How to Handle Adversity
Tom Shrader begins a six-week series on staying afloat in a challenging world, starting with how to benefit from adversity. He explains that life operates in cycles and that adversity is inevitable, but it can become beneficial if we remain coachable. Drawing from James 1:2-4 and other passages, Tom outlines six things to consider during difficult times: who God is, what He has done in creation and history, what He has done in our personal lives, what He promises to do, and what He can accomplish through adversity itself.
“In the midst of this adversity that you're in, consider it pure joy - that is counterintuitive, that's not natural, that's supernatural.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain (2008)
Recorded: January 24, 2008
Duration: 37 min
Themes: adversity, trials, suffering, hope, perseverance, faith, growth, trust, facing hardship, going through trials, struggling financially, experiencing loss, new believer, middle aged adult, feeling overwhelmed, questioning faith
Scripture: James 1:2-4, Job 2:10, Job 9, Ecclesiastes 7:14, Psalm 107:43, Job 37:14-18, Deuteronomy 32:7, 1 Samuel 12:24, Luke 12:24, 1 Corinthians 10, Romans 2:1-5
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual growth, providence, gods sovereignty, james epistle, biblical promises, divine purpose, spiritual maturity
Full Transcript
Today we start a six-week series. That's because we have exactly six meetings until our summer break: how to stay afloat in a world that's circling the drain. The premise of this series should connect, because if you've been alive any length of time, and some of you have been alive a long period of time, you know that life has cycles.
When I came into the real estate market in 1980, interest rates were at 20%. I don't even need to say that. Here's all I need to say: Jimmy Carter was president. You could not get a deal done. Everybody that was around said, "Tom, this is a good time to come in because you can take some time, get a little market knowledge, learn something, because this is going to shake loose. This is going to change." But when you're in it, it didn't feel like it at all.
Then that market got roaring, and we've seen it roar, and then we've seen it go down again. That's true in real estate. It's true in almost everything, that life basically is a cycle. That's kind of a big view. In your life, you have the micro version of that.
Life's Inevitable Cycles
I just saw the movie 42. It's a reminder. I had read a book by Stephen Oates. Any of you ever read any of Stephen Oates? He's a professor, if I remember, at Amherst. He wrote a book on Abraham Lincoln called "With Malice Toward None." It was a great book. It's been out of print. It's back in print. But I'm not sure some guy at 21 must have done it because the font is like four, so you need to find one that's out of print. He also wrote one on Martin Luther King, Jr.
When he wrote that book, when I read that book, it was kind of like a modern Uncle Tom's Cabin for me in the sense that I read this, and I would say to Susan every night, "I don't know how people absorb this." When you saw Jackie Robinson the other day in the movie, and I don't know how accurate it is - how many of you have seen the movie? - when there's the scene when he's in Philadelphia, and there's that Philadelphia manager, and you go, "I don't think I could take that kind of abuse." I know I couldn't.
So here's a Jackie Robinson at a point where it's at the bottom and now really iconic. I mean, for six years I've had a Jackie Robinson jersey. How silly is this? There's a great line in there where Branch Rickey says, "I just went by a yard, and there was a young white boy who was batting and pretending to be you." That's just a great moment. That's a turn moment.
The Nature of Life's Trajectory
Here's that life of Jackie Robinson, even in the movie, where he's this young guy, athlete at UCLA, and then comes into baseball, and then into Major League Baseball, and they sign that contract, goes up here, then that experience like this, and then - here's a word I'm tired of. How about this? Is this overused enough yet? Trajectory. His trajectory is like this.
Life has - here you go, look up here, summer camp - life goes like this. That's the nature of it. You have relationships that are unbelievable. You have these moments where maybe you remember them when you first met, you started to date, you just tingled, and then you have moments where you say, "Yeah, I tingle now, but it's when you leave the room, not when you walk into it." Life has that.
How do we find this consistency in the midst of that? Here's the topics we're going to talk about. Next week, how to remove anxiety from your life. The following week, career strategies. The last four about the changing world. New strategies, new relationships, new family, new spiritual strategies for a changing world. But today, how to benefit from adversity.
Two Implications of Our Title
I love the title because it has two implications to it. One, and you got it, that adversity will come. So some of you are here today, and life has never been better. Everything is steaming along well. Others of you, it took everything you could do to get in the room today. To both of you, we comfortably say this too shall pass.
How to benefit from adversity implies adversity in your life, and the scripture is clear on that. When you encounter various trials, it's the inevitability of it. So that's one on adversity.
And two is this idea of coachability. The thing that struck me with these young graduates last night that I didn't anticipate is they genuinely, I had a private moment with them, and even the moment when I was speaking, they genuinely seemed interested. They spoke about things they had learned. It's the second thing. If you're going to benefit from adversity, you have to be coachable.
The Power of Learning
When are you ever going to learn? That's that phrase. I've discovered that life can be a little bit easier if you learn. You know the old saying, life is tough, and even tougher if you're stupid. But if you're smart, and you can get that by book knowledge, you can get that by watching others, you can get it by personal experience, if you're not so arrogant as to say, "I already know all of this," if you're willing to learn, you can take these difficult, tragic moments, and you can turn them into hugely beneficial times for you.
On your outline, you'll see in the lower left-hand corner, I believe, are the influences affecting your circumstances, three theories regarding the bottom line. When times are good, and things are moving along well, we tend to think it's education plus energy plus ability plus time equals results. I studied hard, I worked hard, I've got this raw talent, give me time, and it works. When things are going good, you tend to do that. Even in the Christian community, it's kind of the idea, "I want to thank God for all of this, but then again, He didn't have to work too hard because I'm pretty smart, pretty energetic, give me a chance."
In tough times, now we'll fill in a blank on there, it's the second one, it's education plus energy plus ability plus time plus luck. You look at that guy and you go, "Yeah, he succeeded, you know why? He's really lucky." The last part of my career with Coldwell Banker, I was in an office out in Mesa, and we had a, it's amazing now, I
I was talking to somebody the other day about the guys that were really players within the Coldwell Banker system in that office. It was a great office, and there were two of us who were kind of the senior guys out there. Periodically, and I love this role, they'd hook you up with the new guys, or the new guys would want to take you to lunch and ask, "What can you tell me about the business? What do I need to do to succeed?"
I would say there are four things. Number one is market knowledge. You've got to know the market and understand how it works. Number two are people skills. Let me rant a little bit, and that's going to become even more important now.
The Crisis of People Skills
Sandy and I are having this amazing encounter. She deals with a lot of college girls and graduates, and I deal with a lot of young men. These people, by and large, are void of people skills. I mean, it is stunning to me how often I'll meet somebody and say, "I'm Tom, glad to meet you." They'll say, "I'm glad to meet you too," but they don't repeat their name and can't look me in the eye.
We were at Lux Sunday getting a gift certificate for a young graduate because now they're coffee snobs on top of everything else, which is now spilling over into the brewing. So now they do special brewing. We're at Lux, the place is full, and there was not a table or couch that had two people at it interacting with each other. It strikes me they want to be connected but don't want any relationship.
I hear people over and over again saying, "Do you know such and such? Do you know him or her?" "Yeah, they're really extraordinary." You know what they've learned? They've learned the ability to say, "Hi, I'm Tom." So you've got to have people skills.
The Four Keys to Success
The third thing is relationships. If you're going to be in an ongoing business, you have to develop relationships. Then the fourth thing, and this would drive them nuts, is you need luck.
Now, some of you theological snobs want to argue at this point about luck and tell me it's providence and all that stuff. I don't care. I got it. I understand it. But I'm saying it helps to be the right person at the right place at the right time. In tough times, you're going to look around and say, "Well, you know, he's lucky, I'm not."
In reality, here's the equation, and this is what we're going to work on the rest of our time together, which is about 25 minutes. It's education plus energy plus ability plus time plus God equals results. That's the accurate appraisal of every situation. The Bible simply says, we roll the dice, God determines the outcome.
Accepting God's Influence in Your Circumstances
In the midst of this, how you respond to your influences—number one, you can accept the influence of God in your circumstances. These scriptures I'm going to give you are really important and they're not on the outline.
Job 2:10: Job's wife has come to Job, encouraging him to curse God and die, and Job said, "Shall we accept the good things from God and not the trouble?" One of the things I see when I'm out teaching and outside either the redemption communities or the priority living environment or outside of good Bible teaching churches is when I start to talk about God. Look at Moore, Oklahoma. Tragic, but we've got to come to grips with the fact that God either caused that or allowed that. And if He didn't, He isn't God.
That's what Job said. Am I supposed to just take all the good things from God and then understand here are these other things that God has caused or allowed in my life and fail to understand they're from Him as well? "Who made the deaf? Who made the dumb? Who made the blind?" God said, "I did."
In John 9, the blind man—as Jesus and the disciples are walking along, the disciples ask, "Who made this man blind? Why is he blind? Because of his sin or his parents' sin?" And Jesus says, "Neither, but that he might become a display case for the work of God."
God's Work Through Difficult Circumstances
Sandy and I, which seems odd given the fact we haven't been married a year yet, did a kind of marriage Q&A with a group of about 100 people last Monday night. The question, kind of the prominent question was, "I'm in this marriage and it's not going very well, and I want out." Oftentimes it sounds like this: "I'm really spiritual, he's not" or "I'm really spiritual, she's not."
Well, if you are really spiritual, then you understand out isn't an option. Here's the problem: when you start to intervene and try to eradicate yourself from those difficult times, you rob yourself of the opportunity to see God do something special. I know this language isn't precise, but that's what happens.
I look back at my marriage with Susan. Susan and I were moving along, and we were not doing well. We'd been married about a year and a half, two years, not going well. She didn't want much to do with me other than a few conjugal visits. I didn't want much to do with her, and we were a mess.
What do you do when you're two people in that situation? You have a baby. So we had a baby. This'll make it better, right? Let's bring in another person. We ended up with a 32-year marriage that was an incredible marriage, and I don't think it would have happened unless God intervened in that and we stayed together.
The Covenant of Marriage
I graduated from high school in 1968, so I went to college and got out of college in about '72. When I was in college, here was our cry: "We don't need to get married. Marriage is just what? A piece of paper."
Now, it's interesting. The gay community has determined it's more than a piece of paper. The whole idea is this is a covenant, and you said, "I do." It wasn't "I do if," it was really "better or worse." We acknowledge in these vows that there's going to be times, though I can't imagine them now, that it's going to be tougher. Richer or poorer—though I don't know anybody who left and said, "Gosh, you're richer, I'm out of here."
Accept God's Influence and Increase Your Perspective
Sickness and in health. There are times where you're just hanging on, and I'm going to be sick if I have to listen to another guy tell me about how he's going to separate from his wife because it's best for the kids. It's best for the kids if you get in there and love your wife, not if you walk away from her. I understand how hard that is, but I've got to in the midst of this accept the influence of God.
Here's the second thing: to use these down times to increase your perspective. So there's a logic now to the rest of this. It's the second point: use my down time to increase my perspective.
Consider God's Character and Actions
Ecclesiastes 7:14 says, "When times are good, be happy. When times are bad," and here's the key word for the day, "consider. God has made one as well as the other." The word "consider" means to see, to analyze, to think, to ponder, to not just react to everything around you but to consciously do what makes you different than all of other creation—to be able to think. So consider, and you'll hear that word in our next six points.
So in the upper right-hand column, here are things to think about while you're waiting for a recovery, while you're in the midst of adversity. Number one: consider who God is and what He's like. Psalm 107:43 says, "Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider"—there's the word of the day—"consider the great love of the Lord." As I begin, here becomes my quest: to think about God as He really is and to think about love in the right sense of His term, to get to know Him.
Years ago, I had an experience where this guy called, wanted to get together, and sounded weird on the phone. We got together, we talked for about a half hour, and he said—I had to write it down, and I quote, speaking of me to me—"'You're really a nice guy.'" And I said, "What? Okay, thank you. Does that come as a surprise to you?" And he said, "Yes. I know you a little bit, but I've heard a lot about you, and a lot of what I heard about you doesn't seem to line up with this half hour that we just spent together. It's been a privilege to get to know you, and I'd like to get to know you a little bit better."
That's the way it is with God. Oftentimes, we encounter God as we've heard about Him, or as we've created Him to be, but all of a sudden, we get to know Him, and He's vastly different than we suspected.
The Distorted Picture of God
Here are the latest statistics. 8% of Americans say they're evangelical. We quantify evangelical this way: believe in the infallibility of Scripture, deity of Christ, substitutionary atoning death of Christ, virgin birth—8%. 35% say they're born again, and that would tell me that we're doing a good job at promoting a checklist approach, where you check a box and say you're born again. We do this one-on-one approach where—and I'm not questioning motive here—we drive people toward a decision for Christ and tell them they're born again, rarely talking about sin or lifestyle change that's inevitable.
7% say they're a faith other than Christianity. 69% believe in God when He's described as all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator of the universe who rules the world. 4%—I don't know who these people are—believe everyone is God. 53% believe if a person is genuinely good and does enough good things for others in his lifetime, he'll earn a place in heaven. 41% believe Jesus, while He lived on this earth, committed sin. 57% say that the devil or Satan is not a living being, and 46% of born-again Christians deny Satan's existence. Two-thirds of Catholics say the devil doesn't exist and is only a symbol of evil. 31% say there are sins or crimes that are so great that God cannot and will not forgive you.
That's a distorted picture of who God really is. Consider the love of God. Consider His standard. I had a chance to teach Sunday at our Acadia campus and really got into the lesson. At first reading, I underestimated the potential of how good that lesson could be. But part of it was this process in Romans 2:1-5, where Paul's coming out of Romans 1 with these clearly evil people. He gets to chapter 2, and there's a bunch of people who think they're good people who are judging those others. Paul says, when you judge those people, you judge yourself, because it acknowledges you have a standard, and your standard is different than God's standard.
In the midst of this adversity, it's important to consider God especially. Consider His love.
Consider God's Power in Creation
Number two: consider what God has done in creation. Job 37:14-18 says, "Listen to this, Job. Stop and consider God's wonders." And then He asks all these questions. Where do I store the snow? How does the eagle fly? Think about God in creation. You and I build; God creates.
When they opened the Raven Golf Course—and I don't remember, do you know what year that was, Mike? 1994—when they opened the Raven Golf Course, we went down there to play. On about the 5th or 6th hole, I said to the guys I was with, "If I blindfolded you, brought you in here, and dropped you at this place, you would never guess you were in South Phoenix." And I don't mean South Phoenix just by the demographic. I mean, South Phoenix is just this flat piece of dirt. They told me they moved hundreds of thousands of tons of dirt to create the Raven Golf Course. And I said, "Well, you didn't create, you built. Only God can create. You can take the dirt that's here and push it around and make a pile and bring in some sand, but you didn't make it from nothing. God took nothing and made it something." He created this universe and everything in it, and I began to contemplate His power, His might, His majesty.
I used to drive every Wednesday morning down to Tucson to teach. One Wednesday, I'm coming up on Picacho Peak, which was the site of the westernmost battle of the Civil War. The sun is coming over the mountains, and even Casa Grande looks good in that setting.
to say that. But I'm there going, this is stunning. I had some music on and the music was this crescendo, the way God timed it, and the sun's coming up over the mountains. This is amazing. It's God's creation.
Think about, consider, think about what He did. And then will He do it again?
Consider What God Has Done in History
It's 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 to you." He said, you've got to know your past.
I'm a history guy and I really do find it fascinating. I just went through a poll that was taken among high school seniors. They were asked, what year was Abraham Lincoln president? The top most frequently given answer was 1915. The question was, now think about this, the irony of this and the sadness of this. What was the Holocaust? The third most popular answer was a Jewish holiday.
If you don't know some of these basic things, I mean, it drives me nuts that people vote for elected officials like they vote for Dancing with the Stars or American Idol. If you can't go back and say, here's how we got here, that's the value of a movie like 42, to go, listen, these are your roots. This is part of this system. But to look and to see what God has done. What God has done on a macro view, the creation, the fall, and His redemption part of this.
Consider What God Has Done in Your Past
Number four, it's now to personalize it. Consider what God has done in your past. 1 Samuel 12:24: "Be sure to fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart and consider what great things God has done for you."
Most of you, especially those of you that are a little bit older, but I don't know where that line is, are living lives way beyond anything you ever comprehended. Just last night, I was sharing with the students that just starting yesterday morning, all I did was make a list of stuff I use every day that when I was in high school didn't even exist. Not only didn't exist, you couldn't even comprehend them. The ability to put a little thing in here and push this button and in 30 seconds get one very hot cup of coffee, a microwave. When I graduated from high school, it was 1968. Al Gore was 20 and had not yet invented the internet. And we didn't have a computer. When I was in high school, Nike was just a Greek god.
My dad was always a great educator for me in this. To talk about his, and he didn't talk much about, he didn't talk at all about growing up. You had to ask him. So six kids, two bedrooms, maybe 700 square feet, Melrose, Iowa, this little dump of a house that I didn't know until we moved my grandmother out that they rented. I thought they owned it. Six kids in one bedroom, boys, girls, all the way through high school or as long as you wanted to stay there.
I know I've told you this story, but it's just so fresh in my mind. We're driving over a baseline one day and Fiesta Mall was not yet built. We're at a stop sign and I look over and my dad's all teared up. He's looking around at these orange groves. And he said, you know, when I was a kid, we used to once in a while get an orange. My mom said, every year for Christmas, I got an apple and a nickel. And my dad said, I had an orange once in a while and I knew they grew on trees, but I never thought I'd see one.
There was a point I had, I don't know how many frequent flyer miles with then America West, thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands. So every time I tried to use them, obviously it was a blacked out flight. So finally I called, got a human and said, listen, I got all these miles. You send me a notice every other day, I'm going to lose them. I'm in Phoenix. What's the furthest place I can go and still be in the United States because they don't have a passport, don't want to leave. Or what's the furthest place I can go and just milk you guys as dry as I can. And they said Anchorage. I said, all right, let's book a flight for Anchorage.
And we're in, and this is mind blowing. We're in the air on the way to Anchorage. My brother's in the air on the way to the West Coast and my parents are in the air on the way to Europe. If you'd have said that to my dad when he was growing up, he would have said, you're out of your mind. So it's amazing. We may talk about what we don't have. We have an awful lot of stuff.
What God Has Done Spiritually
And then think what He's done in your life. Here you go. He took me from a lost sinner to a saved saint and He did it all in spite of me. Something called grace. He created all of this.
There's a hot term, and a lot of my friends tend to be very, and it's not fair to categorize them but they're very conservative white Republicans. And they love to talk about entitlement. Oh, there's an entitlement mentality. And there is among everybody I've ever met. Even when we get to grace, we feel entitled to grace. After you walk with Christ for a while, you begin to think He owes me this. There's an amazing part of it early on. It's amazing grace early on. But after a while, you go, you know, why wouldn't He look at me? Look at what He's done.
I've had a lot of problems with my hands lately and a lot of pain. And I woke up yesterday, day before yesterday, Tuesday, in so much pain everywhere. And I just got in the shower, I turned it on as hot as I could. And I was just trying to get them, the mornings are really rugged, just trying to get it going. And it occurred to me while I was standing there with water as hot as I could get it, it occurred to me that I didn't hurt the day before but never bothered saying to God, thank you for a day that doesn't hurt. How bad is that? Every day. And you do that a thousand times a day.
Consider What God Has Promised to Do
Number five, consider what God has promised to do. Luke chapter 12, verse 24, we have six minutes left. "Consider the raven. They don't sow, they don't reap, they don't
store. They have no storeroom, no barn. And yet God feeds them.
That first time I taught this passage, I decided to consider, analyze, think about the raven. I spent a couple of days—didn't have Google then, so I was in the library—and when I was all done, I came up with essentially this: that the ravens and the birds, and essentially the animals, eat, discharge what they eat, and procreate. And that's about it.
So what's He saying there? Well, He's saying God takes care of them, but is there something more than that? What's the raven do? The raven does what he was designed to do. What God is saying to you and me is, you do what I designed you to do, I'll take care of the rest of this. He's not saying don't work, don't save, don't plan, but He's saying listen, there's a certain ease that you have, because I'll take care of this. It may not be up to your standards, but I will protect you, I'll provide for you, I'll bless you, and see how it goes?
God's Faithfulness Throughout History
And He goes, look at how I've done it in the past. First Corinthians 10, Paul's writing to the church at Corinth, and he says, think about your forefathers, think about the exodus, think about the parting of the Red Sea, think about wandering around, two million Jews wandering around.
Sandy and I, here you go, here's what we do today. We leave the house at two, we get to Gila Bend at three, we go to the Circle K there and get coffee. At five, we'll be at the In-N-Out Burger in Yuma. At eight, we'll be at the condo, we'll unload. At 8:30, we'll be at the tavern having a grilled cheese. And I mean, it's the way it's going to be. Unless there's something catastrophic, that Circle K will be there. I'll be in a line with guys getting a bunch of beer for the end of the day, and I'll get my coffee and away we go.
You're two million Jews wandering around, not clear where you're going, and there's no Circle K In-N-Out Burger in the tavern's not going to be there. But what's God do? Manna. And remember that? That first day they had that manna, this was the greatest thing in the world. Look at this, manna, food. And by the end of the week, what are they saying? More manna, I don't want manna, I want to go back. Slavery was better than this. That's God's promise.
Consider What God Can Do Through Adversity
Here's the last thing. Consider what God can do through adversity. James 1, verse two: "Consider it pure joy, my brethren, when you face various trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance." Perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete and not lacking in anything.
In the midst of this adversity that you're in, consider it pure joy. That is counterintuitive. That's not natural, that's supernatural. It's not in a frivolous way to say, praise God, I've got cancer. It's to say, praise God, that in the midst of this cancer, God's going to do something great in my life. In the midst of this economic difficulty or relational difficulty, God's going to do something very powerful in my life.
What is it? He's going to give me this thing that we admire. It's called stick-to-itiveness. So that you'll be able to say, I finished the race, I kept the faith. Fought the good fight.
Trials as Spiritual Aerobics
What does that? It's that taking of, in our case, just think of it physically, it's aerobic activity. Thursday is a day that Sandy doesn't like to swim. For whatever reason, whatever they do in the program on Thursday, she doesn't like to swim, so she runs on Thursday. So she got up, I got up at 5:15, she got up at 5:15, I went in and got ready, she put her clothes on, and when I left, she took off. She'll run six miles-ish, something like that. And she'll do it and say, I'm slow today.
And she pushed herself. She uses the treadmill, and I love the treadmill, too. We need a treadmill like in our life, because it doesn't let you cheat, and it will pick up her speed, and it will push her, and it will push her. So like two weeks ago, when she did her whatever it was, three weeks ago, she did that swim, nine and a half mile open water swim. And I'm saying, I got tired driving out to pick you up. I mean, this is stupid. But she said, when I push that, when I push that, it makes it easier and better, it makes me stronger.
So here you go, here's the flip. Trials are spiritual aerobics that push you and make you stronger.
Remember God's Goodness
In the midst of all of this adversity and anxiety in your life, remember who God is. Remember what He's done. Remember what He's done in creation, so you see His power, what He's done in the world, through people, and then what He's done in your life. And then what He promises to do.
Sandy the other day said to me, how do you think we've done in our first year of marriage? I said, I think it's good, I think it's really good. And she said, well, what does that mean? And I said, I don't really, I thought that was the right answer. I thought that was the answer you wanted, and it seemed like the right answer. And she said, how do you think we're going to make the second year better than the first year? I said, oh, wow, less questions? Oh, I don't know, somehow it'll be better.
And I look back and I'm going, where I was two years ago, and then God brought Sandy along in some way that was never planned. And to look at a year that we've had that's been amazing. And it's just a reminder, God's blessing you all the time. And your flinch is to develop an entitlement mentality, we'll take advantage of it, and you'll begin to presume on God. And even that hard time, even that down market, even those relational difficulties, it's in the midst of that, that He'll oftentimes do His greatest work in your life.
Well, that's adversity. Next week, we're going to talk about how to deal with the anxiety in your life. We'll look at it next week.
Father, thank You for these truths. They are amazing truths. We love You, but even that's because You first loved us. God, give us the power and desire to know You more.
Growing in Relationship with God
When we know You more, we will love You more. The more we know You and love You, we are going to want to obey You. God, let our lives be different because of Your Spirit in our life. Father, we ask it of You in Christ's name, amen.