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| Rejoice in the Lord Always (Phillipians 3:8-14) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of The Holy Spirit. Amen. Grace, mercy and peace be to you … How do you feel… when it takes $50 to fill up your car at the gas station? How do you feel… when the guy at the fast food drive-through forgets to give you your fries? How do you feel… when you open up the washer and find that someone left a pile of Kleenex in the one of their pockets? How do you feel when you wake up with a start and realize that you set your alarm for 7 pm instead of 7 am? It doesn’t take much, does it, sometimes … to put us in a foul mood that may last for quite while and often impacts our interactions with others. But when those things happen… do you, “Rejoice in the Lord, always … and again I say it, rejoice??” Hard to even think about rejoicing, even if the Lord calls it to our minds… isn’t it? It’s difficult, humanly speaking, to rejoice when bad things happen to us. And those things like we just mentioned are the little things. Pile on a few biggies: like a frightful diagnosis from the doctor. Or the loss of a job. A foreclosure. Ailing parents … or children … Rejoice in the Lord? For why?... we might ask. Where is God when I really need Him? Why doesn’t He answer my prayers? Is my faith at fault? Don’t I have enough? Or is He punishing me for something? Where are you, God?? … and … What am I supposed to do now? Those are very honest and logical human responses to the difficulties, big and small, we face often in life. Is God and the Bible only about “Pie in the sky, bye and bye?” only about the life here after? Or if not, and God is supposed to be with us … why do our day-to-day lives often have to be so hard? Well, you may not like the answer. But, St Paul is leading up to the answer in the verses we have from Philippians for today. In our reading from Chapter 3, Paul is speaking of sharing in Jesus’ sufferings … and in his own case… his personal loss of all things. Does he bemoan their loss? … Does He bemoan the fact that all the training he received in being a Pharisee he now considers loss for the sake of Christ? No. Quite to the contrary, he says he is more than willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of knowing Christ and receiving the gift of Christ’s righteousness through faith. So What? So that now, St. Paul’s life is a life of praise. Or to say it another way, what Paul is telling us … is that what we know for certain about our future can … does … and actually will … change our present. Say that again? Okay: What we know for certain about our future can … does … and actually will … change our present. And the key to that is this: understanding and trusting that no matter what we are going through, no matter how bad it may seem … God is in control of it. Or … as hard as it may be for us to understand … that even the difficult things we experience in life are not “bad” when we consider them from God’s perspective. In fact… what we are going through … is uniquely designed for us personally by God for our ultimate good. Now … if you can believe that … then you can do what St. Paul encourages us to do … which is to rejoice in the Lord in all things. Why? Because if God is in control … then even the things like the Kleenex in the pocket … God can and will use to your eternal benefit. In our opening devotion for the Church Council this month we were asked to think about three blessing that had come into our lives the past week. When we’d all written them down and then compared notes … we found that they all were what you might call “good things.” You see, humanly speaking Good things are synonymous with Blessings. Blessings are always supposed to be good things… But are they? St. Paul is telling us blessings are in God’s economy …not always necessarily in our own judgment. So … if what’s happening in your life IS under God’s control, and if He is working all things for to your eternal good … then what …? Can we give thanks to Him… for even the things that look Bad? Imagine what might happen when we do that… Here’s such a story. A pastor tells this story about a couple who had two daughters. In spite of growing up in a loving, Christian family, the elder daughter had a violent streak. The parents had prayed for God’s help for years. Medically, they’d tried a psychiatrist who’d put their daughter on tranquilizers … without success. Then they met with this pastor who advised them to try something they hadn’t done … He told them to thank the Lord that He had given them this child to meet their need. He said, “Really praise Him for knowing exactly what would be the greatest blessing for your family.” You might imagine the parents’ reaction to this pastor’s counsel after all they had been through, after all their hours of prayer. The confessed that they knew no way to suddenly be glad for everything exactly the way it was. And so, the pastor then led them through the Scriptures which indeed do attest to God’s blessing us even with things that are difficult for us to accept or understand. And God’s Word does have the power to change lives. The parents opened themselves up to the work of the Holy Spirit and they began to feel thankful … And for the next two weeks after their meeting, they began to lose their mind-set of constant worry and fear … and they began instead to experience peace and joy. Then one evening the elder daughter came into the family room holding a potted plant. When she had her parents’ attention, she smiled and dropped the potted plant on the floor. Dirt, pottery and flowers went in all directions… she stood smiling waiting for her parents’ reaction. Now, both parents had given themselves over so much to praising God … that they both reacted by saying simultaneously … “Thank you, Lord.” Their daughter looked at them in amazement. She looked up and said, “Thank you, Lord, for teaching me…” and from that moment on, she began to get better. Now Pastor, you might be thinking, you’re just talking about the power of positive thinking! The power of Positive thinking is all about looking at the good side of something … and ignoring or at least minimizing the down side. In a way, it’s an escape from the reality of the situation we find ourselves in. We force ourselves to look at the bright side… or make up a bright side … to avoid addressing the problem head on. But that’s where God meets us … right smack in the middle of the situation. And so we thank Him and praise him FOR our situations …. Not in spite of them. What God is doing … is showing us how, in Jesus Christ, to overcome the problems we face, not how to skirt around them. But here’s what often happens … We look at the situation. We listen to what Scripture says … and then we say, “Now God … we praised you in the middle of this mess … now get us out of it!” Or what we’re doing is … looking to God to reward us for praising Him, but we’re not allowing or expecting God to change us in the process … which may very well be exactly what He wishes to accomplish in our lives. Praising Him is not about bargaining with God … it’s about dying to self … what we see St. Paul talking about in our reading for today. Laying down his upbringing, His education, his zeal, all things, for the goal of knowing Christ. When do we truly know Christ? When? When we can go where St. Paul is leading us in his words for today. When we can rejoice in our joys … AND rejoice in our sufferings … knowing that both represent God’s love and care for our souls. We all need to settle this thing once and for all … determine to look at your circumstances … no matter what they are … against the backdrop of the cross. What that means is … because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, God loves you unconditionally… That has never changed, and it never will. And in that love … is how He will always treat you. The things that are happening are in His control, and they are happening out of his love. Hold firm to that, and know it for certain. It is the truth. All praise to God! In Him. Amen. |