Lance Brown

Our last “Re-routing” toward eternal joy is failure. Though failure has an awful sting to it, it is most painfully true for men, as Genesis 3 tells us. Frustration, futility, and failure are meant to drive men to God, not just in a generic way, but specifically, to discover a joy they would never experience…

Re-route to joy #8 is suffering. Yes, suffering. It strikes every one of us, somehow, and in some way. Yet, our redemptive God uses even the very worst that happens to us to bring us, eventually, to a kind of joy that nothing else will produce! But it’s painful. Excruciatingly painful.

Trials come into everyone’s life. Trials test us and shape us. For some, trials shape us toward resentment, bitterness, and cynicism. But God makes the audacious claim that when trials come, they provide a reason for joy! Let’s discover why and how that happens.

God’s back road of heartache can be excruciatingly painful. Sometimes is involves human betrayal, lying, deception, rejection or even being replaced. Yet, God can use even this pain redemptively. We’ll look at a woman who had failed in five marriages yet found the love and acceptance her heart had always craved.

Although we wish this world were a lot more like heaven it certainly is not. It is meant to be hard. Why? Because our hearts are hard. As long as life is “smooth” we will have no motivation or reason to face and admit our sin, our need of a new heart, and a new…

We’re not good when the “unexpected” comes crashing into our lives. We’re REALLY not good when TWO big unexpected boulders crash into our lives. God re-routes Hannah to the back roads of the Unexpected, circumstances you never imagined YOU’d ever have to go through. Along the way, Hannah found JOY she never expected to find,…