Principles Of Suffering Pain
Tom Shrader examines James 1:2-4, explaining how believers should count trials as joy because God uses them to develop spiritual endurance and maturity. He emphasizes that trials are inevitable ('when' not 'if') and come in various forms, but God's purpose is to strengthen faith through testing. Shrader provides practical guidance for enduring suffering, including prayer, remembering God's faithfulness, and maintaining an eternal perspective.
“These trials in your life are inevitable, there is no escaping them.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Principles (2009)
Recorded: 2009 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 50 min
Themes: suffering, trials, endurance, faith, perseverance, joy, maturity, testing, going through hardship, facing illness, experiencing loss, struggling with pain, questioning god's plan, new believer, feeling overwhelmed, seeking purpose in suffering
Scripture: James 1:2-4, James 1:22, Romans 8:28, 2 Timothy 4, Philippians 1:6, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Daniel 3:17
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, divine sovereignty, providence, spiritual formation, character development, faith testing, biblical perseverance
Full Transcript
I'm getting ready and finishing up teaching the book of James, which has a good deal to say about suffering. The book of James is an interesting book. If you take the New Testament and arrange it chronologically, James is the first book written of the New Testament. So it comes as a surprise to some of you.
It is a book that is one of the two or three that's most recognizable, and yet for many it's a book that's caused a lot of problems. Martin Luther hated the book of James. Luther was a big grace guy, right? Luther had come out of religion and he wanted to throw off the shackles of religion, and James is coming along and he's really calling us to works. The distinction is this: he's not calling us to works for purposes of salvation, but he's saying because you're saved, now act this way.
If we were to pick a theme verse for the book of James, it would be chapter 1 verse 22 where James writes this: "But prove yourselves doers of the word, not merely hearers who delude themselves." He's not saying don't be hearers, by the way. He's saying be both.
The Problem of Hearing Without Doing
So the problem that we can typically have—and the better the church, the more this applies—is that you become a hearer of the word. Once you get into the Word of God, once you find yourself in a situation where people are teaching you the Word of God, you just can't get enough of it and you want more and more and more. You want to read about the word, you want to go to the bookstore, you want to get more books, and you want to study and study. James is saying there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself unless it gets in the way of doing.
So often here's what happens: We're in our office and somebody comes up and says, "I've got this need, I'm really hurting, can you talk to me?" You say no because you're on your way to a Bible study. You get to the Bible study and what they tell you is you need to be sensitive to the people around you who are really hurting so you can go out and reach out to them. This happens all the time.
We can fall into a trap—James is warning about this. We can fall into a trap where we say it's much more fun to study about hurting people than to live with them. So James is warning us about that, and this book is just filled with practical stuff.
The Practical Content of James
It's talking about how we respond to widows and orphans—what's the true religion. As you get into it, He challenges the favoritism that they saw in the church. They were showing favoritism to those that were rich. In James chapter 3, you have the longest contiguous passage in all of scripture dealing with the tongue. James talks about wisdom.
James has this classic passage where He talks about in chapter 4 verse 13. He said you have a tendency to say, "Come now, today or tomorrow we'll go to such-and-such a city and engage in business there and make a profit," yet you don't know what your tomorrow will be like, for your life is like a puff of vapor. Then He closes out in chapter 5 talking about the misuse of riches and the power of prayer.
The Author: James, Half-Brother of Jesus
Now let me give you a little background. The James who writes this book is James—this is huge—James the half-brother of Jesus. For many, especially if you're from a Catholic tradition, that rocks your world because the Catholic Church teaches that Mary was perpetually a virgin. They teach that Mary and Joseph never came together, she conceived, they had Jesus, and they never came together again intimately, sexually.
The problem with this is that you have tradition conflicting with scripture, because in scripture we have two or three occasions where Jesus' brothers are named. If I remember correctly, there's four of them, and sisters plural. So far from being perpetually a virgin—and I don't mean to be too graphic here—but at least six times Mary and Joseph did it.
That teaches a whole other set of things. What do you do in your life when somebody teaches one thing and the Bible teaches something else? Can we just go ahead and say this is the fifth session and the fifth time that I've made this point: the Bible's the supreme authority in our life. That settles it, like the Supreme Court.
The Bible as Supreme Authority
In 2000, when we had this Bush versus Gore election, this thing went on and on, dragging on and on, going all over the place. One court would say one thing and then one court would say another, and we never got to the ending until it got to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court spoke to it, and when it did, that was it. Well for us, the Bible is that.
So that little bumper sticker that says "God said it, I believe it, that settles it"—you've seen that? A third of the ink is a waste. God said it, that settles it. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. God is what He is whether you believe it or not. That doesn't change that reality at all.
James: A Pillar of the Early Church
So here's this James—He's the half-brother of Jesus. He's also really a stud in the early church. There's three pillars in the early church: Peter, James, and John. This James is one of these guys. He obviously has a mother Mary, daddy Joseph. He had a nickname called Old Camel Knees, and tradition says that his knees were distorted from spending hours on them in prayer. So that's the guy that's writing this book.
The next comment I want to make is not explicitly stated, but I think we can deduce this. Look at verse 1: "James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad, greetings." So I already told you who the James is. I want to go for one more quality in His life.
James's Humility
I think that as amazing as He was, He was a humble guy because He identifies Himself. He doesn't say, "James, maybe you know my brother." He doesn't say, "James, have you ever met my mother?" He doesn't say, "I'm James, you might know that Peter and John and I pretty much run this thing." He doesn't say, "James, the one with the bad knees because I'm praying so much."
James identifies himself as a bondservant. In the Greek there are several words available that are translated servant or slave. The one that he chooses here is one who is born into that condition, who has no way out. One who is utterly dependent upon his master for everything—for his food, his clothing, his shelter. He can do nothing apart from what the master provides and his call is absolute loyalty to the master.
That's the term that James uses. That's a term that Paul uses. Really, that's us as well, slaves to the Lord Jesus Christ, utterly dependent upon Him for everything that comes into our life. No provision is made apart from Him and our singular purpose should be loyalty, service, obedience to Him. Get this, because we love Him.
Isn't that what Jesus said? He said, "If you love me, you obey my commandments." We kind of cling on to the obey part of that and we can quickly turn that into religion and rules and legalism. The driving force there is not the obedience, the driving force there is the love. And He says, because you love me, you do these things. Not out of sense of repaying me, because you can't possibly do that. Not out of sense of duty, but out of sense of love.
The Deity of Christ
That's James. He's a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to deal practically here, and I'm not going to hang a lot of weight on this, but I think here you find an argument for the sinless Christ. Can you imagine anybody saying I'm enslaved to my brother? The Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord, the master, the one who reigns, he gives Him His full name here.
Jesus—that's what the angel said to Joseph. Mary's going to have a son. You're going to name Him Jesus. Why? Because He's going to save His people from their sin. And He's the Lord Jesus Christ. This letter is being written to believing Jews. For thousands and thousands and thousands of years, they've waited for the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. And in just this title and recognition, that is exactly what James is doing. He's pointing to Jesus. He's saying He's the master. He's Jesus. He's the Messiah. He's the anointed one.
The Audience: Dispersed Believing Jews
So James identifies himself. He identifies how he sees himself, a bondservant, and then he identifies the audience. I think this is really important to understanding the jumpstart of this book. It feels to me like this book goes from zero to a hundred. When you read a lot of Paul's writing, it's like there's a little bit of warm-up to this. Part of this is, this is considered a general epistle, meaning it's not directed to a specific city like Philippi or Corinth. But it's written to a group of people.
See how he identifies them? To the 12 tribes who are dispersed or scattered abroad. To these 12 tribes. They are Jews. He identifies them in other parts of this book. I think 13 times, he mentions and calls them brethren. So they're believing Jews. They're dispersed.
Now, why are they dispersed? There's two driving reasons here. One is that they took the Great Commission seriously. Go make disciples. So there's that possibility, though I doubt that that's the number one idea. Here's the number one idea, I think. They're dispersed because when a Jew, especially now where they're in Jerusalem, came to Christ in repentance and faith, that family—what'd they do? They had a funeral for him. That family disowned them.
So just functioning society became almost impossible for these guys. Their relational ties are severed. Their social ties are severed. Their business ties are severed. And on top of all of that, in the midst of it, on top of all of that, there's physical persecution that goes with it as well. So they got out of there. They got out of there with no resources. They went into circumstances where they're now moving in primarily, more often, into Gentile communities. There is difficult, hardship, pain all around them.
The Command to Count It All Joy
We could spend more time on that, but that's verse 1. That's the author. That's how he describes himself. And that's the audience. When you get that these are the 12 tribes that are dispersed, you get to verse 2, and it makes total sense. If they're out there, and there's been a lot of suffering and pain and hardship, then you can sure understand why he says this:
"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect, that is mature, complete, lacking nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach and will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting. For the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being double-minded, unstable in all his ways."
James says this: consider, reckon, think about it. Consider this, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials. Now does that intuitively, humanly register with you at all? That is not a natural response, is it? It is not a natural response when you encounter various trials to say praise Jesus. It's not a natural response in the midst of trials to count them as joy.
The Supernatural Nature of Joy in Trials
And yet this is an imperative. James starts his letter with an imperative: do this, consider it all joy. Well if it's not natural, it must be supernatural. Something's going on here. James has some reason because he's saying, listen, you count it joy. You reckon it as joy. You see what the world sees as adversity and hardship and difficulty. And it's not that it isn't that, but it's bigger than that, it's deeper than that. It's a source of joy, not happiness.
Happiness is totally circumstantial. Joy is absolutely relational.
Look, if you bought a stock on Friday at $5 and today it's at $10, anybody can be happy with that, right? But if you went into work on Friday and they said, "This is your last day of work, we're downsizing and we're starting with you," it's hard to consider it all joy in the midst of that, isn't it? Yet that's what James calls us to do. Consider it all joy.
Now He's not talking to just everyone, is He? What's the next phrase? "My brethren." This is not something that's available or a call to the whole world. It's a call to those of us who know Christ in a personal way. It's the same idea that Paul has in Romans 8:28: "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." Is that a plan for the whole world? No. If you're somebody who doesn't know Jesus Christ, if you're not called according to His purpose, then that verse doesn't apply to you. Not everything is going to work out okay for you. But to those of us who know Christ as Lord and Savior, He says, "Count it all joy," you see it there in verse 2, "when you encounter various trials."
The Inevitability of Trials
I want to camp on this just a bit. There is really an important word there in verse 2. That important word, and you ought to put a line around it or a box around it or something so that your eye goes to it, that word is "when." "When you encounter various trials." Let me change it and see if this doesn't even change the tone of the verse. If the verse said, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, if you encounter various trials," that changes the whole idea of what James is saying. He doesn't say if you encounter various trials. He says when you encounter various trials.
These trials in your life are inevitable. There is no escaping them. That's why this passage has such universal application. At times in our life it seems they are more intense than others, but now we are going through, many of us, personal trials, family trials, and I think we are going through a national crisis.
I got a text just from somebody and they were saying they were just driving around town and their comment was, "My heart is aching over all the empty stores that I see." The freeway was a wreck the other day and I took it down through Scottsdale and around and I was stunned. I'm a commercial real estate guy. Now granted, I've been out of it a while, but I mean I'm pretty sharp at this stuff, I think. I was blown away at these brand new empty buildings. These businesses that had been around for decades that have closed up. So there's trials all around us.
Promises We Don't Want to Hear
I want to camp on it. When? I've been a Christian for, I don't know, three weeks and I went to the Christian bookstore. My first trip there. So it was a cool experience. I found all these books. I learned something then. The books that look the best are usually the worst. They're changing now. Marketing is changing.
So I'm checking out and I'm giving them books and they're typing. There's a rack there of these leather bound gold leaf books that say on it "The Promises of God." I thought to myself, I ought to get myself one of those because if I've got promises I want to know what they are. Here's what happened to me. I discovered after a year or so that there were promises in the gold leaf book, okay, but that there were also promises in this book that never made it to the gold leaf book.
Like when Paul says to Timothy, "If you desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, you will be persecuted." That never got into that gold leaf book. This one didn't get in there. It's a promise. It's a statement of inevitability. Count it all joy when, not if.
So you right now are either going into, in the midst of, or coming out of trials. And they are coming at you constantly.
Multicolored Trials
Now I want to broaden your view of this a bit. "Various trials." The word that's translated "various" there is literally "multicolored trials." Like Joseph's coat of many colors. These trials come in all shapes and all sizes.
So there may be, for example, things in Johnny's life that are a huge trial to him that might be an absolute nothing to me. Things in my life that are giant trials to me that would be nothing to John. But these trials come in all shapes and all sizes.
We're going to do a little exercise. Here it is. I'm going to give you like five, ten seconds. I want you to think of something. I want you to think of this. I want you to think of God trying you. Because these aren't temptations. By the way, the word is essentially the same that's translated "temptation." But when Satan uses it, it's a device to trip you up to sin. When God uses it, it's a proving ground in your life. God's intention here is to reveal who you really are. That's the whole point of these trials.
God's going to try you tonight. Think about what that might be. Just get something in your mind. I'll get water and take a nap. "Man, is that rain going to be on that roof all night again? I won't never get to sleep. This is awful." That's my trial. You can't hear Susan up here going "whine, whine, whine, whine, whine." That's another thing I don't like about her.
Examples of Trials We Face
All right, so you're going to have a trial. What are some of the things that popped into your mind? And I'm not saying just because you say it—it's like my mom. You wouldn't say "flat tire," you'd have one. So you don't want to say this out loud maybe. But do any of you want to share what popped into your mind?
"Falling in the rain." Some sort of physical trial. "Hurting a knee. Hurting a hip." What else? "Ice cream. Or food." I don't mind that trial a ton. What else? So some physical pain. "Losing a job." "Losing a home." Something happened to someone. I mean, that's one of them, man. You just never think...
I'm going to share with you some things that inevitably come into our lives. You never see a child dying before a parent. Or sickness. Frightening. You see the theme there? These are all things that come into our life.
But let me kick the slats out of trials a little bit. There's also the trial of prosperity. Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish historian, says this: for every hundred people who can pass the test of adversity, there's only one who can pass the test of prosperity. Can we go back to what we talked about this morning? God has given you much, and there is much that is required or demanded of you, and yet I fail that test all the time.
The Various Tests We Face
There are those tests, those challenges, those difficulties that come into our life. We talked about those opportunities that are there before us, things that we're responding to, things that happen to us. But there's also the test of people around us who are hurting, and we walk right by them. There are those faceless people all around us who are looking for a kind word, who are looking for Johnny the Beggar. If you can't do that simple thing and transform a grocery store, you can do that.
There are these various trials that come into our life - hardship. There are those things that so often are beyond our control. I can't control whether I'm going blind. I can't control all of a sudden that there's something that happens or a disease that I get.
When we flew in - the time has passed, so I can go ahead and say it without scaring you - when we landed, they took our plane and put it on hold. There were several people who got sick on our plane, and a couple of them from Mexico. They made us sit on this plane until the paramedics got them off and tested them, and then we had to sign all these forms that we'd been exposed potentially to something. All of a sudden, there's that sickness. These things inevitably come into your life.
You've all had them. You've had somebody you love who says something devastating, or a child who wanders away. We hear that story over and over again. Physical health - you know the story.
The Key to Counting Trials as Joy
Now, how can I count them all joy? Well, the first word of verse 3 is huge: I know something. I know that this testing produces endurance. We talked about it this morning.
When Oprah says everything happens for a reason, what Oprah's implying, if that's true, is that somebody or someone or something is in control. Back to Romans 8:28 - if all things work together for good, then God must be all-knowing. He must be all-powerful to orchestrate these things. I know this.
What allows me to endure in this trial? I know something: that the testing of my faith produces endurance. If we had a blackboard here and I was writing, I would write something like this: Faith plus testing equals perseverance.
Running the Marathon of Faith
Everybody I know who's serious about their faith says this: I'm in it for the long haul. I want to run the marathon. I want to break the tape. I want to be able to say, "I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith." I want to be able to say that.
I always thought, by the way, that was pretty interesting. That's Paul's assessment of his own life. I hear a bunch of people say, "I want to hear 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" I got it. It's amazing to me that Paul's assessment of his own life - not hearing "Well done," he got to that later - but Paul's assessment of his own life was, "I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith." I broke the tape. I went all the way through.
It's all in the context of his saying in 2 Timothy chapter 4, "The time for my departure has come. It's time for me to go. I'm going to die, and I have no regrets. I'm dying, boots on, ready to go. I fought the good fight, man. I finished the race. I kept the faith. I was involved in spiritual warfare."
This is you. This is what we talked about this morning. Don't you waste your life now. That's not a call to some teenager. That's a call to everyone who calls Jesus Lord and Savior. Don't you waste your life now. You want to break this tape. You want to go the distance. You want to go the whole way. You want to fight the good fight. You want to finish the race all the way through.
I know. Scary, isn't it?
The Price of Spiritual Maturity
Here's what I want you to see. This is really important. When you pray, "God, make me a man who breaks the tape. God, make me a woman who finishes the race," God hears, "Let me be tested." That's the only way you get there.
You cannot microwave spiritual growth. It's not like those pets where you throw a little water on and you've got a pet in a week. This faith takes time. What James is saying here is that it's like a science class. We've got here the classroom, but in a science class, we have the classroom and we have the laboratory. Life is the laboratory.
This faith that we say we have is not real - we don't get it until it's tested. Until you're put in the fire. And all of a sudden, God begins to take what's there and He begins to burn out those impurities so that faith gets stronger. It gets more real. The longer you live, you begin to see Him over and over again in your life.
Standing on God's Faithfulness
So you can stand here today and say, "You know what? God did these things in my life and I would have never, ever, ever dreamt in a million years that I could have hung in there in the midst of it. But God's good." Because that faith is based on His faithfulness, not your strength.
One of the gentlemen, when we were walking around the room, said Philippians 1:6. Jesus Himself says, "My sheep hear My voice. I know them. They follow Me. I give them to My Father and nobody can snatch them."
No one can snatch us out of My Father's hands. We get that question all the time: Is it possible for somebody who knows Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior to lose their salvation? The answer is no. Absolutely not.
Now at times it feels that way, doesn't it? But see what Philippians 1:6 says - it's not us holding on to God, but God holding on to us. It's very different. If I'm holding on to Him, all of a sudden my muscles start to tighten. They start to cramp. I begin to shake. But it's not that. It's God holding on to me.
He makes it interesting sometimes because He's got you and He goes, "Woo! Woo!" And sometimes it feels like He goes, "Woo!" But He'll never leave you or forsake you.
God Knows Our Limits
Now this is really important. If God is the one who's either causing or allowing these trials, then it's important to know that He knows you. Somebody has used this phrase: God knows the maximum elasticity of our faith.
He'll take us and He'll pull us and He'll pull us and He'll pull us. We say we can't take any more and He'll go here. You say we can't take any more and He'll go here. We say we can't take any more and He'll go here. And we go we can't take any more. He goes, "You know what? You're done. That's it. Done."
Now here's the mistake we make at that point. Then we go, "Phew! I'm glad that testing's over." Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not over. We just loosened the band so we can start out here next time. Count it all joy when you encounter various trials because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance bring maturity into your life.
Asking for Wisdom
Look at verse 5: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously without reproach, and it will be given to him." That verse we use a lot. So for example, we'll be in an elders meeting and somebody will pray, "Father, you tell us that if we lack wisdom, all we have to do is ask and you'll give it to us. We're here tonight. We have big decisions ahead of us. Give us wisdom."
I was going to meet with a guy the other day. I didn't really know the guy. It was just a meeting that somebody suggested we have. As I'm going in, I knew a little bit of what it was about, but I was intimidated by it and I prayed, "God, give me wisdom." I think if you pray, God will give you wisdom.
But the context here is in the context of trials. So often in trials, what happens is we're so overcome by them that we need just God's insight on how to survive in the midst of them.
God Gives Generously
Look at this. He says, "If anybody lacks wisdom" - that's almost tongue-in-cheek. Who doesn't lack wisdom? The wisdom of God. All you've got to do is ask. He gives generously. He pours it out and He gives without reproach. In other words, He's not holding you hostage. He gives freely.
I remember when the girls were at home, they might come and say, "Can I have five dollars?" So you give them five dollars. Then it was like they'd come back like two days later and say, "Can I have ten dollars?" So you give them ten dollars. Well, sometimes as a parent, you just feel like you're a human ATM, don't you? You just feel like they're pushing buttons and you're just spitting money out into their hands.
I remember saying, "I gave you five and then I gave you ten and I think your mom gave you ten. What'd you do with the money?" Well, God - that's giving with reproach. God doesn't give wisdom that way. He doesn't - you don't come to Him and ask for wisdom and go back the next day and God goes, "What'd you do with the wisdom I gave you yesterday? I gave you all that wisdom yesterday. What'd you do? Waste that wisdom? I'm going to hold you accountable for that wisdom." He gives openly. He gives openly in the midst of this.
Faith in God's Character
Now He says that He must ask in faith without doubting. If I doubt, I'm like the seed blown all around. I shouldn't expect anything. I'm double-minded and unstable. When He talks about asking without doubting, this is really important: The faith He's talking about is not faith in God to fix it. It's faith in God and who He is. There's a big difference here.
It's not like I'm saying, "God, I got this thing, I want this, give me that," and then faith is believing it. We had a guy one time came into one of my studies, and he was a sick guy, and he was all hunched up. He was a mess, just all hunched up. I said, "How you doing?" He said, "I'm healed." I said, "Really? You don't look healed to me." He said, "Well, I'm healed. I believe I'm healed. I'm claiming my healing." And I said, "Well, it ain't working very well for you because you're not healed."
It's not that kind of faith. It's faith in God and who He is.
A Practical Example
So we'll take Susan. Susan shared, and there's no way she's going to go up there and talk to you and you're not going to end up talking about cancer. She has cancer, and the doctors told her that humanly they can't heal her. He's never promised from day one that there's going to be healing in this.
Though we ask God to allow Susan to live, to be able to see the first grandson be born, and that was three years ago. They told her at one point six months to live, and it's been four and a half years. So I could argue that God really did heal her if He was right the first time. It's just that He's not going to heal her forever. He's not going to heal you forever.
I don't mean to be crass here, and she's here, but even if God healed her from the cancer, something else is going to get her. I mean, this is the way it is. Let's be honest about this.
So when we pray, we pray this way: "God, I know this. You can heal her. I know it. You can..."
take it away right now. But I don't believe that you have to. That's a big difference. I know He can. I mean, I don't even wrestle. Would you wrestle with that? I don't wrestle with that. But just because I believe in Him, I don't believe that He must heal her.
I talked about that before. These are a whole group of people that set me off like a rocket. These name-it-and-claim-it-and-faith-and-health-and-wealth-and-prosperity guys. They just put people in bondage, and they rip them off. You can believe them, but cemeteries filled with people who had faith they were going to be healed. So when we're asking in faith, we're asking in faith that God is who He says He is, that God is faithful, that God is able.
The Example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
So there's that wonderful picture in the book of Daniel. Here's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Three cats here. The king's going to throw them in the fire. He's mad. So he gets a fire ten times hotter than it was going to be. And he says to them, "Who's going to save you? What God could save you?" And they say to him, "Our God is able to save us."
And then this terrific passage, I think it's 3:17, pretty close if it's not there. "Our God is able to save us." But even if He doesn't, He's able to save us, but He's not obligated to save us. And then, and I'll tell you honestly, and I mean this, it kind of burns me up that these guys get out of this.
And they go into the fire. Do you remember how that story ends? They go into the fire, and the king is there with everybody around, and he said, "Wait a minute. How many guys did we put in there?" And they said, "Three." And he said, "But there's four of them in there." That's a graphic picture. You know who's in there? That's the pre-incarnate Christ right there with them. It's a beautiful picture of you when you're in the fire. You aren't in there alone. He's right there with you.
Now, one of the things that burns me up is that these guys get out of the fire. And sometimes we therefore think that if we say these things, God's going to get us out. He's not going to. And it's got nothing to do with lack of faith or anything else. It's simply God working His perfect plan in the midst of this.
Practical Application: What to Do in Trials
So real quickly, because I didn't have any notes and I was sitting down there and I wanted to make sure I said something to you about some practical application. So I made a couple of things real quickly. What do I do in the midst of trials?
Number one, this is a no-brainer and you almost do it instinctively. What is it? Pray. It's like pray. What should we do? I remember, it was like 10 years ago, there was a drought, maybe 15 years ago now, there was a drought in the state of Texas and the governor declared a statewide day of prayer. And one of the guys in the newspaper wrote, his comment was, "My word, has it come to this?" Well, it's just what you do instinctively.
If you get a call right now and it's somebody you know and somebody you love and you get a call that they've been in an accident, nobody has to tell you, you just instinctively pray. And you pray. And all that means, I mean pray means being honest and open to God. Just tell them what you're thinking. Tell them what's on your heart.
So we pray about a variety of things all the time. So you might pray for healing and just say, "God, here's what I want. I want that person to be healed or I want to be healed. But my faith in You is not based on whether I'm healed or not. My faith in You is based on You."
Remember You're Not the Only One
Here's the second thing. Remember, you're not the only one that's ever gone through this. This year I got a flu shot. I'm always leery. I got a flu shot. Do you all get flu shots? Probably a lot of you do. I'm always leery of having a medical procedure done at Home Depot. I'm always a little leery about that. There's something in me that goes, it doesn't seem right. I can get like a shovel and a tree. I think that's kind of weird.
So I had this great chick, this great nurse. She was terrific. So I walked in. I said, "How are you doing?" She said, "Not so well." I said, "How come?" She goes, "I've only got one needle and I've had 20 shots with it all day today and I don't have another." She was great.
So I didn't get the flu. Last year, I didn't get a flu shot. I got the flu. I'm laying in bed. Susan comes in and she said, "Do you need anything?" No. "Can I get you something to drink?" No. "Cracker?" No. Being sick around Susan is no fun because no matter how sick you are, she always trumps it. You know, I'm sicker than that. So that isn't even fun.
So I'm laying there and she walks out of the room. She's walking out of the room and I said, "Susan?" "Yes?" "Come closer. Science tells us that there's 7 billion people alive on the earth right now and approximately 7 billion people have lived on the earth up to this time. 14 billion people. Susan? Of all the 14 billion people that have ever lived, none have ever been quite as sick as I am at this very moment."
Now, you all laugh, but it was true. I'm telling you, nobody was ever, no one ever had the flu. I'm telling you. I lost 58 pounds the first two days. When you're in the midst of trials, there's a tendency to think nobody's ever had it quite like this. Boy, resist that.
God Is Faithful
Here's the third thing. God is faithful. So in 1 Corinthians 10:13, He tells us that He won't test us or try us beyond that which we can endure. That He'll join us in the midst of that. That He says He'll deliver you. That doesn't mean, by the way, rescue you. It means He'll be there with you.
This is so real in my mind, and I go back to it, and it's a little bit difficult sometimes with Susan sitting here. But I understand what she's got, and I understand it's serious, and I understand that unless God intervenes, it's probably going to take her life. I got that. But that doesn't become a blemish on God. Our daughter Sarah, I mentioned to you, was in a car wreck. So she gets in this car wreck. It was really
When God's Goodness Isn't Dependent on Outcomes
That was weird. That was a Friday. That Friday, I took Susan to the airport. Susan was flying to see her mom. I was going to do a conference in the mountains. We were at Terminal 4. Right there, I was letting her out. And Susan said, "I got a bad feeling about this. I don't like us both being out of town at the same time." I said, "Nothing's going to happen."
So I'm up there. It's midnight, one in the morning when they come and get me. Sarah's been in a wreck. I'm driving down. As I'm driving down, I said she's had a brain seizure. And so it's very, very bad. She's then through the life-threatening part.
I'm going to church on Sunday, I guess. And I'm going to teach. I got my lesson. Why is he teaching? I got a lesson. What am I going to do? Sit at the hospital? Doesn't make any sense. So I'm going to teach. I'm walking in. I had three people say to me, "Oh, Sarah's going to live. God is good."
So I took the message that I had and I set it aside and I did a message extemporaneously titled "God is good even if she dies." God is not good because Sarah lived. God is not good if Susan's healed. His reputation is not on the line in the midst of your trial. He's faithful. He's going to do what He's going to do. Here's whatever it is.
Shift Your Focus to Serving Others
Fourth thing. One of the ways out of this is to start to serve. It's to get your eyes off yourself. Because when all of a sudden these trials come and you begin to think you're the only one, then you start to get in there and it just circles around you. It's like this cloud and you can never get away from it.
But all of a sudden you reach out to other people. It was the passage that someone read over here from 1 Corinthians chapter 1. That God has comforted us with a comfort so we may comfort those who need comforting. There's people all around you who need to be served.
Stop Demanding Explanations
I'll give you a couple more real quickly. Don't try to figure this out. I think I touched on this last night or sometime yesterday. These why questions are just going to drive you nuts. God's doing His mysterious purpose in the midst of this. He does not owe you an explanation so don't be foolish enough to demand one. Or arrogant enough to think if He gave it to you your puny little brain could comprehend all that He was doing.
I mean He just is. Do you see where faith comes in? And this isn't stupidity. This is not intellectual suicide. This is just taking God at His word. He's an infinite holy God. He knows better than me. I don't waste any brain cells trying to figure this out.
Find Purpose in the Pain
I'll give you I guess two more things. Try to find a purpose in the middle of that. And by that I mean find the purpose. I mean knowing God is working a purpose together. Almost always in the midst of these hardships or trials you'll say I would have never chosen this but I wouldn't trade it either. That there's a purpose.
The overarching purpose is that God is growing you deep. He's bringing endurance into your life.
Maintain an Eternal Perspective
And then the last note that I made is to have some sort of an eternal perspective in the midst of this. So Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 16, 17 and 18. "Don't lose heart though the outer man is decaying." We can look around the room and see evidence of that. You got that? I mean nobody's struggling with that one right?
"Don't lose heart though the outer man is decaying the inner man is being renewed day by day for momentary light affliction." That's Paul's description of life. "Momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." So we put them on a scale and we go the affliction here and the eternal weight of glory in heaven here the scale just goes like this.
And Paul says here's the secret "for we look not at the things that are seen but the things that are unseen because the things that are seen are temporary. The things we don't see are eternal." Now I begin to get an eternal perspective on life. God begins to work in the midst of that.
Building a Testimony for Others
So I hope that is a source of encouragement to you. I hope that you see the value of that. Really in the context of when you encounter various trials because they're inevitable right? You're either going into them in the midst of them or coming out of them.
When you're passing a legacy on right? Because that's what we're talking about an overarching topic umbrella is you pouring into the people in your sphere of influence. As you're doing that let me tell you you're going to deal with people who have babies who die and jobs that are lost and all those tragedies. Also you're going to have people who are being blessed beyond anything they can imagine and they're being tested with prosperity and you now have a grid where you can come and talk to them about that.
And you have a story man. You've got a story that you can say you know what? When I was there this is what God did. This is what happened to me. This is God's provision. You have a powerful testimony in the midst of that.
Let me pray. Father thank you for this amazing wonderful truth. And we do suffer and we have hardship and we have pain and there's something in us that wants to avoid it and yet you want us to experience it or it wouldn't be here. God you are faithful and we are trusting you. We know you are at work in this world. You're at work in our lives. That nothing comes into our life that isn't first run through you. God so that everything that comes into our life is either caused by or allowed by you and you won't allow any trial test temptation to come into our life where you don't give us the strength to battle through. Father thanks for that reality. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for you being the faithful God. We love you. Praise you. Worship you in Christ's name. Amen.