Adversity Reveals Real Hope

Adversity has a way of stripping everything down to what’s real. When the wind is loud, the stress is constant, and your emotions feel one step from spiraling, you find out fast what you’ve actually built your inner life on. We go after a hard but necessary question: how do we grow in hope while we’re living through things that feel hopeless? We define hope as the joyful expectation of good, and we talk about why that kind of hope can’t be borrowed from better circumstances. It has to be formed in you. 
 
We connect Jesus’ picture of building on rock versus sand to everyday pressure like financial turmoil, sickness, anxiety, depression, and prolonged hardship. If “I’m beloved” and “I’m in union with God” stay as mental agreement instead of practiced reality, adversity will expose the gap, and your interior world can crumble even while your theology sounds right. We also name the accusations that hit during suffering: “Why is God letting this happen?” and “If He’s good, why didn’t He stop it?” Then we offer a grounding filter that helps you refuse blame-shifting and stay rooted in the Father’s goodness. 
 
Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians and Romans 8 bring it home: weakness can become the place where grace and resurrection power show up most clearly. The practical takeaway is simple but deep: cultivate relationship with the Holy Spirit. We close with specific practices you can start today, especially silence and listening, along with worship, Scripture, and praying in the Spirit. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s under pressure, and leave a review. What’s one practice that helps you stay hopeful when life gets hard?

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Transcript

Welcome And A Snowed-In Week

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, I'm Ben. And I'm Logan, and we're the Robin. Welcome to the Resting Place Podcast. What's up, everybody? Uh, thank you for joining us on this podcast. A little bit different format this week as we are not having our weekly gathering. Um the wind is still blowing outside, so um March has come and Iowa is doing what Iowa does, and that is one last real big snowstorm before we before we get to see spring weather. Um it tricked us. At least it tricked me. Um you'd think I knew better, uh, having grown up here, that you know, you should really expect at least one big snowstorm in March. And here I am thinking 60 degrees, it's pretty nice. I think we're about done with winter. And here we are, canceling our gathering due to 50 mile an hour winds and snow. So uh if my voice sounds a little bit hoarse, it is because I have a very sore throat. Hopefully, uh we can get through things without incident. Um, I'm gonna jump right in, and we are going to talk about a subject today that um I don't know that I've covered since we have started the resting place really in depth. And my goal here is not to do an hour-long teaching. My goal is to do a few minutes, give us a few points, and really treat this almost more conversationally uh even than sharing a message. But what I would like to do is talk about growing in hope in the midst of adversity, or growing in hope while experiencing adversity. How do we, as believers, grow in hope while we are experiencing hopeless situations or situations that would lead us into hopelessness? And there's any number of ways that these come. These come through trauma, these come through tragedy, these come through prolonged um seasons of adversity, and I don't like the word seasons, but here I am using it. So uh it comes at us in several different ways, and um I want to just cover a few points tonight, and then we may pick this up the next time we gather on Easter Sunday, but uh the Lord only knows. So um growing in hope while experiencing adversity, and I've I've written a little bit here, so gonna jump right in. One of the most challenging things in life, one of the most challenging things in the life of the believer is to continue to live in and to grow in hope while experiencing adversity. Now, our definition of hope, just to remind you, is the joyful expectation of good. The illustration that we use, we uh have stolen from Bill Johnson. So thank you, Bill. Um the illustration that we use is the, and I get a front row seat. My kids are so perfectly positioned to give me a front row seat to this every year. Christmas is by far my favorite day of the year. Every year, it's not close. It is peak happiness for me. It is the best thing in the world. It's the crisp, it's the lights, it's the decorations, and it's the absolute ecstatic joy from all my kids. It is the best thing in the whole world. I always end up crying. I'll cry, I'll I'll end up crying two or three times on Christmas just because I'm so happy. And it's the best day, it's the best day in the whole world. Um, the illustration that we're using is stolen from Bill Johnson, and that is the picture of a child waiting on Christmas morning to open their gifts because they know that their father and mother have gotten them something and they can't wait to open it up and see what it is. That is the joyful expectation of good. That's a beautiful picture of it. And so, how do we maintain hope while experiencing really hard things? And um, we can thank David Hogan for this uh short podcast this week. I listened to it, I had the audacity to listen to another David Hogan podcast, and anytime I listen to that man, it stirs something in me. I either end up doing something crazy or end up teaching on some things he said for the next six months. So he uh is just such a hero and such a man, such a hero in the faith. And he did a podcast a couple of years ago on adversity and overcoming adversity, and gave some stories from his um ministry in Mexico that we just man, here in here in the United States, we just don't even understand. So I won't rehash those, but I will give him credit. I'll give credit where credit is due. Uh this train of thought um is deeply inspired by some of the things he taught, and then some of my own experiences as well. So, one of the most challenging things in life, in the life of the believer, is to continue to live and grow in hope, to live in and grow in hope. One of the things that's really interesting about the kingdom is that we are required to grow what we have been given as good stewards. Uh, the parable of the servants, two servants grew what the kid what the king had given them, what their master had given them, and one by all accounts would have been considered in our day a good steward. He didn't lose a penny. He dug a hole, buried what he was given in a hole, and returned to the master things, everything that he had given him, and the master called him a wicked servant because he had not increased what had been given to him. So it's the call of each believer, it's the call of each believer to grow the things the Lord has given us. And one of the things that he has given us is a man is a measure of hope. If we are born again, we are not those that live without hope. There is a hope implanted in us in our new life, in the resurrection, in the in the new life, the new birth. There's a hope implanted in us by Holy Spirit, and we are then required to not just maintain that degree of hope, but to live, but not just to maintain and live in that degree of hope, but to grow that degree of hope. This is what would be considered good stewardship by the Father. How do we do that while experiencing adversity? It seems almost counterintuitive to even begin to talk about this because it doesn't make sense to say that we should be growing our hope while experiencing adversity. Seems counterintuitive. And if I'm honest, this is not the most comfortable subject to be talking about. I really like to tee up faith messages, I really like to tee up uh messages on the power and willingness of God to intervene in our lives, particularly his willingness, um, his desire being for us. But this piece of growing in hope while living in adversity is an essential piece of maturity. If we don't, if we don't grasp this, we will fail in a key area or an essential area of maturity as believers. And friends, we want to be whole. And that's a resting place, we're growing whole people, and one of the ways that we are becoming whole is we're taking these subjects and we're allowing them to bring us into maturity. So, one of the most challenging things, and I'm gonna read this now, I think, for the third time, one of the most challenging things in the life of the believer is to maintain one of the most challenging things in the life of the believer is to continue to live in and grow in hope while experiencing adversity. Now I'm gonna tell on myself what I find to be true of myself in adverse situations is that what I have placed my hope in is laid bare and becomes very clear to me, and importantly, everyone around me. What I have placed my hope in is laid bare and becomes very clear to both me and importantly, everyone around me. So the first one of the first things we have to do is ask ourselves if we have been building upon the rock or building upon sand in this area of our lives. When we go through financial turmoil, it's pretty pardon me, it's pretty easy to ascertain or discern what we have placed our hope in. Now, listen, financial turmoil is not an easy thing to go through. I know many of the words to that song. It is not an easy thing to go to go through. It's not something that you know I take lightly or that I would ever make make light of. However, it becomes very clear to me when I walk through scenarios that are challenging in that area where I have placed my hope. Have I placed my hope in my finance, or have I placed my hope in the one who gives me the ability to create wealth? To grow in hope while experiencing adversity is one of the most powerful ways. We can be a light, we can be light in a world drowning in depression, anxiety, and record numbers of suicide yearly. To grow in hope while experiencing adversity is one of the clearest, most powerful ways we can be a light, we can be light in a world drowning in depression, anxiety, and record numbers of suicide yearly. I'm gonna read 24 through 27, and then we'll talk a little bit about what Paul has to say on the subject. Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against the house, it won't collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against the house, it will collapse with a mighty crash. Really frequently, really often. When I hear this passage, the first thing that comes to mind is you know that we begin to think about the doctrines that we're filling our heart with and the teachings that we're filling our minds with, and those are both, you know, true, good and right. We should be receiving appropriate teaching, correct teaching, the true gospel. We should be receiving those things. However, however, Jesus makes a really distinct point here. I just want to highlight it real quick. Anyone who listens listens to my teaching and follows it is wise. Like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise. Like a person who builds his house on solid rock. Alright, so Pop made a really profound point a couple of years ago, and I'll never forget it, in the middle of a Carolina revival meeting. He said that you know, the difference between sand is sand and rock is that sand is just fragments of rock. They look really similar, and it's hard to discern who is actually, at times it can be hard to discern who is actually building their life on the rock and who's building their life on sand until adversity comes. One of the reasons our interior worlds crumble when we start to face adversity is that we have failed in the area of being a doer of the word and not a hearer only. And that hurts me to say because I have failed, my my interior world has crumbled more than once and fallen apart more than once in adversity, in the middle of adversity, and I found myself not sure of where to go or what to do. And I end up having really hard conversations and having to having to rebuild a lot of the things that I thought that I was building. Um and the truth of the matter is, if we're not applying, if let me say this very clearly, if we're not applying and practicing the word, the word he's giving us, this, this, if we're not applying it, if we're not following it, if we're not simply just listening, if what if all let me say it this way if all we're doing is simply listening and gaining intellectual insight into, and this can be very challenging, especially for the stream of Christianity that we find ourselves in, because we're a little bit out there on the fringes. Uh, we're a little, we're not quite mainstream, right? We're a little bit out there, and so it can be enough at times when you're attached to a group that is um when you're attached to a stream that is not part of the mainstream. It can be enough to learn some cool talking points. Yeah, cool, I'm beloved. Yep. To ascend to that mentally and then not apply what it actually means to be beloved to your life. And when adversity comes, we find out really quickly that mental ascent fails in the area of properly constructing our interior world to the point that it can withstand adversity. If all we have done is learn a couple of talking points, mentally ascend to the idea that we're no longer separated from the Father, but we've been made one in union with the Father through the finished work of Yeshua in our joining to Him. If all we have done is learn that mentally and ascend to that mentally and not begin to step into that in practice and in reality, what will happen is we'll find out when adversity comes that we're still living like we're separated. And it causes a duality that is very difficult in seasons of adversity. The duality is this I know that I'm beloved, I know that I'm in union with Jesus, I know that I'm in union with the Father. You'll know that you're you're in me and I'm in him. You'll know that I'm in him and you're in me, and we're in you. Those are the words of Jesus. And it's this beautiful uh picture of the union of the believer, and we'll know that mentally, but we'll not have put into practice what it actually means to be in union. And when it when adversity comes, what will happen is we'll sit here saying I've done this. This is how I know I've done this. I should not be falling apart the way that I am in my interior world while I know I am beloved, while I know that I'm in union with the Father, I should not be falling apart the way that I am. Why am I falling apart this way? I know that I'm in union and I know that I'm beloved. Why can't I seem to? Why can't I seem to handle this without my anxiety getting to the point that I'm that I'm unable to function? Why does this send me in a spiral of depression? And why am I responding the way that I have always responded to this particular scenario? And you can fill in the blank. Why am I responding the way that I have to this particular scenario, just like I always have? Why pardon me? Why am why is my interior world falling apart? Why do I feel so isolated? Why does God feel so distant when I know that I'm joined with him and I'm in union with him and all these things? Because somewhere we have failed in the area of actually building our house on the stone. We failed somewhere between hearing and building. And we make adversity more challenging on ourselves because we have not properly prepared. And the way that we properly prepare is we yield to the grace that is present inside of the teaching of Jesus. We yield to the grace that's present on the inside of the teaching of Jesus and the gospel message. We yield to that and we begin to not just mentally ascend there, we begin to actually practice and live the way that it tells us to. Paul says something really interesting, and this is a man who is not a stranger to adversity. In 2 Corinthians, and I'll just turn there real quick. In 2 Corinthians, he says something really interesting, and Paul to me is just he's like the master at marrying seeming contradictions. He and Jesus both. It says about Jesus that he was a man acquainted with sorrows. Man of sorrow who is acquainted with suffering, but it also says that he was anointed with the oil of joy more than all of his brethren. It's the two sides of the coin, knowing that life will be full of trouble. Knowing that life will be full of trouble. We have to know how to, on one hand, hold the tension of adversity and hard things and challenge, and also continue to grow in hope and grow in joy. And how do we do that? Each time he said, and this is Paul talking about asking the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh, he said, My grace is all you need, my power works best in weakness. So I am glad to boast about my weakness. This is Paul now. So now I am glad to boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ can work through me. That's why I take pleasure in my weakness and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. He's saying, I take pleasure in my adversity because in the middle of adversity is when I am strongest. When I feel at my weakest, it's then that I am strongest. That is absolutely revolutionary. Because I don't feel strongest when I'm in the middle of adversity. In fact, I feel really vulnerable, really weak. And if we have not properly, and I want to talk about this briefly, if we have not properly cultivated a relationship with Holy Spirit, what will happen is we will get very isolated in the middle of adversity. We'll isolate ourselves because we have not put into practice, we have not built our interior world in union. Rather, we have ascended to it mentally, but we're still treating our interior world like we live, we're living in our interior world, like we're separated from Him. And when adversity comes, what will happen is we'll end up deeply, we'll end up deeply isolated and alone, and we'll wonder why God is allowing this to happen to us. One of the there are two things, we were talking about this in a Bible study recently. There are two things when hard things happen that I use as goalposts. Two things that I use as goalposts. One is this. Did I cause this? Well, there this is three things, but this is my first question. Did I cause this by my own dumb decision making? And that's not popular, and that sounds a certain way, that sounds kind of harsh, and that sounds a certain way. I need you to know that I meant that with all my heart. Did I cause this by my own dumb decision making? Okay. The good news there is that his grace is sufficient for my dumb decision making, so that if I have caused the adversity that I'm in, and I have done it before, if I have caused the adversity that I am in by my own dumb decision making, I will fall on the sword like David and ask the Lord. I've done it a hundred thousand times and I'll do it again. Oh Lord, purge me with hyssop and I'll be clean. Take not thy presence from me, remove not thy Holy Spirit from me, and I'll just start. For the glory of your name's sake, remove this trial from my life. Cause me to come through this, cause me, cause me to overcome one more time my bad decision making in Jesus' mighty. And it just works because he's good. It's not that I don't eat some of the fruit of my own poor decision making, but his grace is sufficient for my own poor decision making, and he will cause us to come through it successfully. Okay. Alright, so if it's not my decision making that has caused this, if this is something beyond my control, okay. One of the first accusations that you're going to have to deal with will be. Why's God letting this happen to you? Why is he doing this? He could just snap his fingers and cause this to stop. Why is he doing this to you? I thought he was good. I thought you believed he was good, and why would why would a good God allow this to happen? Okay. If you're dealing with anxiety, if you're dealing with depression, if you're dealing with sickness, if you're dealing with um uh financial stress, poverty issues, if you're dealing with go down the Rolodex. If you cannot find what you are dealing with in the Father, he didn't do it. He cannot give you what he doesn't have possession of, and he does not have possession of any of those things. Okay, number two, I have to be rooted and founded in his goodness. If I am not convinced in my bones that he is good, what will happen is I'll actually join sides with the accuser. Add my agreement to that accusation and prolong, hear me, prolong the season of adversity that I am in, and rather than grow in hope, I'll grow in depression, and rather than grow in hope, I'll grow in anxiety, and rather than it, this is how it works, you get isolated and then you start to believe. You don't start, you get isolated, and then you start to agree with and add your agreement to the voice of the enemy in your life, and you build a case against the one who is currently working all things to your good. And when he comes to you with deliverance, instead of being the child that's like, oh God, I can't wait to open this Christmas present. You know, our definition of hope, the joyful expectation of good. That's our illustration, right? I can't wait to open what you have for me. I'm so excited about it. Instead of that, when he comes to you, all you'll be able to do is accuse him. And when deliverance comes, you'll accuse the deliverer. Ask me how I know that. It's very embarrassing. Ask me how I know that. I have been in those scenarios where deliverance is on its way, the the Lord comes, and he's bringing great, he's bringing great breakthrough, and all I can do is just sit and accuse him. So, how do we do it? How do we grow in hope? As I begin to feel this direction coming from the Lord, I just begin to have this conversation with him and ask him, How do I communicate this in a way that's really going to be beneficial? And he spoke something really simple to me. It's this cultivate a relationship with Holy Spirit. I want to read one thing to you from Romans eight. This is Romans eight, fifteen. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him Abba Father. For his spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children, and since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God's glory, but we are to share his gl but if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. If we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. If we are to share his glory, we must also share in his adversity. And one of the things that adversity does is it forges relationships at a level that they could never be forged otherwise. And you have two choices in the middle of adversity: fight against Holy Spirit or join your life to him in such a way that when the wind comes, like it's blowing outside 50 miles an hour right now, I will win her. When the winds come and the waves and the waves beat against your house, you can fight against Holy Spirit or you can join yourself to him in such a way that your interior world is forged and founded on your relationship with him. And if you'll do that, what will happen is you'll be so convinced of the fatherhood of God and the goodness of God. Dr. Simmons in the Passion Translation translates that he makes God's fatherhood real to us. And if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those that ask him? He convinces us of the Father's goodness, and in the middle of adversity, we become more convinced of his goodness because we have not placed our hope in situations, we haven't placed our hope in circumstance, we haven't placed our hope in our employment, we haven't placed our hope in our spouse, we haven't placed our hope in our health, we haven't placed our hope in our financial success, we haven't placed our hope in fill in the blank. What we have done is we have placed our hope in the unchanging goodness of our Abba. We have rooted ourselves there. We have built in our interior world through cultivating relationship with the Holy Spirit. We have cultivated that relationship to the point that our whole world revolves around him and his goodness. And in the middle of adversity, I don't, you know, it's not easy. Things are again, it's holding the tension in both hands and finding life in the middle, right? It's it's the whole thing that that I've been sharing now for I don't know, eight months. That I believe true life is found at the conjunction point of two seeming contradictions. So adversity and God's goodness come and they meet, and I'm walking in the middle of it, being pulled in two different directions, and you find true life there. How do you find true life there? By cultivating a relationship with Holy Spirit, cultivating a relationship with Holy Spirit. He will guide you and reveal Yeshua to you. And what will happen is we will get to the point where with Paul we can say, I'm so joined to the Spirit of the Living God that even in the middle of the worst adversity I've ever faced, in my weakness, his strength is made perfect. And I'm more I'm experiencing more of his resurrection power because I have delved the depths of adversity. I'm experiencing more of the resurrection power of Jesus in my life because I've been brought through the middle of adversity. Adversity tried to have its way with me, adversity tried to stop me, but it was not able to. All that it did was forge a deeper relationship with Holy Spirit than I would have ever had otherwise. And this is how Paul was able to say, in my weakness, he's made strong. In my weakness, I'm in my strongest. Because in the middle of deep adversarial contradiction in his life, he could say, I would not know. Holy Spirit, the way that I do now. I would not know Jesus the way that I do now. Because Holy Spirit is the one who reveals Jesus, and Jesus is the one who reveals the Father. That's how that symbiosis works. Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to me, and then Jesus reveals the Father to me. But Paul's saying, I I wouldn't know him the way that I do now if I didn't get beaten. And you can find where he goes through the list. And I read the list, and I'm not going to read it now, but I read the list of things that he said, man. It was five separate occasions beaten with thirty-nine lashes. He doesn't detail that he was beaten with the cat of nine tails like Jesus was, but that's what that's how many times they hit Jesus. It was thirty-nine. It was to bring somebody to the point of destruction. Five separate times. Three times I'm beaten with rods. One time he was stoned. They killed him. He was killed once. The believers of the city came out, circled around him, prayed, and the grace of God raised him back. His life was one of constant contradiction and adversity. And the way that man grew in hope was not by placing his hope in you know the power of his persuasiveness, and he was very persuasive. The skill of his oratory, and he was a very skilled orator. You know, his powerful writing gift. So that when adversity came, he did not join sides with the accuser, but rather what he did was go deeper into Holy Spirit. So I'm just gonna pray for us and um I'm gonna we'll leave it there. Holy Spirit, I ask for the grace to cultivate relationship with you in such a way that when adversity comes, we are able to with Paul say, My your strength is made perfect in me when I am at my weakest. And when things are at their most adverse, I experience the greatness of the resurrection power of Almighty Yeshua. So I ask for grace for the for everyone under the sound of my voice to just yield to the grace made available by you, great Holy Spirit, by you, great Holy Spirit, to yield in relationship with you and to begin to cultivate relationship with you. How do we cultivate relationship with Holy Spirit? Silence is a really good way. Practicing silence. Take ten minutes, shut off all the noise, get as quiet as you can and begin to listen. And he'll begin to speak to you, and then build it out from there. Praying in the Spirit, worship, all those things are are really good ways to do it. Reading our Bible, it's a really good way to do it. Um but I think the practice of silence, we can sing over his voice when he's trying to speak to us, and we wanna we want to be very sensitive to his voice. So I think, you know, there are a number of ways to do it, but I think if I was to give you one practical piece, take ten minutes and get as silent as you can and invite him to begin to speak to you. And in that place we find out what praying in the spirit really means. So I bless you all. We'll see you all on Easter Sunday. Thanks so much for joining us.