Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this, that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, incomparable relationship with a personal God. male announcer: In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.
Next on “In Touch,” “Wisdom in the Midst of Trials.” Dr. Stanley: Are you going through some trial in your life that you don’t understand? You don’t know why it had to happen to you. You look back and you ask one of two questions. “What did I do to deserve this?” You can’t come up with an answer. “God, why have you allowed this in my life?” Can’t come up with an answer.
And to be truthful and honest, what you want most of all is out of this. “I want to escape it. I want freedom from it. I want all this pain and hurt and disappointment and hopelessness and helplessness and all the things that I’m going through. Naturally, I just want out of all this as quickly as possible.” Do you think that’s the will of God? You say, “Well, sure it is because He’s a good God.
” Well, maybe in a few moments you’ll realize that God has something far more important from His perspective than simply getting you out of this difficulty, hardship, or trial. It may be something in your health, it may be in your marriage, or with your children, your finances, or on your job, or whatever it might be, but what you want is to get out of this.
It’s a trial in your life that you can’t figure out why. And you can’t figure out how to get out, but if God is the God He says He is, why isn’t He here and answer my prayer? Well, I think you’ll find there’s an answer. Because what I want to talk about in this whole message today, I want to talk about wisdom in the midst of trials.
How are we to respond? How does God respond? What is He up to in allowing all these things to happen? In other words, do you want to benefit from it or you just want to get bitter and resentful and hostile toward God because of it? There’s a choice. I can benefit from whatever difficulty I’m facing or I can get better, blame somebody else, blame God, and miss the whole point.
