This is a follow up lesson. I am about a year and a half past my sons tragic death and thought it was time to give more encouragement to those who are in or going to go into the valley of the shadow of death.
INTRODUCTION
Our brains are pretty weird. Studies indicate that we have about 60,000 thoughts in a day and 75 to 80 percent of those thoughts are negative in nature. Negative thoughts are often influenced by the use of emotional reasoning that gives us an inaccurate perception of reality. We tend to run to the worst-case scenarios without any evidence to back it up.
I wonder how much lost sleep parents have had since the first child was born fretting over things that never happen. Your special darling Susie was supposed to be home at 10 and now it is 10:30. Every imaginable horror fills your mind until Susie walks in and tells you she just lost track of time! We do it all the time!
But…How do Christians cope when the nightmare comes true? My heart bleeds for those who lost loved ones in the flooding in Texas. In fact, it is still too close to the loss of my son, so when the news came on I couldn’t handle it, and had to turn the radio off. Knowing that there were going to be many more parents who were going to get the call that their child is missing or has passed on to glory.
In Acts 5, that was read last week, we see the new Church is exploding. Great success in outreach. Acts 5:12-16 gives us a glimpse of this success.
The word is getting out and people are noticing. The Church is exploding in Jerusalem and is starting to reach outside the city just like Jesus told them. The great problem with success is that it breeds jealousy and jealousy leads to persecution. So, the apostles were arrested, flogged, and told not to preach in the name of Jesus.
Then we flip the page to today’s reading in Chapter 6 and we continue to see growth. With growth also comes growing pains within the church. In chapter 5 it was the problem with Ananias and Sapphira. In chapter 6 it is an issue between the Hellenistic Jews complaining that their widows were being overlooked but not the native Hebrew widows. Deacons were now first established to oversee the daily serving of food, so no one is overlooked.
Then back to persecution and we get the start of the first martyr Stephen. Good ole Stephen. He was chosen as one of the first seven deacons. He was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He was full of grace and power and was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
Stephen. Excited to be a disciple of Jesus, being active doing what Christians should be doing, but little did he know what was about to happen. Some people started an argument with him, but they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. In common terms Stephen smoked them! They were made to look foolish against the Spirit that was guiding Stephen’s tongue.
Stephen thinks he is doing great, but these evil men were not going to allow Stephen to make fools of them. These evil men secretly induced men to make false accusations against Stephen. Without warning Stephen enters into a nightmare where the crowds, believing the false accusations, get so angry that they drag Stephen off to the council. Surely, Stephen will be saved like the apostles in chapter 5!
Nightmares take on many forms. You go in for a routine test and a few days later you get the call that you need to get in to discuss the results with the doctor. You come back from lunch with your coworkers, and the boss wants to see you in his office. You get the call from your child telling you that your husband slipped off a log, was injured at work, or flipped his dirt bike. Yes this congregation has had a lot of nightmares over the years. So, many of these come with that dreaded phone call.
The phone call comes, and everything changes in an instant. Your world has been turned upside down and all the change has been shaken out of your pockets. God told us not to worry about tomorrow, but he certainly didn’t tell us we wouldn’t have troubles in life. Matthew 6:34 tells us:
Each day has enough trouble of its own. What an amazingly true statement. So, how do we handle it when the nightmare comes true? For Stephen, he is going to be martyred in next week's reading, and his family is going to lose him for a while. So, how do we handle these nightmares? Here are a few things I have learned, read, and studied, that may help you all out.
STOP TRADING WHAT YOU KNOW FOR WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
The first thing I want us to look at is we must stop trading what we know to be true for those things that we know nothing about. In our hurt, we often start asking questions that we cannot answer. Why God? Why did you allow this to happen?
Now I want to be careful here, because I have often taught that it is okay to lament. In fact, there are many laments in scripture including several from King David. King David also asked some questions, that we in the foggy valley view have no answers. Let’s look at Psalm 22:1-2:
Of course we are familiar with this first line since Jesus quoted this passage while hanging on the cross. You can hear the anguish in David’s voice as he utters the word “Why?” The issue is not questioning God with these questions that we cannot answer. The issue becomes that we start just dwelling on the questions that we do not have an answer too and forget what we know about God. When we look at the laments, we see that they do not forget the facts. They do not trade the facts for the unanswerable questions. Let’s read more from Psalm 22:1-5:
The problems come in our sorrow when we give up on what we know, Like:
• God is faithful
• God looks after my ultimate good.
• God is Love, In fact he loves me so much that he sent his Son.
• God has redeemed me
On and on we can go. The importance of not forgetting the facts is crucial in our times of nightmares. I may feel that God has forsaken me. I may be asking why Lord? But I know that God is good, all powerful, and He will be my deliverer. Do not trade what you Know for what you don’t know.
BE IN GOD’S WORD ALL THE TIME
The second thing I want us to look at is that we need to be in God’s Word all the time. I know you hear this one a whole lot in this congregation, but the fact is we must be people of God’s word. You may say I hate reading. But that still is no excuse for not being in God’s Word. Get the audio Bible, but get into the Word. This is so important when the nightmare comes, because it is in His Words that we will find comfort. It is in His word that we will know the facts from our endless unanswerable questions. Listen to a few of these verses:
John 6:63 - 63
Psalm 119:105
Romans 15:4
Proverbs 4:20-22
Psalm 107:19-21
I certainly could find many more passages, but this certainly makes the point. We need the power of truth in our lives. God’s word heals, it delivers us from destruction, it gives us life and healing, it gives us encouragement and hope. Through all the trials and dark places I have traveled, it was God’s Word that has sustained me. It has been God’s Word that has kept me anchored in truth giving me hope.
GOD’S PROMISES GIVES US HOPE
The final one I want to look at today is God’s Promises gives us hope. Why is it important to cling to what we know about God and to be in God’s Word? Because contained in His words are promises and these promises gives us hope to endure the trials of today.
Jeremiah prophesied to a people who had been taken into captivity because of their disobedience to God. This passage we will read from Jeremiah also applies to us who are longing for the day when Christ returns to take us to our eternal home. For now we are aliens living in a foreign land but God’s promises are true listen to the words of the Lord spoken through the Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 29:10-14:
He will bring us back to the Promised Land. Eternity with Him. We are a people with great hope! Do not loose sight of this hope during your nightmares.
CONCLUSION
My prayer is these three thoughts give you some tools to use during your struggles. We all know that God does not promise us an easy life here on earth. In fact, he promises us more hardship in this life than ease. You see we are not guaranteed a positive outcome. The Apostles were miraculously released from prison where Stephen is going to get stoned. Were the apostles somehow better and more deserving than Stephen? Not at all. We cannot answer why the apostles and not Stephen was spared. But we can cling to what we know about God by being in His word. And we can rely upon God’s promises: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28. These promises than give us hope. Let’s close out today with a passage from Romans 5:1-5
What an amazing God we serve. If you have any need…
