“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” —John 11:21

Martha was never one to hold her tongue. You always knew where you stood with this lady! “Lord,” she said, “if You would have been here, my brother would not have died.” To paraphrase it, “Where were You anyway, Jesus?”

Maybe you’ve said something similar during or after some crisis in your life.

Lord, where were You when my parents divorced?

Lord, where were You when we got that diagnosis of cancer?

Lord, where were You when our marriage fell apart?

Lord, where were You when I lost my job?

Lord, where were You when my child got into trouble?

Lord, where were You when my loved one died?

Please notice that Jesus didn’t reprove Martha for what she said. It isn’t wrong to tell God exactly how you feel. I think we sometimes get the idea that it’s irreverent or sinful to express our real fears or the doubts of our heart, even to God. When we read the psalms, we learn there were many times when David and the other psalmists really “let their hair down” with God. They cried out to Him and emptied the contents of their hearts in His presence.

I have done this many times. In my pain, I will cry out to God. Sometimes the reality that my son is gone hits my heart like a sledgehammer, and I say, “Oh, God. I can’t believe this! I can’t handle this pain!” But then I will preach to myself, and I’ll say, “Now Greg, listen to me. Your son is alive — more alive than he has ever been before. He’s in the presence of the Lord, and you are going to see him again in just a few years.” And I will remind myself of the promises of God.

My prayers, however, are wide open and honest. I pour out my heart before God, describing my pain to Him. But I also remind myself of God’s truth. And that is what prayer is.

God wants us to cry out to Him. He invites us to pour out our hearts before Him. David writes, “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8, NIV).

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. —Romans 8:28

I survived a crazy childhood, growing up in an alcoholic home, with my mom being married and divorced seven times. But I came to Christ in high school, at the age of seventeen, and turned my life over to the Lord.

The stats all say that if you come from a divorced home, you most likely will end up divorced yourself. But by God’s grace and against all odds, my wife and I are closing in on our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. So all in all, in spite of the heartbreaks in those early days, it has been a pretty happy story.

Lost Boy, the film that tells my life story, closes with our family walking down the street together, and it’s almost as though you could write the words on the screen: “And they lived happily ever after.”

I had been showing this film in various churches in different parts of the country, and I would speak afterward, telling the story of Joseph, how he faced many adverse circumstances in his life, and how God brought good results out of evil circumstances. Not that bad is good, but God can bring good out of bad and bring glory to His great name through it all.

And then came that morning in July 2008 when we got the terrible, incomprehensible news that our thirty-three-year-old son Christopher had been killed in a car crash on the freeway.

Good out of bad? The best results out of the worst circumstances? Was the message of Lost Boy still true, or was it all a sham?

Even in the depths of our grieving, we had to say the message of that movie hadn’t changed. The chronicle of God’s grace and faithfulness that we told in Lost Boy was as true as ever. We found ourselves in the midst of a life chapter we would have never, never chosen. But God still will bring good out of bad. He will bring glory to Himself.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. —Micah 7:19

Have you ever done anything you wished you hadn’t done and were ashamed of? If you have repented of that sin and have turned your back on it, then the Bible clearly declares that you are forgiven.

In speaking of our sins, God says, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25). And Micah 7:19 tells us that God will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

Have you ever lost anything in a lake or in the ocean? It’s pretty much a lost cause. Once it goes down, it goes way down.

Years ago I was scuba diving in Hawaii. As we started making our way out, it was about fifteen feet deep, then about twenty feet deep, then about seventy feet. We kept going, and the shelf of sand kept lowering and lowering. Then all of a sudden, it dropped straight down. I looked down and could not see the bottom. It was scary. I looked at that and hovered there for a minute. Although I wasn’t any deeper than I had been three minutes before, I turned around and started swimming back. I can guarantee that if you dropped something down to those depths, you would never see it again.

God has taken your sin and has thrown it into the deepest part of the sea. To put it another way, it is gone. Therefore, you need to accept God’s forgiveness and put it behind you.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. —Ephesians 1:4

Before the world was made, even before sin entered into this world that was made, God predestined you. He chose you to be His child. We use phrases like “the day I found the Lord,” and that is true in one sense. But in another sense, God chose us before we chose Him.

Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain . . .” (John 15:16). God chose us before we ever were around to choose Him. We may wonder, What merit or goodness did He find in me that He would choose me to be His child? There was no merit. In spite of our best intentions or the high opinion we may hold of ourselves, God’s choosing had nothing to do with our merit or goodness.

If you knew what would happen before it took place, would you choose something that worked in your favor or against it? God knew exactly how you would turn out. And He chose you from the foundation of the world.

You might say, “I think the Lord made a mistake here because I’m a loser.” But God chose you to win. God chose you to be something that He will make you into. You may look at yourself and see your flaws and shortcomings, but just remember that you are still a work in progress.

God isn’t finished with you yet — not while your heart is still beating! And He will complete what He has begun in your life. So rejoice that He chose you from the foundation of the world.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. —Ephesians 1:3

Hetty Green was known as America’s greatest miser, but she was worth a lot of money. When she died in 1916, she left an estate valued at $100 to $200 million. That is a lot today, but it was even more back then.

What is amazing about Hetty Green is that she lived as through she were poverty stricken. She would eat cold oatmeal every day to save the expense of heating the water. She debated the value of skim milk compared to whole milk and how much money she could save. When her son had a severe leg injury, she took so long trying to find a free clinic to treat him that his leg had to be amputated because of advanced infection. She even hastened her own death by not taking care of herself. She lived like a pauper when, in reality, she was a multimillionaire.

Like Hetty Green, some Christians might not realize how much is actually in their spiritual bank account. Such believers are experiencing spiritual malnutrition because they have not taken advantage of the great storehouse of spiritual nourishment and resources that are at their disposal. Because of what God has done for us, we can live full, productive, and effective Christian lives. We don’t have to find insufficient funds when we go to our spiritual ATM machine. God’s heavenly bank has no such limitations or restrictions.

No Christian has to be spiritually deprived or undernourished or impoverished. The Lord’s heavenly resources are more than adequate to cover the cost of all of our past debts, our present liabilities, and our future needs and still not reduce our heavenly assets.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013