Seeing the Positive in our Problems

Guest Sermon Series

Rev. Robert D. Shofner, Jr.

St. John's UCC Boonville

Many people think that when they have problems, God is angry with them. And that's just not true. Many think that when they're having problems, they're out of God's will. And that's not necessarily true.

There are preachers on the TV and radio today that preach that God wants everybody to be healthy and wealthy. And when we're not healthy and wealthy, then they say we must be out of God's will. There’s a theological term for that way of thinking; “Baloney.”

1 Peter 4:12,19: "Don't be surprised at the painful trials you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. . . . Those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good." Notice that phrase, "those who suffer according to God's will." Problems are sometimes God's will for our lives. Yeah. That's right. So today we want to look at seeing the positive in our problems. We don't want to try to explain suffering, because there's no way that we could. But we want to learn to look at our problems from a new perspective.

How many of us had a problem this past week? All right. God uses that problem you're going through in five ways.

#1 - God uses problems to direct us. He often uses problems to point us in a new direction. To motivate us to change. To get our attention.

The frustrated teacher brought the little boy into the principal's office. "This boy is absolutely impossible!" she exclaimed. "I can no longer manage him. He is constantly causing trouble with the other kids; he doesn't pay attention; he gets into fights; and he constantly talks back to me. There must be some way to help him change his ways, but I just don't know what to do."

"Now, now, Miss Higgins," the principal replied. "You must remember that each child is a precious gift from God. We must practice love, patience, and understanding."

At that moment the errant young lad grabbed a book off the principal's desk which caused a potted plant to fall off onto the floor which set up a chain reaction that ended with the principal slipping in the mud and falling on his behind.

The boy started laughing at all the trouble he had set in motion as the principal got up and seized the child. He put the boy across his knees and paddled him.

The teacher gasped, "But you just told me that we must show children love, patience and understanding."

"How right you are, Miss Higgins," replied the principal. "But first you must get their attention!"

Proverbs 20:30 (GN), "Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways." How many would agree with that verse? Usually we change, not when we see the light, but when we feel the heat. C.S. Lewis once said, "God whispers to us in our pleasure, but He shouts to us in our pain." He gets our attention real quick when problems come upon us.

There are many example of this in the Bible. Take Elijah. One time Elijah was hiding out in the desert. He had everything he needed. Fresh water from a brook, birds bringing him food. He was safe and content and not about to leave. But then ... one day the brook dried up! Ever have a brook dry up in your life? All our resources dry up? Elijah thought, "What gives? God's been taking care of me, and all of a sudden the resources aren't there. God must not love me anymore." And God answered him, "No, that's not it at all. I just want your attention here. I don't want you to stay where the brook is. It's time to move on. And as long as you are comfortable in that situation, you're not going to change." The brook dried up so that God could direct Elijah to a new situation.

Sometimes a job dries up, a relationship dries up, a situation dries up ... why? God says, "Because I don't want you hanging around there anymore. I want you trying something new."

Remember the story of Jonah? God told Jonah to go to Ninevah. That way. He went to Tarshish ... as far that way as you could go. So God arranged a little Mediterranean cruise for Jonah. In the belly of a fish. Fish says, "Jonah, you're going in the wrong direction." And when the fish spits him out, guess which way he's headed?

God uses problems to direct us. To prod us, to push us. We would rarely change if we didn't have any problems. So we want to ask the question: "Where is this problem leading me?" Because problems never leave you where they found you. When we go through a problem we always end up someplace different from where we started off. God uses problems to direct us.

#2 - God uses problems to inspect us. To check us out, to see what we're like on the inside. To test us. Somebody once said that people are like tea bags. You never know what's really inside them until you drop them in hot water.

Deuteronomy 8:2, "The Lord God led you all the way into the desert these 40 years ... to test you in order to know what was in your heart ..." Notice that word "test." The Bible says that when Moses led the people of Israel through the Red Sea , they were to stop at Mt. Sinai , then move on to the Promised Land. Now, the walk from Egypt to Israel really shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks. But it took them 40 years! Why? God wanted them to wander around for a while so that He could test them. Seven times God tested them to see what was inside of them. Remember that story about Marah? That was one of the 7 tests. And every time they blew it, God said, "Okay, one more lap around the desert!"

Has God ever tested you? You bet He has. And we want to ask the question, "What does this problem reveal about me?" James 1:2-4, "Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance ... so you may be mature and complete ..."

The Bible often compares suffering to a refining fire. You take silver and heat it up to burn off the impurities. God does that with people ... through problems. Isaiah 48:10, "I (God) have tested you in the fire of suffering, as silver is refined in a furnace." God uses problems to burn off the excess in our lives, the stuff that's not needed, to purify us. Asked a silversmith once, "How do you know when silver's pure?" He answered, "When I can see my reflection in it." When God sees His reflection in our lives, He knows that He's burned off the impurities.

#3 - God uses problems to correct us. Psalm 119:71, "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your statutes." Hear that word "learn." He's saying that life is a school and our problems are the curriculum. Now why is it that some lessons we only learn through failure? Some things we only learn by blowing it. I remember being a kid and having mom say, "Now, Bobby, don't touch that hot stove." Do you think I touched it? Count on it. Did I ever touch it again? Nope. I learned by being burned.

Have you ever learned by being burned? Ever get burned in a relationship? Financially? Ever get burned by a bad decision? God uses problems to correct us when we're going off in the wrong direction. Living Bible paraphrase of that verse from the Psalms: "... it was the best thing that could happen to me, for it taught me to pay attention to your laws!" It seems that it's just human nature that we have to learn through pain.

Hebrews 12:7 (LB), "Let God train you, for He is doing what any loving father does for his children. Whoever heard of a son who was never corrected?" Do we discipline our kids? Yeah, sure we do. Why? Because we love them. This verse tells us that God's discipline of us is proof that He loves us. (God knows He must love me a lot, right?) Problems don't mean that God hates us, problems mean that God loves us! He allows the circumstances that are the natural consequence of our behavior to occur.

Now we want to get this above anything else this morning. Many people say, "I made a bad decision, I blew it. So I'll just confess my sin to God and ask Him to forgive me." Does God forgive me? Yes! Instantly, I'm forgiven. It's wiped out. No condemnation.

But that does not mean that God cancels out the cause and effect of that situation. We are forgiven, but He doesn't withdraw all of the circumstances. I could go out and recklessly race my Corvette down Main Street , crash into a car, hurt someone else and break my own arm. When I ask God to forgive me, He would forgive me ... but I'd still have a broken arm and a lawsuit. See what I'm saying?

God forgives us, but He often allows the effects of our sin to stay in order to teach us not to do it again. If every time we did something bad, and we could get away with it by just saying, "God, forgive me. " ... we'd keep right on doing it! But the Bible says we reap what we sow. And God allows that to happen, we reap what we sow, not because He hates us but because He loves us. He wants us to learn. "... it was the best thing that could happen to me, for it taught me to pay attention to your laws!" God's discipline proves that we are His children.

So when problems come, we don't want to ask "why." We want to ask, "what?" What does God want to teach us? God uses problems in our lives to teach us about Himself ... His power, His love, His grace. The fact that He can handle anything, that He knows everything about us ... the good, the bad and the ugly, and He still loves us. He also uses our problems to teach us something about ourselves. God may use a situation to reveal a weakness, to show up a blind spot, a character fault. So He uses these problems to correct us.

#4 - sometimes God uses problems to protect us. Sometimes God allows problems in our lives for our own benefit. Many times a problem is actually a blessing in disguise. It may prevent us from getting involved in something more harmful. 1 Peter 3:17, "It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good, than for doing evil." He says, "You're going to have problems in life. So you might as well have problems for doing the right thing, rather than problems for doing the wrong thing." He's saying that it's safer doing what's right, what's honest, and suffer for it ... than to compromise our values, do what's wrong, and suffer for that.

When I think of this verse, "It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good, than for doing evil." I think of Joseph. We've talked about his story before. Remember how his master's wife accuses him of rape because he won't sleep with her? And he gets put into prison for doing good. I'm sure Joseph sat in that prison and thought, "What gives, God? What are you doing?" Sometimes you do the right thing and everything falls apart. Joseph was in prison for doing the right thing. But if he wasn't in prison, he wouldn't have met the men who introduced him to the Pharaoh who eventually put Joseph in charge of the whole country! And two nations were saved from seven years of famine because he ended up in jail. God knew what He was doing, even if Joseph didn't. So remember, we don't see the whole picture, but God does. And He's faithful to us.

So we want to ask, "What is it about this problem that's protecting me? How is this helping me to trust God?"

#5 - Last one - sometimes God uses problems to perfect us. To develop us. Romans 5:3-4 (LB), "We can rejoice when we run into problems and trials (I'm kidding, right?) for we know that they are good for us - they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it ..." It's like the old illustration about the uncut diamond. We are an uncut diamond. And God wants to chip off our rough edges, to polish us up and make us a beautiful gem that glistens and reflects His glory. And so He uses problems to chip off the rough edges in our lives. He comes along with a little chisel and hammer, and sees that rough edge, and goes "chink." Then He sees another rough edge, and "chink." Sometimes there's a great big rough edge, and He gets out a bigger chisel and hammer and goes, "CHINK!" Sometimes He may have to use dynamite ... because it takes different kinds of things to get our attention. But God is trying to shape us into something for His glory and use.

God wants to make us like Jesus Christ. And He does that two ways. Through the Bible, and through circumstances. When we read the Bible, He helps make us like Christ. As we go through circumstances, He forces us to become more like Christ. You see, the easy way is this. God says in the Bible, "Be patient." And we're patient.

But when we don't learn it that way, God will just put us in a traffic jam, force us to learn patience. We read the Bible and it tells us, "Be humble." So we can do it the easy way and just do what God wants. But if we don't, that's okay, because God will teach us the hard way. He'll humiliate us. God will get His message across.

Paul learned that lesson. He talks about his thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it was. It was some type of irritation, maybe physical, maybe emotional. It says three times he prayed desperately, "God, take this situation out of my life." And God said, "No way, Jose." Why? Because the purpose of the problem is greater than the pain of the problem. If God took it out of the way, Paul wouldn't learn the lesson that God wanted him to learn. So God sometimes says "no" to the removal of a problem, because He wants us to learn something first.

In Hebrews it says that Jesus was made perfect through suffering. How do we think we're going to be made perfect? The same way. 1 Peter talks about how there are seasons in life. In life we have good times and bad, things change. There are springs and summers and falls and winters. All sunshine and no rain makes a desert. All rain and no sunshine ... you need an ark. We want balance in our lives. We want seasons in our lives to season us, to prepare us to be what God wants us to be.

Now, the question we ask for this is, "How can I grow from the problem? How does God want to perfect me through this problem?"

Let's wrap up. Our problems are not the problem. The problem is the way we respond to our problems. When do problems become real problems? They become real problems when we get a bad attitude about them. When we lose our perspective, when we let go of our values. They become real problems when we lose our sense of humor, when we start holding pity parties. When we start blaming other people for our circumstances.

(Saw a bumper sticker that said, "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you place the blame.")

I was teaching a class once and we talked about our problems in life, and I explained that God always gives us the strength to bear any burden He may place upon us. And He gives us the grace to overcome all evil with His help.

And I asked, "Are there any comments?" A hand slowly rose in the back of the room, and the person said, "Pastor, I know that God doesn't cause us evil. And I understand that He only tests our faith to give us a chance to grow stronger as His children. But, you know, I still think that sometimes He overdoes it."

What do you think? I think this. Romans 8:28. "We know that in everything God works for good with those that love Him, who are called according to His purpose." In everything, even our problems.

Let's pray:

Now, let's think about these questions as we pray. Just ask, Lord, are you using this problem to direct me? If so, which way do you want me to go? Lord, are you using this problem to inspect me? If so, what does it reveal about me? Lord, are you using this problem to correct me? If so, what should I change? Father, are you using this problem to protect me? You know what's best. God, are you using this problem to perfect me? If so, chip away, Lord! Make us more and more like your son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Help us to see that the pain of the problem is a lot less than the purpose, that you are teaching us and perfecting us and that in all things you work for our eventual good. And for that we give you praise and call you good.

And the people said, “Amen.”