Rick Warren - How We're Getting Through - Part 1
Since mental illness robbed my youngest son, Matthew’s life, one of the passages from the Bible that has really encouraged me has been 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 3 to 11. And I wanna begin tonight by reading that passage to you. Here’s what the Bible says. «Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the same comfort that we’ve received from God». In other words, God comforts us, then we are to pass it on in comforting other people. «For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort, our comfort overflows».
Now, «if we are distressed, it’s for your salvation and if we’re comforted, it’s for your comfort». And here’s the key verse and we’re gonna come back to this. «Our hope for you is firm. Our hope is firm because we know,» now we’re gonna come back to these three phrases. Hope comes from what you know. «Our hope for you is firm because we know that just as you’ve shared in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort». Now, «We don’t want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about the hardships that we’ve suffered. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of even life itself».
Now, this is Paul talking. Paul is the greatest Christian who ever lived next to Jesus himself. And he says, «We were under great pressure beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life itself». And it says, «Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But,» he says, «but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead». He said, «Man, we were nearly dead, but God specializes and raised the dead, and we’re back». He says, «He has delivered us, and we’ve set our hope on him that he will continue to deliver us». He’s going to keep on doing what he did. «He will continue to deliver us as you help us by your prayers. Then, many will give thanks to God for the gracious favor granted to us, in answer to your many prayers». I want you to circle these three phrases, «Our hope is firm because we know. Our hope is firm because we know».
Now, what this is saying is that hope comes from the knowledge that you have. If you don’t know the right stuff, you’re gonna be hopeless. And when the rogue winds come and you have a great loss in your life, you’re not gonna know how to handle it because you don’t know what to do. I meet people who have terrible crises, accidents, years later they’re still stuck, why? Because they don’t know how to go through it. How do you get through what you’re going through. Now, it’s all about what you know. «Our hope is firm because we know».
I want you to write this on your outline, what you know is what gets you through. And if you don’t know what I’m gonna share with you tonight, then you’re not gonna know how to get through the tough times in your life. Probably the question I’m asked more than any the other question is how is your family getting through this? And the answer is we’re getting through it because of what we know, because we know some rock solid truths that don’t change.
Now, if you build your life on popular culture, you build your life on the popular opinion, the opinions are like shifting sand and next month some other value is gonna come up. Never build your life on well, this is popular or this is unpopular; everybody is doing this. History is often wrong. You need to build your life on unchanging rock solid truth. Truth never changes. And if you build your life on rock solid truth, then what’s gonna happen is that you’re not gonna have anybody moving you out of the way at all. You’re gonna not have anybody pushing you out of bounds when the rogue wind comes because you’re solid as a rock.
So today, I wanna share with you three truths you must know and three truths that you must remember for the rest of your life so that you can get through what you’re gonna go through, whatever it is. Now, I don’t like to tell this to you because I’m your pastor and I love you, but you’re gonna have some major losses in your life. You’re either in a problem, you’re just coming out of a problem right now, or you’re in the middle of a problem right now, or you’re getting ready to go into the next one, that’s called life.
And a lot of times I hear people say, «You know, once we just get to this point, then», friends, there is no point. You’re never going to get to that point. There is no point. You’re gonna have problems the rest of your life. And when you go through a loss and you say, «I just lost my job. I just lost my husband. I just lost my health. I found out I’ve got cancer. I just lost my dream». What’s gonna hold you on? What’s gonna get you through those tough times? You got to remember three things, we know these for sure. Let’s get right into it.
Number one, we know that life doesn’t make sense, but we can have peace because we know God is with us and loves us. God is with us and he loves us. Life doesn’t make sense, but we can have peace because we know that God loves us. He’s with us and he loves us. You’ve probably noticed that life is often confusing, that there are more questions in life than there are answers, and you go through life with most of your questions unanswered. Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen now? Why did this happen in this way? And you can ask all you want, but you’re never gonna get the answer to those questions until you get on the other side of eternity. You’re just not gonna know. We simply don’t know why most things happen on Earth the way they do, and we’re never gonna know. And I’ve seen myself going through six phases or stages. I want you to write these down because when you have a major loss, you’re gonna go through all six of these and I don’t want you to be surprised by them, okay?
Number one, just write this down anywhere on your outline. The first stage after a major loss is shock. Shock, you’re just in shock. What just hit me? And you’re surprised, that’s shock. The second phase you’re gonna go through as you move from shock… by the way, shock can last a long time. When Matthew died, I wasn’t in shock for a day. I wasn’t in shock for a week. I was in shock for at least a month. I just couldn’t even lift my head up and go, «Where in the world am I»? So it can be a long time when you’re in shock. Then you move to the second phase which is sorrow, and now you begin to grieve and the sadness fills and it is a profound sadness for the loss that you just had.
«We just lost a baby. My marriage just broke up. I was engaged and they walked out on me,» or whatever. And you have sad… now, sadness is a godly emotion. God experiences sadness. God never experienced a shock because he already knows everything that’s gonna happen. God never says, «Oh, wow. I didn’t see that one coming». So shock is a human emotion. Sadness is a godly emotion. The Bible says that God gets sad. The Bible says God weeps when he sees the sin in the world. God weeps when he sees suffering in the world. The Bible tells us Jesus wept. The Bible says Jesus was a man of sorrow. You’re not gonna be like Jesus unless you learn how to grieve. Suffering is a fact of life. And so, there is no growth in your life without change. There is no change without loss, there is no loss without pain, and there is no pain without grief.
And so, you’re gonna have a lot of things, we don’t grieve very well, particularly guys, we don’t grieve very well. But grief is how you get through the transitions in life. It’s a good thing. It’s God’s gift to us. So you go from shock to sorrow. And then as the sorrow begins to wear down a little bit, you go to stage three, which I call struggle.
And in the third phase, struggle, that’s where all those why questions come in and you start second-guessing yourself. If I’d only done this, if I’d only done that, if I’d only tried this, if I’d only tried that. And all the why questions, why? Why did they walk out of my life? Why did they abandon me? Why was I rejected? Why didn’t I get the promotion? Why did I score so bad on that test? And you start, whying, whying, and whying. And you’re looking for an explanation.
Then the fourth thing, and a lot of people that stay stuck in struggle, is how you get out of struggle is stage four, surrender. And in surrender, you just go, «You know what? I’m never gonna know the why, but I’m just gonna trust God on this and I’m gonna put my face forward and I’m gonna forget the past and move on and I’m gonna try to keep learning and I’m just gonna trust God for the things that I don’t understand». That’s called surrender.
Now, once you get to surrender, now you can move to stage five, which is, like, this is a big Bible word, but it’s the word sanctification, sanctification. What is sanctification? Sanctification is when God starts changing you. It’s when you start being transformed from the caterpillar to the butterfly, the metamorphosis. It’s when all of a sudden, God starts bringing good out of bad. God starts turning you around. He starts making you better out of your pain. In fact, in spite of your pain, because of your pain, and he begins to work in you and make you more like Jesus.
And then the sixth stage after sanctification is service. Service is now God says, «Okay, I want you to go help somebody else with the pain you’ve just been through». And that’s what we just read, that passage where you pass it on to others. Now this is so important in your life that I need to go into it in great detail and we’re gonna do it for the next six weeks. We’re gonna take one week on each of these phases and I’m gonna show you how you get through the shocks of life, the sorrows of life, the struggles of life, and how God turns these things around and brings peace in your life. And we’ll look at that in detail, but what I just want to say to you tonight is this, you won’t go through any of these stages on your own. None of them on your own. God does not let you go through them on your own. He is there and he is aware and he cares. And if you’ll tune into him, you’ll get a whole lot more strength going through each stage with God in his presence.
The Bible has 6,000 promises in it from God, over 6,000. Let me just show you a few of them. Isaiah 43, verse 2 says this. «When you go through deep waters,» this is what God says, «I will be with you! When you pass the rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned up; it will not consume you»! Somebody asked Kay a couple weeks after Matthew’s death, «How are you doing»? She said, «We are devastated, but we’re not destroyed». We’re not destroyed. «It will not consume you».
See, life just doesn’t make sense much of the time. You know, for 27 years, my son had mental illness since a little baby boy. For 27 years, I prayed for my son’s healing every single day of my life, «God, take away the mental illness that he’s got». And I prayed and I prayed, and that prayer was not answered. Was it a bad prayer? No, it was a good prayer. It just wasn’t answered, why? I don’t know. In fact, it doesn’t make sense. We took Matthew to the best doctors in the nation. He had the best medications. He went to the best therapist. We had the best prayer warriors. We had thousands of people praying. He grew up in an incredibly strong family, very tight knit, very loving, very supportive. He got all the love and more he could handle and a family of great faith. I am a part of a family of spiritual redwoods. They are giants of the faith.
My kids, my wife, and others. They are just solid as rock. Had everything and every reason to see this change, but it didn’t change, and Matthew died. And I remember writing in my journal a couple days after he took his life in a momentary fit of depression. I would rather walk with God with all of my questions unanswered than to walk through life without God knowing all the answers. Why? Because answers don’t take away your pain, so stop looking for them. So when you go through a loss, say, «Why did my parents abandon me? Why did my boyfriend walk out on me? Why did I fail that class or not»? And you start trying to… every time there’s pain in your life. «Why did I get this disease»? And you start trying to find an answer, you start trying to find a cause, you start trying to find an explanation, you don’t need an explanation. You need God, because only God can comfort, explanations don’t comfort.
So stop wasting all your time trying to second-guess yourself and asking why. You’re not gonna know why on this side of death. If Kay were to drop dead tomorrow and I knew the reason why, it wouldn’t relieve one ounce of pain in my life, it would still be excruciatingly painful. Explanations never satisfy even when you know them, so stop spending your time asking why, and start saying, «God, I need you». God has not promised to give you an explanation for everything that happens in your life, but he has promised to give you his presence for everything that happens in your life.
Look at this verse, Hebrews 13:5 on your outline says this. God says, «I will never leave you and I will never abandon you». You may have felt abandoned in your life by someone that you loved or someone you thought loved you. You may have felt rejected by someone you thought loved you and then they walked out of your life. But God is never going to abandon you and God is never going to reject you. He says, «I will never, never, never leave you or reject you».
Now, this is important to know. This is one of the things you gotta know in order to make it through the tough times in life. That God is with me, he’s not abandoned me, and he is always gonna love me. Why is that important? Because when you’re going through pain, you have a tendency to start thinking that God has forgotten you. And when you’re depressed, you have a tendency to start thinking God has forgotten you. God could not possibly forget you, why? Because he made you to love you. The whole reason you’re alive is God made you to love you. He could not possibly forget you. The Bible says this. Look at the next verse. Isaiah 49:15, «Can a mother forget the baby at her breast or a child she has born»? The answer is obviously no. «Even if that were possible, I will never forget you! Look,» God says, «I have engraved you on the palms of my hands»!
Now everybody look up here. God says, «I have engraved you on the palms of my hands,» so I cannot forget you. You know, a lot of people in order to remember someone it is they love, they get a tattoo of somebody they love. God has a tattoo of you. He has engraved you on the palms of his hands. You say, «Where did God get his tattoo of me»? On the cross. And when they nailed Jesus to the cross, those nail prints in the hands there, Jesus was saying, «I love you this much. I love you so much it hurts. I love you that I’d rather die than live without you. This is how much I love you. Look at this, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. How in the world could every time I look at these scars, how could I possibly forget how much I love you? I came and died for you. And this reminds me every day of how much I love you».
In heaven, there will be no scars on anybody’s body except the scars on Jesus from his feet, his hands, his head, and his side, why? Because God wants us to always remember, «This is how much I love you. There’s no way I could forget you». And you may be going through pain and you may be depressed and you may think God’s a million miles away. No, the Bible says, «God is close to the broken hearted». On the day that Matthew died, it occurred to me God knows what it’s like to have a son die. God knows what it’s like to lose a son.
As a pastor, I’ve been many times asked, standing by a bedside or at a gravesite, and people say, «Pastor Rick, where was God when my son died»? The same place he was when his Son died. He was grieving. He was weeping. He was hating sin, hating evil. He was sorrowing. We have a suffering God. God doesn’t just sit up there and go, «Oh, I’m sorry, you hurt». No, God hurts with you. He suffers with you. He was with us. And life doesn’t make sense, but we can have peace because we know God is with us all the time and he loves us. You know, Matthew’s life was really in many ways, a tragic life. He was in pain from the moment he was born. He was tortured by his mind, unrelenting pain. And the problem was he was also quite brilliant, and so he knew what was going on.
A lot of people who are seriously mentally ill, they don’t know it. But Matthew was incredibly smart and he knew he was mentally ill. And so, all his life growing up as a grade school and junior high and senior high, then in college, «But why can’t I be normal? Why can’t I be like everybody else? Why can’t I be like all my friends? Why do I have to feel like I’m always on the fringe? Why do I have to feel like I don’t fit? That I’m the oddball. I’m the odd man out. Why doesn’t my brain work correctly? Why can’t I get this test right? Why can’t I go to school right and get the grades that everybody else gets»?
And on and on and on, and he struggled with the unanswered questions of his illness his entire life. But I want to tell you this. He wasn’t in heaven one second and every one of his questions were answered, and then he understood it all. Now, he’s big enough, his brain is big enough to understand it’s not limited by earth. It didn’t make sense, but when life makes sense, you have to hold on to the promises of God. You have to say, «I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know God loves me and I do know God is with me,» and that’s a rock solid fact that’s not gonna change.
Number two, the second thing we have to know, we have to remember to get through the key tough times of life is this. We know that everything on earth is broken, literally everything on earth is broken. But we can still have joy, why? Because we know, we know that God is good and he has a greater plan. We know God is good and he has a greater plan. God is a good God and he has a good plan for your life, not a bad plan. And so, even though everything is broken, we can still have joy.
Now, the fact is since sin entered the world and evil entered the world, everything was broken. Nothing works perfectly on this planet. The weather is broken, it does not work perfectly. So we have tsunamis and fires and floods and natural disasters. God didn’t plan that originally. That’s a part of the sin, the Fall. When God created the world, there was a Garden of Eden, a paradise, but the world is broken, including the climate, including the weather, and it doesn’t work right and people get hurt by it. The weather is broken, it’s imperfect. The economy is broken, it’s imperfect.
I don’t know if you realize this or not, but your plans are imperfect. No plan ever turns out the way you thought it was gonna plan out, never. No plan is exactly the way you planned it ever. So nothing works for… your body doesn’t work perfectly. Have you noticed this? Your body doesn’t work perfectly. It’s broken, and that’s why you have to go to doctors and things like that. No relationship is perfect.
Every single relationship you’ll have in life is broken because it’s marred by sin. Two sinners can’t make a perfect relationship. And even when you’re deeply in love with each other, sometimes you just aren’t gonna communicate right. Every brain is broken. We’re all mentally ill, not insane, but we all have mental illnesses because we can’t control our thoughts and we struggle with compulsions and temptations and worries and fears and anger and self-loathing and shame and blame and guilt and resentment, that’s called mental illness, friends. And you have thoughts that you just can’t get out of your mind, and why? Because our brain is broken. Everything’s broken.