We started a series last week called Thriving in Babylon by Pastor Larry Osborne, his combination of live teaching and some video teaching. So I kicked this off with a really light topic last week of God's sovereignty. It was a pretty light topic. But I think we had a really good time challenged us a lot that God is in control of who's in control.
And when that question comes up, it sparks some questions in ourselves, right? What about when this happens to me? Where is God in that? I know I spoke with a couple of you afterwards, Last Wednesday, dealing with that.
And even then this last Sunday of how to respond in a crisis that we talked about as a church. That theme is almost continuing tonight when we talk about the role of trials in our life. We're going to go into the second week. And then really thrilled.
We heard a story on Sunday, but I'm really thrilled to welcome Ben Vongard. He's going to be teaching us tonight. So welcome, Ben, up here. It's going to be a great time.
And he's going to lead us through about trials. We continue thriving in Babylon. So hey, Ben, I'm going to pray for you before I head on down. All right?
That's cool. All right. Thank you. Let's pray for Ben together.
Father God, we thank you so much just again for this evening. The opportunity to learn. I pray for Ben. I pray for you to learn how to trust you and grow in all the trials that come our way for your and that we would use those for your glory.
Lord, as you use them for our good. And we pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.
If you haven't been here, our main topic, driving in Babylon, the purpose of this series really is to learn to be faithful to God and fruitful for God in an increasingly post-Christian and godless culture. Some of you are thinking I can relate with that. I have neighbors. Last week we really went over God's sovereignty.
God is in control of who is in control. God is moving the bigger pictures, the bigger pieces of our world to make sure that his plan is accomplished. Again, we've been reviewing the life of Daniel, Ryan, talked about how living in the Kingdom of God means that we have this concept of freedom under rule. Meaning that God's not a puppet master.
We have the freedom to obey or not obey. But there's still this dynamic of God still in control of everything. Tonight, we're transitioning into this topic on crisis, on trials, on hardship, on suffering. Whatever you name it, it's under that same heading that tough situations, painful situations happen to us.
So the question that I want you guys to be thinking about tonight, as you listen and watch the video in a little bit, is how do I respond to painful situations? Now, in Daniel 1, we see the godlessness of Babylon. We see all this culture that is so far from God. And our culture, even though we have lots of people struggling for personal power, constant pleasure-seeking, exploitation of other people, our culture doesn't even hold a candle to Babylon's culture.
So for as bad as we have it, they have it way, way worse. And so learning from Daniel on how he became this man of God that was faithful in that period of time can help us out today. Our main scripture comes from James 1, verses 2 through 4, and says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And that steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
So a couple of weekends ago, Kaylee and I celebrated our first anniversary, which was awesome. It was a lot of fun. Went down to St. Louis and went shopping and spent too much money on clothes and normal things.
And on our way down, we were going over the past year, and how our year has gone. We realized we had a crazy year. Lots of different things happened. We bought our first home.
But we had three major medical issues going on. Another crisis that we had was that we had a raccoon in our attic for like three months. Some of you can relate with that, hopefully for not as long. But I'll tell you this story real quick.
When we found out that we had the raccoon, the first thing that I did was, oh, I'm not going to call anybody. I'm going to go figure it out myself. That's a really bad thing to do. So I went to Minard's.
I grabbed a trap. I baited it. I put it on top of our roof. We have access through one of our bedrooms under the roof, where the raccoon's getting in.
We caught the raccoon, which was awesome. But then we realized that I don't have a ladder, because I'm a first time homeowner. That's tall enough to reach the roof. So now I'm set here with this decision of, what do I do with this raccoon?
So of course, I was thinking very hard about this. I decided to bring it through the house with my brother. Don't do that. I handed the raccoon to my brother through the window, and the raccoon being smart, decided to go to the back of the cage, and then the front of the cage, and out of the cage, right into the bedroom, and started running around in circles.
And my brother, his first thought, was, oh, we trapped it once, we can trap it again. So he closed the door with us inside, and which I immediately was like, no, leave. Get out of the room. I don't want to be here and get mauled by a little rodent.
And so we closed the door, and the window was open, and I knew it would just crawl right back out into its little attic, where it's been staying ever since. We have since hired a company to come into it, and we're not too worried about it at this point. But that was a crisis in the middle of our first year of marriage. Now, I make light of crisis, but I know that there are crises in our life that are much more difficult than a raccoon or attic.
There are big things, and some of you heard my story on Sunday about going through cancer. Some of you guys may be facing big things like that, maybe facing bankruptcy, or some other crisis in your life that really can derail us and cause a salute sight of God. So we're going to go to the video. We'll get back up here.
So it's not an easy topic to talk about when going through painful situations in your life. Luckily, we went through a little bit of that on Sunday. And if you weren't here, I'm going to recap a couple of the main points that we went through. Because I think they lay a really good foundation for us when we're looking at the painful situations in our life, the crises in our life, the suffering that we might go through.
And Pastor Mark went through three different types of crises. The first one was self-inflicted crisis. A self-inflicted crisis would be a raccoon in my bedroom. There are moments in our life where we can set back and realize, oh, because of this action, because of this thing that I have in my life, this character trait that I have, it is causing all of this turmoil in my relationships, in my finances, in all these different areas at work, wherever you name it.
It could be a self-inflicted thing. And until we come into a proper biblical understanding of our life and our character and our actions, those self-inflicted crises will just continue. And so we want to make sure that we can step back and really evaluate how we are looking at things and see if there are something in our lives that we can change to become more like Christ. The next thing is an others-inflicted crisis, where somebody else or some other thing is stepping outside of the biblical boundaries and structure that God has created and is causing this crisis in your life.
That could be a huge range of things. And again, but you still have to understand that sometimes itself, sometimes it's others, sometimes they're blended, because we live with other humans. We're messy. So there's a little bit of all of it.
And the third type is a natural crisis. So that would be the same thing as me going through cancer. That's a natural thing. Bodies have health issues.
A tree is going to fall down on your house or something if it's rotted. It's natural. Hopefully we can mitigate that as best as possible with doctors and prayer and other people. But those are all normal things.
And crisis happens at various points in your life. And God uses every single one of those to impact our faith. Larry said, without a test, frankly, there's no way to know the real from the fake. We're tested to be proven to see what's really inside of us in terms of our faith.
The next thing that we went over on Sunday was talking about the pitfalls of crisis. OK, Master Mark identified three different things that he saw in a number of different people that he's interacted with over the last few years. The first one was blaming God. Now, when you're going through a crisis, when you're going through a hardship, that's gut wrenching, that is really hard, that is, it's really easy to just flip it on the side and say, God, you're the reason for this.
I blame you for this, for this thing that's going on in my life. And that could be a really dangerous spot, because it isolates you from the very person that can bring you out. It isolates you from God. It isolates you from the body of Christ.
And it causes this root of bitterness to swell up inside of you and take over. The next thing was getting angry at God. It's similar to blaming God, but it's just getting mad. It's getting so mad that this situation is happening to you.
And anger can come out of a ton of different emotions. Sometimes it's staphothy. I'm angry at you, and I'm just not going to be a part of this anymore. So I'm done.
We kind of have this apathetic attitude, sometimes in anger. Other times it's lashing out at other people, lashing out at little things that people are trying to say to you. It could be a number of different things. The last thing is cutting yourself off from others.
When we're going through a crisis, the most important thing that we can do is let other people know that this thing is happening in your life, so they don't come up to you and tell you a terrible joke. You know? People want to be sensitive to you. People want to understand where you're at.
And the body of crisis is built to surround us during those times. Trials increase our dependency on God. Larry went through 1 Corinthians 10, 13. I'll read it here just a sec.
And I wanted to kind of break it down for you. If I had a whiteboard and as cool as Ryan, I would write it all out. But just follow me with this. Verse 13, it says, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.
God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Okay. Now, when Larry was going through this, he was talking about he used trial instead of temptation.
So it caught me off guard when I was going back through this. I was like, well, trial and temptation are two different things. If it was trial, this would be something completely different. But if it's temptation, I mean, this has implications about God, about all this different stuff.
So I wanted to break it down. And when I was going through it, I realized that there were two key words in this. With temptation, tempted, and temptation, right in a row. The first temptation and the last temptation are the word pyrosmos.
I'm not a Greek scholar, so hopefully I'm saying that right. Which basically means trial leading to sin. So to give you a context of the Corinthians, they are dealing with a culture that is having these banquets. And the banquets are an honor of an idol, or going through idol worship.
And they were under the impression that this temptation was too hard for them. It was extreme temptation. And Paul is addressing this notion that they have no option but to go to this banquet for this because their culture demands it of them. And Paul is saying, you know, no temptation is unique.
Somebody else has gone through this. Somebody else has conquered this with the power of God. So that's the first part. And he goes through this temptation, dealing with the sin part of that.
It's not you're the only one that has ever dealt with that. The next part is tempted, which is pyrazo, which means a trial in general. So he moves from sin to a general trial where he's saying, even though you have this temptation of sin that is not necessarily unique to you, God is faithful. He's saying to the Corinthians who are giving all these excuses.
And God is faithful. And he won't let you be put into a circumstance that is beyond your ability. He's not going to put you through a hardship, a trial that is beyond you. But with the temptation, the sin he will provide a way of escape so that you will be able to endure it.
So I really wanted to break it out because what happens when we read that is that sometimes we can get these weird notions about who God is and what he does. On the one hand, if you read it, just face value, you could believe that God is the tempter. God is tempting you. But that's not true.
We see that in James 1 verse 13, when tempted, no one should say God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone. Within 1 Corinthians 13, the very next verse talks about Paul and he's just saying, I don't worship as a sin. He's addressing it right off the bat and calling them out for what they're doing.
We commonly have this misconception that God will not necessarily allow bad things in our life that we can't handle. We constantly have this idea that this is automatically beyond me. And one of the things that I want to remind us of tonight is that if we could handle the trials of life, there would not be a reason for God. The greatest crisis in our life that we could ever think of is the separation from God.
I don't have the ability to cure cancer. I don't have the ability to make all the things better, but God does. God is the one that's in the middle of all this. And these trials in our life are God's way of testing us to see if our faith is real and allowing us to become more and more dependent on him.
Later, Larry talks about knowing people by their fruit. In Luke 6, 43, 45, it says, no good tree bears bad fruit. Nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit.
People do not pick figs from thorn bushes or grapes from briars. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart and evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. Or the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. I like this verse that he brought up because it's sandwiched in between two other areas.
Right before it, they're talking about judging others, Jesus is talking about how we should treat other people. This is the part where he's talking about the log in your eye when you're looking at the speck of the other person. And so using fruit is not necessarily for your peers but for leaders. Paul brings out how we should look at leaders and test them and put it through scripture.
But Jesus is talking about, we don't go around judging everybody. That's not a role. The role of fruit is an internal perspective. It's looking at ourselves and in the next section he talks about how we have the parallel of the wise and foolish builders.
So just talking about the fruit in our life. And we'll define fruit as many times we'll hear in Galatians as like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control. Fruit is the character in our life that has an impact on our living or the actions that we have. So we have a choice to build wisely or foolishly.
And a crisis will be coming no matter what. We don't really get the choice in that. It's going to happen. And so the way that we go through things, the way we build beforehand really has an impact on how we deal.
And if you remember our question for tonight, how do I respond to painful situations? Louis Giluglo, about 15 years ago, had a message. It was a viral video that went out. And you're talking about a little girl who went through cancer.
He said that anyone undergoing some type of suffering is basically given a megaphone to tell the world what's in their heart. So we have an opportunity when going through suffering. What are you telling the world during your crisis? What are the things that are coming out of your heart, out of your actions, out of your life when something goes wrong?
Are we still able to glorify God in the middle of it and say he's faithful, he provides, and he is there? Or are we reverting? Larry, throughout his book, is talking about counterfeit faith. He brings up the good intentions, the fast moral standards, and a fast start as three examples of counterfeit faith.
When we look at faith in those types of situations, we really want to address it as more of a maturity issue than necessarily black and white. Either you have faith or you don't. Do I have lots of good intentions that have little follow through? Are there things in my life that are doing this that I can grow in?
Do I have a really high standard, which is a good thing under your Christian, but don't have any need for God in my life? These are just areas that we can grow in as Christians when walking through crisis. But there are things that we need to recognize inside of ourselves if we have them. It's more of a blend than a black and white issue.
Larry also shared five things that we need to learn in our own spiritual boot camp, obedience, perspective, endurance, confidence, and courage. These are some of the things that allow us to develop or build a foundation that will outlast the winds and waves of life. And just like in physical exercise, these elements in our Christian walk me to be strengthened. We build muscle over time.
It doesn't happen overnight. Trials are a way of exercising each of these spiritual muscles. And the first one he talked about was obedience. We learn obedience.
I love what he did. Obedience is easy when it's easy in life. But obedience through the valleys and trials of life really helps shape who we are in Christ and who we can become because we grow in our trust in God. When things are going wrong, that's the best place to be in the palm of God's hand, knowing that he's got everything under control.
Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 says, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding and acknowledge in all your ways. Acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. So when we trust him, even though we don't see the bigger picture, even though we don't see what's going on, because we're in the middle of a crisis, we can't see anything going on around us, even in our relationships, they're not able to speak to us because we're blinded by everything going on.
We can trust in God and he will make our paths straight. After the crisis is done, we have hindsight is 20, 20. You have perspective. You see all the things that God put together in the middle of your crisis, in the middle of everything going on.
He was putting this person in your life to begin to speak to you when you were at your darkest moment. He began to let other people know that you were in trouble. They started writing, they might have read a check to you when you were in the middle of a finance issue where you couldn't pay a bill. God's moving all these different pieces in your life and you can't see it until the end.
But realizing all those things and holding on to the promises that God has help us through each and every trial as they come. Second Corinthians 4, 16, 3, 18 says, we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. When we continue to hold on to our perspective, hold on to our obedience and continue to follow God, we begin to develop an endurance. We begin to develop those spiritual muscles in persisting through every single circumstance, through every single hardship. Romans 5, 3 through 5 says, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.
Knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character, produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our heart through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. So every single circumstance is building more character. It's building more of your testimony and your story to be able to impact the people around you and yourself and your relationship with God. It begins to develop this confidence, the assurance that something will happen, even though you can't see it in the moment.
Hebrews 11-1, now faith is the assurance or confidence of things hoped for in the conviction of things not seen. We can place our confidence in God. We can continue to be dependent and confident in God who is ultimately our Savior and provider in times of crisis. That confidence is built up over time as you walk through circumstance after circumstance after circumstance and see how he's been faithful.
That's why we talk about tithing all the time. That is faithful through one thing after another, after another, after another. He's our provider in the middle of it. And the last thing Larry talked about was courage.
I really liked what you talked about. He said courage to the max in the face of fear, or confidence to the max in the face of fear is what we call courage. So even though everything looks bleak and dark, if we have that confidence in God, we have that confidence in the face of the huge mountain that you're facing. That we know that God is doing this, we trust God with everything that we are, and know that we're going to come out on the other side.
Courage gives us hope. And it's through hope that we can continue to operate and enjoy. Joy is not always a happiness, but it's a God's got us. God's faithful in the middle of it all, and he's going to continue to be part of everything.
Our sufferings and trials and crisis are a regular part of our life. Our reaction will showcase really what's going on inside and expose the fruit in our life, the character that we have. What muscles do we need to be flexing today? What muscles do we need to have another person help us with?
Do you find yourself acting with false or counterfeit faith? Are there things in your life that are causing you to lose perspective on your current crisis? In just a minute here, I'm going to ask the Elders and Prayer team to come up. Crisis is one of those things that's really hard to talk about.
We want to hold back and kind of do it ourselves. But really by opening up and talking with other people, by praying through it, God provides in every single circumstance. God really shows up in the strangest ways. So we're going to take a couple moments here if the prayer team would come up.
If you have a crisis going on in your life, please come find somebody. Find somebody to pray with. If you find yourself struggling in one of those areas where you're going through a spiritual boot camp, where you're struggling in these areas, please come and find somebody. We're going to take a couple moments.
Thank you. God, we just praise you for tonight. We thank you for everything that you're doing in our life. We just pray that we would continue to walk by faith and trusting in you in every single circumstance, in every single trial that comes our way, that you would continue to be faithful in the middle of all of our suffering God, that we would keep going, even though things may not seem great at the moment.
Father God, we just thank you for tonight. I pray that you just continue to do new and great things here at Calvary. In your name, amen. Thank you guys.