-Transcript-
00:39 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe.
00:43 Welcome to the program. Pastor Clark Covington here. KJV Cafe program.
00:48 You’re tuned in. Amen. I thank you for that.
00:52 I thank you for tuning in. We, as always, are getting to very important matters in the Bible that can and will have a life-changing effect on us if we go ahead and study it up and apply it to our hearts and our lives. And that’s what I love about God’s Word.
01:05 God’s Word doesn’t shy away from the hard things of life and God’s Word doesn’t shy away from guiding us when we go through hard times. Now maybe you’re going through a hard time today. Maybe you just went through one.
01:18 Maybe a hard time is on the horizon. God’s Word has a lot to say about how we are to deal with difficult times and we being those that are saved, those that have believed on Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And I believe the Lord wants you to know that you should have faith in times of trouble for the believer here.
01:39 Jeremiah 29:11, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Now that’s our text verse and when you look on that verse and you encounter a challenging time, are you able to read that verse and say, yes Lord I know you think thoughts of peace towards me and you don’t think thoughts of evil and you want to give me an expected end.
02:03 Do you think that? You know, okay God you love me, you love me so much, but you’re putting me through the ringer here, right? You know maybe it’s hard to think that.
02:12 I’ve been through hard times. I’m sure you have too. And if we’re honest, some of the things that we think about or we even pray about during hard times, it causes us to doubt, right? You know there’s times where I’ve gone through a hard time and you know you want to know what God’s up to.
02:34 Well I believe the Lord has given us in his Word exactly what he’s up to. So starting with the idea of Jeremiah 29:11 that God loves us and he created us, we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. That when we’re saved we’re born again, we’re one of His, Amen.
02:50 He loves us so much he sent his only begotten, as John 3 16 tells us, to die on the cross for our sins. And we realize that our sin debt is paid, it’s already been done.
02:57 We accept Christ as Savior, that we are saved for an eternity and that again we are his and that we have the Holy Spirit living within us.
03:06 That he sent many prophets and evangelists to tell us the good news so that we could be saved.
03:11 You know, you should thank God for your salvation. Thank God for the one that preached it to you as well, Amen.
03:17 I thank God for the teachers and preachers in my life that didn’t compromise, they didn’t try to tickle my ears, but told me like it is.
03:25 There’s that old Southern Gospel song, preacher tell me like it is, rather than being my friend. I think that’s a great song.
03:29 I know I butchered the lyrics but that’s a great song, preacher tell me like it is. Not what I want to hear, tell me like it is. And if you have that attitude God’s gonna bless you, Amen.
03:38 We go through hard times and those hard times they compel us to have faith and we we gain a greater faith as we go through those hard times. Could it be that those hard times are where we grow the most? And isn’t this antithetical to most preaching today?
03:55 That prosperity preacher telling you that God loves you and you can be rich and live easy? The prosperity preacher that cannot mention the word sin? And the Bible preacher said God loves you so much you’re gonna go through hard times even if you’re abstaining from sin. And those hard times are gonna help you to grow.
04:14 But this is for our good. Yes it can be a bitter pill to swallow, it can be difficult medicine to take, amen, but it is good for us. We are to trust God in hardship.
04:27 This individual, I believe he was maybe the son of the founder of Miracle Hill Ministries in Spartanburg, Greenville area of South Carolina, wrote a book called God Wears His Own Timepiece, His Own Wristwatch, and it was about God’s unique timing.
04:45 And in that book there’s a great chapter, and Miracle Hill is a great ministry. They’re a homeless ministry, crisis ministry, they help those with nowhere to go, with housing and shelter, resources, all kinds of things, food, great ministry from everything that I could tell.
04:59 I got to tour the facility up there in Gaffney and it was A-plus. They have preachers come in and preach, it’s wonderful. And what I could tell from that book was that that man of God understood the blessing of hardship.
05:12 And he wrote about in this book how having a teenager, he felt like the teenager was selfish and and wasn’t really listening and all of these things. If you’ve had a teenager maybe you might think of those things too, or some other choice words.
05:26 And so he wanted to wake his teenager up and so he decided to take him to another city they’d never been to, and to essentially be homeless for a week and go through the shelters there and all this.
05:37 And to allow that hardship to grow that child’s faith. And it was a really interesting principle, really interesting parenting advice in a way, because you know we’ve talked about that with our own teenager. My wife’s a first-generation immigrant.
05:54 She was born in a refugee camp. She came to America at a young age, I guess so to speak, but still remembers pretty vividly those times where she didn’t have two nickels to rub together. And she was very blessed to get into the country.
06:11 I grew up in a broken home and had a lot of problems growing up, more than you can imagine, and a lot of self-created problems since. So I’ve been through it too. And we see this kid and we say, he needs something to mold him.
06:22 You know he’s a great kid, our teenager, and I’m sure this was a great kid that the writer was writing about. But this principle of hard times molding us, our character, and building faith and dependency upon God and obedience and all of these things.
06:37 This principle is what God is getting at, I believe, in His Word when He refers to us and lets us know that, hey, we’re gonna go through hard times.
06:47 We’re gonna encounter obstacles, but we are to seek God. And you know God doesn’t leave us alone. Last episode we talked about John 16:16 of the book of John.
07:01 And now Jesus tells the disciples the Comforter is coming. And the Comforter will tell them all truth. The Comforter will convict them of sin.
07:08 And the Comforter will do all these things within them. And when you’re saved, you have the Holy Spirit living within you. That’s the Comforter.
07:14 And that is who we need. It’s a Him, and He is who we need. Third part of the Holy Trinity, He is who we need to help us as we encounter obstacles.
07:26 So if God didn’t want us to go through hard times, and God didn’t want us to grow in hard times, then why did He give us the Holy Spirit, which He Himself calls the Comforter?
07:37 Hey, do you need comfort if you’re doing great? No, you need comfort when you’re going through a hard time. When I’m going through a really hard time, I need like a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a hug, okay, like that. I need comfort.
07:49 And I’m someone that probably wouldn’t ask for those things, but sometimes I need comfort, you need comfort. God gave us the Comforter, amen. Oh, what a blessing that is to have the Comforter.
07:58 And in our church, our little congregation, we constantly talk about, the Bible says don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Well, we want to enrich the Holy Spirit. We want that Holy Spirit kicking within us, like He kicked within Elizabeth when Elizabeth saw Mary pregnant with Jesus.
08:14 We want that Holy Spirit kicking within us. We want that Holy Spirit revived within us, amen. We want that Holy Spirit thriving within us.
08:19 And as we go through hard times, God will show up, Amen. So what does that look like? We talk about encountering obstacles and seeking God, what does that look like?
08:30 Okay, there’s an event, something hard happens. Now that could be something crazy, you know, substantial like you’ve never seen it, something like a pandemic, that’s an event.
08:43 It could be getting a flat tire and, you know, at night you don’t have a spare. It could be losing your wallet, that can be an event. I took my daughter on a little field trip, went to go pick up some radios in Virginia,
08:57 some actual CB radios in Virginia for our ministry, and we went, I took her to lunch, and we had a nice little time, me and my daughter, my daughter and I, and I lost my wallet.
09:09 That’s an event. I found it, praise God, I found it. Well, I guess God allowed me to find it, if you would say.
09:16 Praise the Lord, because we’re not from there, and I can only imagine calling my wife and be like, yeah, I don’t have my wallet, I’m in Virginia, but now that, thank, thank, praise God, praise God, found the wallet, but that’s an event.
09:27 Anything that’s difficult that happens is an obstacle that I’m speaking of here, okay? And so yes, it could be life-changing, could be long and drawn out, or it could just be something just pops up. And as something hard happens, we are to believe in God.
09:41 So we are to have faith that God is a real God, a living God, and a caring God, and that he is there witnessing what’s going on.
09:48 We are to suffer as we wait on God. This is the idea of godly endurance, of running our race despite the fact that we are going through hard times.
09:57 We are to turn to God in prayer. That’s that action faith, the ongoing faith, and activating our faith, saying, Lord, we are gonna pray without ceasing, because you have commanded us to do that in this difficult time. Does God know what’s going on? Yes.
10:13 Does he ask us to pray because it’s going on? Yes. So he knows what’s going on. He has perfect knowledge, but he still desires us to pray.
10:19 And then we should stay in service to God while suffering. That’s obedience, amen? We should continue to keep our head about us. When I lost my wallet, this is a simple example, and probably not the greatest obstacle anyone will ever face, but I didn’t just like, just freeze up, okay? I was gonna look for my wallet.
10:38 I didn’t throw those radios out that we’re getting for the ministry. I didn’t throw them out of the car or try to get rid of them or something. I kept those in there.
10:48 I continue to be a dad to my daughter, make sure she was okay, and so forth, and continue to look for my wallet until the Lord allowed me to find my wallet. We praise God for that. Not that there’s much in there, Amen. But that’s another story.
10:57 It’s a little preacher joke. Okay, so stay in service to God while we’re suffering. Be obedient, Amen. Rather than saying, oh God, how could you be real? This is happening.
11:09 Saying, God, I love you, and I don’t know what you’re up to, but I trust you, right? And then God delivers you from that situation. Whatever it may be, you get deliverance, Amen.
11:17 And then you praise God for deliverance. And that’s true praise and worship, because you’re not saying, oh thank God for this thing that I don’t know about, that I don’t really understand, but everyone else is saying thank God.
11:28 You’re saying, thank God you delivered me. I heard a story of some young folks who were at church camp at a state park in the summertime, and there was a really bad tornado coming, and they took shelter in a cabin, and that tornado was, the eye of the tornado was right over them, Amen.
11:44 And that tornado, as I understand it, was wiping out trees, and it got to the cabin, as has been explained to me by another preacher, it lifted up, went over the cabin, and dropped back down. That’s Godly deliverance.
11:55 That’s Godly deliverance. So when you have that kind of deliverance, when you’re delivered, you praise God with true praise and worship. Now someone may have be hearing this and say, well I had a hardship, and it didn’t end like I thought it would.
12:11 You know, I loved my spouse, and they passed away. Well maybe that was the Lord’s will for your spouse, and if you truly believe in God, then you believe in heaven, and that your spouse is in a better place. That’s why we call it a homecoming, Amen. It’s a great day when they’re in heaven.
12:27 Maybe it was time for them to go home. God’s plan is greater. God’s ways are greater than our ways, and so we have to praise God even when we don’t understand it.
12:35 I spoke to a preacher’s wife, and he was very young and had passed away, and I told her, you know, we’re talking about Romans 8:28, and how does that apply here?
12:45 I said, I can’t understand, but what I do understand is I know that man was saved, and I know that man preached the gospel, and I know that man was called home, and I know that man’s in heaven today without any pain, without any suffering, and I know that God had a plan for that,
12:57 and God has a plan for her, and so we have to trust and praise God and worship Him, because deliverance can look different to a lot of people, but truly if we’re still living and we’re still breathing, God has a plan for us. We should praise him in deliverance, and then what happens in life?
13:11 Does it not repeat? Do we not have another obstacle, believe in God, suffer, endure, trust, turn to Him in prayer, stay in service to Him, show obedience. God shows up and delivers us, we praise Him, on and on.
13:27 You know who dealt with both all both this kind of plan of dealing with events, this kind of godly reaction to events, and also the idea of a pattern of it keeping to repeat?
13:40 You know who dealt with that? The Apostle Paul. I wish I had time. I wish I had time to get to2 Corinthians 11 here.
13:47 My time is about up, but tune in next time. We’re gonna get in to 2 Corinthians 11. We’re going to look at what the Apostle Paul had to endure, and how he exercised these types of actions of faith throughout Scripture.
14:01 It’s incredible what he went through, what God put him through, and how he continued to be obedient and turn to God, and how we can take inspiration from that as we live our lives.
14:09 So please don’t miss that. That’ll be on our next episode of KJV Cafe.
14:13 Again, thank you as always for listening. Take care. God bless and Amen.