“Am I worth it to you?”  “What is your suffering in comparison to Mine?”  Well, these questions resonated within my heart this morning right at the close of my devotional.  I was spending time not in prayer, but just spending time worshipping the Father.  I had troubled thoughts before I even attempted to enter His presence in order to given Him about an hour of uninterrupted time.  You know when we plan to spend intimate quality time with the Father, we will have those distracting thoughts but I wrestled and stayed with it.  Just when I was about to close out the hour, He spoke!  Yes, He spoke to me concerning my troubled thoughts regarding a message that I must deliver.  This message is not the usual “sunshine” that I am accustomed to.

When God gives us a message for ourselves and for others, it will not always be an easy and enjoyable task.  In my experiences as a Teacher and Minister of the Gospel, I have mostly had to deliver teachings and messages that were very encouraging and comforting.  But what happens when there is a message that exhorts the hearer to take action concerning some negative aspect of their character or to resolve some difficult painful incident that is still pending from the past?  What if YOU are included in the message?  Wow.  These are the times when fear of not being received, fear of rejection and ridicule, and the thought of suffering persecution for the sake of the word will flood your soul.  So the next question that challenged me at the end of my devotional this morning was this:  “IS HE WORTH IT?”  As I cried, i chose to say “YES!”  My Lord is worth the suffering.  Jesus was despised and rejected of men.  Jesus was acquainted with suffering and sorrows.  He shed His life blood as an atonement for my sins and yet in my struggle against sin, i have not yet resisted to the point of shedding any blood! (Isaiah 53:3, Hebrews 12:4).  So yes, my God is worth it all.  Of course I repented for feeling this way.  What a long-suffering and mighty God we serve!

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Minister Denise Cook-Godfrey

Check out other inspirational readings from this author at www.amazon.com/author/denisecookgodfrey