Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 179th episode. For those of you who’ve been following the podcast for a while you know I like to repurpose my sermons and turn them into podcast episodes. Usually when I do that it is a fresh recording made just for you. I never want the content I present to a live audience to be lost on that specific night. I think there’s value in making it more permanent here and sharing it with you. But for this particular sermon I don’t think re-recording the audio on my podcast microphone is a good idea. This sermon was meant to be preached from stage and I don’t think a podcast version will do it justice. So I’m just recording this intro and then we’re going to jump into the audio from that night. I think you will enjoy it and I hope it is as impactful for you as it was for the people who heard it. If you want to watch the video version of this sermon you can do so on The MHB Podcast YouTube channel. As always I’ll be posting a full transcript on my website at mhbpodcast.com So without further delay let’s jump in to the sermon.
Well good evening United! It’s so good to be with you all tonight. For those of you who are new in the room or who don’t know me my name is Michael Baun. I am a pastor although I’m not serving in pastoral office here at Summit and only to some degree at United. I’ll just say before we jump in – and I’ve told Pastor Kendall this before – but this town is very lucky to have a ministry like this and a group of people like all of you in it. I’ve been some places and normally you have to be in a bigger area to see this kind of talent serving God and this many young adults on fire for Jesus. What a blessing your churches and your pastors are and what a boon to the community all of you are turning out to be. So praise be to Jesus for United in Indiana.
I have the terrible honor of teaching you about suffering tonight. This is not a topic that I approach lightly – nor should you – because as a general rule nearly every person you meet is dealing with some very difficult form of pain. With most people, including many in this auditorium, you need only scratch beneath the surface to encounter various kinds of tragedy.
And so a fair question is why do we have to endure suffering at all? If God is all-powerful and if He loves us why did he allow tragedy into this story? Certainly omniscience could have found a better way, right? I could walk you through some standard biblical theodicy like “God wanted to love us, love requires free-will, free-will brought the Fall of Creation, and the Fall ushered in suffering”, but that goes beyond the scope of tonight’s message so I’ll just ask you some questions instead.
First is have you ever had an experience which you – in your infinite wisdom – judged to be suffering only to realize later once you had the full picture that this experience was actually a necessary part of your development?
Second question is do you believe the highest dimension of good is absence of suffering or is it redemption from suffering? Simply put, do you think you have access to the full appreciation of something like freedom the way it is available to a person who was just released from prison? If the highest dimension of good is redemption from suffering – is it even possible to comprehend a place like Heaven without first having known suffering? Is a resurrected life even possible without first enduring crucifixion? Unless a man be born again can he even see the Kingdom of God? I’ll leave you to mull that over on your own – but if you explore those questions I think you’ll be on the right path to new perspectives which will help you tremendously in navigating life.
The interesting thing about pain is that it’s a human universal. You can’t argue your way out of pain. It doesn’t matter what your worldview is, the reality of pain is inescapable. But how you react to pain, how you respond to pain, that is not a human universal. In fact I would go so far as to say your reaction to pain is very telling about who you are. It advertises your moral condition and it reveals a lot about what you believe is true. You could approach tragedy the way famed atheist Richard Dawkins does in his book River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, he says:
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
He’s so lighthearted and optimistic. And look, this nihilistic view of the world is very attractive and without faith the atheistic viewpoint can seem really powerful. I say it’s attractive because if everything is nothing then you have no responsibility to do anything good. And there’s nothing stopping you from doing evil apart from getting caught by earthly authorities – and you know pretty well how to hide and how to get away with it. But we’ve already run this experiment – the evidence is in. Our own generation has tried to respond to the broken nature of reality with this viewpoint. And what do we see? The markers for mental health disorders are on the rise despite the brute fact that markers for overall prosperity are also on the rise. So by and large even though tragedy and suffering are becoming less – mental illness is becoming more.
A guy like Dawkins looks at a world he doesn’t fully understand just like none of us fully understand it and he assumes there is no rhyme, reason, purpose, or design. But I fall closer to the American pragmatist William James in suggesting that if your view of the world is resulting in widespread societal and mental health breakdown then perhaps your view is wrong. If you deploy a belief system and it causes you to fall apart then maybe you’ve failed to account for something.
I’m not up here to tell you there is an escape from suffering – that cup is not going to pass from you. But what I can give you tonight are tools which you can use when the inevitable comes to pass in your own life. Tools that will allow you to respond to suffering in a godly way so that when life sucks and then it gets harder you won’t turn that harder into perpetual, self-inflicted, multi-generational misery.
To acquire our tools we’re going to explore some the story of the prophet Elijah found in 1 Kings chapters 18 and 19. The part we want to focus on is in chapter 19 but to give you context I’ll summarize 18.
Basically Israel is suffering through a famine while being led by the idolatrous king Ahab. God tells the prophet Elijah that if he shows himself to Ahab then it’ll rain and the famine will end. This is a big deal because Ahab’s wife Jezebel is the one who is famous for murdering prophets. Obadiah, who is still faithful to God, encounters Elijah and Elijah tells him to deliver news to Ahab about where he can be found. At first Obadiah doesn’t want to do this because he’s afraid Ahab will kill him when Ahab shows up and Elijah is gone somewhere else. But Elijah promises Obadiah he will stay put until Ahab gets there.
Ahab shows up and meets with Elijah and Elijah tells him he’s an idol-worshiper who’s led Israel astray. Elijah challenges Ahab to gather all of Israel along with 450 prophets Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah together at Mount Carmel. The fake prophets show up and Elijah embarrasses them in front of all the people by demonstrating that Baal is a vacuous fiction and Elijah’s God is the only real God with true power. When I say Elijah embarrassed them, I mean he literally mocked Baal right in front of them. The false prophets were doing these rituals to bring Baal forward and when he wouldn’t show up listen to what Elijah says in verse 27:
1Ki 18:27 About noontime Elijah began mocking them. “You’ll have to shout louder,” he scoffed, “for
surely he is a god! Perhaps he is daydreaming, or is relieving himself. Or maybe he is away on a trip, or
is asleep and needs to be wakened!”
Can you imagine how irritated this made the prophets of Baal? Can you imagine if your life was spiraling out of control and you were in church hoping that God would show up for you in a big way? Then someone saunters on over with a grin on his face and says, “Looks like you’re having a pretty hard time, huh. No God yet? Maybe you have to wake him up. Maybe he’s on the toilet. Hey maybe he’s on vacation and if you pray really hard he’ll come back early!” Elijah might have been a prophet but he also knew how to be an irritant. But it doesn’t stop there. After proving Baal is fake, Elijah orders the people to gather up the false prophets and he takes them to the brook Kishon and kills them.
So all in one course of action he proves that their god is fake, mocks them for being so gullible, and then makes sure this embarrassment is the last thing they feel besides the edge of a sword. Which, by the way, this idea is still true today. You might not have the prophet Elijah take you to the brook Kishon and slay you with the sword, but if you give yourself over to a low-resolution ideological cult, political or otherwise, you will be humiliated when the truth reasserts itself. And it’s entirely possible that these ideas will fester and spread until they possess so much of who you are that you’re willing to lay down your life in defense of your idol. That’s one of the hallmark differences between Christianity and everything else – when you become ensnared in ideology you will sacrifice yourself in an effort to save your god. But when you come to know Christ you will understand your God sacrificed Himself to save you. Let’s read about what happens after Elijah kills the idolaters in 1 Kings 19:1-8
1Ki 19:1 Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.
1Ki 19:2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.”
1Ki 19:3 And he was afraid and arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.
1Ki 19:4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he might die, and said, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers.”
1Ki 19:5 He lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat.”
1Ki 19:6 Then he looked and behold, there was at his head a bread cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again.
1Ki 19:7 The angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you.”
1Ki 19:8 So he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel extra on-fire-for-Jesus and you maybe bite off more than you can chew for the Kingdom? That’s probably how Elijah felt once he realized Jezebel was out for his head. Elijah went from having all his stuff together and feeling bold enough to honor God in front of all Israel to being terrified for his life and hiding in the wilderness.
Life sucks and then it gets harder. Elijah felt like he was at such a dead-end that he might as well just sit under this juniper tree and die. I think it’s safe to say he lost his cool and he was rattled. But it doesn’t matter what you’re going through or what Elijah went through – God is not rattled by any of it. And that particular characteristic of God is where our first set of tools are found. God does not panic and neither should you. Panic makes everything worse. Part of what makes you designed in the image of God is your capacity for rational thought. But when you panic you surrender that godly part of yourself for something much darker, much more violent, and fully incapable of proper judgment.
After Elijah had his moment of despair he fell asleep. And so the first question you should ask yourself when you’re in the midst of suffering or chaos is whether or not you are rested. Many other people are credited with this quote but General George S. Patton said fatigue makes cowards of us all. Your first rule for recovering properly from tragedy or suffering should be: do not forsake your need for rest. This is a hard one for people, especially men, because when we’re faced with problems we feel compelled to act and find a solution. But what you need to understand is that every good solution – every good solution – begins with being rested and being inside the will of God.
If you’ve ever watched movies about Wall Street – not The Wolf of Wall Street don’t watch that one – then you’ve seen movie portrayals of the world of investment banking. Investment bankers are known for a few things but one of them is their colossal work ethic. These men and women work 80 hours a week like it’s a trip to Disney. And many of them have no problem at all with working more than that because the generation of wealth – the productivity itself – has become the thing that gives them meaning and purpose.
Many of these people will do whatever it takes to boost their productivity. And they have all the money to fund the research and buy whatever equipment they need. They’ve even established drug trades surrounding productivity where they can get central nervous system stimulants like amphetamines. But despite all these resources they could not escape the diminishing returns of working too much. These hyper-conscientious people will intentionally schedule rest into their workflow because they understand going beyond a certain threshold will actually cause them to become less productive. Jesus spoke very highly of rest when He called on people to turn away from their heavy burdens and come to Him. Matthew 11:28-30 says:
Mat 11:28 Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
Mat 11:29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.
Mat 11:30 “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
There’s a reason God rested on the seventh day of creation and it’s not because He was tired. God gave us the Sabbath as an example of our need to regularly take a step back from the grind and center ourselves under Jesus. That’s true even when you’re not in the midst of suffering but it’s especially true when you are. When approaching difficult circumstances your first step should be to make sure you’re rested. And here’s a good test you can run to find out whether it’s time to rest. If the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – are not present in you during your work then it’s time to take a break because you are no longer offering God’s best.
So Elijah goes to sleep and when he wakes up an angel is there with him and the angel tells him to eat something. That’s your next tool. When chaos comes into your life or tragedy strikes do not make it worse by putting bad things into your body. This idea sounds trite or silly but I’ve met a number of alcoholics and substance abusers whose use of drugs long outlasted the initial problem which inspired it. Never underestimate the power of addiction to consume your life, destroy your relationships, and become far worse than all the other problems you thought you had.
What you put into your body has great power over who you become. One of the unseen catastrophes of this world is all the lost potential which stems from childhood undernourishment. It’s so egregious that President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center Bjorn Lomborg thinks we could solve challenging problems like climate change simply by making sure children all over the world are getting enough nourishment.
The idea is that if you can prevent 10,000 children from starving – which you could do for not very much money – then these kids would have a chance to develop properly and the likelihood of one of them being a genius is actually pretty good and having a genius turns out to be quite useful when it comes to solving world problems. Elon Musk is a genius-caliber engineer and business mogul who by himself is solving more global problems than most governments.
I haven’t been working out at the gym lately so this next part is going to make me sound like a hypocrite – and that’s because I am a hypocrite. One of the most important steps to recovering well from suffering is to evaluate your physical fitness. It takes responsibility to steward your body well and you’re not getting any help from the commercialization of bad food. Never in history has it been easier to develop bad habits surrounding your diet and these bad habits will only serve to complicate and exacerbate your original problem.
Your body is a temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and your body is an instrument for doing God’s will. Listen to what Paul says about his body in 1 Corinthians 9:23-27
1 Co 9:23 I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.
1Co 9:24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
1Co 9:25 Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
1Co 9:26 Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air;
1Co 9:27 but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.
You will never reach your full potential if you’re neglecting the development of your body. You might be thinking: but I want to be an intellectual! I have the arms of a thinking man! I don’t need diet and exercise! I thought the same thing until I learned about the differences between fluid and crystallized IQ.
Crystallized IQ is like the sum-total of knowledge you’ve acquired from the things you’ve learned. Vocabulary is a good example of crystallized IQ. Fluid IQ is your current capacity for processing new information – it governs how well you can learn new things. Once you hit about age 25 your fluid IQ begins to decrease and keeps decreasing until you die of old age. I used to think the best way to protect against the loss of fluid IQ was by reading. But I was wrong. Reading is great for adding to your crystallized IQ but by far the best way to guard against the loss of fluid IQ is the combination of cardiovascular exercise and weight training. Keeping yourself fit will ensure that you’re operating in prime condition and this physical resilience will make all of your other problems seem lighter and easier to deal with.
Physical unfitness is very pernicious because of the way it grabs hold of you. It’s usually so gradual that if you aren’t looking for it you may not notice how far you’ve gone. I myself have lived in both worlds and I can tell you the same way fitness makes all of your other problems feel easier, unfitness makes all of your other problems feel harder. The difference is no joke and you will do much better in life if you cultivate the responsibility to monitor these things and take care of them. Tragedy is not a justification to abuse your body, and if you use it as such you’re going to make everything so much harder.
Being able to enjoy good food is one of the small things which is a gracious providence of God. Don’t allow what’s meant to be joyful and rejuvenating become a source of guilt for you. Focusing on small forms of grace and stewarding your body well are incremental improvements that will have a meaningful impact on your ability to recover from times of suffering.
Elijah’s food had a supernatural element to it because it strengthened him for 40 days and 40 nights but the overall principle remains the same. Strong people are the ones who walk through suffering well. It is a bad strategy to bank on your ability to evade tragedy altogether. You need to strengthen yourself now gradually, voluntarily, so that when suffering thrusts itself upon you you will be resilient enough to endure it. You don’t make the world safer by trying to eliminate all possibility of danger – you make the world safer by developing competent, resilient individuals who are able to navigate a dangerous world safely. It’s kind of the same thing as how they say a blunt knife is more dangerous in the kitchen than a sharp knife. Weak people don’t handle danger very well and mishandling dangerous things makes dangerous things even more dangerous.
So far your tools for navigating suffering are: make sure you are rested and be diligent to steward your body well. There are two more principles to take away from this and we find them in the remaining verses of chapter 19:
1Ki 19:9 Then he came there to a cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
1Ki 19:10 He said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
1Ki 19:11 So He said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
1Ki 19:12 After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.
1Ki 19:13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
1Ki 19:14 Then he said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
1Ki 19:15 The LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you have arrived, you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram;
And then God tells Elijah who he’s supposed to anoint as king over Israel and He also tells him that Elisha is going to become his successor. Elijah meets up with Elisha and gives him his mantle which is meant to confer prophetic authority to him. Elisha basically says, “let me go say bye to my parents and I’ll follow you right on out of here.” And then at the end of the chapter it says Elisha followed Elijah and ministered to him.
But stepping back and looking at this passage as a whole we see Elijah taking shelter in a cave at mount Horeb. It appears he’s been stabilized and no longer in despair – although he may not be sure of what to do next. This is a moment where he’s demonstrating the faith necessary to wait for God’s instructions and sure enough the word of the Lord comes to him. He’s told to go forward, stand on the mountain, and commune with God.
Next we see a great strong wind come through and break up the rocks of the mountain. But God was not in the wind. The wind was followed by an earthquake but God was not in the earthquake either. After the earthquake there comes a fire but even so God was not in the fire. Finally there comes the whisper of a gentle wind and that is the moment when God reveals Himself to Elijah. That’s your third tool. In the midst of suffering you must look for God in the small things and search for His providential grace in places you might not be expecting it.
On October 2, 2006 at 10:25 in the morning a man named Charles Roberts took three guns into West Nickel Mines Amish school and began taking hostages. Around the same time his wife entered their Georgetown home and found four suicide notes – one addressed to her and one for each of their three kids who were ages 7, 5, and the youngest just 18 months old. Roberts called his wife from inside the schoolhouse and told her he had very dark things running through his mind. During the call he directed her to a letter where he wrote about the daughter they had lost at birth nine years ago. He said, “the loss of Elise changed my life forever…I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself, hate toward God, and unimaginable emptiness.” At 11:07AM Roberts shot 10 Amish schoolgirls killing five who were between the ages 7 and 13. Then he shot and killed himself.
His wife Marie, who is now Marie Monville, went on to write a memoir of the event and she wrote about what her life was like afterwards. Because of what her husband did she was instantly thrust into infamy, chaos, and excruciating heartbreak. Her book is called One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting. In the book she writes:
“When all hell is breaking loose, when the blackness of evil comes crashing into our lives, how tempting, how natural to see only the ugliness…No matter how tragic your circumstances, your life is not a tragedy. It is a love story. And in your love story, when you think all the lights have gone out, one light still shines.”
Chief among the reasons Marie credits for her ability to survive this tragedy was her willingness to pay attention and search for the goodness of God. She found the goodness of God in the small acts of kindness family and friends would do for her during her most difficult hours – maybe bringing her food or just sitting with her. She found the goodness of God in the flowers which decorated the warm and welcoming home of her grandmother and in good tasting cups of coffee.
Most of all she found the goodness of God when she was at her husband’s funeral and the Amish community – many of whom were family of the girls who were murdered – came and formed a wall around her so the reporters couldn’t get to her while she buried her husband. She called it the Wall of Grace. Even in her darkest days Marie saw the light of Christ shine through her neighbors and through her loved ones. She saw the light of Christ in little forms of providence many others would have overlooked if they weren’t paying attention.
In the same way that God appeared to Elijah in the gentle whisper of the wind, in the midst of suffering you must remember to pay attention so you don’t miss all the ways God is revealing Himself to you in the small things. The depth psychologist Carl Jung said, “modern man can’t see God because he won’t look low enough.”
So when people ask me about my conversion process or if I knew the exact moment I came to know Jesus I usually tell them my story from before I ever set foot inside of a church. When I was 23 I went through some hard stuff – like we all have – and I decided to use that suffering as a justification to do whatever I wanted. I moved myself to the city of Pittsburgh and I reveled in the unrestrained power of my nihilistic worldview. I’ve always had good parents who taught me right and raised me well but in the city I was sixty miles away from anyone I knew. I had money and all the freedoms which come with being an adult. I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was or what I was doing. I tore up the nightlife for over a year and not once did I think about God. Not once did I look up and not once did I say a prayer.
Then one night I was at a champagne lounge in Market Square by myself and my arrogance had blinded me so much that I left my drink at the bar and went to use the restroom. When I came back I took a sip and everything faded to black. The police got to me somewhere outside before someone worse could. They offered to take me jail unless I told them where I lived.
I remember waking up in the lobby of the wrong apartment building and security took me to an apartment that wasn’t mine. When my key didn’t work they asked me what building I lived in and they were irritated when they realized I told them the wrong one. Entirely by the grace of God I made it safely home but things were never the same for me after that night. That story has other details which I didn’t learn about until years later but those details revealed to me how close I was to losing my life. This is not the right place for those details but basically king Michael who thought he had power over everything was caught off-guard and only didn’t die that night because of the grace of God and the lovingkindness of other people.
Before I left Pittsburgh and came back to start my path to pastoral ministry I remember standing one night alone on the Clemente bridge. It was cold – probably February sometime – and there was no one around. I stood there for minutes and looked down at the freezing waters. And I thought to myself: I deserve to be there. Dead in the river should have been the end of my story. And even today when ministry gets hard or life sucks – I remind myself that whatever life I have to left to live is only mine because God allowed me to keep it.
Finally we come to the end of 1 Kings 19 where we see God bring Elijah and Elisha together. Elisha would go on to become the prophetic successor to Elijah. But let’s step back and take a look at the chain of events. Elijah made his stand against the idol-worshipers and killed the false prophets. Then the bottom fell out from his life when Jezebel put out the hit on him. He endured a low-point of despair under the juniper tree and when all else failed he fell asleep. He woke up and ate some food to regain his strength. Then he sought to commune with God and found Him in the quiet wind. By the grace of God and by Elijah’s sheer willingness to keep moving forward he survived to this point where God brings Elisha into his life to further support him. God gave Elijah a friend.
Ladies and gentlemen if that’s not a picture of the gospel I don’t know what is. Some of you may have walked through the exact same process. You’re born into this world and if you’re lucky you have a pretty decent life as you grow up. Many things come easy to you because you live within the protection and providence of the most prosperous country in history. And maybe during the times when life seemed so easy you got a little too bold or a little too arrogant. It’s possible you even began to forget your need for a Savior.
And then one day all hell broke loose. One day you realized this life is not what it’s supposed to be. You realized you’re not who you thought you were. You realized that for so many people this life is terrible and tragic and not fair. You realized that life sucks and then it gets harder.
One day your confidence was shattered and you felt the enemy coming for your life. You experienced something you never saw coming and you were convinced it was going to steal a part of your soul that you would never be able to get back. There in the midst of suffering you watched the parts of yourself you thought you loved pass away forever. How many of you here today have had your own moment under the juniper tree?
But by the grace of God and by the resilience of the divine spark inside of you you refused to die there. And so you took stock of your situation and you stabilized yourself even though your circumstances remained desperate.
After the dust settled and the deafening sounds of chaos began to fade you found Someone waiting there in the gentle whisper of the wind. You found God in the quiet. You found God in the moments which no matter how well you explain them they never seem as impactful to others as they did in your own heart. The gospel Good News is that even when life is broken and full of tragedy and evil, you have the mark of divinity on your spirit and that means you have what it takes to overcome.
Jesus said that in Him you may have peace. Jesus said that in this world you will face tribulation but Jesus also said that you can take heart for He has overcome the world. Jesus is your friend in the suffering and with Him by your side one way or another you too will overcome.
Just as Elijah communed with God in the quiet of Mount Horeb, just like Marie Monville and countless others have encountered the voice of God in the voiceless moments – I want you to go to Him. What’s going to happen now is I’m going to say a prayer and then I want all of you to get into a quiet place. For some of you that might look like going off into a different part of the auditorium by yourself. For others it might mean just sitting there in your seat. Whatever it is I want you to go to God in the tranquility of the innermost part of your spirit and realize that He is there and He will never leave you. After a few moments of silence we’re going to start our last song and during the song I just want you to reflect and invite the Spirit of God into that quiet place with you. When the music is over you’ll break off into groups and there will be some questions for you to discuss together on the screens.
Holy Spirit as I turn this back over to the worship team I ask that you pour out your presence on this place. Fill the hearts and minds of every person here and give them the hope they need to be all they can be. Make clear to them the path which they must walk to come into your kingdom and give them the strength to do it. Remind them that even when life is difficult they are not alone. Father God light a fire in these people so they may face their trials with all the ferocity of the Lion of Judah, and soften their hearts so they may face their neighbors and their own reflection with all the gentleness of the Lamb of God. Lord we love you, we thank you, and we praise you this night. It is in the mighty name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.
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