordecai went only as far as the
king's gate, because no one was allowed to enter that gate dressed in
rough cloth. 3 As the king's order reached every area, there was great
sadness and loud crying among the Jewish people. They fasted and cried
out loud, and many of them lay down on rough cloth and ashes to show
how sad they were. Esther 4:1-3 (NCV)
What do you do when your heart aches so badly that you can't even eat
and barely want to move?
The bad news is all of us are going to face heartache sooner or later.
In fact, most of us already know the bitterness of heartache.
The good news is that we don't have to be afraid of it if we're walking
with God. The high point in the story of Esther is how she and the
Jewish people respond to this threat against their very existence!
What is it that makes you feel threatened? What do you fear? What
breaks your heart?
Whatever it is - God is bigger and there are ways for you to
effectively work with God as He heals your heartaches.
HELPS for Healing Heartache
1. Reject the diagnosis of fear and get a second opinion from God!
This is a recurring biblical theme. There are a lot of places in the
Bible where we're told that the Christ follower does not need to live
in fear. Fear shouldn't dominate us. Fear is one of Satan's biggest
tools to rob us of the healing God has for heartaches.
I don't say this because I think that fear dominated Mordecai. On the
contrary. If it had, he would have gone into hiding. Instead he
publicly showed his displeasure with Haman's wicked plot and began a
period of fasting and crying out to God for help.
Whatever it is that threatens your spiritual, emotional, relational,
mental or physical well being, you've got to reject the diagnosis of
fear. Don't give your problems so much credit. Sometimes our heartaches
are magnified because we inflate our fears instead of deflating them.
Overcoming your fear is the first step to healing. Here's a true story
that illustrates the foolishness of inflating our fears.
During his reign of terror between 1875 and 1883, Black Bart was
credited with stealing the valuables and the breath away from
twenty-nine different Wells Fargo stagecoach crews. In journals from
San Francisco to New York, his name became synonymous with danger on
the frontier.
What's most remarkable is that this professional thief accomplished his
escapades without ever firing a shot!
His weapon was his reputation. His ammunition was intimidation. A hood
hid his face. No victim ever saw him. No artist ever sketched his
features. No sheriff could ever track his trail. He never took a
hostage. He didn't have to. His presence was enough to paralyze.
Black Bart. A hooded bandit armed with a deadly weapon. What was that
weapon? One word - FEAR!
As it turned out, he really wasn't anyone to be afraid of. When the
authorities finally tracked him down, they didn't find a bloodthirsty
bandit from Death Valley. They found a mild-mannered druggist from
Decatur, Illinois. The man the papers pictured storming through the
mountains on horseback was, in reality, so afraid of horses he rode to
and from his robberies in a buggy. He was Charles E. Boles - the
bandit, who never once fired a shot, because he never even loaded his
gun!
Who or what is the bandit without a loaded gun in your life? What fear
are you giving more credit to than God?
Haman's wicked plot to murder all the Jews was indeed cause for
concern. But there's no way God was going to let that happen. God had
made promises to the Jewish people. He was going to bless all the
nations of the earth through them. (Genesis 12) Through the Jews we
have the written Word of God, the Bible. And through them we have the
Living Word of God, Jesus, who said,
28And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the
soul; but rather be afraid of Him who can destroy both soul and body in
hell. 29Are not two little sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one
of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave (consent)
and notice. Jesus, Matthew 10:28,29 (NCV)
We need to be more concerned about the condemnation of God than the
death sentence of human beings. Furthermore, Jesus insists that there
is no detail of our lives, no matter how small, of which He is not
aware!
We need to give our fears less credit and give God more! Reject the
diagnosis of fear and get a second opinion from God.
Here's another help for heartache from the book of Esther.
2. Re-examine our attitude about testing.
What does the doctor do when we go to him or her for aches and pains?
The doctor puts us through an appropriate barrage of tests.
Life is like that. We're going to be tested spiritually. The key is to
expect testing as a part of the healing process.
Again we look to Jesus for our attitude about trouble and heartache.
"I told you these things so that you can have peace in me. In this
world you will have trouble, but be brave! I have defeated the world."
John 16:33 (NCV)
We can expect to run into people like Haman. Why did Haman hate the
Jews so much that he longed for their extinction?
The Bible says that Haman was an "Agagite." (Esther 3:10) That probably
means that he was a descendant of Agag, King of the Amelikites. The
Amelikites were the group of people that attacked the Jews after their
Exodus from Egypt. The Jews were exhausted, they were trudging through
unknown territory and the opportunistic Amelikites attack the
Israelites from behind. (See Numbers 14:45; 1 Samuel 15:2) That's just
like the devil and his henchmen. They hit you when and where you're the
most vulnerable!
However, the Amelikites didn't know with whom they were messing! God
declared war on the Amelikites and the Israelites defeated them with
God's help. [This is also probably why Mordecai would not bow to Haman.
He knew that Haman was God's enemy.]
Haman most likely grew up hearing the story of how the Israelites had
whipped his ancestors. His formative years were most likely spent
nursing a grudge against the Jews because his parents and their parents
before them made derogatory and inflammatory comments about Jewish
people. Now, forgetting the hand of God, he takes it upon himself to
engage in payback.
Bitterness and bias and prejudice are cancerous. They eat away at the
insides of a person. Haman was eaten up with hatred for what had
happened generations before him. How irrational, yet how normal for the
human heart without the healing hand of God.
You and I can expect to run into people like Haman. They will resent
our devotion to the Lord. They're nursing wounds that don't have
anything to do with us.
When I live for Christ I need to be aware that there will be
opposition. Now remember our first help we don't have to accept fear's
diagnosis - especially fear of opposition - but we do need to be aware
of it. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I'm prepared when I have
sense enough to know what's coming.
A big part of our dealing with our headaches and heartaches is
ATTITUDE. It's psychological. Instead of having a "woe is me" attitude
we can say, "That's all right. I knew there were going to be heartaches
and I'm ready."
If I follow Christ and His teachings it's not going to tickle everybody
around me.
Expect testing. If and when you do you will be less threatened by it.
You will realize that it's normal. It's part of the healing process.
Don't fear it. Just expect it and don't take it personal.
3. Follow God's prescription of personal involvement.
When word reached Esther of Haman's fiendish plot to kill all Jews it
was through a communication from Mordecai to ask her to plead to the
king for mercy. Esther's reply to Mordecai showed hesitancy. She said,
"All the royal officers and people of the royal states know that no man
or woman may go to the king in the inner courtyard without being
called. There is only one law about this: Anyone who enters must be put
to death unless the king holds out his gold scepter. Then that person
may live. And I have not been called to go to the king for thirty
days." Esther 4:11 (NCV)
Sometimes people go to the doctor with a severe illness and the doctor
prescribes life-threatening surgery. In other words the surgery may
save their life or take their life. The patient has to sign forms
saying they realize the risks they're taking. I think this is the
decision that Esther was weighing.
On the other hand, Mordecai's reply is confident and firm. His words
have come down through history as a classic response to all of us when
we face heartache and need reassurance and a little kick in the seat of
our britches.
"Just because you live in the king's palace, don't think that out of
all the Jewish people you alone will escape. 14 If you keep quiet at
this time, someone else will help and save the Jewish people, but you
and your father's family will all die. And who knows, you may have been
chosen queen for just such a time as this." Esther 4:13b-14 (NCV)
Remember how we said last week that timing is a key to good decision
making? Well now it was time for Esther to speak up and make a plea to
the king for her people the Jews. There is a time to keep our mouth
shut and there's a time to open it. This was a time to open it.
Mordecai was reminding her that the risk was not lessened because she
was in the palace. Either she spoke up and risked being killed by the
king now - or she kept quiet and was killed later on the set day of
genocide. There are just some problems that procrastination can't solve.
When our hearts are aching its easy to justify complacency. It's easy
to rationalize compromise. We feel smug in our do-nothing posture.
There's a time to wait on God and then there's a time to get cracking.
There's a time for sticking our neck out for God, for others, and for
what's right.
Our part is to trust God and get involved! We need to believe that He
has a plan for us no matter what heartaches and setbacks have beset us.
He has a plan for our relationships - even if past relationships have
gone awry, God still has a plan. He has a plan for our finances. He has
a plan for our jobs. He has a plan for every area of our lives!
God is a planning God! He always has a plan!
My part is to plug into that plan! God put Esther in the palace in
order to be a part of His plan to save the Jews!
God has put you where you are "for such a time as this."
attacks on 9-11?
Furthermore, do you remember how you felt?
Most Americans felt a lot of sorrow, anger and heartache, not only for
the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families, but also for
our entire nation, because we saw a raw example of how some people on
this planet want to see nothing less than the annihilation of America.
Think of how we felt on 9-11 as a small indication of how Esther and
her people, the Jews, felt in ancient Persia about four or five years
after she became queen.
We're in the third part of this series in the book of Esther.
Last time in this series we learned that lovely Esther, who was as
beautiful on the inside as she was outside, became the new Queen of
ancient Persia. You might mistake what happened to Esther as a
Cinderella ending, if that were indeed the end of the story. Turns out
it was only the beginning.
As is the case in all of our lives, the sun doesn't shine every day.
The storm clouds that begin to appear on the horizon in chapter 3 of
Esther look very ominous for her and her people the Jews. A wicked
officer in the court of King Xerxes named Haman becomes upset with
Mordecai, Esther's adoptive father, because Mordecai won't kneel down
and pay honor to him.
Haman had bribed and blustered his way into the king's favor and had
become a V.I.P. in Persia. But it was mostly smoke and mirrors. He was
an insecure man who needed constant affirmation, even if it meant the
king passing a law that called for everyone to bow down to him.
Nothing wrong with receiving affirmation every once in a while but when
you need constant affirmation it's a sure sign of serious insecurity.
You need to get help. Haman needed help. But instead of asking for
help, he sought approval in the wrong way.
Haman's motto was, "Every time I walk by I want everyone to bow down to
me!"
As a conscientious Jew, Mordecai refused to bow to Haman. He refused to
play his silly game. Consequently, Haman hated Mordecai. Then, when he
found out about Mordecai being Jewish, his hate-filled mind and heart
decides to plot, not only for Mordecai's death, but also for the death
of all the Jews in the Persian Empire. We pick up the story in chapter
3 of Esther.
8 Then Haman said to King Xerxes, "There is a certain group of people
scattered among the other people in all the states of your kingdom.
Their customs are different from those of all the other people, and
they do not obey the king's laws. It is not right for you to allow them
to continue living in your kingdom. 9 If it pleases the king, let an
order be given to destroy those people. Then I will pay seven hundred
fifty thousand pounds of silver to those who do the king's business,
and they will put it into the royal treasury." Esther 3:8-9 (NCV)
King Xerxes, so easily manipulated by money and baseless argument,
agrees to Haman's wicked plan. He didn't even investigate Haman's
claims. He didn't even try to understand the other side of the story.
10 So the king took his signet ring off and gave it to Haman son of
Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jewish people.11 Then the
king said to Haman, "The money and the people are yours. Do with them
as you please."
12 On the thirteenth day of the first month, the royal secretaries were
called, and they wrote out all of Haman's orders. They wrote to the
king's governors and to the captains of the soldiers in each state and
to the important men of each group of people. The orders were written
in the writing of each state and in the language of each people. They
were written in the name of King Xerxes and sealed with his signet
ring. 13 Letters were sent by messengers to all the king’s empire
ordering them to destroy, kill, and completely wipe out all the Jewish
people. That meant young and old, women and little children, too. It
was to happen on a single day - the thirteenth day of the twelfth
month, which was Adar. And they could take everything the Jewish people
owned. 14 A copy of the order was given out as a law in every state so
all the people would be ready for that day.
15 The messengers set out, hurried by the king's command, as soon as
the order was given in the palace at Susa. The king and Haman sat down
to drink, but the city of Susa was in confusion. Esther 3:10-15 (NCV)
Long before there was a Hitler there was a Haman. If you have a grasp
of how evil Hitler was, or how evil the terrorists of 9-11 were, you
get an idea of Haman's disposition. His evil plan saw to it that every
single Jew - man, woman and child throughout the entire Persian Empire
was to be killed on the same day.
Messengers crisscross the empire to publish the news and a collective
gasp can be heard throughout the land.
1 When Mordecai heard about all that had been done, he tore his
clothes, put on rough cloth and ashes, and went out into the city
crying loudly and painfully. 2 But Mordecai went only as far as the
king's gate, because no one was allowed to enter that gate dressed in
rough cloth. 3 As the king's order reached every area, there was great
sadness and loud crying among the Jewish people. They fasted and cried
out loud, and many of them lay down on rough cloth and ashes to show
how sad they were. Esther 4:1-3 (NCV)
What do you do when your heart aches so badly that you can't even eat
and barely want to move?
The bad news is all of us are going to face heartache sooner or later.
In fact, most of us already know the bitterness of heartache.
The good news is that we don't have to be afraid of it if we're walking
with God. The high point in the story of Esther is how she and the
Jewish people respond to this threat against their very existence!
What is it that makes you feel threatened? What do you fear? What
breaks your heart?
Whatever it is - God is bigger and there are ways for you to
effectively work with God as He heals your heartaches.
HELPS for Healing Heartache
1. Reject the diagnosis of fear and get a second opinion from God!
This is a recurring biblical theme. There are a lot of places in the
Bible where we're told that the Christ follower does not need to live
in fear. Fear shouldn't dominate us. Fear is one of Satan's biggest
tools to rob us of the healing God has for heartaches.
I don't say this because I think that fear dominated Mordecai. On the
contrary. If it had, he would have gone into hiding. Instead he
publicly showed his displeasure with Haman's wicked plot and began a
period of fasting and crying out to God for help.
Whatever it is that threatens your spiritual, emotional, relational,
mental or physical well being, you've got to reject the diagnosis of
fear. Don't give your problems so much credit. Sometimes our heartaches
are magnified because we inflate our fears instead of deflating them.
Overcoming your fear is the first step to healing. Here's a true story
that illustrates the foolishness of inflating our fears.
During his reign of terror between 1875 and 1883, Black Bart was
credited with stealing the valuables and the breath away from
twenty-nine different Wells Fargo stagecoach crews. In journals from
San Francisco to New York, his name became synonymous with danger on
the frontier.
What's most remarkable is that this professional thief accomplished his
escapades without ever firing a shot!
His weapon was his reputation. His ammunition was intimidation. A hood
hid his face. No victim ever saw him. No artist ever sketched his
features. No sheriff could ever track his trail. He never took a
hostage. He didn't have to. His presence was enough to paralyze.
Black Bart. A hooded bandit armed with a deadly weapon. What was that
weapon? One word - FEAR!
As it turned out, he really wasn't anyone to be afraid of. When the
authorities finally tracked him down, they didn't find a bloodthirsty
bandit from Death Valley. They found a mild-mannered druggist from
Decatur, Illinois. The man the papers pictured storming through the
mountains on horseback was, in reality, so afraid of horses he rode to
and from his robberies in a buggy. He was Charles E. Boles - the
bandit, who never once fired a shot, because he never even loaded his
gun!
Who or what is the bandit without a loaded gun in your life? What fear
are you giving more credit to than God?
Haman's wicked plot to murder all the Jews was indeed cause for
concern. But there's no way God was going to let that happen. God had
made promises to the Jewish people. He was going to bless all the
nations of the earth through them. (Genesis 12) Through the Jews we
have the written Word of God, the Bible. And through them we have the
Living Word of God, Jesus, who said,
28And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the
soul; but rather be afraid of Him who can destroy both soul and body in
hell. 29Are not two little sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one
of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave (consent)
and notice. Jesus, Matthew 10:28,29 (NCV)
We need to be more concerned about the condemnation of God than the
death sentence of human beings. Furthermore, Jesus insists that there
is no detail of our lives, no matter how small, of which He is not
aware!
We need to give our fears less credit and give God more! Reject the
diagnosis of fear and get a second opinion from God.
Here's another help for heartache from the book of Esther.
2. Re-examine our attitude about testing.
What does the doctor do when we go to him or her for aches and pains?
The doctor puts us through an appropriate barrage of tests.
Life is like that. We're going to be tested spiritually. The key is to
expect testing as a part of the healing process.
Again we look to Jesus for our attitude about trouble and heartache.
"I told you these things so that you can have peace in me. In this
world you will have trouble, but be brave! I have defeated the world."
John 16:33 (NCV)
We can expect to run into people like Haman. Why did Haman hate the
Jews so much that he longed for their extinction?
The Bible says that Haman was an "Agagite." (Esther 3:10) That probably
means that he was a descendant of Agag, King of the Amelikites. The
Amelikites were the group of people that attacked the Jews after their
Exodus from Egypt. The Jews were exhausted, they were trudging through
unknown territory and the opportunistic Amelikites attack the
Israelites from behind. (See Numbers 14:45; 1 Samuel 15:2) That's just
like the devil and his henchmen. They hit you when and where you're the
most vulnerable!
However, the Amelikites didn't know with whom they were messing! God
declared war on the Amelikites and the Israelites defeated them with
God's help. [This is also probably why Mordecai would not bow to Haman.
He knew that Haman was God's enemy.]
Haman most likely grew up hearing the story of how the Israelites had
whipped his ancestors. His formative years were most likely spent
nursing a grudge against the Jews because his parents and their parents
before them made derogatory and inflammatory comments about Jewish
people. Now, forgetting the hand of God, he takes it upon himself to
engage in payback.
Bitterness and bias and prejudice are cancerous. They eat away at the
insides of a person. Haman was eaten up with hatred for what had
happened generations before him. How irrational, yet how normal for the
human heart without the healing hand of God.
You and I can expect to run into people like Haman. They will resent
our devotion to the Lord. They're nursing wounds that don't have
anything to do with us.
When I live for Christ I need to be aware that there will be
opposition. Now remember our first help we don't have to accept fear's
diagnosis - especially fear of opposition - but we do need to be aware
of it. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I'm prepared when I have
sense enough to know what's coming.
A big part of our dealing with our headaches and heartaches is
ATTITUDE. It's psychological. Instead of having a "woe is me" attitude
we can say, "That's all right. I knew there were going to be heartaches
and I'm ready."
If I follow Christ and His teachings it's not going to tickle everybody
around me.
Expect testing. If and when you do you will be less threatened by it.
You will realize that it's normal. It's part of the healing process.
Don't fear it. Just expect it and don't take it personal.
3. Follow God's prescription of personal involvement.
When word reached Esther of Haman's fiendish plot to kill all Jews it
was through a communication from Mordecai to ask her to plead to the
king for mercy. Esther's reply to Mordecai showed hesitancy. She said,
"All the royal officers and people of the royal states know that no man
or woman may go to the king in the inner courtyard without being
called. There is only one law about this: Anyone who enters must be put
to death unless the king holds out his gold scepter. Then that person
may live. And I have not been called to go to the king for thirty
days." Esther 4:11 (NCV)
Sometimes people go to the doctor with a severe illness and the doctor
prescribes life-threatening surgery. In other words the surgery may
save their life or take their life. The patient has to sign forms
saying they realize the risks they're taking. I think this is the
decision that Esther was weighing.
On the other hand, Mordecai's reply is confident and firm. His words
have come down through history as a classic response to all of us when
we face heartache and need reassurance and a little kick in the seat of
our britches.
"Just because you live in the king's palace, don't think that out of
all the Jewish people you alone will escape. 14 If you keep quiet at
this time, someone else will help and save the Jewish people, but you
and your father's family will all die. And who knows, you may have been
chosen queen for just such a time as this." Esther 4:13b-14 (NCV)
Remember how we said last week that timing is a key to good decision
making? Well now it was time for Esther to speak up and make a plea to
the king for her people the Jews. There is a time to keep our mouth
shut and there's a time to open it. This was a time to open it.
Mordecai was reminding her that the risk was not lessened because she
was in the palace. Either she spoke up and risked being killed by the
king now - or she kept quiet and was killed later on the set day of
genocide. There are just some problems that procrastination can't solve.
When our hearts are aching its easy to justify complacency. It's easy
to rationalize compromise. We feel smug in our do-nothing posture.
There's a time to wait on God and then there's a time to get cracking.
There's a time for sticking our neck out for God, for others, and for
what's right.
Our part is to trust God and get involved! We need to believe that He
has a plan for us no matter what heartaches and setbacks have beset us.
He has a plan for our relationships - even if past relationships have
gone awry, God still has a plan. He has a plan for our finances. He has
a plan for our jobs. He has a plan for every area of our lives!
God is a planning God! He always has a plan!
My part is to plug into that plan! God put Esther in the palace in
order to be a part of His plan to save the Jews!
God has put you where you are "for such a time as this."
