Here is the truth, no matter how good you have it, there will be days that the Storm Clouds will gather right directly over your head and a storm will blow
There is no way around it. Yet the Lord Himself tells us to be of good cheer even in the midst of trouble. If you are a believer, you are not going to escape trouble. To accept Christ does not mean to take out an insurance policy against suffering. The fact of the matter is that you will have trouble after you become a child of God, even if you haven't had any trouble before. He has never promised that we would miss the storm, but we will go through all the storms of life. What He does say very definitely and dogmatically is that He will go with us through the storms and that we will reach the harbor. Any boat that He is in will not go to the bottom of the
But if you are experiencing trouble down here, if the pressures and tensions of life are on you, then that is a sign that you are a child of God. This is the way God teaches us to rely on Him. One Sunday there was a man sitting in his church congregation and the pastor asked for some favorite verses of Scripture. One man got up and said his favorite verse was, "And it came to pass." He sat down, and everyone looked puzzled. The pastor asked him how in the world that could be his favorite passage. He answered, "When I get in trouble, I turn to where it says, 'It came to pass,' and I know my troubles came to pass. They didn't come to stay." God will bring us through the storms. We will finally be rid of all our troubles. How wonderful that is. Maybe we should all have this same attitude? We are constantly having to Overcome our Circumstance’s in life; Mark 10:46-52 Circumstances can control our lives if we allow them to. Ever tell some one that you are doing alright "under the circumstances"? Get out from under the circumstances! Do not allow them to control you. I have known some dreamers. Oh if this or if that were different, I would, but nothing has changed, and as a result, nothing is accomplished. What about us today? Every person here this morning is different. We all have particular circumstances in our lives.
All of us have a choice to make as well. We can choose to remain "under the circumstances" and allow our lives to go on being controlled by our circumstance. Or we can choose to overcome them by relying upon God who is greater than all our circumstances. We have an example in the Scriptures of a man who did not allow his circumstances to control his life. Our text speaks about a very real person who had a very real problem. His name was Barimaeus, and he was blind. He was in every way affected by his circumstances, but he was not content to sit by the roadside for the rest of his life begging. Notice today at what he did to overcome the circumstances of his life. Let us look at his example and learn. This topic is a very unpleasant one for many in the Body of Christ to talk about, much less ever fully accept in their walks with the Lord. Whether we like it or not, and whether we ever want to fully face up to this reality in this life, every single one us, saved or unsaved, will have to face a certain amount of adversity, conflict, trials and tribulations as we journey through this life with absolutely no exceptions to this cold, hard, brutal fact. As a result of living in a fallen, cursed and imperfect world as a result of what happened in the, every single one of us will have to face a certain amount of trials and tribulations as we plow through this earthly life.
Many Christians have either lost part or all of their faith in the Lord as a result of getting hit with some severe torpedo shots. And unless you have a full understanding and full knowledge as to why God will sometimes allow bad things to happen to good people in this life, you can have your faith in the Lord shaken to its very core depending on the level of intensity and severity of the storm cloud that may have just struck you. The Bible tells us that God's people can perish for having lack of knowledge and not having the right kind of knowledge to fully understand why bad things can happen to good people in this life, especially to Christians, can cause you to perish in your own personal relationship with the Lord if you ever end up losing your faith in Him as a result of not being able to fully understand why He may have allowed some severe adversity to hit you in the first place.
I believe that you can learn how to keep some of the adversity that may strike you in this life away from you if you can learn how to properly mesh and flow with the Lord on dealing with storm clouds that may attempt to come against you by learning how to engage with your enemy or adversity in the same way that David did with Goliath. The Bible tells us that we have to learn how to become good soldiers of Jesus Christ. If you can learn how to become a good soldier of Jesus Christ and learn how to walk with God's anointing in your life, you can keep either a lot of these storm clouds from ever hitting you in the first place, or you can quickly defeat them once they do come knocking at your door. However, as a result of living in this fallen and cursed world, even the best of God's true soldiers will still have to face a certain amount of conflict and adversity in this life from time to time. There is simply no getting away from it. And until we get the after the millennial rule of Jesus from the city of Jerusalem, the curse of will still stay in place on this earth, and as a result, we will all have to face a certain amount of storm clouds in this life with no exceptions to this cold hard fact and reality. What gets many Christians in trouble in this part of their walk with the Lord is not having a full understanding of why this has to happen to them in the first place, especially since they are now born again believers who are serving a God who is supposed to be all-good, all-loving and all-merciful.
The first question many Christians will ask when they are hit with any kind of a severe storm cloud and trial is why? How can an all-good and an all-loving God allow me or someone else close to me to get hit with such a severe trial or tragedy? How can God allow some of His own, especially the ones who are faithfully serving and following Him, get hit by something that at times will literally come right out of the pit of hell itself? If God is our true heavenly and loving Father who has nothing but our best interests at heart, then how can He allow some of the following kinds of torpedo shots to come our way? I believe there are three main reasons that God Himself will "allow" a certain amount of adversity to come our way in this life. And unless you have a firm grasp and a firm understanding of these three basic reasons, you could find your own personal faith levels in the Lord being shaken to its very core every single time you have to deal with one of these heavier types of storm clouds.
1. The Curse of Adam and Eve - I believe that Adam and Eve, represented all of mankind that would come after them when they were tested out in the Garden of Eden, and when both of them could not obey God's direct command to stay off of this one tree, they and everyone that would be born after them would all have to be born into and journey through this cursed world before we can make it into heaven. As a result of the earth now becoming cursed, we have all kinds of bad things that can happen to anyone of us at anytime. Our physical bodies are now subject to the death process. Sooner or later, every single one us will have to physically die before we can cross over to be with our Lord in heaven. And not only will our physical bodies eventually deteriorate, corrupt and eventually pass out on us, but they will also be subject to being able to receive all kinds of diseases, illnesses and sicknesses in this life.
2. For Our Sanctification in the Lord - God's ultimate and highest aim for all of us is our sanctification in Him. God the Father wants to make us more holy like He and His Son Jesus is. He wants to transform us into the express image of His Son Jesus Christ. He wants to consecrate and set us apart unto Himself. God is the Potter and we are the clay. He wants to mold, shape and transform us into godly, righteous and holy saints. But this shaping, molding and transformation process can be a very painful process at times. And at times, a certain amount of adversity and conflict is what God will use to help shape, mold and transform us.
3. The Testing of Our Faith in the Lord - The third main reason that God will allow a certain amount of trials and tribulations to come our way in this life is for the express purpose of testing out our faith in Him. It's very easy to have high levels of faith in the Lord when everything is going good and great, but let any kind of severe adversity come knocking at our doors, and many Christians will start to lose their high levels of faith in God once the going starts to really get tough. The Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through "faith." So if we have already shown enough faith and belief in the Lord to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior, then why does God have to test our faith out from time to time? Why can't God just accept whatever levels of faith we are currently operating at with Him, and not have it tested out with any kind of trial or tribulation? The point I am trying to make here is that we are going to go through storms in our life, so if we must go through them then we need to grow through them. We need to take advantage of our live experiences, no matter if they are good or bad, there will be a lesson in it for us to grow with. I will leave you with the best advice I know to give you.
If you aim to get better, then you must persevere and grow in your time of suffering - We must patiently endure and keep our faith strong. Hebrews 11:1 Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for with evidence of things not seen. How ironic is that, I like to compare my faith to the air that we breathe. If only we were as confident in our faith as we are in our air. Just imagine how strong your faith would be then, we expect to breathe, there for we should expect our faith to be just as evident to us as our air. When we can hang tough in the worst of times and not give up, is when we can take a mess and turn it into a miracle.
We must remember that character builds courage – Iron sharpens iron, and the word charcter is used in the process of purifying metal. When metal goes through the fire to be purified of all alloys and impurities and as it hardens and becomes strong. God refines our character so that we are strong enough to handle life’s struggles and curve balls that we face each and every day. God is more concerned with what is going on with-in us then He is with what’s going on around us. He cares more about our character then He does our circumstances.
We also need hope – God gives hope which is a confident expectation based on certain fundamental truths and actions. Hope is the promise of God. Paul said in Romans 5:5, that Hope will not disappoint us because God has poured out His love into our hearts. Storms will come and they will come in all shapes and sizes, and some will last longer then others, however you will with the help of the Lord, we can weather any storm we face. Because of the fall of man, we don’t have the luxury to pick and choose our life struggles or our circumstances that we often face, however can choose how we will respond, we can chose to press on and push through, or we can choose to give up and quit ~ Donnie Bolena
