How To Benefit From Adversity
Tom Shrader explains that life has inevitable cycles of good and bad times, and that everything in our lives is either caused or allowed by God. He teaches from Ecclesiastes 7:14 that during difficult times, we should 'consider' - meaning to think deeply about who God is, what He has done in creation and history, His promises, and how He uses adversity as 'spiritual aerobics' to strengthen our faith and develop endurance.
“Everything in our life is either caused by or allowed by God, or He's not God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World Circling the Drain (2013)
Recorded: 2013 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 54 min
Themes: adversity, perseverance, faith, endurance, suffering, trials, trust, hope, facing financial hardship, going through difficult seasons, experiencing career setbacks, struggling with doubt, new believer, middle aged, parent dealing with challenges, anyone feeling overwhelmed
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 7:14, Job 2:10, Matthew 11:28, John 9, Psalm 107:43, 2 Corinthians 5, Deuteronomy 32:7, 1 Samuel 12:24, Luke 12, James 1:2-4, Romans 1:18-20
Theological Themes: providence, sovereignty of god, spiritual formation, character development, biblical wisdom, sanctification, divine purpose, spiritual discipline
Full Transcript
You have an outline, and most of the time I try when I come to bring an outline to get us focused, and we'll follow it pretty closely. This may sound unnecessary to say, but it'll keep us focused a little bit.
The series that we're looking at is titled How to Stay Afloat in a World that's Circling the Drain. The premise of the series is really simple: life has cycles to it.
Life Operates in Cycles
We can think of it on a macro level. My background is commercial real estate, so I got into the commercial real estate business in 1979. Here's all you need to know: Jimmy Carter was president. Interest rates were 18 or 19 percent. Nobody was building anything. You can imagine now when home rates are going from 3.5 to 4.5 percent, and people are talking about how this is slowing things down. Interest rates were 18 to 19 percent. They used to talk about the prime rate and loaning off the prime rate. There was nothing happening.
I was just starting in the business, and I had some of the older guys who took me aside and said, "Don't worry. This will pass. This is a cycle." Real estate goes through a cycle, and I worked through two or three of those cycles. Sure enough, they go. You think it can't get worse, and then it does. Then you think it'll never get better, and then all of a sudden, it does.
Some of you got caught at the top of the cycle when they were saying, "Just buy real estate. They're not making any more of it." You got caught thinking it's just going to go up and up and up, and then it does. You have cycles. Things have cycles. Life has cycles.
Where Are You in Life's Cycle?
There are some of you in this room right now who are riding high. Everything's working well. If you're married, the marriage is going great. The kids are doing well. The job is not just doing well—it's doing great, and you're flying high.
Others of you barely got here. You're barely hanging on. You're sitting next to that person, thinking, "If I'd have known this about you, you bum, I would have never married you." You've got those kids who are okay, but every time the phone rings and you see that number from home, your heart begins to skip a beat. You're kind of down here.
Well, I can say the same thing to both of you: This, too, shall pass. Those of you up here will experience this. Those of you down here will experience a rise. We see the cycles of life and real estate. Political parties are up. Political parties are down. Next year—I'm an Arizona guy—next year's the 50th anniversary of Barry Goldwater running for president. He took a shellacking, and then all of a sudden, 16 years later, the conservative movement was in and the Democrats were out. Everything is moving around us, and that's what this series is based on.
How to Benefit From Adversity
The session in front of you is titled "How to Benefit from Adversity." We sang those songs tonight, and those are some of my favorite songs. But there's one sense in which I kind of struggle with "Our God is stronger, our God is greater, our God's going to get them, we're never going to lose"—that doesn't seem to match up with everyday life.
Then there was a line in a song I wasn't familiar with, and I hope I get this right, but it said something like "trouble surrounding, chaos abounding." Now we're singing my song! That's how that feels.
One of the things that I discovered—and we've spent this whole week building to where we were this morning—is what does it mean to be a Christian? What makes us a Christian is not what we do, but what we believe. Now, what we believe has to affect how we behave.
God's Terms, Not Our Negotiations
There's a section in Matthew chapter 11. You don't need to turn there. Let me read it to you from one of the paraphrases from The Message. This is Jesus speaking. In Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, He says, "Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me."
You know that verse: "You're tired, burdened, heavy laden." That's what religion does. Religion inevitably wears you out, because religion demands perfection, and you can't get there. God is not looking for you to make yourself pleasing to Him. He's looking for you to come to Him on His terms. That's so foreign to our concept.
As I said, my background is real estate, and we have in real estate a phrase called "meeting of the minds." It goes like this: I'll list a property for a million dollars, and you'll come in with an offer of $850,000. We'll counter and say $970,000, and then you'll say $900,000, then we'll say $960,000, then $930,000, and then we arrive at $940,000. We say we have a meeting of the minds. We negotiate everything.
Sandy and I just remodeled the kitchen, and we bought some appliances. The guy happened to be a friend of mine, so I didn't negotiate with him—he's hopefully going to give me a better deal than he would you. But in there, there were people who were negotiating, saying, "I was just over here at Best Buy, and I've been over here." We're used to negotiating.
Now we come to God, and He says, "I want you to come to me through Christ and Christ alone, nowhere else." We go, "That's a good starting place, God, but here's what I'm willing to do." He says, "No, these are the terms. I set the terms." We say, "No, I'll come here," and He says, "No, there's one way."
There's one way to have that designation on your life change from sinner to saint, and have your destination change from hell to heaven. That's to come to Christ in repentance and faith—to acknowledge I'm a sinner. God hates religion. He's not looking for your man-made efforts to please Him.
Christianity is about a holy God reaching down to a sinful man and reconciling the two of us, but that doesn't become the end of the journey. That's the beginning of the journey, and now I'm living life. One of the misconceptions many people have is that all of a sudden, life's going to be smooth and easy, and I'm not going to have any problems, and that's simply not true, is it?
Our problems are in a sense even multiplied because we have all the problems of life. We still have relationships that don't work, and people that get sick, and deals that don't make, but we also have the persecution that comes with being a follower of Christ. In your life, there inevitably is adversity.
The Reality of Adversity and the Need for Coachability
So the title of it, How to Benefit from Adversity, implies a couple of things. One of them is there will be adversity. I can guarantee you. The second thing is that you're coachable. You can benefit from it because you can learn along the way.
We in our church are known as really a magnet for young guys who want to be in ministry, and we have a lot of guys who want to be part of what we're doing, but we can't take them all. So you look at them, and you try to evaluate because you have to say yes to some and no to others, and how do you do that? There's somebody who said, I've never met a young man who isn't arrogant and an old man who isn't filled with regrets, and that's kind of true.
We have a lot of guys with young man disease. They look at me, and they're going, I'm sure that worked in your day, but that's not how we do it anymore. We're cool now. I was at one of our campuses the other day. I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but I was at one of our campuses the other day, and we had gluten-free communion. I'm okay, I guess. Are you that sick? I guess, I don't know. They gave me a lecture on coffee and all that went with it.
You have to sort these out, and I kind of like the cocky guys, if—here's the thing—if they're coachable. Now, if you're going to meet with them and agree on something to do, and then they don't do it, I give them one chance, and then I'm done with them. Honestly, I think that's part of leadership. I don't think leadership is you have all the answers. It's that you're out there, you're coachable, you're moldable.
How do I benefit from adversity? Well, I have to be coachable in the midst of this.
Three Theories About Success and Failure
Now, on your outline you'll look, and you'll see theories regarding the bottom line. I have three different ones there. The one is kind of when times are good in your life. You think that things are based on education, energy, ability, and time. There's a blank there, but there's nothing to fill in. That's just how you look at it.
Times are good, got an education. I hear this all the time. They talk about these politicians, and they'll always start with, he's really smart, she's really smart. I've had enough of the smart people. Apparently they aren't that smart. But it's like education, and then I've got this energy, I've got this ability, and things will work out.
In tough times, we tend to think, as we look around, that it's a matter of education and energy, ability, time, and I'm going to fill in that blank on the second one, and luck. So if things aren't going so well for you, things are going well for this guy over here, you'll go, I'm smarter than they are. I work harder than they do. I have more energy. I've been at this longer. They're just lucky.
Lessons From the Real Estate World
When I was still in the real estate market, I was with a company, one of the great companies, really, Coldwell Banker, Richard Ellis, it's a commercial division. It was a great job, great company. One of the things I did at the end is, I was kind of one of the senior guys, so they would have me meet with all the new guys. Inevitably, they would go, well, if you had it to do over again, what would you do differently? There's no new questions. But then they would say, what do I need to do to be successful?
I'll tell you this, four things. Number one, you need market knowledge. You need product knowledge. You need to understand what the product is, whatever it might be, if you're selling burgers or you're selling real estate.
Number two, you have to have some people skills. This is tangential, but Sandy and I are—we throw gas on each other's fire as we deal with young people. The generation, especially the boys, like 20 to 30, seem to be socially impaired. I have never met a more de-energized group of people. I was with a group of these guys the other day, and I said, you guys don't even have the energy to lust. That's how bad you've gotten. They don't do anything. They play games. They take their laundry to mom's. And then they eat. They can't communicate.
I'll go, hi, I'm Tom. Hi, Tom, I'm Eli. Eli up here. We have a two-year-old granddaughter named Lucy, and Lucy's awesome. Haley is teaching her, you look at people. When you talk to them, you look at them. So she came out to see Sandy the other day, and Sandy's talking to her, and she grabbed Sandy's face and said, look me in the eyeballs. This is how we communicate, people skills.
So I have all these young people that get out of college, there's no jobs. Listen, if you can say hello, please, and thank you, and give correct change, you're in the top 10%. And that's pretty true right now. All you've got to do is ask somebody that's hiring. It's bleak.
The Power of Relationships
So you've got to have people skills. Here's the third thing. You have to have relationships. That's different than people skills. It's now, when I call somebody, they'll call me back. I went to work for Motorola, selling two-way communications, and I was from Iowa, so they put me in agribusiness. One of the first guys I called on, it was a guy by the name of Dwayne Dobson. So if you're in kind of the southeast quadrant of Phoenix, you'll see Dobson Road, Dobson High, Dobson Ranch, so it's that Dobson. And it was my first—
Accept the Influence of God on Your Circumstances
I didn't know what to do. I have agribusiness, so I called him and said, "Dwayne, I'm Tom Schrader, I'm the new Motorola guy, and boy, you got a lot of our product. I'd like to meet with you candidly for two reasons. Number one, I want to take a look at what you have. Number two, I want to sell you more." He said, "All right, perfect." I said, "Why don't we meet tomorrow for breakfast?" He said, "All right, we meet at the ranch house at four o'clock. We'll be there, and they'll have some tortillas, and we'll eat, and then we'll start the day." I said, "You know what, why don't I meet you at eight o'clock for lunch? Because I don't do four o'clock." It just never even occurred to me that four o'clock was morning - I'm getting home at four o'clock.
I realized in that business real quickly that I needed to have a relationship that's developed over a period of time and based on trust. So you have market knowledge, you got to have people skills, you got to have a relationship, and you got to have luck. You got to be in the right place at the right time with the right thing, especially in the day and age you're in.
You can be working on an app and developing an app that's going to revolutionize the marketplace. Right now there's somebody on the other side of the country who's developed an app that's going to trump your app, and you did everything right. You're just out of business. So when times are tough, we tend to do this. Here's the reality - this is what's important: it's education plus energy plus ability plus time plus God. It's God who blesses. It's God who gives. We need to understand that in good or bad times.
There's a guy by the name of Job that we meet in the Old Testament. Lots of people don't know anything about the Bible, but they know Job. If I did word association, if I said Job, they would say what? Suffering. Patience. It's the patience of Job - "He's got the patience of Job." Here's the thing we forget about Job: Job didn't have the patience of Job until chapter 42. He spent all this time with things falling apart around him, people abandoning him, essentially everything being taken away from him.
In Job chapter 2 verse 10, Job's wife has now come to him. The one thing he wanted to lose, he still had. She's saying, "Job, curse God and die." Job said this: "Shall we accept the good from God and not the trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
Everything is Either Caused by or Allowed by God
Everything in our life - big point - everything in our life is either caused by or allowed by God, or He's not God. If you've been around church people, you go, "Yeah, great." If you're newer to this stuff, that's like a bit of a bombshell. Everything in our life, God either causes it or allows it. If that's not true, He's not God. He's all powerful, He's all knowing.
There was a rabbi who wrote a book about 30 years ago called "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" The book was recommended to me by all sorts of Christian guys when I hadn't been a Christian very long. The book made you feel good, but the problem was it was filled with heresy. Chapter 7 of that book was titled "God Can't Do Everything, But He Can Do Some Very Important Things."
We can start arguing, "Can God do everything?" Well, He can't lie, He can't act contrary to His nature, but that's not the things we're talking about. When we got in here, one of the things they gave us was tsunami information. Can God stop a tsunami? Sure. Can He send a tsunami? Sure. If that's not true, He's not God.
There's a point where God is speaking in the book of Deuteronomy, and He said, "Who made the deaf? Who made the dumb? Who made the blind? I did." My oldest granddaughter, Gracie, is autistic. She's six. We have eight grandkids - two daughters, eight grandkids, and the grandkids are 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in a couple of months. They just go bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
Gracie's six, and she's never spoken. She's autistic. I'd never been around that. I don't understand that. She's this really cute little girl, and you want so much to break into her world, but she's only going to let you in on her terms, and then it's very limited. Why would God do that? I don't know, but I know He did. Why would He do it? For my good and His glory. He's going to teach me something in the midst of this.
Jesus is walking with the disciples in John chapter 9, walking into the city. There's a blind man. The disciples said, "Who made this man blind? Is it because of his sin or his parents' sin?" That was the thought of the day. Remember Jesus' answer? He said, "Neither. But that he might become a display case for the work of God." Jesus heals him, and this man becomes living testimony to God.
You need to accept the influence of God in your circumstance.
Use the Down Times to Increase Your Perspective
Here's the second thing, and this becomes really the jumping off point for the balance of our night: use the down times, the difficult times, the adverse times to increase our perspective. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 14 - Solomon writes this: "When times are good, be happy. When times are bad, consider."
If you're going to write notes, let's do this: write "consider." Because that becomes...
Consider Who God Is and What He's Like
The word for the rest of the night is "consider." It means in the Hebrew, literally, to see, to analyze, to think, to ponder. That's not something we value much anymore. This is great. Go into the office on Monday, when you get back, go down to your cube, get a beverage, sit, and begin to think. Pretty soon people will walk by and say, "Hey, welcome back." "Thanks." "You all right?" "Yeah." "What are you doing?" "Thinking."
The word will spread all through the office. "Hey, there's a guy down here thinking. This guy's thinking." Pretty soon the head honcho will come in and go, "Hey, welcome back." "Thanks." "Did you have a good time?" "Yeah. Great time. Speaker was awesome." "Well, what are you doing?" "Thinking."
Here we go now. What's he going to say? "We don't pay you to think," which is obvious from the consumer end of your company, but that's a whole different story. We don't pay you to think. Think, ponder. I just bought and read a book called "The Thinking Life," and here was the guy's point. The guy's point was we need to think. I lost $29.95 in three hours of my life, and that was his story. We need to think. That's the word consider.
Consider that God has made one, that's the good times, as well as the other, that's the bad times. Think about this. So consider becomes the operative word. On your outline, there are six points up in the right-hand corner. Consider. Here we go. We're going to work through them. We got exactly 28 minutes.
Number One: Consider Who God Is
Number one, consider who God is and what He's like. Consider who God is. Psalm 107, verse 43: "Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord." Consider who He is and what He's like and His attributes. He's holy. That seems to be the toughest one to define because the word means "other than." He's other than us. He's holy. He's omniscient. He's all-powerful, but it's His love.
We sang about it. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, a marvelous passage where we're told that if anyone is in Christ, we're a new creature. The old things have passed away. Now you're an ambassador for Christ and you're to reconcile Christ to the world. Right before that, He gives us the secret to this. He says it's the love of Christ that compels us. If I want to be moved, moved to worship, moved to serve, moved to obey, I need to think about the love of Christ.
You go back over the stuff we went over today. Why were we yet sinners? Why were we helpless? Why were we enemies of God? He loved us and saved us.
The Deep Desire to Be Loved
That's what they tell us, the experts, is that we so deeply desire to be loved. My oldest grandson got a toy. I don't know, he was 2 or 3, and it was an Elmo doll. That Elmo doll, every kid that comes in to our house, they go to the Elmo doll. I was enamored at the way the kids were enamored with Elmo. You press it, and it says, "Elmo loves you." You press it again, and it says, "Elmo loves you more."
I know that that is not just happenstance. I asked my admin if she would do some research on this Elmo toy. I can't remember if it was Mattel. I think it was. Mattel has this high-tech, research isolated building, locked down. You can't get in or out. In the whole history of testing toys, no toy tested out higher than Elmo. They had the Elmo doll. Originally, here's what it did. Elmo came out, and you hit it, and it said, "Elmo loves you." That was the end of it.
Every time, with every kid and every group they brought in, they hit it and said, "Elmo loves you." Immediately, the kids said, "We love you, Elmo," every one of them. It says, "Elmo loves you." "I love you, Elmo." "Elmo loves you more."
Here's what you need to hear. God says, "I love you." You say, "I love you." He said, "I love you more. I love you perfectly." Our love for one another has conditions attached to it, and it's changing, and it's finite. Think about this now. He loves you, and He knows everything you've ever done, everything you've ever said, what you're thinking right now, everything you will think, will do.
I alluded to it before. How many of you have been with people who are in the midst of a marriage that's fallen apart, and she says, "If I knew that about you, I would have never married you." Well, God is never going to say to you, "If I knew that about you, I would have never made you My kid." Think about what He is, who He is, what He's like. Not what you think He is.
What People Actually Believe About God
Here are just some numbers. 8% of U.S. adults classify themselves as evangelical. 35% say they're born again. I'll give you what the evangelical is. The evangelical is some basic core beliefs, like the Bible's the word of God, the virgin birth, the substitutionary and propitiating death of Christ on the cross. Those basic six, seven things. So 35% have been to a crusade or a breakfast or had a one-on-one with you at Starbucks, and they've prayed a prayer, and they've said they're born again. But of that, only 8% believe the core basic truths of the Christian faith.
10%, that number goes back and forth, are agnostics or atheists. 7% identify with another faith. 69% believe in God when He's described as all-powerful, all-knowing, the perfect creator of the world. 4%, I don't know who these people are, 4% believe everyone is God. I don't know about that. 53% of adults believe if a person is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life, they'll earn a place in heaven. That's religion. That's contrary to what the Bible teaches.
The Bible does not teach God helps those who help themselves. That's Ben Franklin. The Bible teaches you that you can't help yourself. There's some more of these things that are kind of interesting. 41% say that while Jesus lived on earth, He committed sin. 57% say that the devil or Satan is not a living being. 46% say they're Christians who believe Satan doesn't exist.
None of that matters. It doesn't matter what you think about who God is. It matters about who He is. He's an objective not a subjective truth.
You go, I'll demonstrate the difference. Like right now, is it hot in this room? I think it's really hot in here. Some of you, generally ladies, will say it's a little chilly. Well, who's right in that? It doesn't matter. It's subjective. But if I say, what color is this phone? It's black. Well, I think it's yellow. It doesn't matter what you think. See, that's what we've lost. We've lost as a country and now even within the church, the idea of truth.
So before he died, Francis Schaeffer coined the phrase "true truth." We're so concerned about what people think and we're polling them and snapshot polls and now it comes to God and say, what do you think? Listen, God says, this is who I am.
How We Know Who God Is
How do I know about God? Essentially three ways. One, through creation. I look around and I go, wow, this is a big deal. He created all of this, spoke it into existence. It's expanding. It's getting bigger. Is there life on other planets? I don't know. It seems logically like there is, but I kind of hope there isn't. Not because it shows me how great I am. It's just designed to show you how big God is.
So I know who God is by creation. I know who God is by Christ, but I know who God is by this Bible. So I had as a young man and then a young adult, I had all these opinions on who God was. None of them lined up in who He said He was. So in the midst of all of this, consider God, who He is, what He's like.
Consider What God Has Done in Creation
Here's number two. Consider what God has done in creation. Job chapter 37: "Listen to this, Job. Stop and," here's the word of the day, "consider God's wonder. Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes His lightning flash? Do you know how the clouds hang poised? Do you know how He makes snow? Do you know where it's stored?" Look at all this.
Here you go. God creates. You and I can build or manufacture, but God creates. God made something from nothing. We made something, somebody, I'll use this piano. Somebody, Yamaha. Yamaha manufactured this piano. They didn't create it. They took raw materials, resources, sawed them, cut them, molded them, put them together, and they manufactured this. God started with nothing and said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God creates. He doesn't build. And that's designed to show us His power and His majesty.
That's Romans chapter one, where Paul's making this case about God and who He is. Paul says in Romans chapter one, verse 18, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness, ungodliness, of men who suppress the truth." That's an action word there. It means to hold down.
My grandkids have all these toys. My kids didn't have as many toys, and they had two toys that were particularly obnoxious. One of them was the popcorn popper. Remember that? Some masochist invented this thing and then gave it to them. The other one was a jack in the box. So my daughter, Sarah, loved the jack in the box. This thing would jump out, and she didn't have the dexterity to put it back in, so it would take an hour or two, and she'd finally get it back, and somebody would help her, and then she'd do it again. One day she realized that she could put her hand on the top of this and the music would play but Jack wouldn't pop out.
This is not good. It got so bad that one morning she walked up and says, "Where's Jack?" And I said, "You know, this is kind of sad, but somebody broke in last night, and they didn't take the TV or the credit cards, but Jack's gone." Well, that's the verb here. That's the suppressing the truth verb, literally. It is that there's the unrighteous and ungodly who are denying the truth, because that which is evident is known about God, is evident within them.
For since the creation of His world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, so that you are without excuse. It's impossible to look around—well, that's not true, because some do it, but it's not logical. If you want to be one of these logical genius people, it's not logical to look around and say, all of this just happened. All of this just morphed.
Oprah, I love Oprah. And I watch Oprah. You know why I watch Oprah? For you all, so I have good illustration. So I watch Oprah, and here's what Oprah says. Oprah says, "Everything happens for a reason." Now, I'm never going to get a chance to sit down with Oprah, and I love Oprah, and I don't mean it in an antagonistic way, but I'd love to say, "Oprah, have you really thought that through?" Because if that's true, that everything happens for a reason, then something, someone, somebody has to be all-powerful and all-knowing to be able to orchestrate things so they happen for a reason. If everything's happening for a reason, there has to be some grand master, some power. And what the Bible's saying is, the creation tells us there's this God, but the Bible tells us who He is.
So in the midst of this adversity, consider what He's done in creation.
Consider What God Has Done in History
Number three, consider what God has done in history. Deuteronomy 32:7: "Remember the days of old. Consider the generations long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you. Your elders, and they will explain." Look at what He's done. Sit down with those that were there. Now for us, read that book.
We're running, and here come the Egyptians, and we don't have a chance, and He parts the Red Sea. And we're out there in the middle. I don't know if you understand all of this, but there were two million Jews that were part of this wandering tribe. And they didn't have a place like the Driftwood to go, or Bills to go, or they didn't have a place to stay. Two million of them, and they run out of supplies very quickly, and God brings manna.
It's so important to know history. There was a survey that was done recently among some seniors in high school.
America's Strength and Personal History
School children today are shockingly ignorant of basic historical facts. When asked what year Abraham Lincoln was president, the most common answer was 1915. That's wrong, by the way—it was 1860. When asked what the Holocaust was, the third most given answer was "a Jewish holiday."
If you don't know these things, if you look around—and this is tangential, I apologize, but it's on my heart—here's what makes America great. This is really simple, and the politicians won't tell you this, but I will. What makes America great is not the people. I'm going to be sick if I have to hear again about how great the American people are. The American people do not have some gene that no other people on earth have.
What makes America great is the system. That's why some guy can land at the port in L.A. with his worldly belongings in a paper bag, and five years later, he's got four restaurants and an apartment building. It's the system. As you chip away and carve away at the system, and suddenly forget the history of it, you have a serious problem.
Remember What God Has Done in Your Life
In your own life, this is so. Think what God has done in your life. Ponder it. There was a couple by the name of David and Mary Lamb, and they were the last couple on the boat out of Shanghai before the Communists took over. They ended up in Calcutta, and they were Chinese in Calcutta, so they were really the poorest of the poor. They were really looked down upon.
Our church connected with them, and I went and visited their place in Calcutta. David and Mary came back to Tempe, Arizona, to a nursing facility there for the remainder of their life. I would go over about once a quarter, and I would say, "Tell me stories."
They had nothing. David wanted to open a church, so he got a storefront, and for three months, every Sunday, he led music and preached, and the only person there was Mary. Somebody gave him something like 15 acres of land, and he was so excited, he went out to see it, and it was swamp—useless land in Calcutta. David tells the story of going out there every day and praying, "God, dry up this swamp." One day, he goes out there, and the swamp is gone. I had a chance to teach in that school that was built there. It's story after story after story.
Consider What Great Things He Has Done
Most of you have stories. Maybe they're not as dramatic as dried-up swamps, but you have stories where God was so faithful in your life. In the midst of adversity, it's important to consider that. In fact, that's the fourth point: consider not just the history, but consider what He's done for you.
First Samuel 12:24 says, "Be sure to fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart, and consider what great things He's done for you." Sharpen your memory. Remember those moments where you had that prayer list, and you were so fired up, and if God didn't move, it wasn't even going to happen? And two years later, you don't remember what it was.
That God brought you here today—I had a chance, and I want to thank you ladies for making Sandy feel so welcome and comfortable today. She had a great time with you, but I had three or four of you say to me that Sandy's story was an amazing story. Well, it's an amazing story, but it's not about Sandy. It's an amazing story about God's love. Every once in a while, she has to go back, like I have to go back, and say, "Here's what God has done."
The Danger of Entitlement
I hang around with a lot of conservative, right-wing, Republican, evangelical guys, and they're an interesting group of people. They're not a lot of fun, but they're interesting. I'm by far the brightest spot in the room. They have this thing they're always talking about: entitlements. Everybody's got an entitlement mentality. By that, they mean people expect food stamps and other government assistance.
I've seen in the church that everybody has an entitlement mentality. After a period of time, you've seen God do thing after thing after thing, and you start to expect it. Remember where you were when He found you? I'm a mess. It's 1980, and I'm a mess in a career that's beginning to take off, and a family that's beginning to fall apart, and a life that's out of control. I'm a mess. Sometimes I forget what an awesome God He is.
Consider What God Has Promised to Do
Two more things, really quickly. Number five: consider what God has promised to do. God said in Luke 12—and we'll look at this again this week—"Consider the raven. Think about the raven. They don't sow, they don't reap, they don't store in barns, and yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds?" If you're questioning that, the answer is infinitely more valuable.
"Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies of the field. They don't spin, they don't labor."
Now, here's what God is not saying through His word, Christ through this parable. He is not saying don't work, don't save, don't plan. He's saying, "Look how God takes care of them. Consider, analyze."
The Lesson of the Raven
I thought about this when I first taught this lesson. I thought about the raven. I took it seriously and studied the raven. At the end of this, I concluded that essentially what the raven did was eat, eliminate what he ate, and procreate. Not a bad life, really. But that's essentially what he did. Doesn't bring much else to the party, doesn't contribute much to society.
My conclusion was this: Consider the raven. What did the raven do? Not the task—he did what God designed him to do. He's saying to you and me, "Listen, God's promised. You work, you plan. We throw the dice, He determines the outcome." You consider this, you work, you prepare. But God makes the promises.
He promises He's never going to leave you or forsake you. Sometimes it feels like that, but I have the promise. He promises that He will meet your needs. Consider those promises. You sang those songs. I guess because I had the lesson on my mind as we were singing, there were powerful messages in those songs about His provision.
and our protection. It occurred to me that you could easily sing those and not really grasp the depth of the difficulty of life, but the promise that goes with it.
Consider What God Is Doing Through Adversity
Number six: consider what God is doing for you through this adversity. James chapter 1 verse 2 says, "Consider it joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." That word "various" is literally "multicolored." Consider the trials in your life—remember what we're talking about? Adversity.
If I say to you, "God is going to try you next week in a significant way. You're going to experience a trial," something pops into your mind. You immediately think of something with a child, a loss of a job, physical infirmity, those kinds of things. Broken relationship, betrayal of a friend. Not one of you thought "win the lottery." Not one of you thought "get a promotion." But those are trials too.
Bobby Jones, the great golfer, said, "I never learned much from a match I won." I've had a chance to be in different businesses and speak to especially sales people. I can walk in a room where I don't know anybody, but let's say there are 30 there. I can pick out the top five. Not because of the way they dress. They're not the least bit interested in what I've got to say. The bottom 30? I'm going, "The sun came up! And it will tomorrow!"
The Trials We Don't Recognize
So there are the trials of success, but we don't do well in trials of success. We don't even recognize them as trials. They didn't even hit your radar screen there. But consider those trials. Why? Because I know the testing of my faith produces endurance.
The term I use is that trials are spiritual aerobics. Sandy and I are very different. We are a lot alike, which makes life pretty easy for us. Our worldview is the same, but our personal life is different. When we were married, Sandy didn't have a television. I have a television, and it goes all day long. I just discovered Direct TV—I have 450 channels or something. What's amazing is 450 channels and every night, guess what? Nothing on. I don't understand that.
Sandy introduced me to something called Roku. This thing is awesome. This changed my life. I can watch this and Sandy will sit there for about a half hour and she'll go, "Do you ever get tired of that?" I said, "No, I don't." "Well, I got to go do something." Then she'll go run.
Spiritual Aerobics
Now, I don't run. I imagine if the house was on fire, I'd walk quickly. Sandy's a swimmer. A couple of months ago, she just did a nine-and-a-half-mile open water swim. She's a swimmer and all this. This morning, she got up at 6:30 and ran. It always drives her nuts because people will say, "Did you run to Haystack?" She'll say, "Well, I ran six miles. It's only a mile and a half down there." "But did you go to Haystack?"
She comes in this morning drenched, and I'm thinking, "Why would you do this? Why would you do this?" I'm trying to wake up. I'm stretching—by stretching, I don't mean yoga stretching, I mean stretching. Here's what she says: "It makes me feel better." We hear that from aerobic activity. Aerobic activity—you push yourself. You push yourself.
I was diagnosed last year with lupus. It's an unusual disease—primarily women age 18 to 30, 90%. I can't wait to go to my first support meeting. There's all this thing that goes with lupus. I've got a thousand issues, and everything flows from it. It's an autoimmune disease. When I was here last year to teach, I slept about 20 hours a day. Part of it is now a pulmonary thing, so I can't breathe. I got all of these things. I know I need to push myself. When I do, I feel better. That's the aerobic part.
How God Stretches Us
Now, here's the point: trials are spiritual aerobics. When you pray, "God, I want to break the tape. I want to finish the race," He hears, "Bring me trials." Consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials because—here's a key word for me—you know something. The testing of your faith produces endurance.
Here's what God does. He comes into your life, and He brings a trial. He stretches you, and stretches you, and you say, "Oh, I can't handle it anymore." Yes, you can. He'll take you a little more. "Oh, I can't handle it anymore." Yes, you can. He takes you, and you go, "Oh." He backs off, and you go, "Wow, that's cool. We're done." He goes, "No, no, no. We're not done. We've just loosened up the band so we can start there next time."
Isn't that the truth in your life? When you look back and you say, "Where did I see God work most? Where did I have those moments of growth? Where are those moments where I was closest to Him?" It's in the midst of these trials. In the midst of this adversity, consider what God is doing for you through this adversity.
Staying Afloat
How do you stay afloat in a world that's circling the drain? One way is to benefit from adversity. Take those six things—you know you can add to this list. All of them come around to considering God: who He is, what He's done. You're His kid. And the seriousness of that relationship.
Finding Security in God's Grip
Choose adversity until we consider what you do in the midst of it. And then we wouldn't want it any other way.
Father, for those who are here tonight and really hurting, barely hanging on, let them know that it's not a matter of them hanging on to You. It's You who have a hold of them. You are in control.
God, give us the ability to look in our past. Not at the sin, but at Your salvation. You're so good, Father. Thank You for loving us. We love You, worship You, praise You. In Christ's name, amen.