even in the midst of their trial to be the kind of person that God wants them to be

Jesus Christ did not come to help us escape all the hardships of life

it is through those hardships that we actually learn to obey we learn to remain true we learn that he

has greater purposes and we learn his faithfulness through all those

hardships now that’s hard and in most abuse counseling you don’t hear that because

most abuse counselors will be very quick to get that person to escape

and not teach them god’s faithfulness or the importance of their faithfulness

in counseling or in in living out uh Christianity even in the midst of

severe affliction so it’s important that we work with that

um and we and it’s important that they understand that

take your bible for a moment let’s go over I think this is best illustrated probably in psalm 119

and you know every time I go to this particular Psalm Psalm 119

um and read these verses over again I’m really convicted by them because of my own sinful human nature

and depravity um but here the psalmist says

uh before I was afflicted I went astray but now in verse 67 but now i obey thy word

notice that verse 67 psalm 1 1967 before I was afflicted I went astray but now I obey their word

could it be that part of this affliction is to help us to understand obedience you know it’s easy to obey god when

things are going smooth right that’s very easy but it’s very very difficult to obey God when things are

going against us when affliction is coming our direction that’s very difficult and immediately

right after that in verse 68 he says thou art good and thou dost

good now within the context here he’s talking about affliction being a part of the very plan of God for our lives

sometimes and and even in the midst of that we’ve got to realize that God is good

and he does good when you listen to some Christians pray and you and they pray and they say oh oh god you

are you are just so good oftentimes I think what they really mean by that is oh you’ve given me so many

things that I enjoy in life and you’re just so good well if God were to take away all

those things and replace all those things that you enjoy in life with affliction would he still be good

absolutely he would be but I’m not sure that’s the way a lot of Christians would view it

here the psalmist is saying in the midst of his affliction he’s able to look and say God you are

good that’s not wishful thinking that is what the psalmist really

believes and you doest good you only do good teach me thy statutes

he says then you skip down to verse 71 he says it was good for me that I was

afflicted that I may learn thy statutes it was good that I was afflicted yeah

and in fact our english translates at the hebrew tense here as a past tense I was

when in reality it’s actually the the hebrew can also be i am present tense it was good for me

that i am afflicted this is a present tense reality that’s going on all right that i may learn your statutes

um are you able to say that is the person that you’re counseling in this particular abuse

situation are they able to look to god and say it was good for me that i went through

this that was good for me that is often difficult

there’s a story that I’m aware of of a young lady in fact it’s written it’s entitled Glenda’s story

and it’s about affliction by um about a young girl who later on grew up

to be a woman got married but when she was young girl her mother hated her

wanted to put her to death her sister despised her her father when she was a baby left and

her mother remarried a stepfather and the mother being a severe drunkard

the stepfather couldn’t hardly put up with her and ended up sleeping with Glenda from

the time that she was four years of age and because there was no sexual fulfillment with the step with the

mother the stepfather ended up finding a sexual satisfaction with this young girl for several years she’s hated by her mom

hated by her sister her mom’s a drunk her stepfather is sexually abusing her

you can imagine the kind of life that this girl grew up in and even in the midst of this in her inner biography of her life

she admits to the fact that I as i look back now I realize that even as a young

girl i had sinful tendencies and propensities even in the midst of what was happening

to me now you don’t hear that in a lot of abuse literature all right what you hear is uh you’re a

victim this is a horrible thing that’s going and certainly this girl did not bring anything upon herself at all

but at the same time she realized the depravity of her own heart when going through this

and her own depravity in response to this and eventually the story goes in her

life that a group from a Christian college ended up or actually was a neighborhood

church with her it was a group from a neighborhood church that ended up leading her the lord

and she later on as she grew up became a registered nurse and and went on and married a man and they

had a wonderful family what normal people would have been affected or marred by that supposedly

for the rest of their life they this would have been a life-defining tragedy that occurred to them

with Glenda that wasn’t true because she handled those thoughts biblically she realized the onset her own

sinfulness as a result of this and she realized that God intended it for good

a book that’s written called dory the girl that nobody loved by dory van stone uh

her pastor uh Lutzer their moody church wrote the

introduction to the particular book but there’s a story of a girl who was from the time she was a little child was sent to an orphanage

she was horribly abused beaten severely and cruelly by the orphanage director eventually later on went on

to a foster home was sexually abused and terribly beaten in several different foster homes came back to the orphanage and it was

her story where a group from a Christian college came in she came to Christ as a result of that

and eventually she married a Christian guy and they went off into the mission field and she talked about how she could look

back on her life and see that it was through all of that even abuse during early childhood that god

was preparing her for the rigors of mission field and that it was nothing for her it was wonderful i mean you know it’s

not like she enjoyed pain i don’t want to give you that impression at all but compared to the other women who were her age who were having problems on the

mission field she had no problems you know I mean this is nothing compared to what i grew up with

what she was enduring and she and her husband went to a remote tribe in new guinea

and served very faithfully there for years until her husband passed away

well i mean this is what we’re talking about here it’s good for me that i was afflicted that i may learn by statutes

and then you skip down and you take a look at verse 75 uh he says i know and and the the hebrew

word here is uh for knowledge is I experientially know

I experientially know o lord that thy judgments are righteous and

that in faithfulness thou has afflicted me

I experientially know that now we have a tendency to think that God is being unfaithful when he’s afflicting us

but the psalmist had the right view of god that god is being faithful in his affliction

wow

now you may think well maybe the the psalmist at this particular point

deserved what he was going through maybe it’s the type of affliction that he brought it upon himself because he

was misbehaving in some way or sinning in some way well that’s not true because you skip down to verse

78 and he says may the arrogant be ashamed for they subvert me with a lie

what’s implied there is the suffering that he’s going through is unjust suffering unjust abuse