Carol Swenson
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I will pray for Cody.
Here are some thoughts from Charles Stanley as well.
God Has a Purpose for Everything That Happens to You
Adversity has a positive side.
I realize that isn’t a statement you are likely to hear very often. Your first response may have been, “Oh, really? You don’t know what I’m going through!”
To see the positive side of adversity is not wishful thinking, denial of reality, or pie-in-the-sky optimism. Rather, it is a statement of faith.
The positive side of adversity is rooted in two strong beliefs:
First, God has a plan and a purpose for the life of every person, including you. If you desire for God’s plan and purpose to be accomplished in your life, the Lord will go to whatever lengths are necessary to see His plan and purpose fulfilled in your life. He will not go against your will, but if your will is to desire His will, then the Lord will move heaven and earth to see that His will is done in and through you. Believing this means, of course, that God can use any adversity that comes your way for His plan, to further your purposes on the earth or to work His purposes within your life.
Second, God can turn things to good for you regardless of the situation you are facing today. You may think your life has derailed and crashed beyond any repair. But the Scriptures say, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).
The Lord has a way of arranging things so that good comes from bad. That’s His very nature as Redeemer—to take what attempts to enslave us and to use it to free us. Not only that, but when the Lord redeems a situation, He also sends a message to other people who observe what God is doing in our lives. That message may bring about many different reactions—from conviction to repentance to praise. What God does for good in our lives is never limited to us; it is always for others, too.
Jesus taught this to His disciples through the healing of a man who was blind in Jerusalem. The disciples asked Jesus after the man had been healed, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). The disciples had been taught all their lives that illness was a sign of God’s judgment. They had no doubt whatsoever that somebody had sinned to cause the condition of blindness.
Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him” (John 9:3). There was purpose to the man’s adversity. The disciples saw his blindness as being caused by something bad. Jesus taught that the man’s blindness was for the cause of something good.
Note that Jesus didn’t say, “This man is blind because he sinned, but God is going to use it anyway.” That would be a much easier statement for many of us to swallow. Rather, Jesus said that God had a purpose higher than anything the disciples had considered. God intended to use the miracle to bring about something positive and eternal in the man’s life and in the lives of people who witnessed his healing.
That puts an entirely new light on any type of adversity we may experience. While there is good reason to be concerned about what causes adversity—which we will deal with later on in this book—our greater concern must always be with what results from adversity. Do we allow adversity to throw us back, defeat us, or pull us down? Or do we see adversity as something that can make us stronger, better, and more whole?
Do we regard adversity as a destroyer? Or do we see it as having within it the seeds that can produce something beneficial and helpful?
Do we see adversity as linked to death? Or do we see it as linked to growth and eventually to eternal life?
Do we look for the results caused by adversity to be negative or situation bound? Or do we look for the results of adversity to be part of God’s miracle-working, for-our-good plan?
This book is concerned with how we can advance through adversity. Adversity can be a teacher.
From adversity, and especially as we work through adversity by our faith and according to God’s Word, we can learn valuable lessons that prepare us fully to be the people God created us to be.
Yes, God has a plan and a purpose for your life.
And yes, God can use whatever comes against your life for your good.
Stanley, C. F. (1996). Advancing Through Adversity. Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
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