Because of how this virus has affected our lives, I wanted to take a break from Matthew this week and be a little more on topic. There is a lot of fear and anxiety gripping our country and the world right now because of this virus. Whether it is justified or not seems to be still up in the air, and we will not really know until it is over a couple of months from now. One of the problems that we are facing is simply a lack of information about this disease. While at the same time facing a “mis-information” overload with people either intentionally or unintentionally causing panic based on false information. Given the apparent danger of this virus, it has severe nature and contagious nature, we have decided to hold off meeting together as a church for now for safety reasons.
One panic that this virus has caused is concerning household essentials like toilet paper. CJ and I had our monthly shopping trip to Aberdeen planned a couple weeks in advance and were down to our last rolls. Because of the panic, we found out yesterday that the entire city of Aberdeen was sold out of TP. Don’t worry, we got ahold of some, we will be good for the next couple of weeks, but it has made me think a bit about disaster prep.
For any of us, the best thing we can do for ourselves and for others to make it through times of difficulty and fear is to be prepared beforehand. My father-in-law, who is a retired police officer, is very focused on disaster prep. He is not one of the crazy zombie apocalypse prepers who has a bunker filled with years’ worth of canned food and an arsenal big enough to fight a small war. What he focuses on instead is more of the natural disasters and things like that that most people actually go through but hardly ever prepare for.
Preparation for disaster is not about avoiding the disaster altogether, because there are things are outside of our control, instead it is about getting through the disaster and coming out the other side in the best possible way.
The same is true with the trials and struggles that we face in life. In the midst of our struggles emotions are running wild and it is sometimes hard to focus on the truth. It is easy to let our minds entertain sinful thoughts. Things that after-the-fact we regret. We are tested in many ways all throughout our lives. There is nothing we can do to avoid all pain and trials and fears in life. There are definitely things we can do to avoid certain trials. Our own sin brings difficulty into our lives and getting rid of that will make our lives easier, but how do we come out in the best position of those trials that we have no control over?
This morning I want to do a little disaster prep. To lay out a plan we can follow to help get us through those times of trial and fear. First were going to look at how we should be preparing before the trial, then how we should react in the trial, and finally how we are to look back to and continue on after the trial.
For this we are going to look at 1 Peter 5:6-11. Peter is writing to the church during a time of intense persecution. He is writing to call them to godly living in a time of intense pain and hardship. Though we do not face anything like this kind of persecution on a regular basis, the trials of life are best handled with this same process no matter what they are.
“Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
When it comes to disaster prep, as with most things in life, no one ever plans to fail but often people fail to plan. The people who are hit the hardest in disasters or those who have no plan in place. Who have not thought about what they would do in these disaster situations.
When it comes to disasters and trials in our lives, the first thing we need to think about is the fact that these trials will come no matter what. If we look back a bit to Peter’s starting point in talking about persecution we see in 4:12. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you.” We need to recognize that pain and struggles will come. We should not be surprised that they come. We should not be angry with God that he allowed trials to come because He has warned us that they will. God has left us in the world to experience these events for a reason. His reasons, His plans, and they are meant to accomplish His purposes in our lives and in the world, but we will look more at that later.
Once we recognize that they will come we can begin to actually prepare for them. And as we see in 5:6 the first thing we must do in order to prepare for these trials is to humble ourselves before God. What is it mean to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God? This is the essence of the first beatitude, being “poor in spirit.” Humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God means that we submit to the truth of His word. We recognize His authority over every aspect of our lives and over everything in creation. It is giving up control over our lives and trusting that God has a purpose for all that we will go through. Everything from the trivial events of our day to day, up to the global events that we can seem so far removed from.
Before we go into the trials of life, and the best way in which we can prepare is to have a clear picture of who God is and how He has called us to live. We must recognize that we are not in control of our own lives. We need to stop trying to rely on ourselves, on our strength, on our brains, on our money, whatever it is. To be humble and contrite of spirit means to recognize that we are in need. That we must rely on someone outside of ourselves for everything.
When we recognize the truth of who God is and we humble ourselves before Him, we can feel secure in the fact that he is in control of all things. That whatever the trial is we are going through he has ordained these events from before the foundation of the world and that He has a plan for what will come next.
A. W. Tozer said “the man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of 10,000 temporal problems for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long.”
This does not mean that the trials will be easier by any means, what it does mean is that our mindset, our attitude, will not make the problem worse. In the midst of trials our wrong mindset about who God is and what we can and should do about the trial compounds the problem. If we have cast all of our anxiety, all of our worries about the future before God before the trial begins, we will not be burdened by our anxiety during the trial.
Being successful in the trials of life begins by having the right mindset before they begin.
Starting in verse 8 we have our direction once the trial begins. We must be sober of spirit. In other words, we must be in control of our emotions, we cannot allow our emotions to control us. Emotions are a symptom. Emotions reveal our mindset. How we view ourselves, how we view the world around us and our place in it, in every circumstance. What you care most about, what you are focused on is revealed by emotions.
Emotions in and of themselves are not wrong, no sinful. They may reveal a sinful heart attitude about something, but the emotion itself is simply a reaction to our mindset before the difficulty begins. When a trial comes, such as the loss of someone close to us. If they were a believer, we can be sad after their passing. We can be in pain and in mourning, and we should be because we have been separated from them and we recognize the pain and suffering death brings but if we allow the sorrow to control our lives it reveals that we either do not trust that we will see them again or that they are in the presence of their Savior and their God. It can reveal that we have doubts about the truth of the gospel.
The same is true for anxiety. Though this might be a time of fear across the world, we are commanded to be anxious for nothing and commanded not to worry about our life. God has promised to care for us every day and He will provide for all our needs until the one in which He has determined to call us home. Recognizing the danger and feeling fear is a natural reaction to danger. Allowing that fear to control us and to force us to live under continued anxiety demonstrates a lack of faith in the person and promises of God.
Emotions are important tools to help us evaluate our mind and what we see as most important in our lives. We must never allow them to control us. We must be sober of spirit because it is in the times of trouble, in times of fear, in the times of pain and trials that we are most tempted to sin. As we see in verse 8, Peter compares the devil to a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
Lions do not go after the healthiest and the fittest animals. They pick out those that are weakened either from age or illness. They go after the easier targets. In the same way we are most often tempted when we are in a weakened state. When we are in pain because of loss, when we are tired because of prolonged times of trial. When there are events happening in the world that we have no control over. We must be sober of spirit, we must be on alert because it is in our trials that we are most vulnerable to sin.
During those times of trials, we must fall back on our training, what we know to be true. We stand firm in our faith by remembering the truth of who God is, what He has done for us and what He has promised us. We stand firm by living out our faith the way that we know God has called us to.
During the trial we must not allow our emotions to control us but use them to seek out any sinful heart attitude that they may reveal. We need to stand firm in our faith. Acting on what we know to be true. Finally, we need to look to those around us for help and guidance. As a believer, you are never alone in your struggles. Whatever you are going through there are others in the family of God who have gone through similar struggles and who have a desire to help you. This is one of the primary reasons God established His church as a family of fellow believers. So that we may bear one another’s burdens.
We can look to the struggles that others have gone through and learn from their mistakes as well is from their victories. We can look to the experiences of others, both those who are still with us as well as those who have long since gone to glory. We use their experience to help us understand what we are going through and how we can best serve God in our own struggles.
Those who try to make it through trials alone will always have a harder time than those who seek out help from the avenues God has established. I am fully convinced that 999 times out of 1000 God answers our prayers for help using fellow members of the body of Christ. If we continue to struggle silently without appealing to the primary avenue for aid that God has provided, we suffer needlessly. God does work in miracles, He can provide relief supernatural ways, but overwhelmingly our relief comes through our church family.
At the same time, as believers and part of the family of God we must be looking for ways to serve those who are in need; especially those within our church family. As James writes in his epistle 1:27, “pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” It is the working out of the second greatest commandment, “to love your neighbor has yourself.”
Before trials begin, we must have the right mindset to be prepared to undergo those trials and we do that by humbling ourselves before the truth of who God is and what He has called us to do. During our trials we must be in control of our emotions, not allow them to control us; we must be conscious of the sinful mindset that they may reveal and that it is during these times we are most tempted to sin. We must remember also that God’s primary means of help comes through the church.
We do this because of what we see in verse 10. “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” After we suffer through these trials, God has promised to use them for our good. We often hear people quote in times of difficulty in times of trials Romans 8:28 “and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” The context of that verse is not talking about emotional, financial, or physical good. We are not promised that God will bring us through times of trial only to bless us in physical ways. Instead the good that is referred to there is our spiritual good. It is being conformed into the image of Christ. Peter explains here what that good is.
God uses these trials to “perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish” us. The idea of “perfect” is that of completion. It is not perfection in the sense of never doing anything wrong or having anything out of place, but rather brought to the end goal that was in mind at the beginning. God uses our trials to conform us more and more into the image of Christ. That is the goal of our walk with God while we are on the earth. It begins with our salvation and being made spiritually alive and ends when we enter into glory, but it is a continuing process wall we remain alive. This work is done primarily through our trials.
God uses our trials to confirm us. This is not a confirmation for God’s sake. He already knows our hearts and our minds. This is confirmation for ourselves. It is why reflection in the midst of and after a time of trial is so necessary. We need to look back on our times of struggle and fear to see if we failed and how we need to change in order to be more like Christ. Or to look back and see how God has used the trials of our lives to shape us for future ministry or to face something greater that is yet to come.
That is the idea of the strengthening and establishing. Trials are a sharpening tool that God uses to hone us into the most effective implements in His hand. Sometimes the lessons that we learn from trials are clear and simple. They are easy to look back on and understand the lesson that God wanted us to learn. Other times, there may not be a clear lesson. Many of the struggles and trials of our life may seem like they serve no purpose. But God is always using them to strengthen and establish us. To grow our patients, to grow our faith, to grow our dependence upon him and to stop relying on our own strength.
It begins when we go through these trials with the right attitude. By first preparing ourselves beforehand by humbling ourselves before God. Going into struggles with the right mindset; keeping control of our emotions and being cautious of the temptations that come against us during our weakest points, by reflecting on the way in which God uses them to shape us into the most effective tools, we can have joy in the midst of those trials.
This does not mean that they will be easy. No matter what attitude you have, pain is still present, uncertainty and fear will be a part of a world filled with sin and sinful people. But it does mean that even in the midst of our trials we can have joy. We can be content.
And we remember the words of Paul in Philippians 4-7, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
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