When Your Faith is Tested.

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“My God shall supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory in Jesus Christ!”  Philippians 4:19 God meets our needs when we face impossible situations. And sometimes we face overwhelming obstacles, situations in our lives that seem impossible. We are over our heads, beyond our pay grade, beyond our ability. And when this happens, these are tests for our faith so that we won’t be satisfied where we are, but that our faith can grow. God may put you in the middle of a test. God uses tests and trials of all kinds to develop our faith, to grow our faith! Some of you are facing perhaps a domestic crisis, an impossible situation in your marriage where it seems it’s never going to work. You may be facing something with your children. You don’t know the answers, you don’t know how to handle it. But in times of testing what we have learned is to trust God, to believe God has an answer! Whether it is a mountain or a mole hill, you know Jesus is interested in big things and little things. Sometimes we have the attitude that, “Well, the big things I’ll bring to Jesus, but the little things, I’ll handle myself.” No, everything big and small, we are to bring to Him! For whom all things are possible. And when you face impossible situations and when you don’t know the way in, the way out, or the way through, that’s when you trust in a God who will make a way when there is no way. Trust God! He will meet your needs.

“I Will Have My Rights”

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

2 Corinthians 5:19–21

Dr. H. A. Ironside told of a church business meeting where a bitter dispute arose between members of the board. Ironside said, “I can remember one man springing to his feet and with clenched fists saying, ‘I will put up with a good deal, but one thing I will not put up with, I will not allow you to put anything over on me; I will have my rights !’ An old Christian responded, ‘You did not mean that; did you? If you had your rights, you would be in Hell. And you are forgetting that Jesus did not come to get His rights; He came to get His wrongs, and He got them.’ I can still see that man standing there for a moment like one transfixed, and then the tears broke from his eyes and he said, ‘Brethren, I have been all wrong. Handle the matter however you think best.’”

Before we insist on getting what we deserve, we would be wise to stop and reflect on exactly what that would mean. So often we insist on getting our own way, forgetting that Jesus did exactly the opposite. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Philippians 2:5–6). If Jesus had insisted on clinging to and receiving His rights, we would have no hope of salvation.

Today’s Growth Principle: 

Jesus took our sins to provide a way for us to avoid getting what we deserve in God’s judgment.