Adversity, trials, and heartaches can be the place for great lesson and growth, a school of experience. They can bring us to a place of insight and understanding; they can alter our view of the world and God. Ultimately it can lead to changed behavior. God is the one who can teach us through adversity so it is to Him we should look for answers in our time of adversity.
1.God uses adversity to get our attention. = adversity is not the only way God can get our attention but it is one way. The reason is when adversity strikes we are more apt to look to God for help or answers. So don’t delay in responding to the Lord when He moves to get your attention, respond quickly, humbly, and patiently in the midst of adversity. Get very familiar with Psalm 25 “O my God, I trust in you… Show me your ways. O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation, on you I wait all day.
2.Attention to area leads us to personal examination= Adversity forces us to look at areas in our life in a more focused and serious way. We start to see things as they really are, the chinks in the armor. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 11:28 to “let a man examine himself”—- take a close look and see what is real! God desires us to have a clean and usable vessel so he wants us to see the areas that need fixed or removed. The Lord may allow adversity to lead us to those areas and desire fixing.
3.Ultimately God uses this adversity to lead us to changed behavior= The lessons that the Lord teaches us through adversity are ultimately for the purpose of change in belief and behavior. It isn’t enough that the Lord gets our attention or that we self-examine, or even that we see our problems or needs. Unless it results in change we will never fully grow as intended.
If you are willing to allow God to reveal the trash of your life, and if you are willing to change what needs to be changed, you will emerge from adversity closer to Christ, more mature as His child, and with much greater potential for kingdom use in the world.
In His Service,
Eric Barnes
