God Can't Handle This... Exhibiting Our Pain

Title: God Can’t Handle… Exhibit

Text: Philippians 1:12-14 and Matthew 26:36-38

Bottom Line: God might be using your circumstances to exhibit to others how to navigate pain

Date: 2/4/18

Intro

Who I am...

Something about the day....

So great to be here with you this morning…

Tension

So we’ve been in this series for about a month now called God Can’t Handle This… Whatever this is… We’ve all had those moments where we’ve thought it sure seems like God can’t handle this… Or maybe he can, but he doesn’t want to…

If were all honest and open for a minute we’ve had those moments where we’ve thought God where are you, do you care, can you even handle this? Some of us might even been in those times right now.

We’ve talked a lot of this and I want to encourage you that if you missed a week or two, or maybe if this is your first time to church this year go to our website and watch some of the previous messages…

We are going to end this series with a short message and a question and answer time and we want to answer your questions… So what we are asking is if you have ANY question about pain/suffering let us know. We want to answer your questions. You can either email Drew at dfroese… Or write in on the connect card that’s in your bulletin and drop it in the offering bucket.

Now before we jump into todays topic let’s start off with a little poll… How many of you cry during movies? How many of you, that it doesn’t matter what happens, you will not cry… Even when you feel like it you will bite your tongue until you taste blood… Not that I’m speaking from experience… Anybody like that?

For those of you that are in that second group this topic today might a little more difficult…

Today we are going to be talking about a different aspect of pain… And I’ll be honest its something that doesn’t come naturally to me… And that’s exhibiting our pain. Sharing our pain, letting others know what’s going on…

I know for some of you you have NO problem exhibiting your emotions… You know who you are… Just kidding… Make sure this is known as a joke…

But that’s not me. I joke sometimes that it’s easier for me to get up on stage and share what’s going on inside me than it is to tell one person sitting across from me. It just doesn’t come naturally to me.

Years ago in college… Million Miles in a thousand years… Gail and I decided that we wanted to live a good story. In other words we didn’t want to settle for just an ordinary life. Not that that is bad, but we wanted to live a life that would be worth talking about. We wanted to tell a story that had to have God as the story teller because there’s no way it could happen apart from him.

So that’s what we set out to do… But I didn’t realize the implications of that until years down the road. One of the hardest pieces was to live a good story you have to actually tell it. Which might sound like a duh type movement… But that’s hard to live out. Because now not only do I have to go through whatever it is that’s happening, but I have to share what’s going on in my life. And that can be hard. It can be really really hard to share those painful things can’t it?

Whenever something happens in my life I have a choice to make… Do I want to keep it in or do I want to share it. What I’ve found for me is every time my temptation is to keep it to myself. I don’t want anyone to know. Because what if people think of me differently… What if people judge me… What if nobody can relate… What if they won’t listen and just tell me some platitude that doesn’t help… Right?

My guess is that’s most of us here this morning. Your list of excuses might look different than mine, but we still all got them don’t we…

?Teaching

I want to look at two examples in scripture of people exhibiting their pain the impact that made.

For the first example let’s turn to Phil 1:12… Now before I read this let me set up what’s going on here.

12 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear. Philippians 1:12-14