Life Lessons with Chip - Answering Your Adversities

Are you in the midst of a painful or confusing season in your life right now?

Maybe it's the loss of a job, conflict with a spouse or a child or a sudden diagnosis. Do you wish there was a specific game plan to respond to these times of adversity? Well today, I want to share with you three questions that you need to ask when adversity and challenges come your way.

They will be questions that help you make it through and then really grow. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We are a discipleship-driven ministry on a mission to encourage Christians everywhere to live like Christians. Well in just a minute, we'll revisit our series, Life Lessons with Chip.

The goal of this entire series is to grow your faith by learning from the wisdom and advice of someone with decades of experience walking with Jesus. And today, as Chip teased, we'll focus on responding to challenges and difficulties in a biblical way because it's not a matter of if trials will come our way, but when. Well if you're ready, here's Chip with his talk, Answering Your Adversities. The most common question I get from someone at church or actually got a text last night, said, hey, could we talk even 15 or 20 minutes? I've got a really big family issue I need to run by you. And you know, we're in a group together and so we know each other and I've set a time.

But here's what I want to talk about. What do we say to that friend, to that family member even, or that person you really care about? They're going through a hard time. I mean it's a really challenging time and you're going to go meet and have coffee or they're going to stop by and you sit down together. I get that a lot.

And maybe you're that person, which is great, so I'm glad to be with you. But I want to give you sort of a quick perspective of how to respond to adversity because I could say, oh well, you know, there's seven reasons why difficult things come into our life. And if it's this, then you should respond this way. And if it's that, read that book.

And if it's spiritual warfare, hey, we have some information on that. I'm talking about you're sitting down with a friend and they say, look, I think I might have cancer. Or my son or daughter just came out and told me they don't believe in God anymore. Or I just found out that our company is being purchased and my job is going away. Or my mom has Alzheimer's and I don't know what to do.

Right? All those are not hypothetical. Those are, in the last six or seven days, very real things that people have brought to me as though, oh, you will know. God knows.

And so let me suggest this. Three questions to consider in times of adversity, whether it's you or someone else. Question number one, how does Jesus want to use this adversity in your life for good? The word trial, the word temptation in the New Testament is the same word. You'll find it in James chapter one. God allows or decrees trials or tests to come into our life so we pass them, we get an A, so we grow deeper, so we're mature, so he brings good out of them.

Okay? What does Jesus want to do through this? Second question is how does Satan want to use this adversity for your downfall? That's a temptation. God wants to bring good out of it.

Satan wants to kill, to steal, to destroy, to get people to lose their faith, to treat people terribly, to take alternatives and shortcuts that will short circuit their life and their relationships and divide families and bring about addictions. You got the picture, right? We're going to picture adversity as this cloud.

I'm going to give you a word picture later, right? And we're all human. It's a fallen world. Sometimes it rains.

You know, this is black rain, right? And it's adversity. So it's everything from cancer to drunk drivers to betrayal to mental health issues to Alzheimer's to job loss to economics to inflation to, I mean, you can't control it, but it just rains adversity. So question number one, what does Jesus want to do through this adversity to bring about good? Second, what does Satan want to do through this adversity to tempt you and take you or someone you love out and bring about death? And then the third question is this, how can Satan turn a God allowed trial into a lethal temptation? So here we go. And this is, you know, this is like you're sitting down drinking coffee.

This is just a couple friends. This isn't, we're not preaching at them. But here's what we need to understand for ourselves first and then for others. Number one, deception. Satan's MO is lies. He's the father of lies. So he's going to attack the truth. His first attack will be on God. God, how could you let this happen? If he really loved you, how could you let this happen to your mom or to your mate or to one of your sons? I mean, if God really cared, why did he cause this company to buy that company so you don't have a job anymore, right?

This is age old. He's going to attack the character of God. And in your weak moments and in your hurt, you and I will be tempted to believe that God isn't for me. God doesn't care. God's not in control.

And that produces levels of fear and doubt and concern that can take us to places that are not good at all. The second deception is if he can't get you to believe a lie about God, then he'll try to get you to believe a lie about you. So the second deception is about you. He attacks your heart. You're no good. You're a loser. You deserve this.

You know why this happened? And then he'll bring some condemnation about what you did two years ago, five years ago, what you did as a kid, did something before you even came to Christ. He attacks your heart, and that's why the spiritual warfare information we've learned over the years, the breastplate of righteousness. In other words, he's going to bring about condemnation. And when you feel like you don't measure up or you deserve this or you're a terrible person, you know, it's just because you're a bad mom.

Let's face it. You're a loser. You know, they told you you'd never amount to anything. You start believing this, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Deception number one about God, deception number two is about you, deception number three is about the future. This is terrible. It will always be terrible. Nothing good will ever come.

He attacks your head. And so you start to lose hope. Like, my husband walked out on me. No one will ever love me again. My child isn't walking with God.

I've lost my job. He's going to attack your perspective of the future, and he brings deception, and it brings fear. We're either living by faith or we're living by fear.

Perfect love casts out fear. So what I want you to get is those three questions, and this last one is the real key one. How is Satan going to take a trial that God has allowed your heavenly, good, and kind Father, who is sovereign over all, that has your best in mind, who wants to help you through this? It's a fallen world.

Challenging times are going to happen to everyone. His goal is good. Endurance, character, development. His goal is to bring something out of it, even beyond what we could ever think, and Satan's goal is what? To destroy. And so he attacks your view of God, your view of yourself, your view of the future. And then finally, he attacks, number four, your faith. You know, I'm not sure I can believe God anymore.

I don't know if this is really worth it. I mean, if this is what God does, I've heard this multiple times, if the God I worship allows this to happen in my life, I don't think I can worship that God anymore. I have a very, very close friend who one of his sons during his high school years lost a friend. He died in a car accident. And something happened, something clicked inside of him, and the enemy just posed that.

If this is the God you worship and he lets your best friend die like that, he's not worth worshiping. And that brought about a hardness in that kid's heart that we pray changed, but I don't know. So what I want you to know is this is what we're up against. So you say, well, what do we do? How do you respond to that? Yes, there's lots of good teaching on spiritual warfare.

There's lots of good psychology and counseling and help. But I'm talking about us regular people where we're sitting around with someone over coffee, and what we're trying to do is help them get perspective. And so taking that truth that I just gave you, I'm going to give you a word picture. So we got this cloud.

I want you to picture this cloud. It's a dark cloud, and it's raining all this adversity, all terrible things, hard things, difficult things. Some are natural disasters. Some are personal.

Some are family. But I mean, you think of it, people that you love that they're going through, like it's raining adversity. It's raining adversity. And then what I want you to realize as it's raining adversity, there's this band. And this band is called spiritual warfare because there is a visible world, and there's an invisible world. And the visible things in our world and the invisible things that we can't see are interrelated, and they're both very real. Remember that 1 Kings passage where the prophet is saying to the servant, the servant says, Elijah, we got big problems.

We're absolutely surrounded. And the prophet prays to God, and he says, open my servant's eyes. And he saw these horses and chariots and angelic forces.

I want you to know, without being spooky at all, that's a reality. There's very real invisible forces, both angelic and demonic. They're at war, and you are the object of God's attention and the object of his affection. So it's raining adversity, and now there's this invisible war.

And then I want you to picture over here, there's a Satan filter. He wants to take this adversity, and he wants to slant it. And what he wants to do is filter your adversity through deception. And so his temptation will be, number one, out of fear, this is what he wants you to feel. It's overwhelming, it's unfair, and it's intended to destroy me.

And where is God? Have you got that? You felt that? You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll get you back to our series, Life Lessons with Chip, in just a minute. But first, if this teaching has ministered to you, consider becoming a monthly partner. Your regular financial support goes a long way to help us encourage pastors, create resources, and share Jesus with today's youth.

Visit LivingOnTheEdge.org today to learn how to support us. Well, with that, here again is Chip. And that leads to what kind of attitude? An attitude of anger, despair, abandonment, which leads to what kind of actions? I need to medicate, right? I'm going to go shopping, I'm going to spend some money, I'm going to go sleep with someone, I'm going to act out, I'm going to fall back into an addiction that I've had, I'm going to log on to the Internet, I'm going to isolate. We all do stuff to medicate. When I'm afraid and when I'm not trusting God, anger and then sin, and then it results in what? This reign of adversity comes down and we want to run from it, we want to get protection from it, we want to somehow make it all go away, and we take a shortcut that makes us feel better for a short amount of time but leads to death.

That's the plan. Now I want you to imagine this cloud of adversity and it's raining and we all get it. It's not just you. It's going to come to all of us. And instead of the Satan filter, which is deception, here's the truth filter of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and this filter is a filter of truth. And this filter says this has been allowed by God, who is good, who's for you, who will never leave you, never forsake you.

It's very, very hard, not diminished. You're not alone. You're not alone. I will never, ever leave you or forsake you. Second, it's intended for your good. Maybe the evil of someone else.

It may be a natural disaster. It may be even a mistake that you've made. It could be even a sin coming up from your past. Hey, I care about you. You're my child.

The filter is I'm going to use this for your good. The attitude, this is a big step of faith. You willfully choose to consider it all joy knowing, not that it's good to experience, knowing the testing of your faith is going to produce this endurance and this endurance, if you don't give up and don't give in and don't shrink back, this endurance is going to do what?

It's going to mature you that you're mature, perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And then the action is you don't give up. It's hard. Everything in you wants to just bail out, but by God's grace, you read the scripture when you don't want to. You memorize a promise when you don't want to. You call a friend and say, I need to meet with you.

Would you pray with me even on the phone? You just hang on. You endure.

And you do it one day, and then pretty soon it's seven, and then it's two weeks, and then it's two months, and then it's five months. And sometimes the circumstances miraculously change, and sometimes the only thing changes is you. Something happens in your heart. Something happens in your character. God is more real than he's ever been to you before. The Word of God is coming alive like never, ever before. You have some relationships with people that are going deeper than ever before. You've been more honest, more vulnerable. God is doing something in you. Do you hate the adversity? Is it unfair?

Is it terrible? Yes. Jesus learned obedience, Hebrews 5 says, through the things which he suffered. And my favorite verse in all of this is Hebrews 10, 36.

I just gave it to a guy going through a tough time yesterday. For you have need of endurance, so that once you've done the will of God, you might receive what is promised. There's so much about life that it's just, don't give up. Stay in the game. Trust in God when you don't feel like it.

Can I remind you of something? We have this picture of Jesus, and obviously he is so loving, and he's so caring. And I don't want to paint this in a negative way, but Jesus did not feel like going to the cross for you emotionally. Remember, he prayed, Father, if there's any other way, if there's a plan B, if there's any other way, he was distraught. It was so intense. He was sweating like blood was coming out of his pores.

It's an actual medical condition. He understood not just the physical. He knew he would be separated from the Father for the first time in all eternity. He knew the just wrath of God would be poured on him to pay for your sin and my sin. And he didn't emotionally at all want to go to the cross, but he endured for the joy set before him. Love is giving another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. And when I feel like I can't go on one other day, I remember, Chip, you have need of endurance so that once you've done the will of God, especially when you don't feel like it, especially when you don't want to do it, then if you endure, you receive what was promised.

And so what you find is it's a completely different result. Over here, it's death, Satan's filter. Over here, it's life. Over here, the rain is something to run from and to medicate yourself and to go down a shortcut. And over here, it's let the rain fall on me, soak on me, cleanse me, wash me, purify me. As someone recently said, some people run from the rain and some people dance in the rain.

I'm not sure I'm quite ready to dance in that adversity, but I've seen that happen. I had a conversation with a guy recently and he's been through more adversity in 10 years. Personally, his wife's health, his company's issues than almost anyone I've ever met. And he had a comment I don't think I've ever heard another person say. He said, you know, I was going through all that adversity and finally things were kind of turning around.

And he's this kind of guy, very athletic type guy. And I decided when the Lord ever gives me some more money, I'm going to punch him in the mouth. I'm going to punch Satan in the mouth. He's going to feel like, whoa, I couldn't take that guy out. I'm going to do some good that helped people in ways like never before. And he is. And you know what I liked the most?

It was that attitude. When we're going through a rough time, when I sit across the table and I'm going through a rough time, I'm just tempted to, would you feel sorry for me? I'm really hurting.

Will you help me? Now, I want people to be sensitive, but I'm not a victim and you're not a victim. And the truth is you today in Christ are more than a conqueror through him. You today, there's nothing that can separate you from the love of God, not life or death or angels or principalities or powers or anything created.

Nothing can separate you from his love. And when you get that, then we go back and we realize there's a cloud of adversity and that black rain's coming down on me. I'm either going to filter it through deception lens of Satan or the Holy Spirit's lens of truth. And I'm going to ask, how does Jesus want to use this for my good? I'm going to ask, how does Satan want to derail me?

And then I'm going to ask, what are the tactics he's going to use to take this God ordained trial to be a lethal weapon to destroy my life and those around me? That is just a little picture that has really helped me. Doesn't solve everything, but allows me to just think about how am I going to handle what I'm going through?

Because our emotions and often the people around us with good intentions want us to pay people back or they reinforce behaviors that are not good at all. I want to encourage you. Endure. Trust God.

Let him work. You'll never regret it. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and you've been listening to Chip's message, Answering Your Adversities, which is from our series, Life Lessons with Chip. For more information about this ministry or our many resources, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003.

That's 888-333-6003 or LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, Chip's here in studio now, and Chip, here at Living on the Edge, we have a core group of people who want to see this ministry flourish, so they invest in us on a monthly basis. And that regular support has tremendous impact, doesn't it?

Absolutely, Dave. Monthly partners make a huge difference in the life of the ministry. Not only does it tell us that you're with us, your heart is with us because your money is being given and helping us each and every day, but it tells us that you're really a part of the family, that you are one of those people that, whether it's a big amount, small amount, really that's immaterial. But it's about saying rather than just now and then, it lets us know here is a group of people that are on mission with us to help Christians live like Christians.

And like any organization, the predictability of knowing that people are behind you, that you can count on whatever it is each month, it makes a huge difference. And so if you've been listening, and I'm sure many of you have already given once here or there, or maybe you have listened and just have never thought about, oh wow, that's right, these people have to pay for all of this, would you consider, just prayerfully, God, would you like me to partner with Living on the Edge? It can be whatever amount God shows you, but it would mean the world to us, and I think you would find your heart resonating as you partner with the ministry, because it's not just a financial provision, it's becoming a part of the ministry that helps other people. So here's my request.

Pray specifically, and then do just whatever God shows you. Well, as you prayerfully consider your role with this ministry, I want to remind you that every gift is significant, no matter the amount. Your support multiplies the ministry work we're doing all over the globe. To set up your monthly gift, go to livingontheedge.org, or call us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003, or visit livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap donate. We'll hear again as Chip to share a few final thoughts. As we close today's program, I want to go over those three questions and maybe just talk to you very personally, because it sounds kind of simple and, you know, thanks so much, Chip, but you don't understand. It doesn't look like my marriage is going to make it.

Or, hey, I've had this job for 27 years, and now they're doing layoffs, and I'm like two years away from my retirement, everything kicking in, and now I'm going to lose it. I get it. I understand. People are going through very difficult, challenging times, and I'm not saying this is some kind of quick fix.

Don't hear that, but you've got to get perspective, because if you don't, your emotions will take you down trails that you'll say some things and do some things. The truth of the matter is you have a promise that can never change if you're a follower of Jesus. Jesus loves you. He died for you. He rose from the dead. All your sins have been forgiven.

You have a new life. He has gone ahead of you into heaven. He's prepared a place for you because He wants to be with you. And in the meantime, through the ups, the downs, the unfairness, the challenges in a fallen world, the sins of others against you, all of these things, He says, look, I'm going to progressively make you like my son Jesus if you'll lean in. And so you ask the question, Lord, how do you want to use this in my life or in the life of others? He either delivers you out of it supernaturally or, as is often the case, He delivers you through it. And so I just want you to ask that question very objectively right now. And then the second question I want you to really ponder is how does the enemy want to take this situation and sabotage your faith, your life, and your relationships?

I mean, what would his agenda be? What's your spiritual Achilles' heel? Is it your emotions? Is it payback? Is it it's hard to forgive? Is it lust? Is it returning to an addiction?

I don't know. I just know I've got mine and you've got yours. And when a difficult, adverse, challenging time comes, we all want comfort. We all want to self-medicate.

We all want to take a shortcut. It doesn't make you bad. It makes you human. But you can't give in. And then you need to ask, what are his tactics to destroy your life or those around you? These three questions can allow you to begin to focus your energy and your faith on a promise-keeping God.

You can actually choose to consider it all joy. How? Knowing by experience that this testing of your faith produces something we don't like. Perseverance. Resilience. You don't give up.

You don't give in. And sometimes you just make it one moment at a time. And then he says, allow this perseverance to have its outworking result, that you can actually be complete. The word is teleos, that you can fulfill the design, that your character can be changed and molded, and you can become more kind and more loving and more peaceful and more joyful as God works in and through this difficult time for good as the enemy seeks to derail you and use it for evil. Consider it all joy. I know that's hard. You can control very little of your circumstances, but listen carefully. You are not a victim. The one who lives in you is greater than the one that is in the world, and nothing can separate you from his love.

You are more than a conqueror in Christ. Great encouragement, Chip. And let me just say, if you're in a painful season of life right now, we're here for you. Call us at 888-333-6003, and a team member would be happy to pray with you. That's 888-333-6003. Or if it's easier, email us at chip at livingontheedge.org. That's chip at livingontheedge.org. Well, from all of us here, I'm Dave Druey, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge, and I hope you'll join us next time. See you next time.