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Building One Another


E. Stanley Ott

WHEN YOU TURN, Vol 8 No 16

April 21, 2009

Dear Friend,

What are you to do after our Lord carries you through a rough time?

Take a vacation? Get on with life? While these make sense, our Lord offers an overarching word to Simon Peter and so to us as well.

After Jesus warned his disciples, “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat,” he went on to offer a word of hope about Simon’s faith and a word of command for Simon after his time of trouble.

“But I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:31-32*

The hope for us is simple yet immensely profound. If you are in a time of sifting know, through the prayers of Jesus, you will turn again to face him.

And when you are “down,” the role of your brothers and sisters in our Lord is to carry you, the way four people of faith in Jesus carried a paralyzed man to Jesus and whose faith Jesus responded to in healing the man (Mark 2).

When you are “up,” when you turn back to Jesus, your role is to carry and strengthen those in your life.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” II Corinthians 1:3-4

With joy - E. Stanley Ott