A Godly view of Circumstances - Life of Paul Part 38

Well, good morning.

How's everybody? Well, let's open a Bible today. I hope you brought one to Acts chapter 16.

And we're going to be continuing in our study of the life of the great man, the apostle Paul. Now, you know, when I became a follower of Christ 32 years ago, I really believe that now that I come to Christ, all my problems were going to be over. Well, since then, my dad had three heart attacks and died. My mom and my 26 year old sister in law both died of breast cancer.

I wasn't allowed to finish my PhD dissertation because I wouldn't compromise on biblical inerrancy and my professor threw me out of the program. I have three teenage boys who count them have had six accidents totaling one car and severely hurting a bunch of other cars. And I have a 10 year old severely disabled little girl. As I stand here before you looking at you today, I have a broken rib. I have a leak in my roof. I have a beloved mother in law who has cancer.

I have a master bedroom shower that's been broken for a month and I have bugs on my azaleas. Now the point of all of this is I've learned in 32 years of walking with Christ that Christians have problems just like everybody else does. But the difference is that as followers of Jesus Christ, God wants us to look at our problems, to react to our problems and respond to our problems differently than people in the world system around us.

And that's what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about what I like to call having a godly view of our circumstances. We're going to see the apostle Paul illustrate this in his life. We're going to use his life as a classroom and we're going to try to talk about how you and I can have a godly view of circumstances in our life.

Now a little bit of background before we dig in. Remember the apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey. He's crossed over from Asia Minor and he's crossed to Greece, the northern part of Greece, where he has spent almost a month in the northern Greek town of Philippi. Here in Philippi he's been arrested. He's been beaten with rods till all the flesh was ripped off his back down to the bone. Then he's been thrown in jail in Philippi. His hands were put above his head.

His feet were spread wide in stocks, causing his leg muscles to cramp up without there being any way of relieving that. And then in spite of all of this, as the evening wears on, he knows that the next morning he's going to face a trial where he very well might receive a worse penalty than he's already got. Now that's where we've been.

Let's pick up the story. Verse 25, Acts 16. The Bible says that about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. Now most people, if we'd have been in that situation, if we'd have been in that jail the way the apostle Paul was, our reaction would have been a little bit more like our friend Eeyore. Remember Eeyore?

Eeyore would have said, oh woe is me, my back hurts, my legs hurt, my feet hurt, my head hurts, everything hurts, woe is me. Well that wasn't the apostle Paul. No sir, he was singing. He was praising God and he wasn't doing it quietly either because the rest of the verse goes on to say, and all the other prisoners were listening to them. This was like a Billy Graham crusade going on in the middle of this jail. And you say, well Lon, how do we explain Paul's reaction, Paul's behavior in light of his circumstances? I mean he has got some nasty circumstances.

His back's all torn up, his legs are all cramped up, he's in this old cruddy jail with his arms above his head chained to the wall, and yet he's calm and he's got joy and he's got peace and he's got confidence. How do you explain that? Well friends, the answer is that the apostle Paul had a godly view of his circumstances and we want to define that. What exactly does it mean to have a godly view of our circumstances? Well, a godly view of circumstances very simply is an outlook on life.

It is a way of looking at our circumstances that is based on believing two biblical truths. Truth number one, which the apostle Paul believed, is that as a follower of Jesus Christ, God was in absolute control of every circumstance that came into Paul's life. Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians 5 17, give thanks in all things. You mean even when you're in jail with your back bleeding and your hands shackled and your legs all cramped up? Give thanks in all things.

Why? Because this, your situation, whatever it might be, this is God's will for you in Messiah Jesus. See, as he sat there in that jail, Paul said, You know what? It is no accident I'm in this jail. It is no coincidence I'm in this jail.

It is not a matter of fate that I ended up in this jail with my back all torn up like I am. God is in absolute control of my circumstances. I am right smack dab in the middle of the will of God for my life because even the smallest detail of my life is under the utter absolute and total control of Almighty God. The second truth that Paul believed is that as a follower of Christ, he had a promise from God that God was going to convert every situation that entered his life into good, into a blessing. He was the one who wrote that promise down and reminded us of it. Romans 8 28.

We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him. And as he sat there in that jail, the apostle Paul said, Hey, you know what? I got a promise from God that as bad as things look right now, they're not going to stay this way.

Somehow God's going to take these bad looking things and turn them into a blessing for me. And he remembered how God had done this for lots of other people in the Bible. For example, he remembered the story of Esther. Remember Esther's mom died. Her dad died. She was forced to move to the capital of the Persian Empire, a city called Susa and live with an uncle that she didn't even know, Uncle Mordecai.

Now, that wasn't a real good looking situation, but God stepped into that tragic situation and flipped it around for her blessing. She ended up becoming the queen of Persia and using that position to save her Jewish people from being slaughtered. Paul, as he sat in the jail, knew the story of Moses and the Israelites down at the Red Sea. Moses found himself with the Red Sea to his back and the charging chariots of Pharaoh in front of him.

And yet God stepped in and turned that very unenviable situation into the greatest delivery in all of human history. Paul knew the story of Ruth as he sat there in that jail. Ruth was married to one of the two sons of Naomi. Naomi was a widow and she had two sons. Their name in Hebrew were Melyon and Hilyon, which mean literally in Hebrew, sickly and weakly.

Now, I don't know why you'd name your boys sickly and weakly, but she did. And the Bible tells us that sickly and weakly both died. Well, and Ruth became a widow and she and her widowed mother-in-law moved back to Bethlehem, and they were so poor that the only way they could eat is go out in the fields and pick up the ears of corn that the harvesters accidentally dropped.

And yet into that situation, God intervened. And one day while she was out in the fields picking up corn, Ruth met Boaz. Now, Boaz was rich and Boaz was handsome and Boaz was godly. And best of all, Boaz was available.

Yes, he was. And they got married. And before Ruth knew what happened to her, she had security, she had family, she had riches, she had provision. And she also became the great grandmother of fellow named David, who went on to become the greatest king of Israel and the progenitor of the Lord Jesus. Finally, sitting in that jail, one more example, he knew the story of Joseph who'd been in jail himself.

Remember the story? Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers at age 17, went down to Egypt, sold a Potiphar, an Egyptian military officer, and everything was going great till Potiphar's wife got what we used to call in the south, a hankering for Joseph. Well, she tried to convince him to have an affair, he wouldn't do it. So she accused him of trying to rape her.

Well, that wasn't true. But her husband believed her, threw him in jail, and he spent 13 years in jail. As an innocent man, between 17 and 30, he never got out of jail. And yet into that very unpalatable situation, God stepped because one day Pharaoh had a dream nobody could interpret it and they took it to Joseph, and he interpreted it and friend before you can say Yul Brynner, he was out of jail and on his way into Pharaoh's court to be the prime minister of all of Egypt. And so sitting in this jail, Paul says I got a promise from God, the same promise he made to Joseph, to Esther, to Ruth, to Moses, and he kept his promise to them, he's going to keep his promise to me. So sitting there in jail, he said, Hey, if I'm right smack dab in the middle of God's will, because there are no accidents. And if I have a promise from God, that he's going to turn this whole situation around by his supernatural power. Hey, if I've got those two things going, then I got something to sing about, not something to fret about.

I don't need to be he or I can be Tigger here in jail. And that's what he was. In other words, the explanation for Paul's behavior was that he had a godly view of circumstances. Now let's summarize what is a godly view of circumstances, then it means number one, seeing God in absolute control of every circumstance that comes into our lives as followers of Christ. Number two, it means seeing God as bigger than even the worst circumstances that come into our life, that there is no circumstance that God can't flip into a blessing.

And third, and finally, it means actively relying on God to keep his promise that he made us in Romans 828, relying on God to personally intervene in our everyday affairs, to overrule even our worst circumstances and turn them into a blessing for us, just like he did Joseph, Ruth, Moses, Esther, and as we're going to see in the weeks to come, just like he's gonna do for the Apostle Paul. Now that's the end of our passage, but it leads us to ask a very important question. We haven't asked this question in a long time. I'm worried maybe you forgot my question. But let's see if we can remember it together. Deep breath. Here we go.

One, two, three. You didn't forget. That makes me feel good. Well, you know, what is the so what? You say, Lon, the so what here is that Paul had a godly view of circumstances. Big whoop.

No, no, no. Friends, the so what here is that a godly view of circumstances is not just for the Apostle Paul. God wants every single one of us to practice a godly view of circumstances in our lives. And when we do, it will enable us, just like it did Paul, to face any situation God sends our way, the good, the bad or the ugly, doesn't matter, and to face that situation with calm, with peace, and with confidence, because we know what God has promised us and we're relying on it.

You say, Well, line, that's great. I appreciate what you're saying up there. You're preaching good and everything. But how do I get one of these godly views of circumstances in my life? Well, the answer is you and I get it the exact same way the Apostle Paul got it. How did the Apostle Paul get a godly view of circumstances?

Real simple. He believed what God told him in the Bible. That's all he did. He believed what God told him in the Bible. He believed God's promise of Romans 828 so thoroughly, so deeply, so utterly, and so completely, not just in his head, but in his whole being, that it radically transformed the way he responded to every circumstance that came in his life. He believed God. Now, friends, if we're going to practice a godly view of circumstances, we need to believe God too. So let's take God's promise of Romans 828 apart a little bit. Remember the verse. We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him. That's our verse.

Let's take it apart. Make sure we really understand what God's telling us there. Four things I want to point out to you about this. First, Romans 828, the promise there is an unequivocal and unquestionable promise. Notice the verse starts off by declaring we know. Paul doesn't say we hope or we guess or we wish.

Paul says we know something with as much confidence as we know our own name. The second thing I want you to see here is that the promise of Romans 828 is made to a limited group of people. This promise is made to those who love God, to those who are followers of Jesus Christ, to those who are children of God by faith in Christ. This promise is not made to every American.

It's not made to every churchgoer. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, the good news is this promise is your personal possession. This promise is your unique piece of property that God made this promise to you, not to the whole world, and you can claim it as yours. If you're here today and you've never trusted Christ as your real and personal Savior, may I point out to you that one of the wonderful things that you get when you give your life to Christ is you get all kinds of promises like this one that suddenly become your personal property, suddenly become your unique possession because now you're a child of God.

What a great thing to have this as ours. It belongs to me. And friends, if you're a follower of Christ, this promise belongs to you.

It's yours. Third, I'd like to remind us that Romans 828 promises that God will convert all of our circumstances into good, that he will intervene in the everyday affairs of our life supernaturally. He will take an interest in the everyday affairs of our life. And no matter how awful our circumstances may be, no matter how impossible it may look, God promises that he will cause.

Look what it says. God causes all things to work together for good. He actively gets involved and causes this to happen by his own supernatural power. And fourth and finally, and I think this is the best part of all, the Bible says God causes all things. This promise applies to every single circumstance in life. God causes all things to work together for good. Now, what this means is that God just doesn't cause some things or most things or all but the bad things.

This is a promise that there is absolutely no circumstance that could ever come into your life or my life that is beyond the reach of God's flip flopping power, God's overruling power. This world cannot send a circumstance bad enough that God can't flip it is what this verse is telling us. Now, friends, remember, this verse is not telling us God is not telling us here that all things are good. God didn't say that bankruptcy, sickness, car accidents, the death of a loved one, family problems, leaks in the roof, children with disabilities, these are not good things. What God is promising here is that God will take all things, the good, the bad and the in between.

He will work them together, blend them together, skillfully combine them with one another, so that by the time God is finished, his overruling power will have turned the end result into a blessing and into good. Now, when I think about this, let me tell you what I think about. I think a lot about baking a cake.

And we're going to do a little emerald live here for you. Because if you've ever thought about this, think now a little bit about what it's like to bake a cake. Think a little bit what it's like, okay, the ingredients that go into a cake, because the ingredients that go into this thing are really not very nice ingredients all by themselves.

For example, we have raw eggs. Now, you know, in my drinking days before I was a follower of Christ, people used to say to me, Hey, if you wake up and you're hung over, take one of these, drink one of these, and you'll feel better. I said, No, I'd rather feel bad. I'm not drinking one of these things.

And this goes in there. If somebody walked up to you on the street and said, I will give you $1,000 if you will drink a raw egg, is there really anybody here, raise your hand, who would honestly do this? Anybody who would honestly do it?

You would? Well, here. It's hard. That one's hard boiled.

But that's a good catch. All right. Now, what else goes into a cake?

All right. We got Western oil. Now, who in the world in their right mind would drink a cup of Western oil unless your cholesterol was in the negatives and you were trying to get it up?

Who would drink this stuff? Well, that goes in there too. All right. What else we got? Well, we got flour.

All right. Unbleached flour here. We take a cup full of that. Who in the world would eat this stuff? Look at this stuff. I mean, this stuff is terrible. Watch. This is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Now, I mean, that is bad.

All right. So what else goes in there? A stick of butter. Who in their right mind would eat a straight stick of butter? I wouldn't. Would you?

I hope not. And we put all this stuff in there and we mix it all up. And when we mix it all up, it's still yucky. So we put it in the oven and we cook it. But you know what? If you pull it out of the oven halfway done, it's still yucky.

Nobody's going to eat it. Ah, but friends, you put all of these ingredients together and you cook them for just the right amount of time and look what you get. Ooh, this is nice. I like this.

This is good. Now here's the point. The point is if we looked at a cake from the point of view of all the individual ingredients, we'd say this thing can't turn out to be anything but awful. And yet you give it to the right chef who knows how to do it. You give it to the wrong chef.

It can be awful, but you give it to the right chef and they can take all these ingredients as unpalatable as they are and turn it into a beautiful thing. What I'm here to tell you is that the promise of Romans 8 28 is not a promise about the individual events, the individual circumstances that come in your life, their ingredients. And you know, sometimes we get raw eggs and sometimes we get unbleached flour and sometimes we get West oil that comes into our life. The promise of Romans 8 28 is that we have a heavenly chef, a divine, supernatural, all powerful God who is a chef takes all of these things as unappetizing as they may be individually, mixes them together, matches them together, churns them together, heats them together.

And when he's done, man, the thing that comes out at the end is a beautiful thing. That's the promise. A danger here is that you and I begin to evaluate God's truthfulness, God's faithfulness to his promise when the cake's only half baked too soon. You know, many times we jump in and we look at things and we go, God is not keeping his promise to me.

But you know what? If Esther had looked at her situations right after her mom and dad had died, if Moses had looked at his situation right there with the chariots coming and the red sea unopened behind him, if Ruth had looked at her situation right after her husband died and she's out there picking up corn off the ground to eat in the field, and if Joseph had looked at his situation, any one of those 13 years in jail, every one of those people would have indicted God and said, God, you lied to me. You did not keep your word to me. Romans 8 28 did not come true for me.

My life did not turn out as a blessing. But wait a minute, friends, the cake was only half baked. Remember what we said? A half baked cake is still yucky. But when God finished the cake for every one of these people, did God not keep his word to them?

Yes, he did. And I know many of us here are going through tough times. I know many of us here have really tough circumstances that we're facing.

Some of us here have been passed over and neglected in our jobs. Some of us here have children with problems that were powerless to fix. Some of us here have trouble in our marriages. Some of us here are single and lonely and we can't understand why God hasn't led us to Mr. Right or Ms.

Right. Some of us here have had our spouse walk out on us and leave us with children to raise all by ourselves. Some of us here have aging parents that we're trying to care for. Some of us here have loved ones who are ill and infirmed and we don't understand why God would let this happen to them. Some of us have teachers or professors who are giving us a hard way to go in school or a neighbor who's driving us crazy. Some of us here want a child so badly and we can't seem to have one.

Some of us here have cancer or some other disease. And you know, when we're going through things like this, friends, it's really easy spiritually to indict God. It's really easy to get angry at God and say, God, you lied to me. God, you haven't kept Romans 8-28.

God, there is no way under the sun that any of this could possibly turn out for good. And we accuse God. Friends, I'm here to tell you that you're getting upset over a half-baked cake.

You got it all wrong. The cake's only half done. Give God time to finish the cake. And when he finished the cake for Esther, when he finished it for Ruth, when he finished it for Moses, when he finished it for Joseph, it was beautiful. And friend, when he finishes for you, it'll be beautiful too. You can't judge God's faithfulness when the cake's only half done. You can't do that. Hey, I understand this.

I told you earlier, I have a 10-year-old little girl that's severely disabled. And you know, in the early years when she came along and things were so awful, I went through this process of struggling the same way in my relationship with God. I accused God. I indicted God. I said, God, there is no way under God's green earth any of this could ever turn out for good. I cannot see one possible good thing that could ever come out of the pain and the heartache and the suffering that we're going through as a family. How would you ever turn this into good God? Well, I'm here to tell you 10 years later, I was wrong.

I was wrong. You know, in the 10 years that my little girl's been around, God has used her to make me into a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better pastor and a better leader than I ever would have been without her. She's actually doing quite well now. But beyond that, friends, God used my little girl to create a ministry here we call Access. It's a ministry where we reach out to over 400 families who have children with disabilities. Half of them aren't even followers of Christ yet.

We're out to get them, but they're not yet. And you know, we never would have had Access ministry at McLean Bible Church if God hadn't sent Jill in my life because I wouldn't have even understood what people dealing with disabilities are going through. I would have had no interest whatsoever in starting a ministry to them.

But hey, because I was in it, I understood. And you know, we have churches who come from all around the country to see what we're doing here in Access ministry so they can take it back and copy it in their own churches and start ministries to children with disabilities in their own communities. On the five acres just to the west of here, we're planning to build an overnight respite center and an after school therapy center for children with disabilities because did you know 80% of marriages who have a special needs child that comes into that marriage, 80% of those marriages ends in divorce. That's not my figure.

That's the National Epilepsy Foundation figure. We want to keep those families together. We want to keep those marriages together. And the biggest thing moms and dads need to stay together raising children like this is they just need a break.

They just need a break. So we're going to give them a 36 hour overnight break every single week to try to keep families together. And our goal is to see centers like this all around the beltway and then in cities all around America. We want to galvanize churches to start these things everywhere through the United States. Jim Dobson has called us three times wanting to know if we come on focus on the family and talk about what we're doing with this center.

And I've told him three times, Jim, not yet. We'll get 50,000 phone calls the next day. And we won't have anything to show anybody. Let us build it first. And when we build it, we'll come on because that's our goal is to make a nationwide impact on churches reaching out to this community of people.

None of this would have happened without Jill. And you know, I got a call from the White House last week. Somebody nominated me. I don't even know who to be on the President's Commission for Mental Retardation. And they had a meeting last week and this lady called to tell me the President of the United States had chosen me to be one of 21 people from across the United States to serve on this commission. I'm going to have the opportunity to sit with the President of the United States and advise him about how to care, advise him about how to care better in government programming for people in America who have disabilities. And let me tell you why they chose me. The lady said there were two reasons. Number one, we wanted you because you represent a church that's doing the kind of faith-based initiatives that we're trying to get churches to do all across America. You're the perfect example. And the second reason we wanted you, the President wanted you, is because he wanted somebody who had lived it. Not just somebody who had been to school and learned about it, but he wanted somebody who had actually lived in the trenches with mental retardation and disability. Now friends, without Jill, you really think the President of the United States would have invited me to be on this thing?

If he had, do you really think I'd have had anything to contribute? Of course not. This is only 10 years of Jill's life. I don't know what God's going to do with the rest of her life, but if he doesn't do anything else, he's done enough in 10 years. And let me tell you what happened several years into this. I finally turned around one day and said, okay, enough is enough. We're not going to be Eeyore anymore. We're going to force ourselves. We're going to demand from ourselves a godly view of circumstances. We're going to stop indicting God. We're going to stop accusing God in this family. We're going to stop questioning God in this family. We're going to rise above that and we're going to have a godly view of circumstances. We are going to assume we're in this because we're right in the center of the will of God.

And we're going to assume that somehow, some way that we can't see that we don't understand God is going to bring good out of this and we're going to walk by faith. We're just going to believe that. And I said to Brenda, you're going to believe it. I'm going to believe it.

And we're going to teach our children to believe it. And let me tell you, friends, not only did God do exactly what he said, but it also made our experience a lot better that we demanded a godly view of circumstances from ourselves. Now, I'm here to tell you that if you've got some tough things going on in your life, God hasn't lied to you. And you say, but Lon, I look at my circumstances and I can't see one single way God could turn them into good.

Well, so what? God didn't ask you to be able to see. You don't have the perspective to see. You don't have the wisdom to see. You don't know what God knows. You have no idea what God's planning to do. You and I are in no position to judge God at this point with a half baked cake. Besides, God says we're not to walk by sight. We're to walk by faith. Faith means we believe what God tells us, even if we can't figure it out, friends. And I'll tell you, if you'll demand from yourself a godly view of circumstances, not only will God keep his promise, but you'll have a lot easier time and a lot more fun in the process than being a or some of us here have tough things.

I know that having a disabled little girl is a tough thing, too. But friends, we can rise above that if we really believe God and have a godly view of circumstances. May God help you do that. Let's pray. Lord, you know that we're all human and gosh, when tough stuff hits our life, the first, the natural, the normal reaction is to just come apart at the seams to panic, to get angry, to accuse you.

We've all done it. But, Lord, my prayer is that you would use the Apostle Paul as a classroom for us. Friends attitude. And then we would understand that what you're looking for from us is a godly view of circumstances. You want us to believe what you tell us so utterly and so deeply that we can rise above those human reactions. And we can be calm and confident and peaceful. Because we know some things.

We know this is no accident. And we know you're going to convert it into good. And we know that so deeply. We're going to walk by faith and believe it before we ever see it. Lord, that's where you want us to be as a way of creating a platform to people around us where we can share Christ with them. So change our lives, change the way we react to our circumstances because we were here. And for those of us struggling through some tough things, God, give us a whole different way of approaching those tough things. Give us a godly view of our circumstances. Help us walk by faith. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, Amen. Amen.