HANG ON... WERE GONNA WIN!

I’ve been thinking a lot about one part of one little verse in the book of John that I think has real significant meaning for us as Christians. The verse is John 16:33 and it says:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

There are 3 things I think are important about this verse. First, Jesus is talking to His disciples and telling them that, after He’s gone, they’re gonna encounter a lot of trouble in the world. The point is that He is talking to, not just people in general, but believers. So we can legitimately apply this verse to ourselves as Christians. He could just as well have been talking to the Lighthouse.

Second, the first half of the verse says, “In this world you will have trouble.” I think it’s vital to our faith for us to understand that nowhere in the scriptures does God promise us an easy, trouble-free life if we come to Him. We are sin-sick people living amongst other sin-sick people in a sin-sick world. Did I say sin-sick enough times there? There’s no way we can live in the middle of this big pot of smoking sin and not have it affect our lives! I think any of us who are beyond 5 years old already realize this. Life is often tough, cruel, full of hurt, and we’re not exempt from that as Christians. Too often I’ve seen people get angry at God, or even turn away from the faith, because they think God’s not holding up His end of some bargain. They think that, somehow, since they are now a Christian they become Superman (or Wonder Woman), and that’s a false premise from the very beginning. God will not hold up His end of a bargain that He never made! All but one of Jesus’ disciples died a martyr’s death --- and they were His disciples!!! If anybody was gonna have an easy ride, you would think it would be them. Job was a very godly man who the Lord allowed to go thru some horrible, horrible things. So be careful not to hold God to a promise, or presumption on your part, that He never made.

Third, and this is the good part, He says, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Translation: if we’re on His side, WE WIN!!! The thing to remember is that, no matter what difficult or tragic thing you might be going thru, He’s always there! It’s not easy and it doesn’t always feel like it, but we have to decide whether we believe His word is true or not ---- even when it’s very, very hard. He tells us in Heb. 13:6, “I will never leave you or forsake you”. There it is --- real plain and simple. This is really illustrated beautifully in a song by Natalie Grant called “Held”. The chorus says:

This is what it means, to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life, and you survive
This is what it is, to be loved, and to know
That the promise was when everything fell, we'd be held!

Trusting Jesus doesn’t mean trusting Him to do what we want Him to do, or trusting Him to make our lives turn out the way we thought they should. No, trusting Him means believing that He’salways there with us no matter what happens!! It means actually believing that He has not left us, or forsaken us, even when it feels like He has --- because He hasn’t! We have a hope, we have the assurance that we will overcome in the end, and we know that, no matter what, we’ll be held!! He is a good and a faithful God ----- believe it!!

By David Thompson