Sermon Central
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How God Restores Our Losses
Contributed by Bradley Kellum on Aug 10, 2009 (message contributor)
Summary: People don’t recover from losses, they get restored by God. Everyone faces major losses in their life and then must deal with how to handle the aftermath. Often people talk about recovering from a loss. Losses however are not so much recovered from as
“How God Restores Our Losses”
Sunday, August 9, 2009
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The other day Nicole was taking out Emma’s little crib and we were replacing it with a bed. Ethan was with her when she started to take the crib out of the room. He said, “Mom, you can’t get rid of it. You might need it for another baby.”
Nicole said, “Honey, I don’t think mom and dad are going to be having any more babies.”
Ethan replied, “But mom. Nothing is too hard for God. He’s amazing. He can do anything.”
Today, as we move into this time together I want you to keep that kind of innocent faith and hope uppermost in your minds.
We are talking about a God for which nothing is too hard, or impossible.
Keep this in mind as we talk about HOW GOD RESTORES OUR LOSSES.
Everybody deals with loss in their life. No matter who you are we all lose things in life. I’m not talking about misplacing your car keys or losing your wallet.
I’m talking about the losses life brings that impact us emotionally. Like when someone we love passes away. When we lose a job or get passed over for a promotion. Divorce. Strokes that leave you paralyzed and immobile. Health issues that disable you.
Everybody deals with these kinds of losses in their life. Money won’t make you immune to loss. Good looks won’t make you immune to loss. A high I.Q. won’t make you immune from loss. Nothing makes you immune to loss.
Loss means change, change means pain.
Learning to deal with loss means learning to cope with unwanted changes in our lives.
Now losses come in all shapes and sizes.
There are different kinds of losses we face in life.
LOSSES PEOPLE FACE IN LIFE…
1.FAILURES IN LIFE…such as when I make wrong choices and reap the consequences.
Adam and Eve are a perfect example of this. If anybody in the Bible ever failed, boy was it Adam. God gave Adam the ball, all of history riding on his next moves , and he choked, failed, sinned through his wrong choice.
As a result, Adam lost intimacy with God, lost the privilege of living in the Garden of Eden. Loss the respect of his wife. John Milton summed it up…Paradise Lost.
And Genesis 3:23 says it all “therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out…” – Genesis 3:23 (NKJV)
Sometimes the losses we experience are our own fault, like Adam.
Other times, the losses we experience are the result of…
2.FACTS OF LIFE…such as when I lose my youth and beauty through aging.
Aging is just a fact of life. You can try to slow it down, but you cannot stop it. It’s out of your control. We all age.
ILL. Frog Prince
An 80 year-old woman was walking down the main street in her hometown one evening when she heard a low voice say, "Hey lady."
She looked around to see who was talking but upon seeing nobody there she shrugged it all off and continued walking. Before she got another five feet, she heard the same voice, only a little louder, say, "Hey lady!"
She once again looked around and didn’t see anybody, but when she went to walk again she saw a frog sitting at her feet looking at her.
The frog then opened his mouth and said, "Could you please help me?"
The elderly woman was shocked at first but picked up the little frog and asked him what he needed. The frog proceeded to tell the woman that he was actually a handsome young prince that had been turned into a frog. All the lady had to do was to kiss the frog on the lips and he would turn back into a handsome prince, and would then be eternally grateful to the woman.
Well, the woman thought for a moment and then quietly slipped the frog into her purse. As she was walking away she quietly muttered, "At my age I’ll have more fun with a talking frog."
Death is another example. You can never really cheat death. We will all die one day. No one escapes this fact of life.
“No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, and no one has power in the day of death.” – Ecclesiastes 8:8 (NKJV)
“…each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment.” – Hebrews 9:27 (NLT)
So some losses are just facts of life. Still others are the result of…
3.FORCES OF NATURE… Like when my house is destroyed by a tornado.
PHILADELPHIA (Aug. 6) -- A woman jogging in a Philadelphia park has been killed by a falling tree branch just days after a similar incident in New York’s Central Park left a man comatose.
