How to Trust God in Times of Trials

TRANSCRIPT

So what we have learned is that everybody plays the game of life. Nobody gets to the finish line without participating. And that very depressing activity has shown us that. That you have all experienced all the really challenging stuff in life. And I bet if I said to you, Are you going through something a bit challenging right now?

A lot of us would be able to stand up and say, Yeah, there's something I'm working with. So this morning I am going to share something kind of a bit off the chain, I can talk about whatever today, so I'm talking about something that I got out of my devotions, and over the last couple of months we've been reading through James, we did a little while ago, which is one of my favourite letters of the, what makes up the New Testament, the Jesus part of the Bible.

And then we've also been reading through John. So I'm actually going to tell a story that came out of when I was reading through James James is actually Jesus brother. He's the one who wrote that letter. And the very first sentence of that letter that he wrote, well, first he said, hello everyone.

And then he said, This one, if you've been in church for any length of time, you've probably heard this one. It's actually one of my favorite scriptures or sentences out of all of the documents of the Bible, because it's something I've had to work on so much. But it says, considerate pure joy, brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds.

And then James goes on to say that going through those producers, perseverance and faith. And when I read that, I had this. story, this event that happened to me 13 years ago, suddenly just like downloaded into my brain. I hadn't thought about it in so long and I did my devotion about that. But then later when we read through John, it came back to me again.

It was like a theme that came up a few times. I'm going to share the story, then I'm going to tell you what I got out of John from that. Okay. So if we go back 13 years Sam and I were married. We had our son, Max. He was not quite two. And everything was going well. Sam was working full time. I was working a couple of days a week.

And then we found out we were having baby number two, which was very exciting. We were so stoked. I was happy because it was on my timeline. I wanted them to be two and a half years apart, and they were. to the week, almost. So I was really excited about that. Anyway, a few weeks later Sam came home from work and he was just white.

And he said, I just lost my job. They just made 30 people redundant from my company. And we were just gut punched because he was our main source of income. Like, we now had almost no money coming in. Mine pretty much just covered our daycare for the two days. And now we had a toddler, we had a baby on the way.

I was about 11 or so weeks at this point. And so we were... That was unsettling. Like, we were very worried about that and we, I remember we sat down that afternoon on our peeling pleather couch and we prayed and we just gave it to Jesus and we said, Jesus, we've got to ask you to help us with this and we're just gonna give you all of our stress about this.

We don't want to be burdened by worry. We did that. And then I remember saying to him afterwards, I said, Oh, I know this is really bad and we feel bad inside right now, but at least it's just a job. You can get another job. Imagine if it was something that happened with Max, or something that happened with our baby.

Famous last words, because five days later, I had a miscarriage. And I won't go through all of the details of it, but we did all the usual stuff. We got the scan done. They confirmed, yes, there was no heartbeat. I was devastated. Like, we were days away from telling everyone we were going to tell them on Mother's Day, which was coming up the following weekend.

And I the next day after this all went down, I, I called work, I said, I can't come in today. My boss totally understood. I dropped Max off at daycare. I was just going to have the day. I needed the day. And then I got a phone call on the way home from the Gold Coast Hospital. To this day, I have no idea how this doctor got my number or the scans or anything because I didn't even go to that hospital.

But she called me and she said, Hey, look, you're nearly 12 weeks. And that means that. You might want to think about actually getting a procedure done because we find that people at that stage and onwards might need to have a bit of intervention and may not actually go as Planned if you do it naturally and you might end up having to do it anyway So some people choose to do it before the miscarriage starts and I said, I'm sorry what I thought I'd already had the miscarriage She goes on a no, it hasn't started yet.

And then she explained to me what was gonna happen Which I just had, I was clueless about, I didn't realise what was coming. And I remember driving home, because I had pulled over to talk to her, and my hands were just trembling on the wheel, and I called Sam and I said, I can't do this. Like, I'm normally the first person to go, do it naturally, your body knows what to do.

I was scared out of my wits. I did not want to go through with this. It's already emotionally hard enough to lose a child. To have to go through what women have to go through physically, and I am so sorry. to all of my sisters who have gone through the same thing. It is not easy. I was so scared and Sam said, just, why don't you just go talk to this doctor.

and see how you feel about it. He couldn't come with me because it was one of his last days of work. We couldn't afford for him to take a day off to come with me. So I came here and Ruth was going to come with me to be my support person. The doctor had said it would start anytime within the next one to two weeks.

My body decided it was going to start in the car park. Thankfully we got to the hospital. I decided to go anyway. I was like, well, she's expecting me. I might as well go, even though it's not for the reason that I was supposed to go there for. It was everything that she had described to me. So at least I knew what was coming.

It was an incredibly difficult few hours, but the whole time, every time it got too much, I just sat with my eyes closed and I said the name Jesus. And this morning we just talked about sometimes there are no other words. I had no words. I just kept saying Jesus.

I would say Jesus, Jesus, And I absolutely knew that Jesus was with me. He absolutely carried me through that day. He controlled my calm. He controlled my thoughts. And even the doctor said, and Ruth will remember this. I know she's off with her family today, but she would remember this. The doctor said, I cannot believe how calm you are.

This is like, cause it happened quite fast. It was faster than normal. She was like, you have 10 X to this whole process and you are so calm. And we were, we were talking, we were making jokes. We were laughing about stuff. I don't know what I said. I hope I said to her, it's Jesus, but I don't think I did. I think I just.

So I got through that day. I felt incredibly grateful. First of all, that Jesus was there to take me through that, but also that ultimately I didn't end up having to have any intervention. It all just went exactly as it should have gone. And I was grateful also that God had somehow orchestrated it so that this thing that I was so deeply scared of, he made it so that I was at a hospital with a doctor who knew what was going on.

who could reassure me that it was all okay, that what was happening was quite normal, fast but normal, and I wouldn't have had that if all of those other things hadn't have happened. He knew exactly what I needed. So I was incredibly grateful for that. So, you might think that's the end of the story, and you might go, okay, miscarriage bad, Jesus good, got it.

That's not, that's half the story. The other half of the story is... More like death by a thousand emotional paper cuts. Because, after that day, I got home and some family had come over to make dinner for us, which was really nice, and then we sat down and played a board game, which you believe, after that.

And I was okay with that. It was okay to do something normal, but I also realised in hindsight it didn't give me any time to process what I'd just been through. I smiled my way through the night, made everyone else feel comfortable. And then the next day was supposed to be my rest day. I was supposed to absolutely recuperate.

I'd lost a lot of blood. They said, you must lie down. I had a graphic design job. I did some work on the side. It was due that day. I had not finished it because I'd been a little bit preoccupied. And so instead of resting, I sat down and I worked all day. And I was really resentful of that, that that time was taken away from me.

The next day, I went back to work because now, the very unfortunate circumstances were that we had no income. Sam had finished up his job. There was no other option. I called work. They said they were happy to have me five days a week. So I went back to work. The only person who knew was my boss and everyone else.

Didn't tell anyone I just smiled and got through the day the second day that I was back at work one of our reps came in and really lovely guy Came in all happy and he said, you know all tall and Canadian. He's like, oh, hey You can laugh. It's alright. That was a bad joke He came in and he said oh, we just found out my wife is pregnant baby number six She doesn't think she wants to keep it.

And every sentence that he said, he just kept talking and it was just like, stab after stab into my very freshly broken heart, and I remember having to just get up, I couldn't speak, I couldn't say anything, I just got up, rudely walked out, went to a huge window, stood there, and my self talk was terrible but I was just going, shove it down Pauline, shove it down, shut down the feelings, don't you cry, don't you come out here, you stay in there, like, and I just pushed it down and I smiled and I went back in and I went back to work.

And then a few days later, it was Mother's Day, which was the day that we were going to tell everyone. We would have been 12 and a half weeks by then. And I, like an idiot, had said to my husband, Don't buy me any gifts. We don't have the money. Let's not be frivolous. Practical. Pauline strikes again. And what I didn't know is that I would wake up on Mother's Day morning.

Just feeling like, freshly, I don't even know, just so much sadness and so much grief because that was meant to be a special day and it had been taken away. The life that we thought that we had with this child, we now no longer had. I'm so sorry. I'm with you, Jen. And I also had this voice in my head and I still remember it so vividly all these years later.

It was said these three sentences on repeat, like someone was whispering it in my ear and it said, You don't deserve this. What makes you think you're worthy of being celebrated? You can't keep your own child alive. And I know that is rubbish. Like, even the rational part of my brain understood that was absolute rubbish.

But my heart was broken and I believed it. And I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't say anything. I just smiled. And there was no real, you know, I'd said no gift, no anything, so there was not really much that we did. We just got ready for church and we came here and I was sitting here and there was a new mum here with her new baby.

And I was like, Pauline, you were going to suck it up. You were going to go say hello to that mum. You're going to congratulate her. It's not about you. It's about her. You goo goo over that baby. And I... Shoved it all down again and I stood up to go talk to her and Meg's Megan Greenway came up And she stood right in front of me like a bouncer and she goes, hey, how you doing?

And I said, oh I just started crying and she goes that's what I thought and she takes me to sit down and she said God told me to come and stand in front of you because You shouldn't do what you're about to do because that would have ended badly for everyone and that poor mum. And then we had Mother's Day lunch.

Story, it just keeps going. This is just the highlights. There was so much more than this. There were the things that people said to me. Oh my gosh. So, we went to this Mother's Day lunch and, at my parents place and My aunt and my nana were up visiting from Victoria. So we went there, I had gifts for my mum, I'd also bought gifts for my nana and my aunt, because, you know, they were away from their own families down in Melbourne, so I got them gifts too, and we got there and we had lunch, and they were sitting at one end and for some reason I was down the other end.

I don't know why, it just happened that way. And I gave my mum her gifts and gifts to my aunt and my nana and my aunt and my mum gave one to my nana and my nana had one for my aunt because she was away from her kids in Victoria. All this beautiful present giving is going on and I sat there and I smiled and on the inside I just kept dying because I know it sounds petulant, I know it sounds like I'm saying nobody paid attention to me, nobody gave me a present.

It wasn't that. It was that everything that was happening was validating in me. The voice in my head telling me that I wasn't worth celebrating that day. That I shouldn't be asking for anything because I didn't deserve it. And I think what I really needed, I don't even know what I really needed. I think what I needed, Well, first of all, no one even acknowledged that we had lost the baby.

Like no one said anything about it, which is just weird. I'm so sorry. That is... Horrible, like it's okay to say to a mum, I'm so sorry. I think I just needed someone to give me a hug and say, I know this day was special and I'm so sorry. What do you need? Sorry, I don't know why I'm getting so emotional. I feel sorry for myself.

For back then, even though I'm not sad about it now. Do you know what I mean? You feel empathetically bad for your old self. That's where I'm at. Okay. So then what happened after that was that over the following weeks and months, I had this weird thing happen where I got this really hollow, empty, heavy feeling in my stomach and it just kept growing.

It got worse and worse. It got bigger and heavier. It was like brick by brick until after months, like six or seven months, I, it almost felt like a desperation and I didn't know what for. I couldn't pinpoint what was going on. And I was sitting here. One Sunday and for whatever reason, I don't remember what happened.

I just thought I've got to go talk to Anne about it So afterwards I went over and I found Anne. Do you remember this Anne? And I just tried to tell her through my snot and tears what was going on and saying I didn't I didn't know what was Going on, but I knew it was something I actually thought maybe it was that I felt like that was it That was my last chance to have a second baby, and that's the memory I get and nothing else and she said Pauline Did you ever grieve the loss of your baby?

Did you ever say goodbye to your baby? Did you ever go to God and tell him how you are feeling? If you are angry, did you go to him and yell about it? And that was the first time that I realized. I hadn't. Like, Jesus was there when I needed him during the actual miscarriage. He carried me through all of that.

He had taken us through the whole job loss. Sam had found a job. Everything. He had taken us all through that. God was there telling me not to go talk to that mum. He knew my heart wasn't there for it yet. But then, stuff got in the way. Like, just those very unfortunate things that are no one's fault. I had to go back to work.

I had to just keep stuffing it down and stuffing it down. I got no time to just grieve. And I'd never done it. And I had turned off. I had gone numb. I wasn't talking to Jesus. I didn't give him anything. I didn't go back to him. I didn't yell about it. I just shut down and carried it myself. And it just kept growing.

So, I went and I did everything that Anne told me to do. I figure if God told me to go talk to Anne... Then I have to do what Anne says, because he must have known she would say the right thing, and she did. It was absolutely, perfectly right. So I did all the things that she said. And the one I left to last was the one I didn't want to do, which was that I had to sit down and talk to God.

So I kept that to last. I took a day off work, and I cleaned the house. I did a few things like that first, and then I sat down on our lounge room carpet. Nothing special. I just knelt there in front of our dining table, or coffee table, and I just... Took a deep breath and I said, okay, God. And that was as far as I got, and it was like seven months worth of grief came out of my body, through my eyeballs, like so much liquid and so much snot, and you know when you cry so hard, that at the end you've got a massive headache, because it's like you've dehydrated every cell in your brain, that's what it was like, it was just so much came out of me, and at some point I started talking, I just started to tell God everything, I don't remember if I was mad or not, I don't actually remember much of the detail of it, but I just know I gave it, all out.

And eventually I was just done. I said everything. I've, I'd grieved everything and I sat there quietly and after a while, I don't know how long, I felt this weight on my shoulders. But it was like a warm blanket weight. You know like when you're cold and someone just put something, a nice warm jacket over you.

It was like that. And it just... I just felt this comfort come over me and that dark, heavy feeling that I had in my stomach just melted. It just went away. And it felt like I was just being given this big hug from behind. And I sat there in that for a few minutes. Come on, Pauline, stick to the facts. All right.

Oh, okay. I sat there for a few minutes. I'm drying out my eyes. I sat there for a few minutes and then I felt that. That comfort and that peace turn into assurance, like just absolute assurance that it was okay, that Jesus had it, Jesus had my baby, like, that baby's waiting for me in heaven, what a great incentive but I just knew that it was absolutely all okay, and God had me, Jesus was right there, and he was the one giving me that comfort in that moment.

So when I read that verse in James about trials of many kinds and finding joy, that all came back to me in one great big rush and I was like, man, that is something that I can look back on and I see the joy in that because all of that brought me so much closer to God and it taught me so much. And then we were reading in John recently about Lazarus and over the past couple of weeks, Pastor Kev has talked about two women a few times.

Can anyone remember their names? Mine is also about Mary and Martha, would you believe, who are Lazarus sisters. So in this chapter, I think it's 11, chapter 11, John is recounting about how the sisters sent a message to Jesus and it said, Jesus, the one you love is sick. That's Lazarus. And God, Jesus says, God is going to use this to do something absolutely amazing.

This is going to be for God's glory. So he slowly makes his way back to Bethany. He gets there where Mary and Martha live. Martha comes out and she says, Jesus, Lazarus has been dead for days. And Mary comes out and she falls at Jesus feet. And she is just weeping and sobbing at the loss, not just of her brother, but every, there's every chance that they had lost their protector, because women back then, if they didn't have a man to look after them, they had nothing, they had no rights, their whole life may have been taken away from them, along with their brother.

So she is weeping, and Jesus sees her tears and her agony, and it says that he is deeply moved in spirit and troubled. He's deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

And then Jesus says, where is Lazarus? And by this point all these people have gathered around. They're all the, the family and friends, they're all crying. They're mourning the loss of this friend of theirs. And they say, well, Jesus, he's, he's dead. He's in the tomb. And then it says, Jesus wept. Very interesting.

Why is Jesus crying? He has already said God is going to use this. He absolutely knows that Lazarus is going to come back to life. Is he weeping for his friend who is dead? I don't think so. He's weeping as we've seen before. He is so deeply moved by the grief that he sees and feels in the people around him, people that he loves that are suffering.

He is weeping for the humanity that he is seeing in front of him. And then some of these friends who are all there crying, they start whispering to each other and they're like, Isn't this the guy who healed the blind man? Why didn't he just heal Lazarus? And then Jesus sees them and he hears them and it says in verse 11th verse 38, sorry, Jesus, once more, deeply moved, came to the tomb.

And at that point I stopped and I wrote my devotion, but, and I'll come back to that, but the end of the story is that Jesus goes to the tomb and he says, God, I'm going to say this out loud for the benefit of everyone else, even though I know you don't need me to say it out loud, Lazarus, come out. And up Lazarus gets out of the tomb and walks out.

And that was Jesus seventh and most amazing miracle. But I went, I wrote in my devotion after that bit where it said, Jesus once more deeply moved, I wrote this, Jesus was human when he was here on earth. He was a child, a young man, an apprentice, a carpenter, a brother, a son. He was betrayed by someone close to him.

He was falsely accused and had rumours spread about him. He was rejected by the people he came to help. His own brothers didn't have faith in him. He saw people make terrible choices. People mocked him. He grieved for people he loved. Remember that his own cousin, John the Baptist, was beheaded. He saw people suffer.

He saw human brutality. The night before he was arrested to be crucified, he knew all consuming anxiety and fear. He was deeply moved by compassion and the grief he witnessed in people around him. So remember in the beginning we played that very unfun game of how many bad things have you had happen to you in your life?

Everyone here has had something happen to them. You've all had someone betray your trust. You've all lost people that you love. You've had physical hardships, some of you have had terrible illnesses. You've had someone spread rumours about you. You've felt anxiety and stress. There is nothing that you and I have not experienced on earth that Jesus himself didn't experience first hand.

And remember that Jesus was fully human in body. He felt everything. He didn't have a secret. God mode feature that shielded him from all, you know, loss and hurt and pain. In fact, people actively sought to hurt Jesus. He lived a whole life of people trying to hurt him. When I lost that baby and I spent six or seven months just wandering in my own wilderness, I was numb.

I had switched off from Jesus. I wasn't asking for help. I just wasn't anything, even though I knew. So many times before I had asked for help, Jesus was there. I just went numb. I carried it on my own and it wasn't until I sat with him and said, Jesus, this hurts, that I then allowed him to give me the comfort that I needed.

And that comfort come from someone who knows exactly how I felt. He knew all about that loss. And when I felt there that day and I started to feel the peace and then I felt the assurance, then it turned into something else. The longer I sat there, I just started to say, thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. Not thank you that all that horrible stuff happened.

That was just stuff. No one made that happen. That just happened. Just saying thank you that you were there. That you have never, ever, ever failed me anytime I have asked. And the only time that things go really badly is when I stop asking. When I disconnect from Him. And I felt that, that it was just all okay.

That I had God there as my Father. That I had Jesus there with His arms around me. That I had absolutely taken care of it. big bear hug of peace. And that kind of peace is something we can have if we ask for it, no matter how small or big the trial. Sometimes we think, Oh, it's such a tiny thing. It's a little tiff with a coworker.

It doesn't matter. No matter how small or how huge it is, we can take it to Jesus. And that same piece is there for us. And that peace helps us to feel assurance, which turns to trust, which turns into greater faith, exactly as James said it would. And here's the application that I wrote. Our SOAP devotion is scripture, observation, application.

So the application, like how we can apply it, I wrote this. When difficult times inevitably happen, we always have a choice. We can blame him, we can hide from him and carry it alone, or we can go to him and let him take the burden. Hiding only lets the burden grow until it becomes a load that spills into other areas.

Brick after brick of hurt, disappointment, betrayal, bad luck, unfortunate circumstances, all add to the weight. It makes us feel too heavy to go back to God. We think it's impossible to praise God through our circumstances. We forget that our Jesus is waiting to take the weight and make us light again. So we can choose to take our worries and hurt and fear to Jesus, the only one who can give us assurance and comfort from the inside out.

His is a supernatural peace that makes this difficult life not only bearable, but one where we can feel joy from our trials. So how it looks to go to Jesus looks different to everyone I said before, I just sat on my carpet. And I talked about it, and some people might want to go sit at the beach, you might want to go out in nature, you might be able to do it here while we're singing you can do it before you go to bed, it doesn't matter, there's no magic about it, there's no secret password, you just talk to God.

And it doesn't need to take long, it doesn't need to be flowery, you just ask for the help. Jesus empathises with you, He knows how you feel, He is deeply moved by our worries and our pain. So I'm going to ask the band to get back up. Thanks, boys and girl. A couple of weeks ago, Tom sent me a song. He didn't know really what I was talking about today.

I'd never heard this song before, even though it's by one of my favourite bands. And the first line of this song says, Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. And I was like, okay, you had me at assurance. That's a good song. And then it says, he's been the fourth man in the fire time after time. And that's who Jesus is to us.

I used to be a blamer. I've now learned to trust God. It's taken the trials, but I've learned to trust God with all the unfairness, with all the difficulty of life. He has never let me down or failed me. And I love this in James. Like I said, it's one of my favorite letters. James says, God is not like shifting shadows.

He doesn't change. He doesn't pull the rug out from under us. He's not something one day and then something different the next. He is the same through every storm, through everything. He is the same for us. He is absolutely reliable and you may not get the outcome you want. You may not get everything you want out of life.

Things may not go the way that you expect them to go. That is what life, that is the game of life. We all participate, but it's how we choose to respond to that, whether we hide or whether we go back to the only one who can give us the peace. That's the difference. We can trust God. We can ask Jesus to see our trouble.

And I just want to say this quickly. Do I have time? Yes I do. God sent Jesus as his representative on earth. God could have sent anything or anyone. He could have sent a robot to churn out instructions on how to be a good God follower. He could have sent more messages from a mountaintop. Whatever could have started a Twitter account.

It doesn't he had a million avenues and instead he chose to send this man Jesus as he was the most compassionate loving just beautiful man who hugged people and loved people so so unconditionally, who empathized, who wept with them. That was the man that God chose to represent him. Someone who could be just like us so that it wasn't just us.

And this big God that we can't understand it's us and Jesus and God. That's who we're talking to. When we say, Jesus, can you help me? It is the man who was here on earth, who was one of us.

What a wasted opportunity. If instead we carry all of our hurt ourselves, what a heavy and difficult life when we don't take the hard stuff to him. don't do what I did. Don't carry it for so long that it becomes more than you can bear. So like I said, there was so many good outcomes from all of that. I do want to say ultimately it was a good story.

Jesus just, he did. Jesus carried us. He was there every time we needed him. He never failed. And one of the things I've actually asked the team to play that song this morning, it's called I, what is it called? Trust in God. It's actually ultimately a song of celebration. It's a real declaration about the fact that God never fails.

Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't do the right thing, but God never ever does, and that he is always there, that every time we ask, he opens the door and he is waiting to help us. So, while they're playing this song, it goes for about five minutes, you can do whatever you want in this time, that's what this time is for, you can think about something that maybe you are carrying that you want to get rid of, you can think about maybe that it's something that you need to do more, is remember to rely on God, remember to ask Jesus for that comfort, and if you want to, you can just, stand up and declare how awesome God is.

Maybe it makes you remember a time that the same thing happened to you when you asked for comfort and he was there. If you want to celebrate, I mean, stand up and just sing. It is okay. Don't feel bad if you're the first one. If you stand up, I bet everyone else does too. So this is your time to do whatever you want with that.

I'm just going to pray very quickly and then I'll let the team do it. Thanks guys. Jesus, I just want to say personally, thank you so much that for the last 20 odd years you have been there for me Every time I have asked that you have never failed I love the person that you are and I have loved getting to know you and I really pray that any single person here who needs something this morning that you will tap them on the shoulder and say, give that to me because I can carry that better than you.

And that is what you came here to show us. So Jesus, I pray for this group of people and everyone online that you would fill up those hurt places full of your spirit and your peace and your comfort. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Thanks.