Bottom Line

 I have two questions for you today: What is it that is the worst that could happen to you? Second, what happens if the worst actually does happen? What happens if your mate leaves or dies? What happens if the love you long for never comes? What happens if the reconciliation you yearn to see take place in a relationship never does? What happens if the children we have poured ourselves into turn their back on God and on us? What happens if the ministry we have completely given ourselves to...fails? What happens if the worst really does happen?

I came to plant the church I pastored for 27 years in Northern Virginia in the fall of 1992. The first three years were wonderful and filled with fruit. A fellowship that had about a dozen people in attendance on a good day had grown to one of over 70 people. Finances increased along with numbers. We excitedly started to look at securing a larger facility. Ministry was a joy and expectations were great....until they weren't. Everything started to change in the 4th year. To say the area is highly transient is an understatement. Job offers and company transfers started to take people away. Some, who only 6 months before had been telling me how great our fellowship was, were now unhappy. "We'd changed," they said, but they could never say just how. Whatever their reasons, the momentum stopped. People who had been coming from everywhere before were no longer coming from anywhere. I sought to stay positive, believing it would all be reversed...and soon. Surely He would intervene and in just the way I wanted. Surely He would, but He didn't. For me, the worst that could happen was to lose all we had gained. If that happened, I'd be a failure, and perhaps, maybe He had failed as well. All my fears collapsed in on me. The worst that could happen, happened.

I don't mean to imply that something like is what awaits you. I am saying that there is no guarantee that how we want things to turn out is how they will. The worst may happen, and it may happen to us. Everything depends upon how we respond if it does. Beth Moore says that ultimately, we must surrender to a "bottom line faith." Faith that says in the midst of the worst that could happen, "My God will take care of me." Faith that says as Job did, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Satan loves to threaten us in these places, and fear is his calling card. Bottom line faith, as Moore says, "robs him of his trump card." Is he playing his trump card with you?

The time we entered was not a short one. Our fellowship faced many daunting challenges, some that threatened our survival. Yet we held on because He was holding on to us. We pressed on, not in our strength but His. In the midst of it all, something was happening. We were maturing as a people, discovering things about Him we could have learned in no other way. He kept us pressed to His heart, guarding us, keeping us as He worked. Out of the worst came a better church, a better people, and I hope, a better pastor. In the worst, we discovered His best and the best of Himself. 

If you're in the midst of the worst that could happen, press in and press on, in Him. As you do, He holds and keeps you, and He will lead you on and past it all. Don't miss what He's doing in you. As His Word says, He's doing something you wouldn't believe if He told you. Trust Him. From the worst will come His best. Be convinced of it. Let it be your bottom line.

Blessings
Pastor O