while on furlough a doctor asked the nature of her illness. She described the intestinal digestive trouble she had been having and the doctor said, "If your check had arrived on time and you had been eating your current diet you would now be dead, because the best treatment for your illness was a thirty-day oatmeal diet." You know, our problem is that we do not wait upon the Lord. We forget that it's through faith and patience that we obtain God's promises.

As in the story of Job and others we already talked about, we need to understand as Christians that sometimes the Lord is working through circumstances that to us are not to our benefit.  This means we need to be patient and understand that the Lord has us in His hands.  "He's got the whole world in His hands".

Love never gets tired

A mother took her six-year-old boy into a doctor's crowded waiting room.  As they waited their turn, he began to ask her all kinds of questions.  In half an hour he managed to cover almost every subject known to humanity.  To the wonder of all the others sitting in the room, his mother answered each question carefully and patiently.

Inevitably, he got around to God.  As the other people listened to his relentless "how's" and "why's," it was plain to see by the expressions on their faces that they wondered: "How does she stand it?"  But when she answered her son's next question, she answered theirs too.  "Why," he asked, "doesn't God ever get tired and just stop?"  "Because," she replied after a moment's thought, "God is love; and love never gets tired."

Our goal as Christians is to be more like Christ.  God never gets tired because of His love for us.  His Spirit continues to strive with us, long after we would have given up.  Don't give up on people.  Continue to pray for them.  When God gives you the opportunity to talk to them about spiritual things, take it.  Don't let the opportunity pass you by.  But be patient as your Lord Jesus Christ is patient with you.

The next story is a story about not giving up from my life.

Outside The Reef

I grew up in Palau and one day I was fishing outside the reef with two of my friends.  I was spear fishing while the other boys were line fishing from the raft.  Very quickly, a storm came up.  It came up so quickly that within minutes the waves at the reef were over ten feet high.  I was pretty far away from my friends and as I looked up I saw them paddling for the reef.  The last I saw of them was the long bamboo raft tumbling lengthwise, end over end, and disappearing on the other side of the reef waves.  One of the boys was only 8 years old and I was afraid that he had probably died.  But, at the moment, I had myself to worry about.  I looked at the gigantic waves on the reef and the blowing rain and I decided that I would probably not be able to make it over the reef.  I looked at the channel but I knew that the tide was still coming out and I would not be able to swim in the channel, especially with the added currents brought about by the storm.  My only chance was to swim on the very edge of the channel.  I knew I had to swim in far enough so that I could begin to grab the rocks on the side of the channel and pull myself in to safety.  It was then my struggle began.  I swam as hard as I could in between waves simply to not lose ground, then let the waves push me in a couple of feet.  Then I would swim as hard as I could, and then let the waves push me another couple of feet.  I did this for about 45 minutes.  I had almost given up hope of seeing the coral by the channel when I spotted my first rock.  I began to haul myself in, hand over hand, until I reached the inside of the reef.  When I returned I discovered that the boys had made it in safely and that people were worried about me.  I will never forget this experience for it taught me some lessons.

Life is made up of a series of small, day to day struggles.  But to strive against the problems and pressures we