如何在神的幫助下處理危機[cc] (How to handle crisis with God's help [cc])

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Today will be looking at how we need one another to grow and the Christian life.
It's true that we're better together,
especially when we are facing challenging times in our lives and in our world.
In our passage today the apostle Paul gives us essential advice on how we should respond
to circumstances and treat one another.
By following his advice advice we will excel in love and wisdom and be a great blessing to many
people not only in our local church but also to all the people we know in our daily lives.
So listen carefully as I read from First Thessalonians chapter five.
Please open your bibles or read along in the Bulletin.
Christ died for us so that whether we are dead or alive when He returns, we can live
with him forever.
So encourage each other and build each other up just as you are already doing.
Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord's work.
They work hard among you and give you spiritual Guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love
because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.
Brothers and sisters we urge you toward those who are lazy;
encourage those who are timid;
take tender care of those who are weak, be patient with everyone.
See that no one pays back evil for evil but always try to do good to each other and to
all people.
Always be joyful,
never stop praying.
Be thankful in all circumstances for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ
Jesus.
Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies. But test everything that is said.
Hold on to what is good, stay away from every kind of evil.
Now made that God of peace make you holy in every way
and mayor whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless
until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.
God will make this happen,
for He who calls you is faithful.
I don't know about you,
but I've had and an unsettling
couple of weeks.
Now normally, what I'm thinking about during the week relates to activities here at church,
my family,
my kids' soccer games,
swimming,
things like that.
But it's been a different
couple weeks for me.
When of the things, Andrea my wife came to me and said
“Oh I wasn't watching tv and you gotta go to the store and buy some soup”.
Why?
“Because there's an earthquake supposed to happen this week”.
Oh, ok, gotta make sure we stock up for the coming earthquake.
Okay great. “And by the way, can you check and see if we need to get that potassium iodide
for radiation.”
No we don't. Good, okay.
It's a little bit crazy
in the world right now.
The middle east. . .
a lot of stuff happening there very quickly.
Kinda wish it would slow down that we could take a little pause there.
But it's in times of crisis like these,
that you begin to think.
Now in my life, I have uh... I have lived through quite a few crises.
When I was overseas years ago
I was in a war zone at one point.
There were refugees coming from other countries
and let me say, we have it pretty good here in Sequim.
We should remember that.
But it is at times when things are unsettled
in the world and often times when they're unsettled in
our families, in our relationships.
I have, I have thoughts. One of the thoughts is,
Jesus? Are you coming back soon?
And if you've had a thought?
But I've had that thought the last few weeks.
But a second thought usually follows that one
for me. How should I respond?
There's a lot of negativity going on.
Lord, what do You want me to do in my thoughts and my attitudes
and my actions.
And as I was knowing that I was going to
teach today, I thought you know, maybe the church needs to hear some of this too.
I'll build a quiet time and see what the Lord tells me and
I'll pass it on.
So in some ways, what we're doing today is is some of that. How do we respond to
the crisis. The theme today is we are better together.
You have your notes in your bulletin and I want you to write something down on them.
It's a little phrase but something to keep in mind.
And that is: Crisis
Is Opportunity
Crisis
is opportunity.
Crisis or difficulties can rip people apart
or it can bring them together
like nothing else.
And our scripture passage this morning deals head on with this matter,
and give some
very helpful guidance
on how we can truly be better together in the church
in whatever comes our way if we respond appropriately.
The passage begins in First Thessalonians five starting in verse ten
It says: Crist died for us
so that whether we are dead or alive when He returns
we can live with Him forever.
So encourage each other and build each other up
just as you are already doing.
We need encouragement
and we need to know how to respond
during unsettling times.
Isolation is fruitless. Worry
is fruitless.
A few uh... I think it was last year. I did a small group study on this on First
Thessalonians,
and what really stood out to me
was this particular passage
was written to a group of people who expected Jesus to return at any moment.
Now that was two thousand years ago.
And this particular advice has been helpful through the entire church age
and it's very helpful to us today.
Waiting for Christ's return.
Now we don't know when that's gonna happen.
Obviously they didn't know then,
but the important thing to remember
Is that Christ died for us.
It doesn't matter if we live or die
before he comes
the promise is that by trusting in His salvation
we will live with Him forever.
That is what we're supposed to keep our mind focused on
is that we will live with Him forever.
We are to expect His return,
but we are to
work together and have a certain attitude in the process of that.
Ad that's what this passage is about and I'm going to take some time to unpack that
for us today.
Tere's another
verse that I really have drawn upon the last few weeks, and that's that God did not give us a spirit
of fear
but a spirit of power,
of love and of a sound mind.
Not a spirit of fear.
Fear tends to do something to us.
It produces a feeling of weakness
it produces distrust
and it produces disorientation
And if you'll notice here
what the Holy Spirit does is it counteracts all those things. Instead of weakness we have
Power;
instead of distrust we have love;
instead of disorientation we have a sound mind.
That's what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us
during unsettling times.
How do we achieve this?
How do we work it out? Well, First Thessalonians has
four essential pieces of advice for us
in this, in this following passage.
These are things that we can do
as we wait.
These are things we can do to be active.
The first one
is to practice showing
honor
even win we disagree.
To honor those who are your leaders in the Lord's work.
They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance.
Show them great respect and wholehearted love
because of their work
and live peacefully
With each other.
First Thessalonians five.
And in Romans
it says take delight in honoring
each other.
Now you wonder why is that the first piece of advice is
honor
others. In times of crisis,
honor
Others.
Well the reason for that is it's
so easy to tear others down when we're worried.
It's so easy to question motives
when we're worried.
And when we we're afraid we do that more easily
than not.
It's harder to assume others' motives are good.
And I am really glad that I get to give this message today because Scott is gone.
And I have the privilege of working with him day In, day out, going to meetings,
watching him as a leader,
and I want to say to you, just so you know, that Scott is the real deal.
Scott
intimately cares about this church,
about the people of this church
and helping us to grow and to to go forward.
Now he's not perfect,
and he let you know that on Sunday morning which is good too.
If you've been listening to him over the last Weeks and of course of the last years, you know
that he's very honest about his shortcomings.
but that's it
as a way to help us all
to grow and to go forward
in our christian life. So we need to honor
our leaders
and that
attitude that he brings here as our as senior pastor
carries over into the staff,
it carries over into the session, the elders; if you ask anybody that's involved in that
they'll tell you the same thing.
They'll nod and say the same thing.
And that is a an assurance for us is a church. Especially
in times
when things are uh... unstable when news is bad.
We have that rely on and we can honor
uh... all that's going on.
Now that doesn't only apply to our leaders but it applies to each other too. It says here
Take delight in honoring each other.
Take delight.
And one of the disciplines I want to encourage you to do,
Especially if the news continues to be bad. If you wake up every day and hear the bad news every day
It's that it's depressing.
I want you to take every piece of bad news and I want you to think -
How can I find something good to comment on as well.
Every bad piece, I'm gonna find something good to comment on as well. I'm gonna find somebody
to honor
instead of mistrust.
That little phrase that kept in my mind - the first one is
crisis is opportunity.
The second one is,
when things get bad
the church gets better.
When things get bad
the church gets better. It doesn't always get better
if people are fighting with each other, it doesn't get better. But if the church understands first
of all that they're being led in a good. direction
the church gets better
when things get bad.
I . .I lived this firsthand
a number of times during those crises
that I experienced overseas. One of the ones that stand out in my mind uh... so strongly was
when we had a refugee crisis in Albania.
We had thousands and thousands of people coming from another country
as refugees into our towns.
And it was the first time that I've ever seen churches take off their names, and not
worry about their denominations.
But they instead served these refugees. They love them, they gave them food, they provided refugee
camps they took him back to their homes after the war was over -
incredible things that people did.
I saw people praying together that never prayed before together,
Sharing buildings that never share buildings . .
When things get bad the church gets better because the Holy Spirit is involved in our lives.
The Holy Spirit just does that. It just happens.
You watch what happens even in the states when when disaster happens. The first
people there are the church
Always.
you you have the this movement
to help.
If we ever had that earthquake,
the one that's promised last week. I think the deadline's today.
The church would respond in a good way and we need to keep that in mind
and remember
that we need to focus on the right things
don't waste time
criticizing disputable things
about methods or approaches or ways of doing things or irritations. We have those we have
those in our church
we have those with other Christians.
The Bible says very clearly don't waste your time on that.
There are better things to be worried about.
This is a great thing.
In the Romans 14,
each of us will give a personal account to God
so let's stop condemning each other
decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer
to stumble and fall.
We are to keep the long view.
Remember that first verse.
We get to live with Jesus forever
and we'll have to live with each other as well.
So we better start honoring each other
and building each other up.
Looking at what God is doing people's lives
even when we have disagreements
or irritations.
We're different.
We're in different places with God.
And this next point builds on that fact.
It's much better to help someone than to condemn them.
So we come to point number two
of Paul's
passage,
take others by the hand.
That's the response.
Don't condemn,
but take them by the hand
We urge you to warn and those who are lazy,
encourage those who are timid,
take tender care of those who are weak
and be patient with everybody.
The catch phrase at the end
help those people along
and then in Hebrews 10:24
let's think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.
Now as a parent
uh... Andrea and I have looked at our children and
I love that idea of holding someone's hand.
Whenever there's a blow-up,
whenever there's a disagreement and somebody
has ah...
has gone off somewhere
you know I liked that idea that I going to grab their hand, I'm going to help them. Let's walk through and
let's get this right, apologize
let's solve this, let's walk to the next thing that you want to see
uh... happen.
Because we are all in process if we Understand that
uh... things will be a lot better for us.
When we disagree when we have crisis
We're in process, you can't go back
to the past
everybody's changing
and we need to take people
where they are
and help them
move forward.
Now I want to give a challenge to you
and Scott gives this challenge all the time so I don't feel bad about it.
And that is if you're not in a small group
or you're not connected in some form of service together with others and
linking arms with people on a weekly basis in this church
you are refusing to hold hands
you're just sitting back,
coming here listening to Scott week after week and not interacting and not opening your
life to someone else is refusing to hold heads.
It's taking something away that God to do in your life and what you can do
in someone else's life.
Now I watched this
this kind of thing happen when I first came here three and a half years ago.
I had a bunch of small group facilitators some of the leaders
they came to me and they said my group my small group is going blow up
because people can't get along so we're just going to stop meeting.
Now I was brand new what happened here.
Wonderful ideal life about small groups and the groups are blowing up.
They didn't want to hold hands anymore.
They didn't want to work that out and they had gotten a point where it was just too far
in the and it was
and it was over.
That happen sometimes we drop out of things because we had trouble
with somebody else.
So immediately the first thing that we did I got together with our small group coaches
and we said let's figure out how we train our group leaders to deal with this.
And we began right away training them to expect Problems,
expect
irritations because
crisis is
opportunity.
Keep that it mind and you don't have any problem when you have problems but you have a less of a problem
because you understand that this is part of what we have to grapple with.
So we began training our leaders and I noticed as time went on
we had less and less of this
problem. In fact what happened was
the group leaders would come earlier and say we've had this problem but we want to solve it now
and we solved it.
There hasn't been any groups that have broken up like that
in the three and a half years.
So crisis is opportunity.
In fact another thing to think about is this:
if you've been in this church for a while and you're just not
connected in that way you couldn't say I'm linking arms I'm holding hands with somebody
and helping them forward
come to Alpha.
Because Alpha is a wonderful way
to become integrated into the life of the church.
At the end of Alpha most people are in a small group or they end up being in one.
We found that time after time.
Because they come and they come with questions may come with with hesitancies
and they ask those questions,
they get to know people in a non- threatening environment and they
really like it because that's part of life in the church is learning and growing together.
and they continue on in their faith.
The other thing is if you've got a friend
who is not connected,
who is just starting out, just checking things out
you can come with them to Alpha,
you can encourage them together.
A great opportunity a great way to
grow deeper in your faith.
Holding hands what a great concept whenever we meet somebody new at this church and
we link them with someone else
in a ministry that maybe they want to be in the choir they don't know who the choir
director is.
Go over and introduce them to Joel. 0:19:15.220,0:19:18.639 They want to serve people that are shut-ins you can
introduce them to Derrill. There are so many ways we can help people
to connect
and to get that next place we can take others by the hand
great concept.
And I'm certain that God began the good work within you
will continue His work until it is finally
finished. God is at work.
Now thirdly Paul goes on and he says
never lose hope
in people
or in life.
I Thessalonians 5
See to it that no one pays back evil for evil
but always try to do good to each other and to all people.
Always be joyful.
Never stop praying.
Be thankful in all circumstances
for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
And then it says bless those who persecute you,
don't curse them, pray that God will bless them.
Romans 12
We come back to that
knowledge that we all have faults we all have failures,
we all have weaknesses, we all sin.
Many of us are a piece of work.
We are a piece of work.
Now we're a work in progress,
We're a piece of work and we can recognize that.
If we know that we're holding hands to help people to the next step and we need a hand hold
too sometimes
that's okay
and so we can have the
fortitude
to never pay back evil for evil.
Because we know that people will hurt us
and they will let us down
and our response is more important
as a Christian there is no room for hate or for slander
in our lives.
Love
agape love means valuing people no matter what they do.
That's the definition of love
and the response we have
it is really actually an impossible response.
It is something in the natural we just can't do
why would we don't want to pay that evil for evil or not curse those who persecute us.
It is only because of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit gives a
counter balancing influence to our life to enable us to do that.
It is only by His help.
There's an old song
that uh... I remember and I used to listen to this when I was in college back in the
80's it's by Keith Greene.
He passed away a long time ago
and that song still comes to my mind from time to time it was put in there awhile back.
The lyrics are
the world has gone crazy
but soon maybe
a lot more are going to know.
The world's blown up right now. A lot of weird things happening in the world
but the promise of God
is that before Jesus comes back
that the good news that the kingdom is going to be proclaimed in the entire world and then
the end will come
and that job isn't done yet.
That's the job that Jesus gave us to do
two thousand years ago.
Whenever we want to put our head in the sand
and ignore the problems
or isolate ourselves we need to remember that hope.
There's never a reason to lose hope.
I am aware of a ministry that uses the internet
too
to link people to Christian websites in their own language
all over the world
and it was started by uh...
uh... a friend of mine back in San Jose years ago
uh... and it grew tremendously and now it's affecting millions of people
every year.
And I asked uh...
I went back and talked to one of the people in that organization this
week and said “Hey, can you give me some stats
on what is going on in Japan and in Egypt
just the last three months compared to like last year.”
And so I was waiting for email and I got it about four o'clock
with the latest statistics. This is really yesterday's news honestly
about what's going on and what they've done is they've
tracked people and what they do they go to Christian websites and sometimes
they even pray to invite Jesus in their life.
Japan for instance,
during the last two weeks of the earthquake last year
before that all happened there were about four thousand people that went on websites like
that in Japan. That's a pretty small number.
It shows that we really need to pray for Japan and that Japan
is very unreached.
But there were four thousand people who went on websites last year
and that two week period of the earthquake this year in the same two week period about
seventeen thousand,
About a fourfold increase in the number of people visiting the sites.
while a long way to go
but Egypt is even more amazing in terms of what's happened last year in that time
period from January through today in March
there were three hundred eighty seven thousand people who went on
Christian websites seeking something, trying to find something else about out about Jesus
in the same time period this year from January through March it's been one point three
million.
Four time increase just like Japan
in the number of people that are seeking
uh... something about Jesus and then they go out and he also said this
here's the number of people that actually so they indicated they receive Jesus as their
Savior. They prayed to receive Jesus
on his web sites.
Eighty one thousand last year in the same time Period.
the same this year two hundred and thirty six thousand people in just the last
Two and a half months.
two hundred and thirty six thousand decisions
and about fourteen thousand of those people
want a personal follow-up, someone to write to them about
faith and the dialogue about it. You're gonna hear learn more about how we can be
involved as a church in that in the coming months.
Great stuff.
Let me tell you there's interest in the world,
great interest
in the world in terms of people in time of crisis seeking God.
Never lose sight of that. Don't the let the bad news fool you.
God is at work.
Crisis is opportunity,
and even relational breakdown
is an opportunity.
Colossians three thirteen,”Make allowance
for each other's faults.”
Wow that is so freeing.
Make allowance for each other's faults and Forgiv3 anyone
who offends you.
Forgiveness
is an open door, that's what it basically is.
It's releasing that
need to do revenge,
that need to carry a burden, to carry hate
to releasing it to God and saying
Lord, please
work in that person's life.
Help them to become open to You.
I know there is no need to lose hope
even in the worst case,
because You can change a life.
We forgive because God forgave us.
That's why we forgive.
He did it for us, we can do it for someone else.
And I want you to think about how your week will be different this week.
If
with every piece of bad news
you find something good to comment on,
to practice showing honor
to someone verbally or in writing.
If you take somebody by the hand
that needs to grow
and help them to the next step
and finally if you refuse to give up hope in any way.
Paul's
fourth piece of advice is also really important in terms of balancing out everything
that's been said today
and that is to be discerning.
Hold
to the Bible
and salvation
in Jesus.
We need to have this piece to make the other three work.
says don't stifle the Holy Spirit.
Well,
you can stifle the Holy Spirit very easily by being angry being fearful
and in grumbling.
Don't scoff at prophecies
but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good
stay away from every kind
Evil.
we need to know especially in these times what is evil and what is good
we need a very good balance of love
and wisdom
in our lives.
And I learned this
firsthand over the last few months in a world view class that I'm teaching on
Sunday mornings. I've been looking at the different
types of
world views and how they relate to Christianity
and what's challenged time and time again by other
ways of looking at things
is the authority of God's word
and the fact that Jesus
died for our sins.
those are things that are constantly challenged
for something else.
and this is the part about having a sound mind at that second Timothy talks about.
We need to understand with discernment
what is true and what is false. It says in second Timothy three
evil people and impostors will flourish
they will deceive others and will themselves to be deceived.
But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught.
You know they are true
for you know you can trust those who taught you.
You've been taught the holy scriptures from childhood and they're giving you the wisdom
to receive the salvation that comes
from trusting in Christ Jesus.
You can be so glad we have a church that teaches the Bible.
Man, that is something to be so thankful for.
That week after week you're getting
nourishment from God's word.
‘Cause that is gonna keep you centered
anything that happens in your life
because many world views and ideas out there are just saying trust in yourselves
pull yourself up by the bootstraps
do good in your own strength,
don't talk about salvation and forgiveness in Jesus.
That's what comes against the truth of the Bible so if we remember that and remember
that the power
of our life comes from just knowing and acknowledging Jesus' salvation.
He did it.
He led me
into a new life to remember that with all of our hearts and then we love
and we honor
and we serve,
we will have a powerful influence
in others' lives. And if this isn't resonating with you if what I just said just doesn't
stick, doesn't make you kinda well up inside
I'm gonna tell you, you need Alpha.
You need to come to Alpha
because you've got to get it right.
You need this. This is an important part
of our own conviction in our own spiritual growth.
The Lord wants the good news
spread around the world.
Whatever's going on around us.
There's a little passage in first Thessalonions, right before the one I focused on
And it says, “Let us who live in the light be clear headed
protected by the armor of faith and love and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our
Salvation.
God wants us to have confidence in our salvation that Jesus is the savior of the world and we never
have to be ashamed of that.
And we go with that message of love and of power to anybody we meet.
We love them,
we serve them, we honor people
and we keep hoping.
Faith and love as our armor. Salvation is in Jesus.
And it says here in first John “I'm writing you not because you don't know the truth but because
you know the difference between truth and lies.”
And who's a liar, well anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ.
We have the truth.
We have a powerful message that's only empowered by Him.
We can't do it on our own.
We need to apply these four things and this is what the promise is at the end.
I love this passage in first Thessalonions if you unpack it ‘Cuz it's all there.
The final words of Paul in this passage. “Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way and may
your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless 0:31:49.260,0:31:52.360 until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again”.
God will make this happen.
for He who calls you is faithful.
Ride with God.
He will make this happen.
He's gonna help us to grow, He's is gonna prepare us
for being with Jesus.
If we practice honoring
and helping and forgiving and hoping.
Firmly fixed on Jesus.
Stay on that no matter what bad news comes your way.
What a simple and profound truth. Let us pray.
Father, you call us to link together with others
in the church
and that's not always easy
that is not natural for us.
We need to constantly be reminded of your priorities and not shrink back from love,
from respect,
from serving
and from faith.
You invite us to this today
so I pray that you help us to respond.
You've got such good things in store for us If we'll only pay attention and follow You.
Lord guide us
and direct us,
help us to be willing in the days ahead;
give us Your power
and Your love
in a great measure.
Give us confidence Lord as we trust in You together.
And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
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