3 THINGS TO REMEMBER

WHEN HARD TIME COMES

• James 1:16-18 New King James Version (NKJV)
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved
brethren. 17 Every good gift and every
perfect gift is from above, and comes down
from the Father of lights, with whom there is
no variation or shadow of turning. 18 Of His
own will He brought us forth by the word of
truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of
His creatures.
When hard times come:
1. Remember God’s love
James is reminding that we were greatly loved by God. We
were brothers and sisters in Christ who had experienced the
love of God in a deep way.
“When we are tempted to give up, remember how
much God loves you.” H.B. Charles Jr. says it this way:
“The peril of the unredeemed sinner is unbelief. The
peril of the redeemed sinner is misbelief”
There really is no cure for ‘misbelief’ except
replacing falsehood with truth.
2. Remember God’s goodness
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from
above, coming down from the Father of lights.

Everything good in this world ultimately comes from

God. If it’s good, God made it, he gave it, he sent it.

Do we understand that we are alive right now

because God wants us alive? We breathe because he
gives us air to breathe.
William Shakespeare reminds us that,
“The quality of mercy is not strained, it
dropped as the gentle rain from heaven.”
Mercy always comes down. It starts with God
and moves to man, it begins in heaven and ends
on earth.
Mercy is indeed like the gentle rain that
softens the hard soil of the human heart.
What kind of God do we serve?
•He’s completely good.
•He’s constantly good.
•He’s unchangeably good.
 When you are tempted to give up,
remember the goodness of God.
When you feel like giving in to
temptation, remember the goodness of
God.
When you want to resign from life,
remember the goodness from God.
3. Remember God’s Grace

Salvation doesn’t start with us. It starts

with God.
 “My part in salvation was to run from the
Lord as fast as I could. God’s part was to
pursue until he found me and saved me by
his grace.
Salvation is of the Lord. We sometimes
say “I found the Lord”, but if the Lord didn’t
find us first, we would never find him in our
own.
 “Our God is good and faithful, and gracious, and
he loves to show those attributes to us if we pay enough
attention to catch them.
We have been trying to pay attention to those
attributes, to hope more on what is unseen than in what
is seen.
When hard times come:
1. Remember God’s love
2. Remember God’s goodness
3. Remember God’s grace
I can do all things through
Christ which strengtheneth
me. Philippians 4:13