When everything is said and done,
all the theology you know and everything,
it comes down to your relationship with God at that moment.
Can I believe that He is the rewarder
of those who diligently seek Him?
Hebrews 11.
Because those who come to Him must do what?
Must believe that He is.
He's God and He's my Father.
And He's going to reward.
See, I'm trusting that there is going to be something good
that's going to come out of this, Lord.
And He says it in Romans 8:28.
Why? Because - here's His attitude toward me -
I'm not under His wrath anymore.
He loves me.
And He wants the best for me in Jesus Christ.
That is what is being tested.
So at the end of the day when you're going through that
and you're praying, you're saying, Lord, why, why, why?
You know why.
I understand that's part of the pain,
but this is where Christian brethren
come in and encourage you
and say you hold fast.
You stay the course.
You know why you're in this.
"It's because of that past sin."
You're in this because your Heavenly Father loves you.
Now, He might have used sin to chastise you,
but you've got to understand.
The big rock in the jar that comes first is what?
God loves me.
And He loves me in Christ.
If He brought His Son through these things
and He had no sin,
then He's teaching me to obey Him, to trust Him.
He's making a down payment
in this momentary, light affliction
that's producing for me an eternal weight of glory.
Son, I've got all this glory here in eternity for you.
And for you to inherit all of this,
you're going to have to go through this -
momentary, light affliction -
is going to inherit all that,
but you can't inherit it if you don't go through it.
And He might drag us through a knothole backwards,
but we'll get drug through backwards.
We're destined to inherit something.
And our Heavenly Father is making that investment
in you, in me.
And you know what you're going to say on that day?
And sometimes you say it before that day.
You know, Lord, as I look back on things,
I wouldn't have changed a thing.
Imagine that.
You can't say it when you're going through it.
But you need brethren in your life to come up
and put an arm around you and say,
one day, we're going to look back on this
and not laugh - we're going to look back on it and say
it was worth it.
And you'll prove what the will of God -
that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
That's a transformed life.
Joni Eareckson Tada -
if anybody knows who she is -
King of the wheelchairs.
Queen. Thank you.
When we broke her neck
and became a quadriplegic,
she wanted to die after that.
She was a Christian.
She couldn't move.
She had plans for the future.
And this wasn't it.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I want to be a quadriplegic in a wheelchair.
Nobody volunteers for that.
But that's where God put her.
Her entire universe reduced down to the size of a chair.
Things that me and you take for granted all the time.
Just you sitting here.
Being able to sit here, she couldn't do.
But God placed her there
and God began to work inside of her with that trial.
And today, if you got to come and hear
a thousand messages by me
on the subject of suffering
or hear her give her testimony,
I'd sit down and listen to her give her testimony.
She's been somewhere that none of us have ever been.
And you'd say could you tell us about suffering?
She's going to give her testimony about suffering.
And here she is in a wheelchair.
And you look at that disability
and you say wow, how could that person
continue to believe?
All of her dreams and future, this and that,
gone and now she's confined to this.
And God has used her mightily
for the Kingdom of God.
So you've got to ask yourself a question,
if you can be used for the Kingdom of God
and be reduced to that,
would you choose that?
Would you continue in your own life?
Have all the accoutrements of human ability
and yet have a lesser glory for God.
Think about what you'd have to say to say that.
But if you talk to her, her testimony is
looking back, I wouldn't what?
Change a thing.
Who says that?
Yeah, from a physical standpoint,
I would rather not be here,
but you know when it comes to the glory of God
and seeing Christ honored,
and people seeing me and then seeing Christ
or coming to Christ as a result of that,
I'm just a means to an end.
See you can say that when God
puts you in that spot so you can
bring people to Christ through your testimony of:
look how great I love Him.
Especially in your affliction.
The lost can say:
I'm thankful to the "man upstairs"
for letting me win the lottery.
That's how they think.
We yawn at people like that.
But let somebody go through an affliction
and a difficulty,
and they say Jesus Christ is my all in all.
He is glorious. He is mighty.
Counting it joy as they said in the book of Acts to do what?
To suffer for His name. Who says that?
To suffer for His name. To be persecuted.
Wow!
At the beginning of Abraham's life,
it took faith for Abraham to hear God in Genesis 12
and leave Ur and follow what God was saying
in coming to the Promised Land.
That took faith.
But you won't find that in Hebrews 11.
Why wouldn't you find that in Hebrews 11?
Didn't that take faith?
Isn't Hebrews 11 the Hall of Faith chapter?
Why didn't he list that?
Because there was the more refined,
more valuable faith that came
later on down the line in Genesis 22
when he offers up his son -
his only son that came from him and Sarah
on Mount Moriah.
That faith had to evolve from leaving Ur
all the way to there.
And so there's a testimony
that God's going to say about you on judgment day.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
And that testimony might be of faith
and it might be a couple years out for you -
maybe five years out, maybe five days out.
And when you hit that junction, that crossroad,
where you're at today is the investment
that's going to bring you to that crossroad
and you're going to be able to pass the test.
Because you don't know what God's going to say about you
that's going to attest and validate
that you're the real deal on judgment day.
But He's going to say something.
And when He does you'll say, wow,
He says that I pass the test here,
but it took some believing before you got there.
And it took trials to nurture
that testing of the faith to produce endurance
to get you to that point.
So you never waste your trials.
It's your future faith that's in play here.
He's increasing the value of it.
And the magnitude of the affliction
that you're going through
is only designed to magnify the glory
on the other end.
Gold isn't designed to forever stay in a furnace.
But it will never shine brighter anywhere else
except in that furnace, in that flame.
When you're in the pain and you open your mouth
and you testify and you can sing -
let me tell you, people got saved
when martyrs went to the stake.
Why would they get saved?
You can watch a man burn at the stake
and you're going to get saved?
Yeah, because they'd go to the stake
and supernaturally could sing
when they were being burned alive.
And people would see that and say:
that's not natural.
Whatever he has, I want.
I have to have what he has.
You can give your testimony
or people can catch your testimony.
And if they catch it, they see it.
They see your love. They see your actions,
your devotion to Jesus Christ.
When you're going through a difficult time,
you're in a prime position to make the Savior look wonderful.
I'll close with this...
To hear the full sermon that this excerpt was taken from,
go to I'll Be Honest and click on:
Transformation Through Tribulation, Part 3,
from the 2019 Men's Retreat.