Pillar One: Basic Discipleship - Dealing with Problems in Your Life

The following is a transcript of the Audio and Video for Pillar One: Basic Discipleship - Dealing with Problems in Your Life

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How is your life going right now? Is it going just great, you do not have any problems and life is smooth? Or do you feel like, “Betty, if I started telling you all my problems, we would be here till next month. I have so many problems going on in my life.” You are not by yourself. The rest of the world does too. And the good news is God loves you, and God cares about you. You are so special to God. He has His eye on you. He knows when you sit down and when you stand up. He knows what you are doing right this minute. He knows what you are going to be doing five minutes from now and he cares. He wants to help you. So you say, “Why are there so many problems in the world. I just want to be peaceful and enjoy life.”

I used to have a friend that was traveling with Billy Graham.  He had a wife that was kind of an activist. She was always out fighting everything. He would laugh and say, “All I ever wanted to do was to sit under a palm tree and play my guitar. What am I doing out here?” Sometimes you feel like that with all of these problems. Why can there not just be world peace? Have you not asked that? Because you know when you talk to people, if you travel very much, you see that all people are pretty much alike. They may have different names, unusual ways of dressing, unusual customs.  But when you get to know them, just as a person, they have the same feelings, “I just want a peaceful life. I want a happy life. I want to enjoy life, and I want to get rid of these problems.”

One of the things I find amusing about watching the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel is when they take a team of people to a remote jungle. They find a tribe of people who really do not have much contact with the outside world. They talk in a crazy-sounding language.  You cannot even begin to understand what they are saying, and they have an interpreter. When that interpreter starts asking questions, it is just amazing. They have the same problems you have. They have the same problems I have. And yet, to look at them, you would think that everything about their life would be different from yours. Some of it is, but the basic stuff is the same.  They have problems, lots of problems.

Why do people argue and fight? Do you like to argue, or do you say, “No, I just want it to be peaceful, I just want it to be calm.” Why are there so many divorces? Why can’t people who fell in love with each other, wanted to marry each other and picked their spouse out among everybody stay married? Right after 9/11 in America, a lot of divorces that were in the process of being finalized were canceled. Why? Because people went through something so horrible they said, “What I thought was a big deal is not a big deal, after what we have been through.” But what do you do with these problems? How do you understand what is going on? 

One of the main reasons there are so many problems in this world is because of the D-E-V-I-L, S-A-T-A-N. He is the ruler of this world (John 12:31, 2 Corinthians 4:4). Is God the ruler of this world? No, Satan is the ruler of this world. Is Satan more powerful than God? No. Is he equal with God? No. But he has dominion in this place. All you have to do is look around. You can see where he has been and the trouble he has caused. According to Ephesians 2, he is also the prince of the power of the air. Now, what comes through the air? Media, TV, movies, the Internet. He is over all of that. That is why you see all that bad stuff there.

Every problem is not just because the devil made me do it, or the devil did all of this. A lot of our problems are due to sinful choices. God could have made you and me to be a robot or a puppet. But he did not want that. He wanted people that voluntarily chose to love him, to walk with him and to obey him. He did not want to force us to obey. Because he gives all of us free will, we make sinful choices. They are choices that cause lots of problems.

The third reason for our problems is foolishness. Would you agree? Foolish decisions and doing things that do not make sense at all. They are not really sin, but they are just so foolish. Why would you do something like that? There was a man that heard God telling him He wanted him to go to seminary, and he dropped everything, his income, everything.  He moved his family to another city. He could not get work, the family got hungry and everything blew up in his face. It was just a foolish choice. He did not wait and make a wise decision. He did not wait on God's timing mainly.

Another cause of problems in the world today is that you may be part of a larger group’s problem. Now what do I mean by that? In the 1980s in Texas and over a lot of the United States, the Savings and Loans Banks went under. That was a larger problem that affected everybody. All kinds of securities companies, banks and people who should have made wise decisions, made very wrong decisions.  It put everybody like you and me in a larger group's problems. We have been forced to deal with that. Some of you have lost your jobs and you think, “I did not do anything wrong. They just did not need me anymore because they were going to go under.”

Another reason for problems in the world is a backlash of God's judgment. What do I mean by that? I mean that sometimes things get out of control.  It takes something really serious for God to stop everything and get everything under control again. There are just problems, multiplied by problems, multiplied by problems. God just has to stop it all. What does God say to do with all of this? It is very, very strange. God's ways are so not our ways. We hear what He said to do and we say, “He said to do what?” What did He say to do? Right here in black in white in the Bible. Look at this first scripture, James 1:2-4. “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So, let it grow. For when your endurance is fully developed you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” That is a very powerful piece of wisdom in your life.

Do you want to see the power of God in your life? If you will consider your problems as opportunities for joy, you will look at the problems you are going through right now differently.  They may be overwhelming and you cannot sleep at night for worrying.  But then you make the decision to obey God, and count it all joy. You can only do that by the power of God. You feel like it does not even make sense to do that. Count it joy? God says I am trying to develop something in you. Just like you have to go to the gym and work out to get bigger muscles, you have to work through your problems. They are going to be there anyway.  They are not going away. They will be here until this world is over and done with. And you and I are going to have to deal with them. We have to count it joy. Why? We have to count it joy in order for our endurance to grow and strengthen. Why? When it is fully developed, you become a perfect and complete person. You do not need anything. What does that mean? Does that mean you can be perfect for everything like Jesus? No, it is not talking about that. What it means is that if you can go through something and count it as joy, endure it with joy and find ways to have joy in your life. Then the thing or the problem does not have you. You may have the problem, but the problem does not have you. You are strong. It can get so strong in you, you are able to say, “It can last as long as it wants to, I am sticking with the Lord and I am going to be happy.” Well how do you do that? One way is to be around happy people. Another is to be around the Lord. Another is praise music that makes you dance. It is happy.

I hope this is helping you as you think back on why you have your problems. You can have little problems and you can have big ones. I have had both just like you have. One time I had this house that had the world’s ugliest carpet. It was shag carpet that was orange and brown, 30 years after orange and brown went out of style.  We just did not feel like we could replace that carpet. I got where I could not stand to look at it. About that time I heard Pat Robertson say on the Seven Hundred Club, that when he and his wife Dee Dee had moved to Virginia Beach they were poor.  They were trying to start the TV station.  They had a house that had cracks in the walls. When the wind blew, everything blew through those cracks. His wife was miserable. Pat Robertson said to her, “Dee Dee, do not complain. Do not murmur and do not complain. Just praise God, Dee Dee.” So, she would do it. 

Where did that concept of not complaining come from?  It comes from the story of the children of Israel as they traveled through the desert with Moses. The more they complained, the more they moaned, the more they groaned about their problems, the longer it took on that trip. God was not going to let them go into the Promised Land with that kind of an attitude. Maybe God is not going to let you go into your promised land until you change your attitude. So, what do you do? What did I do with that carpet? You have to find a way to count it joy. Right? So I said, “Lord, how do I do this?  It makes me mad.  It makes me upset. I look at that stuff and I cannot stand it.” You know what the Lord told me?  I know it was the Lord because I would not have thought it. In just a quiet still voice He said, “Do not allow your eyes to go down low enough on the wall that you can see the carpet.” And I thought, “What?”  I went over by the wall where the carpet was. I just let my eyes go down to where I did not actually see the carpet, about twelve inches down.  I told myself, “Okay Betty, you cannot ever look any lower than twelve inches in any of your rooms.” Now does that sound silly? It made me laugh. It made me count it all joy. I did that. And it helped. It worked and I began to praise God: “Lord, thank you. Thank you for this carpet. I am not going to murmur. I am not going to complain. Thank you that you have everything under control. Thank you.  You know that I do not like it. God, I am not going to lie to you. I hate it. But thank you and I count it all joy. Right after that we had a situation occur where we received some money from an insurance claim. We did not have to use it all to fix the problem, and I got new carpet. How about that? God knew what he was doing. I want to ask you something. Do you think I would have done that if I had not counted it joy? Do you think God would have done that special thing for me? I do not think he would have. When you are looking at all your things, think about that. As you deal with all of your problems, count it all joy.

You have to develop endurance, just like you have to develop muscles. What is another good thing that comes out of this endurance? It can cause you to look at life differently. Sometimes you are in those problems, and all you can see is from one angle. It is like having a sore toe.  When somebody steps on the toe, that is the only thing you can think about. Developing endurance means going with something way past the second mile.  You just have to keep going as long as you need to go, like the Energizer bunny. Then you begin to look at life differently and you count it all joy. You find yourself saying, “Well, okay. What is something good about this? Well, I guess I could say this is good. What else? I could probably say that is good.” And then the next thing you know you start laughing about it. Then you start talking to your friends about it. Have you ever had friends get together, start talking about their troubles, telling their stories and start laughing so hard they have tears in their eyes?

Another reason that you need character training is because the battles only keep coming. They may even increase.  You need to be ready for the next one because it might be bigger. As long as you are alive, you are going to have problems. I wish I could tell you to get Jesus in your life, make Him number one, sell out to Him and you will never have any more problems. It does not work that way, does it? But the thing is, when you get right with God, get Jesus in your life and He becomes number one; I promise you this, life does become easier.  You learn how to handle things and move in different ways. God wants you to learn that.

You do not have to feel joy. You just have to count it all joy. That is what it says in the Word. Who is our example of that in the Bible? Jesus. It said Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame of it, in order to receive that prize. Now there is your example. None of us have ever sweat blood through things being so hard. None of us has ever had to die for somebody else’s mess, somebody else’s problems. And Jesus willingly did it. And he had joy. We can have joy, too.  If you are lying in a hospital bed right now and you are so ill, you can count it joy there. What if you cannot even speak?  You can still count it joy, because the Lord can read your mind. You have heard the saying that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. You might be surprised to discover how strong you really are.

My mother died when I was really young.  I have had my stepmother for over 30 years.  She is a good woman. By nature, she is an introvert. She is a really sweet woman. I just really love her. My dad was strong; strong willed, strong minded, in control, running everything.  Then he got very, very ill. There were a lot of problems associated with his illness. He was dying and we did not know it. One day she had the Lord speak to her while she was in the car. She had to take my dad to another town for treatment, and she did not think she could do it. The Lord spoke to her and He said, “You can either sit down or you can get busy and help, because you are needed.” And she said, “Betty, that is all I needed to hear. It did not matter how great the problems were; I could handle them. And God would give me the strength.” Our whole family was commenting on it. We were saying, “Look how Grandmother Inez is just taking over. She is making all of the decisions, running everything,  running his office and doing everything.”  We were so proud of her. And none of us knew that God had spoken to her and told her that.

Sometimes you feel like you are in a fog of your problems. You cannot grasp anything,  feel anything or get any sense of direction. It is like, “What in the world is going on. I do not know how to count it joy, I feel like I cannot even find my Bible.” What do you do? There are three you need to consider. One of them is that God sent you there. What? You mean God sent me somewhere where there were a lot of problems. Yes, think about Pharaoh in Egypt, and Moses, and the children of Israel. There were a lot of problems going on with Moses and Pharaoh. But God sent him there. When God sends you to a place like that, he usually has a miracle set up. He wants to glorify His name. He wants you to glorify Him. He wants you to represent Him in that mess. He wants you to hear Him and obey. Moses was not any different than the rest of us. In fact, if you study the life of Moses, you will notice that he had a temper problem. He could really get mad. In fact, he blew it so much at the very end that he did not get to go into the Promised Land. He just had to go up on a mountain and look over. God said there it is, but you do not get to go in. You did not do what I told you to do. So it is really important, no matter how severe these problems are that you say, “God, what do you want me to do, besides counting it all joy? What do you want me to do? I am going to do it.”

Look at this second scripture, I Peter 4:19, “If you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right. Trust your lives to the God who created you, for He will never fail you.” When you go through hard times, you remember what Jesus said. I will never fail you, and I will never forsake you. That means I will never leave you in the ditch with your problems. He gets in the ditch with you. He wants to. Sometimes when God leads you into something, He is setting up a mess so that He can do that miracle for you. If you know that God was leading you into that mess; stay steady believing that if God sent you, He will lead you out. Sometimes just doing the right things leads to a big mess, and you know it as well as I do.

The second thing about these problems is that sometimes you will have to say, “I messed up. It was me. God, I did it. I am sorry. I have really messed up.” God is tender-hearted and He has mercy. He wants to help you. You cannot say these; “I am so sorry,” if you are not really sorry. You are just crying crocodile tears. No, you just need to be serious.

Another problem people find themselves in a lot is; who knows?  We prayed about it, but look at the mess we are in. You cannot even figure it out for a long time. That happened to us one time. We got into something, we prayed about it, we really did, we prayed, and it turned out bad. It did not turn out great at all. We could not figure out for years what went wrong. We prayed about it. Who knows what happened? Years and years later, I wish I could tell you that we know the answer now. Well, we think we might. But it is that third set of circumstances, the “who knows”.

How should you respond to the problems in your life? There are four things to keep in mind. The first is that the enemy is going to offer you some sort of a shortcut. Do not take it. It is the shortcut that leads to a long path away from God. Do not take it. He will try to get you to do something wrong to cut the pain. In reality it only multiplies the pain. So, do not do it. What would be an example of this? Let’s say you took some office money and you intended to pay it back, and you thought you could.  You had a way you were going to do it, and then all of a sudden the money was not there to pay it back. Then you go out and gamble, bet, play the lottery and all of these things hoping to earn the money back.  Then you lose everything. That is the devil tempting you.

If this is a self-made mess, admit it and accept the consequences because you have sowed some bad seeds. Accept the consequences, move forward and do not complain when you are moving forward. Just trust God. Keep your eyes on God. Watch out, you have two twins who are going to try to follow you: depression and discouragement. They are sent from the devil to stop you.

Look at this third scripture, Hebrews 12:5-7, “My child do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. If it is a God-given assignment and you know God led you into it; and it caused a mess and punishment to you, just hang tough. Hang with Jesus. Make up your mind that you are going to serve the Lord. You are going to finish strong even in these hard times.

The final thing to remember is that this too shall pass. You think it will not, but it will. You will have another chapter in the book of your life. And you can look back and say, “I am glad I did it the way I did it. I am glad I did it with joy. I am glad I learned what I needed to learn. I am glad I was obedient to God’s Word. I am glad I let Him get glory out of it. I am glad I did it.” Sometimes those are your best stories. You can do this thing. Hang in there.

Quiet Time Questions

1. Why are there so many problems in the world?

2.  How can you walk with God through your problems?

3. What is the outcome of "counting it all joy?"

4.  How should you respond to problems?

5. How does God use problems?

6.  After you have solved a problem God's way, how do you feel about it? 

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