When Life Tumbles In, What Then?

Periods of wearing blinders, and walking through dark days, and days of wearing chains - all while the recycle bin for the blinders, and the light switch, and the keys were right there next to me, is plain self-inflicted pride and woe is me, in hindsight.

Why does that pit always feel so self-deserving? And am I the only one who falls into it so very often?

I think the Lord has been waiting for me to get to empty. To get near dehydration, before He really laid a message on me. And He surely did Sunday.

Sunday morning I was on the edge of the pew; the message we received, had me covering the sermon notes sheet in black ink and fumbling for my journal for more space to record his every word. I desperately wanted to remember every bit of it. It spurred questions. I wanted to raise my hand, from the fifth row from the back and ask, "Can we talk about that a little more?" Can you explain? "

In 1927 Scottish preacher, Rev. Arthur John Gossip, lost his wife of 30 years unexpectedly. All eyes turned to him the following Sunday to see how he would handle this ultimate tragedy.

Gossip preached:

"I do not understand this life of ours. But still less can I comprehend how people in trouble and loss and bereavement can fling away peevishly from the Christian faith. In God's name, fling to what? Have we not lost enough without losing that too?"

"'I don't think you need to be afraid of life. Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely, but we have a wonderful God. And, as Paul puts it, "What can separate us from his love? Not death," he writes immediately. No, not death, for standing in the roaring of the Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of the terror of its rushing, I, too, like Hopeful in Pilgrim's Progress, can call back to you who one day in your turn will have to cross it, "Be of good cheer, my brother, my sister, for I feel the bottom and it is sound."'

"You people in the sunshine *may* believe the faith, but we in the shadows *must* believe it. We have nothing else!"

Our pastor used these references to begin his sermon this past Sunday, and then posed these questions - Why do bad things happen to good people? Will a person continue to love God when something terrible happens?

We looked at Job - a man who had it all. He was righteous (blameless, upright, feared God, turned from evil); wealthy (children, livestock, servents); and religious.

Then enters satan. Satan tells God he's been in and all over the Earth. And the Lord suggests Job to him. My questions began - why would he suggest anyone to him?

Pastor Tim went on to say the Lord suggested Job BECAUSE OF his righteousness. I'm still thinking, but WHY? He's a good guy; one of the best; why is God throwing Job out there like that?

So satan goes after Job, and every ultimate misfortune happens to him within minutes. Literally. Livestock gone. Servants murdered. Fire of destruction. All ten children - killed. Nothing left, but Job. satan struck in a moment of great happiness.

Yet Job falls to his knees and face and...worships God. Blesses the name of the Lord. Wow.

He says - Naked I came, and naked I will go. The Lord gave and Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

How? Job is so in tune with God.

He fully understands that God is the ultimate source of all that you have - your job, your home, your friends, your family, your food, your everything. And it can all be taken away. This is not a threat though.

If you get that; and you believe that; and you have to believe it every day if you're like me. Like, wake up and say to yourself type of thing - thanking God for every single thing you have and knowing that it can all be taken away, then MAYBE it would be less painful when tragedy cuts. Because you would be grateful for the time you had. Still very difficult.

*I was blessed with another message Sunday night, from M. Chandler from two years ago (Luke Series) and I'll share some of his views and interpretations later, that fit in here as well*

But back to Sunday's sermon.

More questions posed:

If you turn from your faith and from God when tragedy strikes where will you run? Who and what are you going to turn to?

Will anyone serve God in their midnight; in devastation; in hurt, in anger, in the shadow of death?

God was good enough for you when you had your health, good fortune, and good family. Is God still good enough for you?

(I'm not preaching this to anyone but myself. Simply sharing. I fall many times, and don't lead, and don't deny myself the way I need to; I'm trying; but its a daily struggle; I just wanted to share the messages).

Also, we don't always know all of the circumstances surrounding a tragedy or loss, but God does.

"He is the ultimate source of all that you have. Your personal trials are not caused by fate or bad luck. They all relate to God's purpose for your life." (HARD). This is extremely hard, especially when you've lost someone,and you feel they were taken from you. Maybe God relieved that person. You just don't know.

And thoughts from Chandler:"I think...there are those of us, because of pain, because of sorrow, because of fear, we've become very indignant and we demand of God signs andwe demand of God objective evidences. And God is not a God of blind faith. Over andover again, He communicates His glory and He communicates His might and Hecommunicates His power. And what ends up happening in those dark nights of the soulis we want to forget all God has historically done for us and all the testimonies of othersthat we've seen Him come through in. We want to forget the testimony of the personthat's suffered and came to know Christ so deeply. In that moment, we forget. In themoment where it's our pain, where it's our frustration, where it's our fear, where we feelstagnant and wore out, we want to forget the testimony of the saints and we want toaccuse God of failing us. And in that moment, what we see from the story is that God's going to lovingly discipline you in that moment. In that moment, God's going to lovingly say, “Alright, I'll receive that, I'll hear you. But no man gets to stand in front of My throne room and shake his fist at Me. So We're going to break you down. We'll humble your heart. Very gently, because I love you, not with a baseball bat but with a scalpel, Iwant to show you that I'm God so I'm going to have to cut some things out here.” And it seems like the humble, the one who through tears says, “I don't understand. I'm trying to trust You. I'm trying to believe and I don't understand. I don't understand how this is getting me good. I don't understand how this is working my completion until the end. And I don't understand how to beat the sin in my life despite the fact that You've said I've got a way out. Show me the way out because I don't see it. Help me.” And then it seems from this little story, this little compare and contrast, that God honors the humble, that He draws near to them, that He speaks to them, that He even gives them explanations. Not always. There's a dozen other stories we could turn to where somebody's like, “What are You doing” and God's like, “I'll show you in fifteen years.” Or really His number isusually forty. Can I ask you just some questions? Because I think there are questions that we have to get to if we're going to make any sense of any of this. I'm speaking mainly tobelievers in here and those who have been introduced to Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Do you believe that He loves you? Because I think that's the question. Do you think He's vindictive and angry at you? Or do you think that He loves you? I think there's this real weird dualism that occurs in the heart of God when He presses us....I think most of us think He will love us and that's completely different than He does. And there's all this objective evidence that He does. He loves you enough to let you suffer right now. He loves you enough to let you go to a dark place where what's really inside of you gets churned up to the top. He loves you enough to let the Son of God, God in the flesh be slaughtered. He loves you enough to call you into Himself. Man, I could go on and on with objective evidences, but at the end, do you know that He loves you? And that in the end, that same Romans 8 passage says nothing can separate you from that, nothing, not sickness, not death, not persecution, not your own stumblings. But we see our sin as this reason for God to not have anything to do with us, and God sees our sin as this monumental opportunity to glorify His name in healing us from it. Do you believe that He loves you?...Because if we can rest there, we get to rest...even when someone we love dies, even when we're betrayed, even when our health disappears, even when marriage is difficult, even when a child goes astray, even when... The love of God is the most humbling force in the universe, not the wrath of God. The love of God."