Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, April 13th. God's grace is sufficient for every trial, every burden, every unanswered question. No matter what you're facing today, uncertainty, loss, pressure, or private struggles, his strength is not diminished and his supply is not limited. Join us for a new series designed to help you stand firm in life's challenges by learning to rely on his abundant grace for today. There are all different kinds of ways to respond to affliction and suffering and hurt and trials and tribulations in our life. Sometimes the simplest thing to do is just to rebel against it. Sometimes we choose to very historically reserve ourselves and decide we're just going to bear up under it. Sometimes we whine and groan and we moan and we complain about it. Once in a while we may understand what Paul meant and we may respond the way Paul responded. That is with joyful understanding of God's purpose in allowing that affliction or that pain. I wonder which of those best describes the way you respond to suffering and heartache in your life. You know one of the errors that's going around today is that if you pray long enough and hard enough and if you believe enough then God will change any and every circumstance of life. And that change depends really on whether we have enough faith or we pray long enough, hard enough, intensely enough. Well if that's true then there's one passage of Scripture that we have to look at again. It's the passage that I want to look at today because I believe this is the pinnacle passage in all the Bible, the mountain peak passage when it comes to dealing with the grace of God and the light of how it relates to our pain and our suffering and our heartache and our hardship that we endure in life. All of us are going to experience those things. It may be physical pain as a result of some disease or some accident. It could be something even worse than that and that's emotional pain because of a broken home, because of the loss of a loved one, because of loss of finances, because of circumstances and situations because it could take a thousand different avenues. There's all kind of causes of pain. But how does this grace of God? This goodness and graciousness of God which He pours out toward us without any regard to our merit or our worth in spite of everything we deserve. What about this grace of God in our life, in the times of pain and suffering and heartache and also what about those things that don't seem to change? Where is the grace of God when things don't change? Where is the grace of God when you've prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing happens? Your friends have prayed and you've prayed and you've obeyed God and trusted Him and took your stand and claimed this and claimed that and claimed the other. Where is God? Well, that's a good question because you see there are a lot of folks in situations and circumstances that don't seem to change and they have prayed and their friends have prayed and they've obeyed God and they've given, they've done everything they know to do. Nothing's changed. What about the grace of God? Well, that's what I want to talk about and I want you to turn, if you will, to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Second Corinthians chapter 12 is Paul's answer to this very problem. What about my suffering and my heartache, my difficulties, my hardship, my pain when I have prayed and prayed and prayed and things just don't seem to change? I'm sure that some of you who are listening are facing that very question. God, I've done everything I know to do and nothing has happened. Listen with the apostle Paul says, you recall that God has been giving him these tremendous revelations of truth and he's understanding things he's never understood before, things that people have never understood before him and so he says in verse 7, beginning in verse 7 of chapter 12, and because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan debuff it me to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this, I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me and he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly therefore Paul says, I will rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Then he says therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Now either this man is faking us out or he knows something that most believers do not know and of course the unbelieving world could never possibly know. Here's the man who says, I am well content with such things as weaknesses, insults, persecutions, pains, troubles, trials, heartaches, you name it, he says, I'm just content in all those things. How in the world could anybody be content in all of that? Well I want you to jot down three statements and then we'll talk about each one of them. I'm going to give them to you one at a time and I want you to take the time to write them down, not going to hurry them, because they're so very, very important. I want you to jot down this entire statement. Grace is God's answer to my pain and affliction and circumstances of life when he may or may not choose to change my circumstances. God does not guarantee to change my circumstances no matter how painful they may be. Now let's look at the Apostle Paul for just a moment. The scripture says here in describing his own situation, the nature of his pain was, he called it a thorn. He says, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh. Now the word thorn is, the only time it's used in the New Testament, was like a stake sharp on the end. It was the kind of stake that oftentimes large ones would be placed around fortifications to impale the enemy when they attacked a fortification. Paul says, God had allowed Satan. He says this messenger of Satan brought about this stake that came into his life, this thorn, this painful experience in his life. And he said, it was there and it somehow it just continued there. Now we don't know what the nature of it was. It could have been some physical illness. Some people say it was some form of epilepsy that caused him to be depressed at times or some eye disease or whatever. Or some people say it was some form of temptation that continually harassed him and continued to confront him. Or it could have been his enemies who continually assailed him because everywhere he went, they either were there before he got there to attack him or they soon showed up because Paul had many, many enemies, the Judaizers, who absolutely hated everything that the apostle Paul preached and taught. And so he was forced to deal with and to live with what he called this thorn in the flesh. And so the apostle Paul began his ministry and lived with this kind of thorn. Now I want you to listen carefully because I know that God has something to say to every single person who hears this message. Sometimes God will respond to our prayers. He will respond to our acts of obedience in other areas. He will respond and change our circumstances as a result of our prayer and obedience. Sometimes he will. In fact, most of the time he probably does. And so when people say, well all you've got to do, brothers, just name it and claim it and God will do it because he does often and probably most of the time is no sign that he'll do it all the time. And we have a right to say, well wait a minute now. Does not the Bible say ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be open until you? Don't we have a right to expect God to change our circumstances, to take away our pain and suffering and to alter our environment when things get so difficult we just can't stand them anymore? He says ask. And does he not say in Hebrews chapter 4 that we have ready access to the throne of grace that in time of trouble we can go to the throne of God and receive what we need in time of need, the grace of God in time of need? Then why shouldn't he change my circumstances when I come to him and ask him? Why would God allow me to suffer hurt and pain with a physical or emotional pain? Why does he keep it there? Why does he just let it lay there? And besides that, when you think about how good God is, does he not say in James chapter 5, for example, that if there's any sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church, let them confess their sins and nought them with all and the prayer of faith will save the sick? I mean, all these scriptures imply and readily confess and declare that if things aren't the way they ought to be, just talk to God and he'll change them. If any of you have ever been in a situation where you prayed and prayed and prayed, cried and cried and cried, begged and begged and begged, promised and promised and promised, and heaven was absolutely dead silent, nothing changed. And you know, it's interesting, you can read this past subscription, everything is just going fine, but you can read this past subscription and say, amen, praise the Lord, amen. And man, if you're in the middle of some pain and heartache and suffering and you read this passage, you know what happens? It isn't quite as simple. You see, it's real simple to read this when everything's going your way. But when you're hurting badly and your circumstances appear to be impossible and you read this passage, somehow the joy just doesn't leap off the page, does it? Somehow it just sort of wiggled a little bit and just sort of lays there. And he says, he cried out to God. He cried out to God and he cried out to God. He says, three times he brought it to God. Now sometimes God will change our circumstances. You know what? Sometimes He won't. You say, wait a minute, wait a minute now, wait a minute. God said, ask Him that He should be given you, seek Him, you should find all these verses we quote about prayer. And He says, come to the throne of grace, praying for the sick, for them to be healed. What do you mean sometimes He's not going to change my circumstances in answer to my prayer or in response to my obedience to Him? What kind of God is this? Is He a God of contradictions? Does He make promises over here and fall through over here? What kind of God is this who makes all of these promises and then does not come through to change my circumstances? Well, let's talk about that. Because brother, that's a reality. Brother, who's told you that God will always change your circumstances and always heal you and always make things better than answers your prayer and obedience didn't tell you the truth? What is it that determines whether God changes my circumstances or not? If it is not, listen, if it is not my faith, if it is not how obedient I am and how long I've prayed, how intensely I've prayed, how sincerely I've been, if it isn't that I love God, if none of those things matter, what ultimately determines whether God is going to change my circumstances or not? One simple thing. Now listen to this. What makes the determining factor is God's purpose in allowing the pain and suffering and heartache and trouble and trial and difficult circumstances. What is His purpose? Look at the life of the apostle Paul. He said he prayed for God three times. He says he prayed for God to remove this thing. Remove it. And he said somehow God didn't remove it. Now here was a man who had an awesome responsibility and you would think he would only be right and fair for God to do it. And yet you know what? God didn't remove it. And to my knowledge, there's not a single verse in the Scripture that says God ever removed this thorn in the life of Paul the apostle, his great missionary, statesman, and his great evangelist. God never removed it. He never ever removed it. Paul said the reason God didn't remove it was in order to keep him humble. Now you say, well listen, if God just tells me to get humble, I will. God doesn't have to send me any of those things to get me humble. Well that's what we think about ourselves. But you know what? He said to keep you from exalting yourself because if you exalt yourself, Paul, what you're going to do is ruin my big purpose for your life. Paul, if I don't keep you humble, if I don't keep you on your knees, if I don't keep you weak, if I don't keep you absolutely totally dependent upon me, you're going to blow the whole thing, Paul. And my purpose is far greater than your individual life. Think what you and I would have missed. Two thousand years later, what are we doing? We are reading these epistles, learning how to walk in the Spirit of God, learning the ways of God, discovering who he is. Now this is the same man who is saying now, therefore I am content. I boast about my weakness. Four years later, he's in prison. Listen to what he says in the book of Philippians and the epistle of the Philippians in the third chapter. The apostle Paul learned something. He says, four years later now, more than all the things he says that have happened to me that are good. I count all these things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things. Count them all as rubbish in order that I may gain him. He says, listen, what I've learned about him and what I'm learning about him, he says, there is nothing to be compared to that. He says thorns, stakes, hardship, suffering, beatings, imprisonments, you name it, nothing is compared to that. You know what he's saying? He's saying there's something far more valuable to him than God changing his circumstances. He says, I've learned something that is far more profitable to me than changing my circumstances. Now listen to this. How many times have you and I have come to God with some great petition that we had from him and Lord, now God, I need an answer. And usually here's what we say, God answers in three ways. Yes, no, and wait. He can say yes, he can say no, and he can say wait, but then he can say what he told the apostle Paul. He didn't say Paul, no. He didn't say Paul, yes. He didn't say Paul, wait, you know what he said? My grace is sufficient for you. Paul, my love, my presence, my undergirding, my surrounding, my overshadowing, my providing, my kindness, my gentleness, my provision. Paul, I will be your sufficiency. Paul, my grace, my overflowing, never ending, inexhaustible, adequate, sufficient, fulfilling, contenting love will be sufficient for your suffering and pain and heartache. He didn't say I won't answer. He didn't say I will answer. He didn't say I'm going to answer later. He just said my grace is sufficient. I wonder if that is what God has been trying to say to you in that circumstance in which you find yourself, that you won't so desperately for God to change it. You just want Him to alter it. You've made Him a thousand promises of what you did if He just changed your circumstance. God, here's what I'm willing to do. If you'll just change it, and He doesn't change it. You've prayed and cried and begged and wept and promised and pleaded, you've done everything. He hasn't changed it. Could it be that He has something better than changing your circumstance? You said, no, wait a minute. Don't tell me this stuff about being contended in my circumstances, in my suffering, in my pain. Well, let me ask you this. Do you think one bad circumstance is the only one you're going to get in life? You're just going to suffer one time in life? Is that all? All of us are smart enough to know that suffering and pain and hardship and trial and disappointment are just a part of life. That's the kind of world we live in. So if the only way for God to deal with this is to remove these every single time, there may be some situations and circumstances in which God knows it is better for me to be in that circumstance suffering that pain, that inescapable situation in order for Him to accomplish in my life what He desires. That was true of the Apostle Paul. Are we above the Apostle Paul? So those people who say, well, listen, man, if your faith gets right. All you got to do is name inclaim it. God's going to answer. God is obligated to answer your prayer. He certainly is. Yes, no, wait. Be my guest in the pain. Yes, He is. It may not be what we want. None of us like that kind of answer. We want God to remove it. You see, we say, well, you see, if God just removed it, that will strengthen my faith. When I see Him change my circumstance, it will strengthen my faith. It will strengthen it even more. That He will so enable you, strengthen you, live on the inside of you with such overflowing, everflowing love and grace and goodness and mercy and power and enablement that while your circumstances don't change, in fact, they may get worse and worse, the pressure may become more and more intensified. The circumstance may be such that not only is it pressure, but it's just continual harassment. It may just get worse and worse and worse and somehow there is this awesome sense of indescribable perfect peace. Which is the greatest lesson? Which is the greatest reward? Which is the greatest answer to my prayer? That God has to remove something in order for me to be at peace? Or God, be something within me while the things that steal my peace can steal it no longer? Thank you for listening to Grace for Times of Trouble. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or Intouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of Intouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
