{"id":38091,"date":"2025-11-11T22:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=38091"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:46:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T00:46:02","slug":"251112-goodness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/251112-goodness\/","title":{"rendered":"Grab Hold of God\u2019s Goodness"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"text-align: right;\">by Max Lucado<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-38093 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251112_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251112_1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251112_1-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Tragedy wages an all-out war on faith, so take some practical steps to grab hold of God\u2019s goodness.<\/p>\n<p>First, invite God to use your suffering for his glory. Most Christians ask God to remove the pain, not use the pain. The apostle Paul prayed for God to remove his thorn in the flesh. Later, he made this resolution: \u201cI want to join [Christ] in his sufferings.\u201d (Philippians 3:10 NIRV). Paul\u2019s prayer changed from \u201cremove this\u201d to \u201cuse this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Also, resist the urge to demand a reason. If God gave one, would we understand it? Most important, guard your thoughts. Disallow any notion that runs counter to God\u2019s truth.\u00a0We may not understand the reasoning of God, but can we not trust the character of God? If he permits pain, it is for a higher purpose.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-37832 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1-300x34.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"34\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1-300x34.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>God Made Our Brains. He Can Retrain Our Brains.<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37576 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/time.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" \/>Stuck in your head? Hounded by regrets? Weighed down by worry? Change is possible! The thoughts that have characterized your past need not characterize the rest of your life.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em><strong>Tame Your Thoughts<\/strong><\/em>, Max explores three key thought-management tools and then applies them to the most common thought problems: worry, guilt, anxiety, and other types of mental quicksand that threaten to trap us. God loves us too much to let us lead a life marked by poor thinking. He has not left us alone in this battle of the mind.<\/p>\n<p>shared with permission<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tragedy wages an all-out war on faith, so take some practical steps to grab hold of God\u2019s goodness.<\/p>\n<p>First, invite God to use your suffering for his glory. Most Christians ask God to remove the pain, not use the pain. The apostle Paul prayed for God to remove his thorn in the flesh. Later, he made this resolution: \u201cI want to join [Christ] in his sufferings.\u201d (Philippians 3:10 NIRV). Paul\u2019s prayer changed from \u201cremove this\u201d to \u201cuse this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Also, resist the urge to demand a reason. If God gave one, would we understand it? Most important, guard your thoughts. Disallow any notion that runs counter to God\u2019s truth. We may not understand the reasoning of God, but can we not trust the character of God? If he permits pain, it is for a higher purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38094,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38091\/revisions\/38094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}