Honoring God Through Adversity–Part One By Jeff Foster
Merriam Webster defines adversity this way; “a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.” It is further derived then from the Middle English adversite, which means “opposition, hostility, misfortune, hardship.” I think we all understand what adversity is after what we have seen in the world during the last few years. We have either lived it or felt it through someone we love. Adversities can either make us get serious about our prayer life or drive us further away from God, depending on our attitude. We all go through trials sometime in our life. Some folks, it seems, have much more than others. But we can be assured that God is able to use each trial we go through to increase our faith and ultimately bring glory to His son, Jesus. “Why do we even have these trials?” you may ask. Adversity comes about in our life from three different sources. First, God sometimes creates a trial to test our faith, such as when He commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. I can’t imagine placing any child on an altar to take its life as a willing sacrifice. Thankfully, God does not put trials on us greater than we are able to bear without providing a means of escape. God provided a substitute sacrifice for Abraham, a way to escape this trial because he was obedient to God’s command. And because of Abraham’s faith and obedience during this trial, we are still blessed today.
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“That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:17-18 KJV) That’s us today. When we get to heaven, we need to tell Abraham how grateful we are that he was obedient in that trial. Second, adversities can come our way from attacks by someone else or even Satan himself, through no fault of our own. Job is a well-known example of this type of adversity. Poor old Job probably never knew while he was here on earth what caused his horrible trial. He also didn’t know that his story would be told for thousands of years to come. How often have we been comforted by Job’s story when we face things we don’t understand? Through his story, we can see the sovereignty of God. He reminds us that God is not taken by surprise by the circumstances that so easily upset us. God is fully in control of the situation and already has a plan for how He will use it to strengthen our faith if we simply stay steadfast in our obedience to Him.
