Keeping the Heart in Adversity

Keeping the Heart – Part 3: In Adversity

We are continuing this evening in our series “Keeping the Heart” and it is only fitting that we follow last week’s message “Keeping the Heart in Times of Prosperity” with this weeks “Keeping the Heart in Times of Adversity”

This deals with antonyms right; the opposite words prosperity and adversity. What we find is that the danger of Prosperity is having an attitude opposite of the attitude we should have in Adversity. And the danger in Adversity is having the opposite of the attitude of what we should have when in Prosperity. And what we are concerned with today is the valley and not the peak.

Discontent

I made a case in the last message that our prosperity is in the eye of the beholder to some degree. We see ourselves as more or less prosperous based upon the picture of prosperity we have been fed by the media and our peers. The amazing truth is that we live in a civilization that has really been richly blessed. I pointed out water last time but just to think about how great our access to food is. We like lump American poor in to the same categories of the poor for the rest of the world with phrases like ‘food insecure’ but we have no idea in this country. Can you appreciate how odd it is that we have folks at the Center for Disease Control studying the epidemic of obesity on the impoverished people of America? Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the problems our poor communities face and I understand the reasons why this is the case…But let’s be honest, People in Nigeria, People in Ethiopia. Nobody in their country is concerned about the obesity of the poor! But that is substance. So often our sorrow isn’t related to the physical. I sang this past Sunday ‘Does Jesus Care’ and in those verses it asks of Jesus’ care in our fears, in the sorrow of repented sin and in our loss of those we love. These are the sorts of things that are common to all man and knows no economic boundary. There is no guarantee that we will always benefit from the comforts of living in this country that is fleeting, but there is no doubt that we will experience sorrow. And in these sorrows we must keep watch over our heart.

Heb 13:5 5Let your conversation bewithout covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

It should be that we can be content in this fact, our God will never leave or forsake us.

Let’s take a look at Is 66:1–2 1Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: Where isthe house that ye build unto me? And where is the place of my rest? 2For all those things hath mine hand made, And all those things have been, saith the Lord: But to this manwill I look, Even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, And trembleth at my word.

Flavel makes this point: There are goods of the footstool and goods of the throne. The footstool can be moved, the throne cannot.

We have 2 charts from the stuff April was selling at the homeschool convention. One is for rewards for positive behavior, the other for discipline for bad behavior. For Whining it references Php 2:14 14Do all things without murmurings and disputings: And I think adults really have as much here to be thoughtful of as children. It is so easy when things do not go our way, or even when we fall into times of heartache to start complaining. I am going to make a hard statement, hard for me and I am going to guess for you as well. We just took prayer requests, there are a lot of things for us to have heartache over. Death, Cancer. It’s a pretty ugly world sometimes. But when these things bring us to despair it is only because we have not true appreciation of how great God and his grace is. If we would understand it even the greatest of heartaches would pale to compare. This is why we look forward to heaven

Fainting

The next concern is that we faint under hardship. I don’t mean to lose consciousness here but rather to fail or become weak. This is what Elijah did: 1 Ki 19:1–4 1And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. 2Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time. 3And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. 4But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.

Times had gotten tough for Elijah and there was real danger, and I will concede more danger than I have ever been in. Nobody has ever seriously threatened to take my life. I say that because I don’t like to be too overly critical of our Bible hero’s: I have the hindsight of scripture and I am not in the situation when I read about Peter and Thomas and Jonah and Elijah. Regardless of that fact, Elijah went running scared. In hard times he fainted, he lost his resolve. We need to be cautious that when we find ourselves in times of adversity that we do not let it overcome us. That we not let it overcome us in terms of our ministries and that we do not let it overcome our spirit. I know all too well that when we are going through tough times often it is only the tough times that we can see.

Here is some perspective 2 Co 4:15–17 15For all things arefor your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. 16For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

Something to Keep us focused

Our trouble could be to allow us to minister to others

Spurgeon once tells of how he was utterly depressed in spirit and soul, discouraged, and failing in health. Just before leaving for a recuperation, he preached on “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The experience was so sad that he wished it would never happen again.

Afterwards, a man come to see him. Spurgeon described him later as “one step away from the insane asylum,” his head bulging, his hands nervous and his spirit totally depressed. The man told Spurgeon that after hearing his sermon, he felt that Spurgeon was the only one who could understand him and so he had come. Spurgeon comforted him as best he knew how from his own sad experience.

For five years, Spurgeon did not see the man. But “just last night” (he was delivering the above lecture to students at the College), “I saw him: it was like night and day. He was completely changed.” Spurgeon concluded that he was willing to undergo hundreds of such experiences now that he knew God permitted it to happen so that he could know and sympathize with people under similar predicament.

2 Co 1:4 4Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

Restraint

Have you considered that your adversity could be keeping you from temptation? How many of the rich and famous have lives where you could look at your current set of hardships and find them all relieved in their wealth and status? But how many of them prove that contentment is something more hard bought than can be purchased with money. They find comfort only in drugs and alcohol and often their lives end tragically. How would we handle the wealth we long for when we have none. Would it deprive us of our humility? Would we take our eyes off of Christ? It may be better to suffer adversity than suffer prosperity.

There is value in your trials

There is a final point I find it important we make. God values our troubles Ps 56:8 8Thou tellest my wanderings: Put thou my tears into thy bottle: Are they not in thy book? And it should be a comfort to know that when we suffer affliction God is there. Our tears aren’t lost on him, and He knows suffering and suffering even greater than you. We don’t serve some distant God that doesn’t understand, but rather a God that is acquainted with our grief (Isa 53:3)

Let’s look at 1 Pe 1:6–9 6Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 7That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: 8Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 9Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

Try to remember that the trial of your faith has value and you can use it to bring honor and Glory to our God.