SERENITY PRAYER #9: If I Surrender to His will…

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, SermonLeave a comment

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If I Surrender to His Will

2 Timothy 3:16-17; Daniel 3:16-18 Philippians 4:11-13; Matthew 26:39-44; John 5:19

As we get close to the end of the Serenity Prayer, last week and this week are really where the rubber hits the road for me. I can rightly ask God for all kinds of help with the serenity, courage, and wisdom I need to live in the present, enjoy the moment, and accept the hardships that come with life. But if I don’t trust Him, as we talked about last week, my ability to receive those gifts and put them into practice is going to be very limited. And if that trust in God doesn’t lead to my surrender to His will, as we will talk about this week, then I am risking a life of idolatry. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s pray together and then find out.

            This phrase – if I surrender to His will – has two parts. We’re going to start with what I consider the easier one first and then tackle the harder one. If I am going to surrender to God’s will, then obviously I have to know what His will is. But it won’t take long to realize that there are lots of different opinions on what God’s will is, and on what He must want. Some of those contradict each other, so they can’t all be right. If I want to know God’s will, how do I do that? How do I sort through the competing claims to understand what God wants in my life?

            Let’s start with the foundation – if you want to know God’s will, begin by reading the Bible. And I would say, the whole thing. Learn the whole story, from creation to re-creation. And continue to read it again and again and again. God has revealed so much about His character, His desires, and yes, His will for us in the inspired Scripture.

 “16All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

God has revealed Himself to us thoroughly in His Word, particularly when we read it as believers who are united with the Word who was made flesh and filled with the Spirit of God. And while the Bible does not typically contain answers about which job we should take, or which car to buy, or whether to choose this restaurant or that one for dinner (or to stay home instead), God does use His Word to lay out the parameters for His will as we make daily decisions.

            I like the analogy of a football game (for those of you who are not football fans, I do apologize, but the analogy really works). In the Bible, God has laid out the dimensions of the field, defined what is out of bounds, and set a general framework of rules for the game. But that does not tell us who should play which position, what style of offense and defense we should play, or whether or not to go for it on fourth and two. God’s specific will for us has to be worked out in the context of our lives – think of Him as the head coach in this analogy – but His specific will is going to be revealed somewhere within the background of the playing field He has already set in place. We play the game of life as He designed it to be played.

            You may feel like I’m spending a lot of time on something that should be obvious, but I can tell you that in over 20 years as a pastor, I’ve found that sometimes people are certain God is wanting something that He has already told us He does not want. I’ll give an old example from my days on the mission field. The pastor of the most dynamic, vibrant church in town came before the congregation and announced that God had told him to divorce his wife because she was not sufficiently supportive of his ministry. Not because she had broken their marriage vows. Not because she had abandoned him, or was abusing him, or was caught in addiction and refusing to get help. But because she had a different picture of church ministry than he did. I can tell you that while I’ve had to wrestle with some difficult and convoluted marriage dilemmas over the years, there is nothing in the Word of God anywhere that allows a Christian man to divorce his wife in order to further his ministry. It’s just not there. And while that is a dramatic and obvious example, I could list many others over the years of people who believed God was leading them to do something that He clearly was not. We need to know well the revelation of God in Scripture so that we can identify the times when our ideas about what God might want come into conflict with what He says there. “Did God really say…?” is the oldest trick in the book – and if we know the Book, we have a better chance to recognize that.

            The next thing I believe we need in discerning the will of God is community. Even when I know what God says in His Word, I find it easier than I’d like it to be to justify, manipulate, or otherwise finagle the words of Scripture to find a verse that I can pull out in support of what I want. That’s where I need God to build a healthy church family of people around me who know me and love me well enough to help me discern what it is that God wants. We talked about this some when we talked about wisdom in week four, but I don’t think we can say it enough. God has always put His people into communities, large and small, so that we can listen, pray, talk, and discern the will of God together. We are designed to live the Christian life in community – it is inherently a team sport, not an individual one. And often the ideas that I have in my head about what it is that God wants sound much different when I say them out loud to a trusted brother or sister. I can fool myself into thinking that God wants what I wish He wanted; when I bring other people into the picture, they can often see much more clearly. In fact, if I could change one thing about the Serenity Prayer, I would change it from an individual prayer to a corporate one. And since this is just a prayer that someone wrote, not Scripture, I actually can do that, and in fact, when I pray at the close of these last few lessons, I will pray the prayer communally – “we” instead of “I.”

            Third, look at what God is doing in your life. What doors is He opening? Which ones has He shut? What gifts and resources has He given you? And as Henry Blackaby describes in Experiencing God, look back over your shoulder. How has God used you in the past? What are the marker stones He has laid down in your history? How do the circumstances of your life inform what God may be asking you to do (or to stop doing)?

            And finally, pray. I don’t mean wait until the end to pray – pray throughout this process. Pray as you read the Word of God, and ask God to show you what He wants you to see. Pray as you talk about your decision with brothers or sisters, and ask God to highlight things that are said that can point you in the right direction. Pray as you look at your circumstances, and ask God to bring things to mind that can be directional markers. And pray as you process all those moving pieces of community, history, and what is in your own heart – processing them against the backdrop of God’s eternally accurate and valid Word.

            At the end of all that, as we said in the discussion on wisdom, you may still not have certainty, but your odds of honoring God with your decisions have gone up tremendously. And you have come to know Him better as you have spent time seeking His will. Now comes the hard part: surrendering to that will.

            Surrender is not a word that immediately conjures up lots of positive associations in our mind. It’s connected to things like this: give up, lose, defeat. We place a high value in our culture on winning, hanging in there, succeeding. So why do we have this word in the middle of our spiritual lives that indicates that we are not enough? That we have to quit? Well, it’s a matter of what we are quitting. In order to surrender to God’s will, what we have to give up is our own will – our right to decide for ourselves what we will do and how we will do it. In C.S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce, Lewis says this: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” God has given us free will. We have the ability to make choices. But He has given us that ability so that we can, in turn, offer it back to Him. We can decline the option to make our own decisions and, instead, surrender that option back to the One who gave it to us. Let’s look at the three examples of this from Scripture.

            Our first example comes from the Old Testament book of Daniel. It’s a familiar story. In Daniel chapter 3, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden image and decrees that at its dedication, everyone in attendance must bow down and worship the golden image. Three of the officials in attendance were captives from Judah: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. We know them better by the names the Babylonian officials gave them: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. When everyone else bowed down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, those three refused. They were brought before the king and given a chance to “repent” of their defiance – they got another chance to bow. Now, in this case, discerning the will of God was not particularly challenging. It was pretty obvious to godly Jews that worshipping other gods was a significant part of what had gotten them exiled in the first place. These three men knew what God’s will was. But their response of surrender is impressive, and an excellent model for us to imitate. Here is their reply: “

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. 18 But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-18, NLT) 

This is what it means to trust that God will make all things right if we surrender to His will. It includes the acknowledgement that God’s will may not be what we want. The three men wanted to live. They were confident that God had the ability to preserve their lives, and they hoped that He would. But even if He did not, that changed nothing about their obedience, their surrender to His will. If obedience to God meant death, then they would take it and trust that His will for them was still good. After his attempt to kill them by burning them to death in a great furnace, even King Nebuchadnezzar grasps what they are doing and why (at least for a little while). In Daniel 3:28, he says, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.” The three young men gave up their ability to direct and protect their own lives because they trusted that whatever God did, it would be better than choosing their own will over His.

            These three men faced a literal, concrete idol. But idolatry comes in many forms. At its heart, idolatry is placing anything other than the One True God at the center of our lives, our wills, our decision-making. Most of us are not going to bow down to a golden image any time soon – but what are the powers and principalities that may sneak onto the throne of our lives? Where do we bow to our comfort? Our security? Our longing for life to follow the plans we have made? Or even our desire to exercise the right we have to make decisions for ourselves? That, too, can be an idol, and place us at the center of our own lives. We are not the center, and we are not designed to be the center. God, and only God, can occupy the throne – anything else is idolatry.

            Now, surrendering to God’s will is not always a matter of life or death, like it was for the three men in Daniel (at least not immediately). Sometimes, it is simply about accepting the direction God has for our lives, even if it makes our lives more difficult. You’ve noticed by now how interconnected the lines of this prayer are. Surrendering to God’s will may mean accepting the hardships He allows as a pathway to peace. Paul talks about this type of surrender in Philippians 4:11-13, Paul says,

 “11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”

In this passage, Paul is in the middle of thanking the Philippians for the support they’ve recently sent him. He’s glad to get money, clothes, food, or supplies that will make his stay in prison more bearable for him. At the same time, he is not insisting that he must have these things in order to be okay. If God’s will allows Paul to be in prison, he will accept it. If God’s will sets him free, he will accept it. Paul trusts God enough to give up his freedom, his position, his status, and even the meeting of his daily need for food, if God’s will allows him to be in those situations. He has thoroughly let go, quit, resigned, and surrendered his will to the will of his Master, Jesus.

            And it is Jesus who most clearly illustrates for us what it looks like to surrender His will to the will of His Father. We see it clearly in the garden. Three times, Jesus asks His Father to take away the cup of betrayal and execution if it is possible. And each time, after He expresses the passionate desire of His heart, He ends His prayer by choosing to surrender His will to the will of His Father. (Matthew 26:39-44) But this act of surrender on the eve of His death was nothing new. In fact, Jesus had lived His entire life in surrender to the Father. As early as 12 years old, He is saying to His parents (in response to their frantic search for Him) that His priority is to be about His Father’s business. Even though it creates tension with the Jewish expectations of a twelve-year-old boy, Jesus was already laying down control of His life and giving it to His Father. This continued throughout His ministry. John’s gospel highlights this with multiple mentions of the way Jesus paid attention to the timing and leading of His Father. Nothing happens in the gospel until the time has come. And John makes it clear that the time does not come when others want it to, or even when Jesus Himself wants it to, but when the Father knows it is the right time. He highlights this in Jesus’ discourse with the Jewish leaders in John 5. When they challenge Jesus’ actions of healing on the Sabbath,

 “19 Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.’” (John 5:19)

How total is this surrender! Everything Jesus does, He does by looking to the Father and taking direction from Him. He says it again in verse 30:

 30By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and My judgment is just, for I seek not to please Myself but Him who sent Me.” (John 5:30)

Jesus’ life is not lived for His own benefit or at His own direction; it is lived at the direction of the Father and to please Him. And His language echoes what He will say to His disciples in John 15:5,

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.”

Our lives will not bear fruit if we live them out of our own will, but when we live them in union with Jesus, when we surrender to the Father’s will as He did, then incredible things can happen! And also, lots and lots of mundane, boring things that very few will see or value, but that surrender brings glory to God just as much as the dramatic gestures. In fact, don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s only important to surrender to God in the big moments. Our decisions in those big moments are shaped by the quiet, day-to-day decisions we have made to give up the right to live life the way we want in order to live it as God has directed us to live.

            As we close, please remember that this is all a prayer. I am not encouraging any of us to try to work harder to surrender or force ourselves to give up. That is largely fruitless, at least it has been in my life. Instead, I am asking us to pray that God will do this for us. If I am going to surrender to His will, it will be because His Holy Spirit is at work in me empowering me to surrender. That’s an odd phrase – getting the power to give up power – and I believe it is absolutely vital to living the life that God has for us in Christ Jesus. It’s time for us to raise the white flag, admit that we have failed to run our own lives well, and we will fail again, unless God takes our lives and our wills into His hands and we surrender them to Him – day by day, hour by hour, decision by decision. And when we do that, we can trust Him to bring about what is Good.

With that said, let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. I hope you’ll join with me as we pray. As I mentioned earlier, I have changed the wording to make it a communal prayer.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if we surrender to His will – that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

May God give each of us the gift of surrender this week. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

SERENITY PRAYER #8: TRUSTING THAT JESUS WILL MAKE ALL THINGS RIGHT

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Trusting is not really the same thing as just holding a correct idea in your head. It involves surrender, a “leaning against.” Trust results in actions. When we trust the Lord, we give up our own control and allow him to truly be God.    

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 8

James 2:14-26. Proverbs 3:5-6

When we closed last week, I mentioned that, at least for me, this week’s phrase is in many ways the linchpin of the Serenity Prayer. Of course, the whole thing goes together – all these things we are asking God to give us are connected – but at least in my experience, trust is the key to all the other requests in this prayer. And in fact, I think trust is central to the Christian life. As we begin this week’s time together, let’s pray.

            [PRAYER]

            Let me start by putting trust together with a couple other words that may be more “churchy”: belief and faith. I think many of us are very used to considering faith as core to our relationship with God. We believe in salvation by faith alone, apart from works. We confess our belief that Jesus is Lord and Savior, that He died for our sins and has been raised from death to life. But I am glad the Serenity Prayer uses the word trust instead, because sometimes using a slightly different word can help us capture the depth of words that we are so familiar with that they may have lost some of their meaning.

            When it comes to the words faith or belief, I think that we have unintentionally lost some of the Biblical understanding of those words. Too often, in our churches, faith has become nothing more than a mental nod in the direction of an idea. And belief has become about having a good, solid list of correct doctrine in our heads. Now, I believe in good, solid, correct doctrine. I think it’s important for our spiritual health and living kingdom life in Christ. But when we limit faith and belief to things that are only happening in our heads (or our hearts), we have stepped away from a Biblical understanding of faith. Biblical faith is about where we put our trust. What are we relying on for our well-being?

            You’re probably familiar with the old illustration of the tightrope walker who is crossing back and forth between two skyscrapers with a variety of props – a ball, a wheelbarrow, a load of bricks. After crossing back and forth several times and demonstrating his skill, he asks the crowd, “How many of you believe that I can walk across this tightrope carrying a person on my back?” Having seen his skill, the crowd responds wholeheartedly that they know he can do it. Then the acrobat asks for a volunteer to be that person, and the crowd goes silent. I fear that too often, this reflects my own approach to faith. I am quick to assent that God can do the things that need to be done in life – but how quick am I to show that trust by actually putting myself in His hands without a safety net of some kind – just in case?

            When we ask God to give us this trust – and remember, this whole prayer begins with “God, grant.” We are not trying to make ourselves trust, we aren’t trying to generate our own courage to get out on the rope. We are asking God to give us the ability to respond to Him with trust. This is not about whether or not we can put the correct answers on the doctrinal questionnaire. This is about whether or not we can be willing to receive from God the ability to let go of control and allow Him, not us, to determine what will happen next in our lives and in the lives of those we care about.

            And to be clear, this part of the prayer is not about asking us to trust God for our salvation. I mean, yes, it would include that, but this is a prayer (at least as I understand it) for believers. For people who have already trusted God to deliver us from our sin. This prayer is more about our sanctification, about the ongoing work of God’s Spirit in us to display His Glory as He calls out the identity of son or daughter that He has given us in Christ Jesus. And trust or faith or belief is just as big a part of our sanctification as it is our salvation. It is God who has brought us into His kingdom, and it is God who is doing the primary work of making us holy. We are called to trust Him and surrender to that process. (And next week, we will talk more about what surrender looks like.)

            Having laid all that groundwork, I’d like us to take a look at some familiar passages about trust/faith/belief in Scripture. We will go back to James for the first passage. Let’s read James 2:14-26.

“14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

            What is James saying here? Is he telling us that there are things we have to do to have salvation? Absolutely not. But I believe he is confronting the same problem that the tightrope walker faced. It’s easy to say we believe something. But the kind of faith relationship God calls us into is one that will inevitably result in action. James is defining what real faith, Godly faith is. He starts off with the illustration of a person in need. If we say all the right things about that person, but actually give him nothing, what good has it done? He is still hungry and naked. And in the same way, if our faith produces no action, then it is just a set of empty words. Our relationship with God is not about saying a magical set of phrases that give us a ticket into heaven when we die. It is about reorienting our lives so that God is in charge of them. If we trust Jesus, our lives should change! If they don’t change, that raises the question (I’m not saying it answers it automatically, but it should at least raise the question) – is my faith alive? Is it producing God-centered obedience in my life? If not, James has no use for empty words. He’s pretty clear – the demons know there is only one God. The gospels make clear that the demons recognized that Jesus was the Son of God. But that “statement of faith” is useless for the demons, because it results in more rebellion rather than transformation.

            We often tend to separate thoughts and feelings and actions into distinct categories. The Bible does not use some important terms in that way. Think about love for a minute. Biblically, love is less about what we feel and more about what we do. Think about 1 Corinthians 13, which is full of observable actions that show love. James is saying that faith is like that too. There is no such thing as a true living faith disconnected from actions. Some of our reformation and counter-reformation debates have put a filter in front of this passage that was not there for James’s Jewish Christian readers. It was obvious to them that living faith is always connected to action. And James brings up two examples from Jewish history.

            The first is Abraham, the father of the faithful. Now, I want to be clear here – Abraham was brought into relationship with God by God’s actions, and Abraham’s (or before his name change, Abram’s) decision to trust God. But everyone connected that decision to concrete actions in Abraham’s life: circumcision, moving across the world, sacrifice – even willingness to offer up Isaac! Those actions not only demonstrate the faith that Abraham had, they are themselves part of it. Faith is interwoven with the actions that he took because of his trust in the God who was speaking to him. The same thing is true for Rahab. Her righteousness – her deliverance – is built on trust. She trusted that Israel’s God was more powerful than the gods of Jericho. She trusted that the spies would keep their word. And she took action. I’m not even sure how I feel about some of the actions she took. (Does God need us to lie to protect His people?) But she took them because she trusted this God of Israel enough to take action, and in taking those actions, her faith came to life, and she was delivered (she was saved).

            James uses another line at the end that we may read differently. We make a lot of distinctions between body, mind, soul, spirit. And while this is a topic for another time, many of those distinctions come less from the Biblical revelation of human nature and more from Greek philosophy filtered through the Enlightenment. So, when James says the body without the spirit is dead, he is saying a person is intended to live with those in unity, not commenting on separable parts. The same thing is true of faith as an idea and faith as an action. They are two parts of the whole. When we trust God to make all things right, that includes taking actions that are shaped by that trust.

This next Scripture is one that I have held closely for over 40 years. I am not claiming that I have lived it out for forty years, but that I have seen how incredibly important it is for me. Proverbs 3:5-6,

 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”

Let’s unpack this for a few minutes. Trust – believe in God – wholeheartedly. But not just with your heart. It affects your mind as well (and again, these are less discrete parts and more ways of talking about different aspects of a whole human being). Instead of leaning on my understanding, what am I to lean on? If I trust God, I am leaning on His understanding. What has He said about the way to handle the situation in front of me?

I’m a smart guy – and that has been one of my biggest problems. Because I have (or think I have) a lot of good ideas about what the solution to a problem should be, it is easy for me to think that I am the one who needs to bring the solution to the problem. But I’m not the one who makes things right. God is. Think about leaning, because it’s a good word to help us understand trust. If I lean on something, I am literally putting my weight on it. If it is unreliable (untrustworthy), I will fall over. And this proverb is telling us what – or Who – is trustworthy. And it isn’t me. It’s God.

            The proverb also tells me that this applies to all my ways. And again, acknowledging God is not just waving in His direction with a prayer. It is actively living in the light of His sovereignty and Lordship. I am confessing, not just with my brain or my mouth, but with my actions, that I am under His command as part of His kingdom. Not just when it comes to church. But in all my ways. How I work. How I play. How I rest. How I engage in relationships, from the most important people in my family to the casual encounters at the gas station. What do I do with my finances? My dreams? My sexuality? My hobbies?  I am turning all these over to God because I trust Him to direct me where He wants me to go – which may not be where I want to go.

            And that leads to one of the great difficulties we have – or at least I have – with trust. Some of the things that God makes right, He makes right in ways that I don’t approve of, and on timetables that I think aren’t good, and using people that I would not choose. But you see, I am not leaning on my own understanding of what is right – I am trusting God to define what is right. This was really clear to me in a Bible study with some close friends many years ago. We were reading through the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Have you read that recently? God tells Israel to do some things that I would call horrible. But my friend Matt made a really critical point that has helped me ever since. It all depends on how we start. If I start with the idea that I know what is good, and then evaluate God based on how He measures up to that definition, I will find myself in trouble. (I will be leaning, putting my weight on my own understanding.) If I start with the belief that God is good, and that I need to let Him define what goodness means, then I am trusting Him.

            As we move toward wrapping up this week, I want to share one more thing that has been helpful for me in working with God to grow trust in my life. And this also goes back to how we define trust/faith/belief. Trust is not just an idea that has no practical impact. And trust is also not defined by the way I feel about the actions God is asking me to take. This may be really simple for you, but it was groundbreaking and eye-opening for me. Early in my recovery journey, I told a sponsor that I just didn’t feel like I could do something he was asking. (It was something simple, like call him every day no matter what was going on.) His answer was, “You don’t have to feel like doing it. You just have to do it.” And I have come to believe that God wants the same thing from me. I can get trapped in my feelings of fear, or guilt, or some other emotion, and believe that because I don’t have a feeling of trust, that I can’t trust. But that’s not true. I can’t think of many places in Scripture where God commands us to feel a certain way. And I don’t think He ever tells us we must like one of His commands before we act on it. He does tell us to trust Him enough to do what He says, and leave the results up to Him.

            And that’s another hard part of this line. We’ll talk about this more next week, with the idea of surrender, but trusting God inherently means letting Him be in charge of what happens next, and that isn’t always pleasant. It never has been. Spending one hundred years building a boat probably wasn’t pleasant. Abraham’s journey to the altar with Isaac wasn’t pleasant. Living in slavery in Egypt for generations wasn’t pleasant. The exile wasn’t pleasant. And certainly, the cross wasn’t pleasant for Jesus, nor were the persecutions that came for His followers. Trusting that God will make all things right sometimes means that an angel sets Peter free from prison; sometimes it means that Herod is allowed to execute James the brother of John.

Trusting that God will make all things right does not mean that all things will go as I’d like them to go – that all my prayers for healing will be answered when I pray them, that God will open or shut the doors that I want Him to open or shut in my life or in the lives of people I love. I talked last week about the insurance situation that was causing major pain for a family at our church. God has not, in my view, made that right – at least, not yet. If anything, things have gotten worse. But I give up my right to decide what is better or worse in circumstances and trust God. After all, if He only did things that I liked or that made sense to me, what need would I have to trust Him? I don’t have to trust people much if they are going to do what I want them to do anyway. But trusting God is a challenge. That’s why we need to ask Him for the gift of trusting Him. That’s why we need to pray this prayer – or at least, I do.

With that said, let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. I hope you’ll join with me as we pray.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

This week may God deepen the trust you have in Him and empower you to take the actions that display that trust, even when it looks foolish or weak or doesn’t make sense. Amen.

SERENITY PRAYER #7: TAKING THIS SINFUL WORLD AS IT IS

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Jesus has better things to do than try to directly fix all the places and patterns of sin in the world. He is, instead, focused on establishing a people who will be different, who will respond differently. Trying to make the world live differently is not a healthy response to its sinfulness. Instead, Jesus lives differently Himself, and He calls us to do the same.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 7

Taking, as Jesus Did, this Sinful World as It Is, Not as I Would Have It to Be

John 17:9-16; John 19:10-11; Matthew 22:16-21; 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

            I don’t know if you’ve noticed it this week or not, but the world is a wreck. We are surrounded by news around the world about wars, revolutions, economic collapse, famines, droughts, floods, earthquakes, disease. And sometimes things nearer to home aren’t any better. We experience painful losses, misunderstanding, betrayals, and disappointments on a somewhat regular basis. It is not hard to sing with Andrew Peterson that the world is broken, that the shadows deepen, and that all creation is groaning. But that same song (Is He Worthy?) also calls us to recognize that there is something else going on, and because of that, to move beyond despair into hope. Jesus did that. And this week, as we continue our journey through the Serenity Prayer, we will focus on the line, “Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.” Let’s pray as we begin.

            Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but it seems to me that if we want to take this sinful world as Jesus did, we should probably look at how Jesus (and His earliest followers) responded to the world. The brokenness of the world is nothing new. In fact, the description I gave as we began is a loose paraphrase of what Jesus says in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 as He prepares His followers for what is coming. And, in truth, that description has applied to much of the world for much of the time. Not all of it at once, of course, but some part of it almost anywhere at almost any time. And Jesus was describing the brokenness largely in physical terms. What about the brokenness of sin: murder, rape, theft, racism, abortion, sexual sin in all its diverse forms, deceit, treachery, greed? We encounter at least some of these almost daily, and others at all-too-frequent intervals. So did Jesus. The world of His day was one where the Jewish people lived in a relatively insignificant province of the Roman Empire, which was not a good place to live unless you were part of the handful of wealthy and powerful ruling families, or at least connected to them. So how did Jesus deal with the brokenness and sin of the world around Him?

            Let’s look at two stories where Jesus encounters the sinful world and see how He deals with it.

            We will start with the most direct encounter between Jesus and a representative of the sinful world He lived in – His trial before Pontius Pilate. Jesus has already stood trial in front of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Leadership Council), and now He is in front of the person who wields the power of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was known for many things – most of all, the willingness to exercise power in whatever form was necessary to get the job done. Pilate was no exception to that rule. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, Pilate eventually lost his governorship after slaughtering a group of Samaritan archeologists. Josephus and another first-century Jewish historian, Philo, also record separate incidents where many Jews rioted over Pilate’s decisions regarding images of Caesar, shields with inscriptions of Caesar’s divinity, and the use of the temple treasury to fund an aqueduct. This was not a good and godly ruler. We know his decision about the execution of Jesus was based on political expediency, not justice. He couldn’t afford another riot and the political fallout from it. So, when Jesus, the Son of God, is face-to-face with this unjust, callous manifestation of the sinful world, how does He respond? Let’s read Mark 15:1-5

“15 Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.

2 “Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “You have said so,” Jesus replied.

3 The chief priests accused him of many things. 4 So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.” 5 But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.”

            If there was ever a time when Jesus could have demonstrated His power over the sinful world, this would appear to be it. He is in front of a corrupt political leader. He is there because of bogus charges. And Pilate’s only concern is how to get out of this with as little damage as possible. And what does Jesus say about the injustice of this? About the hypocrisy of the accusations? About His own innocence? Virtually nothing. His only statement in the synoptics is a short sentence: “You have said so.” He doesn’t admit to being the king of the Jews (because in the sense Pilate means it, He isn’t); He doesn’t deny it (because in a deeper sense, it absolutely is true). Jesus is not surprised by political corruption or the abuse of power by pagan authorities. He takes this world as it is – broken, sinful and a mess.

            John records another sentence of Jesus when He is on trial before Pilate. 

Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore, the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” (John 19:11)

I’m not going to get into the different ideas about who “handed Jesus over” to Pilate today – but I am going to highlight that Jesus recognizes that even though Pilate is misusing the power that he has in Jerusalem, he only has that power because God above has allowed it. This connects back to what we talked about last week: that part of accepting hardship is recognizing the sovereign power of God to intervene, and trusting that when He doesn’t, He is still at work. Jesus has already asked the Father if there is another way and accepted that this path is the path of His Father’s will. In one sense, Pilate is just a bit player in the great drama of redemption that is unfolding. And while Jesus would be accurate to point out all that Pilate is doing wrong, He has more important things to focus on. He is taking the world of the Roman Empire, and its power over Jerusalem, as it is, even though that is not how He would like it to be.

            Let’s look at a less well-known example of Jesus recognizing the sinful world and choosing to do nothing directly about it. In Luke 9, Jesus is pivoting toward the crucifixion. Everything from that point forward is pointing toward Jerusalem. And as He begins that journey, He encounters the sinful world. Luke 9:51-56

“51 As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them. 56 Then he and his disciples went to another village.”

            Jesus is moving toward His death. The path takes Him through a Samaritan village, and He sends people ahead to prepare a place, but they are rejected by the Samaritans living there. Part of what Jesus is facing here is racial prejudice – the Samaritans and Jews were regular enemies (which is what makes the story of the Good Samaritan so offensive to its original hearers). It is unfair and not right that He can’t stay in the village. And two of His apostles, James and John, see the unfairness of it and jump to their master’s defense. They are ready to bring the wrath of God down on this village. They seem to me to be quite excited about the prospect, in fact. And Jesus, rather than approving of their fiery judgment or correcting the village, rebukes them! That must have been quite a shock. Not the first or last time Jesus shocked His followers, but still…why isn’t He ready to destroy those sinners? Instead, He just goes further on the journey, and hopefully (the text doesn’t tell us), gets a better welcome there.

            What do those two stories show us? If I could sum it up in a sentence or two, I might put it like this: Jesus has better things to do than try to directly fix all the places and patterns of sin in the world. He is, instead, focused on establishing a people who will be different, who will respond differently. Trying to make the world live differently is not a healthy response to its sinfulness. Instead, Jesus lives differently Himself, and He calls us to do the same. In John 17, as Jesus is praying for us, He acknowledges that we are still in the world, and will be subject to the evils of the world – we will experience the world’s hatred, in fact. But He explicitly says that He is not asking the Father to remove us from this sinful world, but to protect us so that we don’t give in to the ways of the evil one while we are surrounded by the sinful world. He is calling us to a different life (John 17:9-16).

            Now, an important side note here: we are talking about how to engage the sinful world as it is – not ignoring sin in ourselves or the people of God. Jesus does directly and firmly address the sin within Israel, almost always directing it at the most Godly and religious people. You can read Matthew 23 for a clear example of that. But this week we are not talking about taking sin in the church as it is – we are talking about taking the sinful world as it is, as Jesus did. And Jesus saved His confrontations of sin for God’s people, not the world at large.

If we go to Paul for a moment, he is really clear about the distinction between our response to sin in the world and sin in the church. 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 follows Paul’s direct statement to the church at Corinth that they were wrong to tolerate a man having an affair with his stepmother and needed to put him out of fellowship. And he goes on to clarify:

“9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sisterbut is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. 12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

Paul is about as clear as he could be here. He does not expect Christians to cut off all relationships with sinful people – that would certainly make evangelism difficult, wouldn’t it? At the same time, he is drawing a hard line about tolerating sin in the church. And I do want to point out here that Paul’s list includes more than sexual immorality, and it can be worth thinking about how we deal with unrepentant sinners in lots of different categories – but that’s for another series of sermons, I think. The point I want to be clear on here is that, of course, we deal with sin among people who are committed to a life of following Jesus as Lord – but we don’t hold those outside the church to the same standard. We take, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is – full of people and systems and structures that are opposed to the ways of God.

So, what can we learn from Jesus’ responses to Pontius Pilate and the Samaritan villagers? After all, most of us are unlikely to be sent to a kangaroo court in the middle of the night because our Messianic claims are making us too popular, or denied a place to stay while walking from one village to the next. We’d have reservations at a hotel or AirBnB ahead of time. Where and how are we likely to encounter this? And how can we respond?

I may step on your toes some at this point. If I’m wrong, forgive me. If I’m right, please listen! I am convinced that as American Christians, we spend way too much time and energy trying to make the world not be sinful when we would be better off focusing on tending the fruit of the Spirit in our own lives and our own communities. One of the places where I believe I see this most often is in the way we interact on social media. We condemn non-believers for acting like non-believers – how else do we expect them to act? I don’t like it any more than you do when people do or say outrageous things about Jesus Christ, but He put up with much more than that and chose to save His confrontations for the sin in Israel (and now, in us). Let me give you one concrete example of what I mean from this summer’s Olympics. Were there some offensive things done and said around the Olympics? Absolutely. Pagan things were exalted, and it should not be that way. But pagans do pagan things (around a contest that was pagan in origin to begin with). And me posting about my offense on Facebook doesn’t feel like the way Jesus responded to the pagan injustice of his day, or the way Paul tells us to. Again, I may be wrong, or only partially right, but I think it is at least worth considering the possibility that it is God’s job to defend us against the world, not our job to defend Him.

I think a Christ-like response to the sinful world begins with acknowledging that it is, in fact, a sinful world, and will be until the True King comes for His Bride. We don’t like it. We don’t approve of it. And we certainly should not cooperate with it. But we do need to accept that it is a fact, and then ask God how to respond to the evil that exists without being consumed by it or drawn into using the methods of the world to fight the world. Ephesians 6:12 tells us, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Paul goes on to list the weapons of righteousness, which are very similar to the fruit of the Spirit, and he finishes by exhorting us to pray. Our main weapon in the battle against the sinfulness of the world is not social media posts, or protests, or better laws, or better politicians. All those may have a right time and place. But our main weapon is prayer, and living the life of Jesus in spite of the world around us that will not understand what it is that we are doing.

I am under no pretenses that this will be easy, and I am deeply aware that prayer often feels weak in the face of worldly power. This is one of the most difficult and challenging places for me to accept that Jesus’ way of living is best, even when it feels ineffective. As I was writing this sermon, I got a call from a family at church. I am currently furious about what I see as a deep injustice being done by an insurance company that could endanger the well-being of children in a family I care about deeply. I honestly want to go break something (or worse, someone). If I thought I could fix this by calling down fire from heaven, I would be very tempted to give that a try. But the first thing I need to do is acknowledge, this world is full of sin and brokenness. God has allowed this to happen. How does He want me to respond to this sinful world in this moment?

I don’t have all the answers to that yet, but I know it begins with prayer. I prayed for the person who called. I prayed for the medical people involved. I prayed for the insurance agency. I prayed for the whole family and everyone else who will be involved. And I asked a few others to pray as well. Now, God may also provide some steps for me to take in this situation. There may be actions that I will need to take with serenity, courage, and wisdom. But first and foremost, I need to seek my Father’s face and listen for His voice. That’s where the answers will be – whether I like them or not.

It strikes me that this is one reason Jesus was often withdrawing to pray. The sinful world puts lots of pressure on us, either to conform to it and its ways, or to respond to it in ways that don’t bring anyone closer to the kingdom of God. If I am going to be able to respond to this family’s situation in the manner of Jesus, I will need to continue to spend time with my Father and pray.

With that said, let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. I hope you’ll join with me as we pray.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

Next week’s phrase, “Trusting that He will make all things right” is one that strikes me as a key to this whole prayer, and indeed as something that is at the heart of the Christian way of life. Until then, may God protect you from the evil one as you walk through this sinful world this week.

SERENITY PRAYER #6: HARDSHIP AS A PATHWAY TO PEACE

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment
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Hardship is an important and often unrecognized pathway to peace in Jesus Christ. We tend to dodge hardship with denial, control, or escape. But Jesus walks with us in all things, including in difficulties.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 6

Accepting Hardship as a Pathway to Peace

Scriptures: John 16:33; James 1:2-4 2 Corinthians 4:4-10; Romans 8:15-19; Rom 5:3-5; 1 Peter 4:12-13

            Welcome, children of God! I’m Wade Jones from Priest Lake Christian Fellowship, and we are about halfway into our journey through the Serenity Prayer as a tool to encourage the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let’s invite Him into this time together.

            This week we are looking at the line “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.” Now, I am not usually one to be pedantic about small words, but this week there is an important thing I want to note right off. You can find several different versions of this prayer, and they have slightly different wording. When we went through this study together at Priest Lake, one of the brothers pointed out the difference between praying “accepting hardship as a pathway to peace” and “accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.” Have you ever met someone who always assumed that God’s will would be to do the most difficult thing possible? I see how they get there; it’s way too easy to “hear” that God wants me to be as comfortable as possible, and never hear things the hard way. But the opposite of a wrong idea is usually also a wrong idea, and if we believe that God wants nothing but the most difficult choice for us, we may miss out on seasons of joy and Sabbath rest. So, while we are going to talk about the pathway of peace that leads through hardship, please understand right from the beginning that this is not the only road God will use in your life to bring you to a place of peace, of serenity. It is a really important one, and it’s often a neglected one, but it is not the only one.

            Why would I say it’s a neglected one? Well, we live in a time and place where many things that were hard historically or are hard in other parts of the world are relatively easy for us. I think we all live in homes with indoor plumbing, clean water, electricity to power all our devices, including a refrigerator and freezer so we always have food on hand. If we want to go on a long journey, we have cars or buses or planes that allow us to cover in hours or days what might be a journey of months or years in other settings. This is not to say that our lives are without difficulty and hardship. But I am saying that it is easy for us to come to believe that hardship is an aberration, a distortion of “normal life,” when most of humanity has experienced and continues to experience hardship as a normal part of daily existence. Many of our brothers and sisters around the world and throughout the centuries have prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread” out of basic necessity rather than just a phrase in the Lord’s Prayer.

            When we encounter hardship in our lives, whether it is with our health, our family, our finances, our employment, it is easy to miss the opportunity that God has for us along this path simply because we are so unfamiliar with it that we don’t even see it as an option to let God use difficulty in our lives. We see it as something to get out of as quickly as possible so that we can get “back to normal.” But is that a Biblical view?

            In Jesus’ long conversation with the apostles on the night before His execution, He talked to them a lot about the difficulties they were going to face. He says it plainly, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) So much of His last conversation is letting them know how hard it’s going to be. They will be cut off from long-term relationships. They will face condemnation and shame from friends and family. The world is going to hate them. They will eventually, according to early church history, be killed for their commitment to trust Jesus (except for John – he lives in exile instead).

            Before you say, “But those were the apostles, so their suffering was special. My life is just as an ordinary Christian, so I shouldn’t expect that, right?” Well, James is writing to ordinary Jewish believers when he says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4) This is how he opens his letter to them! And he’s not just talking about persecution, he says trials of many kinds. Later in this letter he talks about wealth and poverty (and the challenges of being poor), conflict between brothers and the harm it brings, and physical sickness. This is a very practical, everyday letter, and James expects hardship to be a part of practical, everyday life for the believer. Almost at the end of the letter, he comes back to it. He talks about the need for patience like the prophets when we suffer. James expects Christians to experience hardship and gives us encouragement to deal with it well.

            Paul talks about the hardships of life as well, particularly in Second Corinthians. In chapter 4, he goes into a long list of things that show the value of his ministry to them and to others. Listen to verses 4-10: “4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” Persecution is a part of that, absolutely – but so are normal life difficulties. And so are positive things that surely we all want to be part of our normal, Christian lives: purity, patience, the Holy Spirit, righteousness, truthfulness. For Paul, anything on this list should not come as a shock to any believer – this is part of life as a follower of Christ.

            There’s a lot more that can be said about the normalcy of hardship in our lives, but honestly, you can just listen to Tom’s podcast (Hope in Hard Times) and get a full and robust teaching from Tom and his sidekick (that’s me). And maybe I’m saying too much about this, but I think it is crucial for our growth as believers that we expect to encounter suffering in our life so that we can respond to it in a healthy and godly way.

            If we don’t expect hardship – if we believe it’s not a pathway we can walk toward peace in Christ – then we are likely to respond in unhealthy ways. That list could be long, but I’m going to talk about three unhealthy responses, and then three responses that I believe counter them. The unhealthy responses are denial, control, and escape. The healthy ones are acceptance, the presence of God, and the presence of community.

            Denial. It ain’t just a river in Egypt. One unhealthy way we sometimes respond to hardship in our lives is by pretending it isn’t there. This is already a problem, since, as we talked about last week, God lives in the Present and in Reality. When I am refusing to face Reality as it is, I am not living in the world where God can engage my life. Let me give you an example from my past week. As I write this, I am coming off a retreat weekend with about eighty men from at least fifteen different churches where we call each other and a group of younger men to come and stand by Jesus. (We call this retreat the Calling of Men – if you want to know more about it, please ask me, because it is absolutely incredible.) Anyway, the first time we did this retreat I was in my thirties. I could stay up until 2 am talking with guys and still be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to serve the next day. I was proud of the fact that I could still easily get in and out of a top bunk and leave the ones below for the “older men” who needed it. Well, now I’m in my fifties. I can’t stay up all night talking anymore – at least not if I want to be conscious and helpful the next day. But this year I still took a top bunk. And on the last day, trying to get up, I fell out, and now my pinky toe is bright purple. Didn’t break anything, but it did hurt. Hmm…that makes me think about the reality that hardship will eventually make you notice it. Ignore something long enough (like getting older) and a bigger, more obvious problem may emerge. I didn’t break anything – but I definitely could have. I think next year I’ll take a bottom bunk instead of trying to deny the changes that come with age.

            Of course, there are more significant examples than a bruised toe. Many of us could tell a story of someone who ignored symptoms of an illness until it was far worse and harder to treat than it would have been in the first place. And the same can be true of financial difficulties (ever refuse to look at your bank balance because you don’t want to hear the bad news?), or our relationships (pretending that all is well in a marriage that is in crisis because we can’t face the fear of what may happen next?), or any other area of our lives. Denial doesn’t fix the problem. We can’t just ignore hardship and hope it goes away (at least, not healthily).

            For some of us, we can see the problem, and we are sure that we can fix it. If we can just figure out what caused it, we are sure that we can change our circumstances so that they won’t be as hard. We will work that extra job, have that difficult conversation, change our diet and exercise – whatever it takes to get control of this issue so that it doesn’t hurt me anymore. We try to beat hardship with control. And this is where, in our culture, there are so many things we can control that it can be hard for us to admit that there are things that we can’t. There are things that are beyond us. There are hardships that we can’t fix. And when we can’t fix it ourselves, sometimes we move into blame. I can’t fix it because I didn’t cause it. But if I can figure out whose fault it was, then I can get them to fix it. Sometimes things aren’t someone’s fault. Sometimes we have hardship because we live in a broken world. And trying to pin the blame for that brokenness on someone or something else (or even ourselves) is not going to bring us to that place of peace…serenity…shalom.

            When I can’t deny it, and I can’t control it, there’s only one bad option left. I can try to escape it. Escape takes so many different forms: alcohol, sweets, shopping, pizza, sex, video games, exercise, work, entertainment – the list could go on and on and on. Did I hit one of your favorite escape routes? I included a few of mine. These things are not bad in and of themselves, as long as they are used in line with God’s design for them. But when any of those good and Godly things are being used to numb me, to help me detach from a Reality that is too difficult or painful for me to engage, then they are an unhealthy response to hardship. God’s intention for us is to use that hardship to strengthen us and build us up. James said that; Paul says that. But I will not develop perseverance by distracting myself from the things that are hard for me.

            So, how do we respond healthily to hardship? How do we come nearer to God and allow Him to form us more into His image as we go through difficulties? This line of the prayer describes the first healthy response: acceptance. We talked about this some when we discussed serenity. Acceptance does not mean saying, “I’m glad that this happened,” or “I’m sure this is better than what I wanted,” or any other pretending that we are not hurting. It does mean saying, “Since my God, who I know is loving and good, has allowed this to happen, He must be at work in it somehow.” An important note here: just because God allows something doesn’t mean He caused it, or that it was what He most wanted. It means He permitted it. This is exactly what Paul is saying in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.” Please notice that Paul does not say that all things work together for his specific good – for Paul’s benefit. But for those who love God. We are part of a people, a kingdom-wide community that the Father is shaping and forming through the Holy Spirit into a spotless bride for His Son. The hardship in your life may well be for someone else’s benefit. Are we willing to patiently endure hardship so that someone else may come to know the love of the Father? Then can we trust that anything He allows is something He intends to use to benefit His people? Even exile, even cataclysmic loss, even death itself. Or as Paul says later in chapter 8: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Sometimes, as God works to reconcile all creation to Himself in Christ Jesus, He uses hardship in our lives as one of the paths to get there. And when we can accept that God knows what is happening, and trust that He knows what He is doing, it helps us respond to hardship well.

            So, remembering God’s sovereignty is part of a healthy response to hardship. So is remembering His immanence. That may be a new word for you. It comes from the Latin immanere, which means “to inhabit.” One definition of immanence is this: “the state of being present as a natural and permanent part of something.” In this case, the something is us. God always intended to be in deep ongoing relationship with people. The fall fractured that. The resurrection has restored it. Take seriously the language of the New Testament about the people of God being the body of Christ and the temple in which God’s Presence lives. God is present with us and in us, both corporately and individually. This means that when we are going through hardships, God Himself is choosing to go through those hardships with us. This is part of what the Incarnation of Jesus was about, and that incarnation continues in His body now. In First Corinthians 12, Paul is describing what it means for us to be the Body of Christ, and he says (verse 26), “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” We usually think about that in terms of our relationships with one another, and we will come to that in a minute, but it is also true of Christ. Jesus Christ is not just standing idly by watching when you are hurting. He has united you to Himself, and in that, He enters into your suffering and goes through it with you. You are not abandoned or alone. God Himself has lowered Himself so that He is able to enter into our suffering with us. That means that we have permission – even encouragement – to invite Him into a situation with us instead of only asking Him to take it away. We can do both. And He will respond to that invitation. In fact, He already has.

            And He has given us a Body to go through these things together. I often need someone to remind me of truths that I believe when I am in a hard place. I don’t mean the platitudes that may, in fact, be true, but that often sound trite and shallow in the middle of our pain. I mean the brothers and sisters who can stand alongside us and say, “I don’t have any answers for this. I can see how difficult it is. I don’t know how to solve your problem, but I will be with you here in it and bring the Presence of Christ in me to comfort you.” We need someone who is able to cry with us as we mourn. We need each other at all times; when we are going through hardship, we need each other even more. I can’t imagine walking through the hardships in my life (addiction, recovery, raising a profoundly disabled child, death) without having people next to me that I could lean on and depend on to hold me up when I could not do it for myself.

            That’s what brings me to peace when life is hard – and life is often hard. I accept that anything that happens is happening with God’s permission, I trust that He is walking through it with me, and I am grateful for the friends and companions He has provided to hold my hand in the middle of it all.

Let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. I hope you’ll join with me as we pray.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

That’s all for this week. Next week we will be on similar ground with the line “Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.” Until then, may God walk with you intimately in whatever hardships present themselves in your life this week, and may you trust Him even as it hurts. Amen.

SERENITY PRAYER #5: LIVING ONE MOMENT AT A TIME

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

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Living One Day at a Time, Enjoying One Moment at a Time

Matthew 6:33-44; James 4:13-17

13 Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” 14 How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. 15 What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” 16 Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil.
17 Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.
(James 4:13-17, NLT)

            It’s good to be with you again this week to spend time looking at the Serenity Prayer. After talking about God, serenity, courage, and wisdom, we are ready to look at the less-familiar section of the prayer, and we will spend this week focusing on “Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.”         

            This line of the Serenity Prayer is calling us to live in the present – to be aware of the current moment and live in that moment. This is really important, because the present moment is the place where God can engage with us. For God, who lives outside of time, all time is now – the present. And when He speaks to us or shows us something, He shows it to us now – even if what we see helps us understand the past or gives us a glimpse of the future, He is showing it to us in this moment. If we want to encounter the living God and His work in our lives, we have to do it in real time, as it is happening.

            Does that mean God doesn’t want us to think about the past? Absolutely not. In fact, He often calls His people to remember – but why is that? At the end of his life, Moses sings a song to all Israel, where he calls Israel to remember the mighty deeds of God in the Exodus.

“Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.” (Deuteronomy 32:7)

Moses goes on to remind Israel of God’s past actions of deliverance and salvation – but his purpose is to point them to God in the present. After singing the song, Moses says to Israel, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. They are not just idle words for you – they are your life.” Remembering the past was not something to do for its own sake; it was a way to understand the importance of present obedience to God and trust in Him. The history of Israel – indeed, for us, the history of God’s people from Adam through the present – is a history of a good God who is active in delivering His people and working through us to reveal His glory to the world around us. So, we remember the past in order to know how to live in the present.

            For example, if I am facing a financial crunch, and am worrying about providing for my family, it can be important for me to remember times in the past when God has provided support that I didn’t have any way to see coming: an unexpected gift, a bonus, someone who fixed my car for free. When I remember His actions in the past, it helps me trust Him enough to live in trust in the present.

            Remembering the past is not the same as living in it. Do you know anyone – maybe at times you have been someone – who lives in the past? “Oh, remember when everything was easy…all our children were well-behaved, my job was easy, and our marriage was perfect.” Or maybe it’s a simpler vision. “Remember when I made the winning play in my high school football game…when I was the homecoming queen…when I starred in the school play.” Not bad things to remember, but what happens to us when we live there?

            Well, first of all, to some extent we are engaging in a fantasy world. Life may have been easier in some ways at some point than it is right now – but it’s never been perfect. It’s easy to glorify the past, to minimize the problems we had then, to forget how incredibly awkward it was to be 14 (or 34 or 54) and imagine that we had a golden era. That’s not the way it really was. And God lives in Reality. Not my imagined super-simple fuzzy memory of days gone by.

            Or my bleak memories of how terrible it’s been, either. While some live in an unreal fairy tale, others of us struggle to escape the pain of the wrong done to us, or the wrong we have done to others. But this is just as unreal a place to live. No matter what I have done in the past, no matter how dark some of my sin has been – and in my case, it certainly has – there are two important things I need to remember. One, I can’t do anything to change my past sin. Two, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have atoned for all my past sin. In Philippians 3, Paul talks about all the really good and deeply terrible things that are part of his past and says that being in Christ trumps and transforms all of that. He finishes by saying in verses 13-14, “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Did Paul literally forget the things that had happened in his past? Of course not! But he is refusing to be defined by his past, good or bad, so that he can live now as one who has been united with Jesus.

            What about wrongs done to us? Do you ever find yourself reliving the memory of being mistreated, done wrong, abused? When I am rehashing those situations and scenarios, I can remain stuck in those places of pain. I am absolutely not suggesting we try to forget those or push them aside. The serenity to accept the things I cannot change includes the ability to accept that I have been hurt by people in ways that were wrong. And then we begin the journey – sometimes the long journey – toward forgiveness and healing. Sometimes that healing work requires us to remember and engage the past – but we are doing that so that we can make changes in the present. We don’t want to let the sins committed against us define us any more than we do the sins we have committed against others. Now, I’m mentioning this very quickly. It’s a much longer and more complicated discussion than I can fully explore in this sermon. But as someone who has had to do a lot of work in this area myself, I can tell you that coming to terms with my past has helped me experience life differently and live it more fully in the present. I don’t want to get stuck there, and I don’t want you to get stuck there either.

            What about the future? Does living one day at a time mean I don’t make plans? That seems foolish! Well, I agree with you. I believe sometimes the work of today is to make plans for days to come. As I am writing the first draft of this talk, it will be weeks before you hear it, so obviously I believe in some degree of planning for the future. What’s the difference between planning for the future and living in it? If it is healthy to remember the past, but not live there, what does it look like to relate healthily to the future but not live there?

            Matthew 6:33-34 come to mind for me quickly:

 “33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

If I am engaged in worry, I am not living one day at a time. Jesus says that our preoccupation with what might happen, and all the myriad ways we can try to prepare for it, is not healthy for us, and will not bring us closer to God. Each day has enough trouble of its own. In other words, do what’s in front of you to do. Sometimes what is in front of you to do may impact the future, absolutely. If I pay my electric bill today, I will have working electricity next month as well. But if I am sitting on my couch, worrying about next month’s electric bill, it may actually take over my mind so much that I never actually make this month’s payment. Worrying about something, at least in my experience, often produces the very thing that it was theoretically trying to prevent. Worry does not do us a lick of good. It accomplishes nothing. Most of the things I worry about never happen anyway. And it often keeps us from seeing what God is doing right in front of us.

            Living in the future can go the opposite direction as well. We can idealize what life will look like a year or a decade or more down the road, and put off things that God wants for us until that Ideal state is reached. Well, I’ll be generous when I get the next promotion. I’ll make church involvement a priority once this work deadline has passed…or the kids are potty-trained…or the kids can drive…or the kids are grown and gone…the list can go on forever. Jayme looked at me a number of years ago and said, “We have to stop waiting until life gets easier to do the things that are important to us. If we wait until then, it will never happen. We have to begin now.” (You will notice in these lessons that often God’s wisdom enters my life through the words and actions of my wife.)

            And if it isn’t worry or idealization, living in the future may also be a product of our pride. James 4:13-16 talks about this.

 “13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”

Honestly, this passage stings a little bit for me. I’m a planner by nature, and sometimes my ego gets the better of me and I begin to think that my plans are actually going to cause things to happen the way I want. When I do that, I am forgetting who is actually in charge of the universe, and it ain’t me. How often when I am setting aside dates for a vacation or determining when the weather will be right for yard work do I forget that all of this – everything in my life, in fact – is dependent on the will of God? I don’t think James wants us to just say this as if it is a magic phrase or a way to demonstrate our religiosity. While it may be important at times to use words like that to help us remember who’s in charge, what is really important is maintaining in our hearts and minds the reality that the future isn’t here yet, and God, not we, decides what it will be like. We don’t get to make our plans and then ask God to bless them. We get to seek His plans and ask what He wants our part in them to be.

            Okay, remember the past and learn from it, but don’t live there. Let it be a tool to help us make good decisions in the present. Acknowledge the future and take action in the present to prepare for it but don’t live there either. Instead, maintain the humility to know that I can’t do anything that God does not permit me to do, and I shouldn’t do anything that He isn’t working in me to do. So, what does it look like to live in this present day and enjoy this present moment?

            One. Ask God for decisions that you can make for today. Remember, this is all a prayer anyway. So don’t decide, “I will always live only in the present and never get caught in the past again.” Instead, start practicing this moment. How long does it take most New Year’s resolutions to die? But make a resolution for today. Addicts know this. We decide, today, I won’t drink (or do drugs, or gamble, or whatever else our addictions may be). And then we hope to wake up tomorrow and make the same decision again. But you don’t have to be an addict. Want to lose twenty pounds? You can’t do that today. But you can say “No” to dessert today. Want to become a person who is always patient? You probably can’t do that today either. But you can make a decision today to respond with patience when someone in front of you in line takes forever to count out exact change. There is so much God is working on in my life. Most of it happens slowly. But I can cooperate with His agenda for me today – and when I do that one day after another, change really does happen.

Two. Be present. Pay attention to the people you are with and the circumstances you are in. When one of your kids is telling a long story about her day, don’t wander off in your head about the game coming on later tonight, or go back to yesterday’s highlights. Focus on her and listen to what she has to say. This is the only chance you have to hear her say those words at this time. So, engage it. And if that’s a challenge with your child (and it can be for me), it’s really a challenge when you are sitting through a pointless boring meeting. But be present. Pay attention to God and what He is doing. He cares about you and all the other people in the pointless boring meeting. So, what is He up to, and how can you notice that and participate in it with Him?

Three. Practice gratitude. So much of the day and its many moments slip by us without our even noticing. But when I take time to say thank you to someone, I’m living in what is happening in this moment. I am appreciating the gift I’ve just been given, even if it is as simple as helping me open a door or passing me the stapler. I am paying attention to what is right in front of me. And that can really impact my relationship with God. How often do I miss the small blessings that He pours out regularly? I know this: I miss them less as I thank Him for them more. One of my journaling practices is to list 3-5 things in my day that I am thankful for. It’s a way to remember the work of God in the past as I connect with Him in the present.

Four. Slow down. That’s hard, because our life is so fast paced. It’s easy to feel like we are missing out if we aren’t always on the go, catching the latest and greatest thing, which by next month will be totally forgotten. Pause. Take a breath. This came up last week in our conversation on wisdom. Slowing down and taking a breath is a critical spiritual discipline for many of us. Pastor John Ortberg once asked the theologian Dallas Willard what he needed to do to be spiritually healthy. Willard’s response: “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” The young pastor replied, “What else do you have for me?” Willard said, “There is nothing else.” Ortberg goes on to say, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. There’s a difference between being busy and being hurried. Busy is a condition of the body having many things to do. Hurry is a condition of the soul in which I am so preoccupied that I cannot be fully present to God or a person. Jesus was often busy, but he was never hurried.” (Living in Christ’s Presence, p. 143-144) Think about that last line again. “Jesus was often busy, but he was never hurried.” In John 5:19, Jesus says, “The Son can do nothing by Himself; He can only do what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” If we want to live like Jesus (and we do), we have to slow down in the middle of our hectic surroundings enough to lift our heads up and see what the Father is doing so that we know what we are to do. That means we have to be living in the present.

Remember God’s work in the past to help you take action today. Plan for the future but hold it loosely and humbly. Live in the present. Live right now. Make decisions for today (including the decision to live in the present moment today). Pay attention to what is happening right in front of you. Look for opportunities to be grateful. And slow down. When all else fails, slow down.

I’ll close again this week by praying the Serenity Prayer, and if God leads you, please feel free to join me in learning and praying this prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

May God bless you this week with the ability to live in the present moment and find His Presence with you there.

SERENITY PRAYER #4: WISDOM

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 4

James 3:13-18

            Brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome back for another look at the Serenity Prayer and how God can use it in our lives as part of His work in transforming us into the image of Christ. Two weeks ago, we talked about serenity – the ability to accept with peace and confidence the reality that life is sometimes difficult and painful. Last week, we talked about courage and the need at times to take action in response to those circumstances. This pretty naturally leads to the question, “How do I know when to serenely accept something and when to courageously take action to change it?” And this week, we will look at at least a partial answer to that question. We are going to talk about asking God for the wisdom to know the difference.

            What does it mean to have wisdom? We will look to the Biblical text in just a minute, but before we do that I want to distinguish between wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge is information, facts, data. These days, you can learn in five minutes on your phone what would once have taken hours at the library to look up. Is that good or bad? Probably some of both. But my point here is that some knowledge is pretty easy to obtain. How much did it rain in London yesterday? Who holds the world record for the 100m dash? When was Louis the 14th King of France? How can I get to this address? But having information and knowing how to use that information – those are two different things. Wisdom is more concerned with the second.

            For instance, knowledge can tell you where you can purchase a certain piece of equipment for your home or business, how much it will cost, even how long the warranty will last. But it takes wisdom to know if now is the right time to make that purchase. And particularly when it comes to human relationships, knowledge may be important, but wisdom is far more helpful in navigating those relationships. So, one way to look at wisdom is by saying, “How do I use the information and tools that I have?” And as Christians, we are asking, “God, how do You want me to use the information and tools that You have given me in order to bring You glory?” This includes the tools of serenity and courage – things that He has been giving us in response to our prayers.

Wisdom is something that appears to be pretty high on God’s radar for us. The Bible is full of references to wisdom and descriptions of wisdom, including entire books of the Old Testament like Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Several of the psalms also connect with that theme of wisdom. But I want to start with a New Testament reference to wisdom. The book of James, traditionally assigned to James the brother of Jesus, is clearly influenced by his knowledge of the Jewish wisdom tradition. As with most of the New Testament, the Jewish background that prepared the way for the Messiah takes on new depths once Jesus has come and paved the way for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So, while the language that James uses would have been very familiar to his readers, who were primarily early Jewish Christians, he is adding depth to their understanding now that the Messiah has been revealed. In some ways, this is similar to what Jesus was doing with the law when He preached the Sermon on the Mount – building on a foundation that God has laid in Israel and taking it farther than Israel had dreamed it could go.

            Let’s look at one of the passages in James that describes wisdom. We’re going to read from James 3:13-18.

“13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.”

            There’s a lot packed into these six verses. If God gives us wisdom, what is it going to look like? One of the first attributes James mentions is humility. There’s one place where the difference between knowledge and wisdom comes sharply into focus. I love the way C.S. Lewis describes humility in Mere Christianity at the end of the chapter The Great Sin, which is about pride:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Honestly, I’m tired of hearing Christians – myself included – go on and one about how smart we are, how we have the right answers to everything, and how everyone ought to just stop and listen to us. We may have the right knowledge – but in that case we are still lacking in wisdom. And that can be hard when I do, in fact, have some right answers. But James is right to point us to humility as a key component of wisdom. If my response to a situation is built on how good it is going to make me look, or boosting my ego, that solution is not based in wisdom (at least, not in Godly wisdom). One of the most brilliant Bible professors I ever knew, a man who was fluent in multiple ancient languages, the contexts in which the passages were written, and the history of their interpretation, would often begin his answers to a difficult theological question by saying, “I might be wrong, but it seems to me…” His humility was profound.

            James goes on to talk about the dangers of envy and selfish ambition. Paul says almost the same thing in Philippians 2:3. He is calling the church in Philippi to imitate Christ in unity, and he also makes the connection between humility and selfish ambition:

“3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.”

Am I seeking to get my own way in a situation? Am I trying to make sure I come out ok? Then I am probably not operating in wisdom. James associates that kind of wisdom with disorder, wickedness, and even the demonic. So, what is Godly wisdom like? We’ve already talked about humility, and the important role that it plays. Let’s look at a few more of the characteristics James mentions

            Full of mercy and good fruit. Mercy is so central to God’s character. And wisdom will often call on us to show mercy to others rather than demand what we may deserve in a situation. Our responses are to be full of the attitude that God has toward us – rich in mercy, slow to anger, and desiring repentance where there has been wrong. Wisdom, like love in 1 Corinthians 13, is not self-seeking and does not keep a record of wrongs. And I think James is intentionally connecting this to good fruit. Merciful actions toward others will often result in good fruit – and especially when we are engaging other believers. Of course, sometimes we don’t see that fruit until years later, if ever. But wise choices on our part should be ones that open doors to good outcomes in the lives of the people we are engaging.

            Impartial. Wisdom doesn’t play favorites. If we use the information or influence we have to steer the outcome of a situation toward what we want (instead of seeking what God wants), we are operating in that realm of competition to get what I want – we are engaging like the world does. James goes on in the next verses (which start chapter 4) to talk about how the world fights for what it wants, but that is not God’s way for us. And it can be so easy for me to convince myself that what I want is really what is best anyway. That’s why I need God’s wisdom – and in just a few minutes we will talk about some ways to help us sort through our own agendas, needs, and preferences to hear the wisdom of God more clearly.

            Sincere. Wisdom is honest in its dealings with others. Wisdom does not play the game of pretending to believe one thing so that we can manipulate a situation to get what we want out of it. God’s wisdom doesn’t need to be sneaky and deceptive in its dealings. When we are behaving wisely, we mean what we say, and we follow through on it as best we can. No promising one thing while intending to deliver another.

            And finally, peace. Wisdom leads to peace. Now, what is James, as a Godly Jew, thinking of when he uses his word for peace? The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom.” We often use “peace” to describe a situation where there is an absence of conflict. We sent the kids to their separate rooms so that we could have a little peace. But shalom is deeper. Shalom is not just an absence of conflict – getting everyone to put down their weapons. Shalom describes a situation where the conflict has gone away because the causes of the conflict have been appropriately and healthily dealt with. In other words, the peace that is a part of Godly wisdom is not just accepting whatever happens, no matter if it is right or wrong (that is not the serenity that we have been asking God to give us). But this peace is the peace that comes when things are well-settled. And that may actually require some healthy conflict in order to get to a place of real peace. Wisdom will move in the direction of peace – eventually. But wisdom does not always mean just doing what it takes to “keep the peace.” With God, things often are more difficult in the short-term, but He is looking toward a very long end – eternal even – and He is willing to have conflict now to bring true and lasting peace.

            My wife and I have had our struggles over the years with doing this well. I’ll give you one example that may seem small, but it points to a bigger problem. When we first started dating, I really wasn’t good at remembering flowers for special occasions. Well, one time I brought her some chrysanthemums. And she was so glad that I bought her some flowers that she made a big deal over them, and I decided that must be her favorite flower. For the next ten years or so, any time I got her flowers, I bought chrysanthemums. It turns out, those weren’t particularly her favorite. But she didn’t want to upset me or discourage my flower-buying, so she didn’t say anything. And I thought all was well until she eventually told me the rest of the story. Now I sometimes buy her chrysanthemums, but I also buy roses, or lilies, or whatever I see that makes me think of her. And in that small area of our lives, we are closer to shalom. But we only got there when she took the risk – found the courage – to bring up an area that could have caused conflict. By the way, there are much more significant examples of conflict in our marriage over the years – I just decided to tell a simple one.

            Okay, there’s several of the attributes of wisdom. But, in addition to praying, what else can we practically do to help us make wise decisions? Here are three things that I have found helpful in making wise decisions.

            First, slow down. Yes, some decisions have to be made in the moment, but even then, there is rarely a time where I am faced with a significant decision, and I can’t take a moment to breathe and ask God for help, rather than simply react. This is especially true for me when I’m feeling strong emotions about whatever is going on where I need wisdom. Alcoholics Anonymous has a great line for me to remember: “We pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action.” If I want wisdom, I generally need to stop, take a breath, remember that God is running the universe, not Wade, and see what He has to say.

            And most of the time, I don’t have to make a decision on the most important things in that moment. I usually have time to stop, to think, to pray. And what has become really important for me is having trusted friends that I can ask for input. When I am facing a difficult decision, it is easy for me to be blind to my pride, selfishness, hidden agendas, and mixed motives. And taking my own advice about what is wise has led me to some of the stupidest decisions of my life. When I talk to my wife, my fellow pastors, my most mature friends, and others, I can gain a perspective on the situation that is not skewed by what I know I want. And I am much more likely to receive the wisdom that God has for me.

             About two years ago, Jayme and I were trying to make a difficult decision about how to handle a situation with our children. We both stopped and prayed. We took time to think about it. And after months of doing that, we were still in different places about what God wanted us to do. So, we came together to Tom and Kari and laid out our perspectives as best we could. Jayme (my wife) and I agreed ahead of time that we would trust Tom and Kari and take their advice. I didn’t like their answer. They agreed more with Jayme. And we have followed their input since then. I still don’t know that I like it – but I agree that it was wise to listen to them. Involving other people takes courage, because I am surrendering my right to be in charge and trusting that God will use His people to help me.

            Here’s a different example, also family-related, where getting input from the Holy Spirit through other believers has led me towards the serenity to accept something I can’t change instead of the courage to change something. I run into this with my kids regularly. They have a problem. I have an answer. And my answer is probably right. But one of the wisest pieces of advice I’ve ever been given – and this applies to more than just my children – is, “Wade, stop answering questions that people aren’t asking you.” Wow! That requires a lot of the humility James talked about. I have to stop thinking of myself as the fount of information and answers and trust that God is at work in the situation, and sometimes the wisest thing for me to do is Shut Up! I don’t like that. And it may not always be the perfect answer – but it is often a good one.

            And that’s suggestion number three. Some of us, including me, can get hyper-focused on making sure we have the wisest answer, and then we get bogged down and don’t do anything because we are not completely sure which way to go. I am convinced that God is more interested in the long process of developing relationship with Him than He is whether we get a specific decision exactly right. So sometimes, we pause, we take input, and then we make the best decision we can, trusting that even if we got it wrong, God is able to work with us and in us and around us to bring things back on course. He certainly did that with the history of Israel. And He has certainly done that with me.

            So, when do we accept a thing we cannot change, and when do we courageously act to bring change? We ask God for wisdom. We look for answers that lead to humility, mercy, and true peace. We take a breath, ask others for help, and take action trusting that God can work in our imperfect decisions.

I’ll close again this week by praying the Serenity Prayer, and if God leads you, please feel free to join me in learning and praying this prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

Well, now we have gotten through the more familiar part of the Serenity Prayer. Next week we will start into the less-known part. May God bless you with serenity, courage, and wisdom until we talk again next week.

SERENITY PRAYER #3: THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS WE CAN

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, UncategorizedLeave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

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SCRIPTURE: JOSHUA 1:1-6       

     Welcome back to our look at the Serenity Prayer and how it can be a tool for God to use to help us walk in Biblical truths as we allow the Holy Spirit to continue to transform our lives. If you’ve missed the first two weeks, I’m Wade Jones, pastor at Priest Lake Christian Fellowship and long-time friend to the Hilpert family and New Joy Fellowship.

            So far, we have talked about what it means to ask God for gifts, and what it looks like to receive and practice the gift of serenity. This week, we are going to look at the gift of courage. When we ask for courage, what does that look like, and what effect will it have on our lives when we receive and practice that gift?

            I know when I think about Biblical courage, the first passage that comes to mind is Joshua 1. So, in this passage, Moses has died, and God speaks directly to Joshua, his successor. Three times in this chapter, God tells Joshua to “Be strong and courageous.” What is God asking Joshua to do? And more importantly, what is God doing around Joshua when He gives Joshua this command? Let’s read the first six verses of this passage together:

1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. 3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.” (Joshua 1:1-6)

            I want to make an important point here. It may seem small, but sometimes small points can make an incredibly large difference, especially over time. We often talk about Joshua leading the Israelites into Canaan to take the land, and the way we do that implies that Joshua and his army are the primary actors. But look carefully at the language of Scripture in this passage:

Verse 2 – The land I (YHWH) am about to give the Israelites
Verse 3 – I (YHWH) will give you every place you set your foot
Verse 5 – No one will be able to stand against you, because I (YHWH) will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Right here at the beginning, God is emphasizing how fully this will be His action, His power, His conquering. In verse 6, He talks about Israel inheriting the land. How do you get the property of an inheritance? Someone else owns it, and they give it to you on their death. And God also says in verse 6 that He is fulfilling the oath He made to their ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says similar things later in the chapter, but hopefully this is enough to make the point. The major actor in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites was God.

And if we move ahead in the story, we will see that pattern continue. How does Israel get across the Jordan River? God piles up the water on either side and they march through on dry land. How does Israel conquer Jericho? They march around it in obedience and God brings the walls down. He is the one making all this happen. Well, if God is the one making all this happen, why does Israel, and Joshua in particular as their leader, need to be strong and courageous?

            Remember, Israel has been here before. Forty years before. They stood in basically the same spot, with Moses at their head, and when they were on the brink of coming into the land, how did they respond? (Well, most of them anyway.) They were afraid. They heard the report and got preoccupied with the power of the enemies they were facing instead of focusing on the power of the God they were following. (This is all in Numbers 13 and 14 if you want to read the whole story.) And Joshua had been there for that. He pleads with Israel to go into the land in language that is similar to the language God uses with him in Joshua 1. “The Lord will bring us into the land…The Lord is with us.” Forty years ago, Joshua knew that God was the primary one at work in God’s own plans to bring Israel into Canaan, but Israel couldn’t see it. And as we all know, that led to forty years of wandering in the desert, and along the way Moses lost patience as well, so when they finally come back to this point, he is gone, and Joshua has taken his place. God is telling Joshua to be strong and courageous just as Joshua had told Israel 40 years earlier and based on the same reason: taking the land is God’s job; our job is to be faithful to Him!

            This is one of the primary forms courage takes for God’s people, whether Israel or us: to trust that God will do what He says He will do and act on that basis. Sometimes those actions will be risky. That wall of water in the Jordan River could have collapsed at any moment, drowning the Israelites in the same way that the Egyptians had drowned in the Red Sea. Joshua needed courage to trust God when He said, “Walk on through.” And sometimes those actions will appear foolish. What possible military value does it have to circle the city of Jericho for seven days? All that does is make sure the enemy has a good count of your army. We would fire any general who suggested that! Joshua and Israel needed the courage to trust that following God’s directions was the best possible way for them to take the city of Jericho. And we still need the courage to trust that following God’s directions is the path that leads to the best possible future for us.

            It’s my opinion that the order of requests in the Serenity Prayer matters. One part of serenity is the ability to accept that life is as it is – to accept life on life’s terms. You see, courage is not glibly or blindly denying that there are difficulties ahead. God does not call us to live in denial, but in trust. And when we have seen the world as it is, some of it will be pretty scary. Courage does not mean closing our eyes to the dangers around us. It means trusting that our Father is a good Father and moving ahead with what He has told us to do no matter what it looks like. We are not called to change the circumstances of the world. We are called to change our responses to the circumstances of the world. And to do that, we need courage. The trust to obey the word of the Lord even if it doesn’t make sense.

            “If I tell the truth about that business deal, I will probably lose that customer, and my boss has already told me that if I don’t make my quota this week, I’m going to get laid off. We’re already late on a couple of payments, and I don’t know what we’ll do if I lose my job.”

            “That woman is spreading all kinds of rumors about me in the neighborhood. I saw her talking across the fence to Jane just last night. But I know a thing or two about her that will put her in her place, and frankly, I could use the peace and quiet. She’s going to cause me all kinds of trouble if I don’t make sure everyone knows what kind of scoundrel she really is.”

            “My close friend is slowly drifting away from God. He hasn’t been to church in weeks, and he’s making jokes at the restaurant about how little time he spends reading his Bible or praying anymore. I’d like to say something to him, but he’s got a pretty mean temper. I’m afraid if I confront him, we’ll get into an argument, and I don’t want to risk losing that friendship.”

            I don’t mean to paint any of these scenarios as ones that are simple to navigate. If you are in one of them, please talk to Tom and Kari to get good, Christ-centered counsel about what some good next steps would be. But I can tell you for myself, that when I am in situations like these, I have a pretty strong response of fear to the idea of losing income, or reputation, or friendships. And if I do not pay attention to that, it is really easy for me to slip into making a decision based on that fear, instead of a decision based on trust that God is my Father, and He is on my side. Can God provide for my family if I lose my job? He can – but it may be embarrassing when He uses others to help me. Can God guard my reputation if someone is gossiping about me, or do I need to gossip back to protect myself? He can – but sometimes it takes Him a lot longer than I’d like, and it’s pretty uncomfortable in the meanwhile. Can God comfort me through the loss of a friendship when I have spoken the truth in love, and it hasn’t been well-received? He can – but that doesn’t take away the pain.

            This is one of the connections between courage and serenity. I must have the courage to act in line with what God has commanded, and the serenity to accept the reality that the results may not be what I want. And both of those require me to trust Him in ways that may end up being pretty painful.

            Here’s another connection: when I recognize that there is something in the way of my serenity, of my peace, that can make me aware of something that needs to change – and usually, at least part of the change will be something that needs to change in me. When life doesn’t go the way I want it to, when things go south, one of my default reactions can be to look for someone else to blame. That goes back all the way to the beginning, doesn’t it? “It was this woman You gave me – she just handed me a fruit and I ate it!” I have always wondered what would have happened next if Adam had the courage to own his responsibility as Eve’s husband and the leader of his garden home. How would the Father have responded if Adam had gone to Him (instead of trying to hide), and said, “God, I blew it. I made a mistake, and I take full responsibility for it. What do You want me to do now?” God probably still would have addressed not only Adam’s sin, but also Eve’s, and I’m sure the serpent as well. But when we resort to blaming someone else, even if they share responsibility, we are missing the opportunity to make courageous changes in ourselves, or even better, to ask God to do that.

            Not everything painful in my life is my fault (Tom has a great podcast about suffering that addresses a lot of that). But most of the things in my life are things where I play at least some part, and where there is at least something I can change. All of us have some defects in our character (shortcomings, sins, strongholds) that God wants to address, and those changes will take courage. Maybe I need to be more up-front with my customer to begin with. Maybe my irritation at that neighbor means I haven’t been praying for her, or maybe my tendency to be judgmental is causing me to see her wrongly. Maybe some of my concern for my friend is based on the realization that my own time in the Word has been slipping of late. When I ask God for the courage to change, the first place I ought to look for change is within me. For one thing, that may be the only thing I actually can change. I can’t change my boss or my customer; I can’t change my neighbor; I can’t change my friend. But by God’s grace, I can change. And I will, if I ask Him for the courage to do so.

            One of the rooms I go to for recovery meetings has a poster on the wall that refocuses the first part of the Serenity Prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the person I cannot change, the courage to change the person I can, and the wisdom to know that person is me.” If I’m trying to find the courage just to make someone else behave the way I want, I may not have much peace at the end of the day. But if I find the courage to ask God to change the places in me where I’m not walking in trust, where I’m not walking in obedience, where I’m not following Him – those changes are much more likely to occur, and there’s not much anyone else can do to stop them.

            I want to wrap up this week by saying again that this is not about trying harder. We are not trying to make ourselves more courageous, or to act more courageously. We are asking God to give us courage to do what He asks us to do. And part of asking that is putting ourselves in a place to receive it from Him. As I said about serenity last week, God usually works in my life through a process of gradual change, not an instantaneous transformation. We are not likely to move from being dominated by fear today to being completely free of it tomorrow. But what we can do is ask for it and cooperate with God as He does it.

            Trevor Hudson has written a short book on the Serenity Prayer – that’s what it’s called, The Serenity Prayer, and I recommend it; it’s a good read. At the end of his chapter on this section, he gives the following illustration: “Imagine an escalator going up to God. Whenever we find ourselves struggling with a particular character defect – for instance, always wanting to be in the right – we imagine ourselves picking it up as if it were a poisonous snake, placing it into a sack, and putting it on the escalator. When the sack comes back again, as it surely will, we have a quick look inside, see what it is, and immediately place it back on the escalator. We continue doing whatever we need to, but we don’t try to beat the character defect in our own strength. If we do, it will win every time. Every time the sack returns, we simply put it back on the escalator. After days, weeks, months, or even years, we notice one day that the sack doesn’t come back. We realize that God is in the process of changing us.

            Change is often painful. Change generally requires courage. God can, and will change us – He will lead us into the Promised Land that He is giving us – if we will continue to ask Him.

I’ll close again this week by praying the Serenity Prayer, and if God leads you, please feel free to join me in learning and praying this prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

Thank you for letting me be with you a couple weeks ago at New Joy, and for listening today. May God bless you and keep you as you go through this week. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

SERENITY #2: THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE.

On By Pastor TomIn Churches in Lebanon, Podcast, Serenity Prayer, UncategorizedLeave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 2

Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot Change

John 14:27; John 16:33; Luke 22:41-44; Hebrews 12:1-3

            New Joy Fellowship, I’m glad to be with you again. If you missed last week, I’m Tom’s consuegro, which means our children Alana and Matthew married each other. I’m also a pastor at Priest Lake Christian Fellowship in Antioch, Tennessee, and I’m blessed to be able to be a direct part of what God is doing in your fellowship for a little while.

            Last week we talked about this prayer as a petition to God – asking Him to give us things that we need. This week we will look at the first thing we are asking Him for – serenity – but I want to emphasize that this is something we are asking God to give us. I may overemphasize this point because it is so easy for me to pray and prayer like this, but interpret it as, “I need to work harder to be serene (or courageous, or wise)” instead of admitting that on my own, I will never reach that goal, and what I am doing is asking God to give me something that I can’t do for myself, and trusting that He wants to do that, is capable of doing that, and will do that in response to my prayer.

            So this week, we will focus on asking God for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” Serenity may not be a word you use often in your daily life – I know it isn’t common for me – so let’s talk a little bit about what serenity is. Or maybe we can begin by talking about what it isn’t.

            Do you ever feel like life is coming at you faster than you can handle? As soon as you put one fire out, the next one starts. Or you run from spinning plate to spinning plate, trying to keep them all going so that nothing falls to the ground and smashes. Do you hit the pillow at night worn out because your whole day was lived trying to fix one thing after another, solve one problem after another, and clean up one mess after another? Or even if the circumstances you are in are fairly routine and predictable, do you find that your mind can move at breakneck speed, bouncing from one worry to another, and never quite able to settle into a place of peace?

            And it’s not just our individual lives, it is also the world around us. We are surrounded by conflict, anger, violence, unpredictability, and rapid change. It seems like as soon as one war ends, another begins. Our neighbors argue, our kids fight, our marriages have tension, and we see all kinds of pain and suffering in the communities around us. It’s no wonder that we often have trouble coming to a place of peace in ourselves!

            In fact, the peace that we need and are designed for is not something we can find in ourselves anyway. As Augustine, one of the great church fathers, said, “God, You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in You.” Serenity – peace – true rest. It’s something we receive from God, and that may be why this prayer begins by asking God to give us serenity – a peace that goes beyond anything that the world can experience or that we can create for ourselves.

            The world’s peace is dependent on circumstances. My family goes to a vacation spot in West Virginia every two years called Capon Springs and Farms. It is a beautiful place in the Appalachian Mountains. When we are there, I have a week of real rest and relaxation. The most difficult decision may be whether to have a slice of cherry pie or a brownie with ice cream and hot fudge for dessert (and sometimes I do both). Our kids are all old enough to take care of themselves, and Mom and Dad pay for everything, so it is easy to lay in the hammock and read a book while smelling a hint of bacon cooking on the cool mountain breeze. I usually turn my phone off for the week, so the outside world doesn’t intrude. And my greatest disappointment may be missing a short putt on the mountain golf course. When everyone is having a fun time, getting plenty of sleep, and no one has to do anything but have fun, it is pretty easy to find peace.

            Then we come back home. And we find that life has all the same problems it had when we left. The bills are still due. The truck still has no working air conditioning. The child without a job is still without a job. Our friends’ marriage that was struggling when we left is still struggling. That sick relative has gotten worse. And for that matter, the neighbors have gotten a new dog that barks. All. Night. Long. The peace that comes from living in comfortable circumstances has evaporated. In fact, it likely didn’t survive the traffic on the way home.

            But Jesus offers us something different. In John 14:27, He says, “27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” It’s pretty obvious that what Jesus is describing is not dependent on what is happening around Him. Judas has just left to betray Him. He has told Peter that Peter will deny Him that very night. And when this conversation ends, they will head to the garden, where He will be arrested and then brought to trial and executed. Most of the disciples will flee. And yet, Jesus has peace to offer them in the midst of trouble. In fact, later in this same conversation, in John 16:33, Jesus says, “33 I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

            There seems to be a connection between the peace Jesus offers and a confidence that He has overcome the world. And in these chapters of John, Jesus is also preparing the apostles for the coming of the Holy Spirit to continue the work He has begun. So peace (or serenity) is connected to the work of the Holy Spirit as well. In fact, John makes this connection again after the resurrection. In John 20:21-22, when Jesus appears to some of His followers, He says to them, “21 Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” I think Jesus is making it pretty clear that if we are to receive the peace that He is offering to us, the serenity to walk in assurance that Jesus has overcome in the middle of events that would seem to say the opposite, we will have to receive this gift through the Holy Spirit. This is why we need to ask God to grant us this serenity.

            So what does it look like to walk with serenity through a chaotic and painful world? This prayer talks about accepting what we cannot change. Let me begin by saying this: accepting does not mean approving. There are many things in our lives that we do not, should not, and cannot approve. But one of the things that gets in the way of our peace is when we attempt to insist that the world simply must be different than what it is. Jesus’ peace did not depend on the loyalty of His closest friends, the justice of the Roman governor, the religious and spiritual maturity of the leaders of God’s chosen people, or living a pain-free life. In fact, He maintained His peace, His serenity, through the betrayal of His closest friends, the injustice of a cruel government, the hypocrisy and manipulation of the priests, and the brutal physical suffering of the cross.

            How did He do this? Partly, by accepting that those things were part of God’s will for Him. By trusting that since His Father is Good, He will not allow anything that He does not intend to use and redeem for good. This does not mean that Judas or Peter or Pilate or Annas or Caiaphas or the centurions carrying out the sentence were right. They were wrong, and in need of forgiveness. But Jesus trusted that God would make all things right in the end, and that faith carried Him through the pain, not just of the cross, but of His entire misunderstood life up until then. The cross was not the beginning of Jesus’ suffering, but its culmination. And yet He lived in peace. In serenity.

            Have you ever noticed how rarely Jesus seems flustered? How infrequently He seems to be in a hurry? And how willing He is to accept some situations that were not what He wanted them to be, coming to the highest and clearest point in the garden. Luke describes this in Luke 22:41-44 “41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”

            Accepting the Father’s will did not keep Jesus from asking if there was another way. It didn’t keep Him from experiencing pain and anguish as He asked. But it did give Him the ability to walk through this night with assurance that, no matter what happened, His Father was ultimately in control, and He could accept those events with confidence and serenity, even though they were going to be indescribably painful for Him on many levels.

            We also face things in life that are painful, unjust, and difficult. And one of the things that derails peace is trying to insist that the world should not be this way. On the one hand, we are right – this is not what God wanted from the beginning. But on the other, we can only live with God in the life that is in front of us, and that means accepting many things that we cannot change. What are some of the things we can’t change? Things that are outside of our control? The weather. The decisions other people make. Whether or not I keep my job. What happens with the economy over the next year. Who runs for president. How long it will be until my car breaks down. Do I have some influence over some of those things? Yes, in some cases I do. And we will talk next week about the courage to change the things I can – to take the actions that God does want me to take in my life. But that will not be enough to make sure that these things go the way I want.

            In fact, that’s a good thing. If I could control all those things in my life, what would that make me? Well, it would make me a god. Lowercase g. And I know when I am honest with myself, that a life that runs according to my own plans, wishes and desires is not going to work out in the long run. Not for me, and certainly not for the people around me. Instead, I have to turn my life and my will over to God. And part of that means accepting that, for today, this is the life He has given me to live. With its joys and pains, with its heartaches and its celebration. This is what Jesus did.

            And what Jesus has done, He wants to empower us to do. The Hebrews writer says, “12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (Hebrews 12:1-3) Now remember, the witnesses the writer refers to in chapter 11 includes people who faced a lot of suffering: jeers, flogging, torture, stoning, prison, poverty, mistreatment, persecution. And he says we have it better than they do, because we can look to Jesus Himself. Jesus endured with hope and peace (serenity) because He saw the joy that was coming. He saw resurrection. He saw our reconciliation with God. And that helped Him keep going – not just trudging along, but walking in joy because He knew that what He was facing was leading to an outcome that God had guaranteed would be good.

            Brothers and sisters, we can have that same joy. In fact, for us, we can already see that resurrection has begun in Jesus. He is the firstborn from among the dead, but we know by faith that we will be raised to life to join with Him. A key part of the serenity that comes from accepting things we cannot change now is the confidence that God will right all wrongs, exterminate all evil, and bring us fully into His kingdom of joy and peace.

            As we wrap up this week, let me say one more thing about asking God for serenity. The most valuable things God has given me in my life have come as part of a long process. God rarely answers my prayers with instantaneous transformation. I believe He can. I know sometimes He does. But it has been much more frequent that He works on me gradually, over time, to form and change my character into the character of Jesus Christ. I did not ask for serenity once and receive it forever. But as I have continued to ask, to seek, to knock, I find that He is faithful to give it to me one day at a time. And Jesus talks about that, too. Matthew 6:34 “34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

            When I pray, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, I am not praying it generically for all things that will ever happen. I am praying it for this day, this moment, this circumstance. I am asking for the serenity to accept the fact that I hit a pothole and have a flat tire that will make me an hour late to my next appointment. I am asking for the serenity to accept the reality that one of my children has just made a decision is not what God wants for them. I am asking for the serenity to accept that my performance this month did not give me the bonus I had hoped for. I am asking for the serenity to accept that it rained during the one good slot I had to work in the yard. And over time, I have found that God has expanded my ability to receive the serenity that He has for me in each of those moments and walk in confidence that His future for me is good – even if that good is a good that I experience after the resurrection.

I’ll close again this week by praying the Serenity Prayer, and if God leads you, please feel free to join me in learning and praying this prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

Thank you for letting me be with you last week at New Joy, and for listening today. May God bless you and keep you as you go through this week. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

SERENITY PRAYER #1: GOD GRANT

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 1

Last week, we finished the book of First Samuel. We will pick up with Second Samuel in a few weeks. In between, I’m really excited to host a short series of messages by Wade Jones. Wade is my daughter’s father-in-law, and one of the pastors of a church about thirty miles away from us here in Tennessee.

Wade will spend the next few weeks talking us through the Serenity Prayer. Although the prayer itself is not from scripture, Wade will use plenty of scripture as we go. One reason I’m excited about this is because I think it will get very practical, very relevant to living day-to-day as we follow Jesus.

A note to to those who will listen to the audio version: Wade is a good preacher. Before this, he had never recorded a message except in front of a live congregation. So, during this first message, he said he felt a bit stilted—he was worried about making too much background noise. But I’ve already heard the second one, and he seems to have gotten into the flow quite well for that one. My point is: have patience. I think this will be good stuff for us.

Without further ado, here’s Wade!

SERENITY PRAYER #1: GOD, GRANT

Greetings, brothers and sisters of ClearBible! My name is Wade Jones. I’m one of the pastors at Priest Lake Christian Fellowship, where we pray for your church family at each service. Perhaps more importantly, I have been blessed for many years by the friendship of your pastor, Tom, and we have become family – not just metaphorically, as my son Matthew is married to his daughter Alana. I talked with Tom recently about a teaching series I’d done at Priest Lake, and he asked me to share it with your fellowship as well, which I feel honored to do over the next several weeks.

            The substance for these messages will come from the Serenity Prayer. It’s unusual for me to spend this much time on writing that is not specifically from Scripture, but I have made an exception in this case, in part because this prayer specifically has greatly blessed my life and walk with God, and I hope it will prove to bless yours as well. My father had the words of this prayer on the wall of his study at home when I was child. Later, when I came into the world of 12-step recovery, I learned that this prayer was (at least in part) important to that community as well. Praying this prayer has become a regular part of my spiritual disciplines and routines, and God often speaks to me through it. Today will mostly be an introduction to this series, so bear with me through the first part.

            Depending on what your spiritual background and tradition is, the idea of praying a prayer that someone else wrote may feel awkward or impersonal to you. And certainly, you have the freedom to pray as the Lord directs – I have no intention of insisting that you use this prayer in the same ways that I have. However, I have found that it is at times useful to pray words that others have written, and I want to spend a few minutes talking about that before we get to the prayer itself.

            Often when we pray, we speak conversationally with God, using whatever words and phrases come to mind. That kind of extemporaneous prayer is a wonderful thing. I practice it regularly. At the same time, I find that I sometimes have difficulty putting into words what I am thinking or feeling, or knowing how to come to the Father with what is on my heart. Four different approaches have helped me in those times. Sometimes my best response is to pray in tongues (and talking about that might be a whole different series). At other times, I will turn to the Psalms, and pray the prayers that Jesus would likely have learned in his home and in the synagogue. Yet again, I may sing my prayers with hymns I learned as a child or the most recent worship tunes, and let the words of those texts express my heart’s cry. And I will also turn to prayers that have been a part of classic Christianity – some for hundreds of years, some for decades. One of those last prayers is this one: the Serenity Prayer.

            The origins of this prayer are unclear, and go back to classical philosophers. Certainly, the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr used part of this prayer in the 1930s, and he attributed it to a German theologian named Friedrich Oetinger. But as with many good sayings and quotes, there are several different theories and attributions for it. No matter who wrote it, the important part is what it says, and whether or not the words of the prayer fit with the teaching of the Bible and can help us as the Holy Spirit works in our lives to bring us closer to living the life the Jesus has given us.

            This prayer has also become very important in recovery circles. I’ve been in 12-step recovery for over 20 years, and almost every meeting I’ve attended has started with the beginning and most familiar part of the prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” There’s quite a lot to unpack there, and we will focus on those lines over the next three weeks. But the prayer goes beyond that to say this: “Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be. Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.”

            With that background, I want us to spend the rest of this week’s time focusing on just the first two words of the prayer: “God, grant.”

            There are many types of prayer: prayers of praise and adoration, prayers of confession, prayers of intercession, prayers of petition – even prayers of complaint! (If you’re not sure about that last category, there are several psalms I can show you.) The first words of this prayer show us what kind of prayer it is. This is a prayer of petition, of requesting. We are asking God for something. And so, let’s talk about what it means to ask God for something.

            Let’s start with God. This prayer is addressed to God, which is just a generic term, although we often think of it as a proper name. For us, we mean specifically the God of the Bible, the Creator of heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; the God who revealed Himself to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God who spoke to Moses, giving him the law and using him to lead Israel out of Egypt; the God who spoke through the prophets, did miraculous works through kingdoms and exiles and returns, and the God who has revealed Himself most fully in Jesus the Messiah, His beloved Son. When we approach this God, what does it mean for us to ask Him for something?

            Here’s one important piece. When we come to God to ask Him for something, that means that we know Him well enough to expect that we have the invitation to ask Him. I don’t just go up to strangers on the street and ask them to give me something good. But when I come to someone I know and love, and someone I trust loves me, I am free to ask with hope and expectation. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 7:7-11:

“7 Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

            What does this passage tell us about asking God? First, Jesus actually directs us to do this. It’s a straightforward instruction. Ask, seek, knock. But not just ask anywhere, or seek for anything, or knock on any door. Look at the last verse of the passage. “How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” Jesus is pointing us to the Father as the one who can give us the things that we need for life. And He compares the Father’s response to the response of parents. While there are cruel and painful exceptions to the general rule, most parents want and try to give our children what they need when they ask for it. When it’s time for dinner, we give our kids food they can eat, not rocks or serpents. But Jesus says the Father in heaven’s goodness in giving is so much greater than ours that the kindness of parents is evil by comparison. That’s pretty strong! We could talk a lot about what and when and how the Father gives, but the point I want to emphasize here is that it is good and right and even necessary for us to go to the Father to ask Him for what we need. That’s what He expects; it’s what He wants.

            What would keep us from going to Father God to ask for something? Well, the picture we have of God will certainly influence that. And often that picture has been distorted by things that we have experienced, or even by beliefs that we have absorbed from the world around us – often without realizing it. If you experienced a parent who was unpredictable, untrustworthy, or unkind – one who might in fact give you a stone or a snake – that can distort the image of who God is. And it can become a vicious cycle. We don’t trust God to give us what we need, so we don’t ask Him, so our life gets worse, and then we trust God less, so we ask Him even less – and it just goes downhill from there. On the other hand, when we can push through whatever barriers the enemy has erected in our relationship with our Father (or when He tears those down for us), and we ask Him for His help, we will receive it. It doesn’t always look like we might choose – sometimes dinner includes broccoli because it’s good for you – but it will in fact be good. And the more we experience His goodness, the easier it becomes to trust and ask Him again.

This is part of what the Hebrews writer is saying in Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Don’t hear this as a reprimand – it’s an encouragement found in the middle of a long list of deeply flawed people who were nevertheless blessed by Father God. Do you believe that God exists? If you don’t, you aren’t going to ask Him for anything, are you? And do you trust that what He gives is good? That He will reward those who seek Him? We will talk more about trust later in this series, but for now, think about trust as enough willingness to ask God for help. Or maybe it isn’t willingness, but desperation.

One more note about God before we turn to the second word. James 1:16-17 says, 

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

The ultimate Source of anything good in your life is God. If it’s a good gift, it comes from Him, even if it passes through other channels to get to you. The air you breathe? A gift from God. The car you drive? A gift from God. The work that puts food on your table? That’s a gift from Him as well. The people in your family, your community, your life? Those are His gifts as well. If it’s good, and you have it, you have it because God has given it to you.

Now on to the second word – and we are not going to go word by word each week, but these two initial words set the context for us to understand everything else that we would pray in this prayer. “Grant.” Or give. Provide. The Person we are asking for something is God, and in asking Him we are acknowledging that He has something we lack and need.

That can be hard for us for at least a couple of reasons. A few minutes ago, I mentioned beliefs that we have absorbed from the world around us. Here’s one: “God helps those who help themselves.” Do you remember where that is found in Scripture?…That’s right – it isn’t! Benjamin Franklin popularized it in America, and while he did many good things, his religious beliefs are not generally ones we want to take for ourselves. And he was expressing a belief that goes back to Greek myths about their gods and goddesses and the ways they interacted with people. Again, not a good source for us to build our understanding of the Christian God on. But many of us have internalized that as a part of our faith. We thank Jesus for salvation through the cross, and then proceed as if the rest of life and godliness are up to us. I’m reminded of the prayer Jimmy Stewart prayed at the dinner table in the film Shenandoah: “Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eatin’ it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for the food we’re about to eat. Amen.” Wonder what picture of God Jimmy Stewart’s character had? It doesn’t appear to be the same as what Jesus revealed. But it is one that can easily slip into our thinking, and so we don’t ask God because we believe it is really all up to us anyway. We adhere to salvation by grace, but then act as if sanctification and daily Christian living are things we are supposed to do for ourselves.

Peter, however, in 2 Peter 1:3-4 says,

 “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Now, we aren’t passive in all this. Peter goes on in the next verses to tell us to make effort to put these gifts into practice. But they begin as gifts – things God is doing for us that we cannot do for ourselves.

That brings us to a third and final (for this week) barrier to asking God to grant us something. Sometimes, our pride gets in the way. At times I don’t like acknowledging how badly I need God. A cultural message of self-sufficiency and independence, being able to do things on my own, has infected our faith. In fact, I need God desperately. Not just for the big things, but even in the small details of my life – sometimes in those more. I love the bumper sticker that says, “Do I really need Jesus to go to Heaven? Man, I need Jesus just to go to Wal-Mart.” And yet, it’s easy for me to adopt the attitude of a toddler who insists on doing it myself rather than admitting that I need help. And when I say, “God, grant” I am beginning with an admission that what I am and have is not enough, and that I am coming to the One who does in hope and expectation that He can give me what I need for this day.

I want to end each week by praying the Serenity Prayer, and I hope that over time, as you listen, you may decide to learn it and pray it as well.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

Thank you for letting me be a part of Clear Bible, and New Joy Fellowship for a season. May God bless you and keep you as you go through this week. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

1 SAMUEL #32: THE END OF SAUL

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

To the very end, Saul chose to act as if he couldn’t trust the Lord, as if everything depended upon his own ability to stay in control. When his own schemes and capacities failed, he despaired, and determined to be in control of his own fate to the very last, he took his own life. The great tragedy is that the Lord was always there for him, and was constantly trying to get through to Saul. When Saul killed himself, the Lord lamented his loss.

Let’s use Saul’s story to remind us that even when we feel like God isn’t there, he has never abandoned us. Let us give up on control, and instead, like David, trust the Lord in all circumstances.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 32

1 Samuel ends with the death of king Saul, recorded in chapter 31. While David was returning home, and then pursuing the Amalekites who had destroyed his town and taken his family, the Philistines and the Israelites began a great battle.

As I mentioned before, the Philistines invaded the valley of Jezreel, which was the only relatively easy way to get from the Mediterranean coast into the Jordan Valley of Israel. Saul’s forces were on a mountain ridge to the south of the valley, a place called Mount Gilboa. When the Philistines began to move east toward the Jordan, Saul moved to attack them and block them.

The picture below is of the actual area (with present day roads, reservoirs and buildings that would not have been there at the time, of course). The Philistines were invading through the valley in the left of the picture, starting in the foreground and pushing toward the Jordan valley in the distance. The Israelites were positioned on the ridges to the right. The little hill labeled “Tell Jezreel” was probably not there.

The massive Philistine army turned to destroy the Israelites. This was a good strategic move, because if they left them alone on the mountain, the Philistines couldn’t be secure in the valley. The battle became a rout. Israel’s army fell apart. Jonathan and his brothers were killed. I want us to consider some things in the following verses:

3 The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by the archers. 4 Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and mistreat me.” But his armor-bearer would not, for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. (1 Samuel 31:3-4, ESV).

Verse 3 contains some ambiguous Hebrew expressions. Most English translations make it seem like Saul was severely wounded before he committed suicide. That is certainly one possible way of translating it, and probably a good one. But even so, it is quite possible that Saul was not wounded at all, but only in despair. An almost literal translation of verse 3 would be this:

“The battle became a great burden upon Saul. When the archers came within range of him, he was deeply traumatized.”

The “burden” of battle could be intense physical combat. However, that doesn’t make sense when we learn that the enemy archers have only just come into range. If he was fighting hand to hand, archers would be irrelevant. They would not shoot, for fear of hitting their own men. From this, it seems likely that Saul was not even involved in actual combat. Therefore it seems probable that the “intensity” or “burden” of the battle was purely psychological for Saul.

The literal translation of Saul being “wounded” is “deeply traumatized,” or “anguished.” We have just learned that the intensity of the battle is most likely only psychological for Saul, and probably not physical (see previous paragraph). “Traumatized” can mean physically wounded of course, and it isn’t wrong to translate it that way. Even so, knowing that what is happening with Saul is already psychological, it would not be wrong either to interpret the trauma as emotional distress, rather than a physical wound.

I believe that this view is reinforced by two things. First, Saul is clearly afraid of being captured and “mistreated.” He says so in verse 4. Several commentators speculate that Saul was thinking about what happened to Samson, the Israelite judge, who was captured by the Philistines. They blinded him, chained him like an animal, and paraded him around to be cursed and spit upon for their entertainment (Judges 16:21-25). Saul was clearly afraid of this sort of thing. That certainly makes it unlikely that Saul had any severe physical wound, because if he was badly wounded, the chances were much greater that he would simply die before the Philistines could do much else to him. Remember, in those days, there were no painkillers, no antibiotics, no modern medicine. Wounded people died at a much higher rate. Severely wounded people frequently died within a few minutes or hours. If Saul had been severely wounded, he would not have feared what else the Philistines might do to him, because he would have soon been dead.

 Second, notice his armor-bearer’s response when Saul ordered the armor-bearer to kill him. The armor-bearer would not kill Saul, “because he was terrified,” (also verse 4). What was he afraid of? If Saul was mortally wounded, why would the armor bearer be afraid to finish what was inevitable anyway? No, I think Saul’s mood and his words are what scared the armor-bearer. He didn’t want to kill Saul because Saul was not physically anywhere near death.

The night before the battle was when Saul went to the witch of Endor, and consulted with a demonic spirit who masqueraded as Samuel. If you remember, that spirit had spoken only words of condemnation and despair to Saul. Saul accepted this message and believed it as if it was truly Samuel speaking. So, here’s how I think it went down: You have a man who has his entire life been insecure, erratic and manipulative. He is a control freak, now in a situation where he does not have control. He has recently accepted and believed the words of a demon. He is deeply emotionally troubled by the battle long before it even comes near him, in fact, he was troubled even before it began (because of his encounter with the witch the night before). When he sees that the archers are finally in range, he suffers deep psychological trauma. He is horrified at the idea that he might be taken prisoner, and made a spectacle in front of his enemies. So he orders his companion to kill him, and when that person refuses, he takes his own life. In other words, he gave up even before all was truly lost. The words of the demon were a self-fulfilling prophecy, in large part because Saul believed them and acted accordingly.

Now, I want to write about something that most Christians don’t talk much about: Suicide. It’s right there in the text, so I think the Holy Spirit wants to deal with the subject. But before we get into it, let’s get one thing clear. You may have known someone who committed suicide. Sadly, I’ve known several. I am convinced that some of the suicides I have known died still clinging to Jesus. There are others about whom I really don’t know. If there is any question, it doesn’t do anyone any good to wonder whether that person died in faith, or if he went to hell. That’s not the point of what we are about to consider. What’s done is done. I cling to the biblical truth that God is far more gracious and merciful than I can comprehend. We leave our loved ones in God’s hands. I certainly don’t believe that suicide in general is some kind of unforgiveable sin.

But right now, I want to talk to and about the living. If you are reading this, you are alive, and these words are for you, not for someone who has already died. Don’t waste your time wondering how to apply these words to someone else – these are for you, for me, for the living.

Saul’s suicide was clearly an evil, demonically influenced act. It was his lack of faith that prompted him to take his own life. It was his lack of trust in the Lord, combined with the fact that he believed and agreed with demonic words. He behaved as he believed. If you are ever tempted to suicide, please understand – you are being tempted by a demonic power. Do not listen to demons. Do not agree with them.

G.K. Chesterton has some insightful thoughts about killing oneself. He says:

The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned, he wipes out the whole world.

His point is clear, but we don’t often think about it. The person who commits suicide does not merely kill herself. From her point of view, she is killing the whole world. Suicide looks at the world and says, “As far as I am concerned, there is nothing worthwhile in the entire universe. I would be just as well off if the whole world is destroyed.” Now, many times, this is because of despair and hopelessness that things will ever get better. I have compassion for people in that much despair. But that level of despair sure sounds demonic to me.

And of course, suicide is not a private decision that affects only yourself. It is a terrible thing for those left behind to know that you preferred death to living on with them. Sometimes the suicidal person knows this. They are angry at loved ones, and they want to hurt those people as well as themselves. Suicide is not just self-destruction – it destroys everyone who knows you. Once again, if that doesn’t sound demonic, I don’t know what does. Sometimes, of course, the suicidal person just can’t see beyond their own struggle. They just aren’t thinking about how their action might affect others, or maybe they even think that everyone will be better off without them. My heart breaks for such people, but suicide is not the answer.

Some Christians may say: “Well, I want to get to heaven. I’m tired of the struggles of this world – I want to be in the peace and rest of eternity with Jesus. Wouldn’t suicide get me to heaven faster?” But that is so much like Saul’s attitude. Saul always insisted upon his own way. He manipulated, fumed and got depressed and sought help from demons – all to get his own way. Like the ultimate spoiled brat, when he realized that this time there is simply no way it was going to happen, he would rather die. We Christians are supposed to live in trust – not in control. We don’t get to determine how and when we die. To do that is to put yourself in the place of God.

I’ll be honest. Several times a year the pain I live with gets so bad that I want to die. I have actually prayed for the Lord to take my life not once, but several times. But I will not take matters into my own hands, because my life is a gift from God. It isn’t mine—it belongs to Jesus. Only the Lord gets to say when and how it ends. No matter how bad things feel, suicide is not God’s answer for me, or anyone reading this.

Remember, Jonathan and his brothers died too. Their result was the same as Saul’s. And yet it was entirely different. They died fighting for their country and for each other.

Jonathan showed courage. Saul showed demonic self-centeredness. I don’t think Saul’s death was the result of God’s judgment. It was the result of a lifetime of Saul’s self-absorbed choices, culminating in the final ultimate act of selfishness. About Saul, you can say for certain, “he chose his own fate.”

Even so, Saul’s story ends with people who loved God mourning for him. I think this is because they were led by the Holy Spirit. God always wanted Saul to turn to Him and trust him. And so after he died, the Spirit of God moved two groups of people to honor Saul in a special way.

After the battle, the Israelites in the nearby parts of the Jordan valley fled. The Philistines took over their towns, among them a town named Beth-Shan, which has been the site of an archeological dig for many years in modern times. The Philistines found Saul’s body, cut off his head, and hung the corpse on the wall of Beth-Shan. They did the same with the bodies of Jonathan and his two brothers. There is a reason that we call brutal, ignorant cruel people “Philistines,” even today.

The residents of an Israelite town further south in the hills on the other side of the Jordan heard about this. That town was Jabesh-Gilead – the place of Saul’s very first battle, the town that had been shamed for centuries, but which Saul had rescued. They remembered how Saul had saved them and finally removed their shame. So they sent a commando-type unit through the night to Beth-Shan. They stole Saul’s body, and those of his sons, from the Philistines, and brought them back to Jabesh-Gilead. They burned the bodies and then buried the bones with honor. It was a bittersweet  end to the reign of Saul, coming full circle to the beginning when he was younger, and did trust God. I think their actions were a reflection of the Lord’s sorrow at Saul’s choices. Saul chose his own way, and he suffered the consequences. But I do not believe that was what God wanted. He gave Saul the freedom to choose, and I believe he was sorrowful for what the king chose. The Lord reveals this same attitude in Ezekiel 33:11

Tell them: As I live” — the declaration of the Lord GOD — “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked person should turn from his way and live. Repent, repent of your evil ways! Why will you die, house of Israel? (Ezek 33:11, HCSB)

A second person who reveals this attitude toward Saul is David. Remember, David had the Spirit of God in a way that was special in those days. Often, he is a type of Christ – he reveals the kinds of actions and attitudes that the true Messiah has. And so when he heard of Saul’s death, he wept in sorrow. Because he was human, I’m sure he was more upset about the loss of his friend Jonathan than the death of Saul. But he reveals the heart of God. The Lord was never against Saul. He always wanted him to turn back, repent and receive grace. Inspired by God, David wrote a beautiful lament, recorded in 2 Samuel 1:19-27

19 The splendor of Israel lies slain on your heights.

How the mighty have fallen!

 20 Do not tell it in Gath,

don’t announce it in the marketplaces of Ashkelon,

or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,

and the daughters of the uncircumcised will gloat.

 21 Mountains of Gilboa,

let no dew or rain be on you,

or fields of offerings,

for there the shield of the mighty was defiled —

the shield of Saul, no longer anointed with oil.

 22 Jonathan’s bow never retreated,

Saul’s sword never returned unstained,

from the blood of the slain,

from the bodies of the mighty.

 23 Saul and Jonathan,

loved and delightful,

they were not parted in life or in death.

They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions.

 24 Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul,

who clothed you in scarlet, with luxurious things,

who decked your garments with gold ornaments.

 25 How the mighty have fallen in the thick of battle!

Jonathan lies slain on your heights.

 26 I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother.

You were such a friend to me.

Your love for me was more wonderful

than the love of women.

 27 How the mighty have fallen

and the weapons of war have perished!

The greatest tragedy of Saul’s life is that the Lord always loved him, continually reached out to him, never stopped offering his grace, and yet Saul acted as if God wasn’t there for him. Saul was never in as much danger as David, and he didn’t have any real reasons to be afraid and insecure. Yet he let his fears and insecurities rule him. David’s life was often in danger and insecure, and yet he lived in deep security, because he trusted the Lord.  But Saul rejected that path. He preferred to try to control things himself. He did not surrender his own will to God. But God’s love and grace and forgiveness were never more than a heartbeat away, if only he had turned to receive them. And so when Saul died, the heart of God was to lament his loss.