“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.
Police say it was a freak accident that killed the woman Wednesday evening in Fairmount Park, one of the biggest parks in the world.
Chief Inspector Scott Small says a 30-foot-long branch fell on the woman from 50 feet above. He says she was killed instantly.
Police say it’s possible the unidentified woman didn’t hear the branch breaking because she was wearing a portable music player, which was still playing when they arrived.
On July 29, a Manhattan computer engineer walking to work through Central Park was hit on the head by a 100-pound rotted tree branch. His mother said over the weekend he was getting better.
18 While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, "Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 19 when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!" – Job 1: 18-19 (NIV)
All of these things spell L.O.S.S.
How do I deal with loss? What do I do when I am facing a significant loss in my life? How do I handle it? As someone who believes in God and wants to follow Jesus, how will He help me get through it?
3 Steps in Dealing With A Major Loss
1.Look for God to replace my pain with a sense of gain.
One of the toughest things about going through a major loss is the way it affects us emotionally.
It can feel like someone kicked you in the stomach. Your world feels like it’s spinning out of control. You can feel helpless like a paper boat drifting on an ocean of sorrow.
The pain is real. But so is God. It’s in these low times of our life that we discover just how real God is.
God specializes in replacing pain with gain. He loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections.
“O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you restored my health…You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy…” – Psalm 30:2, 11 (NLT)
David, who wrote this Psalm, was going through the painful loss of his health. Some of you know that pain. You live with chronic back pain, arthritis, and other issues that plague you and make your life difficult.
David said, “God turned his sorrow into joyful dancing.” David looked to God.
It’s important that we look to God in the losing times of our lives because He wants to replace your pain with a sense of gain.
How can I let God replace my pain with a sense of gain?
•Ask God to erase my painful memories.
Your mind, the brain God gave you, is more powerful than the greatest computer.
Your mind stores information at rates and speeds that far outpace the fastest computers today.
And it’s because we have such incredible minds that we often suffer from memories that cause us pain.
It might be a smell. It might be a sound. It might be something you touch. And up flashes a memory of a time in your past that you’d rather forget about.
If anyone knew about painful memories of loss, it was Joseph in the Old Testament. Joseph knew firsthand the pain of loss. Sold into slavery by his brothers, wrongfully accused of rape, sent to jail unjustly. Finally to be noticed by Pharoah. Loss after loss after loss.
Joseph was 17 when he was sold into slavery. He was 30 when he finally became 2 in command to Pharoah. For 13 years, Joseph experienced loss after agonizing loss. One bad experience after another.
Yet, listen to what he says when his two sons were born.
51 Joseph named his older son Manasseh, for he said, “God has made me forget all my troubles and everyone in my father’s family.” – Genesis 41:51 (NLT)
You say, “Is this really possible?” Well, obviously Joseph could remember what it was like when he was having the losses, because he says he had troubles.
When Joseph says, “God made me forget” he’s talking about how he feels about his past. He’s not saying he actually can’t remember details of what happened. He’s saying, “When I do think about it, it doesn’t feel like it used to. The sting is gone. It feels like I’ve forgotten what it felt like.”
God had taken away the pain of the losses he experienced.
And notice what God gave Joseph in its place.
52 Joseph named his second son Ephraim, for he said, “God has made me fruitful in this land of my grief.” – Genesis 41:52 (NLT)
God had replaced Joseph’s grief with a sense of gain. God had taken away the pain of those early memories and in their place put a satisfaction and appreciation for the blessings of the present.
Joseph looked down at that little baby and all God had given to him and his mind stopped rehearsing the pain of his past.
Now, he looked into the future and saw hope and God’s hand.
This is one of the ways God restores our losses. He erases the sting of painful memories.
Have you ever asked God, I mean, prayed and asked Him to erase painful memories?
Let’ do that right now.
•Ask God to restore my wasted years.
Do you ever look back at periods in your life and wonder if you wasted any of them?
Do you ever waste time? You ever heard someone ask, “What are you doing?” “I’m just killing time” they say.
AMERICANS WASTE MORE THAN 2 HOURS A DAY AT WORK, COSTING COMPANIES $759 BILLION A YEAR, ACCORDING TO SALARY.COM AND AMERICA ONLINE SURVEY
Top Time-Wasting Activities
1. Surfing Internet (personal use) 44.7%
2. Socializing with co-workers 23.4%
3. Conducting personal business 6.8%
4. Spacing out 3.9%
5. Running errands off-premises 3.1%
Let me ask you, “What do you do in your free time?” Do you flitter away hours in a make-believe world, trashy novels, gossip magazines, internet garbage?
“How you spend the time that is your own will greatly determine what you think about. No doubt about it – Satan brings his greatest temptations to people when they have time on their hands. It takes discipline of character and proper goals to handle correctly the extra hours given to an individual in our society.” – Dr. John Maxwell, Think on These Things
But what if you are the kind of person who looks back over your life and sees lots of wasted time, wasted days, wasted years?
What if you haven’t used your time very wisely for the Lord up to this point in your life?
What about you?
25 “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, the consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you.” – Joel 2:25 (NKJV)
God was talking to the Israelites. There had been a period of time where the Israelites were unable to grow their fruits and vegetable gardens, which meant they were unproductive as farmers and people.
But at one point God comes to them and says, “I am going to restore to you those lost years, the lost productivity, the lost income. I’m going to restore that to you.”
How many of you remember the movie “Back to the Future”? Michael J. Fox travels back in time to alter and change the course of events, changing the future and history.
God does something similar. Not that we can go back and undo what has already been done. But God, in a sense, can make up for time we’ve lost or wasted.
David Wilkerson writes...
“In his final days Paul looked back over his life and testified, "I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith. Now a crown of righteousness is awaiting me.
For weeks recently Paul’s testimony had absolutely pierced my soul. Something I couldn’t shake nagged at my heart. In prayer I confessed, "Lord, I don’t think I can say that with Paul! Perhaps I could about the first 15 years of my ministry and the last 10 years.
But there is a gap in those middle years in which I sense the waste of months - even years." That period was not a time of some deep dark sin - but still it was one of drifting, and I was not at my best for Jesus.
In my marriage, too, I look back with some shame because I wasted so many precious hours. I have been happily married to the same woman for almost 38 years now, and we are more in love than when we first married. Yet in recent years I’ve asked Gwen to forgive me for the times in mid-life that I was arrogant and unkind - not at all the gentle, loving man of God I should have been.
I know that, like me, many of you can look back with regret at wasted years that have been eaten away by the worms of hell! I think of a businessman in our church who threw away years by drinking and drug-using. He was an adulterer who left his wife for weeks at a time, a wild man driven by lust and greed. Today he is on fire for God, growing in Christ and trying to make up the time to his wife. Yet he still feels the shame of those years the cankerworm destroyed!
The fact is, the closer you get to the heart of Jesus, the more those wasted years grieve you. The more you fall in love with Christ, the more you cry out to Him within, "Dear Lord, how could I have hurt You so? How could I have been so deceived? I took years that belonged to You and threw them away!”
So many people live with a sense of loss. They live with regret, remorse, grief over what’s been lost.
Yet, God makes to us this incredible promise.
“I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten…”
The New American Standard says, "I will make up to you for the years... eaten."
How in the world can God claim to do this? Normally you and I are limited by time.
But God is not limited by time the way we are. He invented time itself.
For example, at one point in Israel’s history God instituted a rule. He told them that they would plant their fruits and vegetables for 6 years, and then every seventh year they were not to do any work during that entire 7th year. So they work 6 and off 1. Work another 6 and off 1.
And in Leviticus God answers one of their questions.
20 But you might ask, ‘What will we eat during the seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops that year?’ 21 Be assured that I will send my blessing for you in the sixth year, so the land will produce a crop large enough for three years. 22 When you plant your fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating from the large crop of the sixth year. In fact, you will still be eating from that large crop when the new crop is harvested in the ninth year. – Leviticus 25:20-22 (NLT)
God only has to speak and He can make up to you the years you have lost.
Why don’t we stop here and ask God to make up for us the wasted years?
2. In Times of Loss Choose Your Faith Instead of Lose Your Faith.
Let me explain what I mean here.
The Losses that you go through are going to shape you in some way. You cannot go through a significant loss without being changed.
Loss means change. When you lose something things are not the way they were before you lost what you lost. Now something is gone. Something is missing. And things are different now.
The fact is…a major loss can either lift you or lower you.
It can either raise you up to a new level of spiritual faith with God or pull you down to a lower level of faith, or no faith at all.
John Marks was the former producer of the television show 60 Minutes. At the age of 16 he became a born-again believer in Jesus Christ.
John Marks wrote a book called Reasons To Believe that came out in 2008. In this book he chronicles how he lost his faith in Jesus and walked away from the evangelical community of which he had been a part.
What was it that caused him to lose his faith?
In May of 1993, Marks was sent to the former Yugoslavia to relieve a colleague who had been covering the Bosnian Civil War.
Before the man left he told John he needed to check out an underreported story about Muslims being run out of their village in the southern part of Serbia.
John found an interpreter named Jasmina. Together they traveled to a city called Priboj. In the city of Priboj John met an old man whose village had been burned down by Serbian Paramilitary.
The man’s neighbor had been shot dead when he protested against his home being burned.
The man and his wife had only enough time to grab a few possessions and leave. They crossed the Serbian border and ended up in this city of Priboj.
John and his interpreter talked with this man, who told them of his horrific experience. But the one thing keeping this man smiling was the fact that his sons were still alive.
They had worked in a factory and were one day taken away to a concentration camp. This old man and his sons would be reunited when the war was over.
As the old man told John his story, the interpreter, Jasmina, leaned over and whispered into John’s ear, “I happen to know that this man’s sons are dead.”
John Marks writes: “I knew that a day would come, sooner or later, when someone like Jasmina would tell him what she had just told me…I couldn’t breathe a word. I couldn’t be the one to break the news to him that his sons were dead. So I nodded at him and smiled and wished him luck and left. But I was a changed man. From that moment on, it has never been possible for me to believe in any notion of a supreme God that could preside over such a sorrowful madness. I have never been able to believe in a plan that could account for that man’s sufferings.”
Some people experience loss and end up losing their faith.
Their loss becomes a reason why they feel they can no longer pursue God, or believe in His goodness.
A loss can either deepen your faith, or cheapen your faith.
When we go through a significant loss, we can either lose our faith or choose our faith.
John Mark decided to lose his faith and leave it behind.
But there are other options. God wants us to learn lessons from our losses and deepen our faith in Him during these difficult times.
“Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” – Philippians 4:11-13 (NLT)
Paul had learned whether he was facing a time of loss or a time of abundance how to live with faith in God.
Notice this was something Paul had to learn.
• NICOLE SINGS “LESSONS LEARNED”.
3. In Times of Loss Find Hope In Jesus’ Cross.
I often hear people talk about recovering from a loss.
I’m not a fan of that language. I personally don’t believe that people ever really recover from major losses.
It’s like Jesus’ cross. When Jesus was crucified, he didn’t recover. Crucifixion is not something you bounce back from.
When Jesus was crucified, he lost his life. And He did not recover. On the contrary. He perished. He left this world. He lost.
Jesus did not recover from the cross, He was resurrected.
In other words, it took an act of God to restore life back to Jesus.
Jesus did not recover on His own. God had to intervene and restore life back into Jesus.
And You and I are no different. We think we can bounce back and recover from anything.
No, we can’t. We’re just as helpless as Jesus was to pull ourselves out of the situation we’re in.
We need God to come and raise us out.
You don’t recover from your losses, you get restored, by God.
I don’t recover from my losses, I get restored by God.
When I lose a loved one. I’m helpless to bring them back. But hallelujah, it takes an Act of God to resurrect the both of us and reunite us in heaven.
When I go through a divorce, it takes an act of God to restore me to a place where I can laugh and love and have joy again.
The cross where Jesus died was God’s way of restoring us to Himself.
Just like I can’t recover myself from a major loss, I’m just as helpless to save myself. So Jesus came and died on the cross to save me, rescue me, restore me to a place of forgiveness and love with Almighty God.
What I’m saying is that when you are going through a loss, don’t just try to be optimistic, find Hope. Real Hope.
There’s a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism says, “When I go through a loss, I’ll bounce back. A better day is ahead.”
Hope says, “When I go through loss, God will restore me in my loss.”
Optimism says, “Things are going to get better.”
Hope says, “Things are already better because God’s in the house.”
The cross is God restoring us to Himself.
Sin is not something you recover from on your own. Sin is something God has to intervene and forgive.
You don’t bounce back from sin. God restores in you a clean heart.
Jesus’ cross is where we find hope. For in that one moment, that death, His sacrifice, we are healed.
“But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.” – Isaiah 53:5 (NLT)
