We can never be thankful for troubles, but there is a way that God can use our troubles to bless other troubled people.
ACTS 14:22, PSALM 34:28, AND 2 CORINTHIANS 1:3-4: HOW OUR TROUBLES CAN BLESS OTHERS
INTRODUCTION
All of us have lived long enough to know that life is filled with disappointments, sorrows, pain, trouble.
Some people believe that if we just love God enough we will always live in the sunshine.
All our troubles will be over and life will be always be beautiful.
But that’s not the way it works.
In Acts 14:22 we read that Paul and Barnabas “strengthened the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Our disappointments, our illnesses, our difficulties aren’t sent by God—at least not usually.
They come to us because we are humans and live in an evil, godless world.
This world is a world of sin and darkness, and we experience the troubles of the world just as unbelievers do.
Troubles can make us feel sorry for ourselves.
They can make us bitter and unloving.
Worst of all, troubles can make us doubt God.
You have seen this happen; I have seen this happen. It’s common.
Have you ever known someone who, when tragedy struck, said, “This proves that God doesn’t care” or “If there was a God in heaven, he wouldn’t have let this happen.”
We knew a family whose daughter was killed in a tragic automobile accident. They couldn’t bear to think that the God they had learned to love could have caused this terrible thing happen to their little daughter. They quit coming to church for years. Finally, faith came back and they returned.
I. Troubles are troubles and suffering hurts, but our troubles can show us how much we need God.
A. When our sense of well-being and security is torn away from us, we may turn to God and cling to him.
God is our only hope.
He doesn’t take away the sadness but he fills it with his presence.
Trouble forces us to go deeper with God. We feel that our faith is threatened and so we seek God more diligently, we pray more earnestly, we read our Bible with more serious purpose, we come to church with a sense of need, and we determine that we will prove our faith is real.
A Scottish preacher in the last century lost his wife suddenly, and after her death he preached an unusually personal sermon. He admitted in the message that he didn’t understand this life of ours. But still less could he understand how people facing loss could abandon faith.
“Abandon it for what?!” he said. “You people in the sunshine may believe the faith, but we in the shadow must believe it. We have nothing else.”
B. Psalm 34:18 tells us: “The Lord is near the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
God doesn’t inflict pain on us. He grieves with us in our troubles and disappointments.
And so we come to God in our sorrow and in our need and we find that in him is comfort.
We know he cares. We take a hold of his promise to be always with us and to never let us go.
Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. And Jesus weeps with us at the graves of our loved ones.
II. But today I want to go farther. I want to talk about how our sufferings can make us useful as Christians.
A. Troubles can help us sympathize, and they can open up opportunities to help others.
In 2 Corinthians 1:4 Paul reminds us that “God comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
God doesn’t comfort us to make us comfortable but to make us comforters.
The world is full of trouble. All around us people are crying.
Hunger, sickness, oppression, slavery, broken marriages, abused children, people out of work.
Pain and sickness, the loss of loved ones, the fear of death…
As we feel the pain of our own losses, our grieving hearts open our inner eye to the world in which people are suffering much greater losses even than ours.
We know how it feels and we want to help.
A great novelist said, “The important thing is to link your sadness to the sadness of others."
B. What can I do? What can you do?
I can pray and cry out to God. God wants to help, and our prayers help release his power in the world.
Some can give money. Some can pray. Some can offer a word of encouragement. Some can weep with those who weep.
CONCLUSION
Let me close with something a woman wrote in a letter to another Christian.
This is from a letter written to the Christian author J. B. Phillips.
She had suffered greatly. She had had a lonely and unhappy childhood.
Her husband became psychotic and deserted her leaving her with three small children to bring up.
She was poor. Money was always a problem.
Polio had left her handicapped.
Her daughter had a mental breakdown and had repeatedly attempted suicide.
This woman wrote to Mr. Phillips about had God had been faithful to her throughout all this time.
She ended her letter with these words:
“By no other thing than by suffering do we learn to come into union with Jesus more fully or more speedily.
And to me the greatest value of any form of deprivation (quite apart and beyond one’s spiritual life) is the wonderful way in which it can be used by God….
People will not listen truly to a fit person who tells them to offer pain to God and try to rejoice in being able to share his sufferings and the burden of the world!
But when they see me crippled and that I know what pain is all the time, then they listen and will think about it.”
Is anyone you know having a hard time and for whom you can offer friendship, sympathy, and prayers?
Maybe that is the best way you can put your faith to work.
Maybe that is what Jesus wants you to do for him today.
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