Origin
Origin
Disarming Deception, pt 2, It Happened, It Must Be God's Will
Have you ever heard someone say, "Well it wouldn't have happened unless it was God's Will!"? Not true. Not everything that happens is God's Will. Join us at the Table of Origin as we discuss this very subtle lie.
All right, we are back at the Table of Origin. We are picking it up and putting it down this season. At the table are my friends, Kyli Rose and Jina McAfee. How are you doing?
Kyli Rose:We're good. It's a rainy day here in Texas.
ReGina Johnston:It's rainy and cold! Is that your favorite?
Jina McAfee:It is if I'm inside by my fire. Just for a very limited time.
ReGina Johnston:Right. We Texans are kind of spoiled. We like our sunshine. We like our outdoor time.
Jina McAfee:It just makes you happier.
ReGina Johnston:We need that vitamin D! Today we're disarming deception with the truth of the Word. And this week, we're disarming a really big thought,"It Happened so It Must Be God's Will." When we say that, where does your mind go? Does it go to the good things? Or does it go to the not so good things?
Kyli Rose:The hard things for me.
Jina McAfee:Even though I always say everything that happens is not by accident, and I see the blessings, when I hear that statement, I think about hard things.
ReGina Johnston:I think my mind more often goes to hard things. And I think it's just because that's the question I'm often trying to answer for other people. But I do remember a few
seasons where I questioned:"God, why are You allowing this? Why didn't You keep this from happening?" And in those seasons, I had to dig deeper. I couldn't just stay there in that question. We're going to walk through some of these processes of thought as we talk today. So if you're in that situation right now, stay tuned. It is not just a pat answer that takes care of your heart in that situation. We have to dig deeper, which means we have to hang around. We can't just up and leave our relationship with the Lord. We have to hang around for Him to answer those questions. Because to some degree, He will speak to us, and we will be transformed and expanded and changed. So we realize that we're either in a difficult season right now, or that we just came out of one, or we're about to be in one, God forbid, but it's the truth. So we want to begin by saying that if you're in the middle of this situation, be encouraged. We want you to walk away with hope. We want you to know that you know, that you know, that God is with you. And He will never leave you. He does not minimize our pain, and He doesn't waste it. It has value. Proverbs
4:20-22 says this, "Pay attention to My words. Let My words penetrate deep into your heart, that they may bring life and healing to your whole body." So that's what we ask You, Lord. We ask that You speak to the hearts who are listening this morning, who are listening at whatever time they're listening, that You would have Your way in their lives, and bring healing to them in whatever situation they find themselves today.
Jina McAfee:This is a hard subject. So today we want to talk about the things that we know, that we're absolutely sure of, and let Holy Spirit, let God fill in the rest for you in your situation. We don't want to overlook the hard questions, the tensions that come when something really hard happens. A lot of times our first thought is, "Why, why God? and then the question, "Is God good?" That's one of the questions. Is God good? Did He let this happen? Is He in control? And what is He in control of?
ReGina Johnston:And where is He?
Jina McAfee:Right. Where are You, God? I'm crying out to You. Where are you? So we're not going to overlook these questions. We want to get the truth in there and disarm the deception with the truth. So the first thing we know is this. There are multiple forces at work. God is all powerful, all knowing, everywhere at once. He's all those things, but because we have free will, and because Satan is not bound, there are other forces at work in our world today. We want to look at what we know about God, what we know about us, and what we know about Satan. But we want to start with this first
foundational truth:God is good. He's good, and His unfailing love is forever. You can find that in Psalm 100:5 and multiple places throughout Scripture. But the truth is, His love never fails. His unfailing love never fails. It's always working. He's always accomplishing His purpose on the earth. And did you realize that God fights for us, and He fights with love, which is so not of the world. The world fights with weapons. God's weapon is love. I love that. The first point we want to look at,
the first truth:God is sovereign. What does the word"sovereign" even mean?
ReGina Johnston:It's hard to understand. A lot of times when we think of sovereignty, we think of someone who can just control everything and who does control everything. So to square that with the idea that we have choice is hard.
Jina McAfee:Yes. A lot of times we think about a king, an earthly king, who might not be a good king.
ReGina Johnston:Authoritarian rule.
Jina McAfee:And that's what we would call a Sovereign, but God is sovereign. And we want to look at a couple of Scriptures to talk about that. One is in 1 Chronicles 29:11. It says this,"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is Yours, O Lord, and this is Your kingdom. [And I love
this:] We adore You as the One who is over all things." So we have a different relationship. It's not the relationship of earthly king and subject. It's different. And then here's a totally different kind of focus too. This is the one-on-one God
we see in Psalm 139:2-4. This is King David talking to God saying, "You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I'm far away. You see me when I travel and when I'm at home. You know everything I do. You even know what I'm going to say before I say it, Lord." We think about how spouses do that, friends do that. They know what a person is thinking, what they will say before they say it. That's how close God is to us, how intimate. We sing this song that says that He's over the universe and over every heart. And I think these are two extremes really, over the universe but over my heart, too. And that's what these two verses really speak of. He is the same God, the same God. Another truth that is foundational in establishing God's goodness is this: Every good gift is from God. I love this Scripture in James 1:16-17. It says, "Don't be misled, my brothers and sisters. [That means that we could be misled. It happens to us as believers.] Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifted shadow." That means He's good from beginning to end. He never changes. Last week, last session, we were talking about how the world's view of love is shapeshifting, but God's is rock solid. That's what we're seeing here, too. He's a good Father. He's good. And He's the author of good. Here's another one, Romans 8:28. Maybe a lot of you have heard this one before. "We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them." No matter what comes
your way, you can trust:He's working and He's working for good.
Kyli Rose:So we see that He's sovereign. He is in control. He does not change. I think you even said the word "immutable." He doesn't change. I think when we're experiencing something hard, we are tempted to change our theology or what we know about God. We minimize it to fit what we're experiencing or what we're feeling in the moment. What I'm feeling is not good; therefore, God is not good. I'm feeling out of control; therefore, God is not in control. Some of you may be hearing this for the first time, but maybe the temptation if you have been raised in the church is to think, "I already know this." But whenever we're going through something hard, what you know in your head forces you to look at it. Then you have to solidify it on a deeper level. And so: Is He good? Is He sovereign? Yeah, He is. He is the giver of good gifts. Another thing we know about God, that Scripture reveals about Him, is that He is light. "God is light, and there is no darkness in
Him." 1 John 1:5 tells us that. So a truth about God, He gives good gifts, and He came to give abundant life. He is light, and He gives life.
Jina McAfee:The fact that there's no darkness in Him really speaks to me. He can't do anything that's not right because there's nothing in Him that's dark. It's hard for us to get that because in this earthly body, we're a mixture.
ReGina Johnston:We see through a different lens for sure.
Kyli Rose:I think that's why it's hard for us to grasp these truths about God. I was wondering this morning, "Do we have the ability to understand these things fully? With our limited human minds?" I don't know. I do. Yes. And I can say that from experience. I
Jina McAfee:So do you think the hard things help us understand some of those as we go through them? would have been very comfortable receiving the pat answer from you, "God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good." I would have been comfortable saying it and hearing it until I experienced something hard. And then it makes no sense. And then I'm like, "Are You really good?" And that's when I have to do what Regina was saying at the beginning. That's when I have to sit on the floor and look at myself and look at God and like really wrestle through this in His word.
ReGina Johnston:Jina and I were just bantering back and forth this morning about Job because that's where are in our 365 reading. We were talking about how Job's friends obviously didn't comfort well, and they didn't seem to have empathy for what Job was going through. They didn't seem to be able to put themselves in his shoes. We talked about the possibility that Job was the same kind of friend before all this happened to him. Possibly, he could not empathize with the down and outer. The Bible says he didn't sin in all that he went through, but possibly he could not empathetically wrap his heart around people who are going through hard times. When you don't experience it, it's harder. So in his journey, he wrestles with these same questions. Where are You, God? Who are You, God? Why are You allowing this, God? And he comes out on the other end of it, being able to say, experientially, who God is.
Kyli Rose:I feel like that is a practical takeaway. If you're not familiar with the story of Job, this guy loses everything--his kids, his health, anything and everything that you would hold on to. He lost it all. I feel like it gives us permission to bring that kind of honesty to God. We may think that when we come to God, we have to keep our head down. It is this very reverential experience, but as a Father, He invites us, like Job, to come ask those hard questions. And God responds. That's the other thing: You see Job bring these hard questions and you see him wrestling and then you see God respond. God doesn't actually even answer,"Why?" That's the overarching question, but He never answers it. The book of Job debunks this idea that if I do good things, then good things will happen to me, and if I do bad things, then bad things will happen to me. But God never answers why all that happened to Job. What He says is I want you to focus on Who? Like, you're just asking the wrong question, Job. It's not Why? I need you to shift your focus back to Me. When we do that, these are the things that we discover about Him. He is Sovereign. He is a good gift giver. He is light, and He gives life. So even if you feel like what you're experiencing feels like something is dying, or maybe something or someone did physically die, and you are feeling the repercussions and the pain of that, His word promises that He redeems everything. He can redeem anything and everything. And He can bring life even from things that look so dead and feel so, so dead. So one of the things we read in Scripture, John 10:10, Jesus says, "I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of." I think you really have to kind of hone in on that word "eternal." On this side of heaven, we're going to experience pain. The hope is we're only here for a moment in time. We're not going to know pain forever. That gives us hope in the midst of the pain. It's just for a moment. So life here and forever. He is not just concerned about this life. Jesus is not just simply concerned about our 70, 80, 90 years on earth. He is concerned about those, right? He cares about our day in and day out. Jina was like establishing that for us. While He is so involved in everything going on on a global scale, He is also very involved with you. And with me. Lke the Word says, He knows the number of hairs on our head. He cares about you, and the things that you're walking through and feeling. But He's also concerned about our destiny. He's concerned about our destination. Where are we going to go when all of this is said and done? When our time on Earth is over? In just a matter of moments within the grand scheme of eternity, where are you going to be? Where are you going to spend eternity? It's these hard moments in our lives that reveal who God is. And it gives us a deeper understanding of Him, His goodness. And it settles us even in the midst of hardship. He teaches us to cling to something that cannot be shaken, and that's Himself.
Jina McAfee:I think it's hard for us to grasp because we live in this 70 or 80 years. We live here in this. It feels like everything. And so it's kind of like you have to pull yourself back and look up and see the scheme of things. And maybe as you grow older, you see it more. I think I have, but still, we're just so in this world.
Kyli Rose:So I think the overarching question was, "Is God good?" And we see it over and over and over again.
Scripture tells us:He is good. His love is unfailing. It has no end. It has no beginning. It's forever. We see it in Scripture. We even experience it. We are talking about the hard experience of life, but we see it in the sweetness too. There's so many sweet things that only a kind God could have done for me. I mean, even in the hardest moments of my story, I see His kindness. He pulled me out. He sustained me even though He didn't have to.
Jina McAfee:We see it in hindsight.
Kyli Rose:Absolutely. So the truth about God is a resounding,"Yes. He is good."
ReGina Johnston:So when we're going through those things that are causing us to wrestle with these big subject matters, these big questions, it's very helpful if we hang our hat, not on what we feel, but on what we know. We've just talked about what we know about God. Let's talk just a moment about the truth about people. We're His creation. He created us in His image, but the bottom line is it wasn't very long after creation that death came to man as a result of the fall. So we see this in Genesis
2:16-17, "The Lord God warned him [Adam]. 'You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden--except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.'" So the truth about people is this. We chose death. When we had life out before us, we had a choice between life and death, we chose death. And you may say, "Well, I didn't do that. I wasn't there. That was many years ago." But when Adam and Eve did that, it was like a domino effect. The dominoes were all laid out through the ages and the years where if that first one was pushed over, it just knocked the next one and the next one and the next one. And so we chose death.
Deuteronomy 30:19 says, "Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!" I mean, that's God's heart. Oh, that you would choose life. I've laid it out here before you. So the progression from Adam and Eve in the garden, who chose death knowingly, you can see the cycle where the Israelites would choose God for a bit, but then they would choose to sin again, which would bring death into their life, because the fruit of sin is death. It may not be a physical death, but definitely a spiritual death. The fruit of sin is death. And so the truth about people is we have choice. And we can choose even in our hard times, to hang our hat on what we know about God, or hang our hat on our feelings, and our feelings can take us all over the map. So another truth about people is if we're going to share in Christ's glory, the Bible says we also need to understand and share in His suffering. But you're like, I don't want to do that. It's like this scary ride that you go on. Like, that was a horrible roller coaster ride. I'm not standing in line to do that, again. I'm not raising my hand. I'm not getting at the front of the line. Same thing with the suffering. However, if we don't understand and identify with Christ in His suffering, we don't understand the fullness of what He's done for us. And we don't understand how He can rescue us in the middle of it. We don't understand really what He redeems us from. We just don't have a clear and working experience from which to even share with someone else, what all He can do. So here's what the Bible says in Romans 8:17 says, "Since we are His children, we are His heirs. In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share in His glory, we must also share His suffering." So the Bible says we are co heirs with Christ. And Paul says
in Philippians 3:10 HCSB, "My goal is to know Him [to know Christ] and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings." So if we're going to know the power of His resurrection, and, yes, everybody wants to know that power. Well, what are you going to resurrect from? The suffering. So you have to know the height and breadth and depth of who God is. And this is the way we learn to know Him. The way to life, the Bible says, is death. The way Jesus thinks, the way God thinks, is so not like we think, not like the world we live in. And so how do we then endure this suffering? Well, we know we will experience it. Christ experienced it in every way imaginable.
Jina McAfee:One way He experienced it that can take me right to the heart is that He was betrayed with a kiss. When He was getting ready to be crucified, to be arrested, to go before the council of priests and the government, Judas, one of those closest to Him, one who had spent three years day and night with Him, lived life with Him, eaten with Him, been blessed by Him, chose to betray Him to the governing authorities. Judas told the officials, "This is how you will recognize Jesus, I will betray Him with a kiss." So he goes up and kisses Jesus, and Jesus knows. He knows that His friend is betraying Him with a kiss. That is personal. That is suffering. We experience that kind of vulnerable, personal suffering as well. Some of you listening may have had a spouse walk out on you, maybe they said, "I just don't love you anymore," or, "I never did." Or maybe they chose someone else, and you're not chosen anymore. That's hard. Maybe you've been abused by family members, as a child or as an adult, physically, sexually, emotionally. That's hard. That is like being betrayed by someone who should be taking care of you. So Christ made Himself vulnerable. Realize He is our high priest, because He went through every single thing you will go through. He identifies with us in that. And knowing that somehow helps.
ReGina Johnston:The knowledge of that helps us cope. We realize we can go through whatever we're going through in Christ, with Christ. We're comforted by someone, this Christ, who has gone through the same thing we're going through. That's what we want. That's what support groups are, right? Gathering together people who have either gone through what we're going through, or they're going through it at the same time. We have that comfort with Jesus. He totally understands. Even if no one else has been through what we're going through, which they have, but if we're not associated with anyone else that is going through it, we can be associated with the God on High who loves us, because He's gone through what we're going through before us.
Jina McAfee:As a man, fully man. Like, He knows.
ReGina Johnston:Right, as man, as human. And so He knows. He knows the pain. He knows the heartbreak. He knows the sense of being totally alone.
Jina McAfee:The anguish. It would have been such anguish of soul and spirit.
ReGina Johnston:Not only can we enter into the understanding of His pain, He enters into ours. I love that! He comforts, and He shows us how to walk through it. So here's a question, "Is God in control?"
Kyli Rose:Is He in control? Yes. We established at the beginning how He is King of everything, that He is sovereign. He is the supreme ruler with ultimate power. He is the creator. Anything that is, is because He put it in place. Any system seen or unseen, He created it. But here's the deal, and this is the part we wrestle with, He gives us free will. And it's actually the most dignifying thing that He gives us. He has the power to do anything, but He did not want to force us to love Him back because He knows that is not love. And one of the things we talked about last week is He did not extend love to us because He needed something back from us. It's not this parasitic relationship, like you scratch My back, and I'll scratch yours. It wasn't a God who had something missing and reached down to humans, because there was some missing piece of Him. He was in perfect communion with Himself, His Son and the Holy Spirit. He chose us because He wanted to, and He wanted us to choose Him back. He didn't want to force us. Because He's given us this freewill, this ability to choose, sometimes things happen that are not His will, right? So sometimes the things that we're experiencing, the hardships we're experiencing, are the consequence or the residue of the choices we have made. You were talking about sin. I think at the heart of sin, it always boils down to that question, "Is God good?" Like, I don't believe that He's good so I'm going to choose this. I don't believe that He has good intentions for me. I don't think He knows the best for me, so I'm going to make a choice that I think is best for me.
ReGina Johnston:So every time we experience something bad or something hard, are you saying that we've chosen that? We have choice so we've chosen that?
Kyli Rose:We have choice. Sometimes what we are experiencing is a consequence of our sin, and sometimes it's because we live in a fallen world. Whenever we sinned in Genesis 3, essentially that relationship was severed. Sometimes we experience the consequences of other people's choices, not just ours. We live in a broken world. He is coming again. It won't stay broken forever. So sometimes what we're experiencing is the fallout of something we willingly did, knowing that that was not God's best for us. And sometimes, it is the result of living in a broken, sinful world. All those things coexist.
ReGina Johnston:And here's the deal. At the same time He gave me choice, He gave you choice. I may want to selfishly pray,"God, You saw how Kyli did me, make her come and apologize. He's chosen not to do that. Now, can He work in your heart? Yes, if you'll let Him. So my situation is affected by other people's choice as well. It's that fallen world syndrome that we all live in. So we've looked at what we know about people. Let's look at what we know about Satan. What's the truth about
Kyli Rose:So we see some things about him in Ephesians 2:2. Paul is speaking to the church in Ephesus. He says, "You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God." So he is at work in those who refuse to obey God. That's what he does. We get to choose. We choose God, or we choose the enemy. And that is the thing about what we are engaging in. There is no neutral zone. No choice is a choice. Ignorance is not bliss in the kingdom. You cannot have one foot in this kingdom, and have your other foot in that one. When you do, you will forfeit your authority in both. You have to choose. The enemy loves to lead anyone who refuses to obey God. He loves it. He is waiting. He's watching. It's not that we live in fear, but it does call us to live with a sense of awareness. Satan.
Another truth about Satan:he's over the evil rulers of the
unseen world. Ephesians 6:12 says, "We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places." You and I are engaging in a spiritual warfare. Sometimes it's seen, so sometimes we're feeling that. That is spiritual warfare. The enemy is the commander of dark forces at work. We talked about how God is light. The enemy is the prince of darkness. But, know this, he is not an equal opposite. He is a defeated foe. He is not the equal opposite of God. He is a defeated foe.
Jina McAfee:He's not all powerful.
Kyli Rose:He is not all powerful. He is limited. Another thing that's interesting about Job. You see this dialogue at the beginning. You're standing in the court of heaven, and you see this dialogue between Satan and God. The original language speaks of God allowing Satan to speak, allowing him to approach, dismissing him when he is ready for the conversation to be done, telling him where his boundaries are. You can go this far, and then you will stop. You get this impression of Satan being on a leash throughout the whole book. So God is in control. Satan has some control because we gave him that control by sinning.
ReGina Johnston:And we still do give him control.
Jina McAfee:I think that's one of the things that as a new believer, it took me a while to see that there's this battle, an ongoing battle, all the time. And I need to be aware.
Kyli Rose:Another truth about Satan is he really has one objective, and that is to steal from you, to destroy any good thing that God wants to do in and through you, and to kill you ultimately physically, spiritually, emotionally. We were talking about how God is the giver of good gifts. Satan is the opposite of that. He wants to take anything that is good from you. "The thief's purpose is to steal, kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life"
(John 10:10). What we want you to see is that we have two opposing kingdoms, opposing lives and opposing purposes. We can see that God is good, and He wants to work good in and through you. He wants glory for Himself and good for you. We see that the enemy actually wants the very opposite. He knows that by using hardship, he can seed that question, the same question he posed from the very beginning, to Adam and Eve. Is God really good? Is He really good? We see Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness with that. Is He really good? Did God really say...? He is. He's good. You see these opposing truths, these forces, in opposition all the time day in and day out.
ReGina Johnston:So let's recap. We're talking about the deception, "If it happened, it must be God's will." We're laying the groundwork for this is just not true. "Whatever happens is God's will" is just not true. A lot of people will just say that flippantly. But we know if someone sins, that's not God's will. We know that it's God's will for all to be saved, but not all are saved. So we get the truth from those two simple thought processes right there. He doesn't want anyone to be destroyed. He wants everyone to repent, but not everyone is
repenting. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 says,"For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." But that's not necessarily what happens. Is death God's will? No, death is not God's will. That's not how He planned it. When He made Adam and Eve in the garden, He planned for humankind to live forever with eternity. He planned us with eternity in mind. And still, He worked it out so we can have eternity. I love that about Him. So you know it's not true that whatever happens must be God's will. With that knowledge then, when things happen that are not desirable, we need to know who God is. We need to know the truth about people. And we need to know the truth about the enemy. Then how do we live that out?
Jina McAfee:So I was thinking about this. I have a friend who went through something that just totally disrupted her life. It was catastrophic, really. And this is what she says, "What do you do when a Mack truck hits you?" That's a good visual, isn't it? We can feel that, right? So we want to talk about this for a little bit. We've given you truth and proof, but now we want to give you strategies. One thing we know is that no matter what comes your way, God wants you to know Him better. That's a goal. He wants to live with you forever, but He wants you to know Him better, because honestly, He wants you to share Him with other people. We're His representatives, right? We're the ones that make Him known in the earth. When Jesus lived on the earth, He did that. But we have Him in us, and we get to do that. We've talked about Job and the devastating things he went through. At the very end of the book, when God reveals Himself to Job, then Job says, "I only heard about You before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes." It's what Job needed. He could say, "Now I really know You." God doesn't tell him why he lost everything including his own children, but He tells him what Job needed the most, which was to know Him. It's what we need too. Don't we love when God reveals Himself to us?
ReGina Johnston:There's no way really to describe the kind of life you feel when you have a fresh revelation of who Jesus is.
Jina McAfee:I've heard people talk about how it's the "High." There is no high like the most High. It's so awesome that you get into His word and you dig in and you look for Him. He says,"Look for Me everywhere and in everything." And so that's what we want to do. In the end, God wants you to experience healing and health and wholeness. This is the truth. We are raised in a sinful world, and we've had things done to us, and we've done things that are hurtful. So our hearts are broken. We're all broken. We're broken people. But what God wants for you, is to experience healing and health and wholeness no matter what happens, no matter where the hard comes from. King David was known in Scripture as "a man after God's own heart." Even so, he took another man's wife and arranged for her husband to be killed. When God revealed to him that he sinned, he says, "Create in me a clean heart, oh God." And eventually, that same psalm, Psalm 51, says, "And now I minister to others, I minister life to others." And that's what He wants. He wants that for us. What we really want you to see is that there's a process. There's this journey you go on from the very first question,"Why God? Is God not good?" But you don't stay there with that question, right? You can't stay there.
ReGina Johnston:We shouldn't minimize the journey. The journey is important.
Jina McAfee:A good friend will walk through the journey with you. They won't minimize your pain. They'll listen to your pain. They'll listen to the hardest thing you're dealing with. And they'll help put a little truth in there, when they can, remind you of the truth. Even if they don't go through it themselves, they can help you. We want to give you three strategies for how to live all the time, in the little things and the big things so that you have the practice of a strategy of how to live when the really hard thing, when the Mack Truck hits you. You know what to do. But realize you need to live this all of the time. And each of these strategies is an action, which is good because it feels like we can actually do something right? Because sometimes we feel like it just happens to us. What do we do? But you can do something. We're not victims. So what's the first strategy that we want to talk about?
Kyli Rose:So the first strategy is cast your cares on Him, and that is straight from Scripture. 1 Peter 5:7 says, "Give all your worries and your cares to God because He cares about you." 1
Peter 5:7 in another translation says, "Cast all your anxieties[that's a word we're very familiar with] Cast all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you." We live in the information age, right? We are a distracted people. We love our phones. Why? Because they short circuit all those negative emotions, pain, frustration. I can distract myself with it. I can just go work myself to the ground so I don't have to deal with it. And really what you're doing is you are prolonging the process of healing and the process of wholeness that you were talking about. Everything that we feel--our hurts, our heartaches, our questions, our concerns--all of it is valid. And what He tells us in Scripture is that if you will take every single bit of it, all the questions, the ugliest parts, things that have been done to you, things that you have done, things that you are feeling, jealousy, bitterness, anger, that frustration, whatever it is, all those things that are even too embarrassing to say out loud to another human being, He says, "I want every single bit of it. It is too heavy for you. In fact, it will ultimately end up killing you, but I can handle it. Bring it to Me." And so He invites us to abide, to stay closely connected. He invites us to get as close to Him as possible and as often as we possibly can. And to do it all of the time. And in that place of relationship, there is a divine exchange. I am giving You my hurt; You are giving me peace. I am giving You my pain; You are giving me wholeness. I am giving You my brokenness; You are giving me healing. There is this divine exchange that happens whenever we are constantly with the Father, day in and day out. In fact, the word says moment by moment. So cast all your anxieties on Him. To cast it means to throw, to hurl, to fling, like get that thing off of you, out of you, as quickly as possible. Whenever I touch something hot, ouch, that's painful. I get it off and out of my hands quickly. And that's really what He is wanting us to do with those thoughts. Don't let them simmer. Don't let them fester. You know that offense, don't let it sit. That unforgiveness, don't build a brick-and-mortar structure. We acknowledge it, and we fling it to Christ as fast as we can. That thing is piping hot; it will do damage to us. So we get it to Him because He's the only one who knows what to do with it. So how do I live? I cast my cares on Him. We also take heart. In John 16:33 Jesus says,"I have told you all of this so that you may have peace in Me. Here on Earth, you will [not you may] you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." So what does "take heart" mean? We're actually going to look at what it doesn't mean. The opposite of "take heart" is "lose heart." In Luke 18:1 Jesus says, "Always pray and don't lose heart." So the biblical word for losing heart is actually two words. The first is "in or with or by." The second word is "evil or bad." It's when a person is actually immersed in the awareness of problems rather than the awareness of God's nature. So that's a lot of words. But essentially, what it's saying is take heart. To lose heart means you lost focus. To take heart means you stay focused on Him. Sometimes we're asking the wrong question. It's not "Why?" but"Who?" Whenever we're in the throes of pain, we're in the throes of sorrow, we're in the throes of frustration, we can get paralyzed by the question of"Why?" He's saying, in order for you to take heart, you have to shift your focus off of what you're experiencing, onto what you know about Me, off of what you don't know onto what you do know. You know that I am good. You know that I will never leave you. You know that I am the giver of good gifts. You know that I am sovereign and in control. And you know, that while I might not pull you out, I will absolutely see you through. And so, if you want to take heart, you have to be really intentional about your focus. So you turn that problem to God. He is with us. He has overcome the world. He takes the brunt of everything we experience. He took our burdens at the cross, and we are not alone. That is what we know. And that is what we shift our focus on.
ReGina Johnston:And a third strategy is this. Not only do we cast our care on Him, not only do we take heart, we take comfort. We take comfort in the fact that it's not always going to be like it is right now. In fact, there could come a shift just as quickly as I'm sitting here and speaking it. There could come a shift in what you're going through. But not only that, we take hope in the future. The Scripture says,"With eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. We long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies, [glory be] He has promised us." So just think, there's going to come a time. You're not always going to be in the situation you're in. Tomorrow can be a brighter day. But not only that, in the future, there's going to come a time when there's no more sorrow, no more sin, no more tears, no more suffering, no more pain, no more sickness, no more death, and no more loss. And this is a hope that we were given when we were saved. So if we look forward to something we don't yet have, we need to wait patiently and confidently because He will carry it through. This is the thing about
God:He will watch over His promises to perform them. That's what the Word says. So the one thing we really want you to hear today is God is good. So we don't dwell on the "Why?" We dwell on the "Who?"
Jina McAfee: And then I think:Your story does not end here. We started in Genesis. We're going to end in Revelation, one of the last chapters in the last book of the Bible. Revelation 21:3-4 says this, "I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, 'Look, God's home is now among His people! He will live with them, and they will be His people. God Himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever!'" So God's original design for us is going to be fulfilled in heaven. That's what we have to look forward to. That is some of the comfort. We have to take ourselves there; we have to think ourselves there. We want to pray before we leave you. You could be in all kinds of different situations right now. You may not even know this God of all comfort, but hopefully we have made Him known to you in very real ways. And He's speaking to you right now. So we just want to close this out for those who know Him and those who are going to know Him more after this. So, Lord, we just come before You in the great and mighty name of Jesus. And Lord, we just declare, You are good. Lord, You are good. Your love is unfailing. It never fails. It never fails. Lord, You've already shown Yourself by sending Your very own Son, to die on the cross for us, to take our place, that we might have life with You forevermore. Lord, I pray that You would reveal Yourself to people. Lord, speak; let them hear You. Awaken them to know that You are with us. We are never alone. Lord, You know us. You know what we're going to say before we even say it. Lord, we declare every good gift is from You. You cause everything in our lives to work together for good for those who know You and are living for You. No matter what comes, we can know. May we see You everywhere we go and and in everything we do. Lord, may we know that the thief is the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy. But You've come that we may have life and life more abundantly, now and forever. So Lord, I just thank You. I thank You that You speak to us, Lord, that You walk with us, Lord, that You are with us, Lord, that You have a plan and it's a good plan and You will bring it about. We just say,"Have Your way, Lord!" In Jesus' mighty name. Amen.
ReGina Johnston:Well, blessings. See you all. We'll see you again at the Table of Origin.