“If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.” – Proverbs 24:10
Adversity is a word that most of us are familiar with and certainly it is an experience that all of us are familiar with. The Hebrew word that is translated in this verse as “adversity” has the idea of tightness, narrow or little room and no options. It means to be squeezed by difficult circumstances, to feel the weight and pressure of a force against you. Have you ever been there? No doubt you have; some folks seem to live there a lot of the time.
There are some who seem to think that this should not be the experience of faithful Christians. They reason that because all suffering in a general sense is a result of sin, the one who has received God’s forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ and is in a right standing before God should not experience trials in life.
The problem with that theory is it’s not true. It is true that we live in a fallen world and the curse of sin is all too evident around us. However, we clearly see from the example of those in the Bible that people who were walking in fellowship with God still faced troubles — think of Job, David or the Apostle Paul just to name a few. These men loved God and were men of faith yet the suffered many troubles and afflictions. We are not exempt from adversity, in fact, God tells us to count it all joy when we fall into various trials (James 1:2).
What do you do when hardships come? Our verse says if we faint in adversity our strength is small. God does not want you to faint or just give up. The fact is many times these trails reveal that our own strength is indeed small. There are trials that come into my life that I have no control over — but that discovery may not be a bad thing. If we apply our heart unto wisdom, that information is very helpful. It ought to teach us how to find God’s grace in the day of adversity so that we don’t faint.
The Christian is not immune to adversity but God means to use the day of adversity to teach us some important lessons about yourself and about Him. If you have struggled with many trials in life, you don’t have to go it alone or rely on your own strength — if you know the Lord you can find your strength in Him.