Live Free with Josh Howerton - When Suffering Strikes | Ep. 222 | Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Suffering cultivates humility and draws us into a deeper dependence on God. Join us today as we take a look at scripture that reminds us what God can do in and through us in the midst of suffering. When everything falls apart, God will be there with you and wants you to run to Him. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's daily drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. This Christmas, we want to invite you and your family to join us for our candlelight services on December 22nd through 24th at any of our six locations. or for church online. For more information, visit latepoint. com.com slash daily drive.

And now, let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive podcast. My name is Mike Bro, and honored to spend a few minutes with you today, so thanks for tuning in. We're spending this entire week just hanging in the promise of God from a passage that is familiar to many people.

Now, if you're new to Bible study, I pray that you will find some fresh hope in these words. So let me just read it to you again. Romans chapter 8 beginning in verse 28 and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance and he chose them to become like his son. And we talked yesterday about how it doesn't say all things are good because frankly all things are not. But he is and he can take all the hard stuff that comes our way and produce some really good things,

some lasting things, some eternal things, on the inside of us. And we talked about how our definition of good, and God's definition of good, don't always match up. We're often thinking life, health, finances, careers, relationships that are always up and to the right. But God's definition of good is whatever makes you and me more like Jesus. And he will use all kinds of challenging circumstances to shape us. Let me give you another thing today that suffering does in us.

suffering cultivates humility and draws us in a deeper dependence upon God. Suffering has a way of cultivating humility and draws us into deeper dependence on God. I was talking about this with my grandson, Jack, the other day. I got 10 of those, by the way. Jack is such a great kid. He's a sophomore in high school. Just got his driver's permit. And we were riding in my truck. I was driving. I'm not that brave yet. And I don't know how we got on the topic, but he brought up how hard times can really challenge a person. faith. And I agreed with him and said, Jack, you know, man, you're exactly right. But you know what really challenges your faith? When things are going great. Because a lot of times people get very

proud and self-sufficient and they forget about God. I mean, dude, you're right. Adversity can be really hard. But prosperity, it could be a killer. So always stay humble and grateful. My wife Debbie is fond of saying our problem is not weakness, it's independence. We often tell ourselves, you got this, man, suck it up, dude, dig down deep. You don't need any. You don't need any. Everybody, certainly not God. Come on, be strong. And our independence makes us stiff-armed God and other people. And God will use suffering to break us from our self-reliance and self-sufficiency and draw us in a deeper dependence on him. Isaiah 30, verse 18 says, so the Lord must wait for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion. For the Lord is a faithful God.

Blessed are those who wait for his help. Did you catch this? that he really does want to help. But he will never force himself on you and me. He's just waiting for us to be humble enough to come to him so that he can show us his love, compassion, and power. I love what Anne Voskamp writes. She says, God's promises never claim that we won't be afflicted. He promises we will never be evicted from his presence. There's another thing I'm learning as well that suffering has a way of exposing God's substitutes in our lives. It has a way of uncovering idols, pretenders, false little G-gods. Listen to Romans 828 again.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. He acts on behalf of those who love him and who want his purposes to be done in their life. Now, this doesn't mean that God is callous to were unbelievers. I mean, not in the least. He actively pursues everybody on the planet with relentless love. But if you keep running to other little G gods, if you love other little G gods, if your purpose is wrapped up in chasing after other so-called gods,

you won't see the good the real God is doing because you're living as if he doesn't exist. The question is when everything falls apart, who are you going to run to? Who are you going to hold on to? What will sustain you through it all? Suffering has this way of clarifying who or what you really have your security tied to. Proverbs 18, verse 10 and 11 says, The name of the Lord is a strong fortress, the godly run to him and are safe.

The rich, think of their wealth as a strong defense. They imagine it to be a high wall of safety. You see, we can build our own imaginary walls to hide behind. We can run to our money, our stuff, our jobs, our reputation, our athletic, or artistic abilities, or our intellect, thinking that those things, that's our high wall of safety. But when life starts pounding on that wall, and man, it will. It crumbles in a hurry. And it's a good day when God uses suffering to tear down

all those false walls of security and to topple our idols and say to us, come on, run to me. I'm a strong fortress. No matter what happens, you'll be safe with me. In fact, many of us have seen how suffering can also be a wake-up call that leads us back to Christ. It just can. C.S. Lewis famously He said, God whispers in our pleasures, but he shouts in our pain. Pain is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Jim Hartell, a guy who suffers from ALS, put it like this. Suffering is the icy cold splash that wakes us up from the complacency of this life. When we get too comfortable, we don't see God's strength and purpose.

You know, I'm guessing there are a bunch of us who would say it was through a season of loss in our life that we were drawn back to God into a relationship with, Jesus. I talked to a guy recently after a church service who had been going through a really painful, totally unwanted divorce, and he said, bro, this is the worst thing, worst thing I've ever been through in my life. But through all this brokenness, I found my way back to God. And God has taken the worst thing and led me to the most important thing. Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10, for God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. We will never regret that kind of sorrow. See,

tough times make us think. They wean us from this world. They drive us to our knees. And if God uses our personal pain to bring us to the end of ourselves and back to Christ, if that's what it accomplishes, then that's good. In fact, that's priceless. So I'm praying that whatever hard things you might be going through, that you'd run to him, that you'd lead on him, love him, seek his refuge, seek his purposes for your life, to know his peace. He really is working behind the scenes in your life, and he wants to do some incredibly good things deep inside of you today. And I'm praying for you all, and I'll see you back tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship,

join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays, at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.