SEVEN REASONS TO BE ENCOURAGED
[This is a reworked version of John Shearhart’s message, “20 Reasons to Be Encouraged.”]
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR Light Bulb jokes, 133 yrs old. (Reader's Digest)
1. How many divorced men does it take to change a lightbulb? Who cares? They never get the house anyway.
2. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to be willing to change.
3. How many fishermen does it take to change a lightbulb? Five -- and you should have seen the size of that lightbulb! Five of us almost weren’t enough!
4. How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two: one to screw it almost all the way in and one to give it a surprising twist at the end.
5. How many members of the rock band U2 does it take to change a lightbulb? One: Bono holds the lightbulb, and the world revolves around him.
B. THESIS
1. Life has a lot of discouragements. Everyone has felt like giving up at some point or another.
2. God knows how difficult life is and so He has given us many encouragements in his Word. We're going to look at some of those tonight.
3. The title of tonight's message is, "Seven Reasons To Be Encouraged."
I. GOD NEVER CHANGES HIS MIND, PURPOSE, NATURE
“For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed” Mal. 3:6.
A. EVERYTHING CHANGING BUT ONE
1. A lot of people change their mind about like they change their clothes; all the time! Husbands and wives change their minds. Umpires change their minds about a call. The Supreme Court changes its mind about a decision. And -- glory be -- even the IRS changes its mind (usually for the worse)!
2. Two of the rules for a Happy Marriage are, “The woman can change her mind at any time” and “The man must never change his mind without the proper consent of the woman!”
3. But the Most High God doesn’t change His mind. He’s like the unalterable laws of the universe; we can calculate when the sun will come up a 1,000 yrs from now!
B. THE VALUE OF GOD’S STABILITY
1. Aren't you glad God doesn't change His mind? He’s one person we can always count on, that will never let us down. We can trust in Him, no matter what else. He’s the same, yesterday, today, and forever!
2. Life is like being in a boat, with constant movement. But God’s Word is like stepping off onto solid ground. It doesn’t change like shifting shadows.
3. “Your Word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens” Ps. 119:89. “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” Mt. 5:18. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” Mk. 13:31.
4. What confidence we can have about the future and our status with God! We stand on the unshakable promises of God!
II. GOD IS IN CONTROL OF ALL OUR NEEDS
“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” Phip 4:19.
A. THE SCOPE OF HUMAN NEED
1. It seems like our needs are so great; we need everything -- money for houses, cars, insurance, food and clothing, gas, utilities, and a 1,000 other things. It's like the proverbial rat running wheel; we keep running and running and never seem to get anywhere.
2. But I'm glad that no matter how great human needs are, God has the ability to meet those needs.
3. JOKE. Every woman needs at least four men in her life: a banker, an actor, a minister, and a mortician. One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, four to go!
B. GOD IS SUPER-ABUNDANT TO MEET THEM
1. God didn’t promise to supply all of our "wants," but to supply all of our "needs.” Americans are used to a lavish lifestyle. The apostle Paul said, "if we have food and clothing, let us therewith be content."
2. God is in control. He may use a little widow-woman who only has a handful of flour and a table spoon-full of oil. We may share some little boy’s lunch.
3. We may be fed by a Raven or dine on a fish caught in a miraculous manner, but God will supply our needs! God knows what we need and will supply them “abundantly!”
III. GOD CAUSES EVERY TRIAL TO HAVE MEANING
A. A PURPOSE TO RANDOM TRIALS?
1. Many times it seems impossible to imagine that our trials have any purpose. What significance can there be in our dish washer going out? Or us having insufficient funds in our account? In the nagging pain of arthritis? How can there be a purpose in such things?
2. But if God is omnipotent (as the Bible says), and is in all places at all times, then anything is possible. He orders everything in the universe: from the infinite sub-atomic particles to the movements of galaxies.
3. If He can do all that, can’t he orchestrate all the minutia of your life? Why does He allow us to suffer? I don’t know. His ways are “past finding out” Job 9:10; Rom. 11:33.
B. GOD OF THE BIG PICTURE
1. ILLUS. “Looking at the Wrong Side”
a. A minister went to visit a woman who was very despondent and bitter at God over the circumstances of her life.
b. As the Minister tried to give her some words of comfort, she gave him the cold shoulder and kept working away at her knitting, needle work. She was developing a picture on one side of the material. Finally she said, “If God was really doing His job, my life wouldn’t be such a mess!”
c. The Minister, on a sudden inspiration, stepped over and snatched the needle work from her hands. Looking at the under side – which was a tangle of cut threads – said, “I don’t know why you bother doing this; it looks like nothing but a jumble of meaningless threads!”
d. She snatched it back and declared with chagrin, “You’re looking at the wrong side! It’s on this other side that you can see the design I’m working on!”
e. “That is my point exactly,” he said. “You are looking at the wrong side of what God is doing in your life; He has a wonderful plan and you need to see it from His eternal perspective!”
2. If we can understand that there’s a purpose in our trials, they become easier to bear. Think how Joseph's years as a slave or in prison could've destroyed his spirit if it’d not been for the dreams God gave him.
3. Paul said, “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works patience; 4And patience, experience; and experience, hope: 5And hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us Rom. 5:3-5.
4. This means that despite the way it looks, things are getting better for us all the time! Thank God!
IV. JESUS CHRIST IS INTERCEDING FOR US
A. OUR NEED FOR PRAYER
1. We all need prayer, don’t we? One cute instance of prayer, was when Dennis the Menace was kneeling beside his bed, hands folded, looking toward heaven. With an imploring look on his face he prayed, "I'm here to turn myself in!" Do you feel like that sometimes?
2. Now I appreciate all your prayers for me. I don't know what I would do without them. I appreciate my mother's prayers for me. But most of all, I appreciate the prayers of the Lord Jesus.
B. ONE MEDIATOR BTW GOD & MAN
1. How are His prayers different? He always gets what
he prays for! Isn't that awesome? What He requests from the Father, the Father will give Him.
2. So great is His influence with the Father, that not only can He asks, but also what His followers ask in His name will be granted if it’s in the purpose and will of God.
3. Jesus is the sole and only mediator between God and man. There’s not another. Not Krishna, not Mohammed, not Buddha, not Moses -- there is no other, but Jesus! “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” 1 Tim. 2:5.
4. What an encouragement; “Wherefore He is able also to save to the uttermost them who come to God by Him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them” Heb. 7:25.
V. GOD’S GRACE ABOUNDS MORE THAN OUR SIN
A. A GRACE THAT’S FREE
1. In many countries of the world, corporations have to buy the favor of those in power in order to get what they want, or to do business there.
2. Aren't you glad that we don't have to try to buy God's favor? It’s free to us, without money and without price!
B. GRACE GREATER THAN ALL OUR SIN
1. Paul said, "Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” Rom. 5:20.
2. Question: “If you added up all the BAD thoughts and motives of humanity, and weighed them against all the GOOD thoughts and motives, which would be heavier?” Prob. the bad, because there’s been so much sin produced that it staggers the mind.
3. Yet because of the life of Jesus Christ, His sacrificial death and His selfless love was so great, that to the heart of God, its positives -- tenderness and sacredness -- dwarf all the evils hatched since the fall of man in the garden.
4. So now, no matter how great your sin, God's favor for you in Christ is greater! Praise God for the priceless gift of Jesus!
VI. GOD’S LOVE WILL NEVER LET US GO
A. A LOVE STRONGER THAN BETRAYAL
1. It is a strange thing, the love that mothers have for their children. Frequently it has been observed that mothers of hardened criminals still love their sons with the same love they did when they were little boys.
2. That is a type of the love of God; that though we resent it and resist it, though we go against it and do everything to oppose it -- He still loves us and will not let us go!
3. Rare is the love that, after being betrayed, loves anyway. That’s what makes the love of God so unique; He’ll never stop loving us!
B. WHAT ELSE GOD’S LOVE IS STRONGER THAN
1. What happy words that Paul penned in Romans 8:35-39; “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 37Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” Rom. 8:35-39.
2. The strongest force in the universe is the love of Jesus; He prayed for His enemies while He was on the cross.
3. GREATER LOVE! “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” Jn. 15:13.
4. If you’ve failed God, be encouraged; He loves you still. Nothing you could do could stop Him from loving you
5. “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness’” Jer. 31:3.
VII. WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO A MUCH BETTER PLACE
A. PLACES DOWN HERE
1. I've lived in a lot of different places in my life: raised in Houston Texas (a concrete jungle); Springfield, Missouri; Hereford, Texas (with 5 million cows); and Huntsville. Some were definitely better than others!
2. I've gotten to travel quite a few places in the world; probably some of you have too, but you probably never felt like you reached your eternal home. Same with Abraham.
3. “Abraham….sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles….10For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” Heb. 11:8-10.
B. OUR ETERNAL HOME
1. But God sends us a word of encouragement in the Scriptures; He tells us about our eternal home:
2. 22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever” Rev. 22:1-5.
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: One Minute Can Change a Life
1. Sherman Rogers spent a summer in an Idaho logging camp. One day a logger named Tony crossed him and they nearly came to blows.
2. When the superintendent had to leave for a few days, he put Rogers in charge. "What if the men refuse to follow my orders?" Rogers asked. He thought of Tony.
3. "Fire them," the superintendent said. Then, as if reading Rogers' mind, he added, "I suppose you think you are going to fire Tony if you get the chance. I'd feel badly about that. I have been logging for 40 years. Tony is the most reliable worker I've ever had. I know he is a grouch and that he hates everybody and everything. But he comes in first and leaves last. There hasn’t been an accident for eight years on the hill where he works."
4. Rogers took over the next day. He went to Tony. "Tony, do you know I'm in charge here today?" Tony grunted. "I was going to fire you the first time we tangled, but I want you to know I'm not," adding what the superintendent had said.
5. When he finished, Tony dropped the shovelful of sand he had held and tears streamed down his face. "Why he no tell me dat eight years ago?"
6. That day Tony worked harder than ever before -- and he smiled! He later said to Rogers, "I told Maria you first foreman in deese country who ever say, 'Good work, Tony,' and it make Maria feel like Christmas."
7. Twelve years later Rogers met Tony again. He was superintendent for one of the largest logging companies in the West. Rogers asked him how he had such success.
8. Tony replied, "If it not be for the one minute you talk to me back in Idaho, I keel somebody someday. One minute -- she change my whole life."
9. One minute. Have you got one minute to thank someone? A minute to appreciate a person? One minute. It can make a difference for a lifetime. (Steve Goodier)
B. THE CALL
1. 12 “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. 14 “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. 15 Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. 16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches” Rev. 22:12-16.
2. Let’s pray about someone we can encourage!
