Valuable Adversity [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. I know that the breakup of my family is something that is sad. It is great adversity in my life, and I would never want it in my life again.

I would never want it for anybody else. But because of it, you see, something came about that was wonderful. And I think what happens is when you search for your moments in your life like this, you'll start seeing them more and more. It's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, God Moments, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It's Pastor Alan's book by the same title, God Moments, and it can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you a copy of Pastor Alan's book, God Moments, our special offer today. Contact us at pastoralan.org. That's pastoralan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching on God Moments.

Here is Alan Wright. Laura Hall, who works with me, she got up and shared that night because it had been that year that she'd survived a life-threatening intestinal obstruction while out of the country. It could have taken her life, but God provided a way, and she was spared. James Wall was in heaven now, but he was 80 or so at the time that he shared this testimony, and he had just had a successful heart surgery, all of these and many more trophies of praise for what God had done.

But the fact of the matter is that most of the times in our life, we haven't crossed the finish line. We're still in the race. And so I was so glad that Marion and Bridget Blackwell, dear friends and leaders in our church, got up that night long ago, and they spoke. But they were not on a mountaintop.

They were in a desert. And so it was that Marion got up and spoke and said, we've been there, and we're still in the desert. And he said, I want to thank God for what He's doing. He said, as most of you know, my wife's been battling a life-threatening kidney ailment, and we've seen God at work, and she's much better. And thankfully, she's not going to need a kidney transplant or regular dialysis. And he said, we're still waiting for her complete healing, but we're trusting God. Bridget was just as honest. She said, this hasn't been just any desert.

It's been the Sahara. Sometimes she said, it's been all I could do just to cry out son of David, have mercy. But she said, I felt the Lord's presence most near when I've been at my lowest. He's taken away my fear. I've known His love.

In the midst of it, I've been deeply blessed. Then Marion spoke again, and he said, as many of you know, six months ago, I lost my job. I was downsized. But he said, I was strangely prepared. He said, amazingly, two nights before, I was told about the downsizing. He said, I actually had a vivid dream. And in that dream, I saw my boss call me into his office. I sat down and listened to him say, Marion, I have to let you go.

It's a corporate downsizing. And still in the dream, Marion said, in that dream, he asked, have I done anything wrong? And in the dream, his boss said, no, you've done a great job. Marion said, the dream ended. He woke up. Two days later, Marion went to work, he said, as usual, and he lived out that dream. He said, his boss called him in.

He sat down. The boss said, I have to let you go. And Marion said, have I done anything wrong? And the boss said, no, it's a corporate downsizing. He said, you've done a great job.

And Marion said, the dream had prepared me. He said, I think my boss had a harder time with it than I did. I found myself reassuring him, it's all right, boss. I'm going to be just fine. And then Marion went on to say, it's been six months now.

My severance package is running out. I still don't have a job, but I know God has a purpose behind all this. He has a great job for me somewhere, and I'm sure he'll show it to me soon. And then Marion did something I'll never forget. He looked at his children on the third pew, and his voice broke. And with unashamed emotion, this really steady man of faith wept, and he declared an astounding truth. He said, I can honestly say this has been the best year of my life. He squeezed his wife's hand. He said, Bridget and I are more in love than we were when we were first married. And he said, these months of unemployment have given me the chance to spend quantity time with my kids. And he looked at them, and he said, I'd forgotten just how much I love you guys. I've loved every minute with you. Then Marion concluded, we might have been in the desert, but I wouldn't trade this year for all the world. It was years ago. He was in the desert, but he wouldn't trade it for the luscious land of milk and honey.

Why? Because he had discovered new intimacy in the midst of his agony, and he'd found something of infinite value in the midst of temporary adversity. Listen to that again. If you can find something of infinite value in the middle of the temporary adversity, it makes it more than worth it. And the difficult things that you've gone through, or maybe the difficult things that you're going through, they don't become suddenly less painful because you see your God moments.

But what you do is you experience these adversities with the assurances of God's Word that He will bring something valuable from this. The whole story of the Scripture reinforces this. Maybe there's no more clear or better story than the story of Joseph. Jacob had all these boys, and Joseph, his young one, was a favored one because he'd been born to his wife Rachel, whom he loved. He made Joseph this beautiful coat, and it made Joseph's brothers hate him all the more. Joseph had a wonderful dream, a dream that just depicted these brothers rebelling before him. Nobody knew what it meant, but the brothers assumed that Joseph was arrogant, and so they betrayed him, they abused him, and they sold him into slavery. It was a long desert for Joseph. He was falsely accused in his slavery.

He was thrown into prison. And you're wondering as you read the story what happened to the dream, and you're wondering if Joseph is wondering what happened to the dream. But through a series of events in his supernatural capacity to interpret dreams, Joseph gets promoted to Prime Minister of Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh himself. And because there's a great famine that comes across the known world, and Joseph had been wisely administrating the Egyptian government to save up food before the famine, Joseph's brothers have to come to Egypt looking for food. And when they come looking for food, they in an incredible irony have to come and appear before Joseph himself. Joseph is powerful, virtually all powerful in Egypt, and he could have destroyed his brothers from anger and vengeance.

But instead he shows them remarkable grace. And the scriptures in Genesis 45 verse 1 says, Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried, Make everyone go out from me. So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to him, Come near to me, please. And they came near, and he said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. And later in chapter 50, Joseph said to them, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

So do not fear, I will provide for you and your little ones. And he comforted them, and he spoke kindly to them. The power of a God moment of valuable adversity is seen in Joseph's life, because Joseph is filled with a grace towards those who hurt him, because he sees the bigger purposes of God that are at work. When you recognize, remember and rehearse your God moments of valuable adversity, there is a power, a faith, a perseverance, and a grace that comes into your life. There are countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time, or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Allen Wright's timeless book, God Moments. Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Allen Wright. One of my favorite psychological studies that illustrates this began in the 1960s. It was a remarkable study. A researcher comes in, and he gives four-year-olds in a classroom a marshmallow, big, white, plump marshmallow. But there's an option. The researcher tells the kids, you can, if you want, go ahead and eat this marshmallow now. But if you should choose to wait and not eat your marshmallow now, after a while, I'll come back.

And if I come back and you've not eaten your first marshmallow, I'm going to give you a second marshmallow. And I wish I could have seen these children. Some of them just gobbled it up right away. I mean, some of them tried to hold off for a little while, and then they just ate it.

But there were some who toughed it out. They hid their eyes from the marshmallow. Some of them hid the marshmallow from themselves.

Some of them tried to take a nap. Some of them tried to do something, anything they could, whatever it took to not eat that marshmallow. And sure enough, the researcher came back, and for those that had not eaten the marshmallow, he gave them two.

It's a fascinating story. But it was what was learned 12 to 14 years later that made the study famous. Because researchers went back to those same kids, and they discovered that the ones who had waited for the second marshmallow were dramatically better adjusted than the quick marshmallow eaters. They were, quote, according to the study, quote, more socially competent, personally effective, self assertive, and better able to cope with the frustrations of life. Also, they scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT test than those who had wolfed down the one marshmallow. So there is a value if during your adversity or something that's painful, even if it's as simple as the pain of not being able to eat a marshmallow while you see everybody else eating one, you are at that same time trusting promises. So a little kid that trusts a promise of a second marshmallow has so much more health in life. Well, how much more so for us spiritually? And everybody can uncover their God moments of valuable adversity if you'll give it some time.

Here's what I suggest. Is you review the moments of adversity in your life. Review the times that, well, you just start with this, and this can be painful, but you go back and you look through the times in which you felt especially humbled. You go back and look at the times in which maybe you went through something that was quite painful. You look back at the times that in many ways you'd rather forget, but you look at them differently. When you're looking for the God moments of valuable adversity, you look back at the times that you were humbled, and yet you were because of adversity somehow saved from something worse. So that's the first way you could do it. Sometimes it's just so simple. There's a silly illustration, but I was thinking about those dunking booths you can see at the fair where there's a guy that's sitting in there and he is trying to say all kinds of things to aggravate the spectators who go by so that they'll pay something to get some balls and try to throw it, hit this arm that extends from the dunking booth and if they hit it, then it opens up his seat and he falls down into the water and you shut him up that way.

I know about these because one time at kind of a little church fall fest we were doing, I was the guy in the dunking booth. Honestly, it's not very good to put the pastor in there because the pastor, I can't say mean things to people. I'm a pastor. What am I supposed to say to people like, hey, you're so ugly. It's a good thing that God looks on the heart. What am I supposed to say?

Well, it's a good thing that you're saved by grace because you don't have anything good to offer. It just doesn't work, but I was watching one time down at Myrtle Beach at an amusement park there. There was one of the guys, he was the best at this, the guy sitting in the dunking booth, so obnoxious, insulting everybody went by. You just wanted to go up there and just lay all your money down just to knock him in that water one time. I remember particularly there was a guy in a cowboy hat and his wife walking by and that obnoxious guy in the dunking booth, he started calling out to him and he was like, hey, I see your wife there.

Yeah, she's got one of those hourglass figures, but it looked like all the sand sunk to the bottom. He started saying like that. This guy was... I mean, this cowboy was getting mad. I thought this cowboy was going to go up to that cage and he's going to jump in there and grab this guy and we're going to have a brawl on our hands. Well, while this cowboy's getting redder and redder in the face, a teenager came by who obviously had a good arm and he paid his five bucks, got three balls and first ball he let loose, he just sent that thing and nailed the guy and right while he is letting out some obnoxious statement to that cowboy, the guy just splash and he's just silenced.

Guy in the cowboy hat just laughed and goes on and I'm like, okay, we might have saved ourselves from an assault charge here and the police coming. There are times in your life where you realize that if something that was sort of bad hadn't happened, then something much worse were to happen. Can you think of those kinds of times? When they happen, because honestly it happens more than you realize, the encouragement I give you is just pause.

Thank God for it. Recognize it that this just happened. But here's a second way you can look for the moments of valuable adversity. Look for the ways in which a desert time prepared you for something better or brought about something better that you could have never even envisioned and you never would have thought in the midst of the adversity that it would have come to pass. For example, as I've mentioned many times, when I was in fourth grade, my family broke. My dad left home and it was, my whole world was turned upside down. And when I look back on that, there are two ways I can look on it. I can look on it and say, boy, I'm just not very blessed because I missed out on having mom and dad at home together.

I could focus on all of the negative parts about it and I have had to have a lot of healing. But what the story that keeps going through my mind and I tell over and over is that it wasn't long after that that my mother, though she was the daughter of a Methodist minister, she didn't really know the Lord. And she just got down on her knees one night and she caught out, God, she said, I feel like I'm sinking down and I'm probably going to take these three boys with me unless you do something. Not long thereafter, a woman came over to our house, knocked on the door, who was just an acquaintance. And she said, Marianne, she said, I was waking up in the middle of the night with you on my heart and I just wanted to come over and say, do you need anything?

And my mother said, yes. And she told her what was happening in our lives. And this woman introduced her to Christ and told her about the love of God and told her a message of hope. And because of that, my mother fell in love with God and she showed me and my brothers who Jesus really is. And had she not had to fall on her knees, then she would have never been led to the Lord. She would have never led me to the Lord.

I wouldn't be here preaching. And so I know that the breakup of my family is something that is sad. It is great adversity in my life and I would never want it in my life again.

I would never want it for anybody else. But because of it, you see, something came about that was wonderful. And I think what happens is when you search for your moments in your life like this, you'll start seeing them more and more. I actually, therefore, I let myself go back and think on some of the adversities of life.

Because in the thinking on them, I'll remember, wait a minute, something came from that. The God moment of valuable adversity. It's over and over through God's Word. Not just in Joseph's story. It's about Abraham who was told he was going to have a son but then went childless for years.

And David who was told he was going to be a king but then had to run for his life, hide in the caves and avoid being in the danger zone of King Saul lest he be killed. It's in the story of Paul, Saul of Tarsus, who met Jesus on the Damascus road, was caught up in a vision of God and becomes the great preacher of the Gospel. But before all of that, he was struck blind by the glorious light of God, for three days had to be led around by the hand, humbled and without any strength. It's the story in the end of Jesus who comes and dies for you and me. And as he's on the cross, it is the most severe desert experience, the greatest adversity that anyone has ever, ever experienced.

The cross, the symbol of shame where he not only is suffering the physical pain of this awful crucifixion, but he is bearing upon himself the very shame and the sin of the world and drinking the cup of wrath and taking into his being every ugly thing in the midst of this saying, oh my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In the midst of the driest desert, the searing adversity of all time on the cross, God was bringing about the greatest value imaginable, your salvation and mine. In other words, every part of the story of the people of God points ultimately to this moment of valuable adversity through the cross, the foolishness and pain of the cross of Jesus Christ. God was at work reconciling the world unto himself. Our whole story, people of God, in the end is a celebration of a God moment of valuable adversity.

Look back over the course of your life. Look into the times of humble suffering and pain and you will find God has been there and that's the gospel. Alan Wright, and I hope you find hope in that message. Today's teaching, Valuable Adversity.

Stay with us. Alan's back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org. God's always been there. In every moment you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment you were surprised by a blessing.

In every moment you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. So Alan, in the middle of it, if somebody's listening right now and they're just almost feeling at the end of their robe, this teaching today in your admonition here is to say, look, just go back and see where God has been faithful and find hope for today in that. And sometimes when you're in the middle of an adversity right now, you can't see it. But if you'll cultivate this for your whole life and look back and say, okay, the difficult times that I've been through, what was the good that ended up coming out of it?

Rehearse that, remember it, recount it. And then when you face a new adversity, you'll at least be able to say to yourself, you'll say to yourself, I remember that in other times of adversity, God used it. I can believe, therefore, that though I do not understand why I'm going through what I'm going through, and I know that God didn't author an evil that's been perpetrated against me, that God is on His throne. And He is able to bring good out of even this difficult situation. That's what happens when you remember, rehearse and celebrate the God moments of valuable adversity. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.