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Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents
<page 42>The day of adversity can be messy. It is a time when the crutches that supported us during the times of learning are taken away. We need faith and courage to handle the risks we are forced to take as we find new ways to rely on God, but this is where the growth comes from.
About face! I can revise your life. Look, I'm ready to pour out my spirit on you; I'm ready to tell you all I know. …because you wouldn't take my advice and brushed aside all my offers to train you, well, you've made your bed — now lie in it; …
(Proverbs 1:23; 30-31, The Message)
There is a rhythm to life. God provides times of learning followed by times of testing. We have days of easy opportunity where wisdom offers to pour her spirit on us followed by days of adversity when we need the advice she offered. If we listen to her, we are prepared for the adversity. If we don’t, the adversity may overcome us. We have made our bed, and we will lie in it.
If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
During the times of learning, we can make mistakes without great consequences. We have a chance to work our way through our hedge of thorns without being hurt too badly. During the times of adversity, we must show that we have taken advantage of God’s patience in the times of learning. If we have paid attention to His lessons, we will be blessed. If not, our strength will be shown to be small.
As it is, I've called, but you've turned a deaf ear; I've reached out to you, but you've ignored me. "Since you laugh at my counsel and make a joke of my advice, how can I take you seriously? I'll turn the tables and joke about your troubles! What if the roof falls in, and your whole life goes to pieces? What if catastrophe strikes and there's nothing to show for your life but rubble and ashes? You'll need me then. You'll call for me, but don't expect an answer. No matter how hard you look, you won't find me. Because you hated Knowledge and had nothing to do with the Fear-of-GOD…”
(Proverbs 1:24-29, The Message)
<page 43>Consider a man who indulges in pornography for twenty years. Wisdom is calling to him, saying, “About face! I can revise your life. Look, I'm ready to pour out my spirit on you; I'm ready to tell you all I know.” He has a thousand opportunities, but he turns a deaf ear.
Then one day his wife finds out about his betrayal, decides she wants something different from life, and files for divorce. His day of adversity has come, and it immediately turns into a day of catastrophe.
As his whole life goes to pieces, he suddenly realizes the error of his ways. He goes for counseling, joins a support group, and cries out to God for wisdom.
God will hear his cries, save him, and teach him, but it may be too late for his marriage. The damage is already done, and his wife may choose to put the whole situation behind her. If she is unwilling to reconcile, no amount of pleading can bring her back.
In a figurative sense, wisdom jokes about his troubles. It seems as if he is not being taken seriously. In reality, God does take him extremely seriously. He forgives the man and works with him. …But there are no more low-cost solutions available. The easier answers were offered for the past twenty years, but their time has come and gone. Now he has to learn the hard way.
Even if his wife forgives the past, she may give up when she faces the years of difficulty that may be necessary to work through his hedge of thorns. Or it is possible that she is facing her own day of catastrophe, and she doesn’t have the wisdom she needs to do her part in saving the marriage. It will take time and patience for both husband and wife to rebuild their lives, and she may feel that she has given more than enough of these during the twenty years he wasn’t listening.
The man is learning a difficult lesson. Wisdom often takes a long time to learn; it can’t be mastered in a few days or months. He will call for it, but there will be no answer. He will look for it, but he won’t find it (at least not in time for his current crisis).
This isn’t the result of any malice on God’s part, and the man will receive many blessings as He comes to the throne of grace. It is just that he may not be able to gain what he needs quickly enough to save his marriage.
Without an unusual miracle, we can’t make up for twenty years of neglect in a short time. That’s the way life works. Our love of simplicity, scoffing, and foolishness are deeply imbedded in us, and it takes time to undo their damage and root them out. Once the day of catastrophe has come, it is often too late to salvage what we value in the current challenge.
When God gives us twenty years, we should choose our pain wisely!
That isn’t the end of the story, however. Though there may be suffering and loss in the day of catastrophe, there is also hope. God works all things together for good, even the anguish caused by our foolishness. He gives us more than we deserve.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
…Kind mercy wins over harsh judgment every time.
(James 2:13, The Message)
<page 44>Go to the throne of grace – even if everything is falling apart. I’ve been there, and I know that there is no better place to start putting your life back together. I constructed false gods in my childhood and let my heart fall into foolish darkness. Wisdom was shouting, but I wasn’t listening. When puberty came, my day of catastrophe came, and I developed a sexual abnormality that took me down a painful road of addiction with a long period of recovery.
I hope it is becoming clear as you read, however, that God has worked this difficult situation for my good. My pain became a tool that drove me to Jesus. Foolishness cost me something, but the resulting struggle humbled me and taught me truths about God that I might not have learned otherwise. My emotional prison became a classroom for His voice of freedom.
When I surrendered to Jesus at the age of fourteen, I began to listen. I didn’t know it then, but every time I studied the Bible, went to church, prayed, fasted, or put God’s word into practice, I was preparing for coming days of adversity. Though I didn’t seem to be making progress against my sins, my relationship with Jesus was growing. He was building wisdom into my heart and teaching me the lessons that would keep future days of adversity from becoming days of catastrophe.
The first book in this series, Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom, described a couple of days of adversity in which the wisdom that God had built into me came to the surface. I not only survived …my life was transformed.
In this first day of adversity, I had no answers for my sexual addiction. After eight years of failure, I gave in, and it looked as if I was going to ruin my life.[25] When all hope seemed to be gone, God opened my eyes to see Him as the God of wrath and mercy. Eight years of studying the Scriptures and pursuing God suddenly came together into a set of life changing insights. I found victory as wisdom poured her spirit on me and told me what she knew.
I was far from perfect, but I had sought God’s counsel. I had taken advantage of my time of learning, and even though it seemed as if it hadn’t accomplished its purpose, it had. God spoke to me from Romans 1 and 2 with the Holy Spirit’s power, and I was able to receive what I needed in time to avoid disaster.
In the second day of adversity, I found myself without the emotional stability to handle my job.[26] If I hadn’t been listening to wisdom, this could have led to major setbacks in every area of my life. Instead, it opened the door for many of the truths I have been sharing in this series of books.
That’s what listening to wisdom does. It paves the way for God to turn near disaster into quantum leaps of growth.
The day of adversity can be messy. It is a time when the crutches that supported us during the times of learning are taken away. We need faith and courage to handle the risks we are forced to take as we find new ways to rely on God, but this is where the growth comes from. The knowledge He taught us during our times of learning rises to the surface and transforms us.
When we turn a deaf ear to wisdom, we miss these opportunities. Even worse, the day of adversity leaves us lying in the bed we have made. We get our fill of our own way (Proverbs 1:31).
<page 45>I recently had the chance to share with a group of young teenagers. I tried to speak in an amusing and friendly way, but I also did my best to explain the serious truths of Proverbs.
I stressed that they were in a war, and each of them would face days of adversity. How well they would handle them depended on how they responded to wisdom every day. If they listened, they would be prepared. If they saw their current stage in life as a chance to explore the delights of sin, they wouldn’t be ready – and might spend a good deal of the rest of their lives trying to recover.
The world tells young people the lie that they are in a time when they can irresponsibly indulge the desires of their flesh. I explained that they shouldn’t be fooled by the lack of consequences during times of learning. The times of testing would come.
They were making some of the most important decisions of their lives: First, they were deciding what kind of woman or man they were likely to marry. Their romantic and sexual desires were still forming, so they could choose by God’s grace to move toward the kind of spouse who would support them in God’s kingdom, or they could choose someone who would tear them down and lead them astray.
They were also deciding how much money they would be able to make for the rest of their lives. If they applied themselves to their schoolwork, they would stand a better chance of being able to find a good job. If not, they might find themselves trapped in unsatisfying and low paying drudgery.
If they succumbed to an addiction to pornography, they would be laying down emotional train tracks that no woman or man could satisfy. The roof might fall in, and their whole life could go to pieces (Proverbs 1:27) if they reached a day when they didn’t know how to be sexually satisfied in godly pleasure with their spouse. Recovery would be possible but difficult. Depending upon how long they held on to foolishness, it could cost them a great deal of happiness with their family.
Most importantly, if we believe the statistics that say that the majority of Christians make their decision for Christ before reaching the age of nineteen, they might be deciding where they would spend eternity. If they ran from Jesus, they could choose a direction that would blind them to the truth for the rest of their earthly lives. There is no greater day of catastrophe than to be unprepared for the Day of Judgment. It isn’t wise to gamble that we can tumble into darkness for several years and then leave it on our timetable. We might fall in love with our sin and never recognize our need to escape.
For the turning away of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and will be secure, without fear of evil.
For those who listen, testing becomes a stairway to blessing. Wisdom teaches us how to move forward and find the grace of God. We have a foundation that allows us to dwell safely.
When the whirlwind passes by, the wicked is no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation.
Listening to God gives us His everlasting foundation. When the temptations of the day of adversity come, we are in touch with the One who shows us the way of escape.
Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
If we are not listening, we often get into the middle of the temptation and are too dull to find the way of escape. Our turning away and complacency destroy us. We may hope for an answer that will appear miraculously at the last minute, but God’s answer may have been the spiritual maturity we had the opportunity to grow into over a period of days, weeks, months, and years. Wisdom was shouting in the streets, but we thought we could stand without humbly holding to her words.
This of course doesn’t give us an excuse to sin. We can’t say, “I didn’t get the wisdom when I had the chance, so there’s nothing I can do now but fall to sin.” God is gracious enough to give us some wisdom in the day of adversity. And even if we fall, our best efforts to stand will help us learn for the next test.
There is also usually something we can do to minimize the damage, like fleeing from the temptation. Any step in the right direction helps. As we humble ourselves, cry out for wisdom, and do what we can, we place ourselves on the path to recovery rather than descending further into destruction.
By listening, we eventually grow to the point where we are secure. The daily grace of God keeps us from the sin that gives evil its hold in our lives. We still have uncertainty, because we live on a planet under the curse of sin and death, but we are protected from the pain and destruction that our own sinful thoughts and actions could bring. We have chosen our pain wisely.
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