“When the odds are stacked against you”
Scripture reading/text: Hebrews 12:1-3
VIDEO CLIP - ALIEN
Last week Glenys spoke on “Clearing the Hurdles”
- Perdita Felician: “I won’t quit until the final hour.”
- Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs medalist raised by a single mom (two Olympians in this story)
We learned that we can clear our hurdles by:
- Remembering that God is looking out for our best interests
- Relying on God’s all sufficiency
- Resolving to conquer
- Rejoicing that nothing can separate us from his love
I felt so inspired by Glenys that at the end of the sermon God gave me today’s text. I felt impressed that we should continue with the theme of clearing hurdles because it is not easy to stick with it. Discouragement cramps our momentum; the heat-stroke of opposition can drain our stamina and motivation. Running into obstacles that drive our faces in the asphalt of reality make it hard to get back up. Our stories are not unlike Felician’s Hopfner-Hibb’s or Simon Whitfield’s. Last Monday (Aug 18/08 Beijing Olympics) – Simon Whitfield took silver in the Men’s Triathlon. CBC sports coverage said he “mounted a furious rally to briefly take the lead late in the closing sprint before being overtaken over the final stretch by Germany’s Jan Frodeno.
"I kind of fought my way on there, and I thought there’s no time like the present," Whitfield said. "I tried to make it a battle of pure willpower. I gave it everything I had." There was a point in a television interview where Whitfiled admitted he wasn’t sure he could make it. Many of us know what it’s like to give life or a situation everything we’ve got but sometimes it’s just not enough and we have to accept coming in second or third – or last.
One Olympian was competing with a hernia. Another was running with twelve stitches in her foot. A third wanted to continue with a broken elbow but couldn’t because she needed two arms for her heat. How do people stick with it? When the odds are stacked against them they rise to the occasion and instead of quitting they excel. Jesus’ anxiety at facing his death was so extreme that blood vessels ruptured and he sweat blood – it’s a physical condition called “he-ma-to-hid-ro-sis” which is brought on by extreme stress.
I need that type of grit. I need determination that takes my hurdles by the throat and decides you’re not taking me down!
Hebrews provides some meaningful insights for facing life when the odds are stacked against you.
Remember:
1. THE PRIZE – PLEASING GOD (Heb. 11:5)
In our quest to survive and thrive when the odds are stacked against us, our story begins with faith and our earliest fathers of creation. One of those mentioned is Enoch:
- The son of Cain (who killed his brother Abel – author of Hebrews mentions this family stain in verse 4)
- Nothing like his dad (pleased God)
- Lived to be 365 years old!
The Book of Wisdom “has the idea that God took Enoch to himself when he was still young to save him from the infection of the world.”
The Gold in life’s marathon is pleasing God. Too often we burden ourselves with a different focus which asks, “What’s in it for me?” Sometimes it’s not even about that but focuses on what everyone else expects or how he or she believes I should perform. Imagine every day your first impression and only impression is “the only thing that I will pursue today is what pleases God.” We lift the pressure of others’ expectations, the demand for success and the temptation to perform! There is no higher prize than pleasing God. When he is the goal of our pursuits and activity, we cannot fail.
When the odds are stacked against you, remember:
2. THE FOCUS – THE FUTURE (Heb. 11:10, 14-15)
There is mounting pressure pushed on our young people. Magazines like Glamour, Teen, Cosmo Girl and Teen People are presenting images of perfection, success and fame. Buy-in tactics don’t only target teens though. Advertisers are now targeting audiences through major Motion Pictures. The Lotto 649 tag line is “Imagine the Freedom” and the list continues.
We can understand this obsession in some respects. Twelve-time awarder winner, Philip Yancey writes in Rumors of Another World, “Those who believe only in the visible world have a single proving ground of worth, and for this reason they celebrate beauty, success, wealth, talent – the values on prominent display at the magazine rack. The winners who excel get an ample reward in our celebrity culture.” Yancey continues however and notes, “On the other hand, if I believe in two worlds I will look on the same values differently.” He continues to evaluate a certain problem we are facing. “All too often, the attractions of the visible world simply overwhelm those of the invisible. Three centuries after Jesus, when the church had already spread throughout the Roman Empire, John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople (407 A.D.) complained, “We admire wealth equally with them [non-Christians], and even more. We have the same horror of death, the same dread of poverty, the same impatience of disease; we are equally fond of glory and of rule…How can they believe?” The problem that plagued us 1600 years ago will continue to plague us as long as we live.
Coming back to our text, Paul Ellingworth, scholar, author and translation consultant for the United Bible Societies of the United Kingdom, notes, “Abraham and the other patriarchs were seeking a city which, because it was in heaven, was not visible to them, but which existed from the beginning of creation, and may indeed be anticipated now in worship…Hebrews seems to envisage, not a heavenly city descending to earth, but believers rising to share the worship of heaven.” Abraham determined that neither he nor his people would return to the land of Ur. The land of Ur from which they came could distract them from their goal. “He was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (v10)
How timely St. Paul’s words to the Christians of Colossae (3:2), “Set your minds on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth.” If we could only capture this theme verse every day we could ride above the circumstances! Do we forget heaven? Have we forgotten that this is not forever; that this is not the end; that we’re just passing through to a more glorious hope to come? The next time the odds are stacked against you, sit down and think on this thought: “Heaven is coming.” As you leave in the present, keep your eye on the Eastern sky because Jesus is coming again!
When the odds are against you, remember:
3. THE DIFFERENCE – THE DIVINE (Heb. 11:11)
When my girls were little munchkins they often caught me off guard as they climbed up on the table or on the slide and after jumping off would shout, “Daddy, catch me!” I could have been ten feet away and would lunge toward them to catch them before they hit the ground. They never saw any danger. They only knew the amazing adventure of free-falling with a catch at the end.
It is exhilarating to move by God’s prompting and not have to worry about outcomes just because he is God and he can be trusted. Can you imagine the odds that were stacked against Abraham and Sarah? They were in their 90s when God said they would have a child, through which Abraham’s seed would be as easy to count as grains of sand on the beach. To have a child was ludicrous (they did, understandably, laugh) but it soon turned to hope and possibility. The only response appropriate to anything God says is acceptance because he is trustworthy.
William Barclay, theologian and author once wrote, “When we listen to [people] planning and arguing and thinking aloud, we get the impression of a vast number of things in this world which are known to be desirable but dismissed as impossible. [People] spend the greater part of their lives putting limitations on the power of God.”
Too often, when the odds are stacked against us – more bills than money, job lay-off, illness or worry for a family member caught in a bad situation – we are overwhelmed with no way out. Many times the only way to stop drowning depends on how well we can creatively handle the debt or market ourselves for another job. Too often, we weigh the odds of our life’s situations against our ability to figure out a solution when we should be looking at God’s ability!
Remember:
4. THE ACT OF CONTROL – THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE
(Heb 11: 23, 25-26)
The Detroit Regional Chamber provides a monthly tip business tip on their website. The tip recently provided spoke about the place for optimism. Alan Hahn, Business Development Director for a Corporation spoke about optimism. He said, “As difficult as it may seem, I believe there is good reason for optimism. First to clarify, optimism does not mean ignoring reality, nor does it mean trying to put a positive spin on something for the sake of optimism. Optimism is understanding the reality of the situation and realizing that we have a choice of how to respond.”
When Moses was a baby, the great Pharaoh was having all Jewish babies executed because he believed the Jewish race posed a National threat to Egypt. This bad news was an opportunity for optimism as his parents chose to trust God and with a little ingenuity they saved Moses’ life. At the end of the day he ended up at the palace and was in line for the throne as a Pharaoh. Imagine the irony! As the story unfolds, we learn that Moses also make some choices, very hard choices. He rejected the throne and the luxury of royalty when he learned of his Israelite heritage. One source tells us that in doing so
- He chose ill-treatment with God’s people
- He rejected the wealth and throne of Egypt
- Saying ‘no’ to Egypt was to say ‘yes’ to a life of wandering exile on earth
- He embraced the promise of a greater reward through Christ
The Egyptian Nation must have thought he was completely out of his mind, just as some of us may be thinking. :) But Moses saw the future. He may not have seen the fine details or understood it as we do now, looking back and reading the story. But Moses knew enough that he saw something big unfolding that he didn’t fully understand but one thing was sure – God could be trusted and he went with that.
When the odds are stacked against you, you can choose pity. You can whine and complain about how unfair life is and sink into pessimism, the opposite of optimism. Or you can be optimist; you can understand the reality of the situation and realise that you can choose how to respond and your response will make it worse or better than it is.
There’s one final point to make when we’re trying to deal with the odds being stacked against us.
5. THE MOTIVATION – THE MASTER (Heb. 12:2a)
I hardly know where to begin here. Simply realizing all that Jesus endured for me is plenty of motivation for me to decide that I don’t want to waste any of it. When I think about all that he would endure before and during Calvary, I always wonder how he could stare that beast down and not turn back. I believe Jesus captures his motivation in his own words. He said to his followers, "My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work.” Jesus fed on doing what pleased his Father! I feel confident in saying that if it was Jesus’ choice, to decide how to provide Salvation for the world, his first choice would not have been the Calvary Crusade. He said so himself in Luke 22:42 (The Message) – "Father, remove this cup (cross) from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?" Because of that unflinching grit, Ellingworth says, “{Jesus’} perseverance in the face of the crucifixion is the supreme example for believers…He is both the first to complete the road to salvation, and the one who makes our following him possible.”
We must fix our eyes on his example. We must follow in his steps. It’s like the story of The Jungle Book. Little Mowgli was trying to find his place in the world having been adopted by apes because his parents were killed in the jungle. In his journeys he met up with King Louie the king of the apes. Louie sings to Mowgli,
I wanna be like you
I wanna talk like you
Walk like you, too
You’ll see it’s true
Someone like me
Can learn to be
Like someone like you
