Never Give up 1 - Paul

PAUL

Alright! It’s good to see you all tonight, I have to say I’m pretty excited about this new series that we are starting tonight. Hopefully, you feel super pumped now that you saw that video, I feel like I can run a tenth of a mile. Don’t wanna say one mile because let's be honest, I’m in no shape.

So to start, we are talking about resilience. Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from something difficult. For example, If I went to the gym and did 4 sets of ten on the bench press, it might take me like a week of being sore before I recover. But if a football player did the same thing, they might not need a week to recover, they might only need a day or 2. So they have better resilience because they are stronger and have been lifting longer than me.

The same goes for our faith. Some of us who are new to the faith may struggle a lot when things go south. However, someone who has been a Christian for 15-20 years or longer, might not struggle as much because they’ve already been through a lot in their life.

So we need to learn how to build resilience and I think looking at champions in the Bible will help us a lot with that.

Before we do that, how about we get to know each other a bit regarding this topic.

First, let’s go ahead and get into our small groups here. And then we’ll go from there.

Now, this is what we will do, I will put a quote up on the screen and just say whether you disagree or agree with the statement and explain why.

It’s easy for me to find hope when things in my life go wrong.

You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it.

So when we go into our small groups, we can talk a bit more about those if you’d like.

But if we can be honest, some of us probably disagreed with these statements. It’s not easy to find hope when things go wrong in your life. It’s hard to try to see the positive in the negative. And maybe, you have a difficult time responding to things that happen to you. Maybe you get angry real easily, or you get anxiety and feel like in order to cope with anxiety you have to turn to something in order to make yourself feel better. And that something can be helpful or harmful.

There are better ways to cope and deal with hardships without turning to something that can bring harm.

So as we look at these Characters in the Bible, we are going to ask ourselves 3 questions.

What’s happening?

What is true no matter what?

How did they respond?

The first guy we are going to look at is Paul. (SHOW PAUL SLIDE)

He wrote this letter 2nd Corinthians to describe a lot of his suffering that he went through because of His faith in Christ and His passion to tell other people the gospel.

Let’s look at this:

2 Corinthians 12:7B-10 CSB

Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”

Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

So the first question is:

Question: What’s happening?

Answer: Paul is suffering from a “thorn in his flesh” - A messenger of Satan to torment Paul.

We never know exactly what this thorn in his flesh is, however, we can say that whatever it is, it’s causing Paul a lot of suffering and misery.

Question 2:

Question: What’s True No Matter What:

Answer: God gives Paul a reminder that His grace is sufficient, for his power is perfected in weakness.

The truth here is that Paul’s weakness is the way that God’s power is made known to himself and to others. Christ’s power in us is that we can endure suffering, endure misery, go through hardships, and come out of that saying that my issue is temporary, but my life in Christ is eternal. His power outweighs our problem.

Question: How does Paul Respond?

Answer: Paul’s Mindset changes from the attitude of a victim to the attitude of an overcomer.

Look at what Paul says lastly.

10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Instead of saying, I wish hardships and horrible issues never take place again, he says, I take pleasure in it, bring them on. Because it’s for Christ that He is doing it.

It might not have been too easy for Paul, but we see now how he could have hope when things went wrong.

Look how his mentality changed. He knows he can’t control the circumstance, but he now knows how he can respond to the situation in a positive way.

WE

So what about you and me? How do we respond when things go wrong in our lives? Where do we turn to? When someone says something behind your back how do you respond? When your dealing with issues with your parents? When school is kicking your butt and it seems like no one is there to help you?

We need to keep these three questions in the back of our minds:

What is happening?

What is true no matter what?

How should I respond?