Winter Family Weekend Seminar

It was Pentecost weekend 2015 when my best friend, growing up as a kid, called me. He called me. We were having dinner with some friends that evening and it was Pentecost weekend. He called me and he said, we've been at the hospital all day. They found cancer. And the blood of our daughter, three years old. I was shocked. I didn't even know what to say. Many of you know her.

I think many of you have prayed for her. But the story I want to tell today is not about her fight of cancer. The story I want to talk to you today about is the spiritual battle that I had to face over the next little while after coming to wonder what God was doing in our lives. This wasn't supposed to happen. It's not supposed to happen. I mean, growing up in the church, I was always told, God's way works, right? You've heard that. God's way works. What about blessings for those people who are faithful? As I thought about it, and I was struggling with it quite a bit, this is the exact scenario that atheists use to question the existence of God.

Why would God let a little innocent child conduct or contract cancer? Why? Why would he do that? How could that even be? Here I was. I was working at the home office, and I was angry. I was angry with God. I stopped praying. I struggled. I battled with Him, and I didn't know where to turn. Our theme is called running in faith. And there are times in our lives when that run just makes us weary. And I don't think I'm alone in that. It's hard. It is difficult.

Faith can be hard. What I'd like to talk today about is when we have to run through the struggle. A few years ago, there was a popular meme, and maybe you'll remember this. It was called the ridiculously photogenic guy. Does anyone remember this? It's about ten years old now. Some fantastic ones came out of this photo. So what happens is this is a stock photo. Someone finds it and then puts a bunch of cute sayings on it, like this one. Look at that guy. He's winning some hearts right now. He's ridiculously photogenic. Have any of you run a marathon? Has anyone run a marathon?

A few hands. Okay. I never have. My wife has. A few years ago, we did go to the flying pig. We had a friend who was running the flying pig marathon here in Cincinnati. And we posted at mile 19. At mile 19, that is sort of beyond where the people were training.

They sort of stopped around 16. Mile 19 is where the reality of your commitment sets in. And when we were at mile 19, this is what more people were looking like. This guy is not photogenic at all. He's not winning any hearts today. The ridiculously photogenic guy, I think that he, it became so popular because, you know, we know how grueling these races are. They're grueling. They're hard.

They are a test of not only body, but also mind. So when it comes to faith and our relationship with God, you would think like we've prepared. We've prepared for some of the hardest things, right? You would think that with our knowledge of God's plan, with our relationship with God, and us going to Him in prayer all the time, talking with Him, His Holy Spirit, the power of His Holy Spirit, you would think with all of those things in our favor, in our side, that we wouldn't struggle.

Isn't that what we kind of believe when things are going really well? But it's not true. It's not true. There are times in our life when it just wears us down and we find those moments of weakness where we are battling to trust God. During trials and hardships, you know, people will encourage us with good intentions and they'll say, well, we know what the end is and, you know, God won't let us give you anything you can't handle.

And, you know, when you're hurting, you're not always ready to hear that right away. We often read about the heroes of faith and that we go to them for encouragement. We go to Hebrews 11 and we read those chapters and read those stories. But I don't know about you, but sometimes when I am struggling with something difficult, I see these heroes and I'm like, those seem like unattainable standards for me because what I feel right now is not triumph. I don't feel like I'm conquering anything. But if you go to the end of the chapter of Hebrews 11, it mentions a group that we don't always often think about.

It said that there were others who were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, their backs were cut open with whips, others chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, others were killed with a sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. This is in the Heroes of Faith chapter. These individuals saw that despite their circumstances, God's promise is worth the trouble.

It's worth the struggle. It's worth the hurt. It's worth the pain. We read through this chapter quite often and we focus on the triumph. But this group here, they experienced something that we don't always want to think about because it's hard. It's hard. Were they faithful? Yes. Was it hard? 100%. That was not easy. Sometimes we have this equation in our head. I think if we're all honest with ourselves, we have this idea that, well, if I live this way of life, then this is sort of the outcome I'm going to get in my life.

If I follow God, then this is the life that I will be given. We read the scriptures and we're sort of doing this adding and subtracting, you know, if I do this blessing here, if I do this curse here, and we're sort of doing the math in our head on how we act and the life that God will give us. But while we are doing, we're struggling with just the one, two, threes of life, God is doing this, you know, advanced mathematics that's far beyond, you know, anything that we can understand what he's dealing with.

It's not as simple as like, well, if I just do this one good thing, then God's going to bless this. And if I do this, then that's when I'll be in trouble. God is taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture in a completely different way. Let's consider the life of Joseph. He was given a dream when he was young. He had a vision of who he was going to be, what God had in store for him.

He was going to be put in this position of authority. And here he was sort of, you know, the youngster in his family. And he would be put in a place of honor. Did it come true? Yeah, it did. You know, just a few chapters later when we read about it. No, it was not a straight line at all. It was not a straight line. It was 20 years, actually, from when he was sold by his brothers.

And then he was enslaved by Potiphar. And he was tempted by Potiphar's wife. He was imprisoned, wrongly accused, by the way. Left and forgotten there. And then he was given a chance to show faithfulness to God, reveal Pharaoh's dreams in this dramatic, you know, scene. And then he rose to power. And it was during the famine, another difficult time, that his dream finally came true. A number of years ago, I had a friend who was kind of going through his own trials. And we were talking on the phone, and he's like, you know, I read about Joseph. And I read about all the things that he went through.

He's like, what we don't see is how he did it. How he did it. The ups and downs, like, you know, you have this vision of what God has already given to you. What you know is going to happen in the future. But like, here you are in prison, wrongfully accused, slaving away in Potiphar's, you know, in his house. How did he do it?

I know how I would feel if I was struggling with knowing what God's plan is, yet here I am, you know, just working away, slaving away. I was like, I didn't think this was part of the plan.

I thought there was something different coming for me.

Joseph comes to the conclusion at the end of Genesis, telling his brothers, as for you here, the brothers were worried, you know, their father died. They're worried that, okay, Joseph has a chance now. Here he is, Prince of Egypt, and he's going to finally get back at us.

And here's what Joseph said. He said, as for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good, to bring about many people who should be kept alive as they are today. Joseph ultimately understood that there was a purpose for everything. Everything he went through, there was a purpose. He understood how God was using the hardships for good. Did he know that all along?

Did he know that this was sort of the ultimate goal? Maybe that's not the question we need to ask.

Maybe that is the point. Going through all these things, we see the conclusion in his life, and we see the ultimate end to what happened, and that God's promise for him ultimately was fulfilled, and he saw it in retrospect. We see the conclusion in his life. But we don't see the process. We don't know. So what do we do when we find ourselves in the middle of a painful trial, and it hurts deep, and we are struggling? What can our process be? A couple years ago, a book was written called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. Now, Ryan Holiday, he studies Stoic philosophy, and a lot of this philosophy is very practical in living life, and I think you'll see that it goes along very much well with our Christian lives in some aspects. It's very practical.

The book starts off with a story about an emperor who he thought his people were getting soft.

So what he did is he placed this giant boulder in the middle of the main roadway that everyone had to go past. So every day he would come out and he would see people scooching around this boulder, every single day, until one day a man just had enough, and he went into the woods, and he grabs a stick, and he finds a way to loosen this boulder and roll it, finally roll it out of the way.

And under the boulder, he finds a bag of gold and a note. And the note says that never forget inside every obstacle is the chance to prove our condition.

So in other words, the overcoming the obstacle can show us. Being able to tackle this obstacle can show you what we're really made of. And in that, you find out that the obstacle is the way.

Holiday in his book focuses on three things that we can focus on in our lives as we struggle and face obstacles in our lives.

The first thing that we should consider in our lives is perception. Perception. How do you look at your trial? Now, for me, it's hard not to get emotional right away. Even little things in my life, like everything's going along, and I feel like with our kids and both of us working and driving here and there, like the car breaks down. That feels like this massive thing.

Perception is the first thing that we need to take care of in our lives. How do you look at it? The first thing that we need to do is look at every obstacle as this is now my chance to grow. It's a chance to grow. We can't be overwhelmed by what's in front of us, you know? Things happen to all of us throughout our entire lives. I don't think that as I read through the Bible that God ever says, you know what? Once you get baptized, it's smooth sailing from there. That's not what He's doing in our lives. We can't let the emotion overwhelm us. I think about the people in Hebrews, and they had the right perception. It said that they looked beyond, so that they might rise again to a better life. They were able to take the circumstance that they were in and say, okay, is there more to it than just this thing right here? And they were able to overcome the odds. We think about the life of Job, and you know, Job went through a bunch of stuff right at the beginning that we read about.

And he tells his wife who was just fed up. Her perception was not, you know, where Job was.

Job tells his wife, shall we receive good from God? Should we not receive evil? He was able to say, listen, we had all these good things that God had given us. Why can't we take some of the hard stuff too?

That's perception. The next thing in the obstacle is the way that we can do when we're facing these difficult trials is the action that we take. Once we get our perception under control, we need to start taking steps to move forward. Focus on the next step in the process.

I know sometimes this is difficult, but what we need to do is our perception is right at that point. So we don't look at our trial as this mountain. We look at it as just the next step that we need to take to overcome. And that's how you begin. Joseph chose along the way to do the right thing every time.

Now, I don't know what his process was. I don't know if it was hurt. I don't know if he got to Potiphar's house and was like, you know, I don't really want to do all this work. But he did it.

And then when he was tempted by his wife, he did the right thing. And then when there were other people in prison who were struggling, and then they had a dream, and they interpreted the dream, he did it every time he did the right thing.

God will always move towards us when we take that first little step.

When I was struggling a few years ago, I got to the point where I finally went to God and I said, God, this hurts. And that's all I could say.

That was the step. That was the step that we needed to take. And sometimes when you're in your life, that's okay. That's okay. That's just the next step that you need to take.

Once you find yourself and you're like, okay, I got my mindset okay. I am moving towards overcoming this goal. The hard part hits.

The hard part hits. The will. What this is is perseverance. Can you mentally push yourself when it's still hard? When you're still running through the struggle?

You have to decide how to push yourself on with this new perception. You have to decide to push yourself on for the next step and the next step in overcoming. Will is the last step because there's a commitment you have to make. And unfortunately, it's hard because it's time.

You have to just say, you know what, no matter how long this takes, I'm going to do it. I'm going to keep moving forward.

Angela Duckworth wrote this book called Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She begins the book by talking about Navy SEALs. And the Navy, this elite team, would look at all the applicants and they would try to say, okay, who do we think is going to make it through? The first week of the Navy SEALs is called Hell Week, where they are just pushing people to the absolute limits of their ability. They would look at their academics. Is this what's going to make them, you know, to get past this first week? Are they going to be able to survive? What about their physical strength? Neither one of those were really telling on what would, you know, forecast who was going to make it and who wasn't. Angela Duckworth, with her studies, started studying grit a few years ago. And she came in with her test to study what she called the grit factor.

And it's this characteristic, this internal characteristic, this mental will that Ryan Holiday talks about in his book, that's what was the forecast of who would survive. This mental toughness that I'm not going to give up. Is it going to hurt? Yes. Am I going to doubt? Yes. Am I going to struggle? Yes. Am I going to not believe that I can make it? Yes. Am I going to give up?

No way. No way. When we read through the scriptures, we read a lot about this characteristic.

Grit, you'll read it. It'll come through in your translation as steadfastness, endurance, patience. It's an important characteristic. So taking a step back from your circumstances, consider your perception first. What do I think about this trial? It hurts. I'm having a hard time.

Have other people gone through this one? Yep, probably. Consider your actionable steps. What can I do next to ensure that I can continue to move forward and then determine to progress no matter what? Show will. Show your grit. This is the process that you can use to see that the obstacle is the way. It took me a while to come to terms with God and what He allows for us in our lives for our personal growth. You know, I remember even using the F word. This is not fair.

Right? You're supposed to grow out of that by the time you're out of your teenage years.

It's not fair. I took many steps in my relationship with God, and sometimes it's hard, and sometimes it hurts. If you ever find yourself doubting, struggling, not understanding, you're not alone. And that's what's cool about the race metaphor, because we're not alone.

We see all of this cloud of witnesses. We see it in our Bible. But let's just look around us today in this room. We're not running this race alone.

I think sometimes it's hard to talk about this openly, because we know deep down we're supposed to be faithful people. We're supposed to be people who trust God no matter what. We're supposed to be the firstfruits. We read about the heroes in the Bible, and we want to be that too.

But I think that this growth process of struggling is part of the process.

My friend's daughter is doing great, cancer-free for the last few years.

I came to the conclusion at the beginning. I remember finally coming to the place, and I said, listen, I was talking to my wife, and I said, either God doesn't exist, none of this matters, or He does, and He knows exactly what's happening, and He wants me to trust Him.

Faith is trust, even when you don't understand. It's trust. We read this Scripture often, and we kind of joke about it, like, yeah, right, yeah, I'm going to be joyous about falling into trials. Now, they hurt, and it's okay to hurt, but also know this is the way. This was for me. This was for my growth. Count on joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, grit, but let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. We got to come to a point where we trust God when we don't understand. Trust God when you find yourself pushing through the pain and the hurt, and you're running through the struggle, and it's hard. Tell yourself, I'm going to trust Him. Trust God that He is ultimately making us better, stronger, more faithful, and He's letting us run through the struggle, but not alone. And what He's doing is He's perfecting us along the way.