DON’T WASTE YOUR VALLEY
1 Kgs. 20:28; Deut. 8:7
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: “Having Trouble with your Wife”
1. A father came home from work just before supper and was met by his five year old daughter on the sidewalk outside his house. The little girl was not smiling.
2. “Is something wrong, honey?” he asked. “Yes,” she said, “all day long I’ve been having trouble with your wife.” (Source unknown).
B. TEXT
The man of God came up and told the king of Israel, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Because the Arameans think the Lord is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the Lord.” 1 Kings 20:28. “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with ...valleys and hills...” Deut. 8:7.
C. THESIS
1. Today we’re looking at spiritual valleys, why we have to go through them, how they can be beneficial to us, and how to NOT waste your valley.
2. The title of this message is “Don’t Waste Your Valley.”
I. IS GOD A GOD OF THE VALLEYS?
A. SOME THINK GOD’S NOT THERE
1. Many people believe God is NOT there when they are going through severe trials, hardships, & losses. How could a loving God allow these things to happen to me? Either 1). God doesn’t love me or regard me as important, or 2). “God is only present with me during the good times and when He wanders off, the bad things occur. He cares about me but He’s not around to stop what’s happening. He’s probably just so busy.”
2. But God Himself set up the unusual situation in 1 Kgs. 20 where the Arameans thought this exact thought – that Jehovah was only a God of the mountains-tops. God is using this analogy to point out to His people that He’s also a God of our Valleys.
3. This is no coincidence. God is telling us that He IS equally with us when we’re in the horrible moments of our lives! THERE MAY BE TIMES YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE GOD IS, BUT THERE WILL NEVER BE A TIME GOD DOESN’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE!
B. HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND TO A VALLEY?
1. Your valley is a place of setbacks, doubts, disappointments & discouragements. We feel like God has let us down, failed us, not kept His promises. The valleys seem to be a place of negative growth; our faith seems to be betrayed.
2. N.T. BELIEVERS ON TRIALS. James advances the remarkable teaching that the OPPOSITE IS TRUE! In fact, he says we Christians should “throw a party” when terrible things happen to us (“Count it all joy” Jm. 1:2). This is also the view of Peter (1 Pet. 1:6) & Paul (Rom. 5:3).
3. This view of adversity being a “blessing” is really only possible to Christians, who can see the eternal benefits of God’s dealings.
C. HUMOR: The Math Teacher
1. A Math teacher was having trouble teaching arithmetic to one little boy in her class, so she decided to use an illustration.
2. "If you reached in your right pocket and found one dollar, and you reached in your left pocket and found $5, what would you have?"
3. "Somebody else's pants." James is trying to teach us to count it all joy.
II. VALLEYS: PLACES OF GROWTH
A. TRIALS ARE BENEFICIAL
1. Trials are not only inevitable, they are beneficial. Biologists have discovered "the adversity principle;" – “habitual well-being is not advantageous to a species.” Adversity actually gives us greater vitality.
2. When you get saved, your troubles -- far from terminating -- are just beginning. There’s no triumph without a trial, no testimony without a test, and no crown without a cross!
3. We’d rather have nothing but mountaintop experiences, but no growth ever occurs on the mountaintops. It always happens in the valleys -- that’s where the growth occurs.
4. ILLUSTRATION “All things for the best.”
a. During the reign of ‘Bloody’ Mary, Queen of England, Bernard Gilpin, a Protestant, was accused of heresy and was being moved to London to stand trial. His constant saying was, “All things are for the best.” On the way, he broke his leg. His guards mocked saying, “All things are for the best?” He said, “I believe so!”
b. His journey was delayed a few weeks. As he began his journey again, Queen Mary died and the next Queen, Elizabeth -- a Protestant -- sent him home in triumph! [7700 Illus, #6846.] Though God allowed his leg to break, God used that to save his life!
B. PURPOSES OF TRIALS
Testing is “to examine in order to determine the quality, value, or character of.” God has many reasons for allowing trials & losses to come our way.
1. A TEACHING TOOL. Trials/temptations inform us of our weaknesses, of how the enemy operates, and show us how transitory and worthless are the things of this life.
2. FOR STRENGTH BUILDING. Just as an athlete starts with small weights in a gym and slowly adds more weight and muscle, until they get strong, so we start with small tests, as babes in Christ, and end up with the difficult, unfathomable tests like Job experienced, when our faith is strong.
3. FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
a. The process of smelting gold by successive tests, each which take it to a new level of purification, is an excellent example of how God purifies our character over our lifetimes. He gets out the lead of sin and finally even the silver, until only pure gold is left.
b. “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” 1 Pet. 1:6-7.
4. TO BRING US CLOSER TO HIM. When we reach the end of our own resources, we have no recourse but to turn to God, to depend upon Him more. Trials can drive us to God our Helper and can be, in effect, “God calling us into the secret place with Him.”
a. ILLUS. For several nights a 6-year-old girl threw one shoe under her bed before going to sleep. Her mother asked her why she did that.
b. “My teacher says (at a Christian school), that if we have to kneel by our beds to look for our shoes, we’ll remember to keep kneeling and say our morning prayers!” [Paul Tan, 7,700 Illus., #4558.]
c. That’s what God does: He GETS us on our knees by trials so that He can KEEP us on our knees for relationship.
5. TO CUT AWAY PART OF OUR WORLDLY NATURE. To make the right choice often requires us to lose something or to deny our desires for the selfless reason that this pleases God. Only when a void is created can God come into our beings in a fuller measure and possess us in a way hitherto unknown.
6. TO MAKE A NEW VESSEL. What good can come out of your life being broken? Jeremiah 18. The Potter remolds your life to make a new vessel. Begin to look for your new life. It will not be the same – it will be better!
III. SO DON’T WASTE YOUR VALLEYS
YOU WASTE YOUR VALLEY IF...
A. YOU DON’T GROW BY IT
1. If you hunker down and give up, that’s wasting your valley. Exercise your faith! Study the Word and call on God to get victory over it!
2. You may be powerless & backed in a corner, but you have the Lord of Armies to call on. You don’t face this alone! Have faith in God!
B. IF YOU STAY IN THE VALLEY
David said, “Even though I walk THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death... PS. 23:4. Your valley is not meant to be a dead-end, but a through-street to the next phase of your life. Don’t stop there! You WILL come out of this! Your trial will have an END.
C. IF YOU FAIL TO GET A HEAVENLY PERSPECTIVE ABOUT YOUR TRIALS
1. Paul states in Rom. 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” In other words, they’re worth the pain.
2. “God is working in you” Phip. 2:13. God told Paul, “My power is made perfect in [your] weakness.... Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.” 2 Cor. 12:9-10.
3. Paul didn’t just look at his troubles, but prayed to see God’s purposes for allowing the troubles.
D. IF YOU DON’T GET CLOSER TO GOD
1. Some people, without God’s vision and unable to see any reason for their loss, withdraw from God. This is the exact opposite of what God wants. He wants us to rely on Him more than ever before.
2. It’s speculated that the Apostle Paul had a wife before his conversion because he was a voting member of the Sanhedrin. If so, it’s likely that his wife divorced him and that he was disinherited of all the wealth of his family when he became a Christian.
3. Paul wrote, “...the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things” Phip. 3:8. When Paul lost all else, his dependency on Christ was concentrated & became greater – Jesus became his one reason for living.
4. If you don’t get closer to Jesus because of your trial, then you have wasted the valley God allowed you to go into. Make your suffering turn for good!
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUS: Prep for a Higher Place
1. One day a preacher who had just lost his family to a tragic fire, and had fallen into the depths of a deep and dark depression was walking down a city street. There, he came upon a construction crew that was erecting a new church. He stopped to watch them as they worked.
2. As he watched, he observed a worker who was busy carving a triangle out of stone with a chisel and hammer. Stepping closer, he asked the stonecutter what he was carving.
3. The worker pointed to the steeple of the church and said, “Do you see that small opening up there near the steeple? Well, I am carving this stone down here so that it will fit in up there.”
4. The preacher was immediately stirred in his heart. He realized anew the faithfulness of God and came to understand that the valley he was in was God’s way of carving him down here so that he would fit in up there.
5. We live in a world filled with people just like that preacher. There are people all around us who live their lives in depression, despair, despondency and defeat. We need to bring them the good news of the Gospel of Jesus and of life everlasting!
6. Luckily, the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year are similar to a great bundle of sticks, far too large for us to lift. But God doesn’t require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. https://ministry127.com/resources/illustrations/trial
B. THE CALL
1. POEM: “God has not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our life through;
God has not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
But God has promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way;
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.”
[Source Unknown]
2. PRAYER
