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Officer’s Outlook

There Will Be Troubles…

Terry Anderson

08/30/2010

Look around you and you’ll realize that nothing is easy anymore. In today’s business world, you may work twice as hard for the same benefit you received a decade ago—and that’s just the beginning of your troubles. They’re not only present at work but in the more important aspects of our lives.

Local churches are having problems like never before. Once stable churches are disagreeing over issues of every magnitude and even talking about splitting. Saddest of all is the havoc the devil is wreaking on our families. Today it seems that everyone is facing significant challenges.

Personally, I’ve experienced more troubles in the past year than I remember experiencing in my lifetime before that. But I’m not complaining—at least not anymore. Because I’ve come to realize that Jesus has to get us to a place in our lives where we acknowledge that “we” can’t do it anymore. When we reach that point, we have a choice: to continue fighting by ourselves or to call for help from Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and the greatest Problem Solver in the universe.

Last February, I experienced what I then considered the worst day of my life. Quite simply, my life was out of control. I was trying to face all the challenges by myself, occasionally asking God for help because I was a “Seventh-day Adventist Christian.” Because of the economy and other circumstances, my business wasn’t doing well, our local church was in the middle of a “cordial” split, and my spiritual life was not what it should have been. I did not have the relationship with Jesus that I needed—and that He offered.

Friends, if you’re like me, you sometimes look around and wonder, “Is anyone else experiencing the kind of troubles I’m experiencing?” The short answer is, “Yes.” In these last days, Satan has more power to cause trouble than ever before in earth’s history. Our “adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8, NKJV). But verse 9 offers hope: “Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.”

I’m thankful to share that the huge tests the Lord gave me this year have strengthened my faith, and my relationship with God is better than ever. As other tests keep rolling my way, I continually learn that “I can’t… but He can.” This is significant because, as our problems increase so do our prayers. And the more we pray, the more we perceive how God is working in our lives to answer those prayers, which increases our faith and our witness of hope and encouragement to others!

Millions of people on this earth are experiencing problems every day. They don’t know what we know, and they don’t know Jesus. Our purpose for existing at this stage of history is to tell them! There has never been a better time to tell people about Jesus than today. He wants to give us the victory and greater power to finish this work so we can get off this planet.

Problems of all sorts will continue to come, and things will get worse on this earth. But, praise God, those experiences will only increase our faith as we continue to look to Him for our answers and protection.