Wind In My Sails - Dr. Crawford Loritts

well thank you so much i see that i absolutely categorically love your pastor and uh he is an absolute gem and it's great to be here with you want to shout out to 5 15 and i understand they're also watching up in washington d.c and it is just a joy to be here to be here with you what is special is to have my bride with me today uh karen um in a in a few months we'll celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary and she is uh she's uh she's the best part of this deal right here um i met her in college i had broken up with my high school sweetheart well the truth of the matter is she broke up with me um this is the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college just before i went back on campus for that semester uh girlfriend kicked me to the curb and can you imagine somebody getting rid of all of this yeah you say absolutely and so i was in my dorm room praying i went to a christian college and i and i this is true story i said god no more women they mess you up every time i'm going to be single-minded and you and me jesus stay focused and just you know not to be distracted detracted or deterred in any way whatsoever i'm just going to do this well people who know me know once my mind is made up i can be fairly focused and i got up off my knees walked down the street toward the main administration building my heart and mind filled with this deep-seated stalwart prayer not to be distracted or deterred stay focused on jesus and walked up the stairs and there in the lobby was this beautiful new young lady on campus and for i got healed instantly it just i don't know what happened the burdens just left me and uh my mama taught me to be hospitable to strangers and so i introduced myself and said you're new on campus and i'm your tour guide and uh been showing her around now for 50 years so she is uh she's the absolute absolute joy well i've got a long ways to go in a short time to get there there's something heavy in my heart that i want to share but would you bow your heads with me for word of prayer holy father we love you we thank you for your grace and your mercy in our lives you have been good to us you have been lavishly good to us and lord god i pray in the name of your son that you'll speak to our hearts i'm acutely aware of the fact that nobody needs to hear anything that crawford lawrence has to say but we can't make it without a word from god so spirit of the living god make your word alive in our hearts and minds push back the distractions lord give us the ability to concentrate and focus reign in those scud missile thoughts that we have and help us to stay in the moment we pray in jesus name amen amen what do you do when the wind is knocked out of you this has been a challenging year and i'm sure we've heard all about all the ups and downs and we've experienced uh devastation and part of what pastor louis shared a few moments ago but what do you do when the wind is knocked out of you what do you do when you're discouraged what do you do when you get that text message or that email or that voicemail and it's oh boy oh boy you weren't expecting it this is the reason why arrogance and pride is so ludicrously ridiculous when you stop to think about it pride is stupid because the truth of the matter is we control categorically absolutely nothing we're one text message away from devastation so what do we do how do we how do we not be branded by discouragement and that's what i want to talk about today i want to talk about wind in our sails how do i not be branded by the south side of life how do i not be branded by the bad stuff that happens to all of us what what what do i do what do i do you know i want to distinguish or between three words here that sometimes we we use interchangeably but they're actually very different disappointment discouragement and depression disappointment is what it is you don't you can be disappointed but not necessarily discouraged every day we get disappointed disappointment just simply means an expectation has not been met right somebody didn't show up on time they didn't return the phone call in time or whatever uh it's just a garden variety of the unanticipated in life and our expectations were not met uh let me jump over discouragement to depression depression uh this is a little bit above my pay grade here i'm not a clinical psychologist or that kind of thing but depression means that you've gone beneath the hope line and there's circumstantial depression there's clinical depression and i won't say much more because i'll get into trouble but it does mean that you have lost hope and you're down in this dark downward spiral it can be anger turned inward and i i would say that if any of us struggle with depression i would encourage all of us to get some help we need objectivity we need people speaking into our hearts and lives but in between those things is the word is is the whole idea of discouragement discouragement does not necessarily mean that you're depressed but it means a lot more than you're disappointed it means that you've taken a gut punch it means that you've you've read something you've seen something or something has happened that just knocked the wind out of you you can go on but you feel like you're dragging anchor you don't have much joy and the question i want to i want to raise again i said it earlier how do we not be branded by discouragement the truth of the matter is all of us going to get discouraged all of us are going to feel the punch but how do i not how do i not be branded by that you have met people and so have i that they're just tainted with the negative and the reason why they're tainted with the negative is self-protection and so they feel like if i slash my expectations and if i just kind of you know not not not not not dream too much i can protect me well that's a terrible way to live how do i not be branded by now i want to say something here that is that is counter to what our culture is all about today um because this runs counter to everything that we see and think and read these days our problem in our culture today is that we think with our feelings so what i'm about ready to say to you just runs against everything but what i've discovered in all my years of walking with the lord and managing my own times of uh emotional funk and discouragement now listen to this it is the choices hear me on this it is the choices and decisions that i make when the wind is knocked out of me that will determine the trajectory of my emotional attitude and my outlook it's the decisions that you make the decisions hear me on this it's the decisions that you make parenthetically listen to me listen to me your emotions they're great passengers but they're horrible drivers and i'm not saying to deny our feelings or to deny our emotions but what i'm saying is that the banks of the river when it comes to your emotions on one bank is your mind that you're thinking and on the other bank is your volition or your will and they need to guide the emotions if not you'll be one swamp controlled by that so what choices and decisions do we need to make when discouragement comes knocking on our door the wind is knocked out of our sails i get this email that is horrible or this phone call what are the decisions that we need to make now i want to suggest that there are five core decisions now again whenever preachers preach and they give you a grocery list this this is not the 67th book of the bible there's probably more than five in this kind of thing but i want to say that there are five core choices that you have to make and if you don't make these choices what will happen you'll be driven by the moment and the circumstances and the emotions and you'll find yourself in a very unhealthy place the very first choice that you have to make when discouragement comes knocking on our door trespassing our domain upsetting the trajectory of our lives the first choice that i need to make is that i must choose truth i have to choose truth not not what i feel should be true but what is objectively true now let me let me just say this to you when i say choose truth i mean true truth in two ways number one obviously the truth of the situation i have to learn to force myself to stand back okay say crawford you don't like what's happened you're angry you're frustrated you're upset about this in fact you're losing a little bit of hope on this thing stand back and let's analyze let's just say what what really did happen and sometimes you have to sleep on it before you respond so i mean that but i mean something more more specifically i mean choose the truth of god's word over how i feel now i'm going to say something here one of the problems that we have as christians in our society in our culture is that the bible has become a point of reference rather than the context of our lives and so we keep making these four ways back to the scriptures but when we get between a rock and a hard place we pick and choose an a la carte truth where you have to make a decision you have to make a decision that the bible god's word is hear me hear me hear me is your life you have to decide that that this is going to be the governor of my entire life so we choose truth well how does that relate to my discouragement well the bible gives us hope psalm 119 verse 50 says this is my comfort in my affliction that your promise gives me life it gives me life we have to reign in our feelings and our thoughts and open this book and read what it says you heard pastor louie a few moments ago when he talks about going to the rock that's hide and i what did that do it pulled him back up it gives you hope but the bible also now this is going to be you've got to choose the bible to be your delight you say okay now what do you mean crawford can you choose an emotion absolutely absolutely it's like i have chosen karen to be my only wife and to be my source of joy to be my delight so it is with the scriptures psalm 1 you know what it says that the preamble or the preface to the anthology of worship and praise known as the psalms the psalmist begins by saying you need to make some decisions he says blessed is a man who does not who does not who does not who does not making choices in terms of what he's not going to do then verse two contrasts well what does he do but his delight there's an ellipsis there he chooses delight but his delight is in the law of the lord and in his law does he meditate day and night he says to his emotion into his circumstances that i choose to let god's word calibrate my feelings and my thinking so i choose that i choose that in the words of d martin lloyd jones uh you need to talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself particularly when discouragement trespasses your domain so what do you do when you're discouraged well the first thing is that uh crawford you better make some decisions here else you're going to be in a fetal position you're going to be cratered so the first thing i have to do is i've kind of i got to go vertical and objective and i have to choose truth truth is circumstances and the truth of god's word but the second thing that i have to do and you're going to think i've lost my ever-loving mind the second thing that i have to do is that i have to choose joy choose joy now some of you are looking at me strange you're saying how do you choose an involuntary response well easy in philippians chapter four this is an amazing text philippians chapter four the apostle paul says now notice this is an imperative it is a command it's not prefaced by how you feel about it but it's a command he says rejoice in the lord always again i will say rejoice now you you have to know the context you know where he's writing this from you know where he's writing this from right he's in jail and history tells us it's not going to turn out well for him in fact he he will be decapitated he's he's going to die and he's in he's in prison and not only that there are those who have kind of like manipulated and pimped his his ministry platform and all this other kind of stuff he read that over in chapter one and then all of this and yet he says rejoice in the lord and again i say rejoice uh let me let me just make this a few observations here our joy and rejoicing have to be independent of our circumstances our joy in rejoicing has to be independent of our circumstances because joy is lodged and tied to that which cannot be affected did you hear what i just said joy real soul enriching overflowing joy is anchored in that which cannot be affected now paul was not some little novice here and he wasn't just speaking these kind of like you know uh overflowing exaggerated feel-good statements to this church i happen to believe that he may have in mind how this church in philippi got started back over in acts chapter 16 verse 25 um paul and silas went to macedonia and helped the pla and they planted the church in philippi but you know what happened to them there when they get to get there they got the snot beat out of them you know you read these stories in the bible and you you think that maybe they just got roughed up a little bit but they they got beaten and thrown in jail there are probably lacerations contusions you know broken nose and whatever and i can imagine silence is saying to paul while in jail i said hold up man i didn't sign up for this i thought we were doing a little summer missionary trip you know we preach the gospel a little bit then we kind of like check out the nice food places here in macedonia and see the sights and this sort of thing i didn't sign up for this you would think that they'd be over in the corner just saying god this is not fair we're representing you and here we get beat halfway to death and we're in jail and we don't know what's going to happen you know what they were doing they're in the corner singing and praying why because the joy was tied to that which could never be affected you can weep over bad circumstances and yet be joyful because she ultimately knows no that as in romans 8 no one or nothing can separate you from the love of god in christ jesus and so you got to choose joy too many of us are procrastinating our joy until our circumstances change and by the way when you do that hear me on this i don't mean to be blaming the victim but when you do that you commit idolatry for you have just elevated your circumstances to determine your outlook god determines how we look at things and again grieving is important we've been through that sadness does not is not the opposite of joy we can be sad we can be upset about things but ultimately we understand who is in charge thus joy is a determination we determine ourselves to be joyful so what do you do what do you do what do you do and uh discouragement comes and the wind has gotten knocked out of you you got some horrible news and this ain't good stuff for stuff is rapidly headed toward the south side well crawford you better make some decisions or else you're going to look like your circumstances so the very first thing i have to do i've got to decide i've got to choose truth secondly i've got to choose choose joy but thirdly i i have to choose faith i have to choose faith now as you read through hebrews chapter 11 those biographical snapshots of eight of those great men and women of god what you'll do what's your s what you will see is that their their faith defied their circumstances by the way for the sake of time let me just bottom line is and say look look faith in the bible is never denial never ever ever ever denial faith in the bible in other words uh you know i hear people saying stuff like i mean they got a fever 105 degrees because i'm not claiming that i'm not receiving it i'm not claiming it that's stupid you got a fever 105 i don't care what you claim or don't claim what are you talking about i'm not claiming that i don't have a job well they ain't paying you so what is what's up so you know i mean you see how stupid we get you know it's foolishness faith in the bible does not deny the reality of bad stuff did you hear me it does not deny the reality of bad stuff it doesn't it but it defies it it doesn't deny it it defies it it looks through it to see the god who's greater than and sees that this is not the ultimate reality thus the writer of hebrews says that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen it defies things it keeps his vision on someone that is greater it doesn't deny the the reality of pain and so there is this this defiance but also also in the bible and by the way down in verse 6 of hebrews 11 without faith it is impossible to please god and the only way to develop faith is to embrace opposition did you hear what i said it's the only way you're going to develop faith your faith is theoretical if you don't have that which is coming against you now faith is defiance but also faith in the bible is desperation but desperation in the bible is not the same thing as despair despair is hopelessness desperation in the bible has to do with a passionate pursuit of the person of jesus getting to jesus getting to him often often often we turn to god when our foundations are shaking only to discover it's god who's shaking them god will send disappointment he will allow discouragement to take place he'll allow things to unravel in our lives in order for us to develop an appetite for the presence of the ancient of days it's a refining thing it makes us desperate the bad news should drive us to jesus there's a story in luke chapter eight you know the story well of the woman who has this issue of blood she's hemorrhaging basically for 12 years and uh this is during my if my chronology is correct this is during the first half of our lord's earthly ministry where the groupies are still going with them okay you got all these crowds and they want jesus to do a little something for them and so the the scene is that there's this you know these crowds are are surrounding jesus they see jesus and his entourage his disciples coming on the road and so i don't know how many hundreds of them are there and everybody wants a piece of jesus they want to do something or whatever this woman with an issue of blood however she cannot be seen she doesn't want to be recognized which probably is the backstory here this is a reason why she says if i can just touch the fringe of his garment because according to the levitical code she was unclean she was not pure but she spent everything she had and she said i i got to get to jesus so here you see this woman she's probably i don't know i don't want to be unnecessarily dramatic here but she's probably her head's covered she's down slinking through the crowd and she comes up she says if i can just just get close to jesus touches his garment and then jesus asked question uh who touched me i think it's one of the most humorous scenes in the bible because you know peter says um there have been a lot of people roughing up against you and jesus says in so many words no no no no no they handled me somebody touched me you only touch jesus when you're desperate too many christians are handling him and that's the reason why they're not getting the answers that they want jesus has become a cultural icon rather than the living resurrected savior apart from him we can do absolutely categorically nothing we've got to get to jesus bad news all of this stuff is a call to commune with the savior and that's faith faith is defiance but faith is desperation so what do you do when discouragement comes knocking on your door trespassing your domain you weren't expecting that then ain't on my list of stuff that i wanted to see happen today but it's there but you better make some decisions or else your circumstance is going to brand you and put you in a bad spot so you choose truth you choose joy that which cannot be affected you choose faith but number four you choose community you choose you choose community now listen um we all have different personalities and i'm going to say something i'm probably too much information about me but i'm going to say something about myself people think because i speak a lot i'm in front of people a lot that uh that i'm an extrovert well i'm not i i am an introvert that loves people there's a spectrum there i know it sounds crazy but i'm an introvert that loves people i love hanging with people this kind of thing but i don't get my energy from people uh when i travel and speak i don't need the key to the city you don't have to take me on a tour just put me in a place ain't got too many roaches and and uh you know tell me where i need to be and i'm cool just get a good book and tell me what i need to do the downside of introverts hear me on this is that sometimes however when when when i get discouraged or there's a cloud or something bad happens i will tend to keep my council a little bit too long and you got to be careful about that we're called to community the late chuck coulson said that a person cannot have god as his father without having the church as his mother meaning meaning that the moment you said yes to jesus yes you're connected to him but your place in community and you cannot i'll use a 10 cent word here you cannot experience sanctification apart from community you can't do it god has no lone wolf christians and if you're by yourself when you're about yourself over the long haul nothing good happens you get into distorted thinking and that's why we need one another thus over in galatians chapter six verse two it says bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of christ we need each other we need to humble ourselves and by the way bad news is a call to humility we need to acknowledge that no we don't always have it all together you don't have all the answers you're not the fourth member of the trinity you're not that competent and i i wish we would stop stop believing that nonsense that we need our brothers and sisters there are times in which we need a safe place to weep and to cry and to say how bad we feel and get it out and allow them to give us perspective that's what paul meant when he penned the words in romans 12 9 through 16 weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice we need the holy spirit speaking through our brothers and sisters and say okay here's some perspective no this is not the end of the line you're gonna get over this thing you are going to make it that's that motivational speak anchored in the hope and truth of of god's of god's word so we need people i gotta tell you there have been times through all these years i've been in ministry now for 48 49 years where i thank god for people that god sent to me to speak into my heart and life and i've always kept a crew of people around me why because i need perspective you need that in your heart and life but the final one is this when discouragement comes knocking on your door and it will happen the decisions that i need to make and i need to i need to choose truth i need to choose joy i need to choose faith i need to choose community but number five i need to choose service i need to choose service there's something about the reality of life now don't get me wrong i need to i need to give a little context here certainly when the wind is knocked out of us there needs to be strategic retreats i get that and it's appropriate to pull back sometimes we need to get away you need a sabbatical you need a vacation or you need to put i get that i get that but there are times and seasons in all of our lives where you can't stop nobody's on the other end to answer the phone there are seasons in your life where you're going through stuff that it's not appropriate at that point to tell anybody what you're going through and yet you have to show up you have to show up there have been seasons in my ministry where i just feel like preaching i've pulled up to the church and the tears are streaming down my cheeks before i walk in many times i found myself praying holy ghost one more time one more time and sometimes you find yourself there what do you do psalm 126. what a psalm these words verse 4 the psalmist says restore our fortunes oh lord like streams in the negev if you've ever been to israel the naked with the southern portion where it's arid and this this is beautiful wording poetry re restore our fortunes o lord like streams in a desert place those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy he who goes out weeping bearing the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy bringing his sheaves with him notice the relationship between weeping and sowing weeping and sowing weeping and sowing you can do this but you i don't feel like doing i know you cro you don't crawford but you weeping and sowing what what the writer is saying is that it is during these times when you you you don't want to produce you don't want to give you feel like running away but you have no option your tears become holy fertilizer that causes a bumper crop to grow and trust me and i want to give hope to somebody here i look over my life you know the most fruitful times in my life in ministry have have not always but more often than not they've been times of hardness where i've i i just by faith i had to keep going and i look back over that and i could look at god look at god so who told you to quit who told you to quit you see it is the resurrected life of jesus jesus living his life in and through us that when we feel like fainting as paul would say when we feel like giving up at that moment jesus rises up in us he says you can take another step the very one who said i've come that you might have life and might have it more abundantly and if you're not a follower of the lord jesus and you're listening to me right now now is the time and maybe he's using some circumstances in your life to show you where the source of life really is you can turn to him and trust him there's an old line that i i heard someone say several years ago that's really true when you're born you look like your parents but when you die you look like your choices what are we choosing and who are we choosing to look like you

Channel: Passion City Church

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Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021