Staying Upbeat When You Are Being Beaten Up!

Illus: Did you hear about the four expectant fathers that were in a Minneapolis hospital waiting room, while their wives were in labor?

• The nurse arrived and announced to the first man, "Congratulations sir, you're the father of twins." "What a coincidence" the man said with some obvious pride. "I work for the Minnesota Twins baseball team."

• The nurse returned in a little while and turned to the second man. "You sir, are the father of triplets." "Wow, that's really an incredible coincidence" he said. "I work for the 3M Corporation." My buddies at work will never let me live this one down.

• An hour later, while the other two men were passing cigars around, the nurse came back. This time she turned to the 3rd man, who had been quietly sitting in the corner. She announced, “Your wife just gave birth to quadruplets.” Stunned, he barely could reply. "Don't tell me another coincidence?" asked the nurse. After finally regaining his composure, he said "I don't believe it, I work for the Four Seasons Hotel."

• After hearing this, everyone's attention turned to the 4th guy, who had just fainted, flat out on the floor. The nurse rushed to his side, and after some time, he slowly regained consciousness. When he was finally able to speak, you could hear him whispering the same phrase over and over again.

"I should have never taken that job at 7-Up!”

"I should have never taken that job at 7-Up!”

"I should have never taken that job at 7-Up!”

Everyone has troubles, EVERYONE!

This psalm was written by David. As you can see from the words of the Psalm, David was having some serious difficulties in his life.

One of the biggest mistakes that some Christians make, is to assume that TROUBLE ONLY COMES TO THE UNGODLY. I am here to tell you that this is not what the Bible teaches.

Look at Job 14:1, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” Notice, Job did not say a CHRISTIAN MAN or a SINNER MAN. He is addressing all mankind, saved and unsaved! Job is simply saying that every man that is born among women, will have a life of FEW DAYS, and FULL OF TROUBLE.

David was a godly man. He had trouble before he was king and he had trouble after he was king.

We all need to recognize that we are going to have TROUBLE IN THIS LIFE. What is EQUALLY IMPORTANT is that we learn HOW TO DEAL WITH THESE PROBLEMS WE HAVE!

Let’s look at the life of David to see how this great man of God dealt with trouble. We have three OPTIONS as we face trouble.

I. WE HAVE THE OPTION TO FLEE

There were times in David’s life when he felt the solution to his problem was to FLEE. Now I want to remind you that this was a courageous man, he was not a coward. This is the same fellow that had the courage to stand up against an almost ten foot tall giant. He had real COURAGE!

Many times, we call people courageous when they are not courageous at all. For example, consider Evil Knievil who is always using a motorcycle to jump cars and buses. Some say he HAS COURAGE. I have to disagree with their assessment of this man. There is a difference between COURAGE and STUPIDITY!

Many times the actions we call courageous are not courageous at all.

Illus: Consider the beautiful girl that said to the fireman: “It must have taken a lot of courage to rescue me as you did”. The fireman said, “Yes, I had to knock down three other guys who wanted to do it.”

Illus: A very wealthy rich man had a very beautiful daughter. There were three young men that wanted to marry her. Her father suspected one of the reasons they wanted to marry her was because she would inherit his money. So one day he decided he was going to see if these three young men really loved his daughter for who she was, and not for what she would inherit. He invited all three of them to his house and took them out to the swimming pool and said to them, “I will allow my daughter to marry the first one that swims across this Olympic size swimming pool and comes out the other side.” They were all eager to dive in, and he said, “Before you dive in I just want you to know that I have stocked it with Piranhas.” About that time, one young man dove in and swam across to the other side in record breaking time. The father rushed over to him and said, “You will be the young man that will marry my daughter. Do you have anything to say?” With anger all over his face he said, “Yea, who pushed me!”