In Resilience
Grow Up • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I mentioned a couple months back that Micah and I had gone on a backpacking trip with my brother back in July. It was our second year hiking the McKenzie River Trail.
I joked last month that hiking is pain, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something, but the truth is it’s a wonderfully enjoyable trip. and we had a great time.
The trail passes by the Tamolich Blue Pool, Sahalie and Koosah Falls, and mostly follows the river through the national forest.
Last year, though, we were preparing to hike knowing that a significant portion of the trail had been rerouted to bypass a part of the forest that had been devastated by wildfires the previous summer. That detour kept us on an unmercifully sunny and exposed logging road that was a significant upward grade for what felt like an eternity.
Fortunately, this year the area we were bypassing had been declared safe, and hazards had largely been cleared.
It was interesting hiking through this area. The effects of the fire, even two years later, were abundantly obvious. Many large trees wore the scorching on their bark as a testament to what they’d endured, and even more of the small trees were burned to a point that they would clearly never recover.
1 John 16:31-33
John 16:31–33 (ESV)
Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
