Welcome [music] to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, November 26th. Running [music] from difficulty isn’t always an option. Today, learn healthier ways to respond to the challenges that inevitably come your way. Adversity is not really a choice. If it were, we’d all say, “No, thank you. We’d just take it some other way.
” It’s not a choice, but it is a reality because we live in a fallen world. And because there is sin and disobedience and wickedness wherever you turn, there’s going to be adversity. So, we’ve all been there. We’ve all experienced adversity in one way or the other. And we would all like to avoid it if at all possible.
But, uh, it’s not possible to avoid it because as we said, we live in a fallen world. Now if you avoid all all possibilities of adversity, you may miss some of the best things in life. So we would have to say that all adversity is not bad. It depends upon how we respond to it. So whatever you’re going through today, wherever you are in some realm of adversity in your family, among your children, financially, at your job, whatever it might be, whatever it may be, it could be that it is a part of one of God’s greatest blessings in your
life. So it depends upon how we respond to it. So, I want you to turn to 2 Corinthians, a chapter I want to keep turning to in the 12th chapter, because it’s such a perfect example of the Apostle Paul. And you think about all the adversities he went through, which he lists them in chapter 11. And in spite of his prayers and asking God to take away all of this, listen to what he says about himself in verse 7 of chapter 12. Because of that is, look at it.
because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations. For this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, that is awesome things he went through, to keep him from exalting himself. There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, whatever it may have been, a messenger of Satan to torment me, not make me feel bad, torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.
Concerning this, I implored I didn’t just talk to the Lord. I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And he said to me, listen to this. My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. It’s easier to read that than to live by it. Amen. >> He says, “This grace of God is sufficient for me, for power is perfected in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses. Could we say that? Well content with weaknesses, with insults, distresses, persecutions, prisons, and so forth, with difficulties for Christ’s sake.
Well, here’s what I’ve discovered. When I am weak, then am I strong. So, what I want us to think about, we respond to adversity in two ways. One way is the fact that um some people just even though we’re talking about believers now, some people when they go through adversity, their response is just walk away from God.
