Conclusion of the Faith Building Series

• Father Knows Best • Happy Days• Home Improvement • Rescue 911• Sixty Minutes • Cheers

Six Faith Building Six Faith Building StagesStages

• D.r.e.a.m.• Decision• Delay• Difficulty• Dead End• Deliverance

Difficult Becomes Impossible

• Krishna seems cruel jokerKrishna seems cruel joker• Why is this happening to me?Why is this happening to me?• Welcome to phase FiveWelcome to phase Five• More dark, despairing, more More dark, despairing, more

hopeless, the greater the hopeless, the greater the deliverancedeliverance

Dead End WordsDead End Words• Cancer• Bankruptcy• Unemployment• Divorce • Infertility• Things out of

your Control

Do Four Things• Remember What Krishna Can Do

• Rely On What Krishna Has Said

• Face The Facts With Faith

• Expect Krishna To Deliver You

1. Remember What Krishna Can Do

The situation may be out of your control but it's not out of God's control. You don't focus on what you can't do, you focus on what God can do.Can create life and rebirth.

Intimations of Immortality

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to closeUpon the growing Boy,But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy;The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,And by the vision splendidIs on his way attended;At length the Man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.

Prabhupada Town Hall Story, imitating common animal sounds, people

will pay $ 5.00. Scientist claim to create life, but already being done.

Sreevas Thakur’s Son

A great calamity has occurred. Pundit Sreevas's son is dead". "He died some six or seven hours ago.” Chaitanya said, "Sreevas, bring the child before me.” The body of the child was brought before Gauranga in the courtyard. Gauranga addressed the dead child and commanded him to speak. The boy spoke: "I am leaving this body for a better existence. O Lord, may my soul cling to Thy lotus feet!.” The soul again left the body of the child. Gauranga then said to Sreebas and his wife Malinee: "I and Nityananda will take the place of your departed child. Be not troubled. Be not anxious.”

Dead career. Dead marriage. Dead dream. Financial Dead End..

Positive ThinkingPositive Thinking? Alternative?Situations you have no control

over.Most of life is out of your controlKrishna specializes in the

impossible

Giri Govardhan

When King Indra saw Krishna stop the sacrifice meant for him, he became very angry. "These cowherd men shall suffer," he said. "I'll teach them to defy the demigods! Just because that boy Krishna told them to worship Govardhana Hill, they stopped my sacrifice. That boy talks too much. He's just a child. What does He know about the cosmic situation? I will punish Him for being such an upstart."Indra called his most powerful clouds, including the deadly samartaka, which usually comes to destroy the world at the time of devastation. Indra told the clouds, "Go to Vrdavana and flood that village! Destroy Vrndavana! Drown all the cowherd men and all their cows with them.

I shall be flying behind you on my elephant. I shall attack Vrndavan with furious storms. Together we shall punish those impudent residents."Soon the dark, threatening clouds appeared over Vrdavana and began hurling down streams of rain and chunks of ice. Lightning crashed. Thunder roared. The wind howled and shrieked, driving the rain like piercing arrows. Floods covered all of Vrdavaana's fields and pastures. The men and animals shivered and trembled, and the cows bowed their heads and sheltered their calves beneath them.In complete helplessness all the residents of Vrndavana came to take refuge at Krishna's lotus feet.

They prayed, "O Krishna, You are all-powerful and You are very kind to Your devotees. Please protect us from Indra's wrath.""Don't be afraid," Krishnasaid. "You are all My pure devotees and have no shelter but Me. I shall protect you. Indra is trying to prove his supremacy, but I shall take care of him. Actually, Indra is My devotee, but somehow he has become puffed up and mad with power. I'll take away his false prestige and bring him back to his senses."

Kusum Sarovar

2. Rely On What 2. Rely On What Krishna Has SaidKrishna Has Said“I'm never going to get married. I'm never going to graduate and finish school. I'm never going to get well. I'm never going to get out of debt. I'm never going to be able to let go of my past and forget all of that shame and heartache. I'm never going to be able to change. I'm never going to become what God wants me to be. I'm never going to see this situation turn around. That's when hope is dead within.”

“When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, & I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad Gita & I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will find fresh joy & new messages from it every day.”

“Always think of Me, become My devotee, worship Me & offer your homage to Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend.”

• Gita 18/65

A promise is only as good as the character of the person who makes the promise. If He makes a promise to you, He's going to fulfill it. It will happen exactly as He has said. I remember what Krishna can do and I rely on what He has said.

“For one who worships Me, giving up all his activities unto Me and being devoted to Me without deviation, engaged in devotional service and always meditating upon Me, who has fixed his mind upon Me, O son of Prtha, for him I am the swift deliverer from the ocean of birth and death.”Gita 12/7

The Supreme Lord, by His great mercy, comes riding on His bird carrier Garuda, and delivers the devotee from this material existence. A man who has fallen in the ocean may struggle very hard and may be very expert in swimming, but he cannot save himself. But if someone comes and picks him up from the water, then he is easily rescued. Purport 12/7

Janmastami South Janmastami South Africa 1976Africa 1976

Face the Facts with Faith

• Faith not denying reality and pretending you don’t have a problem, Polyanna

• Krishna is greater than the problem• You can build a family on faith but you

can't build it on fantasy. You can build a business on faith but not on fantasy. You can build a life on faith but not on fantasy.

• Driving in the rain, where your eyes are• Look at deliverer, not difficulty

Expect Krishna to Deliver me

• Thanking in advance faith• Afterwards gratitude• The purpose of the dead end is to teach

us to trust in God. Why does God let things get so bad they are out of control? So He can force you to learn to trust in Him instead of trusting on your own ingenuity and cleverness.

Wherever the chariot went, the Kauravas were driven back like darkness at sunrise. Arjuna’s arrows slew men standing a full two miles away. His well tempered & polished steel shafts dropped from the sky like showers of meteors. As Arjuna annihilated the troops who opposed him, Krishna baffled their attacks by His skillful driving, exhibiting various expert maneuvers as the chariot moved with circular, backwards, and sideways movements.

Drona ordered his son, Krpa, Karna, Shalya, Duryodona, and a number of other maharathas to stand before Arjuna, who could hardly see Jayadratha, so thick was the shower of arrows, darts and lances thrown by the Kauravas princes. With only a few minutes left until sunset, Arjuna began to despair.

Jayadrath

Jayadrath

Krishna Does not change the circumstance; He changes you from the inside. Krishna helps you handle the situation, which does not change but He changes you.

Supriya Devi Dasi

“In the middle of 2000, my devotee sons decided to renounce their promising careers to join ISKCON full-time to become brahmacharis (celibate students). I was aghast; all the dreams of their glorious future I had cherished since their birth lay shattered. But I continued my devotional practices and gradually came to accept this as the inconceivable sweet will of the Lord. Meanwhile I suffered periods of poor health, but nothing seemed seriously wrong till the day of that devastating diagnosis.”

“Generally when a young son renounces the world to serve God, his parents in particular and people in general are shocked at what they consider to be irresponsibility and escapism. I was no exception to such sentiments. My anguish was, in fact, much greater, because not one, but two, of my sons decided to forsake everything for the Lord’s service. But now on the verge of death, when the futility of all material achievements stands exposed before me and the inestimable value of devotional service is dawning upon me, I realize how wise my sons were in dedicating their life to the service of the Lord in the prime of their youth.”

“The doctors told me I had around seven months left. I started thinking of King Parikshit, who had only seven days to prepare for his death. He had gone to the banks of the Ganges, heard Srimad-Bhagavatam continuously for those seven days, and perfected his life. I decided to follow in his footsteps.

“When I look back at my life and the great spiritual transformation that has taken place over the last few months, I feel strongly that cancer has proved to be a blessing for me. Had it not been for this deadly disease, I would never have risen from ritualistic piety to heartfelt devotion; I would simply have grown old, got diseased, died, and continued on aimlessly in the cycle of birth and death. I would never have experienced the sweetness of helpless remembrance of Lord Krishna. I feel therefore that the Lord has blessed me by giving me cancer and by simultaneously giving me shelter through His devotees and mission.”

Surapriya Devi Dasi passed away on June 13, 2003, at 3:15 A.M. within the premises of the Sri Sri Radha-Kunjabihari temple, ISKCON, Pune. Her youngest son, Sundaravara Dasa, was chanting on his beads next to her. Before losing consciousness the previous night, she repeatedly chanted the name of Krishna and said that she very distinctly felt His presence in the room. During her last days, her relatives said that they saw no fear of death in her; rather they felt a divine peace pervade her being progressively. Even the doctors treating her commented that they had never seen a bone cancer patient so peaceful amid so much pain.

The ultimate deliverance is liberation. Krishna has not promised to remove all of your pain in this world. He has not promised to solve every one of your problems in the way you want them to be solved. He has not promised to keep all of your loved ones alive for the rest of your life. They will die. There is pain in the world. There is sorrow. Krishna has not promised that everything is going to work out the way you want it to. This is not Heaven; it's earth. Because we are on earth, there is pain and sorrow and suffering. The ultimate deliverance will be one day in Krishna’s abode where there is be no pain, no sorrow, no suffering, no heartache anymore.

From the highest planet in the material world to the lowest, all are place of misery where repeated birth & death take place. But one who reaches My abode, never takes birth again.Gita 8/16

“That Supreme Abode of

Mine is not illuminated

by the sun or the moon.

Those who reach it

never return to this

material world.”

“After attaining Me, the great souls, who are yogis in devotion, never return to this temporary world which is full of miseries. Because they have attained the highest perfection.”

I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, the first progenitor who is tending the cows, yielding all desire, in abodes built with spiritual gems, surrounded by millions of purpose trees, always served with great reverence and affection by hundreds of thousands of godesses of fortune, or lakshmis.

I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, who is adept in playing on His flute, with blooming eyes like lotus petals with head decked with peacock's feather, with the figure of beauty tinged with the hue of blue clouds, and His unique loveliness charming millions of Cupids.

I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, round whose neck is swinging a garland of flowers beautified with the moon-locket, whose two hands are adorned with the flute and jeweled ornaments, who always revels in pastimes of love, whose graceful threefold-bending form of Śyāmasundara is eternally manifest.