Do you ever feel like life is out to get you?  Do you wonder if you might be walking around with a great big target on your back?  Do you feel as if life seems to be throwing you one challenging situation after another?  If you live life long enough, you are going to experience trials!

I don’t like trials!  In fact, for most of my life I have done pretty much everything within my power to avoid trials.  Even with my best efforts at avoidance, trials seem to find their way into my life and while I don’t really like them, I have discovered that I have survived.  In fact, through the trails I have done something more than survive, I am beginning to notice that as I live my way through the trials, there are actually moments that I begin to thrive!

In the Scripture we are told to:  “2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”  James 1:2-4

Consider it joy when I face a trial?  Are you kidding me?  No – that’s what it says and then it tells us why we as Believers should consider it not just joy, but “pure joy”!  It says that when a trial comes into our lives, it provides testing of our faith.  The trial comes to test our faith, not to show God how strong or weak we are, because He already knows the answer to that question.  The trial comes into our lives to test our faith to help us to know how strong or weak we are and this knowledge is for a purpose!

The purpose of this knowledge is to produce perseverance – the strength to stand up under whatever pressure the world might try to put upon us!  This perseverance is what makes us mature and complete.  It is the finishing touch of the Master’s hand that takes the ordinary and turns it into extraordinary!

As you face trials this week, don’t let them knock you down, instead let them lift you up and carry you to that place that you could never get to on your own!

Questions are powerful and the right questions with the right answers have the potential to be amazing and powerful!  Here are three questions that have the potential if asked and answered properly to have a major impact in and through your life.  Take a few moments to ask and think about these questions, then take some serious time and make a real commitment to following through with the right answers!  Your Creator has an extraordinary life planned for you, but you must do your part and when you do, you will be glad you did!

Here are your Three Power Questions:

1.)  What Is Your Biggest Fear?

2.)  What Is Your Biggest Dream?

3.)  What Are You Going To Do About It?

“The Dream Giver” by Bruce Wilkinson is a great little book with a powerful little story about a guy by the name of Ordinary from a town called Familiar.  Ordinary wakes up one day realizing that He has been given a dream and must face a series of challenges to pursue and accomplish that dream by going to a place called Extraordinary!  As you read through Ordinary’s journey, you move with him through seven stages of the dream journey and discover the steps that you must take to realize the reality of the dream that you have been given by the Dream Giver!

The second part of the book is all personal application, designed to help you discover and pursue your dream!  This book will challenge you to leave the perceived safety of your comfort zone, so that you might go on a journey that helps you to live the life that you were designed for.  The main idea is that everyone has a dream and the only way to accomplish that dream is by taking the journey!

This is a great little book with a very enjoyable story, good advice and motivational challenge.  Everyone needs to read a little everyday, so if you are looking for something different, fun and meaningful, then I encourage you to check out “The Dream Giver!”