The Storms And The Scandals - Defiant Hope

So um have any of you ever taken a daughter to college?

Hands if you took a daughter to college, how many of you have taken a son to college?

It's different.

It's different.

When you take a son to college, he takes his stuff with him.

When you take a daughter to college, he takes her life with her.

I mean, when Lisa went to college, she was the fri I cannot believe we had a couple trunks, we had suitcases, we had, and two safari boys named Doug and Brad.

Who worked for cheap.

And I had uh accumulated frequent flyer miles and it was a good thing because we were backed up schedule-wise before she left for college.

Uh we were in New Jersey, she was going to Wheaton, and so um we were able to fly everybody out there.

Small problem when we started to circle O'Hare Airport I i I've landed there many times, but I noticed that every gate had a plane and every one way had planes on it kind of uh nose to tail.

I'm like, what in the world is going on Well, what had happened was the night before there had been nine inches of rain.

Now, some brilliant uh strategist here, whoever laid out the O'Hare Airport complex , There is this one overpass everybody has to go under to get in there.

Well, one little problem.

It was flooded closed.

So no one was coming in, no one was going out.

Literally all the planes were stuck, and so were we.

I think it was estimated there were currently 10,000 people in the airport who weren't going anywhere.

I was there supposedly to record radio programs.

Everybody, I'm sure, had something planned that day.

And in the meantime, we have all this baggage.

It was really nice.

So We go and there was still one suitcase left on the carousel when we were done.

But but there um there we got all these bags off and we said Lisa sit on the bags and I mean it was crazy.

I mean you got Everybody's trying to look for something to eat, something to drink.

There were no cell phones then, so everybody's trying to make a phone call.

Everybody has a phone call to make Uh everybody's trying to figure out what they're going to do for the night because we're going to be there for a while.

They said that the uh the restaurants held out for quite a while, but the Bar was empty in about an hour.

And people are like, I gotta have something to handle this.

I'll tell you I had a coke.

But so It was just, it was nuts.

And I thought, I wonder, 10,000 people, all of them had reason to be here, all of them have plans for today, and nobody's plans are going to happen.

Isn't it amazing the uh the power of a storm to suddenly change everything?

I have to get to, do you really?

No, you don't You 're not gonna have to because you ain't gonna get there today, baby.

I have a very bad history with storms by the way.

So I go a few years ago to Connecticut to do some ministry.

It's right around Halloween time.

And right before the first meeting is supposed to happen, Karen and I are listening to the weather, and they had the largest One of the largest blizzards ever in in the history of the state of Connecticut on Halloween.

And so I'm like, oh that's great.

I come and we have this monstrous Well then I was, uh we were in New Jersey and New York as well, not long after that.

And that's when Hurricane Sandy hit.

So I have the reputation, I think I'm Jonah.

I'm not sure what the deal is, but I go places and there is a storm.

So, you know, you probably should uh You say, yeah, well, they do put out tornado warnings when I come, I guess, but uh but it's amazing.

Boy, plans change.

And when one of our personal storms hits I'm not talking meteorology here.

It shakes everything up.

That's the point of it.

See, God uses storms.

To disrupt the rhythm.

This is in your notes.

He uses storms to disrupt the rhythm and routine of our lives to take us to a new level with him.

This is how God gets our attention.

Everything's cruising along, and then whether it's medical or financial or family or church or whatever it is, something happens that is a personal storm.

Now this is all of us.

We all get those.

Some of them are minor storms.

Some of them are cat five.

I mean, when Karen 's home going, obviously that was my category five hurricane.

But he uses storms of all kinds, specifically one of the things he's planning to disrupt our rhythm and our routines, because he has something new he wants to do.

We want to go to the book of Nahum.

There's an interesting verse there.

But wait just for a minute.

Why don't we all just go around and share our favorite memory verse from Nahum?

We'll just start right here, down here with you, Steve, and we'll all just quote uh our fair Oh no, thank you.

Now you just cheating up here.

Yeah, this isn't gonna take too long.

Turn in your Bibles to the book of Nahum.

We'll allow five minutes Um the Lord is slow to anger, but great in power.

The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.

His way is in the whirlwind and the storm.

And the clouds are the dust of his feet.

When I learned it from King Jimmy in the old King Jimmy version, it says this, the Lord has his way. in the whirlwind and the storm.

Our personal storms, I would suggest to you, often are God's scalpel To perform divine surgery.

That's why this is called storms and scalpels.

Because he's in the business of doing makeovers There's an old um hymn that uh we have sung for, well, uh maybe you've sung for many years, and uh it says Um I th I I don't know if I have here we go with the cards again.

Yeah, um yeah, be still my soul The wind and wave still know the voice of one who ruled them when he was here below.

But there's another one that says this.

You remember this?

Storms arise and tempests blow.

By order from thy throne.

He orders storms.

He orders tempests.

And when a major life storm hits, hope gets hit too.

And it's time we're back again for Defiant Hope.

If I could summarize in one scripture my prayer for you For this whole time together.

It would be the prayer that Paul prayed 2,000 years ago in Ephesians chapter 1.

Here is his prayer.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.

It's your destiny to live in hope.

And he says, I just apparently he's like A lot of times we don't see it.

If the eyes of your heart have to be enlightened, he says, I just pray that somehow God will open your eyes.

And you will see panoramically the hope that surrounds your life, the hope that envelops your storms, the hope that envelops your hurt and your grief and your fear I want you to see the hope.

It's a wonderful prayer.

And I can tell you Do you remember what that original Hebrew word, the first time it appears in the Bible and appears many other times, that word tikva?

Remember what I told you one of its core meanings is It's a rope.

It's a woven cord.

Hope is a rope?

Hope is a rope.

And I can tell you what direction it's pulling.

The hope, the rope of hope is always pulling you up.

It's pulling you up out of your grief and up out of your self-focus and up out of your anger.

And up out of your pain to look at Jesus.

It's pulling you up from a mediocre, complacent place in your Christian life He says, I got more for you than this.

I don't mean for you to live down there.

That rope is always pulling up, and he's trying to pull many of us up to a new level even before we leave here today.

So, I'm going to give you, you remember we've we we've just drilled this, that the difference between whether the hits of life take you to a dark place or take you to a great place, do not depend on the event that happened.

They depend on the choice you make.

So the event is not the deciding factor.

My choice is.

I want to leave you with two choices to make.

When a storm hits you.

And if you get these down and kind of go, okay, I gotta remember, this is what I'm gonna do when the storm hits.

Some of you say, I don't have to remember, I'm in the middle of it right now.

Several of you have mentioned you're in changing seasons right now.

I don't know how it is where you live.

I know we got Wichita Falls folks here.

When the seasons change, it gets stormy There are days in Wichita Falls I'm told they can kind of watch the tornadoes dancing around around the town And somehow, a lot of times when there's a you know when there's one of those days when the temperature changes about 30 or 40 degrees in one day, you say, we're gonna have some problems here, you know.

They um they say in Arkansas they they one of the questions somebody asked me is if I knew the um uh what a what a uh uh tornado and a divorce have in common in Arkansas And they said, somebody's about to lose himself a trailer.

So um That's not your nose finesse.

That's for a reason.

Anyway, um You okay?

I'm sorry.

These things just fly in and they probably should fly right through, but no, they stop and land for a little while.

Here are two choices.

Here's the first one.

That's gonna sound familiar because we talked about this the first night.

Embrace God's purposes for the pain.

Embrace God's purposes for the pain.

I can assure you that there will never be pain, there will never be a storm in your life for which God does not have a redemptive purpose to take you somewhere you've never been before.

Most birds, when they know a storm's coming in, and they usually know they don't need weathermen, they know when a storm is coming in, they go and hide.

I am uh uh my understanding is that when an eagle knows a storm is coming He kind of sits there on the edge of his nest and says, come on.

Come on.

Come on.

And he waits for that storm to come.

He doesn't go and hide.

And when he comes, he flies up and lets the currents of that storm, the intense currents, lift him. and lift him and lift him.

He's not flapping his wings.

He's just got his wings out and he lets the storm currents take him somewhere that is higher maybe than he's flown before Because for him, the storm he understands can take him higher.

It's not the time to run and hide Well, I believe in ego power.

And if you say, okay, that's what happened the day I said I'm not going to waste this grief.

God help me if I'm going to hurt this bad.

Down Connett, I want to become more useful to you as a result of it.

So I have no idea still of all the purposes, but you embrace them sight unseen. because you know what your God is like.

That's why all human suffering, all human pain needs to be viewed from the cross.

If you're at the cross looking at what's going on, what's happening in your life or what has happened to you in your life, you'll understand that certainly this man who died on that cross for you will never do you harm.

Anyone who loves you enough to die for you is not going to do you wrong.

So standing by that cross, everything looks different and looks right.

We had um one of our Aunt Eagleswings warriors, not a current warrior, but uh from some years ago, he stayed at our house in New Jersey.

And he had difficulty waking up in the morning.

No, no, no, no, no.

I mean he had difficulty.

Did you ever see Mission Impossible?

Well, that was that I thought we might make an episode out of me trying to wake him up in the morning.

He really he slept with all his heart.

And uh I would try to get him up because he would keep our office hours and I'd try to get wake him up and and I'd go in there and I would call his name a few times and And uh he'd okay.

Well I'd go back and he was back asleep and then I come in there and I would I would kind of you know shake him a little bit and call his name and he'd wake up and I'd come back in and he was of course he was asleep again and and um Uh I d uh we did several baptisms uh uh at the time.

They were uh more Lutheran than Baptists, but there was water involved and We did uh we did some baptisms and uh I mean I was it was getting tough.

I was like I've got this is I can't it's taking too long.

We've got to figure out something.

So I just got a metal frying pan and a metal spoon And uh I just go in his room, pam, pam, pam, pam, pam.

He woke up.

It was really good.

He wanted that to stop.

And I kept doing it until he was standing up and and vertical A lot of times God has trouble getting our attention, especially about things we really don't want Him to talk to us about.

Sometimes he has to raise the volume a little bit and bang a pan.

And sometimes that storm is uh the banging pan.

Because God says, I've got something very important to say to you, and you need to be awake to hear it.

So, you embrace God's purposes.

C.

S.

Lewis said, though not to me personally, but he said, God whispers in our pleasures, but he shouts in our pain.

His messages come through the most clearly when we're hurting, and that is for sure.

Here I discover I read um Streams in the desert as a devotional supplement in the morning sometimes.

And um this little poem was in there in May when I was reading it in 2016.

And listen to this.

It may give shed a little light on something you're going through.

Not until each loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly.

Will God unroll the pattern?

And explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful in the weaver's skillful hand. as the threads of gold and silver for the pattern which he planned.

I don't know if that helps you, but that little poem helped me.

So you embrace his purposes, and what might some of them be?

I suggest some to you here.

Maybe one of those can be a clue.

To expose misplaced dependency.

In other words, you have kind of slid away from depending on him, and you've depended on something else.

Sometimes we need to uh lose a thing perhaps to see that it has become a God substitute in our life.

And when I don't have it, I realize, you know what?

That's what I was depending on.

That's what I've been that's I I I mean it was important to me.

It was too important to me.

I was talking to um Some brothers who work on Wall Street, and Brian's involved with a wonderful group that ministers to some guys who are are kind of high rollers and very successful in business.

I've had the opportunity a number of times to to share with them.

And uh after 2008, I remember boy, I was on the phone after that weekend in September 2008 calling some of these guys because I mean uh there was uh you know whole institutions were going down and uh this one brother um told me uh that He said, if you had asked any of us on the street, any of us Christians on the street, Wall Street, where our trust was, we would tell you, oh no, we we trust in God.

We handle a lot of money, but but we trust in God.

He said, until We lost it.

And he said it exposed what we were really trusting in.

We didn't know we were trusting in it until we saw how we were when we lost it.

Sometimes a storm drives us back to Him.

And we didn't even realize that we were depending on other things.

I'm going to share with you one of I you know I I I why do I even bring up disturbing questions?

I mean, there are certain questions that really are disturbing And one of the ones that has , it troubles me several times a year, because I think I'm guilty as charged, Galatians 3.

3.

And uh take a look at this, take a look at this question.

Um, you know, that's three, four.

Just a second, that's not the one.

I think we're one off there, and I might I probably Goofed and give you the wrong verse.

Let me just look real quick here at Galatians 3.

3.

I can just about quote it to you.

He says, having begun.

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

After beginning with the Spirit, oh there we go.

After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Listen, when you started out, you knew you really needed me.

You were like, Lord, I can't do this without you.

Whenever you're getting into new a new thing with the Lord or new territory, you're like, oh Lord, I really need you Right?

Because you don't know what you're doing.

You're clueless.

It's new.

There's so many questions.

There's no map.

And so you begin and you start running your race. and you are running the race in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And somewhere along the way, who knows when it is, you don't even know it, you don't change what you're doing.

You keep running, you probably run at the same speed, you run in the same race, but you switch power sources and you go from doing it in the spirit to me power.

God power to me power, and you don't even know you did it.

You go from spirit to flesh.

And so all of a sudden, it's a whole different race Because you were doing it, he was doing it through you, and now you're doing it, you don't even know it.

Isn't that disturbing?

We unknowingly go from spirit power to me power You want to know the price you pay?

Well, in chapter 4, verse 15, he asks this question.

Where then is the blessing of me?

No.

There's another uh version that says, what's happened to your joy?

See you're running.

You didn't you didn't stop the race, but the joy's gone.

Feels like the blessing's gone.

You feel cold inside instead of warm.

Guess what?

You went from him power to you power.

That's what did it.

So you just went from a turbine engine to a lawnmower engine.

There, Steve, that was for you.

Got some landscaping going on.

But you got this little uh power mower engine that is you and you you you you went from the turbine to this little thing.

That's still trying to do the same stuff.

Now I'm troubled by that.

So I asked the question: how do I know I have suddenly reverted to me power?

How will I know if I'm doing it in the flesh?

I got I like I have to ask these how questions.

I'm not that's not that's great.

Thank you for the theology.

I need a little meology.

How can I tell if Ron is suddenly running the same race in the flesh That might be what God's trying to show me through my storm.

I'd like to know how I could tell.

Here's what I think.

I think it's still in Galatians Galatians chapter 5 talks about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

Now you know the fruit of the Spirit passage.

Galatians 5, 22 and 23.

The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and gentleness and goodness and kindness and self-control.

So if I am living In the power of the Holy Spirit, what I do, what you'll, the vibe you'll get from me is, I'm doing it lovingly, I'm doing it joyfully I'm doing it peacefully.

I'm doing it patiently.

I'm doing it gently.

I'm doing it kindly.

I'm doing it with self-control.

How can I tell if I just shift it over to me power?

I'm doing it unlovingly.

I'm doing it unjoyfully.

I'm doing it joylessly.

I'm stressed ball instead of peaceful.

I'm doing it impatiently instead of patiently.

I'm doing it with an edge instead of kindly I'm doing it with some harshness instead of gently.

I'm kind of all over the map and not doing it with self-control Huh.

I think I found a test.

I just take the fruit of the Spirit and take the test and say, how you doing, Ron?

And I look at that and I go, well, I'm anything but peaceful today.

I think I just shifted over to me power.

Time for and the storm sometimes is what wakes it up.

So I call the fruit of the spirit your fleshometer Now, is that a word?

Can we make it a word?

I need a fleshometer to see if I have a spiritual temperature.

And my fleshometer is to measure what I'm doing by the fruit of the Spirit.

That is not in the original Greek, Hebrew, or Lithuanian.

Now another purpose of God, as you embrace his purposes, might be to blow open your God box.

This is just happening to me now.

To blow open your God box.

Every one of us here tends to have a box we end up putting God in.

He's bigger than any of our boxes.

Ephesians 3. 20 says how big he here's how big his box is.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more What's the biggest thing you could ask?

He's able to do immeasurably more than anything you could ask, anything you could imagine, according to his power, but Cool.

That power is at work within us.

Because remember, our hope is a living hope.

It's a resurrected Savior.

So Here's what happens.

And God has just been, I've been frustrated, even in the way to prepare these messages.

I have a way that he's always worked with me for years.

I get immersed in a book of the Bible.

You guys that have been here for years?

You know, I just get he'll he'll he'll draw me to a book of the Bible to study and I can't get out of it.

We joked a few years ago when I did Exodus Because I said I can't get out of Exodus.

I can't ex I can't exit Exodus.

I'm just there for you go just more and more layers of stuff there.

So I'm coming I'm just telling you this is kind of you know, true confessions.

So I'm looking at the president's retreat coming up, and I'm I mean I journal my Jesus time, so I'm like, well this is great.

I I uh you know I I just I I got a a mind to pull stuff out of the ways he's ministered to me through that book.

For months I've said, Lord, what book do you want me to go to next?

He didn't give me an answer.

I can't find the next book.

Lord, this is how we always do this, you know.

Not to get messages.

I mean to get messages for me, which then may become messages for you.

And so I've been having my Jesus time a little bit here, a little bit there, kind of, you know, more a buffet than a plated dinner.

And I'm like, Lord, it's almost the president's retreat time.

And we we haven't really been doing the book thing.

What's the deal?

And God said to me about two weeks ago, Because my messages for the president's retreat are months percolating in my own soul, in a book of the Bible.

And this time God just said, Ron, you're depending on the formula instead of me.

I'm we do differently this year.

I think most of us are formula people We get the way it's supposed to be done.

This is the way it's always happened.

This is the way God's always done it.

And he sends a storm to say, you've started It's not a bad thing, but it's not the best thing.

You've started to depend on the pattern, the way it's always been done, and I want to change it.

Let me out of the box you put me in And the result has been tremendous blessing for me in what he has taught me.

So maybe you've come to depend on the system.

Maybe you've come to depend on the habits you've always done.

Maybe you've come to depend on God's usual MO in the past.

Well he says, you're depending on that instead of me.

Don't you depend on the process.

I'm a very creative God, and when you start to depend on something other than me that might be about me, I am going to shake up the other thing so you depend only on me.

Does that make sense?

I don't know what I just said.

I would hate the diagram.

That sentence.

Um, I um I was gonna share with you what George Mueller said, and boy, I'm like, well that's the way it that's exactly what's happening.

God is pleased continually to vary his mode of dealing with us.

Now that's when I get that's when I get frustrated.

Like, hey, wait, what's going on here?

God is pleased continually to vary his mode of dealing with us in order that we may not be tempted to trust in donors or in circumstances, but in him alone. and to keep our eyes fixed upon him.

This by his grace we are enabled to do, and our hearts are kept in peace.

Well that one didn't happen right away for me, but eventually it did, when I embraced his purposes.

So I see.

I think I get a glimmer of what's going on.

One other purpose that you might need to you might find of the storm is to push us beyond our comfort zone.

He uses like like the eagle, mother eagle, stirring up the nest, he uses storms to get us beyond our comfort zone Um, I gotta show you in my my buffet Bible study.

I was reading in Judges for a little while.

A great book to be highly inspired by horrible things people did.

But the book of Judges has a lot.

There's this fantastic story in Judges 5.

I just got to show you this because it really hit me.

It was this I thought, oh my goodness, so it's so today.

Deborah is kind of the the spiritual leader in Israel at that point, and she has a mil military leader named Barak, and they're invaded by this army that has 950 iron chariots That is intimidating.

They can literally run over your soldiers.

That would be like the weapon of mass destruction of its day.

And so uh some of the tribes show up and follow Barak into battle.

Some of the tribes are ewal. when Israel needs deliverance.

So Deborah, she gets on this baby.

Listen to this.

The princes of Issachar were with Deborah.

Yes, Issachar was with Barak, sent under his command into the valley.

In the districts of Reuben, there was much searching of heart.

Why did you stay among the sheep pens?

To hear the whistling for the flocks.

Isn't that nice?

Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan.

And then why did he linger by the ships?

Asher remained on the coast and stayed in his coves while the people of Zebulun risked their very lives.

That's pretty stinging, don't you think?

This is a woman who's Lois, I could hear you saying things like this.

This is a she's probably a New York lady.

She I think she was from New York.

I'm not sure.

I mean this is like tell it like it is.

She's like Why are you staying in your cove when there is a war going on?

How can you be having a picnic when there's a battle right in front of you?

How many of God's people are staying in their cove, staying by their ships, whistling for the flocks?

Instead of going into the valley and being in the battle.

And God is trying to maybe get you out of a comfort zone.

Now you know what I found out was the thing that used to be for me a challenge and it took courage and faith to start it. becomes a comfort zone.

It was challenging when you first did it.

You had to get out of your comfort zone to do that, but once was what once was your challenge area, now it's become your comfort zone.

And I'm convinced That God has something very big for you beyond your comfort zone.

And guess what?

He's got to shake up your rhythms and your comfort zone for you get to your attention and say, this is not where I want you to stay.

I've learned something from this shoulder thing.

Go to physical therapy and um I was doing really well.

Um had suspects with these other surgeries, but you know, you go to physical therapy and they they work me pretty hard and And you got this level one and level two and and uh I was getting into some of the harder stuff to do.

I mean it's hard uh not because it takes a lot of strength in it, but just hard because you're trying to overcome some of the injury damage.

And uh And I'm watching these people doing the exercises where I started.

It's kind of like the baby exercises.

But I remember those were hard at the time.

Those were challenging.

And I I looked at them and I'm like, I said to the guy, could could I go do those again?

Because this is really hard.

This is hurting, man.

Actually, I want do I I want to go back to what's comfortable and easy and not hard.

I'm not going to grow.

I'm not going to get any stronger.

My capability is never going to be any greater.

I'll be stuck at that level.

I literally have to leave my comfort zone to grow.

I have to leave my comfort zone to get stronger.

I have to leave my comfort zone To be able to have full function and do everything I'm supposed to be able to do.

So do you.

You cannot stay in your comfort zone Most Americans and you can look around and feel really good about yourself because probably most Christians are more comfortable than you are and they're doing exercises down here and you're at level two and God says, Well, I want you at level four, baby And you cannot stay comfortable.

If comfort's going to decide what you do, say this is too hard.

This is too uh too costly.

This is too risky.

I'm a planner.

I don't have all the answers.

I don't have the plan.

I don't know how this is going to work.

If you stay where it's comfortable, you will never be stronger, and you will likely miss the will of God.

Did you get that?

You will likely miss the will of God.

Stay in your cove, stay by your ships, stay with the sheep.

Great.

If you stay where it's safe, well, I can tell you seldom does God's will leave you in your comfort zone The other, I said there were two choices you need to make if you want to come out on the right side of this storm.

One is to embrace the purposes.

The other is to ask the questions God wants you to ask.

I would suggest to you that until our world is shaken, There are things we will not stand back and evaluate.

There are questions we don't think to ask or don't want to ask.

And it's I've begun to learn that that's exactly what the storm is supposed to do, is to get you thinking about some stuff you otherwise might not think.

Like what, Ron?

Well, first of all, he wants you to ask questions about revaluing.

Revaluing.

God uses a storm to clarify the things that really matter and the things that really don't.

You ever yeah I know you have you remember seeing uh then when the when the hurricanes hit Texas and Florida?

And how many times, tornadoes, I mean, how many times on the news, the fires in California?

How many times have you had people say we've lost everything?

But we still have what really matters.

Still got my family.

There's two lists in life, the things that really matter and the things that really don't.

And the lists continually get mixed up.

And things that really don't matter end up on the things that really matter list to us. slide over to don't matter because they get neglected a lot.

And the storm comes along and God says I want you to take a look at what your values right now.

And he'll use the storm to help you know what's really important and what you're supposed to be focusing your life on.

It happened to Paul in Acts 27 when he was in that terrible hurricane and the ship was coming apart and where neither sun nor stars appeared for many days.

Nothing to navigate by, and the storm continued raging.

We gave up all hope.

Wow, Paul, we gave up hope, all hope of being saved.

But last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve Stood beside me and said, Do not be afraid, Paul.

You're uh I told you you're going to stay on trial before Caesar and you're going to, and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.

You know what I read in that God basically said, everybody thinks the ship is what matters.

The ship is not what matters.

The ship's going to go to pieces.

Two things matter.

Your mission and these people.

And your mission is still happening, and these people are still happening.

Forget the ship.

It's going down.

But the ship is not what matters.

And Paul's values are clarified in this encounter with the angel of God.

And he's and he comes back and reports, guys, what really matters is I've got a mission in Rome and I got you and you're going to be okay.

I think it was values clarification time right there.

Here's an interesting verse, Ecclesiastes 7.

14.

Do we have that?

I don't know if I gave that to you or not.

Ecclesiastes 7. 14 says this.

When times are bad, when times are good, well here we go.

When times are good.

Be happy.

Don't you like Bible verses that are easy to obey?

When times are good, be happy.

When times are bad, be sad.

Well, actually , my translation says this, when times are good to be happy, when times are bad, consider.

And it goes on to tell you some things to think about.

But I think what God is saying is, when you got good times, fine, celebrate.

When times are bad, I want you to be thinking about some things.

It's in order for you to consider some things you might not otherwise think about.

So here's some questions to ask about revaluing.

What priorities do I need to evaluate?

What where have I got my priorities mixed up?

What important things have I been neglecting?

What important things have I been neglecting?

Not meaning to, but The storm has made me think about this.

What weakness or sin is God revealing to me through this?

Something I haven't really looked at.

A corner of my life's a closet that is dark and I'm trying to figure out what's wrong here.

What's going on with this storm?

Ask about your sin.

And what have I done or not done that helped bring this on?

That's how you grow from the storm.

Not all those questions will have a bad answer, but they're important questions to ask.

That day that I told you about when Karen was code blue?

In the hospital, and God gave her back to me.

Thank God for those wee years.

But um I I uh had some sobering moments watching her in that CICU room.

And I realized, and I came up with a word, I needed to re-treasure.

The woman God had given to me.

Oh, I knew she was a treasure, but I needed to again remember that what an incredible person I had here.

And really make sure I'm treating her like the treasure she is.

There's a wake-up call in a way.

I wasn't being bad, but I don't think it was enough.

So for me, I literally had a sobering, life-changing, revaluing moment because of a pretty stiff storm that had hit me.

Here's um uh another thing God's wants us you to ask questions about.

He wants you to ask questions about recycling Now that's not taking out the plastic, but by recycling, Isaiah 61, 3, we don't have to put it up there.

We've looked at it a couple of times.

God wants to change these ashes, take these ashes and make them into beauty.

Joseph, after all he went through, you're familiar with Genesis 50-20, says this.

You intended to harm me?

Now, look, I know my brothers weren't praying about what to do, how to treat their brother when they threw me in a pit.

When they sold me as a slave.

My their brother, flesh and blood brother.

He said, I know, I know that you wanted to harm me, but you got overruled, baby.

It was a thing you did, but you got overruled.

God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Do you realize what happened here?

The evil and injustice and abuse of his family was used by God to get him to Egypt where he probably would have never gone, and to put him in a position into the system with Potiphar and then the prison and then the former servant and then getting out and Pharaoh having a dream, and Joseph interprets a dream, becomes the assistant Pharaoh, becomes the second most powerful man in the world. and sees from God how to prepare for a famine and has the stores, stores up for seven years, and he saves his own family's life.

He saves the lives of thousands of people.

So, through an act of evil, pure evil, pure injustice.

Talk about a storm thrown into prison, accused of what he didn't do.

All of this awful stuff, God said, I'm putting you to where you're gonna save many lives.

I see it happening with our warriors.

Horrible things from their lives.

But God is now using that to save many lives.

It was intended for evil.

But God has made a far greater good out of it.

He's the He invented recycling.

I landed at LaGuardia Airport the first time and my friend who picked me up said, Ron, you know you just landed on the garbage of New York City.

That's disturbing.

What do you mean?

He said, well, it sticks out there in the bay and it does.

Surrounded by water, the the runways are.

You've flown into there, Mark.

And uh and but it's all landfill.

It once was somebody's garbage, and now it's an airport, one of the busiest in the country.

See, people are really good.

We got these engineers that can can turn something, can turn trash into something valuable.

Well, God's really good at that.

If you'll let him You know what I've learned?

God uses trouble, this is in your notes, God uses trouble to develop compassion.

If you don't let your heart turn hard.

Second Corinthians 1 says this Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

We looked at this the other night.

In other words, God says, I will do things for you if you'll let me I will do things for you in your pain, which will equip you to be a wounded healer of other people.

In a hurting world, you're surrounded by wounded people.

And you're gonna have, you're gonna, and I gotta tell you, this is happening to me.

God broke my heart and opened my heart.

And there's deposited tenderness there.

Let's look at the Grinch while we're talking about spiritual things.

The Grinch, you remember, stole all the presents from Hooville.

Thus sure that he could make them miserable like he is.

Merry Christmas now.

No gifts?

And his heart grew three sizes that day.

That's what God wants to do through your pain.

Just grow your heart a couple sizes.

Because you walk the trail, you'll walk that trail with many other people.

And be able to do for them what only someone who's walked that trail can do.

Of course you gotta let God do his thing, or you'll get a hard heart instead of a soft heart.

That's where the choice comes in.

So God wants you to ask questions.

God, are you trying to recycle this into something?

Because he uses trouble to give you crud anchels.

In case you wondered how that was spelled, God uses trouble to give you crud anchels.

Yep.

People will listen to you, they will believe you, and you will know how they're feeling because of the crud you were through, and he gives you credentials. to be a healer of other people.

Remember this, the worst times, the worst times in your life, your worst times are your best times to tell about your Jesus.

Some of you had that experience?

People will listen to you then.

My friend who I've been reading his things about his his bout with this almost fatal disease.

He's like, I got people listening to me I didn't even know knew me.

The question to ask, how can God use me through this?

To bring hope to other hurting people.

How can God use me through this to bring hope to other people, other hurting people?

If you want do you want to get hope?

Then be hope.

You get hope by being hope for other people Brian and I have a friend in New Jersey who got cancer.

It took a while for it to take him, but he knew he was going to die.

You know what this guy did?

At a time when many people just, why God, I wouldn't have been depressed and discouraged and fearful and anxious He just started, he's like, well, my situation's my assignment.

And he just started to go around the cancer ward.

Pray with people, encourage them, read to them, laugh with them.

And for the last six months of his life, it was like Jesus was in the cancer war through Holly.

He just never thought about himself.

He's just like, well, I'm I must be here for them.

He went out in a blaze of glory And today, the hospital, as a result of what they saw happen in the lives of patients, through a guy dying of cancer.

Is that they've decided they need to hire a full-time chaplain to do that all the time.

And so how he set them up now, they got a guy who loves Jesus who's there every day doing Spreading Jesus around the cancer ward.

I think Howie must have said, how can God use me through this?

Well he didn't waste his cancer, did he?

He uses a platform to get other people ready for eternity.

Woo.

Another thing God wants you to ask questions about is about releasing.

About releasing.

Revaluing, recycling.

And releasing.

In other words, controlling something that you have Become a controller of.

And God is trying to get a hold of the wheel and you're driving and you're about to fall asleep at the wheel. and you got the radio on and you got the window down and it's 30 below wind chill and you got an uh you got an obnoxious radio station on and you're doing calisthenics trying to stay awake You know, Karen did this with me.

She'd go, honey, let me drive.

No, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

She said we were gonna she said whenever she saw me rubbing my right leg, that was the first sign we were about to die And that's when she would start to say, honey, let me drive.

Why don't you let me I know I'm I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I gotta have the wheel, you know.

And um finally, just before we became a National Safety Council statistic, I'd pull over I mean she pulled by the time she pulled off that that shoulder oh hurts um I I hate it when I see one of those signs shoulder work ahead I cry now when I see those signs But um she pulled off the shoulder.

I'm used I'm probably out cold before we even get up to speed.

We were about to crash because I had to have the wheel.

Sometimes it takes a storm to get a control freak to let go of the wheel.

It isn't that God does this bad thing because he's bad at you, but he's going to use the bad thing to do a good thing.

So it does have meaning and it does have purpose.

Controlling often leads to catastrophe.

And God has a cure for control freaks.

I know this because of people I know who are control freaks.

I've never had a problem in this area, but I know I know some people who I think are control freaks, and I'd like to name them now.

Nope.

I learned this unfortunately first person.

God's cure for control freaks is to give you something you can't control possibly.

Yep.

He gives you something you can't possibly handle alone.

You can't possibly fix.

You can't possibly control John Ashcroft was the governor of Missouri.

And then you may remember, of course, he was Attorney General for uh President Bush.

But uh in between there, he went from governor to senator from Missouri.

And he was in Washington, he's actually Assembly of God uh pastor's son.

And John was in Washington, D.

C. about to be inducted into the United States Senate.

And on the day of his induction.

Um he had a lot of his family come, he asked a lot of his family to come.

His dad, who was elderly and and and pretty weak and and not in great health, but his dad made it there for this proud day in the life of his son.

And they were they were in this room the a little kind of rule room off the hall in the in the Capitol building because he wanted his family to be there to pray for him uh before he entered into his Senate career.

And so he somebody said, well, why don't we all stand to pray?

And so they all stood to start praying for John.

Except his dad.

His dad was still in the chair.

And you could tell he was struggling.

Because his body wasn't working like it used to, and he was trying to get out of the chair.

And John went over to him and he said, oh dad, by the way, this was his dad's last day on earth.

His dad died on the way home.

He said, Dad, I'm sorry.

Let me help you.

Are you struggling to stand?

He said, oh no, son.

I'm struggling to kneel.

We all do.

We struggle to kneel.

We stand as long as we can And God says, no, I want you on your knees.

And sometimes it takes a storm to put us there.

So here's the question to ask when the storm hits.

What have I been trying to control that I need to release to God?

What have I been trying to control that I need to release to God?

These are questions to get the point of what God's doing.

A lot of us, if you were a believer when uh your uh a child was born, uh you probably had It might have been baptism in some churches.

It might have been a dedication service of some kind.

But most of us, we had a, you know, we had a little baby dedication with each of our kids.

Where we we gave kind of gave back to God the the child God had given to us.

You can't ever stop doing that.

You'll start to control try to control their life.

I got some pretty big babies now, but I still need to do what I did when they were babies. and give them back to the God who gave them to me.

Or they might even become a God substitute or an idol.

So what is it that maybe you're trying to control that God says, um, would you let go of that?

Psalm 37, 5 is one of my anchor verses in my life.

Commit your way to the Lord.

And after you've committed your way to the Lord, trust in him.

And as a result of you committing it to him and then trusting him, He will do it, not you.

Relinquishing control.

Here's the good news.

On the other side of letting go of the wheel, which is a struggle.

It allows God to do what only he can do.

You could have never done what he does when he's driving.

I was at a Christian concert at Silverdollar City.

I mentioned this to you over Labor Day And they sang this song, and I I was like, and they I guess the new C D hasn't come out yet.

I will buy this CD just for this song.

Some of the lyrics say, this is not my battle.

This is not my war.

I don't have to worry or fight it anymore.

You have gone before me, and I will sing your song.

Trusting in the victory that you've already won.

This is not your battle.

This is not your war.

Let go of the wheel.

One last area that he wants us to ask questions about is about rebuilding.

About rebuilding.

I won't look at all these verses, but I will look at 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 8 to 10.

Look at what Paul says here.

We don't want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in Asia.

We were under.

Now see if any of these phrases would describe you at all.

Under great pressure.

Anything you could relate to there?

Far beyond our ability to endure.

Maybe you've got, maybe that fits somebody here.

So that we despaired of life.

Paul, the great apostle Paul, we despaired of life itself.

We were so hammered.

We were beat up, beat down.

Indeed, we felt we had received, I thought I was gonna die.

We felt we'd received the sentence of death.

But always the magic word.

But this happened.

I got it now.

Now I see why. that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.

Now I'm going to stop there.

Paul is a very gifted, talented, strong , self-reliant, go for guy.

And he didn't realize it, but he had come to relying on Paul to do God's work.

He didn't know it.

It wasn't he didn't make a choice that he knew.

But he said, I had to go, God had to shake up my world.

It was getting worse and worse and worse.

And I finally went He asked the right question.

God, what are you trying to change in my life?

How are you trying to change what I'm doing?

Help me here.

He finally got to the right question.

God says, Paul You're depending on you and until bad things happen because you're depending on you, you won't come back to depending on me.

So he gets Paul back to relying on him Well, oh I like this.

The God who raises the dead, he said, I thought I was gonna die and because he's like, Oh yeah, I r I raise the dead You're fine.

You're fine.

You need your spirit.

You need your life.

You need your priorities resurrected.

Here I do resurrections.

And he resurrected Paul, you might say.

So the the um question to ask is this, what have I learned from my loss?

That I can use to rebuild my life stronger than before.

What have I learned from my loss That I can use to rebuild my life stronger than before With the help of something Dietrich Bahnhoffer wrote that a friend of mine who lost his wife mailed to me in my my grieving.

I learned this lesson.

He said, don't expect God to fill the void left by that person.

He will not.

For he intends for that void to be there.

Because that is where the person you love lives in your heart.

But what you can do, and what I have been doing. is you rebuild your life around that hole.

You don't stop.

You say I and oh what I have learned.

You don't have time to hear.

You've heard some of it.

You only, just a portion of it.

Oh, what I have learned and am learning.

That I probably would never have known.

Never learned, but I need it so bad now.

My heart is open and God's making deposits in a heart that is open by being broken.

Um I want to bring us home for the next couple minutes here We've talked a lot about the hope killers and the storms.

Whether it our issue is calamity or complacency.

Pain or mediocrity.

We just don't have the hope to reach right now, like my like my arm.

I want to tell you what I think is the single biggest mistake.

The first step to losing hope.

In any situation, this is the first step.

Why don't you stop it at the first step?

In my own life and from being involved in thousands of other people's lives over all these years.

I'm convinced this is the first step to losing hope.

We were flying into Hooper Bay, Alaska. where some of our team members are from. 400 miles from a road, 200 miles from Russia.

It is remote.

It's on the Bering Sea.

It's very tricky landing there.

And we were one of those missionary aircraft with some of our team members.

Karen was on one plane, I was on the other.

And as we're coming in, we hadn't, we couldn't see anything the whole trip.

It was like Uh very b it was bad weather.

It was navigable or these guys will not will not they know what their limits are and they they won't fly but i i i it just to me it looked oh it was bumpy and it was a lot you know, we're by the ocean and we're getting all those currents and everything.

And um it was it was crazy.

And literally, I know we're going down.

I mean, I know when I'm not going down, but going down.

And w it it feels like you know we're we're gonna land pretty soon.

I like what a you can't even see a runway and the runway is this little strip, I mean Here's the village.

Here's a runway and here literally here's the ocean right next here.

You could go to the beach real easy, you know, and or you could go for a swim real easy if you miss the runway.

We can't see anything.

We're landing and we can't see anything Finally , safe landing.

It was fine.

The pilot explained very simply.

It was an instrument landing.

His senses couldn't tell him what to do, but he kept his eyes on the instruments.

And they were telling him the truth the whole time.

Now I'm told by some pilot friends of mine, and Mark's here, and he's gonna go, what?

But blame it on some pilot friends of mine who told me that in pilot training, when you're learning to fly, One of the final exams is called the Graveyard Spiral.

Is that the graveyard?

Did you ever hear of the graveyard spiral?

You're laughing.

The graveyard spiral?

First of all, I hate the name.

Okay, this when I find out the name of the final exam is the Graveyard Spiral, you say some of my final exams were graveyard spirals.

Well What it means is that they cut the engine and the student pilot has got the controls and this thing starts to go into his tailspin.

And it's like, what kind of a test is this?

Well Now when you are in that spin, everything, you can't tell which is up, down, north, south, east, west.

Your emotions are everywhere.

Your environment is all over the place.

You can't, if you believe your feelings, if you try to take your cue from your environment, you are gonna die The only thing telling you the truth is the instruments.

You've got to keep your eye on the instruments because your feelings are lying to you, the environment's lying to you, folks.

The first step to losing hope is to take your eyes off the instruments Your feelings are nuts.

They're crazy.

They're all over the place.

Your environment isn't gonna help you.

This is the truth, and the promises of God have stood every test for every saint of every day David said, All your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them.

And your only way to survive a tailspin is to plant both your feet on the promises of your God.

It's the only truth strong enough to get you through it.

But strangely, when the storm hits, when the hurt is there, when the pain takes over, you You stop picking this up.

And you start to look away from the instruments.

Because you don't feel it.

You at that point are at the point in your life when you need the Word of God more than ever before.

You choose it.

You don't feel it.

You choose it First step to lose hope is to neglect the instruments that will tell you the truth.

I have some encouragement for you if you're going through something painful right now.

It's the testimony of someone who would understand a lot of it, Joseph.

I love what he said.

I want this to be my story.

Look at this.

God has made me fruitful In a land of my suffering.

Not fearful Not despairing.

God has literally made my life fruitful in the land of my suffering.

Your notes pretty much say it all now.

You can lose a loved one.

I have.

You can lose a job.

You can lose a home.

You can lose a dream.

You can lose your health.

You can lose your innocence.

You can lose even your anchor relationship in life.

But you don't have to lose hope.

Nope.

If you make the choices that will build instead of tear you down.

In what I'm writing in this book, I wrote a sentence that says, hope is a fist in the face of surrender.

I'm not going to give up to despair.

I'm not going to give in to anger.

I'm not going to give in to the status quo that I never should have accepted.

Hope says I will not surrender To the darkness.

I will not.

I don't feel like fighting back, but I will not surrender.

I hope you will choose hope.

For some of us here, while we shouldn't surrender to despair, it may be that The challenges and the hurt and the pain, you'll only be able to have begin healing with a new surrender to Jesus I just gotta let all this go.

I just gotta do a heart dump with Jesus and say, Jesus, I gave you me a while back, but there's more me to give now.

And I need to give this to you in a new way.

So I'm going to ask you to read with me my anchor verse through it all We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

Except I want you to personalize it.

But I'd like you to stand up.

Would you stand?

And if you have a Bible with you Why don't you take your Bible?

Put it in your hand.

Now I'm gonna do this with you.

With my good shoulder.

And I'd like you to hold up what lets what gives us our anchor.

Though it's speaking of Jesus.

In fact, I want you to change the soul, if you can override that and make it my soul.

I have this hope as an anchor for my soul.

Firm and secure.

You ready?

And if you've got your Bible, I'm going to hold it up so I remember where to find that hope.

And I let 's say it Defiantly.

Defiant hope I have this hope as an anchor for my soul, firm and secure.

Amen?

Choose hope, man.

Choose hope.

Sit down.

Sit down.

I'm gonna pray.

Let's pray together.

Um you've been accepting You've been accepting a status quo that's unacceptable.

You got a Christian life going, but it's You've lost the hope factor that there's more that you're reaching for Maybe in all that we've talked about all the hurt, the pain, the loss.

Your loss has not necessarily taken you to a good place all the time.

It can very easily take us to dark places.

And even leave us farther from God than we were.

Rather than what it's supposed to do.

Make us hold on to him tighter than we ever have.

Somewhere in all of this, the Lord may have spoken to you about A fresh surrender.

I don't know anywhere else in life where surrendering means winning, except this.

It's possible you've clutched your hand very tightly around something that Needs to be God's and not yours.

You need to release it.

Maybe there's some You're going in a bit of a spiritual eclipse because there's some sin that's crept in between you and God.

It's blocking the light It might be that you have been living in Comfortville.

And you need to say, Jesus, I'm going to go from the comfort zone to the combat zone.

There's a war to win.

There's souls to fight for, including some people I know, right?

I'll see them in a couple days.

I know that for me this has been a season of finding areas that I really needed to surrender anew.

Or for the first time.

Somehow in a major loss, light is shed in corners of your life that have you've not looked at before.

Exposes a real you.

So Um because change is a bit traumatic.

I think it's important and it has been over the centuries.

They, you know, they have an altar always in revivals, and we don't have an altar, but sometimes a physical expression. of a heart surrender.

Confirms it, puts me on the line for it, makes it real, makes it last.

I put feet to my heart and it does something in my soul that says, yep, this is a turning point.

Now the Holy Spirit might be saying to you, you need a turning point.

And if you do and you'd like this to be it, I just want to give the opportunity for you to express that in an outward way that will demonstrate to you your seriousness. about this, make you accountable, and we'll probably make the surrender stick So, in just a moment, with the symbols of his shed blood and his broken body still here.

You could come and kneel here if you can physically or stand if you need to.

The Lord will know what the surrender means.

You'll know what he'll know.

But this is your opportunity to mark a new beginning on this day in November 2017.

We'll wait.

Very briefly, we won't wait a long time.

So if you're gonna come, come now.