When you were first saved, did you think that I would protect you from all pain and suffering? How did that work out? Do you see your fellow believers going through the same difficulties and tribulations as others around you? You have a steadfast hope in me concerning ultimate reality and your final destiny, so you do not sorrow as those without hope. Yet I have not left you alone in this world. Even if you feel that I am not protecting you from anything, can you also say that I am sustaining you in everything? Even if you are accounted as sheep for the slaughter and your outward man perish, your inward man is renewed every day. 

When you go to church, do you sing about me or to me? The fact that you refer to your meetings as worship services should suggest a preferred answer. A performance requires an audience, which may be few or many, and the connection between the performer and the audience may be intimate or distant. You refer to your faith as a relationship with me and I invite you to come to as close a level of intimacy as you can tolerate. Let your worship be an expression of this. The singing you do in church and elsewhere may be structured so that other people are listening, or not. In any case consider yourself to be performing for an audience of one. 

Have you ever heard the statement that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? This is so common as  to be a cliché, usually spoken when one person finds something or someone attractive that others do not. Your culture thinks of beauty primarily in terms of human bodies, and has narrow criteria for the ideal. Are you willing to take a broader view, and revisit the ‘eye of the beholder’ concept from a greater perspective? How much beauty do you see? You live in a world that I created, and declared to be good. You are surrounded by beauty in everyday things. Do you see it? He who has eyes to see, let him see. 

Have you heard that it is more blessed to give than to receive? These are some of the best known of my words but you won’t find them in the gospels. Still they are in the Bible. Can you find them? Do you hear them most often when you are being asked to donate money? I declared a universal truth when I spoke this, so it includes money, although this concept has been presented in an abusive way. But as a universal concept it applies to everything, not just money. Ponder this concept and consider how many non-monetary ways you have received. Then consider how many non-monetary ways you have given, and see if you can affirm this truth in a universal way.