What to Do When… part 2 “When things go wrong”
Story – the summer before my sophomore year we had a really big summer camp planned up in the mountains of Tennessee. We were supposed to have repelling, mountain climbing, mountain bike riding, nature walks, and a lot of other cool things. I had looked forward to this trip so much, and I could not wait to get there on the bus ride up. We arrived and spent the first day on one of two trips, one went on a 12-mile bike ride with repelling, and the other went to the Chimney Mountains for climbing. I was on the bike trip and it was a blast, we got covered in mud up to our necks!!! Then when we were on the side of a mountain to repel, it began to sprinkle just a tiny bit… then a worker that was doing the camp came and got us and told us we had to go back to camp right then! As I rode in the back of that old beat up pick up truck the light rain turned into a summer down pour and I was so confused as to what was going on. We got back to camp and they told us that, that summer shower had been at the Chimney Mountains right before it hit us and one of the students on our trip had slipped and fallen to his death… as I sat there it was plain to see on peoples faces that we all had been hit with something that had gone very wrong.
Tonight we will be looking at the second part of our series on what to do when…
Last week we said that life is full of all different kinds of situations and all to often we get caught up in all this and lose our focus on God, So our focus for this series was to try to handle these times in a way that forces us to become more God focused, and less me focused. The first situation we looked at was, “What to Do When… we are confused.” In this message we looked at Jesus example from the garden of Gethsemane and said there were 3 things we should do:
Stop, and trust that God is with us, and will not
leave us confused
Seek, God in a proper manner in our situation
Submit, to God’s will and his desires…
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This week we will be taking a look at what to do when things go wrong. Before we dive into tonight’s topic, I want to describe a day to you and see if you can relate to it, You go to bed way to late the night before and somehow in your sleepless state of existence set the alarm clock to 6:00pm instead of 6:00am. When you wake up the next morning you realize that it is 7:05am and you have to be somewhere at 7:30… you have just slept in past the point I like to call stinkin’ late, Why do I call it stinkin’ late??? Well it is because you realize that there is no way possible for you to take a shower and get to wherever it is your going in even a little late fashion. So you throw on some clean clothes, on top of your dirty underwear, in hopes that no one will notice your smell. You have missed your ride so you know have to walk to your destination which makes you even later!!! On they way it begins to rain so hard that you look like you just jumped out of the shower with your clothes on. Of course you now find out that you had to turn something in and you forgot it in your hurried condition and as you stand outside holding back the tears, a truck flies by and splashes muddy water all over you…
You know life has a way of just throwing things at us that just don’t seem fair sometimes.
Sometimes we are hit by things that are really just nasty, ugly, and down right tough situations. It seems like if one more thing goes wrong we will crawl up in a ball and die.
On a more serious note, things can go wrong in this life in some really tragic ways. We can lose a friend or loved one to death, or someone we know may lose a person to divorce, or people may be disabled by emotional trauma or depression. Part of life is times when things go wrong. In the Old Testament there is a man named Job who had some similar times of everything going wrong. Lets read a few sections from his story:
Job 1:13-21 & 2:7-8
Here is a guy that I think we can relate to today. Maybe some of us can relate to exactly the same kind of things he went through, but all of us can at least see the suffering he went through and recognize that in our own lives. So what can we learn from Job that might help us handle our times when things go wrong in a Godly manner, one that is more God focused and less me focused? I think there are 4 things we can take from the story of Job and together with some New Testament passages we can come up with a Biblical formula for “What to Do When… things go wrong”
The 4 things I want to share with you are:
Thank
Think
Take
Trust
Lets look at these beginning with thank…
1. Thank, God for your current circumstances
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” NRSV (italics mine)
Here in this verse the Apostle Paul is reminding us that in life we are going to get distracted and want to focus on our problems and then begin to get depressed and discouraged, or begin to worry, BUT, instead of doing these things we are to “give thanks in all circumstances” not just in the good times or the happy times, but even in those times when everything goes wrong. He goes on to say that this is not just a suggestion or some good advice, but rather it is the will of God!!! When we look back to Job we notice that in verse 21 of chapter one he says:
Job 1:21 “Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked I shall return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
In the midst of all of his pain and suffering he says to God, “thank you for what you gave me and blessed me with, I recognize that it all belongs to you, and I bless your name!!!”
Then right under this in verse 22 it says Job 1:22 “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” Why did Job not sin, or was not charged with wrongdoing???
It was because he first of all thanked God! When we get our eyes off of our little world and look up to God and say thank you, thank you for even blessing me with life, thank you for blessing me with things, and people, and love, When we stop focusing on ourselves and begin to focus on God we can have the same things said about us when we go through times when everything goes wrong… in all this they did not sin! But, if we never thank God from the beginning we never get our eyes up out of the canyon of our problems and see that there is a bright blue sky above us filled with God’s love and hope.
So key number on is to thank God in ALL circumstances.
2. Think, about your life, and see if God is trying to get your attention
Like I keep talking about, one of the devils great tools is to use different situations in life to grab all of our attention and keep us from looking to God. Sometimes we just simply forget that God even exists, and we live our lives in such a way that it would be hard to classify us as someone who was following Jesus. In these situations we often find ourselves letting little areas of sin into our lives that we may have never let in before, or ones that we had let God cut out, but now we allow to creep back in. The thing that is so dangerous about being a Christian and not relying upon God for your strength and direction in life is that we often fail to see our actual need for Jesus. If I know I am an out and out sinner doomed to die, then it is easy for me to see my need for Jesus and his saving grace, But if I have a little Christianity in me, then I become numb to the real need that I still have on Jesus just like I needed him for salvation!!! I heard this illustration on the radio just the other day it fits perfectly with my point here: Doctors are afraid that because we are taking so many antibiotics today in our country, that bacteria’s are actually building up immunity’s towards these medicines, In other words something that can save your life, might end up costing you your life. Here is the analogy, if we get just enough Christianity in us that we fail to see that we continually need to depend on Jesus, we are like the person who has the bacteria that the antibiotics cannot cure!!! So to prevent this, sometimes God has to send along a little reminder that we are to stay focused on him, well sometimes that little reminder turns into a swift kick in the shorts…
Now I am not saying that every time something bad happens it is because we have some sin in our life that God wants to deal with. This is what Job’s friends thought from our story when they came to visit him though. While their view of the situation was wrong their intentions were correct to look and see if maybe Job had something in his life that God was trying to get his attention about. And the same if true for us, if we are going through a time when things are going wrong we need to ask God if there is something that is not pleasing to him in our life. If he convicts your heart of something then confess it to him, say “God I am sorry” and ask for his strength to get rid of whatever it may be.
Hebrews 3:7-8a “Therefore the Holy Spirit says, ‘today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…”
Remember first of all thank him, then think if you need to get something right with God.
3. Take, your circumstances as a chance to grow, don’t fight them.
Hebrews 12:7-12 “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom the parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respect them. Should we not be more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed”
This is an awesome passage because it gives us insight to another thing we can do when things go wrong… we can learn and grow!!! When you become a Christian there is a lie that many people believe. The lie is that now that you are saved all your problems are going to magically disappear. There could not be anything further from the truth; in fact many of your problems are just getting ready to start…
Here is what I mean:
For starters satan is going to come after you and try to undo all the work that God is doing in your life (this will create some problems)
Then God desires that we be holy like he is holy, so he begins this process of cutting things from our lives that are not like him (this also is a tough thing to go through)
The second thing I just mentioned is the point here though… for God to cut these things out of our lives there are times that he must discipline us. What happened when you were a little kid and you tried to do something that your parents did not want you to do??? For most of us our parents punished or disciplined us, not to make us miserable, but because they care for us. When you had some bad habits in school like talking too much in class, what would your teacher do??? Of course the answer is the same they would discipline us, usually with a detention or some other means of correction. The same principle can be applied to God as the author of Hebrews has done in our verse, he says that if you are a child of God then he is going to discipline us when we are getting out of line.
Story – I love this illustration and I use it all the time, but it shows this point really well… there was a little baby who looked up at this shinny pot of boiling water up on the stove on day. The child decides to reach up for the pot when the mom comes in and smacks his hand and says “NO” to the child. Well the child thinks they are smarter than the parent so they reach up and grab the pot and pull it down on themselves… well we all know what happens next, the baby is scaled with the hot water.
Was it pleasant for that child to be smacked on the hand, of course it hurt for a while, but the small smack on the hand would have hurt far less than being burned by a pot of boiling water. So when we face some times in our lives when everything goes wrong, don’t look at this as something that we should fight, but rather look at this as a chance to grow, And a chance to learn how to depend on God for more of your daily needs.
God uses discipline as way of teaching us and showing us new things about ourselves, and about God. Back in our story of Job we see again that Job gave us this example in chapter 42
Job 42:1-3 “Then Job answered the Lord ‘I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things to wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
Here we have Job after all this looking back and saying to God, know I understand that you were trying to teach me something. And the same is true today, God wants to teach all of us through our situations!!!
4. Trust, that God will protect you
So we thank God for our circumstances, we think to see if God wants to get our attention, take our circumstances as a chance to grow, and now we must trust…
I once heard that the definition of trust was being confident even when you are vulnerable. I think that this is maybe one of the most overlooked areas when it comes to dealing with times when things go wrong. We must place our full trust in God, not just say we trust in God but to truly trust him. I can say I trust in a chair, but until I run up to it and jump right in the middle of it, I really do not trust it. From the people of Israel not trusting God in the desert to us worrying and doubting today, this has always been a tough thing for people to do, But if we do not trust in God then we will not see the full blessings of God for our situation.
Philippians 4:6 – 7 “Don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Notice the last line, “will guard your hearts and your minds…” if we will simply place our trust in God then we can be confident that he will guard us and protect us. In the conclusion of Job’s story we find that God blessed Job with more than he had, and he died a happy man because he did our 4 “T”’s
Thank
Think
Take
Trust
Prayer time --------------------
If anyone is going through some times where they feel like something, or everything, is going wrong, raise your hand for a second so that I can pray for you…
God we thank you for the promise you gave us that in these times you will be our strength and comfort. We ask that you will remind us to thank you in all situations, to think if we have some things you might be trying to get our attention about, help us to take our situations as a chance to grow and to finally trust in you. We love you God. Amen.
