Maintaining Spirituality in a Crisis. (Part 2)

Is this your story?

God always reveals His presence, but sometimes you have to look in retrospect. He will sometimes be in the shadows like He was in the story of Esther. God is never mentioned in that book, and neither is there one prayer mentioned for deliverance. God was in the shadows, silently, patiently working out His will.

In the darkness and under the mountains of our troubles we can either dig a cave or a tunnel. In the cave you will grope around in the darkness, in the tunnel you will work your way to the other side. The key is to reach out to God for help – he will supply the “unlimited resources” mentioned by Paul in Eph 3:14-20. Hanging in when you don’t feel like it is a sign of real faith. Our feelings are like the weather, changeable. I sometimes have to tell myself, “Be my feelings what they will, Jesus is my saviour still.”

A battered soul does not heal easily, but still must put food on the table, go to work and smile at church. If you are with Christ, you are never devoid of hope, you are never left to your own strength. God never abandons you. Our weakness, wounds and brokenness are opportunities to experience Christ’s power and presence through us.

Remaining spiritual in a crisis is finding God. We need to seek Him, not things. Some unfortunately think finding God is going to church, being good, cleaning up their act, being a religious person, and changing their life. No, it is not! The difference between finding God and finding religion is that religion can be obnoxious. Using God language and even a God address (church) can still leave us struggling by our own efforts and it will not transform a hopeless situation.

I find every day, people are straying from the church and going back to God. Churches are not always what they are meant to be. Some churches provide coffee afterward to get the people awake before they have to drive home. Going to church will not make you into a Christian, just like going to McDonalds will not make you into a hamburger.

A woman was once asked, “Which church do you go to?” to which she replied, “I’m a Baptist but my husband is non dimensional.”

Some people go to church to hear sermons with sound advice. Unfortunately, some sermons are 99% sound and 1% advice. There was once a study done of why people fall asleep in church, and they found that if you put all the sleeping members end to end around the equator that they would be a lot more comfortable. They say that a preacher who doesn’t Strike oil in 20 minutes should stop boring. Somebody once said to a minister that if you can’t get more fire into your sermons then you should put more sermons in the fire.

Two people were discussing the sermon after church one day. One said “I thought the sermon was divine. It reminded me of the peace of God which was past understanding. The other said, “It reminded me of the mercy of God, I thought it would endure forever.”

There was once a minister who apologized for the band aid on his face. He explained that he was thinking about the sermon while shaving and he accidentally cut his face. After church a lady,as she shook his hand, simply said, “Next time Pastor, think about your face and cut the sermon.”

If you think finding God is going to church, being good, cleaning up your act, listening to sermons and being a religious person with a changed life, you are wrong! There is a difference between finding God and finding religion. When we find God, we find strength beyond our own efforts. When we find God, He provides what we cannot provide for ourselves. Going to church will not necessarily connect you with God. Going to church will not produce faith where there is none. But it helps! Worship, fellowship, teaching and learning, Bibe study, and outreach are all important facets of the Christian life. Just like the parts of a car are not the car, they must all function together. So faith is beyond the machinery of the church but they become the vehicle that God has provided.

A vehicle can have the motor purring, the radio rocking, the lights on, and the heater warming, but still be going nowhere if you don’t engage the gears and move down the road. God expects us to live our lives without knowing the end. He doesn’t promise smooth seas, but He does promise a safe arrival. Our advantage over Noah, Abraham, Joseph, David and Job (etc) is that we know how their stories ended. They didn’t have that perspective. They were unsure of the destination amidst the journey. They didn’t know what God would bring out of it and neither do we. You can trust your future to a dependable God.