For more information on broader aspects of
this issue, please go to Fullness of Life in Christ
How do you see and handle the adversities that come to you in your life? Most of us consider them a nuisance,
something that shouldn’t have happened to us.
Common adversities include ill-health, financial loss, violence of both
physical and verbal types, loss of loved ones, unemployment, disunity and
various traumas such as accidents or just plain misfortune. We almost never see such things as positive,
but always as something bad, calling it a set back, bad luck, misfortune, or if
they the adversity is really difficult we would call it a disaster, calamity of
catastrophe, as indeed they can be. So
why are adversities such a common occurrence in life? Why do they happen and how should we view
them? This is just a short introductory
discussion on the issue.
There
are some basic premises being implemented here.
One is that because mankind is basically sinful, there is plenty of
trouble and strife available in the world for God to use as afflictions to bring
adversity. The second is that because
God is sovereign and in control of the whole world, He is able to utilize
whatever might be going on around us to allow the adversity he wants. Also, it is a Biblical principle that God
uses bad or evil to bring about good. So ,just in case God might appear to be an ogre who only
brings trouble, let it also be known that God also brings good to all men and
protects and keeps them from a wide range of otherwise harmful events – and in
His own time, delivers His own from trouble.
However, let us establish from the Bible that God also initiates the
negatives of adversity, woe and calamity, all for His own purposes, which
normally can be shown to be of ultimate benefit from mankind.
First,
Solomon tells us that prosperity and adversity come from God.
“In the day of prosperity be joyful, but
in the day of adversity consider: Surely God has appointed the
one as well as the other, so that man
can find out nothing that will come after him.
Eccl.
Second, Jeremiah tells us that both woe and well
being proceed from God
“Is
it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed? Lam.
Third, Job, one of the
greatest sufferers of all time tells his wife that God brings adversity.
“But
he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed
accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”
In all this Job did not sin with his lips. Job
Fourth, God Himself,
through Isaiah tells us he created calamity.
“I
form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity;
I, the LORD, do all these things.’ Isa. 45:7 (NKJV)
In this verse God says that He makes peace and creates evil.
(KJV) Different versions of scripture use different words for evil. It comes from the Hebrew word “ra” meaning adversity and calamity.
In addition to those four, there are many other
examples in scripture where God both plans and uses evil for His own glory and
His own purposes – to bring ultimate good from evil – even though we might not
fully understand.
Exodus 4:11. God says that He makes the dumb,
the deaf, the seeing and the blind.
Jeremiah 43:10 God said that the heathen king
Nebuchadnezzar was His servant.
Isaiah
10:5 God called the evil
Assyrians, “the rod of My anger”.
Joel 1:4 and
Genesis 50:20 God MEANT evil for good.
Acts 2:22-23 Peter said that Jesus was
delivered (unto the cross) by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.
Acts 4:27-28 When believers were praying
after Jesus death, they acknowledged that Herod and Pilate only did what God
had decided to permit them to do beforehand.
John
John
God indeed does cause and
use what we might see as evil, difficulty and trauma for His own ultimate good.
As
a believer in God, and therefore believing in what the Bible says about these
things, and as an observer of the human condition of my own and the lives of
others, I believe that adversity, if viewed correctly can have and indeed
normally will ultimately have a positive effect. Of course it is rarely possible to see the
good in adversity just after the difficulty happens. We are emotionally involved in our lives and
will always be shocked or saddened or annoyed at this trauma that has just
happened to us. Some time later we may
well see that it was meant to be and had that difficult event not happened we
would not have learnt what we did.
Take for example the receiving of a few speeding
fines. Not nice! $125 each time really hurts the hip
pocket. But after having these
penalties applied, we might learn not to speed and our lives are better
off. It might have even helped us to
live and not die on our roads. At a
minimum we will have more money to enjoy.
It seems to me that we can learn from adversity, if we take
responsibility for what happens to us. Not that we can ever get rid of all
adversity, but I believe we can limit the damage by learning from the
adversities that come our way. If we don’t
learn from them, we can really suffer long terms effects and never really know
something of the peace and prosperity in life that can be possible. I believe that the God of this universe has a
purpose in allowing adversities to come our way. There are literally dozens of scriptures in
God’s Word that say this in various ways.
So how does God use adversity to teach us better ways
to live. There are many guidances like Psalm 1 which
express God’s expectations about how man should live and the consequences of
not doing so. Basically it says that
those who go God’s way will prosper in life and those who do not shall not
prosper. For those who do it His way,
they prosper and those who don’t suffer. However, for both believers and unbelievers
that is not the end of the story. Here
is the psalm.
“Blessed
is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path
of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law
of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree
planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its
fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does
shall prosper.
The
ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor
sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the LORD knows the way of the
righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
So,
given that basic position that God’s people will do well and those who do not
acknowledge God shall not (even their own human effort
shall ultimately fail
them) let us first look at the reasons for the adversities that come
to believers. Yes they do
suffer them and there are Godly reasons for this. Right through the Bible God tells us to
positively view adversity – to be joyful in it. The average person on reading this might
think that perhaps God is some sort of a nut.
Why should we be joyful in adversity.
For believers the reason
is simple. God uses adversity
to sharpen us up and refine us into the sort of person He wants us to be. Scripture tells hundreds of stories that
demonstrate that principle. King David
once said that had God not afflicted him he would not have learned right
ways. The Bible also teaches those
principles in many places. Believers
who know and realize this is how God works, normally after asking God lots of
“why’s”, eventually come to realize that many clouds of misfortune will
probably have a silver lining. Of course
any adversity caused by our own stupidity is exempt from this good. God does not reward us for doing stupid
things. But genuine adversity allowed by
God for our own benefit, will bring benefit if we take notice of the point
being made and change our attitude and behaviour
accordingly.
So the adversity suffered
by believers, providing it is not caused by their own stupidity, will
ultimately benefit them if they view it as God’s teaching of them. Mankind is sinful and stubborn and like a
child needs disciplining for his wrong ways and stubbornness, so do we need to
correct our ways as adults when we still need to learn more of God’s ways. God actually allows or causes such
adversities as an act of His love for the believer, so that He can bring
greater benefit to the believer out of the greater obedience that
results in the believer’s life.
What of the adversity
that come to the unbeliever?
Before we can look at that there is one more thing about the believer
that needs to be understood. It is
simply that he believes in God and what Jesus has done on the cross and by way
of His resurrection, in order to bring life to the believer by his trust and
obedience in God. He belongs to
God. He believes that God made all
things. He believes that God can keep
and guide him through life and that he will be saved from eternal death and
live forever with Christ. He has
crossed over the line from death to life.
As yet, the believer has
not crossed this line. He has not yet
had the benefit of knowing these things.
So God’s first task with the unbeliever is to get him to a point where
he realizes he needs the power of God in his life. And to do this, one of God’s ways is to bring
adversity to the life of the unbeliever, in order that he begin
to question his life and who is in control of it. What God intends is that the more He brings
adversity to a life, the more God hopes and believes that the unbeliever might
begin to ask eternal questions about what life is all about – and by his
seeking of truth, and seeking of God, that God Himself meets the unbeliever and
saves him into eternal life.
The sooner the unbeliever
decides to go God’s way, the less he suffers and begins to benefit. Bringing
adversity to the unbeliever is God’s way of showing His ultimate love for him,
to draw him to Himself that He might reward him from His vast storehouse of
good things, that comes from the unbeliever coming
into obedience to the things of God.
The
primary purpose of this writing is to let both believers and unbelievers know
of the principles behind how God works in relation to the adversities of life.
If an unbeliever does not
find out these things he may consider life to be just one long succession of
things going wrong. It may well be –
until the unbeliever takes solace in these words and begins to seek God and His
ways. It is the most important life
lesson anyone can learn.
Norman Grubb spoke of
life’s adversities in this way.
“The Bible makes it plain that God as purposively sends the unpleasant
as the pleasant. No reader (who has read
Old and New Testaments) can call that into question. God’s will and its
outworking in our lives in not permissive, but determined. When even Satan is only God’s agent, and
evil men only fulfilling His foreordained plan, then we can start off by
praising God for adversity and counting it all joy…… Adversity is prosperity in
disguise.” Grubb pp 95
Grubb’s writing on
adversity is worth the read. See details
below.
Nor does the unbeliever
have to put vast effort into his new life as a believer. He will find that he has exchanged his old
life of striving for the new life of letting the Lord provide His strength and
wisdom to his new life in Christ. Many
unbelievers think that if they become believers they will have to try hard and
because they do not think they can do this (they can’t in their old state) they
avoid seriously considering God and what He offers.
So, God uses adversity
both in the life of believers and unbelievers.
With believers to enhance their life by bringing them into closer
relationship with Himself and with unbelievers by bringing them into initial
relationship with Himself so He can call them sons of God and provide for and
guide them into their new life. It is
certain to be difficult and sometimes painful, but the rewards are great for
those who persevere. Ultimately it
settles the eternal destiny of every human being.
Reader, whether you be
unbeliever or believer, try to see your life and the adversity that sometimes
come as a wake up call from God, summoning you into fullness of life with
Christ, both here on earth and later in heaven.
For more information on broader aspects of
this issue, please go to Fullness of Life in Christ
Bibliography
Norman Grubb. Chapter 14 Adversity or
Adventure? in God Unlimited Christian Literature Crusade,
Ken Walker
Email:
kgww-@tpg.com.au NOTE. When using this email address,
please remove the dash (-) before the @ otherwise the
email will not work. This dash is there to stop search engines picking up my
true email address and bombarding me with useless emails.
September 2002