How to Have Strength in Your Struggles

Tony Evans: Today, Dr. Evans preaches on what the Bible has to say about how we can have strength in our struggles and the 3 ways God gives us strength.

Dr. Tony Evans is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies. The first African American to earn a doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, he has been named one of the 12 Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking World by Baylor University. Dr. Evans holds the honor of writing and publishing the first full-Bible commentary and study Bible by an African American. His radio broadcast, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, can be heard on over 1,400 radio outlets daily and in more than 130 countries. Dr. Evans’ sermons are also streamed and downloaded over 20,000,000 times annually.

Approximately 2 weeks before sister Evans passed away, she She kept calling Jesus.
Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. And then she said, to me, write his name down.
She said write his name down. It wasn’t making sense to me.
She was saying, Jesus Jesus write his name you’ve got to write his name down.
So I found a piece of paper.
Elizabeth was with me and in the bedroom, and I wrote down the name Jesus on a piece of paper and showed her.
And when I showed her the name Jesus, She said it’s okay now. I’m not sure.
Turn your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 40.
Isaiah chapter 40. Versus 27 through 31.
Why do you say, oh, Jacob and assert O Israel?
My way is hidden from the lord. The justice do me escapes the notice of my god.
Do you not know, have you not heard the everlasting god? The lord?
The creator of the ends of the earth? Does not become weary or tired.
His understanding is inscrutable.
He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might, he increases power.
Though yous grow weary and tired and the vigorous young men stumble badly.
Yet those who wait for the lord, will gain new strength.
They will mount up with wings like Eagles. They will run and not get tired.
They will walk and not become weary.
And now, lord, give me strength as I seek to give your people strength from your word.
Help us, no matter what we’re going through, to see more of you, In Jesus’ name, all god’s people said.
Amen. Couple of weeks ago, one of my granddaughters Stopped eating for 4 days.
She refused to eat.
Nothing that the parents were doing was inciting her to eat.
Of course, now they’re becoming very worried and very concerned and kept prodding what is going on.
Why won’t you eat? And then she said to her parents, I don’t know what’s happening to our family.
The trials that we have gone through had robbed her of her appetite.
She said, I don’t know what’s happening to our family.
As you know, these 17 months, I have been the most difficult time of my life.
I lost my brother. My sister, my sister’s husband, my niece, my father in November, My wife in December.
2 weeks ago, Priscilla had 1 half of her left lung removed because cancer was in the lung.
My daughter Crystal has a suspicious growth that we’re trying to get some clarity on.
And so it’s been one thing after another.
In a concentrated period of time, causing my granddaughter to raise the question.
In the words of Marvin Gay, what’s going on?
So much. So many tears, so many unanswered questions.
One thing after another, and many of you know what it is, to have one thing after another, to struggle with the pain of life’s realities that are inescapable.
And if you’ve not been here yet, keep living.
Because life has a way of throwing curveballs.
The unexpected Sometimes you even get hit by the pitch.
God’s people were struggling in Isaiah 40.
They were struggling bad as this chapter prophesied the Babylonian captivity and it speaks about their struggle.
And they ask in verse 27, or they say my way is hidden from the lord, and the justice do me escapes the notice of my god.
What they’re asking is god, what’s going on? God, where are you?
Don’t you see my pain? My way is hidden from you.
You don’t see what I’m dealing with.
Because if you saw it, you would not let it happen like this this way, this long, and this much.
The justice do me is not fair. This isn’t fair.
I should be hurting like this, crying like this, struggling like this, discourage like this where are you god?
And while we could all be spiritual, and pretend we never think that way.
There are those times in our lives when god seems to be conspicuously absent.
Unlocatable. Joe put it this way.
He says, I looked north and couldn’t find him. I looked east. I looked west.
I kept I kept looking, and I couldn’t find him.
The absenteeism of god, the sense that my way is hidden from him.
He doesn’t see what I see, feel what I feel, and understand what I’m going through.
And while we can intellectually know better, it doesn’t change the broken hearts, the shed tears, or the enormous pain of light’s reality.
These people thought that god had failed them that he relinquished his on his covenantal promises.
There are those times in life when it looks like god is letting somebody put a rake over your soul.
Where you push the panic button and you feel let down where you’re no longer singing the gospel, you’re singing the blues.
Because sadness is overtaking you and celebration is just not where your emotions are.
They needed god to intervene.
In the circumstances that was causing them pain.
I don’t know what your circumstances today.
Probably most of you have one or who’ve had one or you’re headed toward 1, whether it’s unfulfilled dreams, desires that have not come through pain that has not been relinquished hurt that won’t go away.
This is what they were facing. Where are you god?
When my world is falling apart.
When god speaks into their situation.
He does not speak scientifically technologically, academically or philosophically, He speaks theologically because he raises the issue in verse 28.
Do you not know? Have you not heard the everlasting god?
The lord, the creator, of the end of the earth does not become weary and tired.
His understanding is inscrutable. He says when your world is real, Evans, members of Oak Cliff is falling apart This is not the time to run from him.
This is the time to run to him.
He says, do you not know?
And then he throws out theological concepts that we must keep in the front His understanding is inscrutable, and he’s creator.
Everlasting, omnipotent, omniscience, all knowing all powerful, and eternal.
You must retreat to the character of god in the crisis of life, regardless of the emotion in the circumstances.
Their emotions are sad. They wanna know where he is.
And when life hits you and you’re looking for god and you don’t see him, You have to retreat to what you know.
He’s everlasting, which means he’s not limited to time and space.
He’s creator. So his power is able to oversee, overrule anything.
And his admissions, his understanding is inscrutable. He is the unfiguratable guy.
Let me serve notice on you right now. God is hard to understand.
He can be extraordinarily confusing.
His understanding is inscrutable. It doesn’t off always add up.
You think he’s going this way?
And he does a curve on you.
And he doesn’t make sense Judaronomy 29, 29 says, god has secret things, things that he doesn’t tell anybody.
Things that he chooses not to explain.
Sometimes he will explain. Sometimes he will give you reasons.
Other times, he will hold it close to the vest.
Either for a time or for all You can ask god a question, but you can’t question god.
Amen. Let me say that again.
You can ask god a question, but you can’t question god.
Now what’s the difference to ask him a question is to say, god, would you help me to understand that?
To question god is to challenge him.
Your children can ask you a question but that’s different than your children challenging you.
When you ask a question, you may or may not get an when you challenge, you’re demanding an answer.
God will allow a question. He will not allow a challenge.
His understanding is inscrutable.
You try to figure out what god has chosen not to reveal, and you’re gonna need all of Walgreens.
Bayer, etcetera, PM, you’re gonna need all of Walgreens to deal with the headache of his inscrutability.
He says you have to understand this because if you do not understand it when your world is unraveling, then you will fall prey to the circumstances.
And not to the creator everlasting, our mission god, who is overseeing the circumstances.
I must admit I have had my series of questions.
Why this? Why this much? Why this now? Why this in light of all these prayers?
I have had my questions, and I’ve had to back up because sometimes I move from question to question name.
And then I have to jump back. Because I’m in territory.
I’m not allowed to go in. Can ask a question? I can’t question.
Because it is up to him what he will explain and what he will refuse to explain.
And if he refuses to explain it, it’s because in his sovereign knowledge, it’s best for us not to know it.
Don’t we do that?
We answer some questions by our children and others, we don’t bother to answer because they wouldn’t understand it, appreciate it, or benefit from it, maybe not then, maybe never.
These people are in crisis.
And in this chapter, a chapter worth reading over and over, a chapter I’ve had to read as I’ve wrestled with these months of one thing after another.
Let me just read a few verses from chapter 40 verse 18 to whom then will you liken me?
Who will you liken god? Or what likeness will you compare with him?
He says as for the idol of craftsman cast it, he says, don’t go away from god to something god made because that’s idolatry.
Who will you like of me?
You’re gonna go to something I made and try to get from something I made information that I’m not giving you.
He says, in verse 22, It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and it’s inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who searches out the heaven like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
He sits over the earth. He’s not in it. He’s over it. Verse 25.
To whom then will you liken me? I’m the incomparable one.
That I would be that I would be his equal, says the Holy 1.
He says, let me help you out. Lift up your eyes verse 26.
And see who has created these stars.
The one who leads forth their host by number He calls them all by name.
You know how many stars? There are? There are millions of stars.
He says, 1, I created them all.
2, I got a name for each one of them and I’ve never forgetting forgotten any one of their names.
Thirdly, because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power, no one of them is missing.
They’re not allowed to fall out of heaven.
He created them, named them, and told them to stay there.
So he is powerful to make stars, but he’s personal to know each one by name.
So he’s the big god up there, and he’s the intimate god down here.
He’s the god who created you, but who still knows your name.
We call that transcendence of their imminent involved down here.
And he says, who do you know that can do that?
To whom will you liken me?
When my world, your world, our world is collapsing as life would have it happen, unfortunately.
He says, you run to this god, not from him.
You don’t go to anything that competes with him, which is idolatry.
You don’t position him in an inferior location just because life has collapsed on you.
A low view of god in a crisis means the crisis will control and own you.
A hive view of god in the crisis means that the crisis has no longer the last word.
Do not settle for the creation.
Don’t go looking at the stars for your horoscope.
He says I made those stars. Yeah. They don’t dictate your future.
I dictate your future.
I am a king, and I’m not a burger king.
Where you get to have it your way.
He says, I want you to recognize me even in the crisis of life.
But we live in a day of the dumbing down of god. Yeah.
A god will only exist to bless us.
Help us deliver us, empower us, but not a god who can dictate to us.
We we we live in a day where if I give you your 2 hours, you ought to be happy god.
And so when the world caves in and we’re not used to dealing with the character of this god, We got all these blame games on god because he is god when times are up, And I had to remind myself, he is god when times are down.
He is god when babies are born, and he is still god when mates are deceased.
He has to be still god in both scenarios for you to make it through any scenario.
He must be god and treated and respected as such.
And so he says, do you not know in this chapter He says, I run the nations.
The nations are like a drop in the bucket.
And the rulers, I control them, lay like a speck of dust.
So there’s only one god and he’s not applying for the job.
So when light caves in, as it has for me, these 17 months, for my family over this past year, And I’ve had 2 true confession wrestle with god.
These were my questions, is my way hidden from the lord. I’ve had to wrestle with god.
I’ve had to retreat to what I know about him in spite of the circumstances I face.
You don’t deny the circumstances but they don’t have the last word.
So what do you do?
Is anybody here right now where life has caved in on you recently? Yeah.
Lot of you. What do you do?
How do you how do you move in this scenario? He tells you.
He helps you out. He says at the beginning of verse 31, yet those who wait for the lord will gain you strength.
He says When life caves in, my way is hidden from the lord.
The justice, the fairness, do me.
This is not fair. What happened? It’s not fair. This happened now. It’s not fair. I’m going through this.
It’s not fair. He says, what I want you to do is wait on the lord.
Now the question is, what does that mean?
The Hebrew word for weight is very picturesque.
All of you ladies know it.
And if this was years ago, I would say, only you ladies know it, but today, ladies and men know it because the word weight means to plat the hair.
It it it was to platt the hair.
When women or men platt the hair, they intertwined sections of hair so that they are tied together in a tight way when you straighten your hair.
It’s loose and hanging down when you plat your hair.
It has been intercoagulated and tightly tied together so that it is no longer subject to the blowing wind.
Because it has been tightened together by pride.
It was used of a rope where the strands were intertwined to make a stronger rope.
So when he says wait on the lord, he’s not talking about passively sitting down doing nothing.
He’s talking about plattening your life.
Intertwining all of your life so that everything is wrapped and intertwined with him so that there is a church and the rest of my week.
It’s god, I got started on Sunday morning. But my stuff is so messed up.
My situation is so deep. I’m going to plant my circumstances.
Plot my decisions, plot my goals, and intertwine them with you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and back again on Sunday, I’m not gonna just straighten my hair on Sunday.
And let stuff blow it all week long.
I’m gonna plat this thing so that it is no longer subject to the circumstances I am going to wrap up tie up and tangle up my life because when things get bad enough, the problem won’t leave you alone.
I mean, I wake up in the middle of the night.
I I break out in tears two and three times or four times throughout the day.
I see a picture. It throws me off. I hear a reference it throws me off.
So I don’t need what happened on Sunday.
I need to be tied up with the god I met on Sunday. All we call.
To wait on the lord is a hookup that you don’t want to be disconnected from.
In addition, it means to not go outside of god to fix it.
Because the temptation, when you’re in a crisis, that is knocking you down is to look for other options when you don’t think god is doing anything.
They said my way is hidden from the lord.
Maybe we don’t see god doing anything because we haven’t platted our lives around it.
We just we just paid him a visit on Sunday.
And therefore, the waiting is waiting without his presence being experienced in our pain.
And I know we don’t like the way the red light.
We don’t wanna wait at the doctor’s office. We don’t like the engine, the idle.
We don’t like the plane to be just hovering.
And, yes, it is real that when your life collapses on you, god is hard to find.
It’s like the pilot in the small plane. He was flying some passengers. The engines began to sputter.
There was one parachute. He put on the parachute went to the door.
They said, where are you going? He said, I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back.
Sometimes.
It feels like god bails out on you when you’re in a crisis.
But when you look at scripture, Sarah had to wait for a baby.
Noah had to wait for a flood. Joseph had to wait longer in prison.
Martha, Mary had to wait for a resurrection. The disciples had to wait for the Holy Spirit.
We’re waiting for the return of Christ Hannah had to wait for a baby.
Ruth had to wait for a husband.
You find people, but when the thing happened that god wanted to happen, those people were connected only when that connection was there when they had platted themselves.
Did they experience whatever god was going to do in their situation?
How do you know that you’re waiting on god this way?
Because the majority of your time you spend in worshiping, not complaining.
You spend your time worshiping and not complaining why because god inhabits the worship and praise and adoration of his people.
So on 130 verses 56, it says you wait on the lord with his word.
If you’re hurting today and life has collapsed, you read Isaiah 40. You read Psalm 42.
You read the Psalms are a great thing because it has so many different scenarios, but you you you go over.
God, remind me of who you are. I need your character. I need your presence. I’m looking to you.
I’m wrapped up in you. Because my circumstances have wrapped me up.
Lamitations chapter 3 verse 2526 talks about how good it is to wait on god.
For his divine intervention. However, he chooses to do that.
And if you wait this way, you’re not passively sitting down doing nothing.
You’re just not going outside of god to fix it, and you’re entangling yourself.
You’re plat in yourself with him. You’re not straightening your hair so that the circumstances blow it.
You are plattening it so that it is tight because that’s how desperate you want.
And by the way, It’s sometimes difficult to decide to go to god when you’re in it.
You need to have the practice of plotting before you get in it so that when you’re in it, you’re ready for it.
See, some folks wanna get close to god because they’re in a crisis.
The idea is to get to close to god before you hit the crisis So you already prepared for the crisis when it hit because Mister Evans was already close to god.
She could cry out to him. She could see him.
She could praise him even though life was ebbing from her body.
She didn’t have to find him they were already hooked up and platted when life fell apart.
What will god do in your questions?
Not questioning, but questions when you don’t cross that line.
Well, he doesn’t promise to answer every question.
He doesn’t promise to give you an understanding of everything as bad as you want it.
It’s his sovereign prerogative, how much he gives, and how much he holds, but he does promise you something.
He says those who wait for the lord.
We’ll gain new strength. New strength.
That means strength you don’t currently have.
Because as you know, when you’re in a crisis strength, drains from you.
Crisis send us the bed. Make us not wanna get up.
Wakes you up in the middle of the night.
It sucks your energy when it’s a deep one or a series of one that won’t leave you alone.
It just like an illness, it just drains you.
But he says, if you wait on me, I will give you new strength.
We all have charges for our phone. That’s because They lose strength.
They run down. The power leaves.
So what we do is we gotta take it and put it on the charger to get new strength.
As the phone sucks in the electrical power. It becomes new again. Yes.
The phone works but it can’t work without the power.
But because of life all day, it loses power.
But when you let it wait on the charger, if it gotta wait, it’s gotta gotta sit there and wait.
When you let it hang out, hooked up, with the pie, it gives new strength. Yeah.
And when god gives new strength, You’ll see it in one of three ways.
He tells you in verse 31. They will mount up with wings like Eagles.
The first way that god gives new strength is his divine intervention.
When an eagle kicks out and egalet the first time, a baby eagle, it’s trying to learn to fly.
Usually, the first time it can’t fly because it hadn’t doesn’t know yet how to fly.
So it’s just flailing trying to make it. Anybody flailing trying to make it? Yeah.
But what the eagle will do when it sees the egalet falling and it’s not gonna make it, the eagle swoops down opens its wings and catches the egglet on the wing and lifts it back up to the nest.
One way god gives you new strength is by swooping into your situation grabbing you and lifting you out of it.
It’s when god supernaturally intervenes and blows your mind by turning something around, by switching something, by reversing something.
And that’s when you get your praise on. That’s when you say it ain’t god good all the time.
All the time god is good because he came out of nowhere.
And with Eagles wings lifted you out of it. That’s one way that god gives new strength.
There’s a second way god gives new strength. They will run and not get tired.
God gives new strength when he doesn’t swoop down and take you out of it.
He lets you run through it. He says, you’re gonna run.
You’re gonna run but I will give you a second win so you can keep going.
I’m going to let you run.
I’m not gonna swoop down and make it disappear, but I’m going to let you run through it.
All of you who get on a treadmill knows what it is to run.
And you know what it is.
And one of the ways you can run longer when you’re on a treadmill, then you would normally run is if you’re watching TV.
I always turn on the news when I’m on the treadmill.
Why because by focusing on the news, I can go longer with the breathing.
If I’m just there and I don’t have another focus, I’m thinking about running.
And so when I get tired of running, I give up, but with the news on, with the focus on it allows me to run longer than I would normally run, and I get a second.
When he says, if you focus on me, even though you’re running, I will give you a second wind so you can go further with this situation, further with this pain, further with this problem, than you thought you could go because I’m a give you a second win.
Then there’s a third way. He gives you new strength.
It says and they will walk and not become weary.
The first way is he swoops down and just take you out of it.
The second way he doesn’t swooze down, he lets you go through the process of running, but he gives you the ability to keep going.
The third way, you can no longer run. He says they are walking.
That walking on the 3rd way.
When you’re on the treadmill and you’re running, and you finish running, they’ll tell you don’t jump off.
They’ll say, you have to walk.
You have to walk in order for things to settle down.
You have to walk for the benefit of the heart slowing down because if you just jump off with a heartbeat and you haven’t given it a chance to make the adjustment on the pace, You see, sometimes life gets so hard.
You can’t run. And you’ve been left to walk.
The first way is god’s divine intervention.
The second way is god’s enablement to keep going.
But the third way, when you can’t run anymore, because you are now too tired.
You’re left to walk. That’s divine encouragement.
That’s when god doesn’t change the situation. He changes you in the problem.
You doesn’t he doesn’t fix it. He doesn’t turn it around like you pray.
But he does something in you that that no longer matters.
That that no longer is the situation.
He’ll bring a person in your life to give you an encouraging word.
He’ll bring a song on the radio. To inspire you.
There’ll be a sermon that you thought was prepared with only you in mind.
That’s when all he’s doing is just encouraging you. Nothing has changed except you.
Because sometimes god puts us in a position to accept something he doesn’t intend to change.
And so all you can do is walk because your running ability is over.
But in all three ways, He’s given new strength. Yeah.
Strength, you know, I would love to say he only does the eagle thing. But that’s not true.
There plenty of times, he doesn’t swoop down and just switch it overnight.
I would love to say that, boy, he’s gonna give you something to focus on he gonna get you through, and you’re gonna have the wind to run, but sometimes life just gets tired.
And you’ll you’ll you’ll get up and go with gotten up and gone.
But what he wants to do is let you know I am there with you and what you’re going through.
They that wait upon the lord will get new strength.
And so I say to you today and I say to me, don’t you give up?
Run to him, not from him, in the crises of life, something I have to remind myself to do every day now.
To run to him because I gotta tell you. He didn’t swoop down.
And do what I asked him to do.
And we ran through every option available to man to fix it.
And so I’m walking. I’m walking. We’re walking.
But in all three, it gives me strength.
I’ll close with the story you’ve heard before, but the little girl who went shopping with a mother And she went up the cookie aisle, and those daughters was in the cart.
She said, mommy, please give me some chocolate chip cookies.
Mother said I can’t I you know, you’ve had too many sweets today, darling. No chocolate chip cookies today.
She went down another aisle The daughter said, Mommy, I really want some chocolate chip cookies.
I told you I’m not getting any chocolate chip cookies. You had too many sweets today.
Mother went down another aisle. Mama, you don’t understand. I need some chocolate chip cookies.
Know what you need is a spanking, because I told you, stop worrying me about chocolate chip cookies.
The mother got in the checkout line.
The little girl stood up in the cart clasp her hands.
Looked up toward heaven and said, god, I learned in Sunday school that if I called on you, you would meet all my needs.
And I need some chocolate chip cookies, but my mama won’t get me any chocolate chip cookies, Jesus.
The lady in back of the mother said, why won’t that woman get that girl some chocolate chip cookies?
The woman got embarrassed. We got a whole bunch of chocolate chip cookies.
The girl stood up and said, thank you, Jesus.
But answering my prayer and get me chocolate chip cookies. There’s somebody here today in the checkout line.
You ready to throw in the towel. You better to give up.
You you you you’re on your last leg, but before you give up, check up.
Because if you check up with god, he has a way of giving you new strength, the ability to keep going, I need it.
You need it. We need it as we fight the battles of life together.
Let’s stand to our feet.