Dr. David Jeremiah knows about trials. And the longtime pastor also knows about God’s faithfulness to bring us through them.
Twenty years ago, Jeremiah, who is also a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of Turning Point Ministries, went through two bouts of cancer, including stage 4 lymphoma.
”The problem with it all was that I never had been sick,” Jeremiah told Dr. Steve Greene on an episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. “I had never experienced anything like this. I didn’t know what to do. And I had lots of people trying to counsel me telling me, ‘You need to do this, go there, do this.’ And once I realized that my life was in God’s hands, and I realized that He’s the only one who could help me, I totally threw myself on Him.”
That experience came to mind this past summer when he and his wife tried to make one of their regular trips to New York City. “We got a call from the hotel where we normally stay telling us that the hotels wouldn’t be available because they’re being booked for people that were just getting out of the hospital, and for workers that were coming in from all over the country to help with the pandemic,” Jeremiah said. “And then they asked this question: ‘Does Dr. Jeremiah have anything that we could put in the hotel rooms that would be an encouragement to people when they show up?'”
Jeremiah said that, in view of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, he had been preaching a sermon series on the concept of shelter. “I had done some homework in the Psalms over a long period of time. And when this whole thing hit, it just seemed to me that this was the time for the Psalms to get working in the lives of God’s people. And actually, there are some psalms that are called ‘the sheltering psalms.’ That’s what some of these are.”
Jeremiah’s publisher decided to run with the idea, and his sermon series became the book Shelter in God: Your Refuge in Times of Trouble, which the COVID-19 heroes received in the New York hotel. “The miracle of this whole thing was from the day we decided to do this until the book was in our hands was four weeks,” Jeremiah said. “That’s never happened in my lifetime ever, in 40 books. And I haven’t been able to find anybody else who ever had that happen.
“And that was a God thing for sure. And so that’s where it all came from,” Jeremiah said.
For more from Pastor David Jeremiah about how we can shelter in God no matter what storms life brings our way, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines here, and be sure to subscribe to the Greenelines podcast at cpnshows.com. {eoa}
