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Sarah Sumner

Stabilizing Truths In Destabilizing Days

Updated: Nov 2, 2020

Dear Friends,


In these volatile days of revolutionary changes so cluttered and polluted with misinformation and mistrust, a thick dark cloud of heavy temptation hovers over us and tries to make us lethargic and complacent.  Consequently, many people are experiencing severe disequilibrium for having been thrown off course and off balance:  

  • We have lost familiar routines that used to provide us structure and a sense of normalcy.

  • People are physically masked and mostly unable to smile at each other in public.

  • Racial tensions are high.

  • Downtowns are being burned and looted (Shock!) in our homeland in America!

  • Americans are tearing up America.  We seem poised for civil war.  Or socialism.

  • Singing is forbidden in all churches in California by state order.

  • Gone are the days of guaranteed First Amendment freedoms.  

  • We have lost our freedom of speech and worry not to say anything offensive.

  • We worry for our children and grandchildren, their economic future and good welfare.

  • Our economy has been tanked by the shutdown, and our currency devalued by the feds. 


Granted, good things have arisen in the year 2020:  We have finally been forced to slow down.  God has ordained this season to grace us with a pace that affords us the opportunity to reassess, reflect, repent, rebuild, restructure and renew the way we live.



For me, a good thing that has crystallized in the chaos is what I call my stabilizing truths.

These are comforting truths I remind myself of often along with all God’s promises in Scripture: 

  1. God is entirely faithful.  

  2. God took care of the prophet Jeremiah, and God will take care of me.

  3. God predestined all of us to be here at this time.   

  4. Like airplanes we are built for turbulence.

  5. God prepared good works for us to do in this hard season of transition.

  6. God delivered King David and the apostle Paul from every single hardship and trial.

  7. God is greater than all the treachery about us.   

  8. God will help us, even strongly support us, if our hearts are completely His.  

  9. We are soon going to see the glory of God in new and astounding ways.

  10. We can repent and adjust ourselves to do the task at hand.  


Now may I introduce the newest Service at Right On Mission?  They’re called Why Statements, and they’re really hard to write because as Christians we believe so many things.  But they are gloriously redemptive and so extremely edifying to discover. 


A Why Statement at Right On Mission is more or less your most stabilizing truth, the one that fuels you to do your mission statement and work toward your vision statement because you honestly believe a certain theological truth so intuitively and deeply that it describes the very core of your personality.  In a sense, your why statement explains why you are “you.”   


Here’s my Why Statement :   

I believe God surprises us with yet another jackpot every time we truly trust in Him.


For me, the above statement is highly moralizing in complete opposition to what demoralizes me. I love, love, love the surprises that God gives us.  Look at all these stabilizing truths inside my Why Statement:


Surprise!  The God we’re commanded to fear came to earth in the form of a baby!

Surprise!  After the horror of Jesus’ unjust crucifixion, Jesus raised Himself up from the dead!

Surprise!  God forgives you (you!) when you honestly, remorsefully confess your real sin.

Surprise!   Despite all your inadequacy, you still bear God’s image distinctly!  That’s why you have a discernible trilogy of Mission/Vision Why Statements that expresses your uniqueness, and why all the rest of us can get to know God better by getting to  know you.  

Surprise!  No matter what you have done, you can ask holy God to dwell inside of you, and if you honestly surrender, God will say “yes” and eventually make you so new that you will become the “you” that you were all along meant to be without any blemish or blame.  


Isn’t that fun?  Stabilizing truths put things back into perspective.   

Satisfied in Christ,

Sarah Sumner 



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