Rabbi Schneider - Why Your Challenges Are Really Blessings
Shalom, God bless you beloved one. I'm gonna share a scripture with you now. And I wanna ask you to be mindful of applying it to your life the next time that you face a challenge, which probably will be today. And we face little challenges and we face big challenges. Regardless, whether it's a little challenge today or something big that you're going through right now, or something that you're gonna face in the future.
Listen to this word, James chapter 1 verse 2-4, hear the word of God for you. James says, "consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result so that you might be perfect and complete lacking in nothing".
Let's focus on the first part of the verse, "consider it all joy my brethren, when you encounter various trials". Why? Because the trials James says are producing something. They're leading to bring us to maturity. They're bringing us to a place of perfection. The challenge is, the next time that you face a challenge, or even if you're in one right now, thank God for it because your challenges are God's opportunities to conform you and I, to the image of his son. You might not understand how God is using the challenge, but challenges break us down to become dependent on HaShem, to become dependent on God.
This is what Paul was writing about in the book of second Corinthians chapter one, he said, "I'd have, you know, brethren", Paul is speaking, "that I am burdened excessively beyond strength so that I despair even of life", he said, "but this happens to me that I would learn to trust in God that raises the dead". In other words, the challenges were so weakening him, that he had nothing in the earth that he could hold onto to strengthen him. And it forced him to get on his knees, figuratively speaking, and depend on HaShem, depend on the spirit of the Lord.
So I wanna encourage you to recognize that nothing's being wasted. The challenges serve a good purpose. And if you and I are gonna truly have a right heart before the Lord, we need to give thanks to God for all things, including the challenges, because the challenges are God's way of making us complete and perfecting us in his image. Will you love him enough and believe in him enough to thank him, beloved one, for your challenges every day? Let's be grateful. Let's have faith and let's believe that God is using all things to work together for good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose in order that we be conformed to the image of his son. This is Rabbi Schneider saying, God bless you. Why don't you pass this on to a friend?