Help Me!

Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Focus: Why is there suffering?

Function: To help people rest in faith (trust)

Form: Bible Study

Intro: For most of my pre-teen years, my dad pastored a Church about an hour north of our house. So, Sunday morning with 4 boys, early breakfast, dressed for Sunday clothes, potty breaks and timing was a fairly large undertaking for my mother. She was good at it.

And my favorite memory of Sunday morning was the way she woke us up on Sunday mornings. She got on the piano and belted out as loud as she could the song: “It is morning, the Son is in our heart, everything is happy and gay!”

it was pleasant. It was so positive. It set the stage for peaceful and organized Sunday mornings. The other thing that I remember about those mornings was coming down the stairs and seeing the TV on. Sunday was God's day, so Sunday TV, if it was on, was always Christian. Good for dad that he wasn't a football fan.

So, the way the timing worked, it seemed to me that every single Sunday morning, just as I hit the landing to the stairs I would hear Oral Roberts on the TV say: “Something good is going to happen to you.” or “Expect a miracle.”

How many remember that?

Now you know that I believe in miracles and I would never want to mock either God or a brother Christian but all of that reminds me of a joke that sort of sets up the sermon this morning. The joke is absurd and it is about faith healers.

It goes like this: When Oral Roberts died and went heaven, he approached the throne room of God and God says to him: “Oral, I've got this pain in my back...”

It took me a while to get that joke when I first heard it. I'm sort of slow.

He was a great faith preacher and let me just say this about preaching faith: “without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach God must believe that God exists and that God rewards those who seek God.” Heb. 11:6

And the great love chapter mentions faith when it says:

And there are three things that remain faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:13

Love is what we preach here, but scripture says that faith is sort of the beginning.

So, I preach faith also.

Obviously, God doesn't need a healing. But the joke expresses the dilemma of faith.

Brother Roberts preached that if you have enough faith, then everything that you ask for will be given you.

And we know that he took the meaning of that out of context because prayer must be according to the will of God.

When I preach faith, I preach that people should ask, but I remind people that we are commanded to pray “Thy will be done.”

And I say that because, at times, God's answer is this: My grace is really all you need.

I wonder: how was that for Paul?

We read of miracle after miracle that he prayed for and then POW something supernatural happened. People everywhere were getting healed when he prayed. But he himself has some sort of ailment, probably physical, maybe spiritual, some surmise that maybe it was even a problem with sin that always kept reminding him that he still needed a Savior and he was never any better than anyone else.

We don't know what his ailment, his thorn in the flesh was, but we know that God decided that he was not going to get over it.

Because he makes reference to his failing eyesight in several places, many think it was blindness, maybe even a leftover problem from his Damascus road experience when he was converted to Christianity.

How would that seem to his detractors?

Paul was a leader. And every leader has people who do not like them for one reason or another.

As a matter of fact, this part of 2 Corinthians is Paul defending himself against his critics.

And this is big ammunition for them.

I can just imagine what was said: “if this guy is so full of faith and is so close to God, how come he has this problem?” Or, “why doesn't he just lay hands on himself and get himself healed?”

(look up in question) I wonder: before God's answer to him in this passage, did he have the same doubt before this?

(look up) “Why can't I get healed?”

When something goes wrong with me, the first thing I am tempted to do is blame myself and wonder what is lacking in my own faith.

That is probably not healthy.

Here is the thing that we must always remember about God's answer to him: We belong to God.

I am convinced that since God loves us, God is more interested in our health and welfare than we are ourselves.

Every parent or every child knows this. When one of my children rebellious and doing some destructive things I said: “I just wish you loved yourself as much as I love you.”

God cares. God cares for us.

And, God cares enough to keep us humble so that we rest in God.

Rest in God.

This isn't God's ego trip.

This is F.R.O.G. Fully Rely On God.

God cares enough for us to allow circumstances that remind us to trust God.

Rest in God.

Do not be afraid.

There has been a lot of anger on the news and arguing back and forth among different people of faith lately.

My biggest concern about all that is that the discussions be done with Christian love.

But fear over the future has entered into the discussion. And that bothers me.

And the problem with fear is that it isn't faith.

We don't need to fear.

I submit that more than anything what is happening is that Christianity is losing its privilege in our nation.

And that, I believe, is a good thing.

But the church isn't dying and it isn't defeated.

History has shown that when we live in power, when we are the dominant culture in a society, it seems as if our Christianity becomes more about what we are entitled to as Believers than us living sacrificial lives for the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of love and peace.

Let me explain it with two events from the last two weeks. Charleston, and SCOTUS.

Dylan Wolf is an angry young white man. He killed black people because he fears that white people are losing the privilege of power over black people.

And against racism, we say: “Amen! That is the way it should be! God has called us to do justice.”

But he said, no way! I want my power and I will do whatever it takes to keep it.

And who knows? Maybe a national movement of repentance over racism will happen and we will purge the Confederate flag because it was the rallying banner of those who refused to give up their so called right to oppress others.

Who knows what God is doing?

So. Enter this morning's text again.

This is about faith.

Rest in God.

He let fear drive him to murder.

Paul learned about faith in God's power, not his.

This is about faith in the fact that God is moving, still, in the Church.

This is about faith that God said that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church.

Now to the Supreme Court.

Many Christians believe that we lost last week.

They didn't lose anything except their privilege to dominate culture.

But we are in a post-Christian world.

And in that post-Christian world, Constitutional protections are now being given to those that traditionally the Church had nothing good to say about.

I suppose Libertarians and Constitutional purists would agree.

For those who raise the alarm of fear over this, I want to ask them:

Is God still in control?

Is Jesus still true to His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church?

And then, what are you afraid of?

Is fear from God?

When things don't go our way, does that mean that God has failed?

Even if this means that your position is now from weakness instead of the strength of the law, isn't our weakness something to rejoice in when it opens the door to more and more of God's work and power?

To everyone, I want to say, Have faith!

It is about faith that God is doing what God wants to do in and through the Church.

Nothing can stop God.