Father, I ask you now that I would be given help to speak something that would be really encouraging and empowering and life-giving and hope enlarging and vision clarifying and Satan defeating

and marriage building and young people rescuing and church edifying and more.

Lord, exceedingly abundantly beyond all that I ask or think,

would you come and help me with my little part in this wonderful evening?

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

What I would like to talk about for a few minutes

is how is ministry possible how do you keep on doing

urban ministry in particular but not just urban ministry when life has so much pain and so much disappointment. How do you just keep on doing it?

Because if you stop doing it because there's pain and disappointment, it won't happen because that's

what there is.

So that's where I'm going.

Let me give you a little background and set a stage and then give you about seven or eight ways that the Lord keeps me going.

There's a mindset in the West, West,

with the capital W, the Western world,

a mindset that we deserve pain-free, trouble-free lives.

And when life deals us the opposite,

we feel we have a right not only to blame somebody, but to feel really sorry for ourselves and to devote

our whole lives to coping.

And let anybody else go to hell because I've been dealt a hard hand.

And so I have a right to blame somebody and I have a right to feel sorry for myself and give all my energy to make

myself feel better.

...