I think there’s the occasional misperception that life with The Gathering is always easy, stress-free and totally comfortable. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “sure, it’s that way for a ministry, but it’ll never be that way for me.” And we get all frustrated. But here’s the real truth – it’s NOT that way for ministries either!

If I’m honest, I would tell you yesterday was a rough day for our team.

- It was just plain cold out. Not a big deal, but didn’t do much to help.
- If it could go wrong technologically, it did. We missed critical emails that just never made it through our gate filter at church. Weird.
- We had trouble getting things printed. Hmm…
- We got tossed out of our normal location by the President of Paraguay sending us scrambling for another location. No estoy feliz.
- We couldn’t get into that new room until 8.15. Tough when you have a 9PM service.
- The road in front of our new location was completely closed. When you are in a 23 foot box truck, alternate routes don’t come easy. We had to park about 300 yards away from the building for our last minute load-in. Did I mention it was pretty cold at that point?

Was everything terrible? No. I had some great meetings with students. Our production team was nothing short of heroic in overcoming all the challenges. Our student leaders made it all work. And I was so proud of our staff, band and tech guys. But all in all, it was tough.

Just wanted to inject a little realism this morning. Maybe it connects with how you’ve been feeling recently.

But the Scriptures show all of us how to respond to the difficulties of life. When Job learned of the devastation that had come to his life, his response was amazing:

“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped.” – Job 1:20.

Wow. It’s what we did last night. It’s what I need to do today. It’s how God is calling all of us to respond…even when it’s hard.