00:00Hello everyone, my name is William Chambers. It is good to be here with you all today.
00:04Good to be here with you all, all the time in the Word of God.
00:08That being said, let us, if I had a title for today's message, I would call it
00:14How Suffering Creates Spiritual Strength.
00:20Ah, that's a title right there.
00:22Uh, nobody volunteers for suffering. Nobody ever asks for heartbreak and pain in their life.
00:31Nobody asks for suffering or tribulation in their life.
00:35Yet many of the deepest truths about God are learned through painful seasons.
00:42Mmm, some lessons can only be taught in the valleys of life.
00:46Some lessons about God can only be taught in the tears, in the crying, in the waiting, in the enduring,
00:55in the waiting on God.
00:56Our text today teaches that suffering is not wasted time.
01:01Our text teaches us how suffering can be a classroom that forms mature believers.
01:08God is using your pain to develop you.
01:13Ah, Lord, help us. Let us look at the text.
01:15And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience
01:25hope.
01:27So God is telling us that the Christians should face suffering differently.
01:31The Bible says, but we glory in tribulation.
01:35Tribulation is suffering, meaning we should rejoice in suffering.
01:38That don't make no sense.
01:39Why should we rejoice in suffering?
01:41Most people see suffering as loss.
01:45But Paul is teaching us in this lesson that believers can approach suffering with a different spirit because God is
01:52able.
01:53In the believer's life, God uses pain redemptively.
01:58Believers can glory and rejoice in suffering because God can produce eternal value from your temporary suffering.
02:08Hmm, Lord, help me, help us all look at suffering different.
02:13To rejoice in suffering.
02:15Many believers spend years praying, God, please use me.
02:20Many say, Lord, I want you to deepen me so I can understand you deeper.
02:25Many spend years praying, make me more spiritually mature.
02:29Yes, spiritual maturity usually comes through pressure in your life.
02:37It usually comes through resistance in your life.
02:40God often does his deepest work in the hospital waiting room.
02:45God often does his deepest work in lonely seasons.
02:50He does his deepest work in sickness.
02:52He does his deepest work in disappointments, in betrayal, in hurt, in pain.
02:57He does his deepest work in unanswered questions.
03:00Suffering has benefits.
03:02What do I mean by that?
03:03Suffering worketh patience.
03:05Our culture, it teaches us to get away from discomfort immediately.
03:11Anything uncomfortable, move away from.
03:14It tells us to look for instant answers.
03:16I want the answer now.
03:17I don't want to wait.
03:19It teaches us to go after instant pleasure.
03:22I want my pleasure now.
03:23No delay gratification.
03:25I want it right now.
03:26I want instant relief.
03:28God delivered me now.
03:29I want instant success.
03:30I don't want to work for it.
03:32I want instantly.
03:33But God often develops the believer slowly.
03:36He develops them through trial.
03:39He develops them through pressure.
03:41He matures them through what they're going through.
03:44And he doesn't deliver us because he's trying to use that suffering to build us.
03:50When we go through suffering, it teaches us how to wait on God.
03:54God wants you to learn to wait.
03:56He wants you to learn how to continue with him while you're suffering.
04:01He wants you to learn how to continue to trust him while you're suffering.
04:05Trust me in his pain.
04:06Trust me in his discomfort.
04:08He wants us to learn how to obey him while we are hurting.
04:13So God said, I'm not interested in moving your suffering out of your life.
04:17I'm trying to deepen you with this suffering that you're going through.
04:22God wants suffering to deepen us.
04:25What do I mean by deepen us?
04:26He wants it to deepen our prayer life.
04:30Deepen your seeking of him.
04:31Be in those scriptures and praying through those and digesting them.
04:36He wants to deepen your dependence upon him and not yourself.
04:40God wants to deepen your compassion because when you go through things, you're more compassionate
04:46on other people that go through them.
04:47You're less arrogant.
04:49God wants us to humble us, deepen our humility, and deepen our wisdom.
04:54Suffering reveals impatience.
04:56I'm trying to teach you how to be patient.
04:57And suffering shows how impatient you are.
05:02Oh, Lord, help us.
05:04When you suffer, you see your fears.
05:07They start to expose.
05:08Your impatience starts to expose.
05:10When you go through suffering, it exposes how self-dependent you are.
05:15You need to see these things so that you can get right with God.
05:18Patience is producing endurance in you.
05:22What am I talking about?
05:23Endurance.
05:23It is one thing to know the truth intellectually, to know the word of God intellectually.
05:28But it's another thing to walk through grief, disappointment, delay, and rejection while still
05:34holding on to God.
05:36That's a whole other thing.
05:38Let me say it differently.
05:39It's a difference between knowing scripture verses and surviving through storms with those
05:46scripture verses.
05:46I used those scripture verses and it made me get through.
05:49I used the word of God.
05:51I kept his word and kept, I took his word and it kept me going.
05:55It's a difference when patience is producing experience in you.
06:00You become a seasoned believer the more you stand up on the trial.
06:03You begin to say, I've been through a few things.
06:07It is the suffering in our lives that moves the word from our head to our heart.
06:13It moves the word and it moves truth from our mind and to our heart.
06:20What am I trying to say?
06:21Okay, suffering has the ability to turn into testimony.
06:25A believer who has walked through valleys with God carries a different kind of spiritual
06:33weight.
06:34You've walked through, you've been through, when you talk, you talk different because
06:38you're talking through experience.
06:39God has gotten me through this.
06:40You're able to comfort other people.
06:42It says experience produces hope.
06:45That's what the word says.
06:47Experience produces hope.
06:48What does that mean?
06:50Deep suffering in our life can actually produce deeper hope in God because after surviving
06:58various trials and things in our life with God, the believer realizes he really did get
07:06me through.
07:07We start to see that.
07:08We start to realize that God actually really sustained me through things.
07:13We start to see that God actually carried me through that.
07:16So we start to get hope because if God can carry me through that situation and that situation,
07:21then God can carry me through this situation I'm going through now.
07:24So we start to have hope for the future because we done been through something.
07:28We've been seizing.
07:30The believer that has watched God sustain them through impossible seasons develops durable
07:35hope in God.
07:36Oh, I can function.
07:38Even though things get hard, I can function because God didn't carry me.
07:40We start to believe that I am not alone in this thing.
07:45See, the person that has never suffered, when they go through suffering, they start to think
07:51nothing good can come through this.
07:53But the believer that's been deepened through suffering can say, God brought me through this
07:59before and God definitely can carry me through this again.
08:06Oh, I got deeper hope.
08:07I'm not so shaken by situations because my hope has grown in God.
08:11I have hope for the future.
08:12When believers repeatedly see God sustain them through trials, their confidence grows stronger
08:19in God.
08:20God said, I'm bringing this suffering in your life so I can show you who I am.
08:24I am the God that will stick by you.
08:26You are never alone in me.
08:28The believer that has walked through valleys with God develops a deeper assurance.
08:33I'm assured that he's going to make me, he's going to get me through.
08:36They get a deeper assurance that the future trials will not be faced alone because they
08:42will be faced with God.
08:45This is why we need trials.
08:46This is why we should glory in trials.
08:49We shouldn't look at it like God is trying to hurt us.
08:51The devil wants us to, he wants to destroy our joy, our faith, our love, and our courage.
08:57But God wants to build us and deepen us and give us future hope with trials.
09:02Therefore, we should look at trials, glorying and rejoicing because God is trying to build
09:09me through it.
09:09We should not look at suffering like the world does.
09:13We should look at it through the redemptive work that Christ is working in me.
09:18God is working in me with his suffering and that should be how we look at it.
09:23Help us, God, to look at it that way.
09:25You are developing me through this suffering and therefore I will rejoice.
09:55You are developing me through this suffering.
09:56How am I, whenjeka собой is living under?
09:56And this is where I literally burned my life and I really recently burned my body.
