310. LIFE IS DIFFICULT BUT GOD IS FAITHFUL

(The Faith Forum Series – Batch 11)

God was undoubtedly faithful to Jacob all of his life, protecting, preserving and providing for him and is family even in a severe drought, so that he lived to an old age. When there was famine in the land, God had already made arrangements through his son Joseph, who was second in command in Egypt, to sustain him and his family, so that he was fed.

Yet, although God was with Jacob throughout his life journey and had been faithful, in reflecting on the life he had lived when old, he acknowledged that it had not been easy. He had had difficult moments, suffered loss, betrayal and heartbreak.

When Joseph brought him before Pharaoh the king of Egypt and Pharaoh asked him of his age therefore, he replied:

• “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” (Genesis 47:9)

This assessment reminds me of what Job summed up in Job 14:1. In the bowels of his affliction, he stated of mankind, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.”

Undoubtedly, life is full of trouble for all human beings, including God’s people. Christians don’t get a pass from trials. As a matter of fact because they have acknowledged the truth, that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe on his resurrection in their hearts and have resolved in surrender, to serve him, they have become prime targets for the devil’s venomous arrows.

Yet, when it comes to his children, no matter what, God is there. He never promised us a bed of roses, a problem free life or one filled with ease but based on his character, he is a God that has promised to never leave us or forsake us. As he faithfully demonstrated time and time again in the old days, his character remains the same. As he indicated to the Israelites, he will be with his children through thick and thin. No adversity could ever separate them from his love.

In Isaiah 43: 1-3, although God acknowledged that waters, rivers and fire would come, all of which alluded to difficulty and trials, he declared through his prophet to his people:

• “But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour…”

To those who did his will, God promised that he would be there for them faithfully, no matter what life threw at them. In Isaiah 58:11, he conveyed to them through his prophet:

• “And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”

That life is hard is a fact but that God is faithful to his children through life’s hardships is also a fact. While he does not promise us that we would be exempt from the waters, the rivers, the fires and the flood or that famine and drought will not exist in the place where we are he promises to be faithful through all of that, so as to take us through it and out of it safely.

For some, this means deliverance while on earth but for others, it means deliverance on the other side of eternity. Either way, God’s people will triumph, hence the reason that Jesus, in preparation for his departure from earth, stated to his disciples and for the benefit of all who decided to follow him:

“These things I have spoken unto you, that in my ye might have peace. In the world, ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

In Romans 8: 31-39, Paul, a man whose life Jesus had transformed after he had had a supernatural encounter with him on the road to Damascus, boldly declared:

• “…If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?… Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We have certainly seen evidence in the Bible of God’s faithful character. Even if we are being stoned, he is there. When Stephen was being stoned to death, as a martyr, he certainly would have felt the pain and he eventually succumbed to his injuries from the endless blows of stones but God was with him!

Prior to his stoning, which was a result of him being obedient to the Lord by sharing the truth about Jesus Christ, Jesus himself showed up, allowing him to have a glimpse of him in glory, so as to give him the support he would need in that moment in the midst of the blows and to strengthen him, before ushering him into eternity.

Surrounded by his enemies, it says of Stephen in Acts 7:

• “But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”

Right before his life had ended from the endless stoning he mercilessly received as a result of his utterances, verse 59 states of him, “And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Even if we are placed in the fiery furnace of any kind of affliction, it is important that remember (because we are prone to forget) that God is there. He will never leave us to go through anything on our own.

He was there when king Nebuchadnezzar, outraged that three Hebrew boys in loyalty to God, refused to worship the golden image that he had set up, placed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into an actual furnace full of fire, heated seven times more than it was supposed to be heated.

Daniel 3:24-26 reads:

• “And these three men, Shadrah, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”

In response, the king went near to the fire and instructed the three men to come out of the fire, which they did. Such a spectacle was this, that it attracted all the princes, governors, captains and the king’s counsellors. The scripture says, that “…being gathered together”, they “…saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.” (vs. 27).

The Lord had not just been with them and kept them. He had kept them well, so much so, that it brought a heathen king to give glory to God and to state, after seeing the Lord’s miraculous act of faithfulness himself, on behalf of his children:

• “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.”

King Nebuchadnezzer could attest, by what he had witnessed, that this God was worthy of such service! For, he clearly did not leave his children when in trouble. He was there with them, to guide them, to comfort and strengthen them and to deliver them.

Paul in the New Testament, himself attested, when he reflected on an experience that he had had, on the fickleness of man, contrasted with the wonderful faithfulness of God. He recounted, that although all had forsaken him when he was going through his difficult time, God had been with him. In 2 Timothy 4:16-18, he stated:

• “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me he preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Whether physically (like in the case of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) or spiritually therefore, God is there. He never allows us to go through life’s ordeals alone, even if everybody else deserts us. This is a comforting thought, to know that there is nothing that we could ever go through in life as God’s children, that could separate us from him. He will never allow us to go through whatever he has allowed us in his sovereignty to go through, without him by our side.

People may turn their backs on us or accompany us for a while and then get tired and abandon us on life’s journey. Yet, God is with us forever.

Hebrews 13:5 records, “…for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” and he is a God of his word. He makes himself available and shows up, no matter how hard, long or difficult the path, so that we can draw from his strength and obtain support, to bear what seems to others, to be unbearable. In so doing, we learn something more of what it truly means to depend on our Saviour and know of a truth, that without him, we can do nothing. I can personally attest to this, my having endured many afflictions thus far, in my life. I have been stripped at times, of everything: Of friends, job, money and even family support. People turned their backs on me but alas, God never did.

And for many, he gives a testimony right here on earth, when he brings them out on the other side, without them exhibiting any sign of the troubles, the pain, the hardships that they’ve been through. They are radiant, perhaps moreso than those who did not go through what they went through and they are filled, like Jacob must have felt when he returned to Bethel with a heart full of gratitude.

In the Old Testament, Joseph was thrown into a pit by his brothers, then sold to strangers who carried him by force to Egypt, where he was again sold as a slave in Potiphar’s house and then put into prison for something that he did not do. Psalm 105:18 says of him, that they hurt his feet with fetters and that he was laid in iron. Undoubtedly, he felt the pain of all that he endured for several years with no sign of abating and given the extent of his suffering, to the natural eye, it looked like God had abandoned him. Yet, the Word of God testifies, that in all that he was going through, the Lord was with him.

Genesis 39:1-3 states:

• “And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand.”

Later on, when, in refusing to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph was lied on and sent to prison, Potiphar’s wife alleging that he had tried to rape her, verses 20-23 states:

• “…And he was there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing that was under his hand; because the Lord was with him, and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper.”

While serving as a captive in a strange land, Daniel was put into a den of lions due to envious men who had hatched a plan to get him killed because they were upset at his work ethic, his excellence and the favour it procured with the king. However, him having spent the entire night in that den and  his enemies thinking that he was surely dead, to their dismay, the next morning when the king went to see what had become of him, hoping that somehow, the God of whom Daniel loved so dearly, would have found some way to deliver him, it was found that God had indeed been faithful!

Verses 19 to 23 of Daniel 6 states:

• “Then the king arose very early in the morning and went in haste unto the den of lions. And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom though servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God.”

In Psalm 23:4, having experienced and learned of God’s unwavering faithfulness all his life, even when he himself had failed him at times, David boldly declared, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

(Written on 09^th September, 2024)

Dear Reader, if you found the above Article to be interesting, informative, beneficial or edifying, you may also be interested in reading the following:

Under the ‘SINGLE Daughters’ page:

• Note 171 – ‘If That Tree Could Talk’
• Note 194 – ‘It Is Well!’
• Note 195 – ‘When God Promises To Write-on A Write-off’
• Note 196 – ‘A Hopeless End Or An Endless Hope?’
• Note 197 – ‘Left For Dead…Then Resurrected’
• Note 215 – ‘Our Difficulty Is God’s Opportunity’
• Note 213 – ‘God – Sometimes Silent But Ever Present’
• Note 216 – ‘Death Must Come Before The Resurrection’
• Note 217 – ‘From Bad…To Worse…To Deliverance’
• Note 308 – ‘Fair Weather People’

Also, under the BROKEN Daughters page:

• Note 36 – ‘The Faithfulness Of God – Remembering How Far We’ve Come’
• Note 76 – ‘The Weight Of Life – Overcoming Brokenness’