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I got a kick out of a story that came from Germany this week. It seems
that three bank robbers were sentenced to prison for their crimes. What
makes this story unusual is that Rudolph is 73 years old, his buddy
Wilfried is 72 and their baby accomplice Lothar is a mere 64.
Rudy, Willy and Lo used automatic weapons and hand
grenades to rob 14 banks of $1.25 million.
Between them they were sentenced to 31 years in
prison and probably the only thing they feel bad about is getting
caught; the only thing they feel discouraged about is whether they’ll
still be able to spend the money when they finally get out of jail.
Maybe they can spend it on long-term nursing care.
But human nature is designed so that we do get
discouraged and depressed when things go sour in our lives, especially
in terms of our health. It was 1939 when Lou Gehrig was forced to retire
from baseball because of the disease that bears his name. If you ever
saw the great old movie “Pride of the Yankees” with Gary Cooper you
remember Lou Gehrig’s speech over the PA system at Yankee Stadium:
“Today I feel like the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
That, of course, is a wonderful attitude to have in
the face of life’s turmoil. The problem, however, is that such an
attitude is almost impossible to maintain all the time. All of us humans
are emotional creatures who are inclined to get very, very high when
things are going well, and very, very low when they’re not—especially
when our health, or the health of someone close to us, is threatened.
How many people here have ever felt discouraged in their life? Of
course, we all have.
But I think discouragement hits Christians especially
hard, because we tend to think of our faith as some sort of insurance
policy that’s going to prevent storms in our life. When the storms do
crash over our head, even people of deepest faith can get hit with the
“Why me, Lord,” mentality. And we feel guilty about it. We say, “I guess
my faith isn’t deep enough. I’m sorry I’ve let you down, Lord.” I can
assure you that in the last 10 days or so since I was diagnosed with a
life-threatening illness I’ve been riding this roller coaster of
emotions, times when I would start to cry spontaneously, times when I
would holler “Hey God, wasn’t the polio enough?”
Keith McIlwain, the Methodist pastor in town, has so
much insight, and he was reminding me yesterday that in scripture when
someone is called “blessed” it usually means they have one huge
challenge staring them in the face.
For example, when the angel appeared to Mary the
mother of Jesus and told this 13-year-old girl “Blessed are you among
women,” the angel really said, “surprise, you’re pregnant and you have
no husband.” In that society, that meant, “You’re blessed, and your life
is over.” As Christians we are told to accept our problems as blessings,
but I don’t mind telling you, in the last 10 days I have told God,
vociferously, “Why don’t you go bless somebody else for a change?”
Feelings like these, while perfectly natural, have
nothing to do with God’s promises. We have never been promised a
storm-free life. In fact, just the opposite. “In this world, you will
have trials,” Jesus told us. What matters is how you handle them. And
that means grabbing hold of the rest of what Jesus said, “But rejoice,
for I have overcome the world.”
Now after the news I hit you with last week, I’ve
been wondering how to follow up in a meaningful way. One thing I’ve
tried to avoid in the four years I’ve been coming here is to avoid any
sense of being some wonderful role model of holiness and tranquility.
The plain fact is that I’m just like you, struggling sometimes to make
sense out of life, trying to walk with God but falling down a lot and
getting back up and falling down again. I get depressed and weary, and
in the past week I’ve felt discouraged and out of sorts, big time.
Feeling discouraged is nothing to be shamed of; as I said, we’re all
subject to bouts of discouragement. It’s not sinful, but it does need to
be dealt with in the context of God’s love.
In the movie “Dances With Wolves,” when it comes time
for Kevin Costner to leave the Sioux Indians that have become his
friends, the medicine man says to him, “We have journeyed far together.”
That’s how I feel about all of you, my friends. We have traveled far,
but we still have a ways to go. Robin asked me what this week’s sermon
was about, and when I told her she said, “You don’t want to depress
them.” But as we journey together it’s important to share what’s in my
mind and heart. I do preach to myself often, and I know that all of you
also get discouraged from time to time. It’s just the way life is. So as
I preach to myself about dealing with discouragement, I want to share
some thoughts I’ve had about getting out of the pit and moving forward
once more.
One of the things we know about God is that he does
not act randomly. Troubles that come into our lives do not come in
because God threw a dart at the board and said “Let’s see what mischief
I can cause in John’s life today.” The trials we encounter are not a
matter of being tested, so God can see how much we can take before we
snap.
God’s actions all fit into his master plan for the
world’s salvation, and ours. And one other thing we know about God is
that he is not content that we should be 50 percent of his man or woman
that he created us to be, or even 90 percent. God sees so much more in
us than we have ever seen in ourselves, and he insists on bringing the
best in us to the surface. I remind you of the story of Michaelangelo
sculpting the figure of an angel and being bothered with questions about
how the artistic work happened. He replied with irritation, “I simply
cut away anything that doesn’t look like an angel.” The trials we face,
the hammer blows that chip away our imperfections, are actually God’s
gift that lets us approach the perfection he designed for us from the
dawn of creation.
And that brings me to the first of several gifts that
God provides specifically for stormy weather, and that is endurance
training. Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us “We rejoice in our
sufferings,” not because pain feels good, but because suffering leads to
perseverance, and perseverance to character and character to hope. If we
suffer it is because God is working through us to prepare us, and maybe
preparing others, for a future and a purpose we don’t understand.
Pilots in the military are trained in survival
techniques for a future they don’t know, but they will be prepared to
endure whatever comes. So it is with us. Because our trials have
developed our character, we have hope that we can endure whatever storm
arises in our life. That’s our gift from God.
A teacher was asked to visit children in a large city
hospital, and to pay special attention to one boy. A note from his
school said “We’re working on nouns and adverbs in his class now, and we
don’t want him to fall behind.”
So the teacher went looking for the boy’s bed, and
was shocked to find him finally in the burn unit. No one had prepared
her to find a young boy badly burned and in great pain. But she didn’t
think she could just turn and walk out, so she managed to stammer, “I’ve
come from your school to help you with your nouns and adverbs.” She
stumbled through what she considered a poor lesson, and a useless one at
that.
The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked the
teacher, “What did you do with that boy?” In reply she started to
apologize, but the teacher stopped her. “You don’t understand. We’ve
been very worried about him. But ever since you were here yesterday, his
whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, he’s responding to
treatment. It’s as if he decided to live.”
The boy later explained that he had completely given
up hope until he saw the teacher, but that all changed when he came to a
simple realization. “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and
adverbs with a boy who was dying, would they?”
God asks us to persevere, to endure so that he can
bring us to hope.
A second thing that God gives us is night vision. One
of the incredible advances in technology for the military has been night
vision goggles that let the battlefield soldier see the enemy in
conditions that appear to be total darkness to the naked eye. As I
understand it, these goggles work by concentrating the available light
in a way that turns shadows into recognizable shapes. In a night storm,
it can be hard to see your hand in front of your face, but God has a way
of showing us the figure of Christ in the prow of our boat, reminding us
that he’s not going to let us sink and drown.
Paul wrote in II Corinthians, “We are hard pressed on
every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted,
but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” God concentrates his
light in the midst of the night storm, and lets us see Christ who
commands the storm, “Peace, be still.”
Then there is a third thing that God gives us for
stormy weather, and that is voice lessons. Have you ever noticed now
noisy it is in a storm? Apart from the thunder and the wind howling and
the rain beating down and maybe people around you hollering, there is
the bass drum beating. The bass drum? I mean the sound of your own heart
beating so loud it feels like it will pound right out of your chest. In
stormy weather peace whispers but pain screams. But God helps us to hear
the voice of the good shepherd leading us forward. That’s what the
Gospel of John tells us: “After he has gathered his own flock, he walks
ahead of them, and they follow him because they recognize his voice.”
What else does God give us? He gives us a sense of
history. Break that word down with me. God gives us a sense of his
story. His incredible actions of salvation. I heard an incredible
sentence this week, one that really hit home with me. That sentence was,
“Jesus loves you so much that if you were the only person in the world
who needed saved, he still would have come to earth to die for you.”
All of us, myself most of all, can testify to the
good things God has given us. Just being able to come and share the word
of God with you has been a tremendous blessing in my life, in every
sense. I have grown so much. God has provided for us abundantly, and I’m
not talking about material goods. He has sent us that encouraging word,
a caring friend, timely support, whatever we have needed at the time to
endure, to get through the immediate trouble and see the bigger picture.
What God has done for us in the past, he can and will do in the future.
He is the same God who is not willing to lose even one of his sheep.
Finally, what does God give us in the storm? He helps
us turn negatives into positives. Psychologist Dr. Elinore Kinarthy says
the average person has over 200 negative thoughts every day. We’re
talking about worry, jealousy, insecurity, craving for forbidden items.
This is the average person. A depressed person might have 600 or more.
Obviously we can’t wipe out all the negatives, but we can certainly
reduce them in our minds, and one of the best ways to turn a negative
into a positive is through prayer. Instead of saying, “Lord knows my
finances are a mess,” you might say, “Lord, you know my finances are a
mess. Please help me see what I can do to straighten them out.” Or
“Lord, you know I’m battling against depression. Please send someone
into my life who can help me get through it.”
Another way that prayer turns negatives into
positives is by simply allowing the prayers of others to wash over you
like a cleansing flood. I have had an incredible amount of love and
support expressed in the past two weeks, from people here, in
Greensburg, all over. It’s been great therapy to be reminded of the love
of others, so great that when I get into one of these low, low periods
of discouragement I literally can feel the prayers of others lifting me
up, putting me back on my feet. Not so many years ago I’m not sure I
would have been comfortable to be the object of so much prayer. I
probably would have wanted privacy as I battled my fears and doubts.
Now I’m like, “Yeah, baby, keep the love and prayers
coming,” I’m aware, and getting more aware each day, of the joy to be
found in just letting go and floating on the uplifting pool of the
concern and caring of others. Please keep praying for me, and keep
praying for one another. We need it so much.
And one more thing to say about prayer: When we pray
we automatically release control of our lives and our fates into the
hands of Almighty God, and that is a powerful liberation from our fears.
Robin knows how difficult it was to sit in the exam room with the
cardiologist and hear him say, “What you have is amyloidosis and there’s
no treatment for it.” My initial reaction was simply to beg God, “Please
don’t let me totally break down here.” And he didn’t fail me. But then
my mind started to shift to “Well, the doctor has no answers, so the
only answer lies with God.”
My dear brothers and sisters, Marge Galley and others
have reminded me that God is the final answer for all our questions. He
is our refuge and strength, a present help in time of storms and
trouble. Maybe some of you are going through storms of your own today,
or maybe you’re just getting out from under some clouds. God is still in
the miracle business, and perhaps his will is that I should live for
years or even make a complete recovery. But today I ask you to join me
as we take God’s hand and allow him to walk us through the shadow of the
valley of death, through our periods of doubt and depression and
discouragement to the still waters where we can drink. And we will all
dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
To close this morning I’d like to read a beautiful
prayer written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It appears as number 103 of the
green hymnal, if you’d like to follow along:
“Oh God, early in the morning I cry unto thee. Help
me to pray, And to think only of thee. I cannot pray alone. In me there
is darkness. But with Thee there is light.. I am lonely, but thou
leavest me not. I am feeble in heart, but thou leavest me not. I am
restless, but with thee there is peace. In me there is bitterness, but
with thee there is patience. Thy ways are past understanding, but thou
knowest the way for me.
O heavenly Father, I praise and thank thee for the
peace of the night. I praise and thank thee for this new day. I praise
and thank thee for all thy goodness and faithfulness throughout my life.
Thou hast granted me many blessings. Now let me accept tribulation from
thy hand. Thou wilt not lay on me more than I can bear. Thou makest all
things work together for good for thy children.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in a German
concentration camp in April 1945, only weeks before the end of World War
II. He had led the Christian resistance to Nazi Germany from inside the
prison camps for two years, and outside for years before that.
Throughout the storm he lived and died with the courage that comes only
through faith in Jesus Christ.
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