God is Great and He is Present in my Tribulations to Strengthen Me

From: July 24 – 30, 2007 Study: # 502

TOPIC: “God is Great and He is Present in my Tribulations to Strengthen Me” Isaiah 45: 6, 7 God is greater than our adversities. Whenever misery, sufferings, and tribulations come our God will be there to strengthen and let us see that He is the great one. It is natural for humans to get tired and speak heavily, with sadness. Affliction depresses the soul and the body receives it because it is a reflection of what we are living. Affliction is a grief and when we are in grief we cannot speak or make wise decisions. We must not make God seem smaller than our anguish. God always will be God, He shall never pass. We cannot make God look as if He is smaller than our tribulations and trials. God is the great one, all the good things that we have are because He added it to our lives. Our adversities begin to oppress us, to crush us, make us cry. We must not forget God’s greatness and occupy ourselves in lament and regretting than seeing His greatness. When we are submitted to these great adversities the best thing to do is to thank God. God is faithful, but man's nature is to be unfaithful. Something we should do is to get to know God better; unfortunately there is a lack of interest in many people. The more we know His glory and power the better it will be for us, otherwise our words will be meaningless. Let us not be mistaken, let us talk about His greatness and not exert our tribulations and adversities. Many times instead of glorifying our great and powerful God we glorify our adversities. Psalm 34:19 Our afflictions have to meet with Jehovah and He will take care of all of them. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God will deliver us from all of them. Sometimes afflictions become our daily bread. We cannot ignore them, because when we choose to ignore our tribulations and not confront them then we will never succeed. Sometimes we live our lives with misery by hiding the truth. No one has ever silenced Jesus. If we remain silent it is because we want to hide the truth. We need to have a firm character, because if we don’t we will not be able to face many things. There are things that are right in front of us, but we must see that God is there. We must not live unaware of the truth. If Jehovah is the one who will deliver us there will be no defeat. We have to understand that there is a promise for us. Isaías 45:6 Jehovah says there is no one else but Him, then, what makes us tremble? Tribulations, afflictions? We have everything to gain. Why can’t we see the truth that lies right in front of us? There can be afflictions but God is greater. He is omnipotent and sovereign, because he is God and our soul has to rest in Him. How depressed our soul can become when we are afflicted! Let us rest in our God. If our soul lacks knowledge it is because there is no search. It is necessary to know the glory and the power of God. It is God who rules the world, He is the owner and each one of us is an instrument for His people. Sometimes God takes us to afflictions. The adversities will allow us to see how firm and stable we are in God. The righteous have God’s favor, He is the one who delivers us from evil. When affliction arrives there is no one else to run to but God who is the only one who can deliver us. It is not by our merits but because of His love. The more God wants to guide us and use us the more adversities we will have. We have

to face life because Jehovah is our God. Jehovah made the light and the darkness. Men are only instruments of God in this world. We have no reason to fear in the day of our adversities. People think that we our defeated by our adversities, but after all God is the one who moves our lives. We cannot receive good or evil unless it comes from God. There is no reason to fear or loose our joy, or become cold because God is in the midst of our adversities. He will deliver us; let us not look at God as if He was small, but as our great God. In the day of adversity God is there so that we will struggle and have no regrets. In the day of the adversity our joy must not leave, because in the cross the Lord paid the price. There is no reason for us to lose the joy and stop praising God. Psalm 35:15 In our adversities there is loss, we don't speak to anyone so that our enemies do not find out, so that the bad news doesn't arrive to our enemies' ears, but those who have something to hide will not prosper. God is powerful to turn our biggest adversity into victory. The enemy enjoys the adversity of the righteous and this depresses because one is judged, and condemned, we can hear their laughter and mockery, but from all of this Jehovah will deliver us. We are the ones who will grow and they will see that Jehovah is with us and that we have not fallen or drowned in our adversity because Jehovah has delivered us, the judgments of God will not fall upon us. Our trust in God must grow more with each day that goes by. In Heaven there is a feast when we conquer for there is a cloud of witnesses that are looking upon us. Spurgeon said that when we are "lame" in our adversity there is amusement before the eyes of our enemies and they sing about our imminent defeat, the evil men are glad to see a good man “limp”. They don't understand that God will deliver us from all our adversities. Ecclesiastes 7:14 Some men will see that there is no one else greater than God. One thing we should do in the day of our adversity is to rejoice. We are always trying to change the course of God’s providence in our lives. Nothing can happen to our lives unless God allows it. God has prepared the adverse as the prosperous things to teach us to maintain our poise of spirit. Each one of us must walk in our days and we must know that God wants us to maintain our poise of spirit, strength and determination in believing Him. In all of our adversities Jehovah is with us, He will never leave us. Jehovah will always be God in our adversities; He knows how it arrived and how it will go away. His power does not diminish. God has promises for our lives. God doesn't see our adversity and our affliction with happiness but with eyes of compassion, mercy, and kindness in our favor. He is close to us. We demonstrate how much we believe in Him by the way we move in our adversities. We must maintain our spirit lifted as when everything is well. The same God that is with us when we are well is the one who is with us in the days of our adversities. We must always stay faithful to the Lord at all times. Sometimes we have a heavy spirit and we don’t want to continue. In the day of the adversity we have to consider that we have days of joy and that this is not forever. We should examine ourselves closely and consider when we are in affliction. Let us understand that the day of our affliction is not to die but to grow. Our tears must not drown us, let us see the power of God. Amen.