Hey everyone, this is Troy Black. So today I want to talk about overcoming hardship.
And this isn't really a fun topic to talk about, but I think it's a necessary
one because hardships are something that every single person goes through in life.
Whether it's the loss of a loved one or sickness or maybe debt or unemployment
or possibly emotional struggles like loneliness or disappointment.
Whatever it might be, I think sometimes in life, you know, it's easy to see when
we get ourselves in these situations, but a lot of times things just happen.
And, you know, we can be left feeling like we don't deserve the situation that we're in.
So I want to start off by reading one of my favorite verses about hope, and
that is Romans 5:1-5. And it says, "And not only this, but we also exult in
our tribulations," and for our purposes you could put the word hardships there, or trials.
And then it says, "knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance proven character; and proven character, hope;"
This is so amazing because Paul's writing and he's saying, "I actually
exult over the fact that I'm going through something difficult right now
because I know in the long run it's gonna produce hope in my life."
And he continues and says, "and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has
been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."
So I personally got out of one of the hardest situations in my life feeling
like I was just a shell of the person I once was. Have you ever felt that way?
I felt like this circumstance, this hardship, had chewed me up and spit me back out.
I felt broken, but at that time I didn't realize that
that wasn't such a bad thing. And the reason was because God actually wanted to strip
some things out of me so that He could begin to build inside of me and instill
inside of me the nature of Christ. And if God's doing that, if He's beginning to
build your character into an image of Christ, that's such a good thing.
And the reason is because ultimately all of our hope lies in Jesus Christ.
So I want to read a verse that shows this, and it's
Romans 5:10. It says, "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God
through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life."
When we choose to believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we receive
grace for forgiveness of our sins for reconciliation with God. But when we
choose to believe Jesus right now today, when we walk in that belief, we get to
receive grace for the moment, even when we're walking through a hard situation.
No matter how bad our life looks on the outside, we get to have abundant life on
the inside through our relationship with Christ. And He does that through the Holy Spirit,
and the Holy Spirit, when He's living inside of us, He begins to fill
our hearts with the love of God. And when we're walking close beside Him in that
loving friendship, we get to have hope every single day. Let me show you what
I'm talking about in another verse. It says, "Therefore having been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we
have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand;
and we exult in the hope of the glory of God." So this verse is just confirming that grace
is not a one-time deal. It's not something we receive just one time.
As we continue to put our faith in Jesus Christ, we continue to walk in the grace
of God, this verse actually says we stand in the grace of God.
And as we're doing that, as we continue to trust Him, God continues to mold our character
to make us look more like Christ. And the question that comes to mind is does God
really want every bad thing that happens to us to occur? And the answer is no.
But at the same time, God can use the situations that we walk through
to continue building our character. But it's really up to us. It's up to our response.
And that's where the relationship comes in.
You know, when we're reconciled to God, God doesn't just see us differently.
God wants to walk with us. He wants to have a friendship with us.
He wants to be growing—us to be growing closer to Him. And as we're doing that
it's kind of like the relationship between a child and a loving parent
in that, you know, a loving parent is not always gonna give that child
exactly what they want when they want it. Because the loving parent knows best.
As we walk through difficult situations, God is not necessarily always going to pull us out
of that situation as soon as we ask Him to, but He's going to use that situation for our good.
It's so easy for us to get busy telling God to fix a situation that
we end up missing what He wants to teach us in the midst of it. And the truth is
God sometimes even is the one who originally led us into that situation.
I mean, think about the disciples getting in the boat when they're about to go
across the lake into the storm. The Bible tells us that Jesus told His disciples
to get into the boat. That's something to think about. Have you ever felt like, you know,
"God I'm in this situation and it's your fault"?
It just might be true. God might have led you into that situation for a reason.
And what comes of that situation in your life, what it produces inside of you,
relies on your response to Him and to it. "God, am I gonna continue trusting
that you're good, that you're loving, that you know what you're doing?"
Have you ever seen one of those competitions where people are cutting up ice sculptures
with a chainsaw? You know, they've got this crazy machine and they're hacking
and slashing and ice is just chipping and flying everywhere.
You know, sometimes I think that's that's how we see God. We think that He's chipping at us,
you know, because we're walking through something that's so hard and it
hurts so much, and it's so easy for us to think that that's how God works.
But the Bible uses a different illustration to talk about how God changes us, and
it's actually a picture of a potter and a piece of clay, which is amazing because
unlike an ice sculpture and a chainsaw, a Potter uses His hands,
and he gently forms and shapes, and that clay is moldable and it's soft.
And I've actually used a potter's wheel one time. And yeah,
your hands get dirty, and you have to really work at it.
You have to concentrate, and you have to really take care of this piece of clay that you're working on.
And I believe that when God is beginning to shape our character,
He's saying, "Hey," and He's slowly moving things, and He's saying, "You don't need this
anymore, but hey you need this, and let's change this over here a little bit."
And what's so amazing about it is that when God is shaping us, He's looking at something.
Have you ever seen an artist who's looking at at one picture to paint another painting.
To create something, they're looking at something for inspiration.
Well God is looking over at Jesus Christ. And He's shaping us into an image of His Son.
And the reason is because He knows the more we look like Christ,
the better off we'll be. So I want to read another verse. It's Romans 5:17.
It says, "For if, by the trespass of one man, death reigned through that one man,
how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of
the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ."
And you might be saying, "I don't have time for my character to be transformed," or maybe,
"This situation is too difficult. I can't handle it any longer." But the truth is
the more that we act like that block of ice instead of that soft piece of clay
the harder that trial is gonna seem to us. Hope it's not something that we get
when we escape our situation. It's something that we receive when we focus
our eyes on Jesus in the middle of our situation. Think about that
the disciples in the storm again. When Peter was getting out of the boat, he was
choosing to let go of the only thing that was keeping him afloat.
It was the only thing he had any hope for survival in was that boat. And when he was
choosing to step out of the boat, to let go of that rail to begin to walk on the
water towards Jesus, he was choosing to take his hope out of that thing and place it in Jesus.
And I think sometimes we get so caught up
with holding on to the rail of the boat, you know. Jesus is saying, "Come on.
Come a little bit deeper. Come a little bit farther." But we're holding on to this thing
that our hope is in and we won't let it go, and Jesus is saying, "Let it go.
Set your eyes on Me today. Because eventually that boat is gonna let you down,
but I am not going to let you down." The Apostle Peter was willing to let go
of this earthly source of hope in order to set his eyes on an eternal source of hope.
And I'm gonna read you some words that the Apostle Peter actually wrote.
In 1st Peter 1:3 it says, "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."
This verse is talking about the eternal hope that we have as heirs to the promise of God.
And it's a hope that never dies. It's a living hope. It's a hope that we get to carry with us
every single day. When you feel like life is just pushing in from every
single side and there's nothing else you can do, my encouragement to you is to
wait upon the Lord, to meditate on the promises of His word, to allow God to
remind you of what Jesus Christ has really done. One way that I would put it is like this:
The darkest days in my life are the days in which I can see the light of heaven the clearest.
Because it's in those days, those moments where everything around you just seems so dark,
that God is saying, "Look at Me. Look at the eternity I've won for you. Look up here." And it is in those
moments where His light shines through. So the hope that we have in Jesus is an
eternal hope, but as I said, it's also a hope for right now, this moment.
I want to show you how the prophet Isaiah puts it. He says, "But now thus says the Lord,
your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, 'Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!" So he's talking about us being
redeemed in Jesus. And what's so amazing about this verse is that God calls us His.
Those of us who have received Jesus as our Lord and Savior, He says, "You're Mine."
And then Isaiah goes on to tell us why that's so important.
He says, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."
As people who are redeemed by grace through faith, you and I can
have hope in the middle of hardship. Because no matter what we walk through,
God wants to be there with us walking through it as well. I want you to picture
for a moment that your life is like this river that you have to cross.
So you're standing at the bank of the river, and you've got to get to the other side.
When the waters of life are still shallow, Jesus is walking beside us.
But when the water begins to come up to our knees and it's kind of hard to take the
next step, Jesus reaches out and He's holding our
hands so that we don't fall. But when the water gets up to our necks
and it's hard for us to go on, Jesus is actually swimming out ahead of us,
and He's holding on to us and He's pulling us forward. But when the river
gets so deep that we can no longer touch the bottom, and we lose our footing and
we're about to go under, it's in those moments where Jesus picks us up and He
puts us on His back and He swims for us. And He says, "You better stop struggling
and rest a while, because I'm gonna take it from here."
And if you're thinking, "I wish that could be me, but I just don't deserve that,
you just don't understand what I've done," the good news is that none of us deserve it,
but we get to receive this friendship with God simply by putting our faith
in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, because the truth is what we deserved
was death, but Jesus took that punishment for us. He took what we deserved on the cross in our place.
When we walk in faith in Jesus Christ now, we get to walk in a
loving friendship with God through the Holy Spirit living inside of us.
So I want to leave you with one more verse that I believe is gonna be encouraging.
It's Romans 5:8. It says, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
So if you are watching this and you feel like, "You know what? I don't know if I have that relationship.
I don't know if I've ever made Jesus Christ the Lord of my life."
What I want to do right now is just simply encourage you to go watch another
video of mine that I've uploaded to YouTube. It's called, "God Thinks About You."
And in this video, I walk through what it means to be saved, what it means
to receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, what it means to have a relationship with God,
and I also talk about the way that God sees us as His children.
So I really encourage you, if you haven't watched that video, go watch it.
I think it's gonna be a huge blessing for you. And I love you guys and I'll see you next time.