Jesus said when the woman poured the alabaster bottle of perfume on him that was worth almost a year's wages, and Judas, who was very money-minded, said you shouldn't have done that, because you're wasting that, we could have sold that and given it to the poor. And Jesus himself said, you will always have the poor with you, but she has done this as an honor to me, and she will be honored for it all of her days. And so you never run out of poor people. You could give everything you had, I could give everything I had, and the world would still be full of poor people.

So now, I exhort you with this truth: Don't spend all your life playing it safe! Safety is very comfortable, but it may be keeping you from God's perfect plan for your life.

We cannot stand through the storms of life based on someone else's faith. We must be fully assured in our own hearts and minds.

If we continue to believe God and place our trust in Him, bad things ultimately give way to better things.

God is not asking us to not have anything or even to give away every single thing that we have. He is asking us to share with people who have less than us, which we do all the time.

God plants dreams in people's hearts. But many people do not continue all the way to the end in order to follow Him to the fulfillment of that dream. Many get started and quit get started and quit get started and quit. They do not continue because their broken heart overwhelms their hope. They do not have any inner strength to carry them through to the end. Jesus will bind up your wounds and heal your bruises. His Word is the medicine for your soul.

Our past may explain why we're suffering but we must not use it as an excuse to stay in bondage.