It tried to hinder me, but helped me!

Psalms 119:67 // Psalm 119:71

Psalms 119:67 The Passion Translation (TPT)

Before I was humbled I used to always wander astray, but now I see the wisdom of your words.

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.

- Psalm 119:71

Three times the Psalmist mentions ‘’affliction’'

verse

67 he said before I was afflicted I went astray but now I have kept I work for

71 it is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn they statutes

75 I know oh Lord that I judgments are right and that thou in faithfulness has afflicted me the Bible teaches us that an affliction is something that transpires in our life a physical or an emotional some pleasant Moses speaks about the burden of all of the people of Israel who were constantly murmuring and complaining.

hurtful things and it was an affliction to Moses to bear the burden of all of those people those disgruntled people through their wilderness experiences in the book of Ruth when Naomi had returned from Moab we’re both her husband and and two sons had died she spoke of having lost her husband and two sons as an affliction it was a painful experience the loss of loved ones

Hannah who was the mother of Samuel the prophet and priest of Israel when she was experiencing Baroness that cultural curse of not being able to have a child she was praying that the Lord will look up on the reflection of his handmade and the sad painful experience of not being able to have a baby was to her and affliction when David not being able to have a baby was to her and affliction when David was fleeing from the city of Jerusalem

when Absalom was moving in with his troops the rebels were coming from Hebron and David fled the city as he was fleeing from the city of Jerusalem this guys she may was running along the top of the hill above David throwing rocks at David and cursing in David‘s bodyguard said you know I’ll go up and take care of that guy I’ll run him through a Davison no let him go maybe God has placed it upon his heart to affect me but being cursed being persecuted by an enemy David looked at did that as an affliction

the Bible speaks about a nation being afflicted with natural calamities with floods or with droughts or with natural disasters tour hurricanes tornadoes or whatever nation of Israel was carried away into captivity it was called an affliction now the Bible seems to make a distinction between being afflicted and being sick so that sickness is not necessarily an affliction.

James, writing his a epistol said are there any afflicted among you pray.

And then he says Are there any sick among you let him call for the elders of the church to annoint them with oil and pray for them in the name of the Lord.

so afflictions are a part of the process that God is working in our lives to instruct us, to correct, us to teach us

and thus when we are afflicted we should pray we should turn to the Lord to seek to learn the things that God is wanting at that time to receive his instruction

if I’m sick let’s call for the elders of the church let’s get it over with let’s get well if I’m afflicted then let’s learn the lessons that this is to know the lessons for which he has brought the reflection upon our lives know there are different sources of afflictions the Bible refers to afflictions that come to a person because of their enemies the inflection of shame

I was directed against David because he hated David and thus he cursed him and insulted him a Manasseh the king of Israel was carried away by the Assyrians as a captive and it said they took him through the thorns you serious extremely cruel and they would take phone hooks and put it through the nose of their prisoners

II. During My Troubles: Learning

“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).

Most of us would have a hard time saying, “It was good for me to be afflicted.”

By definition, affliction is painful to endure. How could we ever call it good? Yet that is exactly what the psalmist said about his own suffering.

Afflictions—common to all  are for the good of men  and the glory of God, and are to be borne with patience by the Lord’s people. They are all directed by God, and will result in the everlasting good of his people in Christ Jesus.

I suppose that most people would rather identify with Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration when, after seeing Jesus standing alongside Moses and Elijah, he declared, “It is good for us to be here.”

Then he volunteered to build three tabernacles so they could stay there for a while. Sure, why not? Sounds like a fine idea to me. There is nothing wrong with being on the mountaintop. We all need those experiences occasionally and no doubt we would like to stay on the mountaintop if we could. I smile when I consider Luke’s parenthetical observation on Peter’s comment:

“He did not know what he was saying” (Luke 9:33). Sooner or later we all have to go back down into the valley. The mountaintop is a good break from the routine of life but it doesn’t last forever. You have to go back into the world of pain and suffering where bad things happen to good people and where life isn’t neat or easy or always fun.

God whispers in our pleasure but he shouts in our pain. Pain is God’s megaphone to arouse a sleeping world. That’s what the psalmist meant in verse 67. His afflictions have led him back to the Lord. Where once he lived for himself, now he obeys God’s Word.

If your God is only a “God of the good times” or a “God of the mountaintops,” then your God is not the God of the Bible. The true God is often best seen in the darkness and his presence most powerfully felt in times of deepest sorrow.

One of the purposes of affliction is to teach us things we would not otherwise know. Until hard times come, our knowledge of God and his Word tends to be rather theoretical, like the man who reads three books on car repair and then opens an auto repair shop.

The psalmist declares that passing through the valley of sorrow was good for him because through it all he learned the Word of God. Martin Luther King once said that he never learned the Word until he was afflicted. His sufferings then became his best schoolmasters.

Its Common! Its Normal! Affliction is Okay! Its here to build you! Shape you and mold you!

Scripture says

1. // Yet man is born unto trouble, As the sparks fly upward.

2. // Man that is born of a woman

Is of few days, and full of trouble.

3 // Many are the afflictions of the righteous:

But the Lord delivereth him out of them all.

4 // James 1: 2-3 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

5 // be glad also with exceeding joy.

6 // Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, And teachest him out of thy law;

7 // For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; Even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

8 // 2 Corinthians 16-18

16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

9 // Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is a hard reality for many believers to face because we don’t like our circumstances. We would prefer that our marriage be different or our career to move in a different direction or our finances to improve or our health to change for the better.

No doubt most of us would change certain things about our own situation if we were in charge of the universe. But can we be certain that our choices would be better than God’s? Just because you don’t like your situation doesn’t mean you don’t need to be there. Your personal satisfaction with life is not necessarily a good gauge of where you need to be right now.

When we factor God into the equation, things look very different. It’s not that the affliction itself is less painful or that something sad has been made happy or that evil has somehow become good. And it doesn’t mean that you would not change things if you could.

When we bring God into the equation, we look back and see how it was good for us to go through hard times because we learned things about God and about ourselves that we would never have known otherwise.

About God, we learn that his ways are far beyond our ways, that he is holy and righteous and full of mercy and always faithful to his children. About ourselves, we learn that we aren’t as strong or as wise or as powerful or as clever as we thought we were. In the end, we are exposed as helpless children desperately in need of our Heavenly Father.

“You can’t rush God.”

“You can’t rush God.” He won’t be pushed and he doesn’t take kindly to those who try to rush him. As I look back on those experiences, I am aware that God worked in my life to produce needed change and to prod me to personal growth. I can truly testify that it was good for me to be afflicted in order that God might do his work in my life.

So many times our prayers in times of difficulty boil down to three words: “Change my circumstances.” While praying like that isn’t wrong, it can lead us in a wrong direction. If we take Psalm 119 seriously, we ought instead to pray, “Lord, teach me your Word.” We say, “Change my health so I will feel better.” “Change my financial condition so I can pay my bills.”

Who among us hasn’t prayed along those lines? But consider this. Perhaps God has not changed your circumstances because he first wants to change you.

Finally, all of this means that suffering and affliction are good. This does not mean we seek it out. The Bible does not encourage self-affliction. Neither does this mean we sit back and refuse to use medicine or to alleviate suffering where we can. But it does encourage us to view suffering as from the hand of our faithful God. Small things like flat tires and broken bones and big things like cancer are tools in the Lord’s hand to drive us away from sin and towards obedience to His word.   We are to be “patient in affliction” (Heidelberg Catechism Q 28) knowing that in the end we will say, “It was good that I have been afflicted.”

1 Peter 5:10 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.