{"id":21326,"date":"2017-03-17T00:10:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T07:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lccredding.com\/lcc\/?p=10287"},"modified":"2017-03-17T00:10:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T07:10:25","slug":"march-17-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2017\/03\/17\/march-17-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"March 17, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cHe said to them, \u2018Go and eat delicacies and drink sweet drinks and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.\u2019”<\/em>
\nNehemiah 8:10 (NET)<\/span><\/p>\n

Lemonade<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

I think we\u2019ve all heard the phrase \u201cwhen life gives you lemons, make lemonade.\u201d According to Wikipedia it is \u201ca proverbial phrase used to encourage optimism and a positive can-do attitude in the face of adversity or misfortune. Lemons suggest sourness or difficulty in life, while lemonade is a sweet drink.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I think being optimistic is a good thing. Of course our \u201ccan-do attitude\u201d comes from Jesus: \u201cI can do all things through Christ who strengthens me\u201d<\/em> (Philippians 4:13). We make choices every day on whether we let the difficulties of life make us sour and bitter, or if we choose to offer them up as a sweet aroma to God as we are Christ-like in the midst of them. \u201cAnd walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma\u201d<\/em> (Ephesians 5:2).<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back on times in my life that were very sour and the sweetness the Lord eventually brought out of them never ceases to amaze me. God definitely makes the best lemonade.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThank You, Lord, for being our joy, our strength and the One who can bring such sweetness out of the sour and bitter things in our lives if we will just allow You to. Amen.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe said to them, \u2018Go and eat delicacies and drink sweet drinks and send portions to those for whom nothing […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-5xY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}