Keeping the Faith
ILLUS: The story is told of a man who was walking across the road when he was hit by a car. The impact knocked him on his head which caused him to be in a coma for a couple of days before he finally regained consciousness. When he opened his eyes, his loving wife was there beside his bed holding his hand.
He said, "You know, Judy, you’ve always been right by my side. When I was a struggling college student, I failed again and again. But you were always there with me, encouraging me to go on trying."
He said, "And when I got out of school and went for all of my interviews and failed to get any of the jobs, you stayed right there with me, cutting out more classifieds for me to check on..."
“Then I started work at this little firm and finally got the chance to handle a big contract. But I blew it because of one little mistake, and yet you were there beside me all the way. Then I finally got another job after being laid off for sometime. But I never seemed to be promoted and my hard work was never recognized. And so, I remained in the same position from the day I joined the company until now... And, through it all, you were right there by my side."
Her eyes are starting to fill with tears as she listens. He says, "And now I’ve been in this accident and when I woke up, you’re the first person I see. There’s something I’ll really like to say to you...."
He said, "Judy, I think you’re just plain bad luck!"
Not what she was expecting to hear…
I wonder if that’s what God hears from us, too. He walks with us through our hardships and the valley of death, through troubles, tribulations, and difficult times, and instead of thanking him for being there, we turn our back, we raise our fist, we say – why are you putting me through this? Don’t you care, God?
When the sun hides behind the clouds, when evil seems to win the day and steal every last glimmer of hope, when your troubles keep building upon each other…will you cling to God during those times or will you turn away??? Think about it? Is your faith strong enough to weather the hurricane of doubt and hardships?
ILLUS: I remember sitting in a circle with Holocaust survivors, listening as the gentleman next to me described losing every member of his family to the Nazis, describing seeing death every day in the concentration camps, telling how he used to pinch his cheeks to make it look like they had color. The Nazis would take those that looked weak and take them aside and shoot them…he tried not to look at any of the guards in the eyes, otherwise they might impetuously pull you aside as well…I asked him how difficult it must have been to believe in God as a Jew during these times. He said he lost his faith. He just couldn’t imagine a God who would stand by and let this evil continue day after day.
ILLUS: Even the professionals go through crisis of faith in hardships. I remember reading a Newsweek article (May 7, 2007) about an Army chaplain, Chaplain Roger Benimoff who deployed to Iraq twice-- he ended up with not only with PTSD, but also a crisis of his faith. He was chaplain for a Combat maneuver squadron (the kind of unit that kicks in doors, drives heavy equipment, prepared for combat)… he saw too much suffering, too many decapitated Iraqis on the streets, too much pain.
He wrote in his journal “I am doing more memorial ceremonies than preaching…I feel numb”…visit troop at an outpost and return later in the week to find out he’d been killed by a sniper.
ALL the while he’d think about God’s promises, like Isaiah 54:10, which reads “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken.” In a single two-week period there were 4 suicide bombings at his location, and the troops would come up and ask him “If I’m a child of God, than why isn’t he protecting me?”…
At one point, after giving another memorial service, he writes in his journal “I don’t feel like giving myself to God. I hope God changes my desire.” He gets home and can’t sleep, has dreams of flag draped caskets…takes anxiety medication, ptsd, and is now a hospital chaplain…his faith went through a crisis , but he emerged holding on to God’s hand even when he felt himself slipping and at one point wanted nothing to do with God…he says ‘Now I’m much more honest and blunt with God.”
See, even though he went through a faith crisis—he had faith…trust…honesty. What we call faith today is not really faith in God…it’s faith in our circumstances.
---When our lives are going well, we’re happy, career strong, our faith and religious experience is often strong.
---When we go through suffering, trials, hardships, pain, persecution, our faith sometimes falters, weakens, or even disappears.
That’s faith in circumstances, and it covers all major religions.
Think about this today… “Is your faith conditional upon being protected from trials, protected from illness, protected from marital discord, protected from suffering and death?”
If you knew that you would face a serious hardship in your life 3 years from now, are you confident that you would hold onto God’s hand through it…or are you shaky? It’s worth considering this morning…
Amazing Scripture dealing with trials and how we can endure…and how we can go through them…
II Corinthians 4:8-182 Corinthians 4:8-18 (New International Version)
8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
13It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken."[a]With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, 14because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. 15All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
16Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Unpack some depth in these words:
#1. Verse 8 “We are hard pressed on every side.” Trouble doesn’t just come from one source--sometimes it comes from many-- all at once. Friends, bank, your work, your kids.
#2 Verse 11 “always being given over to death” always on the edge of persecution and death…
Yet Paul also says in verse 9 persecuted but not –abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. Verse 16… We don’t lose heart. Outwardly dying, wasting away, but inwardly—renewed.
Outwardly suffering, outwardly depressed, outwardly confused, outwardly angry…outwardly going through tough times, but it promises that you can be renewed…is that what you want??? Inwardly renewed no matter what’s happening outwardly?
I hope you will cling all the more when you go through trials…get ruthlessly honest with God, but not just throw him out because you went through trials…
ILLUS: Robert Robinson was just a small boy when his dad died, and this meant that he had to go to work while still very young. Without a father to guide him, he fell in with bad crowd of friends.
One day his gang harassed a drunken gypsy. Pouring more whiskey into her, they demanded she tell their fortunes for free. Another time, he and his rebellious friends started harassing pastors. Another time they decided to go hear the great evangelist George Whitefield and heckle him. As Whitefield preached, a deep sense of sin came over Robert. That started a 3 year journey searching out the claims of Christ - finally, at the age of 20, he made peace with God and immediately set out to become a preacher. Two years later, in 1757, he wrote a great hymn…
Come, Thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above…
What’s interesting in that song is the last stanza:
Robert wrote;
“Prone to wander Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love
Take my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for thy courts above.”
That may describe you, but it actually happened to him. He preached for many years until he came to a hard place in his life and then left his church because of unfair accusations. That deeply hurt him and he walked away from his faith and became very lonely, deeply angry and extremely critical in his old age.
One day as a miserable man, he was riding in a stagecoach and a lady sitting across from him - apologized to him for singing, “Come Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace…. And then Robert said, “Lady, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then.” At the end of his life – coming back to his faith - he said… “I lost that great emotion because I failed to flame the embers of love in order to keep joy burning bright in my life.”
And that is what I want to conclude with today…the solution/the cure
Robert lost his first love when the hardships came… if the honeymoon with Jesus is long over—chances are when the trials come, you won’t have much root or depth in your Christian walk…and you might fall away…
In Revelation 2:4 Jesus compliments the church at Ephesus for their hard work, patient endurance, how they don’t tolerate evil…But then it says ‘but this I have against you…You have lost your first love.”
Do you remember your first love??
Maybe you married them, maybe not…I don’t want to create conflict today…but that first real love…you want to spend your time with them, no expense to great, no distance too far…As the lyric to the song goes…"Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from loving you." There’s a fiery passion. And trials and hardships won’t drown the love. 11 of the 12 disciples were killed for their faith, but they had a fiery first love for Jesus…not the casual Churchianity or mediocrity religion, or one-day a week discipleship…it was real love for God that went all day, every day.
If you want to weather the storms and hardships of tomorrow with God, you must fan into fiery flames the first love you have with Jesus today. A deep love will grow deep roots and will withstand the trials and hardships life throws our way...
But, how do you do that?
Revelation 2:5 “So remember where you were before you fell. Change your hearts and do what you did at first.”
ILLUS: Newspaper columnist and counselor George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. "I not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me." Dr. Crane thought about that for a couple of moments and then suggested an ingenious plan.
"Go home and act as if you really loved your husband,” He told her. “Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind and considerate and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him… then drop the bomb. Tell him that you’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him."
With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, "Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!"
And she did it with enthusiasm. For two months she acted "as if," she loved him. She was kind to him, she listened to him. She was constantly giving, reinforcing, sharing.
Two months went by… and she didn’t return to her counselor, so Crane called her. "Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?" "Divorce?" she exclaimed. "Never! I discovered I really do love him."
Whenever you struggle with “Keeping the Faith” remember to do those things that fan the flames of love to God…Make loving God a top priority in your life.
Do those few simple disciplines well-- prayer, meeting with others, fellowship, authentic conversation with other "seasoned" Christians, getting deep in the Word of God...if your simple practices of faith help to stir your love for Christ--I have no doubt that you will weather whatever trials come your way.
If you are struggling in your faith today, please see me after the service...I will be there to help you on that road of faith, to grow stronger roots, a deeper love, and a faith that will withstand the hardships, doubts, and trials in life.
