Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, August 14th. Are you facing a difficult season?

If you are a follower of Christ, take heart. God is with you, and he will give you the strength,

not just to endure, but to thrive in the midst of adversity. When you face some difficulty,

hardship, or trial, or maybe some crisis in your life,

what is the first emotion that you feel?

Is it fear or is it courage?

And if you find yourself in that same circumstance for a period of time,

which one of those attitudes or those

emotions prevail? One of them is going to dominate your thinking and therefore is going to

affect how you act, what your behavior is. And all of us are going through difficulties and

trials and hardships and crises in our life. And so we have to decide how we're

going to respond. And the Apostle Paul gives us the key to that when he writes to Timothy,

in 2 Timothy, if you'll turn there, in this fourth chapter, there is a passage here

that's just full of wonderful, wonderful assurance and confidence for us in this fourth chapter

and beginning in the ninth verse. Let me give you a little idea of what's happening.

Paul has just given a testimony to Timothy when he said in verse six, I'm already being poured out

as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come.

I've fought the good fight. I've finished the course. I've kept the faith. And then he talks

about the fact that in the future, he says there's laid up for me, the crown of righteousness,

which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. And not to me only, he says,

but also to all who have loved his appearing.

Then he recalls something of his past. And in recalling something that happened in him in his past,

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