Good morning everyone and welcome back to another mornings with the masters. We're going to devote ourselves to the Lord daily with you.

We are picking back up with new morning mercies,

and I'm just going to take room here.

It says this, the difficulties of your life are not in the way of God's plan.

They are a tool of it.

They're crafted to advance his work of grace.

Perhaps the two most important questions you can ask between your

conversion and your final resurrection are this. Number one, what in the world is

God doing right here right now? And number two, how in the world is God doing right here right now?

At number two, how in the world should I respond

to what God is doing?

The way you answer these questions

determines in a real way the character of your faith in the direction of your life.

Consider how James answers these questions in the very first part of his letter.

Chapter 1 versus 2 through 12.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,

for you know that the testing of your faith produces

steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete

lacking in nothing. If any of you who lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to

all without reproach, and it will be given him.

But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the

seed that is driven and tossed by the wind.

...