-Transcript-
00:38 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:44 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here. Another edition of KJV Cafe.
00:49 Thank you for tuning in. Hey, if you’re listening, I certainly appreciate that. I appreciate it.
00:55 Amen. You got a cup of coffee? You got something to refresh yourself with? A tea? Water? Maybe you got your Bible handy? We’re ready to go. We’re ready to dive in.
01:06 I’ve got myself a Guatemalan coffee today and it is absolutely great from Hemisphere Coffee Roasters out in Ohio. They are fantastic little coffee roaster and they support a Christian named Diego. There’s a great documentary about Diego online if you look it up, Diego’s Coffee or something.
01:28 It’s really incredible what God did through that man and what he’s doing through that man. But today we’re not just talking about coffee. We are talking about God’s Word and oh how God wants you to know that you should and would and could and need to have faith in times of trouble.
01:44 Are you going through hard times today? Maybe there’s something going on in your life that’s really hard. Maybe it took you by surprise. Guess what? God has not left you.
01:55 He hasn’t forsaken you. Amen. If you’ve been saved, if you know the Lord, He is there right by your side.
02:00 And if you don’t know the Lord, let today be the day of salvation. Amen. We grow in hard times.
02:07 Is that not true? We grow in hard times. Our Lord loves us so much that He wants us to grow more perfect in knowledge of Him through these difficult times. And when we get to our end, the end of our lives here on earth, we will be thankful for His molding of us because we are then made more like Him.
02:33 And at that time, when we step into eternity and we’re no longer here on this earth, we’ll look back over those hard times and see how the Lord had shaped us and made us more like Him.
02:46 What’s our God up to though if He puts us through hard times? I mean, isn’t God love? And doesn’t God love us? And all this morning, yeah, talking to the kids, amen, at home school. I’m a homeschool dad.
03:01 I hope you know that, amen, teaching these kids, little kids. I tell them, God loves you guys. That was the message this morning, Amen.
03:07 We’re talking about John 3:16. Hey, you know, if God’s love, if we’re telling the kids God’s love, if we’re thinking on God’s love, if He’s love, what’s He doing putting all these hard times in your path?
03:15 I mean, yeah, it helps you grow, but it’s hard. It’s really hard, right? Let’s first look at why God is love. He gave His only begotten Son, John 3:16, so that you could be saved, so that I could be saved.
03:30 I read a beautiful introduction of Christian book at the library today, the public library, Amen. Yes, I found a Christian book in there. I had to look a little bit, but I found one, praise God.
03:38 And it was beautiful about, the author was writing about how God loved us so much that He gave His only begotten and how hard that would be for her to give her only, not her only, but to give her son up, Amen. And that was a picture of God’s love. He loves us that much.
03:53 He provides us with many prophets and evangelists over the years to share the good news, Amen. How could I preach to you if I hadn’t been preached to? How could I understand the ways and the truths of God’s Word if nobody explained them to me?
04:10 As the Ethiopian eunuch mentions, look, we need these prophets and evangelists, and that’s God’s love sending them. Think about that.
04:17 You say, well, God’s just putting people to work. No, they are dealing with persecution. So God loves this individual.
04:22 This individual loves God. They are knit with God. They are loving with God.
04:27 They have fellowship with God. And God says, okay, go suffer. You know, as a holy, loving God, it hurts Him when that individual hurts.
04:33 And God put those prophets and evangelists in the way, amen, to send them to stand in the gap to teach and preach His Holy Word because He loves us so much. And they suffered, and through that suffering, surely it hurt Him, Amen. But it gives us a sense of peace knowing that’s the level of love.
04:55 And, you know, I can’t help it. I got to jump into a verse here, and then I mentioned that it hurts God. Hold on a minute.
05:03 Yeah, I had to go look it up here. How about Colossians119:20 or so. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself.
05:16 By Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or in things in heaven. Goodness, so it pleased the Father that Christ went to the cross to save us. That’s God’s love.
05:26 And so how can this loving God, how dare He, so to speak, and I’m being sarcastic here, but how dare He send us through hard times after He gave us His Holy Spirit to comfort us?
05:42 Well, could it be to compel us to have more faith? Could it be that that is where we grow the most? I think of, and I could talk about sports all day, but I won’t. This is not a sports radio program, so God called me to the ministry, Amen. I don’t know why I’m just kidding around here today.
06:00 I guess it’s such a serious topic, but it is. And so in football, we had a really good coach, Amen, in high school, and he was a very demanding coach, and we went through a lot of hard times. Boy, he put us through the ringer.
06:13 I think his motto was, the game will never be as hard as practice, and that certainly was true, and he was tough on me. But those are the times I reflect on often as an adult, seeing the growth in my character and discipline and all these things that I learned going through that, and I owe that man a debt of gratitude for it. And so as I saw that in an earthly fashion, or as I see that in an earthly fashion, maybe you have a similar story.
06:38 Maybe there was a teacher that was tough on you, but helped you grow, or a coach, or maybe going through the military changed you, or whatever it is. Sometimes being put through the fire is what we need to refine us. And so that is what God is doing.
06:52 He loves us so much, He’s not going to be okay with you not being okay, Amen. Now the prosperity preacher says, God loves you so much, you can be rich and take it easy. You can live easy.
07:04 That’s what the prosperity preacher tells you, even though it’s a lie. The Bible preacher, and we know God’s Word is truth, said, God loves us so much that we will go through hard times to grow. I mean, and I’ll give you examples of great men and women of God that have gone through hard times and grown, amen.
You know, you go through the Hebrews Hall of Champions or Hall of Fame, and you tell me in chapter 11 of Hebrews, who didn’t go through a hard time, Amen, that’s in there, that had great faith. They all did. To test your faith is to have great faith, right? So we are to trust God in hardship.
07:34 And the underlying theme of this message, here’s what I want you guys to think about, okay? That number one, God loves you. Number two, God’s putting you through a hard time because He loves you and He wants you to grow. And then number three, obedience is better than sacrifice.
07:46 You don’t have to feel the pressure to do anything more than God calls you to do. And on Sirius XM, there on the Enlightened Channel, Southern Gospel Channel, there is an artist that gives a great little mini, almost sermon on this, and I, for the life of me, couldn’t get their name, but they explain something to the extent of, in this world, it’s very valued to be creative and be splashy and all these things and do great things. But truly, in God’s eyes, He just wants us to be obedient and do what He’s called us to do.
08:17 And this is true. You know, this is biblical, 1 Samuel 15:22. And Samuel said, hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
08:34 So here we have Samuel, the prophet Samuel, telling us it’s better to obey than to do something big and, you know, colorful and lively. And to listen is better than to offer the fat of rams or that big sacrifice, thinking of a big expensive sacrifice. You know, you could have somebody that God calls them to go to their prayer closet every single day.
08:55 And maybe they have a million dollars in the bank, and badly, they want to write a massive check and walk into church and slap that thing down and say, here you go, this is what God’s doing over here. And God’s saying, no, just go to your prayer closet.
09:06 And as long as they go to their prayer closet, as long as they’re doing what God’s called them to do, He’s going to help them and grow them and bless them in what they’re doing.
09:16 But we oftentimes, when we go through hardship, we think we need to do something exceptional, you know. And by the way, maybe, yes, as you go through a hard time, God is calling you to do something that might look exceptional or different, you know, maybe for the longest time, you’ve kind of felt that tug, the Lord’s calling you in the ministry.
09:38 And, you know, you don’t want to give up, you know, bowling night with the boys, or you don’t want to give up whatever else, right? You don’t want to give up something or you’re, you know, God’s calling you to do something in the ministry, but you got this second job, or you’re trying to get a degree or whatever it is.
09:57 And you just feel like, oh, you know, this would be exceptional. This would be sensational if I just left what I’m doing in this life, which everyone says is good, and did this big thing for God. You know, maybe God wants you to do that.
10:06 But oftentimes, as Christians, God’s calling us to be obedient. And so when we go through hard times, what we can see here, as Jeremiah29:11 tells us,
10:15 and I’m gonna read that here, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you, sayeth the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, togive you an expected end. So we know that God loves us, and He has thoughts of peace and not of evil.
10:28 He wants to give us an expected end. And then as we go through this earthly sojourn, as we travel on this, you know, in this broken world, we can expect turbulence, but we shouldn’t panic. We can encounter obstacles, and we should seek God.
10:43 And we should trust the Lord’s plan, because it is for our own good. And part of that plan, I believe, is to work with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And this little prescription for dealing with hard times.
10:56 Number one, understanding God’s love. Number two, understanding we grow that when we face obstacles, that we can expect turbulence and shouldn’t panic. That we encounter obstacles and seek God.
11:07 And that we trust the Lord’s plan, because it’s for our good, and work with our brothers and sisters in Christ, can be applied to really any man or woman of God that has been used by the Lord.
11:21 And I rarely like to use absolutes, because a lot of reasons. You know, there’s always like, you know, the exception, right? But truly, I think you can apply this to anybody.
11:32 And I’ll give you a few. Fanny Crosby, blind from six weeks on, goes on to write over 8,000 hymns, including Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, and Blessed Assurance. Was so accomplished.
11:44 She was the friend of presidents. She’s a prolific writer. She’s incredible.
11:49 She was blind, really, from six weeks on, right? She encountered turbulence. You know, she had great turbulence in her life. She didn’t panic.
11:58 She was very different. And imagine the time, you’re talking about 1800s, you think of the time that she was living. That was not a time of great attention to the disabled, like we have more attention today.
12:07 Maybe not enough, but we have more attention to the disabled today. But she went through all that, Amen. Coreton Boom was another one that helped Jewish people escape from the Nazis. She hid them in her own home.
12:19 She ends up being caught and arrested in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. And she witnessed these prisoners. She narrowly escaped death.
12:28 It was all by God’s providence. She didn’t panic. She sought the Lord.
12:33 She trusted the Lord’s plan. And with Fanny Crosby, with Coreton Boom, another one, D.L. Moody, a great evangelist who was so poor at 17, he was sent away from his home. All of these here, they are of God.
12:48 They didn’t panic. They sought the Lord. And they all worked with their brothers and sisters in Christ.
12:57 They all had faith to do what God’s calling them to do. And as we go throughout this week, as we look at through these different episodes here this week at KJV Cafe, we’re going to look at what it means to seek the Lord, what it means to not panic under turbulence, and what it means to work with our brothers, sisters in Christ.
13:11 We’re gonna have scriptural examples for all of these points to see that God has given us a plan, a path, amen, to thrive under hard times and circumstances, and most importantly, to grow in who He is.
13:26 It’s not easy, Amen. Living as a Christian is not easy, but it’s very fruitful when we start understanding how God operates, because then we get rid of the self-pity, or we get rid of the worldly critiques of our lives, or whatever it may be, and we look to God.
13:39 We look to Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, amen, and then we can really run that race with endurance, with patience, as I’ve been preaching about recently.
13:49 The idea that God loves us so much that he’s given us his word, his holy word, which we’re told will never fail, will never fall away. It’s an eternal word. It’s his word, Amen.
14:00 He loves us so much to give us this word, to give us instructions on how to have faith in times of trouble. And so I hope you tune in next time as we look deeper at these issues, and how God can and will bless you as you seek Him. I thank you, as always, for listening.
14:15 Take care. God bless, and Amen.