Answering Your Adversities

The most common question I get from someone at church or I actually got a text last night that said, “Hey, could we talk? Even fifteen or twenty minutes. I’ve got a really big family issue I need to run by you.” And, you know, we are in a group together and so we know each other and I have set a time.

But here’s what I want to talk about. What do we say to that friend, to that family member even, or that person you really care about, they are going through a hard time. I mean, it’s a really challenging time and you are going to go meet and have coffee or they are going to stop by and you sit down together. I get that a lot.

And maybe you’re that person, which is great, so I’m glad to be with you. But I want to give you sort of a quick perspective of how to respond to adversity, because I could say, “Oh, well, you know, there are seven reasons why difficult things come into our life and if it’s this then you should respond this way. And if it’s that, read that book. And if it’s spiritual warfare, hey, we have some information on that.”

I’m talking about you are sitting down with a friend and they say, “Look, I think I might have cancer.” Or, “My son or daughter just came out and told me they don’t believe in God anymore.” Or, “I just found out that our company is being purchased and my job is going away.” Or, “My mom has Alzheimer’s and I don’t know what to do.” Right? All those are not hypothetical. Those are in the last six or seven days very real things that people have brought to me as though, oh, you will know. God knows. And so, let me suggest this.

Three questions to consider in times of adversity, whether it’s you or someone else. Question number one, how does Jesus want to use this adversity in your life for good? The word trial, the word temptation in the New Testament is the same word. You’ll find it in James chapter 1.

God allows or decrees trials or tests to come into our life so we pass them, we get an A so we grow deeper, so we are mature, so He brings good out of them. Okay? What does Jesus want to do through this?

Second question is: How does Satan want to use this adversity for your downfall? That’s a temptation. God wants to bring good out of it; Satan wants to kill, to steal, to destroy, to get people to lose their faith, to treat people terribly, to take alternatives and shortcuts that will short-circuit their life and their relationships and divide families and bring about addictions. You got the picture, right?

We’re going to picture adversity as this cloud. And I’m going to give you a word picture later, right? And we are all human; it’s a fallen world. Sometimes it rains. You know, this is black rain, right? And it’s adversity. So, it’s everything from cancer to drunk drivers to betrayal to mental health issues to Alzheimer’s to job loss to economics to inflation to – I mean, you can’t control it but it just rains adversity.

So, question number one, what does Jesus want to do through this adversity to bring about good? Second, what does Satan want to do through this adversity to tempt you and take you or someone you love out and bring about death? And then the third question is this: How can Satan turn a God-allowed trial into a lethal temptation?

So, here we go. And this is, you know, this is like you’re sitting down, drinking coffee. This is just a couple friends. This isn’t – we’re not preaching at them. But here’s what we need to understand for ourselves first and then for others. Number one deception, Satan’s MO is lies. He’s the father of lies. So, he is going to attack the truth. His first attack will be on God. “God, how could You let this happen? If He really loved you how could He let this happen to your mom? Or to your mate? Or to one of your sons? I mean, if God really cared, why did He cause this company to buy that company so you don’t have a job anymore?” Right?

This is age-old. He is going to attack the character of God and in your weak moments and in your hurt, you and I will be tempted to believe that God isn’t for me, God doesn’t care, God is not in control, and that produces levels of fear and doubt and concern that can take us to places that are not good at all.

The second deception is if he can’t get you to believe a lie about God, then he’ll try to get you to believe a lie about you. So, the second deception is about you. He attacks your heart, “You are no good, you’re a loser, you deserve this. You know why this happened?” And then he’ll bring some condemnation about what you did two years ago, five years ago, what you did as a kid, did something before you even came to Christ.

He attacks your heart and that’s why the spiritual warfare information we have learned over the years, the breastplate of righteousness. In other words, he is going to bring about condemnation. And when you feel like you don’t measure up or you deserve this or you’re a terrible person, you know, it’s just because you’re a bad mom. Let’s face it. Or, you’re a loser. You know, they told you you would never amount to anything. You start believing this, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Deception number one, about God. Deception number two is about you. Deception number three is about the future. This is terrible, it will always be terrible, nothing good will ever come. He attacks your head. And so, you start to lose hope. Like, “My husband walked out on me. No one will ever love me again.” “My child isn’t walking with God.” “I have lost my job.” He is going to attack your perspective of the future and he brings deception and it brings fear. We are either living by faith or we are living by fear. Perfect love casts out fear.

So, what I want you to get is those three questions. And this last one is the real key one. How is Satan going to take a trial that God has allowed – your heavenly, good, and kind Father – who is sovereign over all, that has your best in mind, who wants to help you through this. It’s a fallen world, challenging times are going to happen to everyone, His goal is good. Endurance, character, development.

His goal is to bring something out of it, even beyond what we could ever think and Satan’s goal is – what? To destroy. And so, he attacks your view of God, your view of yourself, your view of the future. And then finally, he attacks – number four – your faith. “You know, I’m not sure I can believe God anymore. I don’t know if this is really worth it. I mean, if this is what God does,” I’ve heard this multiple times, “if the God I worship allows this to happen to my life, I don’t think I can worship that God anymore.”

So, what I want you to know is this is what we are up against. So, you say, “Well, what do we do? How do you respond to that?” Yes, there’s lots of good teaching on spiritual warfare, there’s lots of good psychology and counseling and help. But I’m talking about us regular people where we are sitting around with someone over coffee and what we are trying to do is help them get perspective. And so, taking that truth that I just gave you, I’m going to give you a word picture.

So, we got this cloud. I want you to picture this cloud and it’s a dark cloud and it’s raining all this adversity. All terrible things, hard things, difficult things. Some are natural disasters, some are personal, some are family. But, I mean, you think of it. People that you love, that they are going through. Like, it’s raining adversity, it’s raining adversity.

And then what I want you to realize, as it’s raining adversity, there is this band and this band is called “Spiritual Warfare,” because there is a visible world and there’s an invisible world. And the visible things in our world and the invisible things that we can’t see are interrelated and they are both very real.

Remember the 1 Kings passage where the prophet is [talking] to the servant? And the servant says, “Elijah, we’ve got big problems. We are absolutely surrounded.” And the prophet prays to God and he says, “Open my servant’s eyes.” And he saw these horses and chariots and angelic forces. I want you to know without being spooky at all, that’s a reality. There is very real invisible forces, both angelic and demonic; they are at war. And you are the object of God’s attention and the object of His affection.

So, it’s raining adversity and now there’s this invisible war. And then I want you to picture over here there is a Satan filter. He wants to take this adversity and he wants to slant it. And what he wants to do is filter your adversity through deception. And so, his temptation will be, number one, out of fear this is what he wants you to feel. It’s overwhelming, it’s unfair, and it’s intended to destroy me. And where is God? Have you got that? You felt that?

And that leads to what kind of attitude? An attitude of anger, despair, abandonment. Which leads to what kind of actions? “I need to medicate." This rain of adversity comes down and we want to run from it, we want to get protection from it, we want to somehow make it all go away. And we take a shortcut that makes us feel better for a short amount of time, but leads to death.

Now, I want you to imagine this cloud of adversity and it’s raining and we all get it. It’s not just you. It’s going to come to all of us. And instead of the Satan filter, which is deception, here’s the truth filter of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And this filter is a filter of truth. And this filter says, “This has been allowed by God who is good, who is for you, who will never leave you, never forsake you. It’s very, very hard, not diminished, you’re not alone. You’re not alone.” I will never ever leave you or forsake you.

Second, it’s intended for your good. Maybe the evil of someone else, it may be a natural disaster, it may be even a mistake that you have made. It could be even a sin coming up from your past. Hey, I care about you, you’re My child, the filter is I am going to use this for your good.

The attitude? This is a big step of faith. You willfully choose to consider it all joy, knowing, not that it’s good to experience, knowing the testing of your faith is going to produce this endurance and this endurance, if you don’t give up and don’t give in and don’t shrink back, this endurance is going to do – what? It is going to mature you that you are mature, perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

And then the action is, you don’t give up. It’s hard. Everything in you wants to just bail out, but by God’s grace you read the Scripture when you don’t want to, you memorize a promise when you don’t want to, you call a friend and say, “I need to meet with you. Would you pray with me even on the phone?” You just hang on, you endure. And you do it one day and then pretty soon it’s seven, and then it’s two weeks and then it’s two months and then it’s five months.

And sometimes the circumstances miraculously change. And sometimes the only thing changes is you. Something happens in your heart, something happens in your character. God is more real than He has ever been to you before. The Word of God is coming alive like never ever before. You have some relationships with people that are going deeper than ever before. You have been more honest, more vulnerable, God is doing something in you. Do you hate the adversity? Is it unfair? Is it terrible? Yes.

“Jesus learned obedience,” Hebrews 5 says, “through the things which He suffered.” And my favorite verse in all of this is Hebrews 10:36. I just gave it to a guy going through a tough time yesterday. “For you have need of endurance so that once you have done the will of God you might receive what is promised.”

There is so much about life that it’s just: Don’t give up. Stay in the game. You know, trusting God when you don’t feel like it. Could I remind you of something? You know, we have this picture of Jesus and obviously He is so loving and He is so caring, and I don’t want to paint this in a negative way, but Jesus did not feel like going to the cross for you, emotionally. Remember? He prayed, “Father, if there is any other way, if there’s a plan B, if there is any other way.”

He was distraught. It was so intense He was sweating, like, blood was coming out of his pores. It’s an actual medical condition. He understood, not just the physical, He knew He would be separated from the Father for the first time in all eternity. He knew the just wrath of God would be poured on Him to pay for your sin and my sin. And He didn’t emotionally at all want to go to the cross, but He endured for the joy set before Him.

Love is giving another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. And when I feel like I can’t go on one other day I remember, Chip, you have need of endurance so that once you have done the will of God, especially when you don’t feel like it, especially when you don’t want to do it, then if you endure, you’ll receive what was promised.

And so, what you find is it’s a completely different result. Over here, it’s death – Satan’s filter. Over here, it’s life. Over here, the rain is something to run from and to medicate yourself and to go down a shortcut. And over here, it’s: Let the rain fall on me, soak on me, cleanse me, wash me, purify me. As someone recently said, “Some people run from the rain and some people dance in the rain.” I am not sure I’m quite ready to dance in that adversity, but I have seen that happen.

And the truth is you, today, in Christ are more than a conqueror through Him. You, today, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God, not life or death or angels or principalities or powers or anything created. Nothing can separate you from His love.

And when you get that, then we go back and we realize there is a cloud of adversity and that black rain is coming down on me. I am either going to filter it through deception, lens of Satan, or the Holy Spirit’s lens of truth. And I am going to ask, “How does Jesus want to use this for my good?” I am going to ask, “How does Satan want to derail me?” And then I’m going to ask, “What are the tactics he is going to use to take this God-ordained trial to be a lethal weapon to destroy my life and those around me?

That is just a little picture that has really helped me. It doesn’t solve everything, but allows me to just think about: How am I going to handle what I’m going through? Because our emotions and often the people around us with good intentions want us to pay people back or they reinforce behaviors that are not good at all. I want to encourage you, endure. Trust God. Let Him work. You’ll never regret it.