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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
John Burke
Read between
February 9 - March 2, 2023
When we base our worth or identity on what we do or what was done to us, we will struggle with fear of failure, feel the need to prove ourselves, or manipulate others who get in the way of our success. We will become self-consumed. That’s because God never created us to get our identity from what we do or what others did to us, but from who we are to God.
How much have you loved with your life? Have you loved others as I am loving you? Totally? Unconditionally?
Nothing is lost when Heaven is your destination.
When we suffer, God suffers with us. “In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them” (Isaiah 63:9 NLT).
We know when evil, pain, or suffering hurt us, but we do not know how often God orchestrates his angels to care for us. Angels are God’s servants sent to help people.
“Our angels are ever vigilant to protect us from evil that originates from other dimensions of the unknown universes. . . . They are keeping us safe.
God wants to heal us of the wounds and replace the lies that keep robbing us of life.
“I knew God was allowing me to see myself as He saw me,” Crystal says. In God’s eyes, she was perfect, and that would never change, no matter what happened to her on earth, no matter what bad decisions she had made that had filled her with a sense of worthlessness. None of it mattered. Until this moment, Crystal had believed God couldn’t possibly love her, especially after the abuse she had suffered and the sins she had committed. Now, however, she knew she had based her beliefs on a lie—a lie God obliterated with his love.14
[The little girl] was me at the moment the enemy stepped into my life and whispered that I was worthless, that I was broken, that I was disgusting, and that I got everything I deserved.
We live in a world where we taste Heaven—God’s love and goodness, and we also taste hell—the absence of God and his ways. This is why God stays hidden. We experience a taste of both Heaven and hell greatly reduced.
Why would a loving God allow so much evil, pain, and suffering on this earth? Because it’s a warning and a chance to choose him! There’s something much, much worse when we choose to follow ourselves and reject him as God. Hell is God giving free eternal creatures what they want—freedom from him. All the sufferings and evils of earth are meant to warn us.
He looks at the heart and motives most.
When you build into others spiritually, no one may even notice or care—but God cares!
One day you will see how one life changed another life, and how your greatest impact on humanity came by developing individuals.
When we undergo suffering and hardship, there really is a greater purpose. God is training us to govern in eternity.
“You are standing in the River of Life. It is of the Spirit of God. It washes away the scars of sin.
Clearly there will be animals in Heaven, and if God uses animals to teach children (and even adults) how to love, don’t you think renewing all things would include pets we’ve loved as well? I imagine so.
You will realize that all the struggle, all the suffering, all the painful challenges, every act of faith, service, and sacrifice done on this earth produced for us “an eternal glory that far outweighs them all”
