Learning To Trust God In All Times or Ragged Edge
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 16 viewsNotes
Transcript
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
When life takes you all the way to the ragged edge of reality, “be still, and know that I am God.”
“Be still and know” sounds like a great plan, but when life gets rough, it’s not often easy to let go and trust God.
The reasons we hesitate to be still:
1. We don’t like to be vulnerable.
2. We don’t like to proceed where we don’t know the outcome.
3. We have wrong notions about God.
But what we do know about God that should enable us to trust him:
1. God is good
2. He is our refuge (and has been through the ages).
3. God himself will fight the battles we face.
Tonight I would like to challenge you to stay faithful even at the ragged edge.
Ragged Edge - the brink, as of a cliff. 2. any extreme or precarious edge:
What do you do when life takes you all the way out to the ragged edge of reality?
Illustration:
◆ I grew up with a guy named Craig Stillwell. We were good friends through high school. We went to college together. We both fell in love with beautiful co-eds named Marty. We had a lot in common. Then I went to seminary, and he went in the Air Force.
When I got out of seminary I took my first church, coincidentally, in the town where Craig and Marty were stationed. Except now, Craig and Marty had decided to walk on the wild side. They didn’t seem to care about God.
As God does, he chased them down. They left the wild side for God’s side and recommitted themselves to Jesus Christ. They started attending our church. As they grew in the Lord, they started teaching a class.
Then God gripped them and they decided to go to Haiti and work with juvenile delinquents. They would be our first missionaries from this little church.
About three weeks after they were there, in the middle of the night I got a call from Marty.
“Today Craig dove into a swimming pool,” she said. “Unbeknownst to him it was the shallow end, and his head hit the bottom. I watched it happen. I saw his back rise to the surface, with blood swirling around his head. We pulled him out and ran him to a hospital in Port-au-Prince. He’s unconscious.” She said, “His head is like a swollen balloon. And the doctor just told me he may not live through the night.”
A couple hours later I got another call, Marty was weeping. “Joe, Craig died.” There she was: mid-twenties, alone, no family, no friends, in the dirty ward of a rough hospital weeping the loss of her husband. A widow.
What do you do when life takes you all the way to the ragged edge of reality?
Relax
I. God’s Tough Command: Be Still
You must never have been to the ragged edge of reality. Because if you’d been there, you’d know that the last thing you can do is relax.”
It’s not what I’m telling you.
It’s what God’s Word tells us.
God is saying when you get out there, relax.
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
“Cease striving and know that I am God.”
The King James version says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
I always thought this verse meant stop being antsy.
Have you ever been told by your mother in church to, “Sit still.” I still have fingerprint marks embedded in my knee. My mother used to squeeze and say, “Would you sit still.”
“To cease striving” or “to be still” literally means to relax.
It means “to let go, to let your arms down to your side.” Metaphorically we want to use our hands to control and push the right buttons or use our arms to defend ourselves.
Think how vulnerable you feel when you drop your arms, let go, cease striving, and relax.
That’s what God says.
I know what you thinking, “There it goes again.
God telling me to do impossible things.”
Thankfully God doesn’t say just to cease striving.
He describes how to do that on the ragged edge of reality. He says, “Be still and know …” There is something I can know to help me cease my striving in the midst of difficulty.
It’s interesting that our first response to difficulty is inflammatory (arousing or able to arouse intense feeling).
Many times our emotional responses tend to drive the engines of our actions and reactions.
God says we need to respond by what we know, what we know to be true.
He calls for a rational or intellectual response.
Illustration:
1980 Olympic hockey
◆ My all-time favorite sporting moment was at Lake Placid, the 1980 Winter Olympics.
In 1980, America was in the ditch. The economy was in the ditch. The Cold War was in its fury; Russia seemed bigger, more powerful than us. Our hostages were being held in Iran. Under the cover of night, we sent our crack troops to rescue them, and their helicopters crashed in a desert sandstorm.
And America entertained the world at the Olympics in Lake Placid. Part of that venue was hockey.
I remember coming home from church the Sunday that America was playing Russia. It was in the end of the first period, and we were beating the Russians.
All of a sudden I realized my stomach was in a knot. My knuckles were white, and I had this anxiety about the game. All through the second period we were ahead. Going into the third period, I knew what would happen. Russia would score five goals at the end of the game, beat us, and we would be embarrassed again. But we won!
It was such a big deal that the national networks played it again. Marty and I watched the whole thing Sunday night. Only this time I didn’t have a knot in my stomach. I leaned back on the couch and put my feet up. It was the same game, same sequences, same everything. What made the difference? It was something I knew that made the difference.
I could relax because I knew the outcome. You’re saying, “If God tells me the outcomes of my crises, I’ll relax too.” But he rarely does that, does he?
II. God’s Realities
The psalm is not saying we can cease striving because we know how it’s going to work out, but we know the God who will work it out.
Knowing God is better than knowing the outcomes.
Life’s not good. Life’s far too fickle, far too slippery, far too treacherous, far too “in your face” to be good.
But God is good.
The fact that God is good makes life good.
That’s what this psalm is telling us.
“Relax because you can know that I am God.”
God is our refuge.
He gives us the strength of grace.
When we don’t resist trouble and we’re not bitter, God will flood us with grace to feel stability, strength, in the midst of the trouble.
God, the text says, is a very present helper to us. We can know that about God; we can get a grip on it and never let go.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
Not only is his power spent on protecting, strengthening, and helping us in the midst of crisis, He doesn’t leave you when life turn into a ragged edge.
Some of you remember the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. Talk about growing up in a dysfunctional family.
But he had a connection with God. He went to visit his brothers, and they threw him in a pit.
They sold him into slavery in Egypt.
He rose to power in one of the leading bureaucrats’ homes. His master’s wife, lonely, saw Joseph—this handsome, young Hebrew man—and tried to seduce him. But Joseph resisted her.
Finally she betrayed him. She told her husband that Joseph slept with her. Potiphar threw him in prison for three years.
Fast forward
“And God was with Joseph.” He was present because he had a purpose.
His power was spent on managing the situation to bring his purpose about.
The third thing you can know about God is that his reputation rides on our problems.
We call ourselves children of God.
Our friends, our neighbors know that we’re followers of Jesus Christ.
They’re saying, “Yeah, right. You’re a follower of God. Look what he did to you. What kind of a God do you have?”
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
He is jealous for his reputation, and his reputation rides on my problem.
You can count on it that God will bring the problem to resolution in a way that glorifies his name and brings good to us.
He will not waste our sorrows.
That’s what you can know about God.
Getting a grip on that can allow you to let your hands down, take a deep breath, cease striving, and be still.