What Keeps Us from Overcoming Adversity

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| More Than Conquerors series |

• How God Works All Things for Good
• What Keeps Us from Overcoming Adversity
• How to Overcome Adversity

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Last time we saw How God Works All Things for Good. However, we saw that we also have a part to play, that our response to suffering enables us to receive the good that God wants to produce for us in it. This also means that adversity can either produce good for us or harm us depending on our response.

In this post, let’s get specific on what things prevent us from receiving the good that God has for us in hardship. What keeps us from overcoming adversity? Hebrews 12 provides an answer to this question. After identifying these things, we’ll talk about how we avoid these traps so that we can overcome adversity.

The Trap of Bitterness

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that ‘no root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.

Hebrews 12:15

Whenever we experience suffering, it can be hard not to become bitter. Especially knowing that God allowed this suffering can tempt us to even become bitter with God. In warning about this “root of bitterness”, the author of Hebrews is referring to Deuteronomy:

Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart saying “I shall be safe though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.” This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.

Deuteronomy 29:18-19

This warning in Deuteronomy is so insightful, especially when we apply it to God’s promise to work all things for our good. If we think that God will work good out of hardship for us but we aren’t listening for His instruction in it with a humble and teachable heart, we are saying “I shall be safe though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart”.  Then, when hardship comes, we are unable to receive the good God has for us in it. That suffering leads only to our harm as a result. Then, we can become bitter, even with God, for the fact that we expected good but experienced harm. This bitterness can and will rob us of the good that God desires to work for us.

Before moving onto the other traps, I want to point out how both of these verses, warn about the harm that this bitterness can bring to others. In Hebrews it says that by this bitterness, “many become defiled” or tainted. In Deuteronomy, it warns how this attitude leads to “the sweeping away of moist and dry alike” or both those inside and outside the church. We saw in our series on His Love in Suffering that suffering can produce good not only for us but also for others. These verses serve as a warning that the opposite is true as well: When we allow bitterness, that bitterness produces harm not only for us but also for others.

The Traps of Weariness and Apathy

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him.

Hebrews 12:5

I’d like to address these next two traps together because they are so closely related.  That is the trap of weariness and the trap of apathy. Whenever suffering seems to last or seems to come back over and over, it can cause us to grow weary. We can get tired from the hardship and stop putting the effort in to listen for God’s instruction in the midst of it. In so doing, our weariness produces the same result as apathy (or “regarding lightly the discipline of the Lord”). Whether because we are tired or because we simply don’t care enough anymore, we are no longer looking for the good that God has for us in suffering. Instead we just want the suffering to be over.

As a result, we might even turn to other things to alleviate our suffering. Rather than embracing suffering and searching for the good God has in it, we seek to turn it off through alcohol, sex, TV or any number of distractions. It’s in reference to this that, after warning about bitterness, Hebrews warns us to not be “sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal” (Hebrews 12:16). And, this word for ‘unholy’ is translated from ‘bebélos’ and describes when something is profaned because of the way it is accessed. In our context here: While God has given us alcohol, entertainment, and even sex to enjoy, we profane that purpose when we use them to avoid engaging with God in our suffering. We take what God made holy and we make it unholy.

Esau is the perfect picture of this trap. When he experienced the pain of hunger, he just wanted it to end. So, he traded the eternal value of his birthright for temporary relief from a bowl of soup. We look at that and say, “How could he be so shortsighted?” Yet this is exactly what we do anytime that we use pleasure or entertainment as a tool to reject the gift that God longs to give us in our hardship. We trade a gift with eternal value for a fleeting relief.

Overcoming Adversity

Now that we see the things that keep hardship from producing good in us, how do we avoid these traps so that we can overcome adversity? The key is in how we respond to that suffering, both in our actions and in our hearts.

As we consider how we ought to respond, Hebrews tells us to look to the way that Jesus responded to the suffering He endured:

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

Hebrews 12:3-4

During His suffering, Christ set an example of:

• Reverence rather than bitterness. He put His faith and trust in the goodness and love of His Father.
• Patience rather than weariness. He often drew alone to pray for the Father to strengthen Him so that He could endure.
• Obedience rather than apathy. He willingly offered Himself to the Father’s plan, knowing it would lead to pain.

When we look closely at how our passage in Hebrews teaches us to respond to suffering, it reveals a connection to these three things.

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.

Hebrews 12:12-13

When we face adversity, let’s lift our drooping hands in reverent worship, strengthen our weak knees as we kneel to pray for patience to endure, and choose obedience by making our feet follow His straight path. This is what enables suffering to produce good in our lives (“be healed”) rather than harm (“put out of joint”).

When we follow Christ’s example in this way, just like Him we are able to overcome adversity. We not only come out on the other side, but we come out better, perfected by the struggle. It’s in this way that we receive the promise Romans gives in regard to hardship, that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). We don’t simply overcome adversity, we are more than conquerors in it!