Big Questions . . . Living Answers
“Coping With Life’s Tragedies”
For
the past two weeks, we have taken a close issue at the problem of evil and
suffering. How can God allow it and what
comfort does He give us when we suffer?
I hope that that study helped you to begin to understand that God is
very much there when it hurts and ultimately, He will eliminate all pain and
suffering. But sometimes we get very
personal reminders that we are not in that perfect place yet. For many, the steep economic declines have
led to others personal problems; keeping up with a house payment, losing
retirement funds, losing a job, seeing a charitable organization struggle to
meet needs, etc. Outside of this, there
are always those who face other personal tragedies like a debilitating illness
or the loss of a loved one.
Now what I want to do this morning is share with you some principles on how do you cope with tragedy.
The Bible teaches that this is not a perfect world. There is sin in the world. People do wrong things and suffering results. The Bible is brutally honest about this. Ecclesiastes. 8:14 says, “In this life, good people are often treated as though they were wicked, and wicked people are often treated as though they were good.”
What he’s saying here is that we don’t always get what we
deserve. There are two mistakes that you can make regarding tragedy. One is to
think all the good things that happen to me prove I’m good, and that all the
bad things that happen to me prove I’m bad. That’s wrong. In Luke 13, Jesus is talking about two
tragedies that happened in His day. He reminded them that there were a bunch of
innocent people worshipping at the
- His intended will – what He created and intended for creation.
- His permissive will – what He allows in a sinful fallen world of free will humans.
- His ultimate will – what He will bring to fruition when Christ returns.
Think back to 9/11/2001. Now God could have stopped those terrorists. Yes, real simple. Just take away their free will, their freedom to choose. But to be fair, He’d have to take away your free will at the same time. God does intervene at times, but to protect the human freedom He has created, He usually patiently holds back. As I said shared in the previous two weeks, God’s given us the freedom to choose, and it is a tremendous blessing. It is part of the mark of having been created in His image. It separates us from all the rest of His creation. It is also our greatest curse, because we often choose the wrong thing. And when I choose the wrong thing innocent people can suffer. God’s intended will is not always done in this world. That’s why 2 Peter 3:9 says “He does not want anyone to perish, so He is giving more time for everyone to repent.” Question, do all repent? No. Do some perish? Yes. Why? God will never force His will on your will when it comes to the issue of loving Him. That’s why we’re to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Why? Because God’s will isn’t always done on earth. How’s it done in heaven? It’s done perfectly. And so we’re to pray, “God, just like your will is done perfectly in heaven, we want that to be done on earth more and more.”
I want to give you five principles on how to cope with and respond to tragedy.
I. RELEASE my grief and frustration.
It’s the first thing to do. Why? Because tragedy always creates strong emotions. And these feelings can be scary. They can lead to panic. They can lead to irrational behavior. If you don’t deal with them, your recovery from a crisis always takes far longer than it should, if you stuff it down. See some people are stuffers. When they have emotions, they don’t know how to handle them, so they deny them, they ignore them, and they push them down.
Notice what Jesus said here, Matthew 5:4 - “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” It’s good to grieve. You let feelings of sadness out. You release it. You tell what you feel to God.
Psalm 62:8 - “Trust in Him at all times. Pour out your heart to Him, for God is our refuge.” God wants to comfort you in a tragedy.
Psalm 34:18 – “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he
rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Grief is a part of life. And so the first thing you need to do is release your grief, because if you don’t feelings pile up and they will eventually explode in some inappropriate form or another. If you don’t talk it out, you’ll take it out on yourself or somebody else.
Now once you begin to let those feelings out,
2. RECEIVE from others
Galatians 6:2 – “Share each other’s troubles and problems, and in this way obey the law of Christ.” It is a big mistake to isolate yourselves from others when you’re going through a crisis. Now, that’s what some tend to do, but you need other people in a tragedy. You need:
- their perspective
- their support
- their encouragement
- their presence.
Hebrews 12:15 says, “Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of
God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you,
corrupting many.” He’s saying, to make it through a crisis or
challenge, we need not only the promises of God; we need the people of God.
Instead of asking “Where is God when it hurts,” we need to ask ourselves, “Where is the church when it hurts?”
Now this is why I so strongly teach that you need to be a
part of a church family. I’m not just
talking about being an attender. I’m talking about being a member of a
family. Because when a crisis comes, if
you don’t have those relationships in place, whose going to hold you up? I was talking to a guy here in town years ago. The conversation eventually led to talking
about our faith. He said he didn’t go to
church because the forest was his church.
I did not challenge him at the time, but what I wanted to say was: “Ok, when you get sick, do the trees come and
visit you? When you are discouraged, do
the rocks come over to your house or call you on the phone to give you hope and
share in your pain?” The Bible makes no
room for solo Christians. It teaches
that all who believe in Christ are to be a part of a local body of
believers. And coping with tragedy and
helping others cope with tragedy is one of the reasons.
3. REFUSE to be bitter
Refuse to be bitter. Some people have no happiness at all. They live and die with bitter hearts. Now you’re going to have to decide when you go through those tragedies, “Am I going to allow this to make me a bitter person, or better person?” It’s your choice, but you can’t have both.
Have you ever seen a happy picture of a Wall Street trader? No. The only things you see are faces of angst. You see them with their hands on top of their heads and grimacing. It’s as if they always feel it is the end of the world.
One of the things I’ve learned, in being in the ministry for many years, is that there’s there need not be any correlation in life between your experiences and your positive outlook. None whatsoever! Because I’ve seen people who had absolutely the worst experiences in life; things that would shock everyone of us, and yet they maintain this positive attitude, this optimistic outlook, because it’s a choice. They focus on their relationship with God and their hope in heaven. That’s why, I’ll just be honest with you, I don’t like to be around whiners. I really don’t. Why? Because I’ve seen people who had every right in the world to whine and didn’t. I mean, they had every reason in the world, the disasters, and the crisis that they’ve seen in their life and they still maintained a positive attitude. And then I’ve seen other people who almost nothing has gone wrong in their life; almost nothing, and they still complain, and whine about everything.
Contentment is a choice. You refuse to be bitter, because bitterness always hurts you most.
I read a story about a little boy Luke, who’s 2 years old. I was drawn to the story, because I used to do the same thing with Ashley as a two year old that this father did with his son Luke. His father was reading him a story, and he said, “Luke, who made the trees? And Luke said, “ Luke did.” And Tom said, “No, you know Luke, God made the trees. Who made the mountains, Luke?” “Luke did” He’s just laughing each time. He thinks this is really funny. “No, God made those mountains. Who made the stars, Luke?” “Luke did.” “No, no, God made the stars. Next morning at breakfast, Luke spills his milk. Tom comes in and said, “Luke, who spilled the milk?” “God did.” Now isn’t that human nature? OK, if anything good happens in my life, I did it. If anything bad happens in my life, it’s God’s fault.
How do you keep from being bitter when the inevitable tragedies of life are going to come? You do 2 things:
1. Accept what cannot be changed. Quit trying to fight it. Accept what cannot be changed.
Faith is not pretending everything is great in your life; faith is not pretending that all is wonderful. Faith is facing the facts and not getting discouraged. Faith is facing the facts of life, and not being discouraged by them. It’s not pretending everything’s great. Everything’s not great. There are bad things in the world. Jesus said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” And bad things do happen to good people, but faith is facing the facts without getting discouraged.
The serenity prayer so many people appreciate starts with this. “God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and
wisdom to know the difference.”
There are also some great parodies of it too.
“God grant me the Senility to forget the people I never
liked anyway,
The Good Fortune to run into the ones I do,
And the Eyesight to tell the difference.”
“Lord, Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot
change,
the Courage to change the things I cannot accept, and
the Wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill today because they ticked
me off.”
What I’m saying is this: The only way to overcome some problems in life is to accept them, and to move on. Your past is past. It’s over. It can’t continue to hurt you unless you allow it to. Accept what’s been done, and move on. That is the second part.
2. You focus on what’s left. Not what’s lost.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” What’s God’s will for me in a crisis? It’s that I be thankful, no matter what. For the problem? Of course not. God doesn’t expect you to be thankful for a tragedy. But you should be thankful for what’s left, not what’s lost. And you choose to focus on God’s goodness. You want to get over a discouraging problem? Start making a list of all the good things in your life. You focus on what’s left, not what’s lost. And that leads to this principle:
4. REMEMBER what’s important.
Crises have a way of clarifying values. They have a way of pointing out what matters and what really doesn’t matter. They define your values. Luke 12:15 says, “Life is not measured by how much we own.” In other words, don’t confuse your net worth with your self worth. Don’t confuse your possessions with your purpose in life. Don’t confuse what you’re living on with what you’re living for. A man’s life does not consist of what he possesses.
In such suffering, what is really important can become crystal clear as never before.
For many decades we lived in a bubble in
As a country, we need to give thanks to God for what He has given us in this country. We need to daily acknowledge Him and place our trust in Him, not in our prosperity. The dollar bill even reminds us that it is in God we put our trust as this country was founded. I hope that a crisis such as this will return us as a nation to that trust and to acknowledge what God says is important. I cannot say I strongly believe it will, but I hope it will.
1 Timothy 6:7 - “We didn’t bring anything with us when we came into this world, and we certainly cannot carry anything with us when we die.” You’re never going to see a hearse with a U-Haul behind it. Here is the point, if you want real security, you must build your life on something that can never be taken from you – God’s love for you in Christ.
In this world, can you lose a loved one? Yes. Can you lose a home? Yes. Can you lose a career? Yes. Can you lose a marriage? Yes. Can you lose your health? Yes. Can you lose your youthful beauty? I’m living proof. Can anything separate you, though, from the love of God? No. That’s Romans 8:35-37.
I like Revelation 21:25. It says about heaven, “It’s gates never close at the end of day because there is no night.” That’s security. No threats to be concerned about. No need for checkpoints or Secret Service or metal detector machines. That’s the place we long to be.
Romans 8:23 – “And
we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a
foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin
and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us
our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has
promised us.”
If you want real security, then you build your life on
something that can’t be taken from you.
Because God says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Paul says it like this in 2 Timothy 1:12, “I
know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that He is able to guard what I
have entrusted to Him until the day of His return
5. RELY on Christ.
Philippians 4:12-13
- “I have learned the
secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or
empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives
me strength.”
HOW?
Have different people read out loud
Psalm 112:6-7 – says of people who fear the Lord, “Such people will not be overcome by evil
circumstances. . . They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord
to care for them.”
Psalm 46:1-2, 4-5 – “God
is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear, even if the earthquakes
come and the mountains crumble into the sea . . . A river brings joy to the
city of our God, the sacred home of the Most High. God Himself lives in that city; it cannot be destroyed.”
Jeremiah 29:11 – “For
I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for
disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
Look to Christ for hope and strength!
Remember that Christ suffered on your behalf on the cross – taking the pain and suffering for your sins, so that one day you could be in that perfect place with God forever.
2 Corinthians 6:1-2 – “As
God’s partners, we beg you not to reject this marvelous message of God’s great
kindness. For God says, ‘At just the
right time, I heard you. On the day of
salvation, I helped you.’ Indeed, God is
ready to help you right now. Today is
the day of salvation.”