Handling the Catastrophes in Life

Many years ago, when Christine and I were considering moving to Moore, Oklahoma, to minister to a church there, we stayed in the home of a couple in the church and quickly became friends with them. They had a son about our daughter’s age, but told us the tragic story of the death of their daughter.

This man was a contractor who built homes for a living. He was building the home we would buy and live in and had built the home they lived in where we were staying. A couple of years earlier, after they had moved into their home, he was grading their yard with a tractor. He backed the tractor around the house, did not see their young daughter, backed over her, and she died.

The troubles for this couple did not stop there, though. After a couple of years, as people were no longer buying homes, he had to close his construction business. He became an officer in our local police department and then began to drive truck. A year or so after beginning to drive truck, he was unloading some pipe in Kansas when the pipe rolled off the truck, pinned him to the ground, and he suffocated in the mud. I was a chaplain in the police department in which he had worked, so I received a call about the accident and went to his home along with a police officer to inform his wife of his death.

That all seems almost too much for one person to handle. This week we meet a person in scripture — Job — who lost so much more than that. Job faced a huge loss of family and property as he faced catastrophe after catastrophe. At one point Job’s wife told him to curse God and die. His friends came to counsel him, and they sat with Job in silence for seven days and nights, and then tried to convince him that he had done something that had caused all the catastrophe, that God was mad at him.

In the midst of his suffering, though, he hears God speak to him. God questions him until he realizes how great God is, even while God is sifting him by catastrophe. Job points us to finding God in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our catastrophes. This week we will examine his story as we continue to consider how God sifts us.

Summer Sermon Series–Sifted

On of the most familiar verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28 — “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.” While that verse is true, the reality is that we often have to face trials, challenges, and disappointments in order to experience the good that God can bring to anything that we face in life.

So on Sunday, June 20, as we take a summer break from The Story, I will begin a seven-week sermon series titled: “Sifted: Pursuing Growth Through Trials, Challenges, and Disappoints.” The focus of the series is to help us face the hard things in life by examining our walk with God through the lives of seven Bible characters who faced their own challenges:

• Simon Peter denied Jesus three times during the night leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, only to be restored by Jesus after the resurrection on the way to becoming the leader of the early church.
• Job lost everything in the prime of life, was blamed for his loss by three friends, before learning the greatness and power of God that is available for every circumstance in life.
• Jacob deceived his family multiple times, and then had some remarkable encounters with God that changed his life.
• Moses was taught — and humbled — by working as a shepherd in the sands of the Sinai, only to become the great leader God used to rescue his people from slavery in Egypt.
• Jonah tried to run from God and spent three days in the belly of a large fish, before God transformed him and used him to bring many in the city of Ninevah to repentance.
• John the Baptist questioned whether Jesus was the one God had sent to deliver his people, but Jesus recognized him as one of the greatest in the Kingdom of God.
• Jesus suffered great temptations in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry and the rejection of God as his crucifixion, only to defeat death forever by rising from the dead.

I trust that, over the course of the summer, these seven individuals will speak to your life and the trials, challenges, and disappoints that you face.

Summer Preaching at Westwood

In June, July, and the first half of August, we will take a break from The Story in our Sunday worship, children’s classes, and adult Bible classes and studies. We will return to The Story on August 18.

We will begin the summer with three guest preachers at Westwood on the first three Sundays of June while Christine and I travel overseas. We leave on May 31 and fly to Rome, from where we will embark on a cruise to visit the sights of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys, including Rome, Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, and several others. We will return home on June 15.

Marion and Marilyn Greaser will be on the cruise with us. Carl Ferguson, the preacher at Waupaca Christian Church, and his wife, Deb, will also be traveling with us. We are all looking forward to having a remarkable adventure.

The three preachers during our travels will be:

• June 2 — Lance Hawley, who for a few years led a church here in Madison known as Emmaeus Fellowship and which participated in our first three annual Great Communion services, will preach. Lance is currently a member at Mandrake Road Church of Christ and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at UW.
• June 9 — Tom Jones, who has preached at Westwood a few times in the past, will preach. Tom held long-term ministries in Green Bay and Brookfield and was a chaplain in the Aurora Health System in Milwaukee.
• June 16 — Bud Holmes, Christine’s brother, will preach. Bud had a long-term ministry at Lake Superior Christian Church in Marquette, MI, where I enjoyed preaching for him several times.

I have asked each of them to preach from a story in the Bible with an emphasis on how that story weaves into the Upper Story of the Bible.

Beginning June 23, I will preach seven sermons around the theme “Sifted: Pursuing Growth Through Trials, Challenges, and Disappointments.” This series is intended to help us understand how God uses the tough things we face in life to build our character and our trust in him. I will develop each sermon around the life of a Bible character whose faith was challenged and strengthened through personal challenges and temptations.

The premise of this series is built on Luke 22:31-32: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus was speaking to Simon Peter. Satan would indeed sift Peter like wheat as Peter would deny Jesus three times before that night was over. God, however, would use Peter’s sifting to make him stronger, so that he would lead the church beginning on Pentecost.

We all go through difficult seasons in life during which God sifts us like wheat. We might wish that those times were optional or that we would not have such times at all, but we do. God, however, can use the difficulties we face — even the most painful ones — to make us stronger. We will learn this summer from seven characters in the Bible how God can use such sifting times to strengthen us.