Dr Charles Stanley - Life’s Trials Explained - Part 1

We say, God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him, to those who

call the corner's purpose.

Well, if that's true, then what happens?

Whatever He allows in my life, what is He up to?

He's up to, in same thing to in your life, He's up to causing something good to happen.

And all of us who believe us, when we walk obediently before Him, what happens?

We become living demonstrations of what God can do in bad situations.

Welcome to In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley, where glad you've joined us.

When we're surprised with bad news or sudden tragedy strikes, our first reaction is usually

fear.

It's normal to respond to unexpected difficulties that way, but believers can learn to shake

off these feelings and move forward with sure faith.

Here's part one of Dr. Stanley's message, Life's Trials Explained.

Into all of our life comes seasons of difficulty, hardship, pain, suffering, trials, sorrows,

and somebody says, well, if God is this good God, you're always talking about why is

that true?

Because that's just the nature of life.

It's always going to be here.

So if you're one of those persons who is saying one of these days, I'm going to get above

and beyond all this.

No, you're not.

Because you see, in this life, that's just the way it is.

So what we have to do is to ask the question, how we to respond.

And something awesome begins to happen in our life when we respond in the right way.

So what I want to talk about in this message is simply this.

And that is Life's Trials Explained.

How do we explain these things that happen in our life?

And I want you to turn if you will, the first Peter, and this very first chapter, and he's

writing to people who are going through these circumstances and difficulties and trials.

And in the process of doing so, he gives us an awesome promise and encouragement.

And what I want to do is I want to look at this passage for a few moments and then look

at these principles about which you and I are to experience and how we to respond to

these trying times in our life no matter what the nature of them may be.

So he begins in verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who

according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again, to a living hope through

the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable,

undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who, those who are protected

by the power of God, through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time

of when Jesus comes.

Then he says, in this, you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while, if necessary,

you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being more precious

than goal, which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise

and glory and honor the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but

believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.

Obtaining is the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Well, you say, what in the world is all that mean?

He says, you and I, who are believers, we've been born again, we have Christ living within

us, we have a reward that we are laying up in heaven, and God is working all of that out

of our head.

But right now, right now we're going through trials, and so He says, I want you to understand

what God's up to.

If I understand what God is up to in my life, it's a whole lot easier.

If it's difficult, the hardship, trial, and suffering, and I don't understand what's

going on.

Why is, what's happening here?

It's much more difficult than oftentimes causes people to doubt.

So what I want you to see in this message, what are His purposes for allowing us to go

through the things that cause tears and heartache and pain and suffering and sorrow?

So let's begin with this whole idea, and think about in terms of the purpose.

Sometimes, the purpose is beyond us.

We don't understand.

It seems to be with no purpose.

Why would God allow this?

What in the world?

How could He be in this situation in my life?

Why would God allow such suffering?

Why this pain?

What have I done?

And oftentimes, we want to look back and see some sin in our life to see, well, this

is the reason God is doing this.

Remember this carefully.

Everything that comes your way in my life is not necessarily sent by God.

Some things He sends, some things He allows, some things.

It is a result of our conduct, something we've done in the past.

But oftentimes, it looks like it has no purpose.

And when it seems to have no purpose, we want to mermon, blame God and be resentful and

accuse Him and God, whereas your love and question, for example, what we really

internally believe.

Sometimes, for example, that purpose is sort of blurred.

Now, what blurs my understanding of the purpose?

A number of things.

First of all, the very nature of what I'm dealing with.

I don't understand God why you would allow this in my life.

Another thing I've done to deserve this, and so it's difficult for me to get the purpose

when I don't understand quite what the nature of it is.

Sometimes it's the intensity of the pain.

It's the intensity of the hurt and the disappointment.

And because it's so intense, it's difficult sometimes for us to see, how could God be

in this?

And if you notice when there's some big tragedies, some major international thing that happens

as people are quick to say, God is not in this.

God couldn't be in this.

This is the way the world responds, why?

Because they don't understand the ways of God.

They don't understand the word of God.

They don't understand the workings of God, and so what they want to do is they want to

eliminate Him absolutely and totally and completely.

So what you have to ask is this.

If God is sovereign, that is, He rules over all things at all times and all places and

old circumstances, what can happen in life that He has nothing to do with?

Not a single thing.

Some things we bring upon ourselves, some things we suffer for are not our fault.

It's something sometimes that someone else does, or some circumstance of life.

But if I understand that there is a purpose, it may get blurred by the intensity of it.

Or it may get blurred, for example, by the result of it.

What happens in my life and we may say, well, God, if you had some purpose in this,

surely you wouldn't let it all fall out like this.

This wouldn't be the result of it in my life.

And yet God knows exactly what He's doing.

And oftentimes part of our problem is it's the timing.

Why now?

Why would you know if this happened then?

Once in a while I find myself asking God now, Lord, this doesn't seem to me to be the

proper time.

Why would you take someone of this, why, why, somebody says, well, you shouldn't ask God

why yes you can?

It would be unnatural for us to say, okay, God, just whatever you say.

We have the privilege to say, God, why?

Now, well, listen carefully, I have the privilege to ask Him why He has the right and the privilege

not to tell me why.

And so, you know what, that keeps everything balanced.

But I won't always understand why and He's under the obligation to always tell me why.

But I can tell you this, He is far more willing to explain to us what His purposes are.

And why He allows things happen than we are willing to believe that He will.

And so, why does God allow these things in our life which He says sometimes is like

firing our bones?

We can't, God can't handle any more of this.

What is He let it happen?

Well, one of the primary purposes is to do what?

To surface in our life those things that ought not to be there.

That is, it's to purify us and to make us righteous and holy in his eyes.

And so, what is it that gets our attention?

What gets our attention with God is not pleasant, profit, and all the rest?

What gets our attention is difficulty, hardship, and pain.

It causes us to come face to face with ourselves and with God like nothing else does.

He's going to use whatever is necessary to get our attention.

To surface in our life things that ought not to be there.

Listen, He's up to surfacing in our life.

Anything and everything that does not fit who we are.

We are those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior

and we are those who supposed to be followers of Jesus.

So, would it not be like Him to surface anything in your life and my life,

bring to our attention for confession and repentance and cleansing and purification

anything that would keep us from being the person He's created as to be?

He has a will and a purpose and a plan for our life and therefore what is

fouling up the plan, what's slowing it down,

what's keeping us from heading in the right direction, He's going to put His

finger on it and He's going to do something about it.

So, one of the first reasons for allowing these things in our life is that He wants

to bring about purification in our life, righteousness in our life.

He wants us to be godly men and women.

So, He's going to deal with sin.

Listen carefully.

Not only sin, but think, watch this, but things that are not necessarily sin,

but that don't fit who you are as a follower of Jesus.

There's just some things that you and I have no business being a part of that may

not necessarily be a sin or it may be something that God doesn't want in your

life that it may be okay for someone else.

It may be all right for someone else to be a part of or participating,

but not us, not you.

For a specific reason that He has in your life because He's got something

better and that doesn't fit and that will frustrate God's purpose for something else in

your life.

So sometimes it's purity and that is, secondly, He is doing what, testing our faith.

Now, I want you to remember this statement because it's so very, very important.

Listen carefully.

You listen and say, man, untried faith is unreliable faith.

If it's not tried, if it's not tested, it's unreliable.

In other words, you don't know how much faith you have and what tests our faith,

what tries our faith reveals to us the degree of our faith and reveals to us.

Listen, how strong our faith is and if it's untried, then what happens?

If it's untried, we're going to have a problem.

Now, listen carefully.

Once in a while you hear somebody say, this is what happened in my life and it just devastated me.

When a person says they were devastated by something, it says something to you about

their relationship to God, their faith in Him, their trust in Him.

It says something about how they view the Christian life.

It says something about how they understand, they do not understand the ways of God because

listen to this.

If I believe that God is in absolute control of all things and I trust Him as a God who is

in control, then how can I be devastated by something if I believe my Heavenly Father

who loves me unconditionally has allowed something to destroy me because He would not.

If I allow something to destroy me, it's my response because God, I'm going to show you

in a few moments, is not going to allow anything, listen, to absolutely devastate you if

your attitude toward Him is right, He's not going to allow it to happen.

We just got through talking about how He protects us here.

So one of the things that He does and one of His purposes is to do what?

Is to build our faith and so He's going to test our faith.

And if He tests our faith and try our faith, what is His goal?

His goal is to grow it up.

And if He's going to grow it up, He's going to grow it up how?

Not by His comfort and pleasure.

God builds your faith, difficulty, hardship, pain, which you walk through and God sees

you through it.

And you walk through it and God sustains you.

And you have those needs and He provides.

Then in the next step of life, what happens?

You look back and you see, well, God provided that.

God helped me through that and I didn't think I'd ever get through that.

And so I can tell you, the moment in time, the moment in time when I discovered with

my faith was absolutely real or not real.

If I believed completely and totally what I'd been preaching all these years, a moment

in time, two o'clock on the Monday afternoon, I had a phone call.

The most devastating phone call I could ever receive could not be more devastating under

any condition.

I remember listening to this conversation, it was very brief, I hung up the phone and

my first response was, God, you're in control of my life.

At that moment, I knew that what I'd been preaching all these years, I absolutely,

totally believed because my faith was tested.

If it is not tested, it is unreliable.

And I say to you that God is going to test your faith.

Not listen, He's not trying to find out what it is, He knows all about it.

He wants you and me to understand what our faith is.

What degree of faith do we have?

Little faith, wavering faith, faltering faith, strong steadfast, immovable, persevering faith.

That does not turn back, that does not give up, that does not quit.

What is in the process of building into us, into us this relationship with Him, that

is based upon faith.

And so when I think about His purposes, one of His purposes is to build faith in our life.

And when I think about it, I think about the fact that in the process of doing so, I'm

going to get tested.

I'm going to get tested in my devotion to Him.

So think about this.

Are you willing to do what God tells you to do when you don't want to do it?

Are you willing to do what God tells you to do when you don't think you can do it?

Are you willing to do what God wants you to do when you are fully persuaded that it's

impossible for you to be able to achieve what He's sent you out to achieve?

Are you unwilling to be obedient to Him because of something in your life you don't want

to give up?

He knows how to test our devotion.

It's easy to say I'm devoted to Jesus Christ.

Remember what God does.

Jesus doesn't work on the surface.

You know, we say to people, well, you ought to quit drinking and quit smoking and quit

your morale and stop this and stop that and stop the other.

You know what He's talking about?

He's talking about deep down inside of us.

He's talking about creating Godly character.

It isn't just getting rid of that and getting rid of the other.

It's a deep abiding relationship with Him.

It's a devotion.

It is a commitment.

It is a reliance upon Him and when He talks about our faith being tested and being tried

and I'm willing to do what He says do when it's more painful than I think I can handle

and I'm willing to be obedient when I don't understand why and there have been many times

I've been tested by the fact that I didn't understand why, why God.

You just trust me.

You just obey me or there have been times when I've said God the truth is I just have

to tell you I'm afraid.

I'm afraid I'll fail.

I don't know but I'll tell you this.

Every single time you're willing to be obedient to Him, He's going to see you through it.

Not most of the time, every single time.

And just what I've discovered, the tougher, the more difficult, the more trying, the more

painful, the more heartache, the more hurt, the more sorrow, the more tears is what happens.

When He walks you through that, you take these giant leaps forward in your relationship

to Him because you see the tougher the things you go through, the more you know that what's

coming next and there's always going to be something coming down the pike, always something.

What happens?

He's strengthening your faith, building your faith, growing you up, making you the godly

man and woman He wants you to be.

So He's going to test our devotion and not only that, these situations and circumstances

give God this awesome opportunity to do what?

To show us who He is, to reveal His love, to reveal His power, to show us how He can

get into our life and under these burdens and help us through them.

If we never had any, how would we know it?

If we didn't have difficulty in hardship and pain and sorrow and overwhelming things

that looked like absolutely, we'll never be able to live through this.

If we didn't have those, God would not have the opportunity of demonstrating to you

the degree of His love, watch care, listen, caring for you and His awesome power to provide

for you what you cannot provide for yourself.

If these things were not true and if we didn't go through it, we'd never know that.

So when somebody says, I want to be what God wants me to be, step forward.

When somebody says, I want to learn who God is, come forward.

For the simple reason, He is more than willing to teach us.

He's ready to teach us.

But if you think you're going to learn those principles and learn those lessons by reading

them in the book, nothing to do it.

You may learn about the principle in the book or in the sermon.

But how do we learn them?

Experience.

It's one thing for me to tell you or for somebody to tell you what how God works.

It's something else when you walk through the experience and God works it in your life.

Then what happens?

It isn't something that you heard, that you're telling.

It's something that you know that you've experienced.

God is working in my life.

God is cleansing me.

God's growing me up.

God's shaping me.

God's working in my heart.

God's doing something awesome in my life.

We're listening to InTouch with Dr. Charles Stanley.

His message continues next weekend.

The Lord uses every event we face to build Godly character.

The wisest thing we can do is to yield to His control and trust that He always knows best.

If you're facing a crisis right now and need some resources to draw from, check out

our website at intouch.org.

You'll find an extensive library of helpful content to view online or download.

Again, that's intouch.org for help advancing through adversity.

And if you go to our bookstore page, you can order a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete

message, Life's Trials Explained.

Our web address again is intouch.org or call 1-800-intouch.

You can also write to us at intouch.

Post office box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 303-57.

The Holy Spirit is God's incomparable gift to His followers.

Are you relying on His limitless resources?

Today's moment with Charles Stanley is coming up.

It's hard to buy the same old gift for people.

This year's time to take it up an notch.

Why not get something more meaningful?

The intouch catalog is full of great personal gifts that bless.

It's an old brainer.

Because of not, you'll be like the guy who got his kid and stuff unicorn three years

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So get your friend, coworker, grandmother, teacher, or anyone else you can think of.

It gives that blesses from in touch.

They'll be glad you did.

To give a gift, visit givestabless.org.

When my daughter was two months old, she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

I would pray and ask God if He would heal her.

In the midst of suffering, how do we know what God's will is for our life?

God's will for your life doesn't after remain a mystery.

Learn how to understand and pursue God's ultimate plan for your life.

In Dr. Charles Stanley's new book, The Will of God, to order, visit intouch.org-will-of-God.

The Holy Spirit is the believer's constant companion.

And for good reason, here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Life Principle 22 from the Life Principles Bible says,

To walk in the Spirit is to obey the initial promptings of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is our guide.

God sent Him to be our guide and our counselor, both in small and large situations in life.

So when He comes to making decisions, here's what you can rest in.

The Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit was given to us to be a helper.

That's what Jesus called Him.

He's also there to give us guidance in those big and small decisions in life.

Not only that, He's there to help us discern.

What is the difference between what's good and what's best?

What is the will of the Father versus what do I want to do?

They help us to discern what other people are saying, for example, when they want to

give us their opinion.

The Holy Spirit is the one who enables us to be able to fully understand what is God

really saying to us.

Likewise, He's our Comfort.

Are we getting into those situations or hurt and pain?

He's there to comfort us and how does He do that?

He does that by taking us back to the Word and reminding us of what the Word says about

a particular situation.

God's full of comfort.

The Scripture says also in this 14th chapter, John, that He's our teacher.

He's the one who really teaches.

The people like myself and others who have the title of being teaching what the truth is,

that's the work of the Holy Spirit.

We make and obey the truth, but it's the Spirit of God within you, teaching you the truth.

He also says that one of His responsibilities is to convict us of sin and to convict us

of righteousness and judgment who puts a pressure within us to help us to see what's

really going on.

He enables us, that is, He empowers us.

He strengthens us.

He equips us to do those things that we need to do.

He's the one who determines the spiritual gifts that you and I have to live out our light

and to serve the Lord.

What an awesome gift is the Holy Spirit, an awesome gift from God to enable you and me

to be the person's God wants us to be.

Learn more about the believer's life of faith at mtouch.org.

A replay of today's message is available at our website.

You can also find other messages in our audio archives or download a podcast to take with

you.

Find all this and more at mtouch.org.

Life's trials are not just endurance tests.

If we respond in the right way, they will benefit us greatly.

Next time, we'll hear about the process God uses to cultivate a believer's character.

I hope you'll join us next weekend for mtouch with Dr. Charles Stanley.

This program is a presentation of mtouch ministries at Lata, Georgia and remains on this

station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.