Rick Warren - The Path to Peace - Part 1
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God has five eternal purposes for your life: worship (knowing and loving Him), fellowship (learning to love others), discipleship (growing to become like Christ), ministry (practicing service by serving people), and mission (sharing your life message). Pain, when surrendered to God, fulfills these purposes—drawing you closer to Him, deepening love for others, building Christlike character, preparing for eternal service, and equipping you to share hope—rather than wasting suffering through bitterness or avoidance.
If you take out your message notes, we’re in a series on getting through what you’re going through. This last week was birthday week in the Warren household. We had three family birthdays. Sunday morning is Amy’s birthday, but earlier in the week we had Cole’s birthday and Caleb’s birthday. And so on Cole’s birthday, we went to a bounce house, and had a whole lot of fun playing in the bounce house. And on Caleb’s birthday, we went to a trampoline club. You can imagine me on a trampoline. And so I was really getting into this, and all of a sudden Cassi comes up, she’s seven years old, she says, “Papa, I have something I want you to do with me”. I said, “Okay, babe”.
You know, I’m up for anything. So she grabs my hand and she takes me around to this balance beam jousting contest. So we put on the headgear, we get, this is like American Gladiator. Okay, now it’s me versus a seven year old. I think this is gonna be pretty easy, okay? And so we get up on the balance beam, and it’s over this giant pit filled with real squishy, super soft sponges, so if you fall off it’s no big deal. And, so she’s on one of the balance beams, and she comes at me, she takes one swack and I’m off. Okay, I’m off. So I fall into this pit, and then I think, okay, well that was fun. And then I start to get out, but at my weight, those things just collapse, and you know, they’re up to about here. Okay, so it’s a pit filled with these super soft sponges, and you’re going like this, and you push down, and they just all push right back down. And I thought, I’m gonna die in this pit.
I wanted to do a commercial, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get out”! And actually, I couldn’t get out. I literally, because there was nothing to step up on. And so finally Josh and Amy grabbed my hands and pulled me out. Have you ever been in a pit you couldn’t get out of. That’s why we’re doing this series. Because we all have pits: financial pits, emotional pits, relational pits. Sometimes life’s just the pits. And some things you can’t get around, and some things you can’t get over, you can’t go under, you can’t climb out on your own. You just gotta go through it. And sometimes you have to ask for help.
Review of the Six Phases of Grief and Loss
Now we’re about, you know, two-thirds through this series, we’re in week four. We’ve got three more that we want to look at, but before we do, I wanna go back and review kind of where we’ve been, because we’ve been talking about the six different phases or six responses or reactions to when you have a major loss in your life. You lose your job, you lose your health, you lose your spouse, you lose a loved one to death, you lose credibility, whatever. And everybody goes through losses in life and we all have major losses in life.
Now, these six phases that we’ve been looking at: shock and sorrow and struggle so far, and we’re gonna look at surrender, sanctification, and service, they’re not really linear. In other words, it’s not like you go through one and then that’s it, and then you’re done. You can actually bounce back and forth between these stages. In fact, you could have all six of them in one day, and you could get through shock and then be going through sorrow and come out on struggle and then all of a sudden you find yourself back in sorrow again. That’s normal. These are not linear, like you graduate from them. In a grieving period, you go through them all in different ways.
So let’s just review this. First, we said that the typical reaction when you have a major loss in life is shock. And in shock, you feel numb. And we talked in that message about crying out to God and letting others help me. And we talked about how, really, you need other people in your life. You need fellowship when you’re shocked because you can’t think straight, and other people need to think for you. And you can’t pray straight, you need other people to pray for you. And you can’t even believe straight, when you’re in shock. You need other people to believe for you. And so we’re in shock. Then you move into the sorrow phase, and in sorrow, you move from feeling numb to feeling grief. Remember we talked about how grief is a good thing. Grief is God’s way of getting us through the transitions of life. That there is no life without change, there is no change without loss, there is no loss without pain, and there is no pain without grief. Grief is healthy.
In fact, to not grieve is unhealthy. In fact, grief is the only thing that makes you different from the animals. It’s the most human emotion. God grieves. It’s not a sin to grieve. Jesus wept. We talked about that, that you cannot go around grief, you gotta go through it. And the reason why so many people have so many problems in adulthood is because they have never grieved over losses early on in life, they just stuffed it. And whenever you stuff your grief, you’re the one who’s gonna get sick. You’re the one who it’s gonna come out sideways, with all kinds of bizarre behaviors and things like that. You have to face it to move on. We talked about how men, we’re not particularly good at grieving because we don’t like to feel our emotions. In fact, we’re often afraid of our emotions.
And so we stuff them, and we don’t deal with them. When you stuff it, your stomach keeps score. The only way to get through it is to go through it, and you can’t stuff it, you can’t deny it. Remember we talked about listing the losses that you’ve never grieved. There’s some things that you went… and a lot of grief is more than just losing a loved one. You can lose a lot of things in life. You can lose your identity, you can lose your credibility, you can lose your health, you can lose a position, and then you identify what you really lost, and then you ask Jesus to heal your broken heart. Then last week we talked about struggle, and if in sorrow you feel, in shock you feel numb and in sorrow you feel sad, in struggle you feel angry, and now you’re starting to get frustrated, you’re starting to get ticked off at God. You’re getting a little angry at God and go, “Why is this happening”? That’s the “why” questions of life.
And remember I talked last week about how you have to learn what the Bible calls “lament”. I gave you a little acrostic care. Complain, appeal, remind, express. You gotta complain. Tell God what I think is unfair, and then appeal to God’s nature. You’re a good God, you’re a loving God, help me out here. And you gotta remind God of what he said. God loves to be reminded of his promises. And then I express my total trust in God. And this week we’re gonna look at surrender. And the emotion best described it with surrender is peace. It’s the pathway to peace.
Remember last week, I finished the message by saying the only way you’re gonna win a fight with God is surrender. But when you do, you win, because God pours out blessings on you in that surrendered attitude. And specifically what I want us to look at this week in surrendering in the path of peace, how do you let go of the pain in your life? How do you get on? How do you move through it? How do you get past the pain so you don’t get stuck. Because so many people are stuck. At some point, a major loss. They had a divorce and that’s defined their life. Now, everybody is gonna have bad things happen to them. Everybody does, everybody does. And you have three choices when bad things happen to you. You can let it destroy you, you can let it define you, or you can let it develop you. You can let it destroy you, you can let it define you, or you can let it develop you.
God Uses Pain to Fulfill His Five Purposes
What Kay and I wanna share with you this weekend is how you let even the bad things in your life develop you and grow you by the act of surrender. Specifically, we’re gonna look at a passage where David, King David in the Bible lost his son. He had a baby that died. Now, the Bible says, look there on your outline, Romans 15 verse 4: “Everything written in the scriptures was written to teach us, in order that we might have hope”. Circle that word “hope”. The Bible says that everything God gave us in the Bible was given for our encouragement and for our hope, and so these stories that are in the Bible, they’re not just there for stories. This story of David losing a child is not just a story, it teaches us the principles of the path to peace, to surrender.
Now, I don’t know what losses you’ve had and I don’t know the losses that are gonna come in your life, or in my life either, but you’re gonna need to know how to respond to them. So let’s look at David, and this story of him losing a child, and then what he learned to do as a result of it. In 2 Samuel chapter 12, verses 16 to 24, it says this, “David begged God to spare the child”. Now, let me just say it. Bathsheba was pregnant, the baby was born, and then the baby gets very, very sick. And it is near death, and David is freaking out. And like any new dad, he is on the floor praying and crying and weeping. And it says, “David begged God to spare the child. He went without food,” in other words, he’s fasting, “and he lay all night on the bare ground,” he’s praying to God.
“Now the leaders of the nation,” remember David is the king of Israel, “The leaders of the nation pleaded with David to get up and to go eat something, eat with them, but he refused. Then on the seventh day the baby died”. So this has been going on for days and days. No food, no eating, just praying. “On the seventh day, the baby died. Now, David’s advisers were afraid to tell him. 'He was so broken up about the baby being sick,' they said, 'What’s he gonna do, you know, what’s he gonna do to himself when we tell him that the child is dead?'” So they’re worried about it. “But when David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. 'Is the baby dead?' he asked. And, 'Yes,' they replied”.
Now, that’s the setup of the story. And the rest of the story that Kay and I are gonna share with you are the six things that David does after he has a major loss. He’s been praying all of his life for this baby to be well. The baby dies. I told you that I prayed every day of Matthew’s life for 27 years that God would heal him of his mental illness, and it didn’t happen. It was the number one prayer of my life, and it didn’t happen. Now, what does David do after this? Is he gonna let it destroy him? Is he gonna let it define him? Or is he gonna let it develop him? David does six things. If you ever needed to take notes, it’s this weekend. Write these down. The first thing I need to do if I want to get on the pathway to peace is this. Accept what cannot be changed.
That’s the first thing I have to do on the path to peace. That’s the first step in surrender. I have to accept what cannot be changed. You know, when people receive bad news, what’s the first response to it? I don’t believe it. Exactly. I don’t believe it. We reject it. In fact, usually, if you tell somebody some really bad shocking news, here’s what they’ll start doing, they’ll go like this… No, no, no, no, no, no, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. It couldn’t be, it’s impossible. It’s not real. Because our minds reject shocking news. And the first reaction is no, no, it can’t happen. It’s not supposed to happen like this. That’s the first typical reaction. But slowly reality starts to set in and you can’t deny it anymore. And that’s where surrender comes in. Surrender is accepting a reality.
Here’s what David did. Look there in your outlines. 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 22 and 23: “David said this, 'I fasted and I wept while the child was alive, for I thought perhaps the Lord would be gracious and let the child live. But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again?'” The answer is no. What is David doing here? He’s accepting what cannot be changed. And when you have an immediate loss, like, when I had a son who, a few hours earlier he was alive, and then all of a sudden he was dead. And that was so shocking, it wasn’t like a six month, you know, cancer, where you get a chance to prepare for it. It seemed so surreal in those early hours, because all of a sudden he was not there anymore. And really, for the first couple of weeks, I kept expecting him to walk in the door at night.
Purpose 1: Pain Draws You Closer to God
Now, what I say when I say accepting what can’t be changed in whatever loss you’ve had in your life, no matter what the loss is, the first thing you have to do is, if it’s over, it’s over. And you accept what cannot be changed. Now, acceptance doesn’t mean you stop caring. No, no. And acceptance doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It does. And acceptance doesn’t mean you even think that what happened is good. It’s not! None of that’s acceptance. Acceptance simply means, “I can’t change it”. David says, “My son has died, and I can’t change that”.
I want you to write this question on your outline. What do I need to accept that’s over in my life? What do I need to accept is over in my life? Maybe it’s that job, and you keep thinking, maybe they’re gonna call me back and give me another chance at it. I made a big mistake. I blew it. I really messed up. I really made a big mess of it. It’s over. There ain’t gonna be another chance. Maybe there’s some relationship that’s over, and you just keep hoping they’re coming back, and you keep hoping they’re gonna come back. You keep hoping they’re gonna call. They’re not coming back. It’s over. Maybe you need to say, “What I need to accept is that season of my life is over”.
You know, I one time went to a high school reunion, I will never go again. Because there were some people still reliving the high school catch they made in a football game. I’m going, “Get a life”! That happened 20 years ago. And I mean you’re not in high school anymore. Have you looked in the mirror? That season of your life is never coming back. It’s over, and you need to accept what cannot be changed. And the past in your life, for good or bad, the good things and the bad things, they are seasonal, and they’re not there, and the past is past. Some of you, you’ve had a dream, and it didn’t happen, and it’s over. You need to get a new dream. You need to get a new vision. You need to get a new goal for your life. That’s the first step. Accept what can’t be changed. The second, and Kay is gonna come and talk about this, is remember, it’s not the end of the story.
Kay Warren: It’s not the end of the story. There’s a second step to finding peace through surrender. When we experience a devastating or catastrophic loss of some kind, it’s really normal to feel like this is the end. This is over. Nothing good can ever come from it. Everything is lost. King David, as he experienced the loss of his son, he was able to focus on the hope that was ahead of him, believing that God wasn’t finished. 2 Samuel 12:23: He says about his son, “I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me”.
He understood and accepted that his son would never be with him again on this earth, but he was confident that he would be reunited with his child, that his son was not going to come to him, but he was going to go to his child, and that the baby’s death was not the end of the story. I told you a few weeks ago when I spoke that I know that Matthew’s death is not the end of his story. It’s not the end of our family’s story. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments that I don’t doubt, because I do. Matthew is in heaven, but I can’t see heaven. I can stare out at the sky, and I can stare as hard as I can, and I can look and I can look, and try to penetrate the veil of this existence to catch a glimpse of heaven, and I can’t. I simply cannot do it.
And what I’m learning to say is this, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief”. And if you will be honest about your own walk with God, there have got to be those moments in which you would say that same thing. God, I believe I do, I believe. But there are still these doubts. There are these things that I can’t see, things that are mysterious things that I don’t know what to do with. And so we just end that prayer with God, help my unbelief. There’s nothing wrong with praying a prayer like that. See, God never is content to let a single one of our stories end in ashes. He promises that he will bring beauty from ashes. Where I struggle is sometimes believing not that he will bring beauty from ashes, but how?
How will he bring beauty from these ashes, because I am completely and utterly convinced that he will not let our story end with just ashes. I told you about the hope box that I had all the years that Matthew was ill, and that I believed, and how I stuffed it full of verses that I was clinging to, that God was going to heal Matthew, and then God didn’t heal Matthew. And I told you that what I had now, besides rebuilding this hope box, is that I had a mental picture of a little pot that I was collecting, and I called it the mystery pot, and I was putting all the things that I don’t know what to do with in that pot.
Well, I have a friend who knows that I’m very literal, and I now have a little mystery pot, if you will. And this little pot has questions. It has questions. And every time I think of another question that I don’t know how to answer, that I don’t know the answer to, that I can’t figure out, it goes in the pot. And it sits on my devotional table, and it sits there as a reminder of… this is real, this is real stuff that I’m dealing with. The questions that you have about faith and about the losses in your life, they are real questions. And so if you do something like this, a little pot or something else, but the point of it for me, as I look at it, is not that I have questions that I can’t answer.
The point of this is to remind me that God will not let ashes be the end of the story. In grief, one of the most challenging transitions, I’m discovering, is moving toward the future, rather than hanging around in the past. That’s a really challenging thing for me. Jerry Sittser, who wrote a book that I recommended to you, “A Grace Disguised,” that we have in the pavilion, he lost his mother, his wife, and his four year old daughter in a car accident, and he wrote this incredible book. And he says, when talking about how do we move into the future, he says this, “How could I conceive of a future without them? The very thought was abhorrent to me. Whenever I thought of the future, I still found them there, but they were never going to be there, which only made me more aware of how devastating my loss was. I remembered a past that included people I did not want to give up. And I imagined a future that excluded people I desperately wanted to keep”.
And I find this very true. When we think of the past, our loved one is in it. Every time you think of the past, that person you’ve lost is in your past. They were there, they were such an integral part of it. And it’s so impossible in these early stages, at least for us, to envision a future in which our loved one isn’t there. And so what we do if we’re not careful is we get stuck in the present. We get stuck here in this limbo land because we don’t want to leave the past, because that’s where the loved one was, and we can’t envision a future in which they’re not there. We’re disbelieving that they won’t… and so we stay in this very uncomfortable limbo land of the present.
And some of you would probably agree with me that a little nagging sense of guilt can creep in. It’s been 4 ½ months. I’m breathing again. But when you think of going into a future without the one that you love, there’s a little bit of a sense, if I move into a future, am I forgetting him? Am I neglecting him? And if any of you have been in any of that situation, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a very common response in grief, or guilt or denial or deep sorrow. I don’t want a future in which my loved one isn’t a part.
Surrender the Future to God
So how does surrender help us find peace in this grief as we think about a future, as we, like David, understand that our loved one is not coming back, or that loss is not changing. How do we find peace in that? Sarah Young writes in a devotional book I love called “Jesus calling”. She says this about the future. She says, “Your future looks uncertain and feels flimsy, even precarious. That is how it should be. Secret things belong to the Lord, and future things are secret things. 'When you try to figure out the future, you’re grasping at things that are mine,' Jesus says. 'This, like all forms of worry, is an act of rebellion, doubting my promises to care for you. Whenever you find yourself worrying about the future,' Jesus says, 'repent and return to me, and I will show you the next step forward. And the one after that, and the one after that.'”
Purpose 1: Pain Draws You Closer to God
Now, I can use my pain to draw closer to God. I can use my pain to draw closer to God. Now, when anything bad happens in your life, you have a choice. You got a choice. You can either run to God or you can run away from God. Now, we by nature instinctively turn to God in pain. Whenever there is a massive tragedy, a bomb explodes, there’s, you know, a fire, a flood, a terrorist attack, people go, “Oh God”. The first person they cry out to is God. Because by instinct, we know that we should turn to God. But some people turn away from God in this.
You know, when Matthew died, now several months back, it forced me to go deeper with God than I’ve ever had to go in my entire life. I’ve always spent time with God every day. I’ve had a quiet time for most of my life where I sit down and I spend time talking to God, reading his Word, listening to him, and talking to him in prayer. But I want you to know in the last several months, I’m a changed person, because I wasn’t spending a quiet time with God every day. I was spending hours, hours and hours, with God every day, just listening, thinking, meditating, praying, reading the Word, reading good scriptures, reading good books and things like that, because I wanted my pain to draw me closer to God, not further away from him.
Now, how do you do that? How do you draw close to God in your pain? Well, you tell him how you feel. You cry out to God. You argue with God, you trust God, you do all of the steps we’ve talked about in the last 7 weeks. In shock, you express your shock to God. In sorrow, you cry out in your sorrow to God. In struggle, you argue with God. And in surrender, you let go and you trust God. You take all of these steps. You can worship at every stage of the development. This is what our family has been doing now for several months. We’re doing what Paul did in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. Look at that verse. Paul says this: “We were crushed and overwhelmed and we saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who could alone save us. And he did help us”!
Circle the phrase, “but that was good”. Paul says, “Wait a minute, we were crushed. We were overwhelmed. We were in over our heads. We were ready to give up. We were discouraged, we were defeated, we were dying”. But he says, “That was good”. Why? “Because it drew us closer to God, rather than away from God”. One of the things that my family did in the last several months is we did a surrender retreat together. We went over to Rancho Capistrano and had Jamin Goggin who’s on staff as the spiritual director at our retreat center and had him lead us in a retreat of surrender. Why? Because we wanted to be drawn closer to God. Last night, I was speaking to the women of faith up at the conference at the Honda Center.
And while I was up there, I heard a story about a guy who came to Christ on 9/11, the actual day, 9/11. And I just got to think how many people do you know, have come to Christ out of pain? Maybe you did. Maybe you did. Maybe there was a divorce, a death, a disaster, a distraction, a difficulty, a disappointment. God says, “One of the things I can use this for in your life is I will draw you closer to me, if you let it”. Many of you could say pain turned me to Christ. In 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 9, Paul says this: “I’m glad about the pain that these people went through. Not because it hurt you but because the pain turned you to God”. That’s the first purpose. I can let pain draw me closer to God.
Purpose 2: Pain Draws You Closer to Others
Second purpose. I can use my pain to draw closer to others, not just to God, but to other people. And this is the purpose of fellowship. And if you allow it, pain will deepen your love, your love for other people. It will mature your love. Suffering sensitizes you, suffering deepens you. Suffering turns you, it transform you. I’ve seen the most stubborn, self-centered, selfish, hard-bitten men turn into real lovers after a major tragedy in their life. God says, “I can use pain to draw you not only closer to me, but to draw you closer to other people”.
Now, you know, the odds aren’t good for couples who lose a child. In fact, about nearly one third of all marriages where a child dies, like in the case, in my family, in our family, nearly one third of all those marriages ends in divorce once a child is lost. But I have to say, Kay and I are closer today than we were 4, 5 months ago. Closer today. I’ll just be honest with you, I am more in love with my wife than I have ever been in my life. And I just, well, I won’t go any further because I don’t wanna embarrass her. But I asked Kay today as I was preparing this message, I said, “Why do you think we’re closer today than ever before”? She says, “Because you’re so nice to me now”.
Well, that might be part of it. But I think there were a couple of reasons and we actually would agree on this, is that after Matthew died, we knew the statistics that a crisis, a death, particularly the death of a child, often splits up a family. And we said, “We’re not gonna let that happen”. And we intentionally worked at strengthening our marriage over the last months, intentionally worked at cultivating and deepening in it. We’ve been married now 38 years, but we said, “We’re gonna make this the best year of our marriage”.
And I think another thing we did is we gave each other a lot of grace. And one of the things was we did not judge each other’s feelings because when you’re going through pain, your feelings go like this, they go up and down and they go all over sideways and you think strange thoughts and weird thoughts and have all kinds of emotions. And we just decided no emotion is a bad emotion, and Kay would say, “I’m gonna tell this to you,” and she would tell, and I would sit there in non-judgment and goes, “Well, that makes sense,” that there is no wrong feeling. Feelings are not right or wrong. Feelings are just feelings. How many arguments have you had in your marriage because you tried to convince your spouse their feeling was unreasonable? Don’t do the elbows right now.
So many of our arguments in marriage end up because we’re trying to talk each other out of feelings. Don’t. Don’t do it. Feelings are just feelings. They’re neither right nor wrong. They’re just feelings. And so by showing grace to each other, that brought us closer together. Do you remember a few weeks ago, I talked about that there are four levels of fellowship, and they go deeper and deeper. And we talked about how in your Small Group, the shallowest level of fellowship is the fellowship of sharing. That’s where, how’s your day, how are you doing, what’s going on in your life, how’s everything going?
That’s the fellowship of sharing and that’s okay, it’s just not very deep. To go a little bit deeper in fellowship, you go to the fellowship of studying where you study the Word of God together. To go a little bit deeper than that, you go to the fellowship of serving. And if you’ve ever had your Small Group go on a peace trip together, you know how much that binds you together. It’s when you’re serving together, you go deeper than studying or sharing. But the deepest level of all is the fellowship of suffering, the fellowship of suffering. And the only way you get to the fellowship of suffering is by being willing to be vulnerable. Take the risk of being vulnerable and share what you’re feeling.
Galatians 6:2, there on your outline, says this: “By helping each other with your troubles, you truly obey the law of Christ”. What is the law of Christ? Love your neighbor as yourself. And he says, “When you help each other in your pain, when you help each other in your suffering, when you help each other in your troubles, when you enter into the fellowship of suffering,” he says, “then you’re obeying the greatest commandment: love your neighbor as yourself”. And I just want to say to you that pain, if you will allow it, will teach you how to really love. You see, pain isn’t, I mean, love is far more than chocolates and roses and valentines. Real love changes bed pants. Real love changes, real love works. You know the meaning of that? God bless you.
Purpose 3: Pain Makes You More Like Jesus
Number three, the third purpose of pain. I can use it to draw closer to God. I can use it to draw closer to others. God says I can use pain to become more like Jesus. I can use pain to become more like Jesus. In other words, pain is always an opportunity to grow in character, to grow in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. These nine qualities, how do you learn them? You learn them in tough times. You learn love in unlovely situations. You learn joy in grief situations. You learn peace in chaos. You learn patience, having to wait. You learn these things in the exact opposite situations. I can choose to let pain make me more like Jesus. But again, it’s a choice.
Some people, pain makes them bitter, and some people let pain make them better. Some people let pain be a stepping stone to progress, and others let pain be a stumbling block to failure. It’s choice. Proverbs 20, verse 30, look up here on the screen, says this: “Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways”. Anybody wanna give a testimony on that verse? Yeah. Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways. Now, the fact is, and I said this a couple of weeks ago, God’s number one purpose in your life is to make you like Jesus.
Now if God’s gonna make you like Jesus, loving like Jesus, thinking like Jesus, being kind like Jesus, being truthful like Jesus; having the character, the integrity, the generosity, the humility of Jesus, if God’s gonna make you like Jesus, he’s going to take you through the things that Jesus went through. Hmm, were there times when Jesus was lonely? Yes. Were there times that you will be lonely? Yes. Were there times when Jesus was misunderstood? Yes. Will there be times when you are misunderstood? Yes. Were there times when Jesus was criticized, maligned, and judged? Yes, same for you. Were there times when Jesus was so tired and fatigued, he felt like he couldn’t go on another day? Yes. Were there times when Jesus was tempted? Yes. What makes you think God’s gonna spare you? He didn’t spare his own Son, so why would he spare you? He did not spare Jesus from pain. And if God is gonna make me like Christ, then he’s gonna take me through the same kind of things that Jesus went through.
Now, look at up here on the screen. The Bible says this, Hebrews 5:8: “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered”. The Bible says Jesus learned obedience from suffering. Jesus learned to do the right thing in spite of the fact that it wasn’t the easy thing to do. How are you gonna learn to do the right thing in spite of the fact that it’s not the easy thing to do? Same way, through suffering. Here’s another verse. Look at this verse, Hebrews 5:9 on the screen: “Suffering made Jesus perfect. And now he can save forever all who obey him”. You say, “Well, suffering made Jesus perfect? I thought he was perfect”. Well, the word “perfect” here literally means complete. And it’s saying it completed Jesus by going through suffering. There are some things, the only way you learn them is through pain. You agree with that? Some things you only, only learn through pain.
Now, Paul compliments the way the Corinthians, the believers in the city of Corinth in Greece, had handled the pain in their lives. Look at this verse, there on your outline: “Now, isn’t it wonderful,” Paul says, “all the ways in which this distress,” they’d been going through a tough time. “All the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, you’re more concerned, you’re more sensitive, you’re more reverent, you’re more human, you’re more passionate, you’re more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart”.
Now notice, Paul’s talking to a group of people who’d just gone through the wringer. Their life had just been hell on earth. They had gone through amazing persecution, amazing suffering, amazing pain. And he says, “There are seven things that have come out of this. You’re more alive, you’re more concerned, you’re more sensitive, more relevant, more human, more passionate, more responsible”. He lists these seven quality. Wouldn’t you like to have those in your life? Wouldn’t you like to be more alive? Wouldn’t you like to be more compassionate, more passionate, more sensitive, more responsible? Then you need to ask God to use the pain in your life for good and choose to co-operate with him.
See, the fact is pain transforms us. It never leaves us where we started. It will either be better or bitter, as I said. It won’t leave you where it picked you up. It will take you to another place. Now, I want you to listen very closely what I’m about to say. I want you to win in life. I want you to succeed in life. I want your life to have meaning and significance. I want your life to be all that God wants it to be. The secret of every winner, whether it’s winning in business, winning in sports, winning at love, winning in relationships, winning financially, spiritually, or any other way, the secret of every single winner is one word. It is the word “resilience”.
Resilience. It is the ability to bounce back. Why? Because everybody goes through tough times, everybody has failures, everybody has flops. Nobody goes through life with unbroken success. Nobody goes through life with no problems. Nobody goes through life with it just a breeze and everything’s handed to them. There are problems, pains, pressures, difficulties, in everybody’s life and the difference between winners and losers is that winners get back up. It’s the only difference. The only difference between a winner and a loser is resiliency. Losers stay down. “I’ll never let another man hurt me”. Dumb idea. Because you shut yourself off to hurt, you’ve just shut yourself off to a love and you will live a loveless life the rest of your life. “I will never let another employer hurt me”. “I will never let another,” whatever, “hurt me”.
You build a wall and you fill the moat and you pull up the drawbridge and you build a prison, a self-imposed prison, that your heart stays in and you become a little clod of a person. That’s what a loser does. Winners have resilience. Winners keep on keeping on. Winners keep going. Winners get knocked down but they get back up. Winners have the same problems losers do. They just have resilience. And I think more than any other quality, I want you to develop resilience in your life because life is tough. Everybody agree with that? It’s tough and you can let it beat you down and you can get down and then stay down the rest of your life and you may as well die. God may as well take you on home right now because you’re not gonna live, you’re just gonna exist. But if you have resilience, you learn from your losses, you profit from your pain, you gain from the pain, you advance from your adversity. All of these things happen when you have resilience.
Now, how do I get resilience? Well, you need to do what Paul did. I want to read you three passages. They aren’t on your outline, they’re gonna be on the screen. Three passages of Paul that show that he was probably the most resilient person who ever lived. Now, the first one is 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 23 to 28. Let me read it to you. It says this.
This is Paul’s personal testimony: “I’ve been put in jail more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times I was whipped with thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I’ve faced dangers from flooded rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from angry crowds, mobs. I’ve faced dangers in the cities and in deserts and even on stormy seas. I’ve faced dangers from people who claim to be Christians but aren’t. I’ve lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights”.
This is the guy who wrote most of the Bible you read, the New Testament. “Weariness and pain and sleepless nights. I’ve often been hungry and thirsty. I’ve often gone without food. I’ve often shivered with cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm”. He said “often”. “And besides all this, I’ve had the daily burdens of all the churches I’ve started”. And you think you had a bad day, all right? Now, if anybody has a right to complain, it’s Paul. That laundry list of the terrible things that have happened in his life, while he’s trying to serve God, by the way.
Now, here’s another verse. This is not on your outline. 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 says this: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. When we get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going”. “I’m knocked down, but I’m not knocked out,” he’s saying. “Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies”. Now, that’s what I call a resilient person.