ADVERSITY - Gateway to Success

The following message is presented by John Eliam, a minister in the United Church of God. Back in 1931, a lawyer politician failed in business. I don't know if you know what it's like to run a business, your own business, you put everything on the line, and it's sort of do or die your first two years. You don't make any profit at all. It's very marginal if you'll even survive. And this particular lawyer politician, his business totally failed, and he had already obligated himself to pay off all of his father's debts. His father had died and left a large debt.

In 1932, he was defeated when he ran for the legislature. In 1933, he failed in another business. In 1934, he won a seat in the legislature. In 1935, his wife died. He didn't have many friends, and his wife, so near and dear to him, died.

The next year, in 1936, he had a nervous breakdown. He sat alone in a house with the curtains drawn for most of that year. In 1938, he was defeated for Speaker. In 1940, he was defeated for the electorate. In 1943, he was defeated for Congress. In 1946, he was elected to Congress. In 1948, he was defeated for Congress. They didn't like him. People in Congress didn't like him. He lived alone in a rooming house. Nobody befriending him.

Everyone shunning him. In 1955, he was defeated for the Senate. In 1956, he was defeated for Vice President. In 1958, he was defeated for the Senate. Life is tough. Life is hard. Our lives begin with expectations for success, whatever we might define success as—generally achieving goals. We would prefer to avoid hardships in the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of goals. If we go to Luke 22, verse 14, we have an example of a very high goal that a human set.

Luke 22, verse 14. When the hour had come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him, and he said to them, With fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you. There is his goal, and he had come up toward that goal. It was why he was on earth, you might say, all encapsulated in the opportunity for salvation for all other humans. He, to be the first fruit, the forerunner, the first one, the first son. There is a goal, but shortly thereafter, in verse 41, we read this.

And he was withdrawn from the disciples about a stone's throw, and he knelt and prayed, Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me. No human, including Jesus Christ, likes adversity. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. As was with the first successful person in God's plan of salvation, we find that adversity is a necessary element of success. This wasn't some one-off that Jesus experienced.

Rather, it is a component that goes along with success. Lou Holtz said, Show me anyone who is successful, and I will show you someone who has overcome adversity. He was being celebrated as one of the great coaches of all times. And he said, Anyone who is successful has overcome adversity. You and I should not be strangers to adversity because we have an adversary. An adversary. Let's notice this in Revelation 3 and verse 21. Revelation 3 and 21. You and I have a goal. Hopefully, it is the right goal. Jesus says this, To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.

What are you needing to overcome to sit on Christ's throne? Well, he overcame something and sat on God's throne. What did he overcome? He didn't overcome sin. He overcame Satan. He won the battle with the adversary, with the temptations Satan threw at him, with the adversity of persecutions, with the torturing. Everything he won over.

And he said, If you do the same, you will sit with me on my throne. So there's our goal and there's our adversary. And there's the adversity that you and I will fight against, just like Jesus did his whole life. Not other people, but rather the mindset that wants us to betray the path that we are on. Today, let's face a challenging, frustrating, integral part of your successful life and mine. The title of the sermon today is, Adversity Gateway to Success. Adversity Gateway to Success.

Now, adversity comes in many forms. There's mental anguish. That is an underlying reason, by the way, for drug abuse. It is anguish, mental anguish. It's an underlying reason why people go into alcohol abuse. It's anguish, mental, physical. People who get into drug abuse often get into it because of physical anguish.

Through some accident, through an injury, through an operation. And they are given some type of a pain reliever that relieves the feeling of the adversity, of the trauma. Be it a physical trauma, a mental trauma, an abuse of some kind, and there's some release, and so there's a solace there.

The point is, these things have reasons. Divorce is a band-aid for trauma within a relationship. People today don't marry because they want to often avoid trauma and conflict that would end in divorce. Games are just another form of family. People who are in trauma because they don't have a framework of family and family support, and so they feel this stress and they feel a certain amount of need to be connected, and someone says, you can join our family. We'll take care of you. We'll fund you. We'll protect you. You can be ours. You can have our markings.

You can have all the family right here. So you see, many things in our world are reactions to adversity. Adversity can come in loss of a job, can come in bigotry, can come in various forms of sexism, favoritism, politics, calamities, financial troubles or disasters, loss of bodily function, conflicts, persecution, natural disasters, an accident, a goal impeded by bad weather, environmental degradation.

There's so many things that can be adversity to us easily achieving a goal. Adversity resists any easy achievement of a goal. Now, let's look at this in a little brighter way. Let's go to sports. What do you have as the feature in sports? Whether it's hockey, whether it is football or soccer, you have a goal.

It's actually called the goal. And in front of that goal, who's there? The goalie. And in front of you, achieving that goal with whatever device it is you want to send into it is a defensive team. Now, the goalie is trained to prevent you from success. And you have an entire half of the people on the ice or on the court, that have trained to prevent you from reaching that goal.

So what do you do? Quit? Is that what Lou Holt said? No. He says, you don't make the goal without a lot of adversity. Success in anything is choosing to succeed with adversity. You're going to have pain. You accept that you're going to have pain. You're going to have trauma. You know, if you decide, I'm going to sail from point A to point B, and it's a three-day trip, you have just chosen two full nights of navigating without sleep, without being able to see very well, probably outside in the cold with salt water splashing on you, and coating you in salt.

You have made that choice! So whatever your goal is, you're going to have some trauma, and you're deciding to move forward no matter what. It's the same on a sports team, basketball, anything else, any type of a game. You're going to move forward no matter what, even if it's a board game or dice, cards, whatever. You're going to have resistance. You and I have to choose success and go into it knowing that there will be adversity, but what we often don't realize is the adversity isn't the enemy. The adversity actually is a tool that will enable us to succeed, to succeed better.

Some fear crashing in an airplane, and they don't go on airplanes. Pilots train to crash airplanes and have everybody walk away. It's sort of a difference there. One is, you know there is a risk, and so I'll avoid the risk. I just won't think about that. And the other is, I know there's a risk, so I'm going to train and prepare. And in pilot training, you actually, in small planes, you actually come right down. You're up there, and you're flying, and you pick a spot, you kill your own engine, you pick a spot, and you go right down and almost land.

Surprise, many a farmer in this area, actually. By almost landing. But what you do is you train under any circumstance, whatever goes on with that aircraft, to be able to fly the plane. I've practiced in these guys, flying a plane without even a steering column. What can you do if you lost all the steering in an aircraft? How would you pilot that plane and get it down safely? Figured out you can do it through the doors. By opening doors, you'll give a certain amount of push that'll put the plane into a tilt.

You know, there are things that if you're going to succeed, you learn all the way down to the fine points of how you will succeed. And Jesus said this is a narrow way. This is a difficult way to a narrow gate. He described the gate as almost like a keyhole. Alright? Tiny. But we need to say, yes, that's what we're gonna do.

We are gonna do the impossible because we can, with God's help, and we're not gonna stop. We're gonna endure to the end. We're going to be successful no matter what. It's like those who go out for things that one might think is very, very dangerous. But if you train, you can go down hundreds of feet in the water with the right gear. It'll kill you if you don't know what you're doing. And so you train for it. Or climbing, some of the mountains around here, the great peaks, the ice peaks, they're very, very dangerous. But people train, and they become skilled, and they are very doable. No matter what it is, even including things that we can't know for sure about.

Tsunamis, earthquakes, risks in this area. There are plans that can be made. There are things that people can do. They can continue, as it were, to fly that plane through any situation and endure in the end. So as we begin, there are many aspects of this life that are in our power to develop skills for.

To develop skills for. And if we are skilled in these things, then the adversity that would seem to overwhelm you becomes doable. Like the person on the court. To reach the goal is impossible with all the defense there. With the goalie there, there's no way. And yet people make goals. They can do it. If they learn the skill sets, they can overcome the impossible. And so you and I can as well. How do people grow? You know, you think of a little child. How does a child grow? A child grows its body through adversity. You see a child jumping and running and playing. It's doing that to injure its muscles and to some degree its bones.

That's what it does. It injures those muscles and bones and then the child sleeps and the body makes stronger muscles and stronger, bigger bones. And that's how we grow. It's through actual injury.

You and I might call it exercise. We go out and injure ourselves exercising in order to injure those tissues that the body will replace with stronger tissues. And that's similar to our life. As we mature in life and we have these setbacks, injuries, various things that affect us, we learn, we grow, we become more capable, more knowledgeable, more understanding, and then more wise. That enables us to be more giving.

When I was a teenager, I took up cross-country running. And two blocks from our home was one of the steepest streets I think you'll find anywhere. It's called Arbor Street Hill.

Arbor Street had this hill on it. And in order to win or do well across country running, I had to get myself up before sunrise and go run. And one thing I dreaded every day hated the thought of Arbor Street Hill. I hated Arbor Street Hill. I could tell you now how much I hated Arbor Street Hill. It's just a loathing memory, a daily loathing memory. I would wake up in the morning and say, oh no, I'm awake. Arbor Street Hill. You know, that's a tough thing. It was dark. I was alone.

It was generally chilly. But in those morning runs, I chose to go down the hill and run through the lower city streets around the Arroyo and make the final part of the run.

Arbor Street Hill. Coming home as fast as I could. You couldn't park a car in Arbor Street Hill. It's too steep. You couldn't get your foot flat on Arbor Street Hill. You know, it was too steep. You kind of had to run on your toes or the ball of your foot. But coming around the corner as the light began to come, you saw this look like a wall to me. And you think, oh, I'm gonna get it.

And up you go. Now, the interesting thing is, the result of that was an edge for success.

The other runners didn't have it. What it did was it allowed at the end of a long race, several miles, everybody's exhausted, to be able to sprint the last 50 meters at full sprint. The fastest sprint you've ever sprinted in your life. It was just waiting there. It was always there.

It was really something to sprint to the finish line in any circumstance.

Now, in cross-country running, it was much easier to run for miles, listening to the radio, nice music, chugging along out there, seeing the town, out of school. But that didn't do it.

Spiritual success is like that. We have to look at things and say, I don't want to do that.

I don't really want to go through that, but that is the best thing for me.

You can't have spiritual success without adversity. Let's go to 1 Peter 5 and verse 8.

1 Peter 5 and verse 8. Here's our reality.

Be sober. Be vigilant. Because you're adversary. The one who brings adversity in all its forms and inspires everything on this planet to be adversarial to you reaching your goal. Your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Oh, no. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel safe?

Does it make you feel doomed? Or does it give you the goal, I'm going to avoid the lion.

I'm just going to make sure I'm never going to see that lion. Or I just won't think about that lion.

Is that how we succeed? We have an adversary. What are we going to do with it? Well, notice the next verse. Resist him. That's what we're to do. We're supposed to take the adversary, the adversity, and resist it. Be steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. So adversity is part, it's a core part, of our spiritual success. We are not here to avoid lions. Let's notice the training and the tools in Ephesians 6 and verse 10.

Ephesians 6 and verse 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. Don't faint in the day of adversity. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle, oh, we're going to be doing wrestling with flesh and blood, but we wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to succeed to stand. We are going to succeed, and this is how we're going to do it. We're going to put on these elements of power, of success, that all achieve the goal through adversity. And every one of those pieces of armor is all about defeating the adversary.

So, you and I need to realize we're not given success, free. You know, it just doesn't come to someone who says, oh, you're lucky. You are not given a happy marriage. You're not given great children. You and I are not given a lovely career, a carefree body, a carefree home, no maintenance, the yard, never needs mowing or trimming, a carefree automobile. You weren't given some talent to easily master a sport, or easily master an instrument, or easily master a career, a business. You can read books like Talent is Overrated, which dispels the myth about some people just sort of being born with some easy path to success, or The Tipping Point, another book, or How the Mighty Fall, about the big corporations.

Dedicated practice is needed. A lot of hard work to overcome adversity is required. Sacrifice in developing oneself, the investment of time and money, and the strains to improve condition, the trauma involved in reforming one's character. All of these things need to be accepted and tackled in the road to success. Sometimes you hear a person say, oh, you're lucky. When something is acquired or a state is achieved that someone else admires, must be nice.

You hear that? Must be nice. I wish I had that ability to someone. I wish I had that talent.

Some can get offended with such comments. A successful businessman once told me, seeing a successful person is like watching someone arrive. You don't see the trip they made getting here. You know, and it's those trips that are always interesting. When you get to talk to an individual and see how they got there, that becomes very, very interesting. So I spoke with an individual this week. We had a nice, long conversation. He was a successful man.

He has a bigger boat than I do. We were talking in a friendly way. And I asked him, I said, tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that are going on in society right now from your perspective. He has a skin that is just black, as black as many of our friends and our family in Africa. And I said, what's that really, really like from your perspective? And he said, well, I've done well, and I succeed here in this part of the world well. And I have people that I support and people who have supported me and helped me. And I said, so are you from here? No. I grew up in the South. They burned crosses on my neighbor's lawn. My grandfather had a noose around his neck when I was age five. I know what it's like to travel through various parts of this country.

And he said, there is a small minority of people who really will give you a lot of adversity.

But most people, it's just part of being in life and helping and encouraging. He says, but you know, you do have a lot of adversity along the way.

We can talk to individuals in Asia when we visit there. We have friends around the world.

And within their even communities or within their own social order, there is a lot of adversity.

Be it the women in some culture who are treated like chattel and yet aspire and do very, very well in the face of that. Or individuals who are persecuted, put down, stripped of rights, etc.

Because in their own culture, there are layers and there are privileges.

And so it is all humans, every person in any situation, is going to have adversity.

People don't see the failed ventures, the large loans. They don't see the risk in trying something.

They didn't do the work. They don't see the personal denials. They don't see how the scraping, the risk of failing and losing everything, and sometimes doing that repeatedly is required as part of the learning process that success requires. Every successful person has mastered an avalanche of adversity. Others get the same adversity, but they don't master it. That's interesting. Just because you might not want to acknowledge Satan the Devil and you might not want to put on the armor and go face him, doesn't mean Satan the Devil won't give you the same adversity. Or me. In Acts 14, verse 22, it says, Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God. In other words, through much adversity.

Second Timothy 2, 12, If we suffer we will reign. In Matthew 24, he who endures to the end, the same shall be saved.

In one sense, our minds go right to the nag. They're like, oh, I don't want to do that.

It's like saying, oh, I don't want to go out and till that soil and put in a garden.

Well, we want the fruit, don't we? We want the harvest. And if the harvest and the fruit and the deliciousness of it and the taste and the benefit to our body is strong, we'll do a lot of things with that ground and with that land and with stinky stuff and mixing it up and telling it and planting and weeding and all kinds of things. So let's not faint just because there is adversity.

Let's go to 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 23. 2 Corinthians 11 verse 23. You know, in some ways, the Bible is a record of the success that people have had through many struggles. Job, David, Paul, just add them up. 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 23.

Are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool. He's jesting.

I am more and labors more abundance, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. Sometimes you'll see a picture of a person whose head lashes across their back and it's nasty. You think, oh, I don't know. If that ever happened to me, what would I do?

In stripes above measure, prisons. Terrible place to go. In prisons more frequently, nobody wants to die. Paul says, in deaths often.

In verse 25, three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. A night in the deep.

You know, verse 27, in weariness, in toil, in sleeplessness, often in hunger, in thirst, in fasting, in cold, in nakedness. Besides the other things, Apostle Paul wasn't a quitter. It's a sign that I saw a number of years ago. I keep this in my office. Quitters never win. Winners never quit. And that has a lot of depth to it.

Doesn't just mean on the surface. It means right down to where there's no way of succeeding.

Winners never quit. And there's usually sometimes a way. There's the Sully effect, you know, Sullivan, Captain Sullivan. And there's no way you can fly a plane, and you've taken off all the engines fail because they're chock full of birds, and there's no way you can land.

You fly the plane, no matter what. You use everything at your disposal. There was the Captain of a flight up in Iowa, flying across Iowa, and one of his three engines, the one on the tail, the engine shredded, cut all the hydraulics. There's no way to steer the plane. What do you do? Oh, you just give up and quit. No? You scratch your head and say, no, what can I do? If I give a little power to one engine or the other, can I get it in a turn? If I get in a turn, can I line it up on a runway? I mean, what can we do? We don't have flaps anymore. We don't have any way. But what can we do? After he successfully crash-landed, that plane broke apart, some people died, but most everybody walked away from it. Mary and I drove to that place and looked out through the fence to see where it happened. The pilot had made a big impression on me. You fly the plane.

First, the firemen went out and they thought everybody was dead because they didn't see anybody.

And then people started walking out of the corn field, just walking out of the corn field.

It was amazing how many people survived. Most everybody survived.

And so it is. You and I need to be like Paul and keep moving no matter what. I'd like to give you some points about this. There are some elements of adversity. I'll go through them pretty quickly that that I've appreciated through the years. The first is endurance. The first is endurance. If we succumb to these, I should say, if we succumb to the quit desire and say, oh, all is lost, then we do not receive salvation spiritually. We would give up. We would say, I'll put it in an app and I'll just quit. I won't do it. But Matthew 24 verses 4 through 14 talks about a very challenging time that's ahead for you and me. And when we pray, your kingdom come, we're saying, bring it on. We're saying, I accept that. And we will go through this with God's help, and we will succeed. And he who endures to the end, the same shall be saved. So we will do this. We will do godliness. Whatever our end is, until that time, we will do it. A successful person once said, success is not so much from talent or opportunity, but from concentration and perseverance.

Perseverance.

Second Timothy chapter 2 in verse 3, Paul talks to Timothy and tells him, meet it, toughen up, Timothy, and endure hardness. Endure hardness. It's not a negative thing, remember? Remember Arbor Street Hill? Enemy Hill? Whatever you want to call it. Horrible Hill?

It's not really an enemy. And sometimes when somebody is critical of you, that person is not your enemy. The person is your opportunity. That hill is your opportunity. That so-called defeat is an opportunity to learn. To learn how to master something that you didn't see before, you didn't know before. Some element, some component that once you have mastered and once that's part of your skill set, you will take on hurdles, the next hurdles, on the way to success, much more capable. It's been said that the surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed. In the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, a primary obstacle to success is built into our minds.

Our mind gets ruled by two different systems. We need to understand these two. The first is the rational mind that says, I will eat well and exercise every day. That's the rational mind.

But we all have the emotional mind. And the emotional mind says, those cookies and that ice cream will make me feel better right now. We have to master, we have to make a switch, as it were, in our road to eternal life. From the emotional, oh, I don't want to feel bad, I can't go through this, to what Paul did. That I will live right. I will do right. And that is what I will always do.

Proverbs 24, 16 says that a just man falls seven times and rises up again.

That's what we do. That's what we'll always do. Remember Helen Keller, deaf and blind from birth, never heard a sound, never saw a person, never saw any image.

She learned to read, to write, to speak. She spoke to an audience that she never saw, never heard. And she said, we can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

So, to you and I have some big excuse why, you know, we can stand before Christ and say, it wasn't my fault, I couldn't do it. I'd like to go back to the lawyer politician one more time.

In 60, he was elected President Abraham Lincoln.

You know, that speaks to a person who grew up very, very poor in poverty and started out with nothing except his father's debt. He had no looks, nothing appealing about him, nobody liked him.

Defeat after defeat after defeat. And he said, I do the best I can and I mean to keep doing so.

That's, that is dedication. That is perseverance. So, in Ephesians chapter 6, we have the whole armor of God. We mean to keep doing so.

We're going to do right. We're going to overcome Satan. We're going to grow a wholly righteous character, no matter what. The second is diligence. Diligence is the action part of doing it, actually doing it. We're familiar with proverbs that talk about the diligent versus the slothful. We know in 2 Timothy 2 verse 15, it says, be diligent to show yourself approved. That word, diligence, the Greek word is spondeso. It means to use speed, to make effort, to be earnest, to give diligence, to endeavor, to labor, to study, as defined by Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. We need that. We need the, yes, I'm going to get up and I'm going to go face the adversity. I'm going to learn how to get around the adversaries. I'm going to work my way through defense. I'm going to be able to shoot. I'm going to be able to score, even though the chances are impossible. The third point is unpleasant tasks. Unpleasant tasks. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'll think about fasting. I'll think, oh no, I don't want to find any problems. Think about Passover coming up, atonement. You know, it's like, oh no, that's a downer.

Might find something. See, we're a little reticent to do the work at times. It's said that most people could accomplish 80 to 90 percent more if they would just face the difficult tasks. You know, there are books out, time management, leadership, and things. One talks about squashing ants when you need to be shooting lions. You know, you don't really like the lions, but the answer here, you know, these are easy, kind of fun. So you'll, you'll piddle around with all the things that you can do, your emails or, you know, whatever, straightening your desk, and all the fun stuff. But the big project that has the deadline that's going to clobber you, the book that has to be written, whatever it is, sometimes we, we, we consider that unpleasant, and we procrastinate.

In the book, Talent is Overrated by Jeff Colvin, he says, scientific evidence does not support the notion that great performers have natural or inherited talent. And he goes through a scientific exploration of that, and it cannot be proved that anybody who is a great anything has some inherited talent. Rather, talented people have each spent 10,000 hours pushing themselves in deliberate practice. Or you might say dedicated practice. It's deliberate. I have determined to do this thing which is unpleasant, and it's hard. And I'll do it for one, I'm sorry, 10,000 hours. They've gone in and calculated that. Before a person has ever said, oh wow, that person really is the top of their field, or they're really talented, you can go back and add it up. There's 10,000 hours there. Whether it was Mozart, Warren Buffett, Tiger Woods, Jerry Rice, the list goes on. You can go find the 10,000 hours. Study and prayer. The Bible talks about a sacrifice. Sometimes we'll say, you know, it's kind of dry, it's kind of this, kind of that.

I'll put that off. I want to do this other thing. The 10,000 hours in here, 10,000 hours, is really before a person will really know the Bible or know what they're talking about with skills. It's more pleasant to, as we've said in our generation, to be cool, no sweat, to daydream, to chill out, to escape. Fictional entertainment.

We had a member in South Dakota, in our congregation there, his name was Albert Chichester.

Albert was a rancher. He had his own ranch, kind of a dream, acreage, a ranch, animals. He also worked in a production house at one of America's fine window companies, making windows. Albert Chichester remains the most physically handicapped person I've ever met for my wife who could walk.

He was a man of short stature, no real chest. He was on oxygen, severely deformed skeleton from birth, his legs, his chest. He basically didn't have anything except his head sitting on his waist.

And he was on oxygen. He lived alone. But he had a dream. His dream was to be a rancher.

His dream was to be a rancher. And he was a rancher. He was a good rancher.

He didn't mind hard work. He didn't mind doing the difficult. He didn't mind the setbacks, the adversity, or in his case, the pain.

Adversity is a gateway to human and spiritual success, and yet we'll shy away from it. We loathe it. It's unpredictable. It's scary. Sometimes we'll give up, run away from it too fast.

A wise person once said, it's impossible to succeed without suffering. It's impossible to succeed without suffering. If you have succeeded without suffering, then someone has suffered so you could succeed. If you are suffering without succeeding, then you are suffering so that someone else may succeed. But there is no success without suffering.

You know, Apostle Paul, after he endured great temptation, said, there's a crown laid up for me and for all who love this way. So we have the goal. We have the tools. Number four is discipline. We can get off track in this life if we're not careful.

In Matthew 13 and verse 18, Jesus talks about being distracted.

Therefore hear the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, they don't dig in, they don't spend the 10,000 hours with the word, then the wicked one comes and snatches away that which was sown in his heart.

In verse 20, he who has received the seed on stony places, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a little while. Why? For or because when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. The adversity requires a discipline to move through it. We have to stick with it and not run away from it.

President Calvin Coolidge said there is no growth without effort, and the word effort means work.

It means work.

You know, we need to discipline ourselves and not float down life without work, without disciplining. We need to dictate what each day will be comprised of and then do it. I will rise at a certain time. I will pray. I will study. I will go to work early. I will stay late if need be, but I will not pamper myself.

I will discipline myself to do those things that a day requires.

Point five, courage. Proverbs 24 10 says, if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

We're not here to have small strength. Remember, in Ephesians 6, be strong and of good courage and be strong in the Lord and the power of his might.

We don't faint in the day of adversity. We don't faint in front of the lion. We don't faint from the adversary. We have great strength. Admit your fear for certain things and face it. Admit that you are afraid of risk and embarrassment and failure. Ask God for the strength, for the hope. It's not an excuse. Remember what Jesus said. Endure the end. Troubles and failures are as much a part of winning as winning itself.

That's what winning is about. It's overcoming troubles. The trouble of the distance, the trouble of the height, the trouble of the depth, the trouble of some obstacle is what sets a goal.

Welcome them. In James chapter 1, in verses 2 and 4, James chapter 1 and verse 2, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.

When you encounter diversity, count it all joy. Now, the word joy there doesn't necessarily mean sing out and click your heels, but it's a word that says it's positive. Look at things that are negative trials, challenges, adversities, and a positive light. Say, oh, wow, this looks overwhelming. What can we do with this? This hill, this height, this depth, this thing, this challenge. What can I do with this?

So, count it positively when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, enduring perseverance. Look in the margin. See, enduring perseverance.

But let enduring perseverance have its perfect work that you may be complete, lacking nothing.

See how adversity raises us up to a state of completeness, where now we have the knowledge and the understanding and the wisdom in order to move forward in a way that the defense simply crumbles as it did with Jesus Christ.

In Galatians chapter 6 and verse 9 is an important note here from the Apostle Paul, a man who was acquainted with great adversity. Galatians 6 and verse 9, And let us not grow weary while doing good.

For in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. All the components are there. You've got the adversity, you've got the effort, you've got the discipline, but then you also have a tendency to weary and lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. See, that's what we do through the adversity. We continue to do good to all. Do good is the spiritual application of God's Holy Spirit and His law. We do that no matter what. No matter what's coming at us. No matter if you've got a spear in your side like Jesus, you're concerned about those beside you and in front of you, and your family. You just keep doing it. And point six is no excuses. You can't say, well, I'm too old, I'm too handicapped, I've got poor health, no time, I'm not lucky, I'm too short, tall, wrong background. You know, successful people are too busy succeeding and to make excuses.

Excuses are just used to justify failure. It's the only time you need an excuse. Well, I failed.

It's a cover-up for something, but it's not. Success.

Those who want to achieve will find a way, it's been said. Those who don't will find an excuse.

You know, if you achieve, you'll find that way, that difficult way. You'll find it somehow through that keyhole, as a camel going through the eye of a needle into the kingdom of God. Somehow, with God's help, you'll find a way. But others, we saw, were nailing, knocking on the door and giving excuses. But we did this, and we did that, and we did this. Or, I knew you wanted something.

And the seventh point is the help of God. Let's notice in 1 Peter 3, verse 12, none of the success that we seek is even remotely possible without God.

It does require our involvement. The six points are our side of this equation.

We need to be very involved, but we can't do it without God. 1 Peter 3, verse 12, For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you're blessed, and do not be afraid of their threats nor be troubled.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

You know, that defense, you see, once again, there's an adversary there.

Somebody doesn't like what you stand for, and you be ready to still be on point. You don't join the defense. You don't cave in.

Having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.

For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good.

Than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit. So we have this example. We have this forerunner. We have the first successful human. He's our role model. He's traveled the path. He's done it.

So let's go forward and do that as well.

The last scripture is Romans 8.35.

Some encouragement here. Some serious encouragement. Romans 8 verse 35.

What shall separate from us? I would reverse those words. What shall separate from us the love of Christ? What's going to cause you to stop, to fail, to quit doing good?

What will cause you to stop, to give up, to fail? What will separate from us the love of Christ, out of us? What will take it out? Will tribulation, if you go through tribulation, will you quit?

Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or sword?

Here it is.

Here it is. We're presented with sort of the ultimate elements of adversity. Which of these will cause you or me to fail, is the question.

As it is written, for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Okay, so we have the adversary, and he has his minions. What is it that could cause you and I to not succeed? What form of adversity? Well, Paul goes on and says, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Remember all that equipment we're given? The armaments of God to defend against Satan? For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, you know, the threat of that being taken away, nor angels or principalities or powers, the very things that the armor of God is to combat against was those principalities, those fallen angels and powers, nor things present, the evil of things of today, nor things to come, end time tribulation, nor height. Somebody is going to throw you off a cliff, nor death, so I'm going to throw you in the ocean, nor any other created thing, no machine, no gun, anything else, shall be able to separate from us the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If we have the dedicated practice and all those elements and we are really, truly sons and daughters of God, no one's going to take that out of us through adversity. That's going to remain.

It's going to endure right to the end. God is pleased beyond measure when we endure adversity because of His kingdom, because of His way of life and our faithfulness to it.

So in conclusion, life is a long road and roads have potholes.

Life has a lot of troubles with heartaches that try to block our progress. Yet those very challenges temper the resilience of our character and they test us and help us to grow deeper character and stronger in godliness. It's like the faceting of a rough diamond.

The end result is something that is honorable, respectable, and much desired.

So progress is made through adversity. Thus adversity is actually a blessing in disguise.

Adversity truly is the gateway to success.