I want to begin with a verse found
in Isaiah 55.
We're probably familiar with that statement that God
works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
And here it says in Isaiah 55 verse
8, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways declares the Lord.
Now it's very difficult for us to really
believe that verse.
Because after we've been Christians for some years,
we think we have understood all of God's
ways, but we haven't.
The more I hear a lot of Christian
preachers today, I see that they haven't understood
God's ways.
And that's why they preach as they do.
A lot of things which appear to be
scriptural, but which are not because they take
certain portions of scripture and expand it out
of all proportion to the rest of truth.
So that it's no longer the truth.
I mean, it's like I've often pictured truth
like the human body.
And the beauty of the human body is,
first of all, there's a balance.
You know, the left side externally is so
perfectly balanced with the right side.
And it would be hideous if one eye
were ten times the size of the other,
even if you had two eyes.
Balance is one thing.
And truth is like that.
Truth has to be balanced.
In so many areas like love to God
and love to man and the fruit of
the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit
and grace and truth.
Behold the kindness and the severity of God.
We could go on and on and on
and on.
In many, many areas, evangelism and discipleship.
It's where there is imbalance, there is ugliness.
And even though we may be speaking what
appears to be truth, it's not the truth
because it's only one side.
So in the other thing about the human
body, beauty is that each part has got
a different size.
So if one truth is like if you
make a year so big, it's a year,
but it's ugly.
And that's what's happening in a lot of
Christian preaching today because they haven't understood God's
ways.
And that brings a lot of discouragement and
unreality in the lives of many Christians.
And how different are God's ways from our
ways?
It says here in verse 9, as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are
my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts
than your thoughts.
In other words, God's way of working, God's
way of doing things, God's way of thinking
is as different from our human way of
thinking as heaven is from earth.
So the difference is vast.
It's almost indescribable.
The difference between God's way and our way.
If I can, first of all, acknowledge that,
then I will come to the scriptures with
a humbler attitude and say like the psalmist,
teach me your ways, oh Lord.
Otherwise, it's very easy, perhaps after we've been
Christians for a little while, to have a
little arrogance in us to think that I
know God's way.
We don't really.
So I want to say, share a few
things today.
I want to speak first of all about,
I want to speak about four things where
God's ways are different from what we would
expect them to be.
And the first of all, first of all
in the area of failure.
Now we would think that in a genuinely
sincere Christian or a wholehearted Christian, failure should
have no place.
Now that's our way of thinking.
Because that is the view that the world
has given us.
That it's not God's way.
Failure in our life, failing sometimes repeatedly in
some area, is very essential to our spiritual
education.
Jesus didn't need it because he never came
with that sinful nature that we have.
But we need it.
And there's never been a Christian in the
history of Christian church that has not needed
it.
And the scriptures teach us.
That's why the Bible is full of examples
of the failures of godly people.
I remember as a young Christian, I read
the biographies of some of these great saints.
I mean, there was Hudson Taylor's biography written
by his daughter-in-law.
Now a daughter-in-law can never write
about the failures of her father-in-law.
That's impossible.
And so here was this perfect saint who
almost never did anything wrong.
And that didn't encourage me because I felt
he was a million miles ahead of me.
And where in the world could I ever
be like him?
And then I read another book on Hudson
Taylor by John Pollock called Hudson Taylor and
Maria.
And there I saw a very human person
who fell in love and all types of
things which are very human.
And I realized that this man was very
human after all.
And that's the difference between a lot of
biographies we read about missionaries who accomplished fantastic
things and we almost never read anything about
their slip-ups or their failures.
The difference between those type of biographies and
the biographies in Scripture.
Scripture tells us very clearly right from the
first man whose history is described extensively in
Scripture.
That's Noah.
How he failed.
I mean, we would have liked to leave
out those few verses about his getting drunk
and lying naked and things like that.
But the Bible puts it in.
After this tremendous faithfulness for 120 years and
seeing God leading him out of this ark
to be the father of the human race
in a sense because all the rest were
wiped out.
That he finally gets drunk and the Bible
puts it down there as what he did.
Abraham's failures of telling lies and things like
that.
And then we come to the New Testament.
I find that in Luke chapter 22, the
Lord told Simon in verse 31.
Luke 22, 31.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to
sift you like wheat.
It's one of those lovely passages that teach
us like in the first chapter of Job.
That Satan has to get permission from God
before he does anything to God's children.
He has asked for permission to sift Peter
and God gave him permission.
God gave permission to Satan to sift Job.
It's only the chaff that goes away when
we sift the wheat.
That's why Jesus used that word, to sift
like wheat.
But I have prayed for you and we
would think that Jesus should say, I prayed
for you that you won't deny me.
But that's not what he prayed.
He did not pray that Peter should not
fail or fall in the temptation.
Because we know he fell and he didn't
just fall once.
He fell three times that night.
And it's very interesting that Jesus did not
pray that Peter should not fall.
We pray for one another, Lord preserve them
in the moment of temptation that they don't
fall.
And it's a good prayer to pray.
But it's very interesting to see that Jesus
did not pray that for Peter.
He knew that Peter would fail.
In fact, he said that before this night
is out, you're going to deny me three
times.
But what he did pray, he said that
in verse 34.
I say to you, before the cock crows
today, you'll have denied me three times.
He knew he was going to fail.
Imagine telling a person you're going to fail
tonight three times.
But he says, I prayed for you that
when you do fail, your faith may not
fail.
And that's the Lord's goal that I don't
get discouraged when I have fallen.
And I don't give up and say, well,
I'm useless.
I'm hopeless.
God can do nothing with me.
Then faith has failed.
Then everything is gone.
So that teaches me that even Peter committing
such a terrible sin, like saying, I don't
know Jesus.
Who are you talking about?
I don't think any of us sitting here
would ever get that far to say.
I think a lot of us, perhaps all
of us would be willing to give our
lives to acknowledge that we are Christians.
I mean, none of us would say I'm
a Hindu or an atheist to save our
life.
But that's what Peter was doing.
He was pretending not to know Jesus just
to save his life.
And even such a terrible sin like that,
and he did it three times.
He said, Peter, just make sure when you've
done that, that you don't give up hope.
And say, well, God's given up on me
because I did this terrible thing and I
didn't just do it once.
I did it again and again.
He said, I prayed for you that your
faith may not fail, that when you reach
that rock bottom, you don't give up hope.
These are God's ways.
Now, I'll just explain to you why failure
is necessary in our life.
And when you have turned again, he says,
I know you're going to turn.
He encouraged him saying, I know that you
are going to turn.
And when you turn again, strengthen your brothers.
So, for Peter to have a ministry of
strengthening other people, he had to go through
failure.
Such deep failure, more than any of the
other apostles had failed.
And not just failure, but after failing, he
had to make sure his faith did not
fail.
If you failed in life and your faith
failed, saying, oh, well, God's given up on
me, then you can't strengthen your brothers.
Your failure, God can handle.
But the failure of faith to say, well,
faith is basically to say God loves me.
I've understood faith to be that God still
loves me.
If you can say that in any situation,
your faith hasn't failed.
Yeah, I know I've done that.
God still loves me.
Then your faith hasn't failed.
But if you stop saying that, stop believing
that God can still do something wonderful with
your life, then your faith has failed.
So, it's very important for us to see
in this passage, what is the thing in
us which we must never lose?
And that's our faith.
Jesus spoke so much about that.
We know that in many situations, he encouraged
them to have faith to do miracles and
faith to cast out demons and all.
But here he was speaking about faith when
we have failed so utterly and totally.
And if our faith doesn't fail, and I
want to say to all of you here,
I mean, even if you don't need this
word today, maybe someday in the future, something
terrible can happen.
You can have a terrible failure in your
life where you let down the Lord so
badly and weep bitterly, just like Peter wept
bitterly.
And I want to say to you at
that time, if you can still say that
God still loves me, he's the lifter of
my head, you can still one day turn
around and be one who strengthens your brothers.
That's God's way.
So then we go to this point of
why did God permit this failure?
Why does God allow failure?
I believe it is so that we, first
of all, I think there are two reasons.
One is so that we never take credit
for victory when God gives it to us.
Or for some blessing in our ministry, when
God blesses our ministry, that we don't take
credit to ourselves.
We don't take glory to ourselves.
See, God's blessing is something that can,
it's so wonderful that we can become proud
so easily when God blesses us in a
way that he uses us in a way
that he hasn't used others.
And, you know, the tendency to unconsciously compare
ourselves or our ministry with the ministry of
other people.
There's a lot of that that goes on
in our minds, which, though we act humble
on the outside and all that, which where
we can secretly begin to think, well, you
know, God's blessed me, and blessed me more,
and blessed my ministry more.
Or we can be proud of victory over
sin.
Sin is like a pit.
Every sin is like a pit, but if
anger is a ten-foot pit, if God
were to give me victory to pull me
out of anger so that I never get
angry again, I've got total victory over my
foul temper.
And then I've come out of this ten
-foot pit and I've fallen to a hundred
-foot pit called spiritual pride.
That's not really victory.
That's what often happens.
Somebody gets victory over one sin, and then
he gets so proud of that, that he
doesn't realize he's fallen into the deepest of
all pits, which is spiritual pride.
Now, how can God save us from that?
Or God blesses our ministry in such a
wonderful way that we see results, souls are
saved, or churches are established, and whatever we
do prospers.
It's very easy for God to do that
through anyone.
But for God to keep a man humble
at the end of such blessing, that's very
difficult.
Christian history is littered with the examples of
people who have been tremendously blessed and who
got puffed up and destroyed themselves with spiritual
pride because they were proud of God's blessings.
So, one way, one major way in which
God saves us from that pride is by
repeated failure to such an extent that we
never forget what total failures we were.
I believe on the day of Pentecost, there's
such a tremendous blessing that Peter experienced in
his ministry.
I mean, imagine, put yourself, sometimes when we
read the scriptures, it's good to put ourselves
in the place of the person whom you're
reading about and see how would I react
if I were in that situation.
That's a very good way to read the
scriptures.
In any situation, in the Old Testament or
New Testament, put yourself there in the place
of that person.
So, here I put myself in the place,
or you put yourself in the place of
Peter on the day of Pentecost, and you
preach.
How long was the sermon?
Maybe 15 minutes.
And you preach 15 minutes, and boy, 3
,000 people are saved.
Not just 3,000 ordinary people, but 3
,000 hardcore Jews.
Think if you went to Israel and preached,
and in one meeting after 15 minutes, 3
,000 people among your listeners got converted and
took baptism and were filled with the Holy
Spirit.
I think you'd have some difficulty handling that.
And all the apostles would have had a
difficulty handling that, except Peter.
He was the only one who was capable
of handling that type of blessing.
Because if you went up to Peter and
slapped him on the back and said, Boy,
Peter, see what happened.
How God's blessed your mercy.
What a man of God you are.
He'd have said, Listen, I know what I
did six weeks ago.
He couldn't forget what he was, a total
failure.
He denied the Lord, let down the Lord
so badly, that the memory of that remained
with him all through his life.
And that was his salvation, that God could
use him to open the door to the
Jews, to open the door to the Gentiles,
to limitless avenues of ministry.
Because he had learned a lesson through failure.
Now that's not a man's way.
You know, if you're a repeated failure in
college, they write you off.
Say, you're no use, go and do something
else.
But God's ways are different.
As different as the heaven is from the
earth.
And so there is a purpose in all
the failures he takes us through.
So one is, so that we don't get
puffed up with pride.
The other reason for failure is, so that
we never again look down our noses on
other people who fail.
You know, that's another tendency.
One is this tendency to get puffed up
when God blesses me in some wonderful way,
or uses me in some wonderful way in
which he hasn't used other people.
And the other is that we tend to
look down on someone who perhaps hasn't got
the victory that I have.
And we don't realize how, just like spiritual
pride, because of God using me, stinks before
God.
In the same way, when I look down
on another person, that also stinks before God.
The Bible says, Proverbs, don't even rejoice when
your enemy falls.
Don't let your heart be glad, it says.
So God doesn't, you know, want us to
rejoice even when our enemy falls.
We are fallen creatures, and I remember reading
years ago, a small little article by Francis
Schaeffer, who said that, I mean, I can't
express it as well as he does in
that little article, but whenever I see anything
wrong in another human being, in an area
in which I'm right and he's wrong, it
tends to exalt me above that person in
my mind.
And that removes the relationship that God expects
me to have as a creature, to a
fellow creature.
And I can never be to him what
God wants me to be.
And that feeling of I'm superior comes because
I've not failed enough in my life.
I haven't got that education that comes through
failure sufficiently.
If I had it, if God had rubbed
my nose in my own muck for so
long that I never lost the smell of
it, then I would never look down on
that person who has failed.
But maybe my nose has not been rubbed
in my own muck for so long enough.
Maybe I need to fail another 10,000
times before I learn that lesson.
So how long does it take to learn?
Well, it differs with different people.
Some people learn quickly that without Christ I
can do nothing.
That's the basic lesson.
You know, I believe that Jesus was trying
to teach his disciples that lesson which he
said in John 15 verse 5, Apart from
me, you can do nothing.
Now, theoretically, we all know that.
Now, who among us would say, Apart from
Christ, I can do something?
No one.
We have the right answers.
But deep down in our subconscious being, we're
not convinced that apart from Christ I can
do nothing.
Jesus used the example of the branch in
the tree, that even if that branch has
been producing fruit for 50 years, 50 years,
you cut it off today.
That's the end.
No more fruit.
It's that, you know, sense of helplessness and
weakness.
I can do nothing apart from Christ.
In order to teach us that lesson, he
has to allow us to go through repeated
failure.
And that's why Peter, towards the end of
his life, he writes in 2 Peter chapter
1, 2 Peter 1, he says, he's
talking about a number of qualities that make
us fruitful, in verse 8, 5 to 8.
And then he says in verse 9, If
you lack these qualities, you're blind and short
-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former
sins.
How does a person become blind and short
-sighted?
When he forgets the pit he was pulled
out from.
And I can imagine when Peter wrote that,
he was thinking of his own having denied
the Lord, his purification from his former sins.
He's forgotten it.
And when I forget what a wretch I
was, and what all failures I've had, and
where I still fail in my life, I
can become very unmerciful to other people.
And then I become blind and short-sighted.
So, these are the reasons why God has
to allow failure in our life, to keep
us in that place of humility, and where
we don't look down upon other people.
The second area I want to speak about,
in relation to God's ways, is the area
of weakness.
We would think that a man of God,
must be a man who is always strong.
And that's the, you know, in the world,
just like they don't have value for people
who are failures, they don't have value for
people who are weak.
The world is looking for strong people.
Corporations and everywhere, they want strong capable people.
But have you understood from the New Testament,
God looks for weak people.
In 2nd Corinthians, Paul says, in verse chapter
13, verse 4, speaking about Jesus, it says,
He was crucified because of weakness, yet He
lives because of the power of God.
We also are weak in Him, but we
shall live with Him because of the power
of God directed towards you.
So, God's way, secondly, is to make us
weak, just like He allows us to fail.
He has to make us weak, not strong.
It's through weakness, that He manifests His power.
And Paul says, even Jesus, was crucified because
of weakness.
It is a weakness He deliberately chose.
That means, He said to His disciples, if
I wanted, I could call 72,000 angels
right now to come and fight for me,
but I'm not going to do that.
He deliberately chose weakness, allowed Himself to be
bound, beaten.
He was crucified because of weakness.
He could have come down from the cross
easily.
That way of weakness is so little known
among Christians today.
That's because, generally speaking, Christendom has not understood
the way of the cross.
If there's one message that's missing in preaching
to the unbeliever today, it's the message of
repentance.
And if there's one message that's missing in
preaching to believers today, it's the message of
the cross in the life of the believer.
You have to take up your cross and
follow Me, otherwise you cannot be My disciple.
It's a message that's rarely heard from the
pulpit, whether it's charismatic or anti-charismatic circles.
One thing that's common about both of them
is that they both don't preach the cross,
generally speaking.
The cross is a symbol of weakness.
He was crucified because of weakness.
And we cannot understand the power of God
if we have not understood that weakness that
God wants to bring us to through the
cross.
Even the great Apostle Paul in the previous
chapter, he says in chapter 12, verse 7,
Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations
that I had, for this reason, to keep
me from exalting myself, there was given me
a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of
Satan to buffet me, to keep me from
exalting myself.
It was a messenger of Satan.
What are you supposed to do with a
messenger of Satan that keeps on harassing you?
Well, the standard answer would be resist it
in Jesus' name.
Get rid of it.
You're not supposed to have a messenger of
Satan in your life.
I don't know what that messenger of Satan
was.
I personally think it was a sickness that
Paul had which he never seemed to get
rid of.
He who had healed the sick and even
raised the dead had some type of ailment
in his body which he never seemed to
be free from.
And God could have healed him.
God used him to heal.
Even the handkerchiefs from his body healed the
sick.
But in his own case, it was necessary
to keep him weak because otherwise God's power
would not be manifested in him.
And he prayed.
In fact, he prayed like we should pray
when we are sick.
Anybody who is sick should only pray one
prayer.
Lord, heal me.
And that's what Paul prayed too.
Lord, heal me.
He says, I entreated the Lord, verse 8.
I kept on asking the Lord until I
got an answer.
The point is not three times.
The point is until I got an answer.
He got an answer in three times.
But if he hadn't got an answer in
three times, he would have prayed 30 times
or 300 times.
But he prayed until he got an answer
and the Lord said to him, No, I'm
not going to heal you.
My grace is sufficient for you.
And the Living Bible says, another part of
that verse, verse 9.
My power shows up best in weak people.
You know like a light shines more brightly
when it is dark.
You see it more brightly anyway.
God's power is manifest in a much greater
way in human weakness.
Where it is obvious that this is God
doing the work.
This is not this man.
I mean no man could possibly do something
like that.
This man is an incapable, weak type of
person.
But this is God.
So many servants of God today, you look
at them, you watch them minister and you
get the feeling this is a mighty capable
man and I'm not like that.
You don't get the impression of a weak,
helpless type of person who is terribly dependent
upon God for help.
That's not the image unfortunately even of a
lot of Christian preachers.
It's not the image they want you to
have.
They want you to have the image of
a mighty man of faith who never has
any doubts or fears in his life.
And that shows to me the man's own
insecurity.
You know the more insecure we are in
our relationship with God, please listen to this
carefully, the more insecure we are in our
relationship with God, the more we want to
impress other people that we are mighty men
of God or mighty women of God.
And the converse is also true.
The more secure we are in our relationship
with God, God loves me.
I don't have to prove anything about myself
to anyone.
I'm just a disciple whom Jesus loves.
I don't have to prove to you that
I'm a great man of faith or anything
like that.
And Paul was secure in the love of
God for him.
And so he says, Therefore, I'm content, verse
10, with weaknesses.
Imagine to be perfectly content when God has
told you, I'm not going to remove that
sickness.
It's going to be with you.
OK, Lord.
Praise the Lord.
That's fine.
Because it's serving a purpose.
Weakness.
God's looking for weak people.
Because He says in the last part of
verse 10, When I'm weak, then I'm strong.
That is really God's way.
He has to make us weak.
I see that in the way God worked
with Joe.
You know there's a verse in James which
says that He uses the expression the end
of the Lord.
In the King James Version, James 5.11,
it says the end of the Lord in
his dealings with Job.
Or the outcome.
You see the outcome of the Lord's dealings
with Job.
James 5.11. What was the end of
the Lord?
What was the end towards which God was
working with Job?
Job had such wonderful qualities.
You just got to read chapters 29 to
31 of Job to see what a man
he was.
He helped the widows.
He helped the poor.
He never made gold his God.
Even though he was a grandfather, he was
careful with his eyes, not to lust with
his eyes.
He knew about lusting with his eyes thousands
of years before Matthew 5 was spoken.
He knew what a man he was.
But there was one thing missing in that
man.
With all his good qualities, he was a
man who feared God, who turned away from
evil.
A man whom God himself could point out
to Satan, saying there's no one like him
in the whole earth.
The most wonderful man of God in the
whole earth had one fundamental flaw in his
character.
Something so seriously wrong that God had to
teach him a lesson through a very, very
hard process.
And I want to show you that end
of the Lord which James 5 speaks about.
Have you ever thought about what you read
in James 5?
What was the end of the Lord?
And I believe it was this.
What we read in the book of Job
in chapter 40.
You know, when after all these preachers have
finished speaking to him and they haven't accomplished
what God wants to accomplish in Job, then
God Himself speaks from chapter 38.
You see, the difference between God's preaching and
man's preaching and God's preaching was this.
Men were trying to convict Job of his
sin like a lot of preachers trying to
point out our sin to us.
And God, in an amazing way, in those
two chapters, in chapter 38 and 39, He
doesn't say one word about sin.
Have you noticed that?
You compare that with the four preachers who
went before that and all they were doing
was preaching about Job's sin.
And God never said a word about it.
God just showed him His greatness.
And I believe that's what we need to
see.
And Job says when he sees God's greatness
in Job 40, verse 4, Behold, I am
nothing.
I am insignificant.
Lord, I have nothing to say.
That's the place to which God wants to
bring us.
God has to reduce us to zero before
He can use us.
And I want to say to you, my
dear brothers and sisters, if God is in
the process of reducing you to zero through
your circumstances, through your neighbors, through your relatives,
through financial struggles, through physical sickness perhaps, whatever
it is, let Him do His work.
Because when you come to that place, He
can accomplish something wonderful.
When I am weak, then I am strong.
Behold, I am nothing.
You know, the most wonderful book I've ever
read on humility is Andrew Murray's book.
I've never read anything equivalent.
And he says there how a lot of
us think that humility is dependent on sinning.
In the sinner, humility comes out of two
reasons.
One, because we're sinners.
We've failed so much.
What else can we do but humble ourselves?
But in the most humble man that ever
walked on the earth, there was no sin.
Jesus.
Where did His humility come from?
His humility didn't come because He had failed
so much.
And that's so true, you know.
When we look at our life, so often
our humility comes out of the fact that
we have failed so much.
We have failed so much.
We have failed so much, oh Lord.
Well, how can I lift up my head?
Yeah, that's true.
That's a great aid to humility, our failure,
as we just considered earlier.
But we must remember that in Jesus, the
humblest man who walked on the earth, there
was no failure at all.
And yet, He was the humblest man that
ever walked on the earth.
And Andrew Murray expresses it so beautifully in
that book.
He says, Jesus had that sense of entire
nothingness so that the Father might be everything
in His life.
I really love that.
That is true Christianity.
To be nothing so that Jesus can be
everything in our life.
So that people who come in contact with
you don't think you are the great man
of faith or a great woman of faith
or some mighty man.
No.
Just an ordinary person.
But someone through whom the beauty of Jesus
radiates in your words and in your conduct
and your behavior.
And very often unconsciously.
It's not a deliberate attempt to act like
Jesus.
In fact, we can get sick and tired
of people who try to act like Jesus
towards us.
But it's an unconscious thing.
It comes out of that sense of entire
nothingness.
It's in our thoughts.
Humility is in our thoughts.
It's the sense of utter weakness and nothingness
that God might be everything.
That's what God created us to be.
He created us to reflect His glory, to
radiate His glory.
You know, there is one thing about God
that He'll never give to us.
He'll give us His nature, but He'll never
give us His glory.
It says in Isaiah 42.8, I think
it is, My glory will I not give
to another.
And you know, if you were to examine
your life, as I examine my life, I
believe one of the greatest sins that we
have all committed is the times when we
have touched the glory of God.
When we have taken credit for things we
had no right to take credit for.
It was God, but we accepted the credit
for it.
We pretended we did it.
And we thought in our minds that we'd
done something.
I know I feel terribly in this area.
It's one of my major areas of repentance
constantly.
Lord, I never want to touch Your glory.
It's brought so much weeping in my life.
If you see how serious a sin it
is, it will bring a lot of weeping
in your life too.
True Christianity is to have that sense of
entire nothingness, that God might be everything.
That's humility.
That's why God has to reduce us to
weakness.
So don't look at all these great so
-called mighty men of God on the television
screen and on the platforms and wish you
were like them.
I don't want to be like them, to
tell you honestly.
I don't envy them at all.
I'm secure in my relationship with God.
I don't have to be like you.
I don't have to be like another person.
I thank God I'm myself.
You know that you have a particular purpose
in God's plan.
There's a particular slot that you have in
the body of Christ.
And you're going to frustrate God's purpose for
your life if you're always wishing that you
could be like somebody else, wishing you could
preach like somebody else or be like somebody
else or do things like that man can
do it.
You're just frustrating God's plan for you.
Imagine if the kidney in the body, say,
I'm hidden away in the body.
Nobody appreciates me and I wish I could
be like the tongue.
And it's never going to be the tongue
and it won't do its job as a
kidney properly and do a lot of havoc
in the body.
You think the kidney is not important just
because it's hidden and unseen?
To be secure that God's made me the
way I'm supposed to be.
And the more hidden I am, the safer
I am in a sense.
In fact, the more public our ministry and
the more visible our ministry doesn't make you
any more important in God's eyes, but it
makes you a bigger target for Satan.
And particularly if you try to have a
ministry that God never called you for, then
you're an even greater target of Satan.
Our competition, oh boy!
The thing that saved me from competition, I'll
tell you honestly, there's a lot of competition
in Christian circles that I can honestly say
before God that I am not jealous of
any ministry, of any Christian worker in the
world.
And I'm not in competition with a single
soul because of one reason, not because I'm
such a great humble saint, but because God
has shown me my place in the body
of Christ.
And that He has shown me that He
never made a mistake in the temperament He
gave me.
He never made me like somebody else because
He had a particular function for me to
fulfill.
I don't want to be like somebody else.
I don't want to have somebody else's temperament.
I don't want to have somebody else's ministry.
I'd be frustrating.
My father's wonderful plan for my life.
And when I came to rest in that,
I could glory in my weakness.
Okay, I'm not like that person.
So what?
God made me like this because I have
a particular function to fulfill that can never
be fulfilled if I'm not like this.
So we need to glory in our weakness.
And the third thing I want to speak
about is perplexity.
I spoke about failure, weakness, perplexity.
Again, God's ways are not our ways.
In the world, people don't have time for
a man who is perplexed and confused.
Is there a place for perplexity in the
life of a wholehearted spiritual Christian where you
say, Lord, I'm confused.
I don't know what your will is.
Of course, the way to test it is,
was there perplexity in the life of Jesus?
Was He ever unsure about God's will?
What do you think?
What about after He had lived on earth
for 33 and a half years?
On the last day of His earthly life,
He wasn't sure about God's will.
Do you know that?
That's what He was struggling with in Gethsemane.
He was saying, Father, isn't there another way?
I can't imagine Jesus praying that even for
one second if He was absolutely sure of
the Father's will.
I mean, I wouldn't pray.
If I were sure of the Father's will,
I wouldn't try to change the Father's will.
And Jesus is some millions of miles ahead
of me.
Can you imagine Him trying to change His
Father's will?
No.
He was perplexed.
Perplexity is not an indication of carnality.
It does not mean that you're not mature
or not spiritual.
I believe because we are human, there are
many areas where we will not know God's
will perfectly.
And there's no harm in acknowledging that.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 8,
he speaks about this earthen vessel in verse
7 that carries this glory of God mentioned
in verse 6.
He says, this wonderful glory of God is
seen in an earthen vessel.
You know, sometimes we want to project an
image of a golden vessel.
No.
It's an earthen vessel.
So easily cracked.
You know, in the villages of India, they
use earthen vessels all the time.
You've got to be very careful.
Even when you put an earthen vessel on
the ground, it can break so easily.
It's just made of earth, the clay from
the potter's wheel.
You put it down a little hard and
it's broken.
That's how weak we are.
Just a little bit of blessing and we
get puffed up.
You prayed for somebody and the fellow got
healed.
Boy, the vessel is already broken.
That's how weak we are.
Pride has broken the vessel.
Some blessing came in our life unexpectedly and
that's it.
We are earthen vessels.
But in this earthen vessel, the thing that
people need to see is not, oh, what
a wonderful vessel with the glory of God
in the earthen vessel.
And because we are earthen vessels, it says
here in verse 8, middle of verse 8,
we are perplexed.
And we will be perplexed.
But we don't despair.
Okay.
I don't know.
I remember reading an article of Tozer's years
ago where he said, the most profound statement
in the whole Bible.
What is the most profound statement in the
whole Bible?
Tozer's opinion was, Ezekiel 37 verse 3, O
Lord God, You know.
That is the most profound statement in the
whole Bible.
Lord, You know.
There is no harm in saying in so
many situations in life, I don't know.
God knows.
There are things I don't understand.
That is the answer I have to give
to many questions that people ask me in
India.
Why has God allowed all this poverty here?
Why all these lepers who go begging, begging,
begging, begging every week.
They don't have salvation.
They are not saved.
They don't know the Lord.
And they have it pretty bad on earth
as well.
Where is your God, they say?
Look at this poor fellow's life.
He was born into that type of life
in a slum.
He has nothing on earth and nothing in
eternity.
Lord, You know.
I don't know.
I mean, if I were God, I probably
wouldn't allow any poverty on earth.
That is because I am stupid.
I am not God.
I don't know.
God in His tremendous wisdom allows a lot
of things which I would not allow.
I don't know.
These founders of false religions that have created
so much havoc for the true Christian faith
that have persecuted Christians in different lands.
You know, think of some major religions in
the world that were founded by somebody hundreds
of years ago.
I have often thought if I were God,
I would have just killed off that little
baby because I knew that He was going
to found a false religion.
I knew that havoc it was going to
create to my children years in the future.
But God didn't do it.
Why?
I don't know.
Why do the wicked prosper?
Why is it some people who are so
faithful, so righteous, so wholehearted seem to struggle,
struggle, struggle all through life?
And why do other believers seem to have
it so easy?
Lord, You know.
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to many, many
things.
I do know some absolutes such as God
makes everything work together for good to those
who love Him.
That I am sure of.
God is on the throne.
He is running the universe.
He knows everything that is happening to us.
The devil has been defeated.
And it will go well with the righteous.
You know, God told the prophet to tell
the righteous, say to the righteous, it will
go well with you.
That's for certain.
But why so many things happen?
Why He allows many things to happen?
I don't know.
And there is no harm, even if you
are the most mature saint on earth, to
say there are certain areas.
I don't know God's will.
I am in a fog.
I am trying to walk with God.
But that's part of the walk of faith,
you know.
Certainty can sometimes be the equivalent of sight.
And a certain amount of perplexity is necessary
for a walk of faith.
So, in perplexity, if I can still trust
God, and say, well, I don't know, but
I trust my Father.
It may be something that is happening in
your life.
Say, I don't know why He has allowed
it.
I don't know why He hasn't relieved me
of this burden yet.
I mean, I've searched my heart, and everything
seems to be right, and I don't know.
But I know my Father loves me still.
You haven't lost your faith.
That's true Christianity.
It's not the way Christianity is projected today
in a lot of pulpits.
But that is true Christianity.
Perplexity, Jesus had it.
Weakness, Jesus had it.
Lastly, opposition.
Persecution.
It says in 2 Timothy 3.12, All
who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus
will be persecuted.
There is no way out of that.
That's another thing which the world can't understand.
If you are God's Almighty, why doesn't He
protect you from all these evil people?
I mean, when the world's super power sends
its military to distant parts of the world,
it does so many things to rescue its
prisoners of war, and so many risks it
takes, and so much money it's willing to
spend to protect its forces.
Why doesn't the universe's super power do that
for His children?
Isn't that a good question?
God says, My ways are not your ways.
Your ways are as different from My ways
as the heaven is above the earth.
God is glorified when His children go through
persecution and are faithful.
And that's part of one of the differences
in the New Covenant from the Old Covenant.
In the Old Covenant, God shut the lion's
mouth when Daniel was thrown into the lion's
den.
But in the amphitheaters of Rome 19 centuries
ago, no lion's mouth was shut when the
Christians were thrown to the lions.
Because these were New Covenant saints who were
following the Lamb wherever He goes.
And their forerunner had gone ahead of them.
And His prayer when He faced the cross
was, you read in John 12, Father, what
shall I pray?
Save me from this hour?
No.
Father, glorify Your name.
Have you read that beautiful prayer?
Wonderful prayer for us to pray when we
can't understand things.
When we go through difficulty, trial and probably
facing death.
John's Gospel chapter 12.
Jesus was honest enough to say that His
soul was troubled.
John 12, verse 27.
Now my soul has become troubled and what
shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour?
No.
I shall pray, Father, glorify Thy name.
And in a situation where you face one
day, what are you going to pray?
I know our human tendency, yours and mine,
is to say, Father, save me from this.
Let's follow Jesus and say, Father, glorify Thy
name.
It says in Hebrews that people by faith
quenched the violence of fire.
In the Old Testament.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the
fire and came out untouched.
Polycarp, the elder in Smyrna, was thrown into
the fire and he was burnt.
Many other Christians like that.
We don't see God doing it.
That's the same God.
The God whom the Christians who were burnt
in the fire worshipped was the same God
of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
But now, we are to glorify God in
the fires.
God's ways are not our ways.
In poverty, in weakness, through failure, through perplexity,
through opposition, where there is no relief from
the persecution until death comes.
Christians locked up in prisons for 15, 20,
30 years.
God can release them.
He did it even in New Covenant times.
He released Peter.
I've often thought about that incident where Peter
comes out of prison.
It says the previous couple of days earlier,
James had already been killed, beheaded.
And then a few days later, Peter is
released.
The angel comes and releases him and he
comes out and he comes to this prayer
meeting in the house of Mary.
And he gives this wonderful testimony how God
did a mighty miracle and sent the angel
to remove the chains from his legs and
the doors opened one after the other and
brothers and sisters, here I am!
And sitting there listening to him is James'
wife or his mother if he wasn't married.
Wondering, why didn't God do that for my
husband?
Why did he allow my husband to be
beheaded three days ago?
Why didn't the angel come then?
Lord, you know, his ways are perfect.
And if in every situation we can bow
our head and say, God, I don't have
the answer to everything on this earth.
But I know one thing, my father loves
me.
I'm a child of God.
And even if I can't explain a thousand
and one things, my father loves me.
My faith hasn't failed.
I'm a victor.
I'm more than conqueror through him who loved
me and will never let me go.
Let's pray.
If there's someone here who's facing the situations
we spoke about right now.
Word of God says, cast your burden upon
the Lord.
Roll it upon him.
Don't lift it anymore.
Once and for all, roll it upon him.
Humble yourself and acknowledge that you will never
have the answer to everything.
Acknowledge that you're a mere created human being,
a speck of dust on another speck of
dust called planet earth that's rotating in this
universe run by our Heavenly Father.
There are many things we don't understand.
But we know one thing.
Our Father loves us.
And that's our glory as we go away
this evening and every day of our life.
I am beloved by my Heavenly Father.
I failed, but he's forgiven me.
And he still loves me and he'll still
do something wonderful with my life.
Therefore, I refuse to be discouraged.
I will only praise him till the end
of my days.
Heavenly Father, help us, encourage us, strengthen us
to be all that you want us to
be.
In Jesus' name, Amen.