When Nightmares Come True

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.