THINK ABOUT THIS
Only 4% of adults have a Biblical worldview.***
64% believe moral truth depends on the situation.
60% believe male/female cohabitation outside of marriage is acceptable.
55% believe that a good person can earn his or her way to heaven.
70% of self-professing Christian parents did NOT list bringing their children to salvation through Jesus Christ as one of their priorities.
44% believe that Jesus Christ committed sin.
CONSIDER THE PERIL OF COLLEGE STUDENTS AND PROFESSORS
67% of college professors approve of homosexuality.
84% of professors approve of abortion.
65% embrace socialist and communist ideals.
88% of students from "Christian" homes deny their faith before they graduate from college.
91% of students from evangelical churches do not believe in absolute moral truth.
Denominational leaders indicate that between 69 and 94% of their churched young people are leaving the traditional church after high school...and not returning.
***George Barna, at www.barna.com
THROUGH TRIALS TO TRIUMPH
“God knoweth the way that I take. When He hath tried me,
I shall come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10)
Should not our prayer be: “God, grant us patience, strength, courage to bear the crosses of life? Shouldn’t our faith follow the footsteps of Jesus? It was Jesus, who bore His cross to Calvary, offering Himself as the eternal sacrifice for sins, hallowed our sorrows, and lightened our burdens.
Jesus is the light for darkened souls who are faltering under the weight and agonies they cannot bear alone.
“Why must I suffer?” “Why do miseries crowd in upon my life?” “Why are my ambitions always crushed into the dust?” “Why do I have so many physical afflictions?” “How can I be sure my employment will last?” “I’ve spent years with my present employer. If I lose my job here, who would employ me at my age?” “How can I ever reason why God lets ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires and floods devastate our countryside?” These bitter and resentful questions have been asked since the cradle days of humanity. These questions have never been asked in a more piteous protest, and discouragement, than in this 21st century!
It is easy to become so disheartened that one may question: “If there is any justice in earth or in heaven, why are we the victims of endless miseries?” “Why are the joys and sorrows of life measured out unequally and unfairly?” “Why does the scourge of God beat us with cutting lash, while the overflow of plenty, heaps up money and pleasure, for the open enemies of God?” “Why is a young mothers heart broken, as she presses to her bosom her dying baby, an only child, while FORTY MILLION others have refused to become mothers, by killing their babies, through abortions or other neglect.?
There is one, and only one, true, sustaining answer to the everlasting “why” of humanity’s sorrow: the solution found in God’s never-failing Word! This light for the darkness of our pain and affliction comes to us with practical, everyday force from the Book of Job.
Job was a man of affairs, a patriarch of renown and riches. Job was, in his day, as the Bible assures us: “…the greatest of all the men in the East.” He numbered his cattle, sheep and camels by the thousands as they roamed over the vast sections of his land.
Job had seven sons and three daughters. Prosperity had, indeed, smiled upon Job, the upright and God trusting man.
But suddenly, disaster struck, swooping down upon his house and his lands. His cattle, flocks, his droves of 3000 camels were taken from him in one single day! And, on that same day before the sunset, breathless messengers brought the terrifying announcement that all his children had been killed. One would wonder how a man could keep a balance of mind under such losses and multitudinous despair. But, horror of horrors, Job had not yet felt the depth of his cup of suffering. Pain and torture was now pressing its bitterest dregs upon his own physical body. He was afflicted, we read, “…with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown,” with an agonizing form of leprosy; so hideous and repulsive was his skin cancer, over his entire body, that the ancients hesitated to speak the name of this incurable curse. Picture this repulsive scene: Job sitting in an isolated, remote ash-strewn corner, feverishly scratching the fiery ache of his ulcerated body with a broken piece of pottery, and listening to his wife say: “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? [thy faith in God?] Curse God and die!”
But Job did not die. He turned to God and found solution to the problem of suffering. Job has shown us a way through trial to triumph, with his immortal words: “God knows the way that I take, When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
Through trials we triumph. Today a blinded world staggers under the impact of one savage onslaught after another, adding to its misery, pushing God aside. National Governments, Churches, Educational and Economic Systems and Family bonds, all are seeking selfish agendas, pushing God aside. When I think of the evolutionary theories that humanity has (somehow) evolved from monkeys and apes, I should like to ask those theorists: if we are evolved from monkeys and apes, why are monkeys and apes still in existence? Has it come to this: Public tax money being used to undermine Christian faith?
Let there be no misunderstanding on this one basic fact: If we are to contradict the Bible and believe that there is no sovereign God in heaven above; if we are to contradict Christ and hold that this world is only the haphazard result of an ancient accident in the solar system; if we are to contradict the biblical statement that God created man; if we believe that we came up from the ameba and the ape, all by chance, then there is no key to the mystery of sorrow and suffering. If we are but pitiful playthings of cruel fate, though we scream piercing prayers into a black hole of despair, our failure reminds us that we are only hopeless atoms of humanity, caught in the riptides of life’s crosscurrents. Destroy faith in God and life becomes a roulette wheel and mankind is always the loser.
With Job we look beyond earth’s agonies to our Redeemer. In the cross of Christ we find the answer to the perplexities of human pain. God loves us, weak and sinful as we are, and has loved us with an everlasting mercy, through the atoning sacrifice that nailed Jesus to Calvary’s Cross. Christ Jesus “I S” everlasting mercy to all! How can we doubt this? Apostle Paul states this truth in Romans 8:31-32. “What shall we then say to these things, If God be for us, who can be against us. He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” This assures God’s guidance for every turn of human affairs.
In the radiance of the cross and in the light of its love we, too, can raise our trusting eyes to God above and join Job in exclaiming: “He knoweth the way that I take.” (Job 23:10) It is God’s hand that moves the spheres of the universe and directs the course of all history. God’s eyes sweep the world and sees the path of every life before life begins---our God knows the way that we take. It is beyond man’s finite mind to understand the infinite purposes of Almighty God, who in His omniscient essence knew the end from the beginning. The scripture teaches that God knew us and; ‘…hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4) We Christians have been told that we: “…have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.” (Romans 8:15) God teaches us that: “…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” (Rom. 8:28) Therefore, it should be a constant aim in our life to: “be conformed to the image of His Son…” (Romans 8:29) Not a day passes that His watchful love does not guard and bless our progress toward heaven. His constant promises are always “Yea” and “Amen”
Like Job, the patriarch of old, and all the Prophets, down to the last person born into God’s kingdom, the declaration is: (Isaiah 41:10) “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” When we are prone to blame God as we impatiently mark time and wait for removal of obstacles and misfortunes, let’s remember that God knows the way that we take. God’s time for help is always the right time. We are prone to look: “…through a glass , darkly” but we shall see Jesus “face to face” (1st Cor. 13:12) because Jesus said: “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” (John 13:7) When the scales of sin have fallen from our eyes, we shall discover the answer to the perplexing “WHYS”.
Job knew that this triumph through trials would be his, and he confidently proclaimed: “When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10)
What better can we do, than “casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you.” (1st Peter 5:7)
Now let us hear the conclusion of Job’s TRIUMPH!!! Job remained faithful. He said: “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” (Job 19:25) Job’s health was restored. God gave him back double the possessions which were earlier removed. Another family of seven sons and three daughters was given to him and he lived through four generations. “So, Job died, being old and full of days.” (Job 42:17)
THROUGH TRIALS TO TRIUMPH
Written February 1, 2007
Evangelist Don Brown, Founder/Director
Beth-Eden Bible Camp
10638 Ottawa Drive. Conway, Missouri 65632
Beth Eden Bible Camp
10638 Ottawa Dr.
Conway, MO 65632
(417) 589-6485
Evangelist
Don Brown,
Founder
Rev. Terry Brown, Administrator
1510 Timber Drive
Cabool, MO 65689
(417)962-0333
(417)300-6533
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