Don't Miss the Messages in Your Misfortune, Part 2

In the midst of a tough patch you're going through, you may have heard well-meaning people say, take heart, God never wastes your suffering.

Well, is that statement really true? Does God redeem our pain, our unexpected calamities? Today on Insight for Living, we're listening to a message that Chuck Swindoll delivered to a receptive audience of men and women preparing for ministry. In his address to the students at Dallas Theological Seminary, Chuck shared a quote that delivers an unpopular truth.

When God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible person and crushes him. Don't miss the messages in your misfortune. There are many of them you have yet to learn. You've not learned them because you've not suffered the crushings of those misfortunes, and they will crush you. They will break you down. They will cause you to wonder, should you be doing what you're doing? Should you keep on doing it? Should you ever trust anyone else when a really good friend betrays you? Should you ever try to select another elder when an elder you have endured has made your life miserable for years? You're going to be crushed, so don't miss the messages.

That's my point. Now, the scriptures. Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 8 and 9, give a sort of a, well, difficult job description. We are afflicted in every way. We are perplexed, the passage goes on to say.

It means not knowing which way to turn. Several render this in paraphrases. We are at wit's end. You'll be there.

You'll be there. We are afflicted. We are at wit's end. Third, we are persecuted. And fourth, we are struck down, knocked down.

Now, each of them has a contrast, the benefit, the message, and the misfortune. I'll not get into from this passage. The point is, you will be pressed on every side. You will be bewildered. You will be at a loss to explain why this happened, and you'll be knocked flat down, wondering if you'll ever get back up. Yes, yes, yes, that will happen.

Yes, yes, that will happen. So many times in your ministry, you'll ask, I wonder what could happen next. And here's the really confusing part. What's happened isn't your fault. So you'll ask, what did I do to deserve this?

Yes, you really did nothing. It's happening to you. Things happen to us, and they crush us. And we're reading the Bible in a whole new light. Suddenly, it's talking to us about our lives. So when we read words like verses eight and nine, we're not reading about Paul living through this. Though it's true, we're reading our biography.

So what do you do? Well, I'm going to turn to a verse of scripture you have memorized, and I'm going to use it on purpose so that you will have a whole new appreciation for it, I hope. I'm referring to Romans 8 28.

And we know that all things work together for the good to them who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. You just preach those words. Just write those words. But I want you to see them deeply and how they apply. How do you, facing Sunday's service, go on? You don't see with any sense of perspective, and you don't know how to pray.

In fact, it is so difficult, the Spirit of God prays for you with groanings that cannot be uttered. Isn't that an amazing way to put it? Since we don't see, and since we can't know, then there's only one place to look, and that's up, and there's only one to turn to, and that's the one who sees and knows. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. His ways are better than our ways.

In light of that, we look to him with some sense of confidence, and that's where verse 28 plays its vital role. First, we know. Look at that.

This is a promise that's to be claimed and never ignored. We know this. God causes. Not because he's cruel, but because he's wise. He either makes it happen or permits it to happen, but he's behind it.

He okays it. The plan and the project, these are God's, not ours. It's all in his hands. He is fulfilling his will in his time and in his way. In all this mess and misery, he is at work. His plan is relentlessly unfolding.

He's causing his plan that he doesn't stop to explain to you. To you, it's a storm. It's a storm. It's a storm. It's a storm. It's a storm. He doesn't stop to explain to you.

To you, it's a storm. He causes these things. He permits these things. He okays these things. They have his approval.

What is he? He causes all things to work together for good, for his glory, for our good. So I remind myself when such things occur, for my glory, Lord, and for my good. Remind me of that. Drill that home in my brain.

Remind me of it. These are profound words and they have gaps, my gaps of ignorance in them. Romans 11 33, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

Get this. How unsearchable are his judgments? How unfathomable are his ways?

Unsearchable? Unfathomable. All for his glory and for our good because they are according to his purpose. You enter ministry, you enter into his man and purpose for your life. And God immediately goes to work shaping you into the image of his son.

It isn't an easy shaping. It includes, as I've said, painful, unexpected times when we think we can't go on. And so in light of that, just as the Chief Justice brought a message to that group of graduates, I want to give you five wishes that I have for you along the same line as John Roberts gave at that little commencement address. First, I hope you will not know early success.

Let me repeat that. I hope you will not know early success in your ministry. Rather, I hope you will encounter difficulties that will drive you to your knees, that will teach you the value of vulnerability, and it will enable you to keep success from ever going to your head. Early success can make people awfully proud. I hope you are beginning to show a few gray hairs before you begin to taste any measure of success in ministry.

I hope it comes later on. Second, I hope you will experience obscurity and anonymity after you leave these halls of learning, especially if you are greatly gifted and intellectually bright. The result will be great lessons in humility, keeping you surprised that God would be pleased to use you in the years to come. May that always be a surprise to you.

I hope you will experience obscurity and anonymity. Remember Paul, shortly after he gained his eyesight back following his conversion, he went away to Arabia for years. We never know what he did there. No one knows.

Obscure, anonymous, probably for many people forgotten. That was where the revelation of God's plan for his life and for the future, which included, by the way, the thorn in the flesh, whatever that was. It was severe. It was painful.

The Greek term, thorn, means a sharp stake. So whatever it was, it was physically painful. And he lived with it until he died.

Easy to forget that. It helped him become the man he was as he was crushed by the thorn. Third, I hope you will fail because you relied on your own flesh to reach certain personal goals. Those failures will be a healthy part of your personal growth toward maturity. You will learn far more from your failures than you will ever learn from your great accomplishments.

Fourth, I hope you will be forced to deal with a difficult elder or a fellow staff member who gives you fits, even one who, like Demas, who forsakes you. I could keep you busy for the rest of the morning telling you stories from my own life, where I really relied on certain individuals only to find out they had deceived me. One man carried on a sexual encounter with other women while serving on the staff quite effectively until he was found out.

Speaking of that, I know of another individual – now gone – who at the time was a very effective Bible teacher, taught a large adult fellowship class at a church, was the chair of a Bible department at a fine Bible college while carrying on with one of his students sexually. I got a call in the middle of the night from a detective who said he had to meet with me. It was pouring down rain. I said, I'm not coming out tonight. He said, yeah, you will. You need to be meeting with me, because if you don't, and he named the man, he'll be dead in less than two days. The husband of this woman that he's having the affair with already has a hit man, and he'll be dead.

He's going to kill him. Well, I went out that rainy night, and we had quite a conversation the next day. I confronted the man. He denied it.

They usually do. And then I said, you see this fellow sitting at the end of the room over there? We were in an empty room except for the detective with a brown envelope. I said, before you lie any further, see this man over there? Yep. See that envelope? Yep. In it are photographs of you with her in bed.

You want to look at the photographs with me? No, I don't. You need to know something. Tomorrow you'll be dead if you don't break this off. It's a man I trusted.

It's a man hundreds of people believed in, living a lie. I hope you'll know that experience. It'll break your heart. It'll disillusion you.

You'll probably lose your way home that day, wondering how in the world could this have happened. Right? Look at this have happened.

Right under my eyes. You're crushed. You're broken. You realize the heart of man is desperately wicked. You'll learn to hold people accountable. You'll learn not to be so gullible. You'll take your time in selecting leadership. You'll be very, very cautious about the choice of elders. You won't just get a couple of good friends, your buddies, as you form the church.

Please don't. You need qualified, godly, capable men to serve in that capacity. I hope you'll be forced to deal with difficult people.

Fifth, I hope you will be hindered by unexpected obstacles that will keep you from reaching your goals in your ministry, so that you will discover what God's goals are. By the way, this has a great ending, even though right now you feel like taking your life. I want to tell you that God knows what he's doing. He's not wiping you out. He's just breaking your heart. He's just interfering with your will.

He's just cutting your legs out from under you, so you'll quit walking in your own strength. Paul really wanted to go to Rome. He really wanted to make the gospel known to the seat of power. He really wanted to make the gospel known to the people.

He stated that. This was his plan, his hope. He never dreamed how he would get there. He would wind up being under house arrest, of all things. He couldn't even move out of that house, chained to another Praetorian Guard member. He realized while he was there those two years, hey, this is a captive audience. So he led him to Christ, and tomorrow he led the next one to Christ, and before long he led a whole barracks full of them to Christ, and the whole Praetorian Guard talked about Christ, and guess who they talked to?

Well, they had access to the Emperor himself. He never dreamed it would come through an imprisonment, and he said it's fallen out to me for the greater expansion of the gospel. That's a strange evangelistic plan. Don't miss the message, okay? Don't get hung up in the misfortune. It'll be dreadful.

There'll be some that are miserable. Don't forget you were warned. Don't forget you heard it. Don't forget it may be your spouse. It may be your elder. It may be in your community before the flood happens. It may be into your home the thief breaks.

It may be one of your children. It'll crush you. Don't miss the message. There's a great passage in Deuteronomy 8-2. You shall remember all the way the Lord your God led you these 40 years in the wilderness, get this, to humble you, to test you, to test you, to show what was in your heart, whether you'd keep his word or not. 40 years to humble you, to put you through the tests, to reveal to you what's in your God knows what's in your heart. You need to see it, and then you will turn to him, and you'll give him praise for walls that crumble down by just walking around them. You'll give him praise for being able to conquer the strong enemy, the Canaanites, as you move into homes you didn't build and eat from trees you didn't plant and drink from cisterns you didn't dig. And blessings will come and you'll go, Lord God, you get all the glory for this. Thank you for the years, the years when you broke me down and cut me down to size.

Thank you. John Oxenham once wrote these fine words. He writes in characters too grand for our short sight to understand. We catch but broken strokes and try to fathom all the mystery of withered hopes of death, of life, the endless war, the useless strife.

But there with larger, clearer sight, we shall see his way was right. There's a great hymn in our hymnals that unfortunately most churches don't sing anymore. Written by a man who lost four daughters at sea. They were traveling with their mother to get to England, having left Chicago. They went to New York and then set sail and of all things there was a collision at sea and their ship sank. The mother lived through it and sent a wire back that said to the dad, her husband, saved alone. Shortly thereafter the dad, mourning the death of his precious girls, went to sea and took a ship across to be with his wife. When he came to what was figured to be this area where that ship had sunk, he stood on the deck of that ship and wept and later wrote, when peace like a river attends my way, when sorrow like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say it is well. It is well with my soul.

Horatio Spafford did not miss the message, though he lost all four of his daughters. Let's pray. Father, I have no idea what you're saying to different ones in this meeting. I don't know most of these men and women, but I do know this. I know you and I've trusted you throughout my ministry even when I didn't know which way to turn. Thank you for never leaving me in the lurch.

Thank you for teaching life's hardest lessons when I couldn't even explain why they had happened. We do pause now asking you to get us ready for whatever you have for us, knowing that when you want to do an impossible task, you take an impossible person and you crush him. May you find it well with our soul following the crushing. In Jesus' name.

Everyone said, Amen. Chuck Swindoll delivered this convicting message to an audience of seminary students preparing for full-time ministry. He titled his talk, Don't Miss the Messages in Your Misfortune. This is the fourth message in a special six-part series from Insight for Living. For more information and to access Chuck's study notes, look for the series called The Pros and Cons of Ministry at insightworld.org slash studies. Well, gratefully, God has used Insight for Living to inspire young leaders to pursue full-time vocational ministry. And Chuck's teaching on this program has encouraged pastors to remain true to God's calling on their lives as well. So as you financially support this daily Bible teaching program, rest assured you're making an impact on local churches around the world.

We receive hundreds of comments at our international headquarters that validate that. Comments like this one, Chuck, I'm a pastor and have served the church for the last 28 years. Your teaching and preaching has been an anchor in my life. You truly are an encouragement to me. Well, this pastor and countless others like him have been enriched because of your gifts to Insight for Living.

So please keep up the good work. To give a donation today, visit insight.org. By the way, if you're a pastor in training, or if you're looking to learn more about God's model for church leaders, I'd recommend you purchase Chuck Swindoll's Living Insights commentary on 1 and 2 Timothy, including the book of Titus as well. It's chock full of timeless wisdom from the apostle Paul. Plus the commentary is laid out in an easy-to-read format and in the refreshing style you've come to expect from Chuck. It includes helpful context about the first century church as well. To purchase Chuck Swindoll's Living Insights commentary, call us.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or go online to insight.org-slash-store. Take it from Chuck Swindoll. There's nothing quite like the beauty of the great frontier. Wide open skies, pristine glaciers with various shades of blue and turquoise, mingled within them towering pine trees and all manner of wildlife. I'll tell you, Alaska is truly a masterpiece of God's creation. I've been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things, but honestly, nothing compares to the beauty in Alaska.

God is awesome. Come with us on the Insight for Living Ministries Cruise to Alaska, July 1st through July 8th, 2023. When I'm in Alaska, I feel like I'm in an amazing painting created by God. Let yourself get lost in the majestic beauty. Spend quality time with those you love. Allow God to refresh your soul as you reflect on His word and His goodness in your life. To learn more, go to insight.org-slash-events or call this number 1-888-447-0444.

The tour to Alaska is paid for and made possible by only those who choose to attend. I'm Bill Meyer. Tomorrow, Chuck Swindoll invites us to examine our legacy and the things that outlive us. Join us again next time here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Don't Miss the Messages in Your Misfortune, was copyrighted in 2021 and 2023, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2023 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.