| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Oct | ||||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | ||||||
About NEMinistries
Dear Friend,
Welcome to Ndubuisi Eke Ministries. I believe that we are alive for such a time as these.
No matter what we face in life we have been given the
ability by God to overcome it and come out successful. The Church is the only agent that is better equipped to influence the socio-economic and political condition of the world.The world is sick with greed.Everyone is trying to grasp something instead of seeking to serve others.Jesus spoke about the effect greed has on our mind as human being. It destroy the power of human reasoning and makes a man a slave to what he should have mastery over. I want this website to be part of the answer to the wake-up call the Lord is making to His church.. Iam committed to the task the Lord Jesus Christ has committed into my hands.It is the task of preaching the glorious gospel of His saving power to all men.The quality of your life will be determined by the what you are exposed to! God is speaking through every human medium available today.I pray for you today that the Lord will touch your lives and transform you to live for His purpose.
Ndubuisi Eke Ministries (NEMinistries) is a ministry that is committed to the evangelizing of lost souls. Living without Christ is not considered to NEMinistries as an optional or neutral living.Rather,it is a hopeless living.
Everyone is entitled to hear the full story of salvation and to hear it accurately.The Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.
“And He gave some,apostles;and some, prophets;and some,evangelist;and some,pastors and teachers;For the Perfecting of the saints,for the work of the ministry,for the edifying of the body of Christ:Till we all come in the unity of the faith,and of the knowledge of the Son of God,unto a perfect man,unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”-Ephesians 4:11-13
God has committed it to NEMinistries to raise a body of believer with an accurate knowledge of God’s character.
Basically,NEMinistries is committed to missions. The Church is to be light and salt to the world.
Light and salt symbolizes relevance.NEMinistries hopes to be the voice of hope in my nation.NEMinistries is a God-centred,Purpose-driven and people empowering ministry.This three words encapsulates what NEMinistries is here for.
Thank you for your participation in the gospel. I pray that this site can be of benefit to your walk with God. In Christ, Evangelist Eke Ndubuisi
Rev. Richard P. Smith
First United Methodist Church Murray, Kentucky
February 12, 2006
SERMON SERIES: HANDLING LIFE’S CHALLENGES
“ON HANDLING DISAPPOINTMENT” (4th in Series)
Psalm 22:1-4; II Corinthians 4:7-9
I think you know that being Christian does not free you from experiencing life’s disappointments. There’s not a one of us here this morning who doesn’t know something about disappointment.
People can disappoint us.
The circumstances of life will most certainly and inevitably disappoint us.
We may disappoint ourselves with our own poor decisions or bad actions.
Sometimes we may feel disappointed with God, when He doesn’t respond to our prayers as we want or need.
Our theme this morning is “handling disappointment.”
But let me be clear. I’m not talking about life’s little disappointments – you know that the weather ruins your plans for the day or that a little slight came your way this past week or that everything this past week didn’t go exactly as you had hoped. No, I’m talking about the great disappointments of life.
A marriage falls apart.
Someone you trusted greatly betrays you.
The job you want or need doesn’t work out.
Your health or the health of a loved one begins to decline.
Promises made to you aren’t kept.
It’s these kinds of disappointments to which I’m speaking this morning.
Let me share four insights around the theme handling life’s great disappointments.
I. NO ONE HANDLES DISAPPOINTMENT PERFECTLYPerhaps the most telling example of this truth is Jesus himself. In the gospels of Matthewand Luke we find Jesus exclaiming, as he suffers on the cross, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani. These words in Aramaic, Jesus’ native language, mean, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Most of us are aware that Jesus shouts these words on the cross in the midst of his suffering.What we may not realize is that Jesus was quoting a psalm, the 22nd psalm. As a young boy growing up learning the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus was well aware of the many different psalms and the themes to which they spoke. Thus, Jesus could have repeated any number of Hebrew Scriptures while hanging there on that cross. He, for example, could have chosen to have repeated the 121st psalm…”I lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence comes my help,’ a great psalm of comfort and assurance before God. But he didn’t. Instead, he chose the one that most clearly expressed what he felt in his heart, his mind, his spirit. He chose the opening verses of the 22nd psalm. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He felt let down by God. He felt to some extent God had betrayed him. For a few brief moments he was truly disappointed with God.Now that scenario in the gospels of Matthew and Luke is an encouraging one for you and for me. This is Jesus, the Son of God, and yet in those moments he wasn’t handling disappointment well. If Jesus didn’t handle disappointment perfectly, then certainly God understands when disappointment gets to us. Listen, friends, God understands! God understands that we are human beings who have to work through our disappointments over time. Thus, you can be honest with God about your feelings.
God can handle your honest thoughts and feelings.I have had countless persons come to me over my ministry and tell me about the guilt they feel at not being able to bounce back quickly from some great heartache and disappointment. What many of these persons do to themselves is let a second burden settle in – the burden of guilt; guilt at not handling things well, guilt at letting God down, guilt at not being as strong a Christian as they know they ought to be and want to be. It’s bad enough to carry the burden of disappointment; far too often we also carry unnecessarily the burden of guilt.
Hey, accept it – no one handles great disappointment perfectly! You don’t; I don’t!
Now, having said that, let me move, however, to our second point, an important follow-up thought.
II. MOVING BEYOND DISAPPOINTMENT IS A CHOICE
Many of you know the name James W. Moore. Jim Moore is Senior Pastor of St. Luke United
Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. I’ve known Jim Moore for forty years, ever since he was my youth director when I was in high school in Milan, Tennessee. He’s written many books, among them one titled, You Can Get Bitter or Better. What a great title! In that book he writes,
“When trouble comes, when disappointment breaks your heart, when sorrow grips your spirit, you have a choice…you can get bitter or you can get better.”Let me follow-up on Dr. Moore’s thoughts with my own way of putting it:
You can wallow in your disappointment or you can do something about it and begin to get well, to experience the joy and peace of life once again. It’s your choice.
We can wallow in self-pity or we can get up and get going
We can wallow in saying “if only” or we can move on to saying, “Now what?”
We can wallow in despair or we can reach out to God and others and receive the help that can move us onward and upward
We can wallow in sadness or we can eagerly look for the blessings and joy of life that remain in spite of our deep disappointment.
I remember some time ago in another church a man who came to me with a real heartache in his
life. The woman he loved and whom he planned to marry decided to back out of their relationship. He was shattered. More than once he literally wept in my office. I met with him weekly for quite a while, going into several month. After the first couple of sessions, I gave him some spiritual and emotional prescriptions for making it through this difficult time.
I had him write on 3 x 5 cards some key verses in the Bible that offer words of encouragement and hope and told him to keep them on his bathroom mirror and read them every morning and evening;
I gave him the titles of several books that could be helpful at times like this and told him to buy one and we could discuss it together;
I told him that he needed to talk with God even if all he could do was pour out his heart in agony;
Yes, you’re not going to handle disappointment perfectly. Yes, we struggle sometimes to find our way through the great disappointments of our lives. Yes, we have to watch letting extreme guilt become a second burden in the midst of our disappointment. But there also comes a time when we have to decide whether we’re going to wallow in our disappointment or move on and get better. Every one of us has a choice in the midst of our disappointment
I suggested he talk regularly with one of his professional colleagues who had also gone through that same kind of disappointment.
Well, after several weeks, it was clear that he wasn’t making much progress. I pressed him on whether he had done any of the things I had suggested. No, he wasn’t reading the scripture texts. While he had bought the books, he had not read them. No, he wasn’t talking with God. No, he wasn’t talking with anyone else who had been through this kind of difficulty. Finally, I said to him, “Look, I don’t think we need to meet anymore.” He was stunned. “You don’t mean that, do you?” I said, “I most certainly do.” He said, “Why?” And I said, “Because you’re not trying to get better. You’re just wallowing in your pain, your grief, and your misery. Not even God himself can help you get better if you don’t make the choice to do your part to move on. When you’re ready to do your part, let me know and we can begin to help you heal.”
You see, whether we wallow in self-pity and despair or move on toward healing, with God’s help, is our choice! It’s up to us!
III. DISAPPOINTMENT CAN MAKE US WISER AND STRONGER
I said in my sermon on failure that failure was one of the greatest teachers of our lives if we are
willing to learn the lessons failure teaches us. In my sermon on conflict, the second in this series, I said the same thing; there is a lot we can learn amidst the conflicts in our lives. Well, the same is true of disappointment. Disappointments in life, once we’ve worked through them and moved beyond them, have much to teach us about life, about ourselves, and about how we can handle other disappointments that will come our way in life.
The truth is that there’s not a one of us in this sanctuary this morning who would be who we are if it were not for disappointment. Why do we parents allow our children to face disappointment? Why do we let them risk and make certain decisions knowing they are at times definitely going to be disappointed, maybe even greatly hurt? Because we know it will make them stronger. Because we know in the end they will be more mature. Because we know that in the end they will be better persons.Some unknown poet summed this truth up quite well when he wrote:
“For every hill I’ve had to climb,
For every stone that bruised my feet,
For all the blood and sweat and grime,
For blinding storms and burning heat,
My heart sings but a grateful song…
These were the things that made me strong.
For all the heartaches and the tearsf,
For all the anguish and the pain,
And for the hopes that lived in vain,
I do give thanks, for now I know
These were the things that helped me grow.
‘Tis not the softer things of life,
Which stimulate one’s will to strive;
But bleak adversity and strife
Do most to keep one’s will alive.
O’er rose-strewn paths the weaklings creep,
But brave hearts dare to climb the steep.”
You and I certainly would not choose, if we had a choice, to face some of the great disappointments of our lives. But there is not a one of us who isn’t better, wiser, stronger, more mature because those disappointments came our way. As the poet puts it:
These are the things that make us strong
These are the things that help us grow
Look at your life. Isn’t that true? Haven’t you learned a lot about yourself, about others, about life, even about God in the midst of your disappointments? I think so!
It is feeling struck down but not letting it destroy our faith and hope.
That’s a triumphant faith and it’s possible for each and every one of us. Believe it or not, you can have a triumphant faith – a faith that stays strong and hopeful whatever life may bring.
How do you get a triumphant faith? Let me suggest some things you must believe, some things you must embrace if you’re going to have a faith that is truly triumphant amidst life’s great challenges and difficulties and disappointments. You give up expecting God to let life always go your way;You accept that disappointment and heartache will come your way;
You prepare yourself through prayer, worship, and Bible study to be strong when the time comes;
You believe with all your heart that God can and will bring good out of the worst of circumstances;
You soak up the power of God that comes when you really spend time with Him and when you open your life up to His divine presence.
I wish for each of you that kind of faith!!!
A TRIUMPHANT FAITH IS POSSIBLE
Want to know what a triumphant faith is? Well, Paul describes it here in this passage from II
Corinthians.
It is feeling hard pressed but not letting your spirit get crushed
It is feeling perplexed about life’s difficulties and disappointments but not giving into despair
It is feeling persecuted but not letting oneself feel abandoned by God
4 Comments »
{ RSS feed for comments on this post} · { TrackBack URI }
Temitope Said:
on J000000Monday08 25, 2008 at 11:08 am08
ALL I EVER WANTED WAS A MINISTRY THAT WILL HELP THE HUNGRY SOULS. I THANK GOD I JUST FOUND ONE.
YOU ARE A BLESSING. PLEASE KEEP THE FIRE BURNING.
Adiele Egbukole Said:
on J000000Tuesday08 25, 2008 at 11:08 pm11
The end time is near… all human being should come close to God. As salvation is the only master key to Heaven. The time is ticking away, dont hesitate… Pastor Eke keep doing the Good work that God has choosen you to do and may Almight God continue to lead you in all you do.
Lora Said:
on J000000Thursday09 25, 2008 at 11:08 pm02
My dear friend – thank you for sharing what God is doing in your life and this ministry. Continued prayers that God will abundently bless you as you encourage others and spread the good news of the Gospel. Thank you for being a blessing to me!
Your sister in Christ – Lora
Okeke ndidi Said:
on J000000Tuesday09 25, 2008 at 11:08 pm08
Sir,
you have been a bleesing to me, I have been wanting to be connected to people like you and thank God i did cos i also want to touch lives worldwide.i never knew i had a ministry but you made me discover it i shall work with you so as to fight the battle ahead to come and to awaken the church from their slumber.I will always thank God for your life!
Your daugther,
Ndidi.