Northside Church - Sydney
Makin' A List & Checkin' It Twice – Week 2: Expect to be Challenged
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, we started a Christmas series last week entitled Making a List and checking it twice. Of course, we recognize that like Christmas, it's all about lists, Christmas card lists, for invitees, for your various Christmas functions, Christmas gift lists, it's all about lists. But the list I'm wanting us to consider in this series is the list of expectations. What are your expectations of Christmas? What are you hoping for at a personal level last week it was, let's expect a surprise. Today, let's expect that there will be some challenges this Christmas, we've got to be ready for those, some real tough times. If you're going through a tough time now, then that's possibly going to continue. Maybe there are going to be some tough times you can't even anticipate. So let's expect some challenges this Christmas, let's first of all bow in prayer, shall we? Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to open your word. Thank you for this wonderful season. We recognize Lord this morning, there are people in this church family who are concerned, who are experiencing considerable difficulties, some are deeply concerned about parents in at least a couple of cases, parents a long way away, others are concerned about financial issues, relationship issues, health problems, Lord, we're a pretty mixed bunch. And Christmas is looming, and this is causing apprehension and anxiety in the hearts of a lot of people. Please, may there be something in this message this morning that will assist us to cope with Christmas and to approach it with greater resolve to be victorious over all the things that might otherwise pull us down through Jesus Christ our Lord be pray. Amen. Now here's the question, who's the Christmas character featured the least in Christmas cards in pageants, in historical art, even in traditional Christmas songs, who's the character featured the least, anybody want a chance to guess? Joseph, correct, fantastic, well, have we thought before, spontaneous, beautiful. Joseph, of course, I mean, he's there in the shadows with some of the Christmas cards, you know, you can pick him there if you look hard enough. And somebody's going to play Joseph in the pageant, but it's nowhere near as glamorous and as exciting as saying like playing a wise man, you know, getting all the glitter and the robes and stuff, beautiful, I've done that gig, that's fantastic. And of course, even a shepherd, you might get to carry a sheep, you know. And of course, Mary, wow, that's the starring role, she's the one who gets all the spotlight. What about the carols, you know, once in royal David City, stood a lowly cattle shed, we're a mother, laid her baby, you know, hello, what was Dad doing, you know, like the earthly father, where was he in that little scene, or a little town of Bethlehem, for Christ is born of Mary, we know that to be true, but have had a bit of recognition, you know, for the earthly father of Jesus. And then there's silent night, which we were just saying a moment ago, all is calm, all is bright, round young virgin mother and child. Have you ever wondered why it was calm and bright, why the baby was sleeping in heavenly peace? It's because Joseph was on his third nappy change, he'd already swept the stable from top to bottom a couple of times, he was handing Mary her third cup of herbal tea, I mean, that's why I was such a scene of peace, I mean, that's what dads do, right fellas? Fellas? Absolutely, right, well, I mean, to be honest, let's face it, for the most part, Joseph takes a back seat, you know, compared to Mary in the many artistic and literary expressions of Christmas. It's a bit like Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark, you know, I mean, who would look at him when you can look at Prince as Mary? I realize that's purely from a male point of view, he's a bit like the Duke of Edinburgh, a bit like our own dear Tim Matheson, you know, God bless him, you know, always just walking a little bit behind Prime Minister Gillard, I mean, it's a syndrome that affects, it affects men who happen to be involved with powerful, influential women, but you know, I'm rather glad, I'm rather glad that Joseph gets this secondary role because, you know, it provides us with the opportunity to look at some of the reasons why that might be. For instance, I believe that Joseph stands as a reminder that Christmas is not necessarily a season of peace and goodwill and joy and happiness for everybody, not necessarily so, that Joseph, that first Christmas or at least the events leading up to that first Christmas was a time of profound turmoil and confusion. I mean, we read about it in the reading brought to us by Annie just a moment ago. Now, whilst today, a pregnancy outside of marriage is almost compulsory to be on the Hollywood A-list. In those days, in those days, and still the case in some traditional Middle Eastern countries today, it was a huge disgrace. Joseph was bewildered and he was confused. He didn't know what was going on. Imagine, you know, in that setting, that ancient, very righteous setting, that your fiance suddenly appears to be expecting a baby and you know nothing about it. There would have been many moments of misunderstanding, embarrassment, and tension among family and friends, you know, like, Joseph, hey, what, you know, I don't know what's going on. Well, not exactly the ingredients for a happy Christmas, would you agree? Not exactly the way in which you want to approach Christmas with that kind of underlying tension and stress. Now, I know there are people listening to me now and you're facing all kinds of huge challenges and difficulties in your own lives. At this time, I mentioned some of them in the prayer. In some cases, problems of estrangement, and tension within relationships, even within marriages. In some cases, concern over financial issues, others facing health problems. For some, it's uncertainty about the prevailing business and economic conditions. You're in business. You're wondering, you're even wanting about your own job, in some cases. We're approaching Christmas from different perspectives. And you know what? When our timepieces, when our watches and our and our mobile phones and our clocks on the wall on Christmas Eve, when they click over to Christmas day, these problems aren't going to suddenly disappear. They're not going to suddenly be resolved. They're going to be there. These challenges and these sources of adversity. So in that sense, adversity and the possibility of adversity have to be on our list of expectations for Christmas. The question is, in God's strength, how can we manage these? How can we make sure that these challenges, these difficulties, don't get on top of us? How can we manage this reality in God's strength? And friends this morning in the remaining moments, I want to give you three little facts about adversity. Three little truisms, if you like, which, if taken on board, can mean the difference between a memorable Christmas and a morbid Christmas. And I think we all want a memorable Christmas at this stage. Here's the first one. Adversity is inevitable. Misery is optional. In other words, we get to choose our response to the things that happen to us in life. Mary Engelbright, she's an inspirational American author. And she says, if you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Back to the first century, the Apostle Paul said this. I'm going to actually, we have a word from Paul for each of these facts this morning. The first one is what he has to say in Philippians 4 verses 12 and 13. Listen to this. He says, "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have more than enough. I have learnt this secret so that anywhere at any time I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little, I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me." Guys, arising out of his deep faith in Jesus Christ, Paul is describing the choices he makes in the face of adversity. He describes the process as a secret. Let me tell you, the secret is out. I could pass the microphone around this auditorium this morning. And in your own way, so many of you would talk about how you hand over the problems and the issues you face in each day. You hand them over to God in prayer. And in doing so, he gives you the strength to get through. And these are ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. So it was no secret. It might have been a secret for Paul when he was writing, but the secret is out. Adversity is inevitable, but misery is optional. We've got the power to chew through Christ. Here's the second thing. Adversity is temporal. Faith is eternal. See, the challenges and the problems of life are, for the most part, cyclical. Would you agree? Like they come and go. Problems seem to come and go in cycles. Now, that's not easy. That's not easy when you get hit with wave after wave of problems. As someone has said, it's not easy handling problems one at a time because they never actually line up in a straight line. That'd be easy at one at a time. Okay, I'll deal with that one. He's another one. But they come at us from all angles in the most unexpected ways. Mother Teresa once said, "I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he wouldn't trust me so much." You know, I mean, anybody resonate with that? Here's a second quote from Paul. This one comes from Romans 8 and it's verses 18 and 19. He says, "I consider what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. All creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children." He's talking about future. He's talking about the afterlife. He's talking about heaven. Now, friends, this is not a call. This is not a call to some sort of false piety. You know, where people say, "Oh, I'd be better off if I could, you know, end at all, at least I'll be with the Lord." You know, like, this is nothing to do with that. No, this is a simple acknowledgement that for the person with faith in God, this is not our permanent home. Like, this is not it. This is just temporal, but we're just passing through. Our ultimate destination is in eternity and that's been made possible by the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, in the face of adversity, people of faith give meaning to events and circumstances which on paper have no meaning. Tragedies and situations which you look at them and just go, "What the heck is that?" That has... You couldn't possibly get a meaning out of that. Death of a child, premature death of anybody. Like, what's that all about? The tragedies that we read about and we hear about all the time, no sense at all. People of faith make sense out of even the most severe of problems. You see, Christians don't just sit back passively and take it. With God's help and in His name, we make something out of what might otherwise be meaningless. We give it eternal significance. Our prayer is not, "Lord, give me an easy life." It's, "Lord, I pray to be a strong person." That's what it means. That's getting that eternal perspective. Friends, I've got so many examples of this from my ministry, many of them from this church. I'm not going to give those because some of you would pick who I'm talking about. Let me tell you about Barbara in my last church in Adelaide. I'm minister with Barbara and her husband, Jeff, and their two beautiful teenage children over a period of about 18 months, and then Jeff ultimately died in a hospice in Adelaide in his mid-40s of cancer. Huge, funeral, tragic loss. Two beautiful kids going through high school. A lovely wife, they expected to grow all together and it happens all the time, of course. But here's the thing. He spent the last few months in a hospice in Adelaide within weeks of his death to the amazement of all of her friends at loved ones. Barbara went back to that hospice as a volunteer worker and she said to me one day, "Who better qualified to assist these people as they struggle and they go through their loss than somebody like me who also journeyed with her loved one in this very place." She spent many years there in that role. Just something that was just so tragic, she made something of it, gave it some eternal significance. One of the ministries we operate here at Northside is divorce care. It's not our biggest ministry, it's not designed to be big. It's designed to help small groups of people as they journey through the pain of divorce. We're one of the few churches in Sydney that offer this ministry. The minimum qualification for leading that course is you have to be divorced. Every single person who runs that course has themselves suffered the pain of divorce. They know what it feels like. This is not somebody just giving something out of a theory book. These are people who are prepared to invest back into people rising out of their own loss. So, in that sense, giving it some eternal significance. Adversity is temporal. Faith is eternal. Here's a third and final thing. Adversity may inflict pain, but the resultant growth means long-term gain. One of the ways of measuring a person's growth spiritually, mentally, emotionally, is to see the way they've handled the tough times of life. We know this. It's one of the ways of measuring a person's growth in those areas, to trace their responses to the hurtful and the harmful things of life. You meet some people and you can see instantly the course they've chosen. They're jaded. They're cynical. They're very bitter. They might be ultra-critical, judgmental, defensive. You get a sense of which course they've chosen in response to their pain. You meet other people and you realize that they've chosen a very different pathway. These are people who are stronger. They seem to have come through with greater strength. They're more compassionate. They've got an increased capacity to empathize with people who are going through tough times. These are the people often we're really drawn to. I want to give you the third quote, the third and final quote today from the apostle Paul. Speaking of his own experience, let's know what he says in 2 Corinthians 4, 8, 9. He says, "I'm often troubled, but not crushed. I'm often in doubt, but never in despair. I have many enemies, but I'm never without a friend. And although badly hurt at times, I am not destroyed." This is the apostle Paul. Wouldn't he be getting extra protection from God? Wouldn't he be having a dream run? No. He's experiencing life just like you and I. Paul, like virtually every significant leader in the Bible, had more than his fair share of adversity. But his strength and his tenacity and his resilience as a leader, as a man of God, could be attributed in no small part to the fact that through faith in Jesus Christ, he had overcome those problems. He had grown through those problems. They'd been painful, but the long-term gain had overtaken the pain. I have a friend in Arizona, a ministry colleague. His name's Roger. I was there with him a few weeks ago, as many of you know, as in the United States. And Roger is a remarkable man. He and his wife tragically lost their one and only 15-year-old hemophiliac son to a bad dose of blood. He basically died of AIDS. And inevitably, when we take groups over there, groups of ministers, the question comes up, "What has been the most difficult period of your ministry?" And he always cites this particular moment. But this year, he added something that I'd not heard him say before. He said, "You know, I never want to go through that experience again, but I never want to be the person I was before that tragedy. Did you get that? Did you get that? I would never want to go through that again, but I would never want to be the person I was before that tragedy." Wow. He's saying, "I've grown. I see things differently now. I have a greater love and depth of feeling for family, for relationships now. I have a more intense understanding of people now." That's powerful for someone who suffered such a loss. I have a friend in Adelaide who once told me she wishes she could rewrite every sympathy card she ever sent before the death of her mother. Because she said, "Although she was well-meaning in what she was trying to say, looking back, a lot of it was pretty naive, pretty superficial, pretty simplistic." She said, "Now I know how to feel. I wish I could write all those cards again, based on my own experience." Adversity may inflict pain, but the resultant, long-term growth is gain. Hey, friends, Christmas is a great season. And we can expect all kinds of things, great things, exciting things, surprising things. At the same time, we should be realistic enough to understand that some of the stuff we're going through now will continue. And in fact, there might be some stuff that we can't even anticipate that will arise in these coming weeks and during the season. If Sam was doing this message, I'm sure he'd call it the Sanio principle. That's life. We're saying, "No." And it's life in terms of how we experience it. That's life. You've got to expect that. It's not a matter of what's happening. It's a matter of how we're handling what's happening. Praise be to God. We don't face any of this alone. I'm a Christian for many reasons. One of them is because I can face the problems and the adversities of my own life in the knowledge that I do not face them alone. There's one who has faced all of them in far more, and he's alive and well today, and he gives me the strength through the Holy Spirit to press on and overcome adversity. That's the testimony of so many of you. Praise God for this great Christmas season when we remember the one who came to deliver us and to strengthen us and to enable us to handle even the most severe problems of life. Praise his name today. Let's join in prayer, shall we? Father God, we recognize that, as we just said, some of these things that we're experiencing now are not going to magically disappear when the clock strikes midnight and we move into Christmas day. Hopefully, we'll all find ourselves in a place where anything we are struggling with can be minimized somewhat. Hopefully, all of us will get into such a spirit that we'll be able to enjoy the season and enjoy the day, but Lord, maybe before that and even during that time, may we draw deeply on the resources available through you and through the risen Christ to be able to help us handle no matter what comes our way and to be as Paul testified more than conquerors because of him who loves us in his name we pray. Amen.