Feb 22, 23, 2020
Sermon
God uses our pain points.
Nehemiah 1:1-10
What does surfing champion Bethany Hamilton have in common with Nehemiah who rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem 2500 years ago? Both of them have left their mark on the world. We are going to work our way through the book of Nehemiah over the next eight weeks discovering how God used him to make his mark and how God can use us to make our mark on the world.
Making a mark is a longing in many of us. It is also a calling for all Christians. Making our mark is an invitation from the God of the universe to be a part of what God is doing because God doesn’t do anything without it making a difference, making a mark. Who among us hasn’t wanted to make a difference, to make our mark on the world? Maybe not the whole world. Maybe just our own part of the world or even just our own family. Most of us would say we want to make a difference. We want to know our purpose. This desire may be strongest in young adults in their 20’s and 30’s who overwhelmingly report that they want to make a difference, support companies who make a difference, and work for organizations that make a positive contribution to society.
Most people who know the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament will say it is about a man who led God’s people to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. That’s a fair summary but there is so much more.
In this book there are heroes and villains, and many setbacks. There is a king who could be trouble for Nehemiah. God is clearly involved from beginning to end.
His experience is really intense and few people are ever called to be leaders like Nehemiah but his experience speaks to our experiences and our desire to make our mark. That is the theme of our entire series – Making our mark on the world. Today we are going to start at the beginning before Nehemiah was a champion of his people, before he had laid everything on the line for his passion to rebuild the wall and his nation’s hope.
And, guess what? Nehemiah’s journey to making his mark begins at the same place Bethany Hamilton’s journey began, with a pain point. Both of them had painful events in their lives that set them on a new trajectory for their lives that eventually led them to making their mark.
So what’s a pain point? Well, we all have turning points in our lives. These are life changing or significant events. They might be things like graduations or weddings, or promotions. Some of our turning points are the best moments in our lives. And some are painful moments and events we wish never happened. These might be the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job instead of a promotion. I call these hurtful turning points pain points in our lives.
Bethany Hamilton grew up in Hawaii, surfing all her life. When she was thirteen years old she was on her surfboard, waiting for a wave when a 14 foot tiger shark attacked her. She survived but lost her left arm. That was Bethany’s pain point. Just two months she was back on her surfboard. The shark attack didn’t stop her from surfing but it did something else. It changed the trajectory of her life. Whatever she planned to do with her life changed. It was as if that shark attack caused Bethany’s life to take a hard right turn. She had been going in one direction and her pain point turned her in what seemed like a completely different direction.
The same thing happened to Nehemiah.
I’m going to read the beginning of Nehemiah’s story from Nehemiah chapter one. I would like you to listen for where Nehemiah’s pain point and his hard right turn show up.
Nehemiah 1
These are the memoirs of Nehemiah.
In late autumn, in the month of Kislev, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes’ reign, I was at the fortress of Susa. 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came to visit me with some other men who had just arrived from Judah. I asked them about the Jews who had returned there from captivity and about how things were going in Jerusalem.
3 They said to me, “Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.”
4 When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.
5 Then I said,
“O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, 6 listen to my prayer! Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel. I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned! 7 We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that you gave us through your servant Moses.
O Lord, please hear my prayer! Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you. Please grant me success today by making the king favorable to me. Put it into his heart to be kind to me.”
In those days I was the king’s cup-bearer.
Did you hear the pain point and the right turn? I’ll come back to Nehemiah in a minute. First, let me shown you these two elements in Bethany’s life.
We said the shark attack and the loss of her left arm were her pain point. Bethany’s right turn came because her story was so inspiring that she began to be asked to speak all over the country. Then a movie was made about her experience, Soul Surfer. She had been an ordinary thirteen year old surfer girl. Now, thousands of others, especially young girls and their mothers, looked to her for advice. It was nothing she had ever imagined for herself. But, it has led her to make her mark on the world. That was almost twenty years ago. Today she has over two million followers on Instagram and hosts conferences in Hawaii training especially girls and their moms to be unstoppable.
Which brings us to the point of our message today.
Its good news that comes out of bad news. It’s this.
God can use our pain points to help us make our mark on the world.
The bad news is, we all have pain points in our lives. I don’t have to convince any of us. Pain points are turning points in our lives that unfortunately cause us pain. They can be almost anything, maybe how we grew up or setbacks we have had or bad decisions or physical limitations. We wish we didn’t have them. We wish we didn’t have to go through them.
But, we can’t avoid them because pain points are a part of life. The Bible says the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Rain and pain are part of life. The good news is, God can use those painful experiences, choices, physical challenges, relational situations to help us make our positive mark, on our own lives, the lives of those around us, and on the world.
I want to say, it might be easy to say, if we had a choice, we would be fine not changing the world if only we didn’t have to go through our pain points. That isn’t a negotiation we get to make. God isn’t causing our pain points. He doesn’t have to. We cause plenty on our own and what we don’t cause, other people, circumstances, and mother nature cause. God isn’t causing our pain points. God is redeeming them. And, redeeming them in such powerful, divine ways that it leaves our mark on the world, sometimes a mark so big that it is out of this world.
You know how we always say, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist?” Well, sometimes it does. Meet my friend
Dave Gallagher who is actually is a rocket scientist.
Behind us in the picture is the actual Rover that is now on Mars sending pictures back to us. We are at Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena CA where they build most of NASA’s equipment. Dave has worked at JPL for over 30 years. Dave shared a pain point with the entire Nasa and JPL communities and scientists around the world. I’ll come to that in a minute. First, let’s make this point clear from Bethany, Dave, and Nehemiah.
We can summarize all these experiences this way.
Making our mark is a harrowing combination of pain points, right turns, and perfect alignment.
The idea of perfect alignment shows up next week when we see what Nehemiah does with the information he received from his brother. Today we are focusing on the fact that God can use every one of us for his glory and purpose. In the process, we make our mark on the world and much of the time, God uses pain points and right turns in our lives to do it.
So, back to Nehemiah. Our text says one fine Autumn day, Nehemiah was at the fortress of Susa when he was visited by a group of people including his brother.
Then, something happened. He got bad news from his brother.
Remember I said to listen for the pain point in Nehemiah’s story?
Here it is
4 When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.
Isn’t it true? Something always happens. We have all had pain points and we will all have more.
The redeeming thing about our pain points is that, through them, God uses us to make a difference, and helps us make our mark. And, we said that pain points often lead to hard right turns in our lives. Did you hear Nehemiah’s right turn in the text?
Here it is
In those days I was the king’s cup-bearer.
We will get into this more next week but I’ll just say now, being the king’s cup bearer is a great job. Nehemiah was at the top of his career. He was trusted by the king and respected by other’s in the king’s court. What in the world does being a cup bearer have to do with rebuilding a wall in another country 1300 miles away? Nothing whatsoever. This is the hard right turn. First, we hear his pain point – bad news from Jerusalem. Now we realize the right turn that news is going to mean to Nehemiah. His life is about to go in a totally different direction.
That’s all interesting and now let’s see a couple of take aways we learn from Nehemiah.
Being overwhelmed is normal
4 When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.
Nehemiah was overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed by difficult news is norma. It’s not as if having more faith or prayer time or devotions would keep us from being overwhelmed. No matter how much we believe, we are still human.
Most of us have little margin in our lives and no spare time. Almost any extra thing can push us over the edge into being overwhelmed. Don’t be so tough on yourself when you get overwhelmed. Instead, do what Nehemiah did. Engage with God. Nehemiah mourned, fasted, and prayed. Those are appropriate responses to being overwhelmed and good places for us to start. Just remember Nehemiah, the Biblical figure whom God used to do amazing things was first overwhelmed.
The second thing Nehemiah did may be surprising. It may be counter intuitive. But,
what Nehemiah did is extremely helpful for us
Recognizing our need for improvement is helpful
6 I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned!
This is a bit of a surprise. Nehemiah hears bad news that happened in another country far away and he turned a spotlight on himself and admitted his own shortcomings.
It may seem odd but external circumstances actually often motivate us to reflect on our own lives. Think of what happens when we are watching the Olympics. We say, those people are amazing. I should get in better shape. That’s reflecting on our own lives.
The story of the wall in Jerusalem made Nehemiah reflect on his own life. That’s a good thing. If we aren’t reflective, bad news can lead us to be numb, or cynical or dismissive. Unfortunately, we are bombarded with bad news today. Being cynical or dismissive seem like defensive measures we need to keep up. But, Nehemiah teaches us to reflect on our own lives. What do our pain points say about us. He didn’t immediately dismiss the bad news as someone else’s problem. He let it soften his heart.
Thank God that we have Jesus Christ in our lives. Our pain points don’t just leave us feeling bad. They can prepare us to turn our lives over to the one who gave his life for us. And who knows where that will lead.
Which leads us back to my rocket scientist friend, Dave Gallagher.
Dave’s pain point came in 1990 when the Hubble Telescope was launched and the world discovered its lens had been polished incorrectly and its pictures were blurry. It wasn’t just Dave’s pain point. It was a hugely embarrassing to JPL, devastating to NASA and disappointing to astronomers and scientists around the world.
Dave’s right turn came when NASA and JPL selected him to lead the team who would repair the Hubble Telescope. He was taken off whatever project he was working on in a back room somewhere and placed in the spotlight of a world waiting on pins and needles as astronauts from a space shuttle replaced lenses on the 16 billion dollar, school bus sized telescope 340 miles above the earth in space. Tens of thousands of people held their breath and crossed their fingers as Dave led the team from Cape Canaveral.
It worked. The Hubble has provided the world with the clearest photos of the furthest reaches of space. Dave left quite a mark on the world. Like Bethany the surfer and Nehemiah, Dave didn’t see his pain point coming. And, like Bethany and Nehemiah, Dave’s hard right turn changed his life. In many ways, their pain points and right turns defined the lives of these three people who have all left their mark on the world. Today, thirty years later, Dave Gallagher is the number 2 person running Jet Propulsion Laboratories.
For any of us living with a pain point right now, I’m sorry. Maybe like Nehemiah’s, yours came out of the blue, unexpectedly. The good news is, God is in the pain redeeming business. Whether your pain point is happening right now or was in the past, each of us can enter into Nehemiah’s process. We can accept that being overwhelmed is part of the process. And we can reflect on our own lives. We can invite God into our situation. God redeemed the pain points of Bethany, Dave and Nehemiah. We can spend some time this week asking God how he is going to redeem ours.
