God’s Care: Resilience, Part 10 – Determination, cont. (#956)
Good morning. We’ve been doing a series for many months on how much God cares for us. As you know. And we sort of took a subset of that, on because He cares for us He helps us be resilient, so we can bounce back from challenges. Because we all have challenges, sometimes they are little, tiny challenges; sometimes they’re huge, life-changing events. But, we have to be resilient and be able and bounce back from them. I’m reminded of something…I think Peter, you said this to me in a text this week: “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” And that’s true. You always look at what you got, and the problem is people will often look and see: well I’m short of this and I’m short of that, and this is going wrong and therefore, my next year’s going to be a mess. Well, not as long as we have the promises of God. Because I might be very short of something I’d like to have or need more of, but as long as I have God’s promises, I won’t be forsaken. And neither will you. So resilience is a big deal, and then we took a subset of resilience last week, and talked about determination. And we’re going to continue on that theme today. You may remember that one of the records we read about last week was about Hannah, Samuel’s mother. She was so determined to have a son that she just kept praying, and praying, and ultimately ended getting pregnant and having a son named Samuel, who she took to Eli the priest to serve the Lord. And we’ll read a little bit about that. And I better switch from my song book to my Bible, otherwise I won’t find First Samuel chapter two…

As taught by Bruce Mahone 20181118.  All Rights Reserved.
Verse Listing and Notes
I Samuel 2:12-36        Samuel’s training by Eli
Ex. 29:31-34                Seethe (boil) the offering, then priests eat
Lev. 3:12-17                Burn the fat
I Samuel 3                   Samuel’s training by God
I Samuel 7                   Samuel led Israel to victory by God
Teaching
God’s Care: Resilience, Part 10 – Determination, cont. (#956)

God’s Care: Resilience, Part 9 – Determination (#955)
Good morning! We’re going to continue today, and oh by the way, any of you on the phone if it is possible for you to mute your phone by hitting start six (*6) or a mute button, go ahead, but if not, try not to spill your coffee and use a cuss word — OK. So here we are this morning, we’re going to continue our series on resilience. And part nine of it today is in Determination; because to be resilient, you have to be determined to move on the next level of your life, or your project, or whatever it is. We all know that if you sort of sit back and let things happen in life, they sometimes will go the way you want and sometimes they won’t. But if you set a course for your life and get determined to go there, now you can begin to make some progress in the direction you want to go. Now if you don’t care what direction you go in, it doesn’t matter, you can just go wherever life takes you. And you have ever right to do that. But if you have a certain direction you’d like to see your life go, its going to take some determination for that to occur. And you have to focus, and you have to take actions and pray, and ask God to help you to go in that direction you want to go. And there are other times in life where you have no idea what direction is good for you, so rather than get worried about it, you just move along through life and enjoy it, and trust God and see what doors He opens. But even then, its still wonderful to pray with great determination that God will bless you. Like for instance, you might have a financial need and you may not know what the best answer for meeting that financial need is. So you just pray that God will supply your needs, and then see what doors He opens. So you’re still determined to trust God and have that financial need taken care of, you just may not know how to do it. But, in other times in life, you may know for a lot of reasons; whether God told you or its just something you’ve been working on for ages and have a little progress, so you want to take care of your financial needs in a certain manner. Well, then you have to be determined to try to make that happen. And if that’s the case, work very hard to make that happen, but if along the way, God opens another door, where God tells you, you should be moving a different direction to have that need taken care of, then you obviously want to adapt. But either way, you need to be determined. Determined to either accomplish a specific thing or determined to just trust God that He’ll come through for you, regardless. And we’re going to start with the record in first Samuel chapter one of Hannah…
As taught by Bruce Mahone, 20181111.  All rights reserved.
Verse Listing and Notes
I Samuel 1-2:11   Hannah prayed and received a son
Luke 18:1-8          Men ought everywhere to pray and not faint
II Cor. 4:1(-7,16)   Having this ministry, we faint not
Gal. 6:9                  We shall reap, if we faint not
Eph. 3:13               Faint not at tribulation
Heb. 12:1-4 (5ff)   Lest ye faint
Luke 17:6              Mustard Seed
Teaching
God’s Care: Resilience, Part 9 – Determination (#955)