Suffer Well – Fight Triumphalism

welcome to clear creek community church online we exist to lead unchurched people to become fully devoted followers of jesus christ we are a people not a place and are sent to make a difference in our world clear crete gathers for worship online and across multiple campuses in the bay area of houston for more information visit us at clearcreek.org well today we continue our sermon series called salty sticking out for the right reasons you know followers of jesus have a set of ethics and values that often run contrary to the greater culture around us so how can we as believers live in the public arena in a way that we stick out for the right reasons as we follow jesus today you're going to hear from our lead pastor bruce wesley but before we jump in you should know more than providing online content we want to connect you in community and we hope that today would be a preview of who we are as a church family so that you can connect with us at one of our five campuses in the houston bay area now you can find our locations and worship service times at clearcreek.org that's also a place where you can find details on how we serve in the community and how we grow in small group or find upcoming events and resources if clear creek church is your home and you want to give online to support the ministry of this local church you can do that online as well but wherever you are today we're glad that you're engaging with us let's continue in our series salty there's a lot of suffering these days and when you look around at suffering what's interesting is if you look closely enough you'll probably see something beautiful surrounding that at least we hope right i mean there's a lot of suffering with kobe these days and yet there are medical workers who are sacrificing pushing in close to people to care for them to to see them heal to let them know that they matter and this is a beautiful thing this is the way of jesus this is what jesus did and this is what jesus would have his followers do just not long ago one of the elders at our west campus brad thompson was emotional when he was talking about what happened after hurricane harvey his home was flooded all these people showed up his house and were mucking out his house but not just his house but went across the street to this neighbor and to that neighbor and they were helping them as well and in the midst of the suffering there was this beautiful thing this beautiful way of serving other people and when when people who follow jesus serve in sacrificial ways it's winsome it's this beautiful thing that we want to celebrate now i wish they were always true right i mean i wish that we always stuck out for the right reasons but followers of jesus don't always stick out for the right reasons sometimes people suffer and followers of jesus do stuff that just make us cringe you guys remember when that earthquake hit haiti and the earthquake was so bad and some tv preacher was talking about how the haitian people had made this pact with the devil and they got hit by an earthquake because they had this pact with the devil made me cringe all these people suffering and someone's like that i mean someone suffering by losing a loved one and some people i i think sometimes mel well-meaning but they wrongly just approach that person and and they just say you know this must have been god's will uh god needed another angel in heaven and all this is going to work out and things are going to be even better you just wait and see and that just makes you cringe at least it does me i mean i think about some who have suffered from disease and why is it that some people just feel like they have to say to somebody someone like that you know it's almost like they've had too much caffeine you know i mean god made you to win and you're going to be the head and not the tail and so if you'll just believe you're going to be made well you understand the subtext when we talk to people like that i mean the subtext is if you'll just have enough faith then you're going to be healed but if you aren't healed and if you suffer it's all on you because god is a good god he'd never let anybody suffer who's a follower of jesus the problem with that is obviously there are tons of pictures of people in the bible who suffered and who are followers of jesus and so when people do that it just makes me cringe all these things are rooted in what is known in theological circles as triumphalism that's the kind of stuff that doesn't just make us cringe you understand triumphalism is why some people say that's crazy i mean they reject jesus and they reject the church that's how toxic triumphalism is so what is triumphalism triumphalistic theology just focuses on the christian life as being one of present glory while neglecting the brutal facts that we suffer that christians suffer regularly and it's believing that the victory that jesus gives us and by the way i believe that jesus gives victory right i mean jesus saves jesus heals he frees us he gives us peace he makes our lives better but we also suffer and jesus makes these promises that one day that suffering is going to all be dealt with but that day has not yet come and so one of the evidences that you might be you might have triumphalistic theology kind of in the mix in your heart one of the evidences of that is when you suffer what do you do do you ask yourself what did i do wrong i mean did i do something that's causing all this after all you assume maybe that this is not the way it works i mean if i follow jesus if i go to church if i try to serve other people i do good things and god does good things back to me and surely suffering is not going to come my way and if it did then i must have done something inadvertently i didn't know i was doing or maybe if i'm not well and i've asked god to heal me and i'm not getting well that maybe i just don't have enough faith maybe there's some sin that's causing all of this and if that's how you think about suffering then you better beware because the passage we're about to look at this passage is uh well it kind of blows away that whole idea so if you have a bible and you'd like to turn there you can look at second corinthians chapter 12. ii corinthians chapter 12 i need to give a little bit bit of background before i actually read the text so here's the background the apostle paul who wrote a third of the new testament he's writing to this church at corinth to solve some problems and one of the problems that's in the church is that some some fast talkers who have come into the church and they're questioning paul's authority even though he's the one that helped plant the church and brought the good news of jesus to these people and they're questioning him because they are you know sharp looking and smart and eloquent and he is not i mean paul believe it or not was known for being a poor speaker and he was sick sometimes and he suffered a lot and so if people think that a person doesn't have god's favor on them because they suffer then paul suffered maybe he doesn't have god's favor he's not the guy that should be the leader in that church and so the apostle paul starts out in the passage we're going to see talking about how god had given these amazing insights revelations of god to him and that at the same time he was a person who suffered this might be familiar to some of you in second corinthians chapter 12 beginning in verse 7. so to keep me from becoming conceited he says because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations a thorn was given me in the flesh a messenger of satan to harass me to keep me from becoming conceited three times i pleaded with the lord about this that it should leave me but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness and therefore i will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of christ may rest upon me for the sake of christ then i am content with my weaknesses with insults and hardships and persecutions and calamities for when i am weak then i am strong paul had a thorn in the flesh we don't know what that thorn was some speculate that it was this ongoing temptation maybe it was the persecutions that he experienced some me included think it's probably something physical it says in galatians 6 11 that he struggled with bad eyesight maybe it was migraines or gallstones we don't exactly know and maybe that's god's good providence so that we can all relate to just say yeah i know what it's like to have a thorn in the flesh and that's what paul had what we know about this thorn was that he suffered with it he continually asked god to take it away from him he saw it as a messenger of satan that harassed him so he suffered with it and what emerged from his experience with it was a new way of looking at suffering and if we were to boil the lesson down to one thing that paul gives us it would be this you can meet god in your suffering that when suffering comes your way whatever it is and realize he listed a lot of different kinds of things right calamities come our way hurricanes hit us or maybe it's an insult or a persecution whatever the suffering is he says you can meet god in your suffering and if you will in the passage he kind of shows how god gives him these unique gifts these precious gifts because he met god in the midst of his suffering now let me clarify something so i'm not misunderstood suffering is an intruder suffering is a thief it is unwelcome if any of us had the power to eradicate the world of suffering we would do it in a heartbeat because we don't want to suffer we don't want other people to suffer and you should know that one of the reasons jesus came was that ultimately ultimately he is going to eradicate suffering because jesus is making all things new but all things are not quite new yet second i'm not saying that these gifts that god gives us when we suffer well when we meet him in our suffering that these gifts are why we suffer i'm not saying that i mean the whole question of suffering about why a good and all-powerful god allows suffering in the world is a very complex question and what i'm addressing tonight is one tiny little piece of this whole complex answer and i don't think i have all the answer anyway rather i'm saying that like paul we can meet god in our suffering and when we do when we do there are gifts that we receive that would if we if we knew about it we would really want them although we wouldn't want the suffering we would want the gifts and when we meet god in our suffering it makes us stick out in all the right ways let's talk about suffering well like paul what does it look like when you suffer well well when you suffer well suffering keeps you humble it keeps you humble have you heard the old mac davis song i'm looking around the room to see who's old enough to know the who mac davis even is it goes like this oh lord it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way i can't wait to look in the mirror because i get better looking each day to know me is to love me i must be a heck of a man oh lord it's hard to be hung humble but i'm doing the best i can so you know someone who thinks that they're getting better looking each day and to know them is to love them i mean they've lost touch with reality and that's why this is funny because what is humility humility is is someone who has a touch with reality a sober judgment about themselves and about the world around them so if you're humble you can make mistakes and not feel like you have to hide them because yeah of course you make mistakes we all make mistakes if you're humble you can receive a compliment because you know that you can bring good and you can bring blessing into people's lives when you're humble you see god and others and yourself rightly when you're humble and god uses weaknesses and suffering to give us a kind of humility with one another so let's look again at verse 7 what does paul say notice so to keep me from becoming conceited he says but notice the end of it to keep me from becoming conceited the whole thorn in the flesh was to keep him from becoming conceited conceited is just the opposite of humility it's to be this self-promoting self-exalting person who thinks that they're better than others so why would paul think that he is better than others or become conceited and the answer is because he's a big deal he knew he's a big deal he wrote a third of the new testament god enabled him to do miracles he's starting all of these churches all over the world and he's a big deal he's not an also ran in christian history i can promise you that but he knew that through this suffering god would help him understand that he might be a big deal but he is not more important than other people he's not something more than another human being so what about you uh why would you my why might it be that you're not humble are you a big deal and maybe you think well i kind of am a big deal you know maybe you're you're young you're handsome you're strong you're talented you're uh you got money a lot of people want to be around you they invite you to do this and that you just feel like you're really important and good for you but you should know that you're not more important than other people and one of the things that is valuable to god is for you and me for us to be humble here's what james 4 6 says it says therefore it says god opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble wow i want to be humble because god gives grace to the humble and god will go to great lengths to see that we are humble and one of the things he does is he breaks us of our selfish pride with a thorn it's like breaking a horse it's painful it's not easy but when a horse is broken now the will of that horse can be shaped to the rider in the same way that when a human being is broken before god he or she can be humble and responsive to the lord and be used powerfully in the hands of god do you realize every person who ever comes to faith in jesus must first be humble it's the very reason that many don't come to faith in jesus they're not humble enough to say i too just like everyone else i'm a sinner i too just like everyone else am in need of a savior and to be used by god you have to be humble this is why it's important to god so god would want us to be humble so that we are we are submitted to him and our usefulness grows as our submission to god grows humility is so important that you can't be saved or used by god without it and god would go to such great lengths that he would allow us to even suffer in order to develop this great gift humility well there's another great gift when we suffer well suffering makes you depend upon god suffering makes you depend upon god suffering will drive you to pray now it might drive you to a lot of other things first but it will eventually drive you to pray paul's request goes like this in verse 8. he says three times i pleaded with the lord about this that it should leave me that this thorn would leave him but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you my power is made perfect in weakness and therefore i will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of christ may dwell in me paul poured out his heart to god god take this from me you ever had something like that you just begged god would you take this from me take this suffering this pain this torment this temptation just take this from me i can picture paul doing it like this lord you know i am submitted to you i planted churches everywhere i've already suffered for you i've been stoned i've been beaten for you i've been shipwrecked for you so this thorn would you take this from me please god and this whole idea that he says it three times is like there's this finality to it and crickets he gets nothing god gives nothing to him and then god speaks god speaks we don't know how he spoke to paul in this case but he speaks to him and have you ever had god speak like that for me it's mostly in a scripture i'm reading the bible and scripture jumps out at me and god speaks to me and it becomes one of those things where you know all the bible is god's word to us but then there are times when we got a word from god it is a word that shapes us i've got stories to tell that have shaped my life this passage this passage this passage just a handful of them really that have so shaped my life because god spoke through that passage in that moment and in this moment he speaks to the apostle paul and he says i've got something to say to you i'm going to give you something and it's it's not healing from the thorn it's not removing your pain he just says i'm gonna give you this word you can hang on to this word my grace is sufficient for you i'm gonna give you my grace and that's enough god says to paul in your suffering i want you to so depend on me and lean into me that i'm going to give you grace to help you make it through every day that you're suffering but here's what i'm not going to give you i'm not going to take away the suffering which would you rather have seriously think about it and i think on you know on the surface we'd say i'll take the healing i'll take the deliverance how about that but before you answer that isn't it true that what we need more than thorn removal is we need god himself that even if the challenges of our life create pain for us they they brought us into fellowship with god and they're the very thing that draws us near to him all the time and if you take that away and it means i'm no longer running to him seeking him depending on him did i really get anything worth having and so he says to paul no i'm not going to take it away and you get to model for the rest of the world that more than you need a thorn pulled you need me and that if you'll lean into me you'll have one of the greatest gifts you can ever have a real relationship with the god of heaven let your suffering teach you to depend upon god and you'll suffer well when you suffer well thirdly suffering shows god's power it shows god's power i was one of 25 000 teenagers in a big arena that's a long time ago but i remember it like yesterday because of what happened can you imagine trying to speak to 25 000 teenagers and get them quiet so you can say something to them and yet the very first speaker grabbed everyone's attention in a moment because his speech was wet slur it comes from rebellious facial muscles and an uncontrollable tongue he spoke painfully slow and i'm not going to try to mimic his sound but maybe his cadence when he said my name is david ring i have cerebral palsy what's your excuse i don't read this passage that i don't think of david ring where he said but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you my power is made perfect in weakness and therefore i boast all the more gladly in the weaknesses so that the power of christ may rest upon me and for the sake of christ then i'm content with weaknesses insults hardships persecutions and calamities for when i'm weak when i'm weak then i'm strong paul was praying for substitution this is what we pray for most often right god would you substitute my pain with comfort would you substitute my weakness with strength that's what we want god change it all out but what paul was learning what david ring knew was that sometimes god doesn't substitute he transforms ralph waldo emerson wrote a famous essay that's titled compensation you may have read it it's a truth of the physical world and it's like when you have a strong right eye it's compensating for a weak left eye and the same thing happens spiritually sometimes when you have a weakness whether it's physical emotional spiritual that there are compensations for that and in the compensations there's a kind of power so disease had left my friend kaye with limited mobility for years she volunteered in the office and answered the phones at clear creek community church i remember watching kay come in from the parking lot because she couldn't climb stairs she could barely walk alone and if something was an uneven surface forget about it and yet when she showed up someone else would always come alongside her and i would watch as she's holding onto their arm they're talking they're laughing you can tell she's bringing sunshine to somebody's day and before you know it i am not thinking about her weakness i'm thinking about the beauty of the way she connected in blessed people all the time now was there a thorn yes was it a problem yes and yet god used it in powerfully good ways compensation so the south american christians lived in a little tiny hut they were dirt poor on a dirt floor and they had very little but they had grateful hearts and so when the north americans walked in and they're offering tea to the north americans they share this tea and before they even begin to drink they automatically bow their heads over this little cup of tea and the north american christians are reminded of how much we really have because people like me i don't typically bow my head over every cup of tea but when you have so little you learn to be grateful so much that's compensation that's how the weak are made strong so paul reframes what we believe about suffering and what you believe about suffering really determines whether you can suffer well and whether you can help other people suffer well for the last 16 months or so i've had a mysterious illness a little more than a year ago i wrote a letter to the church i said don't know what this is the doctors think it's an anxiety disorder of some kind and soon after that the working assumption changed now the diagnosis is myalgic encephalomyelitis more commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome and various symptoms come with this kind of a disorder random pain extreme fatigue anxiety and all that and it has humbled me so if you don't know me i have uh i've not been sick really my whole life i've had tons of energy and i hate being sick i do depend on god more i can say honestly i pray more and i have to admit that some triumphalism in my theology emerged i didn't think i had trouble triumphalistic theology but i've been asking myself did i do something i do something wrong and i've had to be reminded that god is a good god and he is at work in and through people who face challenges weaknesses who suffer i mean one of the greatest preachers of the last century charles hadn't spurgeon suffered from depression his whole life in much of the latter years of his life he had debilitating gout and yet he's one of the most dominant voices in that century reaching all the way to today so i have to know that just like the apostle paul god he uses us and he's with us and he's for us even when we suffer but i have to tell you i haven't suffered very well i mean i'm learning recently yancey reached out to ross du that if you don't know that name he's a he's a famous writer for the new york times and um he's coming out with a book in october it's called the deep places it's the story of contracting lyme disease and how he has suffered with it how he sought healing from god he is a christian so yancey asked ross to send me an advanced copy of his book thinking it might help me in my efforts to suffer well and he graciously did so i identified so much with so much of what he said in the book you know when you have a chronic illness you kind of sometimes get consumed with it and it becomes a part of almost every conversation because you know how we greet one another we say how are you doing well be careful if you ask me that right because we're going to talk about my challenges and that's that's not good for any of our relationships at least in the long term if that's all we're going to talk about right so i'm learning that sometimes that just means hello at one point due that tells about a college friend who was working in south korea and he he visited that at his home in connecticut three different times in the first year of his illness and um when he came ross wasn't really excited about him coming first time he just showed up the front door you know he had a pizza and some beer it's like here i am and then one of the other times his his wife or his mother and his daughter were there and this was a friend from college who was always upbeat and cheery and ross was feeling terrible i don't know about chronic lyme but he was really suffering i mean he would find just dark corners of the house and just weep he did not necessarily want to entertain a friend or anything like that but he says that each time after his friend left and i'm going to quote him now he says i was almost pathetically grateful for the visit his appearances were in their way acts of love and solidarity solidarity offering no answer to my illness no cure for our distress save his solid physical presence his good humor and the proof and all the miles that he traveled that he genuinely cared you know if your belief about suffering is in the right place you can be one of those people that show up in someone else's life simply because you genuinely care without feeling like you have to offer all the answers and the reasons but just to love them later he says that he was grateful to to the people who just listened who broke his constant monologuing with their mild expressions of optimism and encouragement and he emphasizes mild because you don't want that person who's just going to tell you everything's going to be wonderful and your life's just going to be great in the future it's like no what what you want though and need is someone with some mild encouragement that in his language he says that helped him lance the pulsing wound inside my psyche and let some of the poison out when he was so very sick that's what an encouraging word can do and then he talked about people who would want to explain his suffering and he said you know i didn't need someone to come in and tell me why i'm suffering and neither did i want to buy into the whole idea that is common in our world today that suffering is this thing we could never understand in any way and so we're just going to gather up in a group and lament together but he said rather he wanted he wanted to know the narrative the sense of the arc of his life in light of the disaster and the purpose of its author in imposing this particular plot twist let me say it to you clearly he said i want to know this is part of the story part of the story that god's writing in my life and in the world and you should know if you're suffering it is it is part of the story i said earlier i don't know all the reasons we suffer right i don't know that but i do know this that god created us so that we could know him and that the the sinfulness brought about a brokenness in this world so that everything is falling apart physically socially spiritually and everything is subject to decay but god has not abandoned us of all the major religions of the world christianity is the only one who shows god coming to earth in the person of jesus and taking on our suffering he takes our suffering on himself even to the point that jesus died on the cross to pay for sin so that we can know forgiveness and the promise of redemption and reconciliation to god so that one day all the suffering in the world can be taken away and the power of that is if we will we can see what this means i mean not that we understand all the suffering but we see what the suffering can't mean it can't mean that god doesn't love us because he's shown that he supremely loves us by suffering with us and suffering for us so that through jesus we can rest in the fact that even if we suffer we are supremely loved by god and there is coming a day when he is going to wipe away every tear and there will be no more suffering and no more pain and until that day his grace is sufficient for us and his power is made manifest it's made known through our weakness so when others suffer we can show up in their lives and we can pray for them and we can pray with them and we can assure them of the goodness of god and point them to the grand story that god is playing out and in so doing not only do we suffer well but we suffer well with one another that's what god wants for us would you bow with me father i can only imagine that all of those under the sound of my voice have tasted some suffering and some are really suffering even now i thank you lord that you spoke through your word and through your servant paul to show us that even in suffering we know that you're at work to make us humble so we can draw near to you to teach us to depend upon you and even to know that your power is made perfect in our weaknesses and so we need you i pray for everyone who's suffering now that you would draw near to them and they would draw near you and that we would sense your presence your comfort and i pray that you would help us just by reminding us that jesus has taken our suffering on the cross and that one day jesus is going to take away all of our suffering father i pray for us as a community of faith that we might be people who suffer well and who suffer well with others who engage as a friend with encouraging words and with the story of grace so that together we can look to you and know that father you are at work in us thank you lord for the truth of your word we commit this to you in the name of jesus amen you are good you are good and your love will always lead me to the place where i belong [Music] i know i shouldn't be water's afraid [Music] i keep calling out your name [Music] where will my help come from [Music] [Music] and your faithfulness is [Music] [Music] i know the promises you made i still feel unworthy but your hands they were pierced to break these chains [Music] [Applause] [Music] comes [Music] [Music] i never and your faithfulness is [Music] [Music] for you are good you are good and your love will always lead to the place [Music] you are good you are good and your love will always lead me to the place [Music] you are good you are good and your love will always lead me to the place [Music] oh yes you are good you are good and your love will always lead me to the place [Music] faithful is [Music] [Music] your faithfulness is my cornerstone [Music] [Music] [Music] you are good you are [Music] your love will always [Music] again thanks for engaging with us online today as a church we exist to lead unchurched people to become fully devoted followers of jesus christ so wherever you are we want to encourage you to continue to take those next steps if you're encouraged today or challenged in some way share this link with a friend or someone you think needs to see it and then we look forward to worshiping with you in person at one of our five campuses soon clear creek we love you god bless [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Clear Creek Resources

Views: 538

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Keywords: Salty, Suffer Well – Fight Triumphalism, Clear Creek, Clear Creek Community Church, triumphalism, suffering, suffer well, sticking out for the right reasons, Jesus, Christianity, Clear Creek resources, online worship experience, Church, church online

Id: bug-lSxAN5Y

Length: 45min 39sec (2739 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021