Trials and Tribulations
We seem surrounded by such difficult situations and challenges in our lives, and particularly here lately in our church it seems almost everyone has either personally or in their families experienced such challenging trials and tribulations. Suffering pain hardship and even death has touched us all recently and it can rock the foundations of our lives, how we think and how we act. For many it seems the light has gone out of our world and we wonder where is God in all this, why is He so silent. God I’m a Christian, my faith is in You… but nothing is happening, my prayers are not answered… have You left me…. How can I have the faith You want me to have in the midst of all this pain? Why do you allow these things to happen….?
In April there was a bus crash in South Africa where 20 children were killed, a week ago two people drowned while been baptised in a river in Africa- the river swept them away! Why does God allow these sorts of events, and others which are perhaps not as dramatic to occur in our lives? This is what I want to address today. Because when we understand this it allows us to stand on firm ground, we may be stirred but not shaken (can’t say that like Sean Connery.. I’m afraid!)
Well for me pain and suffering all starts in Genesis!
Genesis 3:16-19(ESV)
16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to[a] your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, ...”
You see our world can be visualised as two circles that overlap, the one been the physical world that we are so familiar with and the other the spiritual realm. There is an overlap and some refer to this as metaphysical. But we need to understand this important fact and that is, after the fall of man in Genesis and the sin that entered our world, decay, pain and suffering took on a completely new dimension that exists with us today.
I would like to just address the physical world briefly. I have no doubt that before the fall of man if Adam had climbed up the tallest tree to get some fruit and decided to jump down , he would have still have sprained an ankle or hurt himself. You see God has created natural laws for our physical world which we need to be very aware of. One of which is gravity. The laws are there for our own good. Without gravity we would not be able to walk, we would be floating everywhere! How do you drink water in a glass? How do you store water? But it’s this same gravity that causes us to fall and hurt ourselves! God is not likely to change the laws of the physical world just so that you can drive across a swollen river to get to church, no matter how much you pray! You may be crying out “sacrilege- He did it in the Red Sea. You have no faith!” You see what we need is common sense. If you believe you can cross that river then touch the waters. If they stop flowing and build up and you can cross on dry land then do so, that’s what you call a miracle, and it’s not called that for nothing! Otherwise don’t go in! If you baptise someone in a flowing river, you all better know how to swim!
Much of what we experience is simply the consequence of the natural laws of this world that God has set in place. When I was a teenager I visited a friend’s farm and there was a bit of a wild horse that had not been ridden for many years. I did not have a saddle or bridle, but found some old tatty rope and fashioned a halter for the horse, no bit or anything, then jumped on this horse bare back-I’ve seen the Red Indian do this in the movies and it looked simple enough! I manoeuvred the horse near a fence post and scrambled on top of this horse. It was then that I realised I had underestimated the skill of the Red Indians and probably every other true horseman in the world because the horse took off at speed going so fast I could not believe it. The only way I could hold on and stop myself from slipping off with no saddle was to put my arms around its neck! It took off down the road about a straight 500m. I said now what do I do??? I didn’t have to think long because I came to a gravel road T junction that was in the process of being graded. I had no idea which way the horse was going to go Left, right straight and leap over the fence- either way it looks bad. The horse decided to go right and I seemed to keep flying straight- straight into the gravel. I survived but spent an hour or two digging out stones from my hands and knees- pain embarrassment, shock.
Was it God’s fault- of course not! Has it anything to do with faith ...no. You flout natural laws you pay the price! It was simply a stupid thing to do! Just to remind you the mortality rate of Christians is the same as non-Christians! 100%
Getting back to my two circles of Physical and Spiritual… not everything we experience in the Physical is Spiritual and vice versa, but there is an overlap
When the imperfections of this world, when this poison ivy brushes against you, you can feel pain, you can feel like it’s all so unfair, you can feel all alone and you may think “Lord why do You not answer me- why do You not take it away?”
If you sometimes feel like this, you are not alone!
Remember Psalm 22- David calls out;
Psalm 22:1- (NIV)1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.
What about Job he had lost his family, his health, his friends, his wealth
Job 30:20-22(NIV)20 “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer;
I stand up, but you merely look at me.21 You turn on me ruthlessly;
with the might of your hand you attack me.22 You snatch me up and drive me before the wind;
you toss me about in the storm.
Where is God when we need Him? Isn’t it amazing when God was with the disciples they did not recognize Him, yet He was closer than ever, and when they thought He was dead He was rising from the dead!
But why does God seem to leave us all on our own sometimes? I just love this bicycle analogy. When I was teaching my kids to ride a bike, I would hold on the saddle keeping the bike upright with them sitting on the saddle and I would do this till I had the confidence they could go on their own. But when I did let them go off on their own they sometimes fell off with many tears! Can you imagine if I never let go of that bike, they would only go at walking pace, they would not experience the exhilaration and fun and freedom of riding off on their own! There have been times in history when God has held the bike, (for instance the Israelites in the desert) but He has given us a free will to experience and learn about this wonderful world we live in and so He let’s go! Free will is part of God’s plan. Most importantly you need a free will to love. God won’t force you to love Him, but when you do out of free will, that is very special. But it’s that same free will that we have that allows us to enter into difficult situations, sometimes through no fault of our own. So God does not hold onto your bicycle all the time. Freedom comes at a cost.
I remember I planted many thousands of Blue gum trees, by hand. You buy the seedlings which are a few inches high and you plant them a couple of meters apart. I think it was our first year after planting we seem to have plague proportions of these little beetles that covered every little tree. It was so bad I could not see any green of the seedlings! I sprayed and did everything I could, but by the end of it all, all that was sticking up out the ground was a barren twig. It looked like I had put a piece of straw in the ground. I thoughts, that’s it, what a waste of time and money. But I left them. The beetles disappeared; well there was nothing left for them to eat! But later on that year I saw signs of life and now 10 years later they are few meters high and look as though they have been pampered their whole life. Sometimes we are like this, like Job, stripped of everything, but if our roots are in fertile ground you may not see it now, but You Easter will come!
I would like to have a look at a few ideas in handling these trials and tribulation.
Time. There is a Jewish proverb sometimes attributed to Solomon that is used when facing difficult times that says “this too shall pass” and the King was so impressed he had it engraved on a ring so he would never forget these words of wisdom.
Similarly when the disciples thought Jesus was dead, He was rising from the grave to change history, and like Jacob who thought Joseph was dead and it was not to be and great things were happening as Joseph became the Pharaoh’s right hand man, like my blue gums that seemed to have died, now thriving and like the difficulties we face right now, they too will pass and your dawn will follow your night
Ecclesiastes 3:4(NIV) There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. (There is a time to weep and mourn and in the Old Testament there was a set mourning period of 7-30days.)
We may think life is so unfair and that you are in no man’s land but you know what God says
Jeremiah 29:4-6(NIV)4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. What this means to us now is its time to LIVE! The past is the past; we are living in the year of the Jubilee! After the mourning there will be dancing!
Thankfulness. So much is written about Job. We know he was stripped of everything dear to him but then God speaks and gives Job some advice that we should all take heed of! Isn’t it interesting that God does not answer any of his questions of why Job went through all the trials and tribulations he did. But in some of the most powerful verses in the bible , God speaks and says
Job 38:2-4 (NIV)2 “Who is this that darkens my counsel….
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
That should be enough shouldn’t it? But He goes on for a few chapters in Job, and says look at the world you live in, the sea, the grasslands, the storms, lightening and weather, the dew the frost, the stars, the animals of the world, large and small, horses, lions, birds and eagles. God says He has them in the palm of His hand.
Look around - You too may have lost everything like Job. And if you are can’t find your way out of this pit, look to what God has created. I was looking at the beauty of these little blue Wrens that we have, there’s nothing of them yet they seem to exude life energy! What amazing and beautiful little birds they are! Let’s thank God for what He has given us
Psalm 8:3-6(NIV)3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?[a]You have made them[b] a little lower than the angels and crowned them[d] with glory and honor.6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their[e] feet:
Look at this amazing world we live in…thankfulness can set you free!!
Eternal View If we are to run this race of life, we need to set our eyes on our goal, and we cannot look to the right or left. This may sound harsh but nobody is going to run the race for you, not your husband, not your wife not your kids. You are running this race and if you take your eyes off Jesus you too like Peter will sink into the waters. Look into the light so that the shadows fall behind you, don’t look to the world!
Isaiah 31:1 (NIV)31 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel.
Look to God and everything else goes out of focus!
Spiritual warfare
Ephesians 6:12 (NIV) For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
The time for war has come!
Numbers 13:26-33(NIV)
26 They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land.27 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. 29 ……..
30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there ... We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
When Joshua eventually crossed the Jordan, there was circumcision at Gilgal, then they attacked the stronghold of Jericho. They marched around it for 6 days and on the seventh they took possession. I’m asking that we do the same. Rid yourselves and homes of all that is evil, Budda statues, anything of the occult, get it off your property, let there be circumcision of the heart, put on the armour of God and for the next 7 days pray against the evil one and on the 7th day let’s claim the victory that the walls may come tumbling down!
I’m going to finish off by praying right now.
Lord as we come before you this day cleanse us with your blood. We bring our families and our extended families into a covenant relationship with You.
In the name of Jesus we come against Satan and all of his works. We cover all our families and extended families with the blood of the Lamb and we break every curse, every generational sin, every stronghold, everything that binds us, we break in the name of Jesus.
We pray Lord that you would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that all of us and our families may know You better Open our eyes Lord as you did for Hagar, show us this well, that we may be filled with your Holy Spirit and bring healing, spiritually and physically in our lives Amen