“GETTING OUR HEADS TOGETHER ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS”
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Today begins a new series called Getting Our Heads Together. I took that from 1 Peter 4 when I was reading it during the 40 Days of Purpose. I really liked it in the New Living Translation. All the texts I will be quoting are printed in the sermon outline. If you want to refer to the sermon outline, you may if that is helpful to you, but let me read it to you. The audience, of course, is Roman Christians and the issue is how to live as Christians in a secular and immoral culture, and of course, I think that is relevant today. The answer is in the first part of verse 1; it gives you the how. Here is what it says:
Since Christ suffered while he was in his body, strengthen yourselves with the same way of thinking Christ had. . . . Strengthen yourselves so that you will live here on earth doing what God wants, not the evil things people want. In the past you wasted too much time doing what nonbelievers enjoy. You were guilty of sexual sins, evil desires, drunkenness, wild parties, and hateful idol worship. Nonbelievers think it strange that you do not do the many wild and wasteful things they do, so they insult you. But they will have to explain this to God. . . . The time is near when all things will end. So think clearly. . .
If there is any admonition for our day, living in our own culture, we need some clear thinking on issues of our life. Romans 12:2 says this: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
The fundamental, essential trait of a Christian - the litmus test, how you know that you have a personal relationship with God and you have passed from this life to the next - is the transformed life. Are you living a transformed life? Well, how are we transformed? Romans says we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Proverbs 4:23 says this: “As a person thinks in his/her heart, so is he/she.” NIV says that the mind is a “wellspring of life,” so in the next eight weeks we are going to be in the process of renewing our minds on various topics.
I find it interesting too that when you look at God’s mission - his life plan for saving the world - when he left the disciples here he gave them three basic tasks to do. Do you know what those three primary tasks were? Preaching, teaching and praying. Some say healing the sick, but it is praying that God will heal the sick, because it is God who heals. Preaching, teaching and praying - the center of two of those is the passing on of information, the renewing of our mind. God knows that we need some bits of information. He knows that we need a different perspective on our life that we are not getting; and he has invested a lot of time and a lot of energy, a lot of resources and a lot of personnel into the renewing of our minds. If that is the amount of effort God has put forth, we need to do the same thing ourselves. The Bible says that apart from God our minds can be dull, blind, depraved, and hostile towards God. They can be easily led astray; they can be confused, diluted; we can live in denial but, and Romans 8:6 says this, but the potential is the mind controlled by the Spirit - the mind controlled by God is what? It is life. So this summer we are going to experience life!
Today we are going to talk about the issue of our problems. How we think about our problems is just as important as our problems themselves. You can discover two people who go through the same exact problem, and that problem for one person will destroy them; and for the other person it becomes a great opportunity for drawing closer to God, and they come out the other side deeper in faith and better in their life.
How do you explain that? The explanation is in how they view their problems. We are going to learn how to view our problems from God’s perspective, but before we do that let’s take a moment to pray and ask for God’s blessing upon today. [Prayer]
What do we do when we encounter problems? Whatever problems you are going through, be assured that God has a purpose for that problem, and that he will indeed redeem it and he will cause some greater good to result from it. Trust God. An example of that, of course, is the cross. If you have seen the movie “The Passion,” that really brings it to light. That is pretty accurate. From the human perspective, if you looked at Jesus, you would say that was senseless, cruel, heartless suffering that anyone can go through, and yet think about it, the most tragic event, the most barbarous cruelty God took, and took that senseless act of cruelty and made something good come out of it. He caused the suffering of Jesus to result in the opening of heaven for us all, and if God can do that with Jesus, think about what he can do with our own problems. Think about the most tragic event in all history, deicide, the death of God, resulted in the most glorious event in history, the salvation of the world, the personal salvation of you and me.
You know this past week I was having a little pity party. Of course, my wife was away but that wasn’t the problem. I was a little bit depressed about my house. In the last three years all kinds of things have gone wrong. I go downstairs because I am thinking the humidifier has been running awfully long and an inner voice said go check it. So I went down to check it and it hadn’t shut off - there were gallons and gallons of water in this newly remodeled basement of mine, and at midnight I am in there with towels soaking it up until 1:30 in the morning, and I had to get up at 7:00 to make breakfast for the kids and get them ready so I can get to work.
When I am down there this thought is going through my mind. Maybe you have experienced this as well. My life stinks – that is not really what I thought about – I can’t catch a break. Why does this always happen to me? Everything in my life is going wrong. Have you experienced that before? You know what, a peace swept over me; an almost audible voice but it was a sense, an inner sense, and the word to me was Richard, you are upset about, think about it, you are upset about your home and what you are upset about is its improvements. I have all these things I want to do. It’s not that it is falling apart. It is not getting worse. You are depressed about its betterment. Think about it. You are getting upset about the improvement of your home, not its demise, and then it changed everything.
Things in my life are really going better, but when, and this is a human trait we have, we encounter difficulty we get into this all or nothing thinking don’t we? One thing goes wrong and what do we say? Everything is wrong in my life. We hear one word of criticism and we say everybody hates me. We make one mistake and we say why can’t I do anything right? We get on ourselves. I did this as a young person. I got on myself. I didn’t hit the golf ball right. I didn’t do well in sports and I said why can’t I do anything right, I’m such an idiot. That is false, that is wrong.
It is important for us to get our thinking and get our heads together on this to think clearly. When you think clearly about your life, really only about one or two things are wrong, but 99.9% of things are right. 99.9% people love us and those who don’t either don’t know us or they are idiots, or they are jerks, and they are not worth the time anyway; and 95% of the time we do things that are right. We have many skills, many talents and many abilities. We get on ourselves when we fall to a particular sin or temptation, and we say you are such a failure before God, but the reality is there are many things you are doing right in your life. There are many areas of your life in which you are living in obedience to God. You made one failure; you are not a failure. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You probably have 85, maybe 90% of it right.
Now I am not saying that we should deny our problems. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t exaggerate about them. Most of the things in our lives are good. Life is good. (You are pretty good when you are sleeping. My grandfather said you are pretty good when you are sleeping. I never understood that.) What is not good, God has promised to turn to good. I am not saying that things that happen in your life are necessarily good and that they are from God. I am not saying that is true at all.
I will give you an illustration, something that clearly is not good. You hear pastors rail about it all the time – divorce. Would you say divorce is good? Would you say God is for divorce? No, no, and yet I know about some of your lives, and I know that it was through divorce you came into a relationship with God. Which is more important? Which is more valuable, your salvation or your marriage? I know some of you found a better spouse, greater love, a soul mate through divorce. Now do I advocate divorce? No, but it shows you even bad things, things that God doesn’t desire, how he can take them and turn them for a much greater good in our lives, so trust him. Trust him to turn a greater good out of the badness in your life. Psalm 19:31 says: “How great is your goodness . . . . You have stored it up for those who honor you. You do good things for those who trust you.”
I know some of our problems will cause depression. Sometimes they are overwhelming. What do we do when we experience overwhelming problems? When we experience overwhelming problems, it is important to focus, not on the problem, but on the greatness of God. When I think about the greatness of God, I always think about the wonderful story in the Old Testament about the children of Israel just before they cross the Jordan and they send out spies and the reports of the spies and my heart goes out to the Israelites and their view of themselves. What do they say? The spies come back and they say the people are like giants and we look like grasshoppers. What were they doing? They were comparing what they are able to do versus what God was able to do through them.
All of us have those times in our lives where our problems look like giants and our resources and abilities seem like grasshoppers. There are times when marital problems can be like that- where you feel completely at a loss and you don’t know what to do. It is an impossible situation. Where do you begin? Financial difficulties can seem like that as well. I know people who have been $30,000 and $40,000 in debt just in credit cards. It is an overwhelming problem. Illnesses can have a sense of being an overwhelming problem because sometimes there is nothing we can do about them. The death of a loved one is the ultimate in being overwhelmed.
What is God’s Word to us when we are overwhelmed? What did God tell the Israelites? Don’t focus on the problem, focus on me. You can’t, but I can. I remember the Apostle Paul was overwhelmed with a thorn in his flesh. He was complaining before God and he said God why don’t you take this away? God says this, My grace is sufficient for you. Paul responds with you know what, I have learned that when I am weak, it is then that I am strong.
Part of the quintessential example of meeting overwhelming odds, one we learned as a child, is David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. You know that story. In response to overwhelming odds, Saul tries to put the armor on David, and David says no I just can’t do that. Here is what he says in 1 Samuel 17-39 and some other verses, David responds this way: I can’t go in these, I am not used to them, this is Pastor Richard’s paraphrase, so he took them off and then he took up his staff in his hand and he chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in his pouch, called the shepherd’s bag, and with his sling in his hand, he approached the Philistine. David said to Goliath, verse 45, you come against me with sword and spear and javelin but I come against you in the name of the Lord God Almighty. Notice the word he uses, the Lord God Almighty. He is focusing upon God’s power and God’s greatness, not upon his own power and greatness.
Then he did something else. He not only had faith and trust in God’s greatness, not his own, but he also looked around and found the resources that he already had. He found a sling, a shepherd’s staff, and his bag. He didn’t use things that were foreign to him, but he found the resources he already had in order to find a way out of a problem that was presenting itself.
This reminds me of 1 Corinthians 10:13 which says this, and the word in the passage in some translations is ‘temptation’ but the word means both temptation and trials. So substitute the word problem for the word temptation and here is how it sounds. “No problem you are going though is unique. Others have gone through it before and God is faithful. He does not allow you to be tried beyond what you can bear but when you experience problems, he will provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
Are you experiencing a Goliath-type situation in your life? What are we to do? Focus on God, don’t focus on yourself. You can’t but he can. Focus on the resources that are available to you. One of the great resources is the word ‘others.’ Others have gone through what you are experiencing right now. Call and get in touch with those who have already experienced this trouble, this problem, that seems overwhelming to you. They can be of tremendous help to you.
If you are experiencing financial difficulty, God has provided for you - you probably have these - a pair of scissors. Cut your cards up. The resources are already there. There is financial help all through our country. Find a financial advisor and financial help.
If you have an illness, of course we have the best medical system in the world but it has problems, it is not perfect but it is still the best system in the world. People come here for it.
If you are experiencing someone who is terminal or if you are terminal, know that you have the best Savior in the world and he has provided hope and eternal life for you.
If you are experiencing marital problems, there are counselors all over the place. When I say that, so often what I hear are couples who think of the price tag. It is going to cost me so much money, yet we will spend tens of thousands of dollars on cars, thousands of dollars on drapes for our homes and carpet, and yet isn’t your marriage worth more than that? Isn’t the person you are married to worth more than that? Why is there always a price tag that keeps us from getting the help that we need? If you have taken ten years to get into your problems, it will take you quite a long time. It won’t take one or two sessions. You can’t get out of your problems in one or two sessions. It is impossible. God has provided professional counselors all over our country to help you out. Tap into that resource.
What about loss, what about tragedy? If God is so great, why does he allow these things in our lives? I do not have a lot of time to deal with this one because it is a huge topic but if you want to get a comprehensive dealing with this question, I have provided a bibliography in the notes. I will give you a short answer to this one before I end with one more step, and that is, it is really God’s greatness that gets him in trouble with us. It is God’s greatness that gets him in trouble. Which is greater, totalitarianism or a democracy? Which is greater? Which is greater, absolute rule or freedom?
The movie Star Wars is a good illustration. The motivation for Anakin Skywalker is he wants to have ultimate power so the suffering his mother experienced would never happen again. He could salvage the empire. What happens? Totalitarian rule was the result: greater suffering. God understood this. God understood that the greater good was freedom, so he created a people with the freedom to choose good and evil. God did not create evil, he only created the possibility for evil. If we are truly free, then we have to have that possibility, that potential. So the cause of evil then is choice. It is human free will. It is our freedom. If you look at human history, you will notice that the source of the greatest suffering of the world is not with God, but it is with us.
I remember one cartoon, I forget the cartoon but the one character says you know what, I see all these problems in the world and I just want to ask God, God why did you allow this to happen? The other person responds you know wha,t I am afraid to ask that same question because I am afraid that God is going to ask me the same question. The reality is the Holocaust, starvation, AIDS, Stalin, Pol Pot, the killing fields are all because of our inhumanity to each other, not because of God. Tragedies so often are caused by people who drink too much and then drive. Tragedies result from people who have taken sex outside of its created limits which is within the marriage between a man and a woman. I don’t care what the world says about this issue, let’s be very clear, let’s have very clear thinking, I know they accuse us of being bigots, but we are not bigots, it is simply clear thinking, get our heads together, this is truth.
Tragedy is caused by people who drive recklessly or live recklessly. Tragedy is caused by people who are impatient or lose their temper or abuse their power. Tragedy is caused by people who slander and gossip and break their promises. Joni Eareckson Tada wrote a wonderful book called When God Weeps. I think God spends most of his time weeping because of what we do to each other. When God weeps, what does God do then? That is a nice theological argument. What does God do when we screw up our lives or screw the lives up of others or we experience tragedy or the impossible or the unbearable? It is then that God brings out his very best. We ask, in these situations, an intuitive question which is the right question. We ask God, where were you, that is the right question. It is a question not about an answer or a reason or a thing. It is question of who. It is a question of someone. The answer to tragedy or the impossible or the unbearable is not an answer (if you read the book of Job which is the quintessential treatment on the issue of suffering). It has no answer because the answer to this question is not an answer. The answer to this question is the answerer. The answer to this question is not a bunch of words. It is the Word itself, himself. It is not a well-thought philosophical or theological argument called a theophany, it is the person that answers the question God where are you? with I am right here and I have been here all along.
One of my favorite movies is Forrest Gump. I love Forrest Gump because it has this wonderful scene where Forrest is trying to be a fishing boat captain. It’s not working out. He is a nice guy and God should really bless him, and Lieutenant Dan is all over him, where’s this God you are always talking about. When he said that, what happens? What is the next line? It is funny you should say that because God showed up. You know what, it is in those impossible tragic unbearable situations that God shows up. That is the message of Christmas. That is the message of the incarnation, God coming in flesh.
You know what undermines people’s faith? You know what suffering undermines people’s faith so often? Most often the sufferer experiences God in the suffering. Most sufferers do, 80% do. What undermines faith is the observation of suffering, isn’t it?
It is interesting that when God observes our suffering, what does he do? He can’t sit there. He can’t watch this, it is unbearable, so he comes down and bears it with us and bears it for us and he opens up the possibility that when we experience these times he can be there for us. It is the cross that makes the Spirit’s activity in our lives possible -that God can be there every moment of our day. God did it because he could not bear to see us suffer alone, so he provides a way he can hold our hand and be there for us each and every time. Psalm 23:4 says this: “Even when I experience the darkest of dark times,” the phrase is when I experience the valley of the shadow of death, the phrase is “when I experience the darkest of dark times.” When was that for you? Maybe it’s now. When I experience the darkest of the darkest times, I will fear no evil. Why? Because you are with me. Isaiah 43:25 says this: “When you pass through the river at flood stage,” which you will and when was that for you, “I will be there . . . they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire,” and you will or you probably already have, “you will not be burned . . . For I am the Lord your God . . . your Savior,” notice the words your Savior, I will save you from this. “You are precious and honored in my sight . . . I love you . . . you have nothing to be afraid of. So don’t be, for I am with you.” God is just a prayer away in those unbearable, impossible, tragic situations.
One just happened yesterday. We were waiting for Renee at the airport and her plane was four hours late. What do you do with four children from 7:00 when she is coming in at 11:00? We ride the escalators and the elevators and we go to the coffee shop to get a double espresso. But this one elevator is stuck, and Ariel and Alan said, we want to ride it. So I said, okay, you ride it up and then come back down. I will stand here and wait. They like to go in that little glass elevator, but it was stuck and they forgot to push a button to move it, so it closes and they can’t get out and Ariel freaks. You hear her screaming and spontaneously I panicked. I panicked as a parent, and, if I do that as a human father, how much more when God sees us in our suffering, does he panic? He wants to be there to help us. He is there with the Holy Spirit and he wants to help you. Call upon him. [Let’s pray.]
