In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

Next on In Touch, lessons we learn in Gassimity.

When you are suffering pain, whether it be physical pain or emotional pain,

and it becomes so intense that you even

despair of your future.

Where do you turn?

There many places you can turn, but the most helpful, healthiest, most encouraging, the best

place you can turn, the most rewarding place you can turn

is to the Word of God. This is not a history book, even though it may contain some history.

It's a book about life. It's a book about reality. It's a book about how people live,

not just how they want to live, but how they really do live.

And when you think about where you turn and where people turn when they go through difficulties, they're turned to all kinds of things.

But this is God's guidebook for living. This shows us how to respond to every single circumstance of life no matter what.

So, when you look in the scriptures and you find these promises about peace and joy and contentment

and eternal life, if you just keep reading what you'll discover as this, there are even more

principles there about how to deal with heartache,

trouble, trials, hardship, persecution, criticism, you name it. It's all right here. And what God has

done, he's given us in the experiences of his children in the past and of his servants, he's given

us principles. He's shown us how in their lives he worked during

those difficulties and hardship so that you and I might also learn how to deal with these things,

so that what happens is because they know how to respond, the very pain that would destroy

them ends up in enriching them and preparing them

...