[podcast]http://www.revkwon.com/podcast/believe-life_clashes.mp3[/podcast] Were going to begin our Lenten series. If you dont know what Lent is, its the 40 days before Easter. Scholars say that this period corresponds to the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. I know some of us dont understand this period in time in church tradition. However, let me tell you what happens during this period of time every year around churches all across the globe. They pray more, they ask God to do more, they look more introspectively at themselves and try to understand where God is moving and shaking in their lives and actively try to be a part of it. In this series during the Lenten season, were going to be doing the same exact thing. This series in March and April is titled, What Do I Believe? In this series we are going to examine how and why we need to trust and believe in God when it seems that there is no point at all in believing in God. The Bible tells us that God loves us more than we could ever comprehend, and because He loves us, He knows the people and things that are precious to us. But sometimes knowing that God loves us is not the same as believing that God loves us. I say this especially in light of what we know bothers us and what keeps us up at night and what God seemingly doesnt do about it. But its more than just that. Sometimes it is very apparent that its not God at all who doesnt do anything. Its more like, we dont think God can do anything. It really makes us question ourselves on what we believe about God. Listen to how Michelle McKinney Hammond describes Gods care for our concerns: Just as single women can believe in God for everything except a significant other and mothers can believe God for everything except their children, the same principle prevails here. We have trouble releasing our most precious things into the care of God. For some reason, we do not believe that what we view as precious is even more precious to God and that He is well able to keep those things we hold dear. How it wrenches our hearts when we have done everything we can think of, yet to no avail, and we are forced to release our dreams, our mates, and our children into the hands of God, stand still, and see His salvation. If God loves us as much as he promises in the Bible, then he also is capable of taking care of those things we hold dear. But the reason we cant and dont believe God will take care of things is because at some point in our lives, we all spin out of control. We won’t know how and we won’t know why. God loves us. He has rescued us and He has a plan for us. We want to believe God is good. But we dont live in a perfect vacuum. So what happens when the circumstances of our lives dont align with what God says? We can choose to focus on exactly why God has allowed this situation and how it came about, or we can focus on trusting God for the next step; but we dont because were spinning and spinning. That tells us exactly what we believe. In addition to keeping our focus on God, it is important to remember his infinite love for us. The presence of pain and disappointment in our lives does not mean that he does not love us. It actually means that he loves us all the more and has something bigger planned, more powerful than what were experiencing. Lets look at 1 Peter 1:3-9 this morning. In looking at this passage, were going to try to understand what we need to do when life and God clash at each other and when our lives spin out of control at a pace where we question who and what we believe about God.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by Gods power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
Isnt this the problem? We are living here on earth and heaven cant get here fast enough. We have promises that we dont actually have and were supposed to just trust them. But the more we try to believe it, the more our lives tell us that we cant because it doesnt match up to the promises that God tells us to have. It feels great to know and read that there are great promises for us. It makes us feel better, but if you gave it enough time, life and God clash and God comes out the loser. Im sure you can rattle off a long list of things in your life that make you feel that the salvation that you have believed in was useless to you at times in your life. Like when you forgot to study for the big test. Or maybe when the train you depended on broke. Or when the friend you thought you could rely on, wasnt reliable. All those things probably messed up some part of your life pretty good. You are well entitled to ask God, come on? It feels as though you havent had a good day, or even a so-so day in as far as you can remember and you begin to think that everybody else is rightGods dead, because if He were alive, Hed surely do something about it. Like, have you ever thought about this: where was God when THAT happened? In the meantime, our priorities are focused every here and there all at the same time. We have so much to do and not enough time. We cant trust anybody with anything because we dont know that they will do it correctly. What good is a reward that is shielded from all that is horrible and bad if were here on this earth experiencing everything horrible and bad? Lets keep reading.
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faithof greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by firemay result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Let me help you make sense of everything here in this passage. I want to finish my sermon here. The reason I want to finish my sermon here is because I want you to talk about, in your small groups, how you can keep on believing in light of all of this.
Islamic State turned up and said to the children, you say the words that you will follow Mohammad. The children, all under 15, four of them, said no, we love Yesua; we have always loved Yesua; we have always followed Yesua; Yesua has always been with us. They [ISIS] said, Say the words! They [the children] said, No, we can’t .They chopped all their heads off. Vicar of Baghdad, Andrew White
I want to say that those kids, they have received their reward. They are rejoicing up in heaven. Im going to tell you that nothing you face in life, nothing that you will ever face in life means anything in comparison to what Jesus has in store for you. There is nothing anybody can do to you; there is nothing anybody can say to you, that matters as much as what Jesus has done for us. Lets look at our memory verse again. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faithof greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by firemay result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. -1 Peter 1:6-7
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