Dear Heavenly Father, thanks for being with us each day, thanks for a great Easter Sunday. Lord, thanks for protecting us this day from a bad accident. Thanks, Lord, for family, friends, and also this line. Thanks for Your healing hand on Sterling and Bob. Be with our president and our leaders. Bless and watch over our veterans and our military, and please, dear Lord, prevent war in Korea and please bring world peace. Watch over police, firefighters and all who help us stay safe and healthy. Now please help me with this message. I love You, Lord. In Jesus' name, I pray and give thanks. Amen.
It is April 1st when I am writing this, but nearing April 2nd. All day people were pulling April Fools jokes, and I for one refuse to get involved. I am sorry I did not write early on Monday as I was out plowing snow. Praise The Lord for His healing hand on Sterling who has returned to The Bridges after a long stay in the hospital and for His healing hand on Bob Everhard who is doing well after a valve job. That would have been on his heart, not his car!! My subject for today is on suffering, and I know someone is going to say if I stop with the jokes they will not suffer nearly as much. Anyway, sorry I am running a day late. We did have a day of appointments.
Monday/Tuesday April 1 & 2 2013 - Relief in Times of Suffering.
2 Corinthians 12:8/10 - Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (NIV)
The very easy answer for relief in times of suffering is just come to Jesus and He will take care of your suffering. The truth is that does happen, but not always by taking away your pain or other reasons you might be suffering. There are many, many reasons people suffer and I cannot name them all, as I do not know all of them, but here are a few that I do know and understand. People can suffer from the loss of a loved one or a dear friend. As a parent, we can suffer when something happens to one of our children and even our grandchildren. Parents and grandparents suffer from loneliness and I will talk about that in another message. Most often we relate suffering to pain, pain from accidents or broken bones, and that thing called arthritis. Many of you live in pain and we pray often for you, if we know who you are. Dolores and I both live with a lot of pain, so we understand this. I confess that often we pray to have the pain go away, and sometimes it lets up and we keep going forward. I think that is one of the reasons God pointed me to this subject, for as I have told all of you, often God is directing my very own messages right back at me. Let's take a look at some scriptures and get some help from our Bibles and of course from our dear, dear Lord Jesus.
In the scripture above we are talking about Paul who had a thorn in his flesh. Paul said: "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me." This did not happen, Paul still had the pain from the thorn, so then how did he look at it? Let's go and look at the scripture again. Paul is telling us that Jesus said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Now we are going to need to look at our pain as a weakness, now I know that is hard to do, but let's keep going with the scripture. And at this time I want you to also remember what Jesus went through for us, I mean this man Jesus took a bad beating for us, and a lot more, including death. I know when my pain gets so bad I just think I cannot go on, and trust me, I get days like that, I pray and say to Jesus and also myself, Jesus, Your pain was greater than mine and if You can do this for me, then I can carry my pain and work for You. But Lord, it is hard!
Now let me get back to the scripture again and again that same verse from Jesus. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." You can see from His own words that His power, the power of Jesus is made perfect in our weakness. So now we go back to Paul and he makes this statement! "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties." So in the words of Paul, recorded in our Bible, our trusted Holy Bible, which I for one trust and believe from the beginning to the end, I also should delight in my sufferings, and so should you. We should be happy with what we have wrong, as LONG AS WE ARE TRUSTING IN JESUS TO TAKE CARE OF US. Brothers and sisters, I know that all of this might not make your pain go away, so we keep praying God takes it away, and Jesus is still the same today as He was yesterday and He will be the same tomorrow. So pray each day to get well, but also do as Paul tells us, "and for Christ's sake, delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, and in all that is wrong in your life." Now let's take a quick look at one more scripture.
Romans 8:26/28 - In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. (NIV)
A few things here, the Apostle Paul is the writer. We know that Jesus left us with the Holy Spirit when He left to go back to His and our Father in Heaven. So we find that "the Spirit helps us in our weakness." We are also told that we do not (always) know what to pray for, and I know that I have gotten that way many times, I have prayed for the pain to go away in Dolores and in me, and it still goes on, so how do we pray? So we find that the Spirit intercedes for us. Another thing I want to point out, the Holy Spirit is a person, and folks, it is a man. Note the terms used by Paul. "Himself, and He." The Bible also tells us, "He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit." Now He who knows our hearts would be? Yes, if you are thinking Jesus, you are correct!! He knows our hearts (scary sometimes, right?) Also, note that the Spirit groans and Jesus understands that and of course it is work with accordance of God's will. And now we look at that last verse.
Romans 8:28 - And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
So many people just stop after a few words that being "all things God works for the good" and that, my dear brothers and sisters, is pulling these words out of context. We must look at it all. All things and that is true, in all things God works for the good, for those WHO LOVE HIM. And yes, there is more. "Who have been called according to his purpose."
To wrap it all up in a few words ... GOD LOVES YOU AND CARES ABOUT YOU AND YOUR SUFFERINGS. So keep on giving it over to God ...
Thanks, dear Father, for the message of today, and please let the message be blessed and fall on lots of ears this day. Open hearts to understand it. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Now go forth and share your blessings, and never, never give up. I love ya. (Pass it on.)
Pastor Dan.
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