Uncomfortable Necessity

Intro

Welcome to BIBC! I’m glad you all came to join us today and you all look great in your Christmas presents! If you’re new or visiting, or joining us online for the first time, my name is Aaron and I’m one of the pastors out here. Today is an extremely exciting day because…There’s only 4 days left if 2020. It’s been a heck of a year, right? In my prep for today I came across several memes that described this year and here are a couple of my favorites...

Can we just say it and admit this has been a rough year. It’s been uncomfortable, confusing, heartbreaking, and exhausting.

One thing I believe everyone is ready for, and maybe you’ve heard this a lot or even said it a lot: We’re all ready for things to get back to normal/New normal.

That’s not a bad thing. Because normal is, well, it’s comfortable. I know how to navigate normal.

There is no way I’m going to try and convince you there was anything good about 2020.

What I want you to consider is:

Even though 2020 could have been better

Could you be better for going through it?

I have to wonder if our pursuit of normality is causing us to miss the necessity of discomfort

We’ve got all these phrases we use to motivate us and others when things get hard.

Regardless if we subscribe to it or not, we’ve all said things that show discomfort doesn’t have to be pointless. We’ve said things like

no pain, no gain

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going

no guts, no glory

pain is just weakness leaving the body

You may not subscribe to that. I personally like to live by “no pain…no pain”. In most cases. When I go to the gym or when I go on a run, I usually push myself. I don’t look for or try to hurt myself, but the discomfort is cue for me. It’s letting me know where I am and it’s letting me know where I’m going.

I believe the same thing is true for the challenges we face in life.

Discomfort is necessary in life because it exposes what we would otherwise never see in comfort

So let me ask a couple of questions that will guide our talk for the rest of the day.

What did you learn about you this year?

What came to the surface that you weren’t really a big fan of? Or what did the person who was confined to a house with you for 2 months point out and it immediately made you defensive because it exposed something about you?

What did you do with what you learned?

Keep these two questions in the front of your mind throughout our talk today.

I get that from Paul.

Romans 8:28 (HCSB): 28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.

If we’re going to talk about good things from God we have to reconsider what we consider good gifts.

Two types of gift receivers

Every year I torture myself because I’m a terrible gift giver and I feel like I let Tamara down every year. This year i realized why. There are two types of gift receivers: 1. The people who like gifts you immediately enjoy. 2 The people who like gifts that are practical and you’ll use them for a long time.

I’m super easy to shop for. I like opening gifts that bring immediate satisfaction regardless if I never pick it up again in 2 months. My wife is the practical gift receiver and every year I feel like I did a terrible job even though I get her exactly what she wants, she loves it because she’ll get long term use out of it.

When it comes to what we consider are good gifts from God, we’re much more like the immediate satisfaction type.

We’ve been conditioned to believe good gifts from God are immediate relief from discomfort and the temporary satisfaction of pleasure. But God is interested in so much more for us. He wants to grow in us a joy that is so much more permanent.

That’s why some of the best gifts from God are when He allows the temporary challenges in life to build in us the ability to maintain a consistent joy regardless of what life throws at us.

Maybe that’s where you get thrown. Perhaps you were sold a bill of goods that Christianity is an escape hatch for difficulties in life. Or that following Jesus would make life easy. That’s just not true. You don’t see that anywhere in any of the writings throughout the Bible.

Not only does Paul and James tell us that we will have challenges in life, Jesus says it often. His farewell speech to His disciples warned them they would have many problems. They’d be arrested. They would struggle but He also told them to take heart, because He has overcome the world.

We were never promised we wouldn’t have challenges in life but we were promised we wouldn’t be alone through the challenges.

There are 3 things that bring suffering in life:

Demonic oppression - 1 Peter 5:8

Human Rebellion - James 1:14

Broken World: Genesis 3

None of which are caused by God and none of which are limitations to God’s power and plan for your life. - Romans 8:28

“All things” - There has been a large spectrum of impact on the scale of 2020. The same thing will be true for next year. Some will have the best year of your life. Others will face more challenges. And in each one of these situations God is actively working in your life to accomplish His purpose.

Think about the confidence in trials that give us.

The schemes of the enemy that are meant to steal your joy and move you off course are ultimately used against him to further God’s plan.

That’s why Paul was unshakable.

Death - “to live is Christ and to die is gain”

Beat him and thrown him in jail - worship service

Send him to rome - Great, I’ve been trying to get to Rome!

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 8

29 For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.

This is God’s plan for you and me. To shape us into an image of Jesus. To mold us in a way that our life, joy, and purpose would be one that reflects the person we’ve commited to following.

This is what James, the brother of Jesus, meant when he said

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 1

2 Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

This is a wildly misunderstood verse. James isn’t talking about our momentary happiness, he’s talking about our state of being.

“Consider” - some versions say count. The word James uses here is an accounting term. What he’s saying here is

Credit your trial as a deposit that adds to your joyful state of being.

“Produces endurance” - it adds to your ability to withstand trials.

He’s not saying you need to be happy about trials. He’s saying they are an uncomfortable necessity because trials produce the ability to withstand future trials.

Understanding this is the difference in why we apply those phrases like, no pain no gain, to our life vs. just going to the gym.

It’s the difference in knowing the goal. I’m much more focused in on what the discomfort is saying instead of the discomfort itself.

Sponge illustration

What came to the surface for you this year?

When the pressure and stress of this year happened, what did you learn about yourself? What did the discomfort expose, in you? Not in the person sitting next to you. It’s easy to see that. We don’t need a pandemic to see how jacked up our neighbor is.

Charles Spurgeon - I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the rock of ages

What did you do with what God showed you?

There’s not a person in here whose temptation isn’t to hide their humanity.

When I take my dogs outside and I call them for the 482nd time, I suddenly get the urge raise my voice. Not just any type of raise my voice, the type where you thicken your voice a bit and yell so loud it echoes in the neighborhood for 30 seconds. What’s crazy is my first thought after doing that is, “oh dang, what’s the neighbors gonna think”.

I don’t consider the fact that I’m using full blown sentences to try and communicate with an animal who doesn’t understand what in the world I’m saying.

Some of you parents can’t laugh at me because I see you do it too. That’s why when your kid is acting a fool they get “the look”. The oooo if we weren’t in public look.

I used to get that all the time. My dad would lean down and whisper, “wait till we get home”. Bro, everybody knows what you just said to me.

We carry such a shame about our imperfections that we allow it birth a strong enough desire to hide our flaws from God and others that we rob ourselves of the blessing and gift of allowing God to work them out of our life.

We cannot and do not need to hide our flaws. They are gracefully brought to the surface to show us what we need to work on in our life, not what we need to hide. It’s such an exhausting game constantly trying to conceal imperfections we carry.

I believe Paul understood this, that’s why he wrote this next verse.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 8

30 And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.

He reiterates what he just spent the last 7 chapters talking about. Your salvation wasn’t because you’re good. It’s because God’s good. You and I did nothing accept respond to the call.

He called. He justified. Justified is a legal term.

He glorified. Glorified is a past tense term referring to a future moment. He’s spelling out that we were powerless in our salvation. It’s by His grace and His grace alone we’ve been forgiven of a debt we owe. And it’s by His grace and His grace alone we are held in that salvation.

Paul is letting us know that God isn’t in love with some future version of you. You at this very moment are fully known and fully loved. The example of Jesus shows us that. Jesus was always calling people out for the thoughts they had and still showed love and acceptance.

We can accept the love of God and not have to try and conceal what He reveals to us.

What did you learn about you this year?