The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“Trouble and Triumph”
Our memory verse this week speaks to a challenging truth, but one we must know and embrace in our walk with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
“But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew” (Exodus 1:12).
We find the New Testament corollary in the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Romans 8:35-37).
Trouble and triumph go hand in hand, heart in heart in the life of believers. By definition, we cannot overcome without challenges to overcome. Thus, our Heavenly Father charts a path for all His children that includes not only the blessings that make us smile, but also the difficulties that lead us to avail ourselves of His realized presence, leading, comfort, and enabling. In simple terms, how many prayers do we pray that have to do with problems, pains, sorrows, and sufferings, whether those of others or ourselves? More importantly, how many of God’s answers have resulted in our growing discovery of His faithfulness? Or how many prayers whose answers we still await have revealed the same assurance communicated to the Apostle Paul when his thorn in the flesh remained? “My grace is sufficient for thee” (II Corinthians 12:9).
When trouble comes, of whatever mode or measure, opportunity arrives with it. We get to trust and submit to God in ways that would not be possible apart from challenge. We get to triumph, to overcome. Indeed, I recently saw a video from several years ago that reported of a group of young men beheaded by adherents of a false religion because they would not renounce their faith in the Lord Jesus. The question arose in my mind: “Who won?” Who indeed triumphed in the encounter, those who bore the sword, or those who felt its keen edge in physical death, as they abode faithful to the far keener and forever victorious “sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God?” (Ephesians 6:17). We know the answer. “In all these things, we are more than conquerors…”
Exodus 1:12 offers a declaration most certainly to be memorized and affirmed for a lifetime. Greater affliction, greater multiplication and growth. Trouble… triumph. Or most vividly, “They crucified Him… but God raised Him from the dead” (Matthew 27:35; Acts 13:30). Our faith began with the greatest of all overcoming. It flows with the same current of grace in challenge as we remember that without trials, there can be no triumph of “the more they afflicted them, the, the more they multiplied and grew.”
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”
(II Corinthians 4:8-11)
“We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”
(Acts 14:22)
Weekly Memory Verse
“But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.”
(Exodus 1:12)
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