Battle Scars Of Suffering

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Some people wear their scars on the outside, some wear their scars on the inside, but the thing as believers we're gonna get scarred up and those are not shameful things, those are things of honor. Suffering for the believers a tool and suffering ends the moment you and I see Jesus. Are you hearing me? When you and I see Christ are suffering ends. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to Jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jackhibbs. A thing to slay us as to slaughter sheep. What is he saying? He's saying, listen, you can attack us. You can make fun of us. You can slay us. You have no idea what you're doing. Paul put it this way to live as Christ to die as gain. The Christian always wins. Always. If we live, we live for Christ. If we die, we go to Christ. The great scholar Frederick Derek Kinder put it this way and I love this. This is a great statement. A revolutionary concept to the Old Testament man or woman of God that suffering may not be a punishment but a battle scar the price of loyalty in a world which is at war with God. I love that. I have a friend that was one of the founding fathers of U.S. Army Delta Force, General Jerry Boykin. This man has got numerous purple hearts. He took a 50 caliber round 50 caliber. You know what that is? 50 caliber round through the armpit and they were able to put his arm back on. Shot through numerous times. Body scarred, special ops, wars, events from the Middle East to the jungles of South America. He looks great in a suit but if he takes his shirt off, he looks like he's been put in a meat grinder. And I love what Kinder said that in our lives these are scars from the battle. Listen, don't you want Christian? Don't you want scars from being in the battle? You can't challenge General Boykin's patriotism. He doesn't have to say a word. I just have to take a shirt off. Paul is saying standing there as a believer. You've got to remember church. Paul the Apostle, church history, church history, not the Bible, church history tells us that Paul's eyes were very close set together near the bridge of his nose unusually so. He had a very, very large beak-like hook nose. He was very unattractive, bald-headed with hair in the back, very petite and severely bull-legged. Poor sight, very poor sight. This is the great Paul the Apostle. Don't you think Paul the Apostle would have been more like, like, you know, I don't know, like Dwayne Johnson or something, the rock. You write Paul walks into town and people come to Christ. Paul came into town and nobody knew who he was. And the Bible does tell us that his voice, his speaking is contemptible. Can you imagine? You guys, Paul's going to speak. Hey, everybody's Paul. He's going to speak. And some guy stands up there. When's Paul going to speak? Oh, that is Paul. He's going to speak. That's Paul. You ever meet somebody they only know you from a radio voice and I meet them and they, you're Jack. I envision something different. It's funny. That's Paul and then Paul would go, I want to talk to all you Romans here. His speech was contemptible. But the scriptures say he was mighty with the pen. Wow, that's encouraging. Let God establish you. But I want to be in the battlefield of this world fighting against evil. God helped the Christian who sees it as a spectator option. These young people that are standing today, I'm very encouraged. Look, these two that are standing against the evils in our public school system, they're under attack. Are you fighting for anything that is worthy of being attacked? The old saying goes like this, if you were to be arrested for being a Christian, would they have enough evidence to convict you? Are you guilty of following Christ? Are you guilty of association with Jesus? And the other thing is this church is that we no longer want our way about life. See, are you sure about that? Yeah, listen, the longer we live, the more sure we know this is that we are counted, accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Don't let that throw you too far off at all because you actually know exactly what that means. He's quoting the 44th Psalm as I said earlier, but Jesus put it to us this way, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me. That is God. Good morning. This is Jack. I'm asking you to live your life through me today. Please God, keep me out of it. I mean, help me to hang on. Let's go, whatever's coming, but don't let me mess it up. So I'm getting out of bed now, God. So let's live the life that you have for today, for me to live. I don't want to do my thing. And the longer you walk with Jesus, the less you want to do your thing doesn't go well. I take the application this way in the world that you and I live in. It looks like we're outnumbered. It feels like we're dying. It sounds like we're losing. It seems like we're alone. That's all through the human perspective. And that's a normal thing to feel, but it's not accurate. I have this question written down to my notes on page 7. Has God worked a work in you enough so that you are both unwilling and unable to walk away from him? Let me explain what that means. Has God, can you say today that God has worked enough in your life that you cannot walk away from him? This is a very, very kairos moment for somebody that might be here today. You would call yourself a Christian, but you have no testimony of God's dynamic working in your life and you're troubled by that. And so you should be. You know enough that you can't go back into the world and say, I'm an atheist now. You know enough, but you've never gone forward. And I want to say to you today that God, the Holy Spirit is saying, let's go forward now. Let's go for it. You yield to me. Let's go. The man, the woman, the teenager is blessed in this moment where they might be in doubt or they might be in fear. And you speak to them and you question them and you're talking with them. And then you say to them, listen, then just put down your Bible, walk away from God, never bring his name up again, forsake everything that you've learned. Never go back to church again and go live your life. And you know what? You'll always spot the believer in a second when that happens. They'll say, I can't do that. Why can't you? And I have to say it for them because he's done enough in your life for you to know that he's real. And I'm asking you, let go and let him take you the rest of the way. He is so good to finish what he begins. John 6, verse 65, Jesus said, therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my father, verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. They just quit. Then Jesus said to the 12, do you also want to go away? You got to love Peter. He's the best. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Okay, isn't that amazing? Jesus just got then preaching a very hard thing in chapter 6 of John. Basically, whittled it down to this, hey, you're with me or you're not. It's time to get up. This is good going. You've got to be one with me or you're not. And people heard that and they went, yeah, no. And they left. And then watching, the 12 are watching, people walk away. And Jesus, they're just walking away. You know, it's awesome about Jesus. Jesus never went and ran after the person that was walking away and said, oh, did I say something to the venue? Can I, can I, can we, can we talk it over? Listen, church leaders, church, pastors, boards, whatever. Listen, when somebody, when somebody says, I'm leaving, don't ever talk them into staying. Don't do it. It may be a blessed subtraction that they're leaving. But don't try to convince them. Trust God to speak to them. But when Jesus said, so are you 12, you guys going to go away too? This is, this is finished this. And you could just see Peter. Jesus, you alone have the words of eternal life. This is the best deal in town. No one's ever said this stuff or has done this stuff you've done. Where do we go? There's no place else to go. I mean, we've got all kinds of places to go, but there's really no place to go. It's him. Psalm 138, verse 8 tells us, the Lord will perfect that which concerns me, your mercy, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. Is that precious? And then finally with this, verses 37 to 39 is the fact that you're suffering, listen up, we're going to end with a bang. Your suffering, my suffering, our suffering. Under the watchful eye of God, pick it. Listen, don't say it out loud, but what is it in your life that's causing suffering? Is it the past? Is it the memory of something? Is it currently what's going on? Is it financial? Is it legal? Is it relational? Something's going on in our lives. But we're believers in Christ. He's our God, which means our suffering is only a tool. It's a tool. Michelangelo picked up the mallet and he picked up a chisel and he had a big block of granite and he went to work and he created some of the greatest sculptures that have ever been produced in humanity, of course, David being the pinnacle. But think of the chipping. God is chipping on your life. You might be able to say, well, you know they came about this way or pastor, I did it to myself, I did this or I made the biggest mistake. God is going to use that as a tool. He's the only one that can convert either the world attacking you or you attacking you into a tool because nothing shall separate you from the love of Christ. Not even yourself. You're thinking about who you grabbed the wheel. I'm going to drive now. I'm going to drive now. Don't do that. Let God drive. But even as a Christian, you can crash the car. And you listen, God will see too it. You learn suffering is a tool. If that should be a tattoo. I'm not endorsing tattoos, but if you have a tattoo, whatever, suffering is a tool. Cross your chest. I don't know. Suffering is a tool from God. How do we know? Because it causes us to rise above. Suffering allows you to rise above. Verse 37, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. More than conquerors. I think our conqueror is good enough. He says, no, no, more than that. Is that amazing? By the way, the word conqueror means an overwhelming victor. It's not that you're a victor. You're overwhelmingly one. A warrior having been victorious in battle, standing over the enemy. Wow. Can you imagine, Christian, if we understood that the dark forces that were in our world today or demonic activity, type of forces, and we stand over the enemy in Christ, we stand in full and total victory. That's what the Bible teaches us. Scarcely do we believe it. More than conquerors. So I'm putting this together with the scars of the battlefield, and we're more than a conqueror. I want to stand before God. I pray. I stand before God at the end. And my armor is all dinged up. I want my armor oily, bloody, bent, dented. I'd love to have a helmet on with this big bent over here. And my shield is just, in fact, it's a great, God got me out of earth just in time because my shield is about ready to be worn through. Don't you want to die like that? I want to die like that as a Christian. Say, I understand, listen, you scars. Listen, look, some people wear their scars on the outside, some wear their scars on the inside, but the thing as believers, we're going to get scarred up. And those are not shameful things. Those are things of honor. Like I was mentioning, General Boykin, but I got this in Somalia. I got this. He was the faint, listen, he was the one that got the phone call from Bill Clinton himself. Bill Clinton said, go in now. And he said, Mr. President, we never attacked during the day. The operations forbid it. We're going to lose too many people. Do you remember the, in fact, they made a movie of it called Black Hawk Down. That's him. And you know, I got this in Somalia. I got this in South America and a covert CIA operation. I got this. He's, remember, remember, Jaws, the movie Jaws, what they're talking about, where'd you get that scar? I got this one, Suzy threw a pencil at me. Richard Dreyfist points this one out. The other guy puts his leg up there and says, I got this, a shark made me a rodeo. And what's his name? Robert Shaw says, I got this in the ward, it's some big bad scar. Can you imagine being as a Christian standing there on the day? Where'd you get that? Oh man, we got this battling the orange school board. Right? Right? Oh, where'd you get, where'd you get that? Oh man, that was up in Sacramento. It's fighting for the unborn children. That one. Right? Oh, what about that one? That's when we sued the governor over churches having to pay for abortions. Yeah, real stuff. The Bible makes it very clear that suffering also, listen, suffering prepares this for what's about to come. And this is okay, don't freak out. Don't get up now. Usher's locked the door. They're not the time for you to pan it. It's like, is this where the ride drops off all the way down? Suffering prepares you. Listen, you don't know this or not, but you love being around people who have suffered. They just don't tell you about it. I'm talking about Christians. I love being around new believers because they're like, bring it. They're the best. You know what? It's the mediocre Christians. I cannot, I'm sorry, I just can't hang around. I can't. New believers, they're like, come on, let's go down the forest line, let's raise the dead. Yes, let's go! They're amazing. And the only other group of people I'd like to be with are seasoned saints. You know why? We all love it. You know bedtime. Can you tell me a story? Papa, Mimi, can you tell me a story? Kids love that stuff. We love that stuff. Well on the other end of that pendulum and somebody saying, you know what? You asked about my life. This is what God's done in my life and they tell you a tale of this incredible battle. Suffering for the believers a tool and suffering ends the moment you and I see Jesus. Are you hearing me? When you and I see Christ, our suffering ends. This Jack Kibb's podcast as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities are listener-supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.