Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
The secret of the mystery, Part 159. The portfolio of invisible assets: the value of undeserved suffering.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
The secondary assets are related to your positive volition toward doctrine and your priorities and scale of values in life.
Providential preventative suffering is undeserved suffering directly related to your secondary assets.
a. Volitional assets related to your positive volition toward doctrine, keeping your priorities straight, so that you can reach the different stages of spiritual growth.
What are desirable things?
Money, success, prosperity, pleasure, friends, loved ones, social life, sex, status symbols etc.
The most important love in your life is to love doctrine which is the means or the vehicle of personal love toward God.
Bible doctrine requires some aggression on your part.
Riches speaks of materialistic success.
Honor speaks of character, virtue, and integrity.
a. Volitional assets related to your positive volition toward doctrine, keeping your priorities straight, so that you can reach the different stages of spiritual growth.
b. Production assets.
Christian service is never effective unless it is a result of your spiritual life; it is never the means of your spiritual life.
REV 22:12 “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”
c. Suffering for blessing assets: providential preventative suffering, momentum testing, and evidence testing.
d. Invisible impact assets.
Your personal impact is blessing by association, historical impact is the pivot influence, and international impact is the function of worldwide missions.
Primary assets, election and predestination, originate from the sovereignty of God, and they express God’s will for our lives.
Secondary assets originate from the volition of the believer, and they express our attitude toward doctrine and the grace of God
There are certain blessings that God has ordained to take place in your life because His omniscience saw the positive volitional decisions you would make in time.
“Diligently seek” - piel participle - shachar = an intensive search for Bible doctrine.
Shachar is an intensive search.
An extreme search.
A fervent search.
A passionate search.
A very strong search.
At this point you have your first encounter with undeserved suffering from God called providential preventative suffering.
This requires your daily residence inside your very own plan designed by God for you in eternity past.
You have already used positive volition to reach the first stage of growth, spiritual self-esteem, therefore, at spiritual self esteem you are tested or evaluated concerning your positive volition.
In spiritual self-esteem, your persistence in positive volition toward doctrine is tested by that category of suffering for blessing called providential preventative suffering.
Providential preventative suffering is defined as short-termed suffering from the sovereignty of God for the benefit of the believer.
Providential preventative suffering is that suffering which prevents, restrains, or insulates sin and evil, while challenging spiritual self-esteem to suffer for blessing and profit.
Providential preventative suffering is the first category of suffering for blessing related to spiritual adulthood, SSE.
Its offensive role is to accelerate the believer’s spiritual momentum beyond spiritual self-esteem into spiritual autonomy.
Its defensive role is to prevent him from falling victim to arrogance.
He may assume that his strength comes from self rather than from God’s Word and the PPOG.
In grace, God takes preventive action by sending suffering for blessing or providential preventative suffering.
Providential preventive suffering reminds the believer of his dependence on the predesigned plan of God and forces him to use divine assets under circumstances that human ability cannot resolve.
In this stage of spiritual growth, affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sound; not to make us sorry but wise.
Trials, temptations, disappointments - all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly.
Every triumph over temptation represents a new supply of spiritual energy.
There are some things that we will not be delivered from until God’s timing is ready.
The only thing Paul will boast about is the grace that made it all possible.
He will boast with regard to his weaknesses -
noun astheneias = weaknesses, frailties, distresses, afflictions.
God’s glory is manifested by God’s grace.
EXO 33:18-19 Then Moses said, “I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!”
EXO 33:19 And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”
Exalting myself - pres-pass-subj - huperairomai = to become conceited, arrogant, to lift up one’s self above others, and there is the reason for providential preventative suffering.
1. If you learn from your suffering and understand the lesson taught through it, you will be able to help others who may be going through the same experiences as you just completed, 2CO 1:3-7.
1PE 5:8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
1PE 5:9 But resist him, firm in your doctrine, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
2. Painful as it may be, a significant amount of suffering can be the incentive for choosing a direction that serves and those around us more effectively -
2CO 4:12 So death works in us, but life in you.
3. You do not develop courage by being happy in your life; you develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversities.
4. Trials, temptations, and disappointments not only test the fiber of our character but strengthen it.
5. Suffering and adversity is the state in which we become acquainted with ourselves and free of hypocritical acquaintances.
PRO 17:17 A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity.
6. Things do not go wrong so we can become bitter and give up; they break us down and build us up so we can be all that God intends for us to be.
7. You will never know your own strength until you are met with adversity.
8. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to grow further spiritually and improve your performance the next time.
9. A Chinese proverb -
“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”
10. Just like fire is the test of gold; adversity is the test of the strong believer.