Keeping It Together When You’re Falling Apart
Trust Me
1 John 5:1-5
Text from The Message: 4Every God-begotten person conquers the world’s ways. The conquering power that brings the world to its knees is our faith.
Today’s message represents my final in a series called “Keeping it together when you’re Falling Apart.” It works in tandem with Glenys’ presentation last Sunday on “Measuring your Faith” so that we will consider faith again today.
Author, Philip Yancey in Reaching for the Invisible God quotes George Everett Ross, minister, as speaking of two kinds of faith. “One says if and the other says though. One says: “If everything goes well, if my life is prosperous, if I’m happy, if no one I love dies, if I’m successful, then I will believe in God and say my prayers and go to the church and give what I can afford.” The other says though: though the cause of evil prosper, though I sweat in Gethsemane, though I must drink my cup at Calvary – nevertheless, precisely then, I will trust the Lord who made me. So Job cries, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust Him.”
The call to faith this morning is an invitation to trust God when you think everything is falling apart. In the midst of the difficulties you face, the pain you bear, or the darkness you stumble through, trust Father.
Monica Dickens in Miracles of Courage tells the story of “David, a 3-year old with leukemia, who was taken by his mother, Deborah, to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, to see Dr. John Truman who specializes in treating children with cancer and various blood diseases…When he was three, David had to have a spinal tap--a painful procedure at any age. It was explained to him that, because he was sick, Dr. Truman had to do something to make him better. "If it hurts, remember it’s because he loves you," Deborah said. The procedure was horrendous. It took three nurses to hold David still, while he yelled and sobbed and struggled. When it was almost over, the tiny boy, soaked in sweat and tears, looked up at the doctor and said, "Thank you, Dr. Tooman, for my hurting."
Faith is falsely interpreted when we understand it to mean the problem will disappear, the situation will change, the disease will be healed or the relationship will be restored and when it doesn’t we become disillusioned with God. While we desire these and in many situations it is the reality, there are just as many that God doesn’t seem to fix, heal or restore. What of them? How can we make sense of faith in these? The problem therefore is not God but our understanding of him and of how faith works.
These inconsistencies lead us to explore the realization that there is a God-part to our journey, our experiences, where we simply choose to accept God is God and he knows what he’s doing even when, especially when, everything within me suggests God is not anywhere near my reality. It is the picture of God in the garden called Gethsemane where a rare physiological phenomenon called hematohidrosis resulted in Jesus literally sweating blood. He agonized about the cross so intensely that blood oozed through his pores. Make no mistake about it – God allows us to plead our case, to speak our agony and ask for a change in the circumstances. But be reminded that with the privilege of pleading our desire comes our responsibility to surrender and pray as Jesus prayed, “Not my will but yours be done.”
That is faith. Sometimes we call it TRUST. It allows us to say to him, “God, thank you for my hurting”, believing full well that anything that comes to us will meet the will of God for us in the end.
If we are to keep it together when we’re falling apart we have to make room for something that we cannot theologically explain or scientifically prove – God is in it. I can trust one unchangeable truth that is anchored solid as a rock and that will never change no matter what the outcome will be and it is this truth, this promise from God –“I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU" (Hebrews 13:5, NASB) God is with you and me, personally, intimately, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, or as Jesus affectionately says in John 14:16 (ASV), “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever.”
If there’s anything we need in the church, in our homes and in the workplace of our society, it is people who know the experience of victory, people who know how to bring the world to its knees because of powerful faith, rather than the world bringing us down to its level. It can happen for you! If we will experience “the conquering power that brings the world to its knees”, that being our faith, there are a few things that must happen before we get there and reminders we need if we will stay there.
1. We cannot trust what we do not know – (verses 1-2a)
I read a funny story that relates to us the sometimes complex and difficult problems of relationships. “If you think your family has problems, consider the marriage mayhem created when 76-year-old Bill Baker of London recently wed Edna Harvey. She happened to be his granddaughter’s husband’s mother. That’s where the confusion began, according to Baker’s granddaughter, Lynn.
"My mother-in-law is now my step-grandmother. My grandfather is now my stepfather-in-law. My mom is my sister-in-law and my brother is my nephew. But even crazier is that I’m now married to my uncle and my own children are my cousins."
Relationships are not easy. They are hard work. Harder still is the building and maintenance of relationships with Christian views and practices attached to them. Yet, if we will ever know faith we must work on relationship-building and maintenance. John speaks of this in verses 1-2. To be “born of God” is similar to the picture used by John to capture God’s part in Jesus’ physical birth. John says in 1:13 that Jesus was “born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John shows us that just as Jesus’ physical birth was God’s initiative, so is this true of our spiritual birth. If God was to save the world, God had to come in the flesh into the world. Likewise if we are to be saved from the world and “bring the world to its knees” through our faith, we must be born spiritually. This gift is not for unrepentant people. It is not for those who exhaust themselves in good works and busy lives. It is for people who consciously choose to know God personally.
The invitation offered here, to live victorious through faith, begins with an invitation to belong to God’s family. We cannot trust a God we don’t know. Therefore, faith cannot be born until we know him. John then proceeds in verses 1-2 to speak of how this new birth brings us into relationship with Jesus and the body of Christ as “family members”. In speaking of Jesus he says in the opening verse of his book “we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim…” (1 John 1:1)
Bill Leslie is a pastor in Chicago. He described himself once as feeling like an old hand-operated pump where people would come and draw out of him until he was barren, dry and had nothing left to give. Bill visited with his spiritual advisor, a nun, expected her to applaud him for his unselfish giving, and maybe would suggest he needed a sabbatical. She said nothing along those lines but said, “Bill, there’s only one thing to do. You’ve got to go deeper.”
Dear friends, the world will draw what energy you have out of you. It tries to chew us up and claw us to death. It is a mercenary that hunts us down every single day. If we are going to overcome the world it will only happen by trusting God through Jesus Christ, and to get there we have to get to know him more deeply. If we’re to trust him we have to get to know him more.
2. As we grow in knowing God we learn to trust his motivations – (verses 2b-3)
Someone told a story of Neil Marten, a member of the British Parliament. He was giving a group of his constituents a tour of the Houses of Parliament. As they visited they met up with Lord Hailsham, who at the time was lord chancellor, wearing all the regalia of his office. Hailsham saw Neil Marten among the group and Called to him by name: "Neil!" Not daring to question the instruction of the lord chancellor, the entire band of visitors quickly dropped to their knees!
Too many people struggle to trust God but rather, are suspicious of what he’s doing, if in fact he’s doing anything at all. Yet, the story illustrates the unquestioning obedience we ought to give our King. Without question or challenge, without thinking of our ‘rights’ or demanding to understand the logic of God’s expectations. Theologian, pastor and author William Barclay notes, “Obedience is the only proof of love.”
Yet we need to learn how to just obey. His command is simple. That doesn’t mean it is easy so that we can simplify it to a walk in the park. It takes a lifetime of commitment, relationship-building, faith and investment. But it is manageable for us otherwise he would not have ordered it. He told us in Matthew 11:30, “my yoke is easy, my burden is light.”
Obedience is the source of life in our desert wilderness. Allow me to explain with an illustration I read about Arabian horses. In the Middle East horse trainers put this powerful animal through hard training. Absolute obedience is required from the horses, and trainers test them to see if they are completely trained. The final test seems somewhat brutal. The trainers force the horses to go without water for several days. When he turns the horses loose, of course the first thing they do is head for water. Just as they are about to drink the trainer blows his whistle. The completely trained horses will turn away from the water and go back to the trainer. They are parched and desperate for water, wobbling on their legs from exhaustion and thirst. But they obey. The purpose of course is to ensure a perfectly trained steed. The deserts of Arabia are harsh and unforgiving and an obedient horse could mean the difference of life or death for a rider. The commands of God are always for our good and preservation. Only a deepening relationship with God will trust that motivation. Yet it is important to get there because we must learn the safety of obedience, especially when the perceived answer to our pain and thirst suggests something else.
Our knowing, growing relationship with God leads to the final point:
3. Confident trust wins the war – verses 4-5
When God births us into spiritual life, and we grow in our love with God, we replace suspicion with confident trust. It is through this process of increasing, growing trust (faith) that we “bring the world to its knees”. When our world turns upside down we can have the testimony of Oswald Chambers, prominent 20th century Scottish Baptist minister and teacher. He said, “Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love. There are some things only learned in a fiery furnace.”
The world cannot upset confident trust nurtured in relationship. It accepts creationism above a theory treated as fact. It pulls from us the nobler sacrifices of our lives because love compels only the best. Trust pleases God when every other feat or accomplishment doesn’t get a sideways glance or his attention. It makes a man build a ship in the middle of a desert as his community mocks him. It prompts people to pack everything up, sell their real estate and go to the mission field. It believes the impossible promise for a child when he’s 100 years old! It prompted a mother to hide her baby from a tyrant among the water’s reeds from a reigning tyrant. It convicted an heir to a throne to meander in the desert with nomads, following a God called Yahweh. They trust deliverance when cornered, expect a way through the wall of opposition and even see the anointing of God poured out on a prostitute. Faith or trust in God topples kingdoms, sees justice served and promises fulfilled. Those who were the recipients of such miracles did not seek to know the science behind it or the logic in it. They just knew God’s voice and trusted it implicitly so that when he spoke they responded without question.
We take the stance of Asa, king of Judah when Zarah of Ethopia planned an attack against him with a million men and three hundred chariots. He called to God as recorded in 2 Chronicles 14:11, "O LORD, no one but you can help the powerless against the mighty! Help us, O LORD our God, for we trust in you alone.”
WRAP
- Know God
- In knowing God you will learn to trust his heart for you
- As you deepen in love with God, nothing in this world will ever shake you
