Real Christianity acknowledges there are problems in life. Christianity is not a ‘pie in the sky’ entity. But, it’s not a ‘woe is me’ entity either. You are going to have problems because Satan, the mad dog, is loose on planet earth. Until God moves heaven to earth, know there will be problems. Spirituality doesn’t hide and pretend that real difficulties do not exist. But also know, God didn’t leave us without a remedy. With that said, here are some things you need to know in order to make it through a bad day.

You Know You Are Going to Have A Bad Day When…

• You see a “60 Minutes” news team in your office.
• You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.
• You turn on the news and they’re showing emergency routes out of the city.
• Your twin sister forgot your birthday.
• Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell’s Angels on the highway.
• Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat.
• Your income tax check bounces.
• You put both contact lenses in the same eye.
• You finally remember the name of that person you promised to visit in the hospital–while reading the obituaries.
• You are informed that the car wash that you went to used steel wool sponges.

Real Christianity Has Answers for Trials and Tests

• The entire world lies in trials, tests and difficulties.
• No one on planet earth has it easy or is free from:
  • Social problems
  • Relationship problems
  • Work problems
  • Money problems
  • Family problems
  • Health problems
  • Death
  • Mean spirited people
  • Evil people
  • Strife
  • The curse of the fall

The whole world suffers under sin.

• The creation groans

Romans 8:22 (KJV)
²² For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

• Satan hates humanity because he fears them.
• The devil doesn’t just hate Christians.
  • He hates saved and unsaved alike.
• The devil entangles…
  • Youth with beauty
  • The miser with gold
  • The ambitious with power
  • The learned with false doctrine.
• He even hates those that worship him.
• People are deceived when they say, ‘I am not afraid of hell because it’s just going to be one big party.’
• Hell is a place where no one has anything in common with anybody else except the fact that they all hate one another and cannot get away from one another or from themselves.

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Hebrews 4:15 (KJV)
¹⁵ For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

• God acknowledges the difficulties and gives us instruction concerning them.

Handling Difficulties on Planet Earth: A User’s Guide

• Count It Joy

James 1:2 (KJV)
² My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

Definition: – ‘temptation’ – trial, test, affliction, or adversity

• Count it all joy when life gives you lemons.
• Joy is supposed to be part of the equation when difficult sour situations confront you.
• The word ‘oxymoron’ is a term used in the English grammatical community.
  • It is 2 opposites stuck together.
  • ‘Poor rich kid’ is an oxymoron
  • ‘Dumb genius’ is an oxymoron
  • ‘Dry rain’ is an oxymoron
• ‘Joyful trial’ is an oxymoron as far as the world is the concerned.
• According to human thinking, these two words, ‘joyful’ and ‘trial’ aren’t supposed to go together.
• You are supposed to have sadness in trial, distraught difficulties, and wailing wipe outs.
• All of which partners with ‘down in the mouth’ negativity.
• The only way to go opposite the normal human experience is to embrace ‘faith’.
• It takes faith to go against the world’s grain.
• It takes faith to have joy when you’re supposed to have sorrow.
• It is remarkable that nowhere in the Epistles are believers ever encouraged to believe or to have faith.
• An unbelieving believer, therefore, is an oxymoron.
• Urging believers then to believe is a contradiction of terms.
• Faith is acting on what God said and it should be as natural as the air you breathe.
• Count it joy is acting on the Word of God
• Counting it joy is faith to make it through a bad day.
• Most people want to have faith to never have a trial in the first place.
• Notice that is not what James said.
• He said count it joy in the middle of a trial.

Counting It Joy Won’t Work if the Trial is Your Own Doing

• Notice the phrase, ‘When you fall into divers temptations.’

Luke 10:30 (KJV)
³⁰ And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

• The phrase ‘falling into’ implies you didn’t initiate the trial with your own lack of wisdom.
• It is funny how people on planet earth never get too old to learn some new way to be stupid.

ILLUSTRATION: In 1982, “ABC Evening News” reported on an unusual work of modern art: a chair affixed to a shotgun. It was to be viewed by sitting in the chair and looking directly into the gun barrel. The gun was loaded and set on a timer to fire at an undetermined moment within the next hundred years. The amazing thing was that people waited in lines to sit and stare into the shell’s path! They all knew that the gun could go off at point-blank range at any moment, but they were gambling that the fatal blast wouldn’t happen during their minute in the chair.

• Is this foolishness or what?
• If the shotgun blows the side of your face off while you have your minute in the chair, would you call it a trial or would you call it something else?
• If you are in financial straits because you won’t go out and look for a job, would you call this a trial or would you call it something else?
• If you are sick and you refuse to go to God’s Word, would you call this a trial or would you call it something else?
• If you marry an unbeliever, and things become hard in your marriage (and they will get hard), would you call this a trial or would you call it something else?
• If you won’t read your Bible and act on what God said, what exactly are you going to call that?
• If you initiated the trial, ‘Counting it joy’ won’t help you because counting it joy is not the first thing you need to do.
• Repentance and asking forgiveness is the first thing you need to do.

You Have to Count Trials as Joy because You Aren’t Going to Feel Joyful

• My wife Sharon had a brain aneurysm some years ago. I did not feel joy. I felt many other things.
  • I felt grief.
  • I felt pain.
  • I felt death.
• In a severe crisis moment, you need help.
• The whole thing was a battle.
  • I didn’t feel any joy.
  • I didn’t feel saved
  • I didn’t feel the Holy Ghost
  • I didn’t feel anything except sorrow, grief, death, pain.
• But while driving to the hospital, the Holy Ghost spoke in my spirit and said ‘Many are the afflictions of The righteous but the Lord delivers him out of them all’ (Ps. 34:19).
• I got to praising God, going down the road.
• The Holy Ghost helped me to ‘count it joy’.
• We are not Superman, we are not machines, we are not super faith hero’s.
• We are men and women with frailties, emotions and our own personal pile of stuff to overcome.
• But, in the midst of all of my inefficiencies the Comforter was there to put us over.
• He was there to help steer us into the Word.
• We have often thought that ‘count it joy’ means to just tough it out.
• You don’t have to be tough, you just have to be led.
• In your darkest moment, at the midnight hour of your life, at the crisis point when the flood tide is at its highest point, the Holy Spirit of God is there to help you.

Isaiah 49:16 (KJV)
¹⁶ Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; Thy walls are continually before me.

• God’s people are not without trial in this world, that is a fact. But mark this down, you are not without your God in the midst of those trials.

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The Attitude Factor

• Counting it joy is an attitude adjustment that occurs in the midst of trial.
• Attitude is everything
• The person who thinks it’s a misery to be born, a pain to live, and a trouble to die, will not do well in trials.

ILLUSTRATION: Attitude of a Future Hall of Famer
A little boy was overheard talking to himself as he strutted through the backyard, baseball cap in place, toting ball and bat. He was heard to say, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world.” Then he tossed the ball into the air, swung at it and missed. “Strike one!” Undaunted he picked up the ball, threw it into the air and said to himself, “I’m the greatest baseball hitter ever,” and he swung at the ball again. And again he missed. “Strike two!” He paused a moment to examine his bat and ball carefully. Then a third time he threw the ball into the air. “I’m the greatest hitter who ever lived,” he said. He swung the bat hard again, missed a third time. He cried out, “Wow! Strike three! What a pitcher! I’m the greatest pitcher in the world!”

• Attitude determines altitude.
• Instead of ‘woe is me’ think ‘it’s wow is me.’
• God is absolutely the most positive person you have ever met in your life.

2 Corinthians 2:14 (KJV)

¹⁴ Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.

• Look at these verses in Romans also
• Just because something isn’t happening for you right now does not mean it will never happen (Rom. 8:28).

The Trial of Your Faith Produces

James 1:3–4 (KJV)
³ Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. ⁴ But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

• The trial of a believers faith produces.
• Not so for the unsaved. Trials take away from the ungodly.
• The primary difference between believers and unbelievers when it comes to going through a bad day is that the world is just ‘taking a licking for nothing’.
• In God, you have the opportunity for trials to add patience to your life.
• Patience is to persist in a thing undertaken; to maintain a purpose in spite of difficulty or obstacles. It means to stay the same; to stay consistently constant.
• Many people throw down their Bibles and walk off when hard times happen, I know. I pastored some of them.
• God wants you to know trials and tests awards opportunities to develop patience, to develop singleness of purpose, to develop an attitude where nothing moves you the longest day you live.
• If the bad stuff can’t move you, if the pressure can’t back you off, if the evil that men do, won’t make you quit, THERE IS NOTHING LEFT to move you.
• When nothing moves you, when you can stay consistently constant, that’s patience which leads to maturity.

1 Cor. 15:58 (KJV)
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Call to Action

Standing fast, counting it all joy and maintaining a positive spiritual attitude are keys to making it through a bad day. Now the ball is in your court. What will you do?

QUESTION: What spiritual principles did you lean upon in a personal area of trial? Please leave your comments in the comments section below.