11 April 2024 - Spot the Blessing in Difficult Times

James 1:2-4(NLT) Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

In every difficult time there is a hidden blessing. It is an opportunity for great joy, for your faith to be tested, to grow, to develop, to become perfect, to be complete and to fulfil your need completely.

What are difficult times? It is a time when you appear to be going in the opposite direction of your dreams. There is a sense of no spiritual growth and development. It is also referred to as the Wilderness. It is a time when Satan wants to convince you that your right standing with Him is not at the level it should be.

Do difficult times mean that I have messed-up? Difficult times is a time of preparation for our destiny in God. So, it is not God’s rejection, but His place of preparation.

John 9:1-2(NLT) As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”

Was this a strange question: “who did sin?” Did the man sin? Why was he born blind or why was it his parents’ fault that he was blind? Immediately they said, because he was born blind, it must be sin. We have to stop this. When people go through difficult times, we want to ask what is wrong. We have to change this. When people go through difficult times we have to ask, what is God preparing them for?

Difficult times present an opportunity for God to do mighty miracles.

John 9:3(NLT) “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”

Deuteronomy 8:2(NLT) Remember how the LORD your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey His commands.

God is up to something good. Difficult times are a time to seek the heart of God, which will produce character and strength in us. It is a time to maintain vision. God is up to something good. Without the clear view in our heart of where we’re going, difficult times will seem discouraging and can foster complaining.

God is up to something good

Philippians 1:6(TPT) I’m fully convinced that the One who began this glorious expression of grace in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you through your union with Him and will complete it.

The most exciting thing about the difficult times is that it is the place where God reveals Himself in fresh new ways!

Isaiah 51:3(KJV) For the LORD shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

God is always to be found in difficult times. When we draw near to God by seeking Him with all our heart, then He will draw near to us.

No Matter How Lonely You Feel, God Is Present!

Hebrews 13:5(NKJV) I will never leave you nor forsake you.