John K. Jenkins Sr - Proper Prospective During Problematic Times

Grab your Bibles while you're standing, and let me read this brief passage of scripture to you : 2 Corinthians chapter 4. I want to start at verse 7 . "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels , that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body."

I want to talk about the proper perspective during problematic times. Look at your neighbor and say, "The pastor is going to talk about having the proper perspective during problematic times." Did y'all get it? Alright, you can be seated .

There 's a lot of discussion about what the purpose of the church is and a lot of opinions about it. Some of them are not quite holy. Some people think the purpose of the church is to come and find a husband or a wife; some think the church is a bank-put some offerings in, and you ought to be able to draw something out. I had a young man some years ago who wanted to get his guitar out of the pawn shop and asked the church for some money. I told him, "That 's not how we use the church money ; we don't use the church money to help you get your guitar out of the pawn shop." Somehow, in his mind, he thought that because he had given an offering, he should be able to come and make a withdrawal . He got mad and asked for all the money he had given to the church to be returned to him . He didn't know I had already checked his giving record , and I told him, "We've already used up the money you gave ."

There are a lot of purposes of the church , but one of the purposes is to help people deal with trouble in their lives and help them handle their troubles. Amen. Let me thank those 17 people who affirmed that very powerful point. Let me just check and see if this is the crowd I need to be preaching to : How many of y'all have some trouble somewhere in your life? Okay, alright, I saw a few hands down . They have a lying spirit, but we'll pray for them . Maybe you don't have any trouble ; maybe everything's going well. But let me tell you this: I want you to listen to this message today because everybody is either headed into trouble, in the midst of trouble, or coming out of trouble. It is part of life; it is the journey of life. It's the way life is. It is full of ups and downs .

Of course, if I had my choice, there are some things I would eliminate from life. If we had the opportunity to choose , we would eliminate a whole lot of things, but God does not give us the opportunity to choose. As a matter of fact, trouble comes into your life without an invitation. In fact, trouble has a key to your house , and it steps right in. It can take over the whole house if it wants to.

So, every now and then , we have trouble shaping our lives, and one of the problems is that people in church have not been properly prepared to deal with trouble . Some people lose it; they go crazy. They go ballistic. They get trouble, quit church, quit God . People have trouble in their marriages , and they just walk away as if they're getting into a car : " I'm just gone ." People quit their jobs ; they just don't know how to handle difficult times. Part of what we try to do at our church is to prepare you so that when troubled times come, you'll be able to deal with them properly. Look at that person next to you and say, "You need to know how to properly handle trouble."

Yeah, you're going to have all kinds of trouble . But Paul is writing-listen, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth . He wrote them two letters . The first letter dealt with the carnality of the church . The church in Corinth was carnal; they had everything going on - division, fights, suing each other, immorality, incest, adultery-just like First Baptist Church of Glenart. Nothing surprises me anymore about our church ; I've heard everything. So, he spent the first letter writing to them to straighten out some of those issues . But now, when he gets to the second letter to the Corinthian church, they have matured. Listen to me carefully; they have matured and are now beginning to walk in their destiny. They are beginning to live out what God wants them to live.

They have matured, and any time-matter of fact, here's what verse 7 says right here: "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels."