Introduction
I was sent a link this week from the New Wine website. It was a report about a 23 year old man called Ulrik who was travelling to Stockholm on the train after a training day on healing.
Unknown to him, a well known Swedish actress and singer, who I don't think would call herself a Christian, called Pernilla Wahlgren, was in the same train carriage typing away a new post for her blog on her laptop computer - and this is a translation into English of what she wrote down:
I’m sitting on the train on my way home to Stockholm, and something very unusual just happened in the seats next to me … a young guy is sitting next to an elderly lady and I can’t help but hear how he is telling her about his faith in God. With great feeling he explains how he can really sense that God lives in him and how much God loves everyone. The lady tells him a little about herself and how the pain in her shoulders is so strong she can’t even blow-dry her own hair.
Suddenly the guy asks if he can say a prayer for the lady! She says yes – even though I can hear from her voice that she’s a little hesitant. So he puts his hands on her shoulders and starts praying. He prays that she will feel God’s love and that the pain in her shoulder will disappear. When he’s finished he asks whether she can feel any difference. ‘You mean now?’ says the lady, somewhat bewildered. ‘Yes’, the guy says. Try to lift your arms up now! So she does. And this is when the really strange thing happens. Because the lady, very surprised, lifts her arms high up above her head and doesn’t really seem to understand how it happened. ‘I haven’t been able to lift my arms this high in many years’, she says.
The post continues…
I don’t want to stare at them, but I must say I am fascinated by the whole scenario! After a little while the guy stands up from his seat and offers to pray for everyone in the carriage who feels sick or is in pain. He can feel a ‘tingling’ in his hands, and apparently this is a sign from God that there is someone there who needs help. However, it seems that no one chronically ill is present. Or maybe they just don’t dare to let people know because we’re a little afraid of anything ‘Christian’ in this country aren’t we?
Just 24 hours later that post had attracted 120+ comments, after which Pernilla added these thoughts:
Thank you so much for all your comments! It’s great to read about the way you look at things like this, and God is a very big subject that you could discuss forever really! But I got a lot of positive energy from your stories! And it was so nice that the believing guy’s mum apparently also read my blog post! Sometimes the world is very small! And to those of you who thought the whole thing was a ‘set-up’, I can just say that it was definitely not! It was just a very nice experience that I was fortunate to watch!
How many of you are encouraged by that?
The Encouragement of Testimony
We Christians are good at sharing encouraging testimonies. We like to speak up about the great things God is doing amongst us. We had a lovely testimony on Easter day about a prophetic word during prayer ministry here about expecting a baby which came true. We had a couple of uplifting testimonies at our APCM service last Sunday.
It’s right for us to do this because there is so much in our culture and media that grinds down the morale of our faith. And therefore we need to be reminded again and again that the kingdom of God breaks through into our reality when we leave our comfort zones and step out in faith. It strengthens our faith to celebrate God’s great and wondrous deeds amongst us.
In fact, the Bible actually says that we become afraid and we lose our confidence in the Lord when we stop remembering his mighty acts. Did you know that?
Psalm 78.9-11 says that the men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day of battle [because] they forgot what God had done, the wonders he had shown them.
So we remember God’s amazing acts and we tell one another what he is doing in our midst.
The Reality of Suffering
But we need to be honest and acknowledge also that our lives, as Christians, are not one long unbroken line of exciting and extraordinary miracles.
If you are told that that is what living as a Christian should be like all the time, and you discover it isn’t, you might end up terribly disappointed. You might wonder if you are really a proper Christian. You might even run the risk of eventually abandoning your faith completely disillusioned and disheartened. I’ve seen it happen.
Let’s take a look at Scripture. How did obediently following Jesus work out for the Apostle Paul?
Here’s how he sums up his CV in 2 Corinthians 11:
“I have frequently been in prison, been flogged severely, and exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, from bandits, from my own people, from Gentiles; in the city, in the country, at sea; and from false believers. I have laboured and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and exposed.”
Well that’s what you get when you fly with Ryan Air… Actually, it sounds like he should have checked the fine print before signing up for that New Wine camping holiday!
But seriously, it’s a shocking list isn’t it? It reminds me of what Theresa of Avilla said when she was going through a particularly rough patch in her life. Falling off her horse into a muddy puddle she looked up at the sky and said, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you haven’t got very many!”
But I want you to notice this, it’s very important: at no stage does Paul ask “Why do bad things (like this) happen to good people (like me)?” Or “If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t he do something about this?”
These questions don’t even arise. Paul takes it as read that God does allow all this to happen to him and he doesn’t see anything untoward.
In other words, God is still in total control. None of this casts any doubts on his sovereignty. He is God. He is not taken by surprise by any of this. Not one raindrop falls to the ground without him knowing about it and being able to stop it. “All things work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his plan.”
Paul seems to have a completely different worldview to the one we grow up with.
People sometimes ask me, whenever something bad happens to them or their loved ones, “Why? Why is God allowing this?”
It’s a natural human response and you can understand the question, but it’s not one we find in the pages of the New Testament.
Unfortunately, sometimes people are given the impression when they get converted that becoming a Christian will make life easier for them. Were you given that impression?
Well, when Paul became a Christian they told him the truth. Acts 9.16 says that the day Paul was converted, a man named Ananias was sent to show him how much he was going to [not be blessed] but suffer for the name of Jesus.
Can I just make it totally clear in case there’s still any confusion? Not one verse in the Bible, not one, ever holds out the promise that life will become easier for you once you are converted.
So, if this is what being a Christian is about after all, why would anyone want to bother becoming one?
If you’re not yet a Christian and you’re thinking of becoming one, it doesn’t look like there’s much in it for you does it? What’s the point?
Christianity Is True
There are two basic reasons why you should be a Christian. The first reason is that Christianity is true.
Why am I a Christian? Basically, and first of all, because I believe the gospel makes sense of the world around me like nothing else. As C.S. Lewis once brilliantly said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
In other words, the Gospel offers the most coherent and most satisfying explanation there is about life, the universe and everything.
So, at the risk of a little detour, let me set out in four very brief bullet points why I think Christianity is true.
Firstly, God exists. The overwhelming scientific consensus on the origins of the universe is that everything that exists came into being, from nothing, about 13.5 billion years ago in what we call the Big Bang.
There is a law in science that says that whenever anything begins to exist it has a cause. The universe exists, therefore the universe must have a cause. And, frankly, what is easier to believe - a) that God made everything that exists from nothing or b) that nothing made everything that exists from nothing? That’s why I think it is reasonable to believe in the existence of God.
Secondly, sin is real. You can travel all over the world and come to the same conclusion; nobody lives a perfect life. We all have within us the tendency or inclination to do what we know is wrong. The human heart, even from the youngest age, seems to be turned away from God towards self. Sin is like a congenital disease - a spiritual disorder that weakens us and keeps us from doing what we know is right. What the Bible says about sin seems to me to be true. We are all guilty of sin and need a Saviour.
Thirdly, Jesus saves. Only someone who was completely without sin would be in a position to save us from our sins. Jesus lived a life just like us but never sinned. Even his enemies admitted they could find no fault in him. And when Jesus was on the cross, the Bible says all our sins were transferred onto him, and he took upon himself the judgment we deserve. You don’t need to carry your burden of sin and guilt any longer, if you open your heart to Christ and trust him alone for your salvation.
And fourthly, Jesus lives. The Bible makes it clear that the resurrection isn’t just a symbolic story like Baloo the bear or Aslan the lion. It actually physically happened! The soldiers who crucified him certified he was dead when they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But on the third day that tomb was empty, no one could explain it, and later hundreds saw Jesus alive.
He’s still alive today. That’s why people get healed on the train to Stockholm. Jesus is alive. That’s the first, and fundamental, reason why you should be a Christian. The gospel is true.
Christianity Works
The second reason you should be a Christian is that, even though Christians do suffer as much as non Christians do (and in some countries much more) all that is transformed by the resurrection life God gives to all who believe.
“If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”
The second reason that it’s worth being a Christian, whatever happens, is that Christianity works.
Here’s what I mean; life with God is not trouble free (as we’ve seen) but life with God is trouble proof.
If my watch is water proof it doesn’t mean it never comes into contact with water; it means water cannot damage it.
If my life is trouble free it means I never have problems. If my life is trouble proof it means that whatever happens to me, however tough life gets, however much I suffer, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
And this is what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 6.4-10, the reading we had earlier.
Paul gives another inventory of the hardships he endured. Endurance, troubles, hardships and distresses, beatings, imprisonments, riots; hard work, sleepless nights and hunger, dishonour, bad report, regarded as impostors, regarded as unknown, dying, beaten, sorrowful, having nothing.
Was his life trouble free? No. With such a wretched list of circumstances we might expect Paul to talk about discouragement, powerlessness, dismay, worry… but just look at the attitudes Paul inserts into that long list of woes:
But look what comes out of the resurrection life of faith: “In purity, in understanding, in patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit, in sincere love, in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.”
Then look at all the ‘yets’. “Dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
If you are a new creation in Christ everything bad about that list in 2 Corinthians 6 looks different. Hardship and trouble is transformed by faith.
Listen, for every bit of grim news the devil throws at you, for every discouragement you face, for every body blow you take from the school of hard knocks, God gives you a “yet.”
What ‘yets’ do you need to speak out, in faith to what you are going through today?
Sick yet never subdued, running on fumes yet not running on empty, unemployed yet never unoccupied, depressed yet not despondent, tired yet not tetchy, always giving out yet never giving in, down yet not out. What’s yours? Speak it out in faith.
And finally, there are some of you today who need to hear and receive this word from the Lord:
If you never felt pain, then how would you know that I am your Healer?
If you never had to pray, how would you know that I am your Deliverer?
If you never had a trial, how could you ever become an overcomer?
If you never felt sadness, how would you know that I am your Comforter?
If you never made a mistake, how would you know that I am your forgiver?
If you were never broken, how would you know that I can make you whole?
If you never suffered, how would you know what I went through for you?
Ending
So, as we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, remember that as we share the one bread and the one cup, it is a participation in the Lord’s sufferings.
If you never suffered, how would you know what I went through for you?
Bring your sorrows and trials and disappointments to God, who alone can make something new out of them, who alone can transform them - and transform you.
“Dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 29th April 2012
