Finding Favor in Sorrow

So a lot of you don’t know this, but I am a man of many sorrows. I don’t mean like the man of many sorrows that the Prophet Isaiah refers to Jesus about, but I mean many sorrows as I have been seriously emotionally and mentally damaged and resulting into a callousness of the heart and an emotionless detachment. Until recently and even sometimes even now, I wear these sorrows on my sleeves and push back into a dark place and languish in that darkness. In fact, one of my close friends reminds me every week that if I sabotage one more relationship using the excuse of potential sorrow, she’ll grab the largest knife in her kitchen and cut my heart out and force me to eat it. You know that I deflect and change topics and laugh off things as well as the next guy and so I said, “explain yourself!” Here’s the explanation she gives me. “Jonathan, when you sense you’re getting too close, you ‘get too busy’ and then you lose touch, that’s your favorite method. Or you just say intentionally hurtful things hoping that the other person will walk away from you in politeness.” Now if you ask her and her husband, the reason is simple, the last two serious relationships and most of my interfamilial relationships left me more than a bitter taste in my mouth. Since you are all adults now, I’ll share the pain in my life, not so that you can compare who had a harder life because I know you all think my life is all roses and daises and good things happen to me while you sort of sit there quietly in pain. But the girlfriend I had coming out of college, who I thought I would marry eventually, she had dumped me, a few weeks after I came to OHBC like 8 years ago and she said to me, “you’re not going anywhere with your life. Sorry, you’re a loser.” Wow, did it break me? I mean seriously it broke me. It took everything in me to wake up in the morning and it took even more than that to wake up on a Sunday to smile in front of all of you. These things, each on their own left me tail spinning into a sorrow that they had to repair. So with every misstep, with every failure, with every mistake it became harder and harder to find God’s favor amidst my sorrow because that’s all I was capable of. That was all I was able to conjure on my own. My life was filled with it. It is true, I’ll admit it. I prefer most times that people hate me and don’t get close to me than allow myself the chance of being vulnerable because I live in the sorrow. But it’s not just with relationships. I do this with business and my projects—I don’t pour “my everything” into things, so I have lots of things and allow those things to be so scattered that I don’t feel too bad if one of them don’t fall through. Now you know that I’m not perfect. I bet you’re thinking, “woah, I’m a lot better mentally than Jonathan, thank God.” But I can bet you have one or two of your own sorrows in the form of mistakes, missteps, bad decisions and pain that have stunted our ability to move forward. God ordains favor for our future, but our pain, our sorrows hold us back from where God is ordaining that favor and we have to stop ourselves from holding ourselves back from God’s favor! Let’s get to the Bible. The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” – 1 Samuel 16:1 So Samuel felt the same way we do. He poured everything into Saul. He anointed him, he provided guidance and practically raised him politically. But Saul failed and as a result Samuel failed and he sat sorrowful. But he fills his horn with the oil of the LORD and starts to go where His new favor can be found. If you are mourning a moment in the past, you have to come to terms with the fact that you can’t have that moment back. You can’t get that moment back. I mean you can learn from it. And you can even keep yourself from doing that again. But that’s not what keeps us in sorrow. The sorrow that holds us is the nagging voice that keeps telling us, “what about that person that left you? What about the project you failed? What about the mistake you made? What about the time you wasted? What about the money you’ll never get back?” I want you to underline the phrase: “how long will you grieve.” Shoot, it took me years to get over. I mean, I poured everything I had and everything I was into these relationships and what was the result? Betrayal? Failure? But really, God wants to know, I want to know, and you should want to know, “how long will you keep grieving? How long will you keep yourself out of God’s favor because these moments are haunting you? Will it take 10 days? 10 months? 10 years? How long are you willing to sit outside of where God wants you to be because you grieve your sorrows? I’m going to tell you that these moments are gone and there is a new moment right now, right here and if you just fill your horn with oil, the oil of the Holy Spirit, the oil of fresh power from God and go, then God has something fresh for you and that’s the moment we don’t want to miss! Why don’t you circle that in your notes: “Fill Your horn with oil, and go!” This is a command from God. God is telling us all, who are here right now that we must stop being so sorrowful and move on into God’s favor. Sometimes when God brings His favor to us, we don’t recognize it. The reason we don’t recognize is it is because we define ourselves a certain way—as unfavorable. That’s what the psyche of sorrow does. Then we decide because of where we are, we are defined by it—as unworthy. I am going to tell you right now that’s wrong. Where we are and what we did doesn’t define us. Just because we messed up, doesn’t mean that we can’t be redeemed. Just because we had a few bad days, it doesn’t mean that God isn’t going to use us. Just because we don’t meet the mark, doesn’t mean anything to God. Here’s the problem: when we magnify the past, we miss the moment God wants us to be in the future because we dwarf what God does in the present. We need to stop that because God gives us fresh oil. He gives favor when we start going, not where we were. Let’s read. 6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.” 7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” – 1 Samuel 16:6-7 God looks at our heart. If our heart is for God; if our heart is repentant; if our heart is honest; humble and contrite, God is looking at us, wanting to bless us with His favor. All this time we were feeling sorrow for ourselves, God just wanted to love us and we didn’t want His love. We didn’t want the love that would set us free and liberate our hearts and souls. God doesn’t care that you’re not perfect. God doesn’t care that you don’t meet the world’s standards. God, because He is our father, wants to take us places and give us things despite our shortcomings. That’s His love for us. So Samuel has the horn of oil and is looking for God’s favor at the house of Jesse. He is looking for the new king and the first guy isn’t it even though he looks the part. This is what we need to learn. We don’t need to look the part to be able to receive God’s favor. Who ever told you that is a liar. It doesn’t matter if you’re not ready because God doesn’t care about whether you’re ready for it or not. He just wants to give to you. So this continues 5 more sons and God keeps saying “no” this isn’t it. Let’s read verse 10. 10 And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.” 11 Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” Let me tell you what this means. It means, yeah, he’s a runt! He smells. He isn’t palace material. And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.” 12 And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” The same way David is chosen, we’re chosen. We may be forgotten, left back, unloved by everybody else. In fact, we may even think there is something wrong with us, but God says, “no way, this is it.” You are it. You may have forgotten yourself in your sorrow because that’s what sorrow does. But God still anoints you. He pours on you His power. So it’s time to have a funeral for your sorrow and to move forward and forget about . 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. – 1 Samuel 16:10-13 Amen. I could just end the sermon here, but I know you’re filled with doubts and hesitations. I know that was way too easy. In fact, you’re probably saying that was way too theoretical. The hard part, and I know you know is, well how do I let go because saying I should let go is a lot easier than letting go. Let’s go to Mark 5. 25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” – Mark 5:25-34 Let me lay the ground work for what’s going on here and how this very familiar story relates to us in our sorrow. First, this lady, she was in a state of sorrow for twelve years. Just imagine the worst life you can possibly imagine for 12 years. You have to understand that the culture back then is misogynist and women weren’t even considered people. Then religious law says that if you’re bleeding, you’re not clean so you have to be outcasted. So she was not only second class, she was also religiously an outsider. We know that she probably had a family—husband and kids because she was able to go to the doctors. So she visited all the doctors and spent all her money and it all failed. So think about what her state of mind is. She is in the midst of sorrow like we couldn’t even imagine. We sit here and talk about heartbreaks and commitment issues; she was actually thrown outside of the city walls because she was suffering the longest period ever! She couldn’t touch her kids, she couldn’t embrace her husband. She had no money left because it was all burned trying to cure her and it just got worse. And I know you females know the pain of bleeding, because I can only assume that the type of bleeding was menstral. I’m told it hurts! So if you’re having a 12 year period, you’re probably hunched over, or crawling, but barely because it hurts so damn much. She had no realistic hope, but she sees that God’s favor can, just possibly…. So what did she do in a male dominated society? She went and touched Jesus’ clothes, so that she could be healed. Let me tell you how crazy this is. Jesus is a rabbi. He is thronged by lots and lots of young men. There are no women in the crowd. It wasn’t their place. I mean, she could have been excommunicated for even being inside the city as a bleeding woman who isn’t even cleansed ceremonially. This is just society back then. And he is going to Jarius’ house to heal his daughter. This is important because it describes the type of people that have come to summon Jesus—these are important people who are surrounding Jesus trying to get his attention; this is not the place for a woman, and an old woman for that matter. This poor woman is probably hobbling then crawling along the dirt while a throng of people are busy trying to push Jesus into the right direction. I can imagine that she was kicked, trampled and even stepped on. So she wills herself even further, clawing the ground ever deeper and kicking the dust on the floor as she drags her limp body across ever closer, but never close enough until finally she reaches out with all her strength and touches. She doesn’t even touch the hand of Jesus. She touches the dirtiest part of Jesus’ outer garment. Probably the closest to the ground, with the dirt. We all know that the object of power has power, but with Jesus, because he is God, even the things touching him has power flowing through them. So the woman reaches and she is healed! I want to tell you that this is the only way to push through our sorrow. We have to audaciously reach where we don’t belong and move toward God. It is tough. It is hard. It is near impossible. But if we just glaze over that which touches God, we will have moved on from our state of sorry into the place of God’s favor. Jesus sees that it was a woman, a person who didn’t belong there, and blesses her. We have to be like this woman in our moments of sorrow. We have to push hard through it and go to a place where we don’t belong. We should belong in the sorrow, but we can’t be there. The world is already dying and destitute; God wants us to push through it. He doesn’t want us to mourn over it. He wants us to audaciously reach for Him. We spend so much time in sorrow throughout our lives, it is imperative that we realize that we are not destined for it. In fact, through it, God has prepared His favor to us. Hebrews 2 says, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” God saves us through the blood of Jesus, Jesus, in his sorrow, paid the price for our missteps, our mistakes, and our pain so that we can avoid being subjects to a lifelong slavery. This is our hope and this is our rest. Receive God’s favor in your sorrow. Let’s pray.