The Struggling Christian

The Struggle is real

Have you ever had one of the following thoughts? Why do I need God if that means I am going to go through hard times Regardless ? Or Maybe Does God really care for me if he is going to allow this hardship in my life to come? If you answered yes to either of those questions the truth is you are not alone in this Struggling is life is one of the most complexed things that we have to understand when it comes to walking a life that is like Christ. It is something that even though we know about it it is still something that Satan will use to attack us to pull us as far away from God as possible. As we start the series this week we are going to be looking at common Struggles that everyday disciples go through.

1 Peter 1:6–7 ESV

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

This is a passage where Peter comes into more as an Inspirational letter rather than prayer or anything like that . As Peters writing here he’s focused specifically on the believer the new believer the one that is found new in Christ and he’s referencing their salvation and encouraging them through the promise of what’s going to happen in the end times . No a unique thing about this that I thought was fascinating is if you take verse 3 and read it all over verse 12 in the Greek and that is all one entire sentence in Peter’s writing computer but as we look at this we see there’s a couple of encouraging things that he’s trying to get us to understand what it comes to struggling . The first thing anyone has to notice is when he’s talking he’s saying that you have been grieved by various of trials he’s not talking about small tiny trials I woke up late this morning I stubbed my toe but he’s talking about genuine struggles that have entered in your life . Addiction, lust, loss, depression, financial, Doubt. And really any other struggle that you want to put in there these are the ones he’s talking about here and so there’s a couple of things that I think that he’s really pointing out here that we can take away and a couple things that we can use in order to understand the struggles we’re going through . See before we can talk about the individual struggles and what God S word says about those struggles we need to talk about the fact is what do we as believers do when we struggle .

Struggling is a test to our commitment in the Belief of who God is.

The first thing that he’s pointing out here is when we go through these struggles when we go through these trials we have to understand that it is a test to how committed we are in believing who God says he is and what God really did on the cross . I think this is a very vitally important thing to understand because our first temptation that comes into play is when struggle starts to hit or Travis he starts to hit or any of those things starts to hit the first thing we do is tend to blame God rather than put our trust in the belief of him . And I think there’s another verse in the scriptures that we can pull out that truly proves why we need to struggle and it’s a verse that sometimes we might use a little too loosely to genuinely understand .

Proverbs 27:17 ESV

17 Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

I think this is a verse we use all the time when we’re in Bible study oh iron is sharpening iron when we’re talking to each other we’re kind of conversing a little bit 0 iron is sharpening iron we use this verse quite a bit but I have a question for you have you ever seen iron sharpening iron . See when I was a cook we had many things that we would have to bring in to work our job on the strip I have my own spatula I had my own Toms my egg spatula all of these things but there was one crucial important item that you could not do your job without and that was our chef knife . You physically could not do your job without it because whether you were prepping or you were cooking there was always something that needed to be cut the only problem is when you go through that and you’re always cutting constantly your knives would tend to get dull and would not cut as pretty as you would want them to so we would buy this knife sharpener and and and it’s a nice little plastic knife sharpener but in the middle here there was these little iron bits that would crease against the knife and shave little tips of shavings off until your knife was as sharp as you needed it to be . Because to in order to sharpen the iron and sharpen the knife there was two things required 1 you needed another piece of iron to do the job 2 the other thing that was required was friction in order to get shavings off of your knife to sharpen it . So when it comes to this Bible verse and he’s saying just his irony of sharpens iron the thing we need to understand is it’s not about just sitting together reading our Bible not about praying together those things are great we need to do those but if we are truly sharpening ourselves and we are truly getting closer to the Lord what was required friction enough friction to shave little pieces of blemishes off to get back to sharpness we truly are called to be . And I think this fits so well into what we’re talking about here because what is a trial it is the test of genuineness of our faith in other words it is friction in our relationship with God to bring us closer to the Lord who the Lord is it brings us to a place where we have to commit to the Lord the next thing it does is it slowly chips away the blemishes in our lives by illuminating the spots in our lives that we cannot handle ourselves to allow the Lord to work to sharpen us sharper .

Our Test through Struggle is more precious that Gold at it Perishing point.

The next thing we pull from this passage is understanding we’re struggle the test do we receive is more precious than gold at its perishing point . Have you ever seen gold at its Melting point . In case you’re wondering it is exactly one 1948 degrees to melt gold in other words to summarize it for us so we have a better understanding is that if we take the hottest day and summer which is averagely about 120 degrees for living that day for 16 1/2 days straight with no temperature change or anything would give us the idea of what a melting point would be for gold that’s just the melting point that’s not the point of perishing with the gold becomes useless and nothing that is just the point where we can refine gold and bring it down and we can shape it and we can do all the things that we needed to to make our gold into jewelry or whatever it needs to be . What Peter is saying here is that our struggle is more precious than that point . Now there’s some value to this I think there is important to this we have to understand something and it’s something I think comes hard for us to understand is the fact is God chose us over anything else . And here’s what I mean i’m not talking about our salvation yes Jesus told us that on the cross and all those things that’s not what I’m talking about but what I’m talking about here is the fact that God individually chose us to go through a struggle to show our commitment and faith and bring us closer in reliance to him . In other words let me summarize it a little bit easier for us to understand here in other words God says I don’t just want a relationship with you I want the best relationship with you I want you to trust me feel me interact with me and if going through struggle is going to bring you closer to me I want the best relationship with you . In other words God doesn’t want this lovey dovey puppy loaf stage or what we call weekend commitments god chose you and wants you daily in how he’s going to bring you closer is by giving you that struggle to test you to produce that reliance in him so when he pulls you out of it you know he willingly loves you . You know I think it’s funny when we go through struggle we tend to blame God forgiving us a life that is so hard but when was the last time we thank God for willingly choosing us to do it . I mean if you really think about it at one point he could have said cool you’re saved that’s it you’re done and just ignored us afterwards but he does it he willingly chooses us and comes after us at once to be with us . And the way you can really see this is when you get married young and you are first starting to live together with joint bills living in a house trying to figure out how to cohabitate and the way and all that stuff nothing makes you closer than the first few years of your marriage where you are trying to understand each other . Because you want to talk about struggle start living with your spouse when you get married and then you know struggle that brings you closer together because you learn things you did not know about yourself he might snore weird she eats her cereal weird breakfast in the morning all of these things and you learn all of these things and what it does is it first causes conflict or that friction we talked about but then you learn to enjoy those things I love those things about drew spouse bringing you closer together . Sometimes we go through the struggles with God but it’s not to pull you away but what God is doing is bringing you closer together . In other words to summarize it and really close out our series is this God spent through struggle when he went on the cross and died for you then he chose you and went through that friction for you I’m here to ask you today are you willing to go through the friction for him . Have you been going through a struggle in your life where you have blamed God instead of turn to God . Are you going through a struggle in your life where you need the help of your fellow believers to sharpen that iron to help you get those blemishes off to make you whole and better for God and if that is you today I pray that you come and you ask and let’s talk about it today .