Spiritual Warfare - The Helmet That Is Always Strong

God Centered Theology

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The helmet that is always strong. The helmet that is always strong.

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In 2017, Joni Erikson -Totta surpassed the 50 -year mark as a quadriplegic.

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And it's quoted as saying, I really would rather be in this wheelchair, knowing

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Jesus as I do, than be on my feet without him. She was involved in a horrible diving accident when she was young, and has been confined to her wheelchair ever since.

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She has suffered dramatically, but through it all she has found a deep connection and faith with her

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Savior that she would otherwise never had. She is also said, if I were to nail down suffering's main purpose,

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I'd say it's the textbook that teaches me who I really am.

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And I agree with her. She's right. Suffering's main purpose is the textbook by which it teaches us who we really are.

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Nothing reveals character more than suffering does. It doesn't show you who you really are.

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It shows you where your true alliance and true trust is.

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In the book of Romans now, primarily our text is coming from Ephesians 6, where it tells us to take up the helmet of salvation.

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But as with many of the other sermons, we're going to take a look at some other pieces of scripture to define and articulate why this piece of armor is so important.

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We're going to begin in Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5 and verse 3 says, and not only this, but we also exult, exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings perseverance, and perseverance proven character.

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So I agree with Joni when she says that suffering is the textbook that shows us who we really are, because suffering and tribulation produces proven character.

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And proven character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit who was given to us. You know, so often the question is asked, and it's usually asked in one of two ways.

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One way it will be asked, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

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Another way it's asked is, why would God allow such tragedy and suffering to befall innocent people?

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Well the problem with both of those questions is the false assumption involved in both.

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You see Romans chapter 3 and verse 10 says, there is none righteous, not even one.

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There is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless.

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There is none who does good, there is not even one. See the problem is so many people run around thinking there's good people, that there's innocent people.

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There's none good but God. None. What I'm afraid is, and this is not something that's unique to 2018, this has been going on since the dawn of man.

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When God first created Adam, and since when He fell, and ever since sin has been with us, this is something that's been with us ever since.

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We so minimize sin, particularly our sin, and we convince ourselves through the lie and satanic deception that we're good, that we're righteous.

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The book of Isaiah just before we get too prideful reminds us that our righteousness is but filthy rags before God.

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See this all comes down to can a man be right before God? And the

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Bible is clear that if you're relying on your own goodness, which is nonexistence, or your own righteousness, which is filthy rags, or your own innocence, which you're not, you'll fail.

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You won't enter the kingdom. In fact, the only time in history, the only time, when a good and innocent person had something tragic and evil happen to them, is when

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Jesus Christ hung on the cross, and was murdered, and had the wrath of God poured out on Him for sin, for you and for me, and all the believing ones.

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It's the only time in history it's ever happened, that an actual person that was both good, innocent, and also righteous, perfectly sinless, not that He just didn't sin, but that He was incapable of sinning, was murdered by His own creation.

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Men that He had created that otherwise would not exist without Him, murdered

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Him. But lest we think that somehow we're off the hook, it's still your sin and mine.

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We may not have been there and present that day. We may not have put the spear in His side. We may not have put the crown on His head.

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We may not have put the nails in His arms and in His feet. But my friends, your sin and mine very much so put our

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Savior on that cross. So let's drop the pretense that we are so good and innocent, and that God somehow owes us a perfect life free of pain and suffering.

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Suffering and pain and trial is a part of life, but my friends, it is not purposeless.

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God is sovereign. Everything that happens, whether it's a

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Jewish holocaust, whether it's a hurricane, whether it's cancer, I don't care what it is, nothing, not one atom in this universe is outside of the sovereign control of Jesus Christ.

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Everything is under His control. Everything is under His sovereignty, which means every single thing that has ever existed, starting with the heavens and the earth, going all the way down to 2018 with you and I sitting here today, has purpose.

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There is no purpose less suffering. Now there's reason for it, and we may not like it sometimes.

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It certainly goes against the grain of what we would quote, unquote, do. But as it is so often in life, we forget about the fact that He is

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God, and we are not. Now, in terms of righteousness, being righteous, performing righteousness, performing good things, yes it's possible for us as creatures to perform those things, but even as we perform good things, or we perform acts of righteousness, it is still not us that's doing it.

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It is the power of God living in us, working through us. We are created in Christ Jesus to be

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His workmanship, to produce and do the good things, to bear good fruit, to live and produce righteousness all through the origination of Christ, through the power of Christ, and it is that power of the

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Holy Spirit indwelling us and working through us that produces it. The unsaved, the unregenerate man cannot produce one single act of righteousness because even in the act of doing something that is quote, unquote, good, it's still done with the wrong motive.

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The unregenerate heart cannot love God properly. That is why it is said that we are a new creature in Christ.

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We have a new heart. Ezekiel says He'll take out the heart of stone, replace it with a heart of flesh.

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It is a transformation, Romans 12. It's everything that goes with that. The helmet of salvation is vitally important.

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The helmet of salvation is always strong because it is the salvation of God.

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One of my good buddies, Jim Krieger, another fellow preacher, has said, and he even preached a sermon back home one time about this.

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He said so many, I think this was actually a title to his sermon, he said, so many people want the salvation of God without having the

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God of salvation. They're perfectly fine with a quote, unquote, free ticket to Heaven, which is not what salvation is.

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Yes, salvation is full and free by the grace and mercy of God. Yes, we can't work for it. Yes, we can't earn it.

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Yes, it is by faith, but it's just not a free ticket to Heaven where you can go on and live your life however you want to.

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That's not what sanctification is. That's not what transformation is. That's not what regeneration is.

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That's not what salvation is. It's the literal God of the Universe regenerating you, changing your heart, changing your disposition, changing your spirit, raising your spirit to spiritual life, indwelling you, and then producing something in you.

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Now, we won't do this perfectly. We obviously reside in sinful humanness. We won't receive our glorified body until the eternal state.

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When Jesus Christ returns a second time, sets all things right, we will reside in the sinful humanness.

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We will struggle with sin, but we should be daily becoming increasingly sanctified.

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Those things that so easily beset us in the past should not beset us in the present. And we should be working towards a future when we are increasingly and increasingly better equipped through the power of God to resist sin and choose righteousness.

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All the pieces of armor are important. But I think

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I can make a strong argument that this one is the most vital. You see, it's the helmet of salvation that I believe

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Satan wants to attack more than anything else. Why? Because it is our full trust in Christ that saves us, and it is our full trust and faith in Christ that keeps us.

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Our salvation is secure. It is eternal by its very nature. John 3 .16,

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when it says that the ones that will be the believing ones will be saved, and they'll possess eternal life.

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The whole good news of the Gospel is not something we're looking forward to. Eternal life is obviously something we will experience fully in the eternal state.

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But eternal life, my friends, for the Christian, is a present possession.

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And Satan wants you to doubt that more than anything else, because if he can get you to doubt that you are eternally secure in Christ, if he can get you to doubt the eternal nature of the atonement that Christ made on your behalf, he can get you out of the game.

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He will render you as little to none opposition to him in a spiritual war.

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The most and biggest threat to Satan starts with a firm grasp and understanding of the eternal nature of our salvation.

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And this is why he wants to attack it more than anything else. And he'll use every tool available to him for this purpose.

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We're not going to discuss him at length this morning. It's not the subject matter for us, although I think our ladies did a study on Job recently.

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Was that correct? Take a look at the life of Job. If you ever really want to get an insight into God's purpose and what goes in our lives, read the book of Job.

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Read it slowly. Meditate on it, my Wednesday night crowd, reading meditatively.

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Meditate on it. Satan wants to take trials, tribulations, sufferings to get us to doubt

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God, lose faith. He would love to be able to accuse us before the throne.

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Is that not what he did with Job? Touch his body, God. He won't serve you.

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He'll curse you. Let's bring this to 2018, shall we? Take away their finances,

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Lord. They'll only serve you when times are good. Plenty of money in the bank, good job.

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Everything's going well in your work -life balance, home, church, work, everywhere you go.

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Everything's coming up roses. Oh, how it's easy to serve God in those times, isn't it?

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Satan wants to tell, see, I told you so. Your people don't love you.

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Your people don't truly serve you, because the second it gets hard, they turn and they run.

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Well, our Christian friend, our Christian sister, the quadriplegic,

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Joni Tata, she has a thought about that herself. She has said the following about Satan and his desire to do this.

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She said, when the devil insists that God's people only serve him when life is easy, I have the high honor of proving him wrong.

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To be on the battlefield where the mightiest forces in the universe converge in warfare, by God's grace,

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I'm all in. Now, look, I'm a pastor.

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I've never met this woman. But God has used her to convict me.

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I'm relatively healthy. By all accounts, there are some that would look and say, well, he's got it easy.

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Now, look, I have my own issues. I have my own things. But sometimes when the mirror of someone else's suffering is put in front of you, it puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

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Now, with that being said, we should not play the comparison game to the point where we say, because a lot of people, especially those that are in tune with Christ and living for Christ and are not looking to, you know, some are more private, some don't put things on public.

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Some things people go through you'll never know about. So, we can't look at someone and say, oh, well

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I've never seen any evidence of suffering or trials or they must have it easy. You don't know that. No, you don't.

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Some of the Christians that have hurt the worst, you'd never know it. Now, there's an argument that can be made we need to be more vulnerable and open and trust our brothers and sisters to help us and come alongside us, but that stands to reason that we need to be trustworthy, and loving, and caring, and not judgmental.

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We're going to get to that in earnest when we get back to Colossians at the end of chapter 2. It talks about this whole issue of being judgmental, and it really slaps it over the face of judgmentalism.

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Is that a word? I think I just invented a word. See, this is why you'll have to work with me, because sometimes

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I'm going to make up words on the fly, and you're just going to have to assume that I know what I'm talking about. Judgmentalism!

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My friends, she says, by God's grace, I'm all in. Sadly, not every Christian feels the same as Joni.

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Look, I have never been in her situation, but I've had things happen to me that in comparison would not even touch what she's going through, and I felt like quitting.

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Does it make my suffering, or my trials, or my tribulations any less hard for me? No. It's still real.

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It still hurts. But it's using the comparison of understanding that there is someone who has it a little harder that gives you the perspective, and sometimes gives you the encouragement to face the next day.

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You see, God wants you to trust. Satan wants you to doubt. God wants you to grow.

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Satan wants you to decline. God wants you to study His Word. Satan wants you to ignore it.

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God wants you to be fully committed to Him. Satan wants you to be fully committed to self.

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God wants you to worship Him alone. God wants you to worship idols and tradition.

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God wants you to focus on Him. Satan, rather, wants you to focus on your problems and circumstances.

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God wants His people to continually be changing and transforming. Satan wants you to fight and resist change and stay exactly the same.

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So many Christians today, instead of trusting God and allowing endurance to have her perfect work,

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James chapter 1, they would rather question God, attempt to avoid suffering at all costs.

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Many in the Christian community, and I'm not going to preach a sermon on this, we may hold this for another day, but I'm going to touch on it briefly.

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Many in the Christian community even claim that health and wealth is what God has promised.

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But is that what God has said? Is that what

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He has promised? No, it is not. If someone in Christianity has health, has wealth, or whatever it is, it's not to be looked at something that happened to you because of something you did, as if God owes us anything.

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But if you have health or wealth, you're to look at both of those things as something you can use for.

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It is not there for you, it is there for God. If anything you hold on to too tightly,

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I have no idea if that's right grammar or not, but I'm going with it. You hold on it too tightly, God will take it from you.

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I don't care if you're talking about individuals, a married couple, or even a church. I've seen it, it's happened, and you think it's yours, and you hold on to it,

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He'll find a way to make it be gone. It happens every time. Everything I've held on to tightly, it's gone.

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Those things I freely give to the Lord Jesus and submit it to Him, He gives something back to me even better, largely spiritual.

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Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3, we have been spiritually blessed. Acts chapter 14, it spoke of the souls that were involved there and disciples.

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They were being strengthened through tribulation. John 16, 33, the

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Lord Jesus Himself told His disciples, in me you have peace, in the world you'll have tribulation.

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Colossians, we've been studying that book, it says we will partake in the sufferings of Christ. My friends,

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I could go on the rest of the afternoon quoting verses that says you'll have persecution. 2

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Timothy 3, 12, those who desire to live godly lives will be persecuted. Well, if all those that desire to live godly will be persecuted, and all

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Christians should be desiring to live godly, it stands to reason that all Christians will be persecuted. If you're not being persecuted for living godly, guess what, you're not living godly.

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Start it, do it. You can't avoid suffering, what you are avoiding, your salvation will be eternal and secure, but the reward you are missing out on, the fellowship and the blessing of being there for someone, you're missing it.

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Nowhere in Scripture are Christians promised health and wealth.

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There's nowhere in Scripture where it says that He wants to heal everybody. By virtue of the fact that anyone dies is proof that He wants to heal everybody in this life.

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Context. In eternity, different story. In the next life, we will receive glorified bodies, we will dwell in perfect paradise with God continually, and all pain, all loss, all tribulation, all trial, all suffering, all persecution, all peril, storms, gone.

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Never to come back again. Which means that if there's trial and tribulation and persecution and peril and storm, now there must be purpose.

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Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good to them that are called to love God according to His purpose.

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His purpose, not ours. John MacArthur said, it is when believers are out of answers, confidence, strength, with nowhere else to turn but to God, that they are finally in a position to be most effective.

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So why would God allow something like this to happen to Joni Tata?

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Because, you know, we don't have time to go into it. I suggest you study her story, but she spent a lot of years in denial and in issues and, you know, blaming and wondering and all that.

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Asking the question, why? It's not sinful. But accepting God's answer, even when it's not what we want, is biblical.

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Why would He allow something like this to happen to her? Well, I don't want to guess, I want to use her own words. She said it's because there are people every single day floundering in hopelessness with different disabilities.

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And because she has one, a severe one, it puts her in a unique position to tell them there is a

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God, He loves you, she can be a living demonstration of the gospel to these people.

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She can demonstrate for them what it means and looks like to trust

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Christ in suffering. She says that every day she goes into her

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Jonian friend's international disability center. She tries to squeeze every ounce of ministry effort from her quadriplegic body.

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And if that isn't enough for you, this one really slapped me across the face pretty hard.

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She says she thanks God every day for her wheelchair. I'm just going to be a little honest with y 'all, outside looking in, the first time you hear that, that sounds a little crazy.

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Right? Because what do we hear? So much satanic deception.

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Well if you just had enough faith, you wouldn't have that. Lies. Unique position.

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Let me tell you something, who's going to have a better opportunity to witness to people like that? Someone that is upright and walking and running marathons and is the epitome of physical fitness?

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Or someone that's in the exact same situation as them? All these cliches, all these things we say, you learn from hard times, you learn from suffering, you learn from trials, you learn from all these things we go through.

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There's purpose in it. Why? Because someone is going to sit in front of you one day that's going through the exact same thing you did, and you're going to be able to look them in the face with a straight face and say,

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I know how that feels. I know what that's like.

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Let me tell you about it and let me point you to a Savior that helped me get through it.

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He'll help you get through it. And I know He can because I trusted Him. He is faithful even when

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I wasn't. He is faithful even though all of humanity is not. And even in the midst of my suffering, trial, persecution, peril, storm, whatever it is,

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He is faithful. He needs us to be in these things because there's someone else that has an eternal destiny at stake that's not going to listen to anyone else.

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Because your trials, your suffering, those unique things you've been through put you in a unique position to witness to others.

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That otherwise wouldn't listen to me or anyone else. My pastor told me time and time again when he was teaching me well over a decade, he said, son, one day somebody is going to walk into your office and they're going to be explaining something to you and it's hard for them.

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And you're going to be sitting there smiling at them. And they're going to be like, this guy has lost his mind. He shouldn't be smiling.

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This is not a good thing. And they're going to say, what is wrong with you? And you're going to say, well, my pastor told me one day that someone would sit in front of me with the exact same problem

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I went through and now that day has come. Everybody I counsel, for the most part,

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I mean I might have missed one or two, but those I've talked to, those I've counseled, those I've worked with, for the most part of my recollection,

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I think I pretty much have told them all this to some degree. I'll tell them, you know, hey, here's the deal. You know, we'll get through whatever it is that's bothering them.

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We'll work on it. We'll talk about it. And then somewhere towards the end I'll say, look, one day someone's going to sit in front of you and you're going to be in a unique position to help them that even

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I couldn't because of what you went through. Probably, there's so many good things

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Joni has said. This is probably, okay, I know I said the other one was my favorite, but really this one's my favorite.

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She said, grace softens the edge of past pains, helping to highlight the eternal.

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What you are left with is a peace that's profound, joy that's unshakable, and faith that's ironclad.

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How is it that someone like Joni, quadriplegic for 50 years, paralyzed from neck down, can say this?

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How does anyone say that? How can anyone like you in this room this morning with what you go through ever say something like that?

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It's because it's someone that has an eternal perspective. We're not going to read the verses this morning.

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We're going to, I'm going to summarize for time purposes, but in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, I urge you to go back and read these later.

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The verses are 16 -18 of 2 Corinthians 4. It talks about the fact that we don't need to be looking on the outside.

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We don't need to be looking at the temporal things. The outer man decays, but the inner man is renewed day by day.

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We need to be looking into things which are not seen, those things which are eternal. I submit to you this morning that Joni looks on those things that are eternal.

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2 Corinthians chapter 12, once again, I'm not here to preach this text, I'm going to summarize it.

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I encourage you to go back and read 2 Corinthians 12 at some point. But Paul, well -known scripture here, and he's doing ministry, and he has this thorn in the flesh, and there's many debates about what that is.

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We're not going to get into all that. But whatever it was, it caused him so much grief that the Apostle Paul prayed three times.

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And when it says implored, it means he begged. He didn't say, well you know God if you get around to it. No, he begged, and begged, and begged for God to take it away.

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And did he take it away? This is Paul! He wrote like two -thirds of the

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New Testament of all people. You'd think he'd help him out, right? God says, son, my grace is sufficient.

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The last thing I want to share with you from Joni in her own words is this.

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She wrote a booklet called, Hope, the Best of Things. And this one's about four paragraphs, but I want you to follow, this is very important.

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This last thing I want to read to you from her specifically. She says, I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to Heaven.

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Now I know that's not theologically correct, but I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of Heaven.

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And then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful, glorified legs,

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I'll stand next to my Savior holding His nail -pierced hands. I'll say, thank you,

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Jesus. And He will know what I mean, because He knows me.

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He'll recognize me from the fellowship we're now sharing in His sufferings. And just as an aside, all suffering is

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Christ's. We partake in it. And I will say, Jesus, do you see that wheelchair?

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You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, John 16, because that thing, referring to the wheelchair in the corner, was a lot of trouble.

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But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you.

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And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be.

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It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.

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Then the real ticker tape parade of praise would begin, and all of earth will join in the party.

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And at that point, Christ will open up our eyes to the great fountain of joy in His heart for us, beyond all that we ever experienced on earth.

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And when we're able to stop laughing and crying, the Lord Jesus really will wipe away all tears, as He tells us in the book of Revelation.

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And this is the last sentence she says. She says, I find it so poignant that finally, at the point when

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I do have the use of my arms to wipe away my own tears, I won't have to, because God will.

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So what do we do? What do you do when life's hard?

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What do you do when suffering comes? You know, I don't know how many of y 'all care about things like this, but sometimes

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I like to share with you certain scriptures that mean the most to your pastor. I want to share one with you as we close this morning.

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Psalm 62, verses 5 through 8. It says,

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My soul, wait in silence, for God only, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold.

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I shall not be shaken. On God my salvation and my glory rest, the rock of my strength, my refuge is in God.

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Trust in Him at all times, O people.

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And watch this, pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us.

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When it's hard, when it presses down on you, when you don't know how you're going to wake up and make it another day, pour out your heart before God.

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Pour it out. Tell Him. Tell Him all about it. He can take it.

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That cross says He can take it. He's suffered in ways we'll never understand and He tells you because of that,

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I will be with you. Why?

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Because as God told the Apostle Paul, my grace is sufficient.