Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – January 9-10, 2016 Page 1

“Everything Happens for a Reason”

Theme: Half-Truths Scripture: Deuteronomy 30:19-20 Things I’d like to remember from today’s sermon: Meditation Moments for Monday, January 11 – Read Galatians 6:7-10 – The phrase, “Everything happens for a reason,” holds a half-truth. In this world, there IS some cause for every effect. Some bad effects, like severe storms, are just “the way life works.” Galatians noted that in other cases our choices, not God’s acts, cause bad effects.

What do you think it means to say, “A person will harvest what they plant”? Have you felt this in your life?

Have you ever seen this happen with devastating effects in the lives of others? Do you think God caused this

to happen to them?

What do you believe about natural disasters—are they God angrily raining down terror and misery on people?

In what (sometimes smaller) ways could we “harvest devastation from our selfishness”? When we do good

things for others, do you believe that we are “doing God’s work”?

Prayer: O God, help me to see you at work in all of life, knowing that you can take even tough and challenging moments and bring about your will. Help me to lean on you and trust you in every moment. Amen.

Tuesday, January 12 – Read Job 4:1-9 – Suffering has always raised deep spiritual questions. Job, the Hebrew poetic drama, came from roots that seem to go back more than 1000 years before Christ. The ancient drama showed Job facing awful loss and agony. Though at first his friends sat with him in silence, they soon began to offer simple, black-and-white answers to explain his suffering.

What deep spiritual questions has suffering ever raised in your mind? Have you experienced suffering that

made you wonder what you did to make God want to punish you? How do you experience God in the midst of

suffering and hurt?

As you read the comments by Eliphaz to Job in response to his suffering, do you tend to agree or disagree?

Eliphaz said, “When God breathes deeply, they perish; by a breath of his nostril they are annihilated.” What do

you think of this statement? Should God get the blame for all the bad things in our lives? Why or why not?

Prayer: Gracious God, I don’t fully understand how everything works in life. Sometimes I want to blame you when bad things happen. I know you understand my heart when I feel these things. May I be honest with you and still hold onto my faith so I have something on which to stand. Help me to always feel your presence, even when life hurts. Amen.

Wednesday, January 13 – Read Job 42:1-8 – Starting in Job 38, the drama shows God speaking to Job about his suffering. The answer God gives is both beautiful and unsatisfying. God does not explain why suffering exists but God does speak about the gift that life is. God also reasserts that he is the creator of it all. So we find Job affirming trust in God even when he couldn’t fully understand everything. Then God rebuked, not Job, but Eliphaz, the others and their simplistic answers: “You haven’t spoken about me correctly.”

In your own words, what is Job saying to God in verses 2-6? In verse 7, God is clearly angry with Job’s friends.

Does God, therefore, rain down suffering on them? What then, does this suggest to you about how God acts in

our lives?

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In the story of Job, are simplistic answers for suffering correct? Does God actually explain the reasons or

causes of our suffering? The story of Job suggests that evil is permitted to work in this world. Do you believe

this? Can your faith survive and flourish even without firm explanations from God about the nature of

suffering?

Prayer: God, help me to see that you are the Creator of all of life and that every moment is a gift from you. I don’t always understand why there is hurt in the world, but help me not to rely on simplistic answers that can sometimes cause hurt, especially when I speak about you incorrectly. Instead, help me to love you and love others well. Amen.

Thursday, January 14 – Read Exodus 34:5-9 – In Exodus 32, Israel failed badly, making and worshipping a gold statue of a bull, an Egyptian god (of all things!). In the violent, revenge-oriented ancient Middle East, the Israelites found it hard to grasp what God was really like. Yet, almost like an unexpected harmony in a dissonant symphony, God (unlike Egypt’s gods) showed Moses a divine character based on the profound realities of love and forgiveness.

Most of the people around Israel in Biblical times believed in angry, vengeful, punishing gods. Do you know

people today who tend to see God in this way? How does that view affect one’s ability to love or trust God?

When God revealed himself to Moses, how did he describe his nature? How have you sensed that God stays

with you through both good and bad?

Prayer: God, sometimes I get to worshipping things other than you. I know that when I do this you are eager to welcome me back and offer forgiveness. Help me to see you as a God who made me to love me and not one who holds grudges or is filled with anger towards me. Give me the strength to reflect your true character to others. Amen.

Friday, January 15 – Read Matthew 5:43-45 and Luke 11:11-13, 13:1-5 – In Jesus’ day, as in ours, many people were inclined to see tragedy and suffering as a divine punishment and/or object lesson. Jesus consistently said they “got it wrong.” He recognized the randomness of some tragedies, and the role of evil in creating others. He was not much concerned with assigning blame, but in bringing healing. He taught that, like a good father, God takes delight in giving his children good gifts, not awful, hurtful ones.

Reread Luke 11:11-12. What is Jesus saying with these words? Now reread Luke 11:13. How might this change

our interpretation? Luke 13 speaks of people killed by soldiers and in an accident. Was God involved in these

acts? Why did you answer as you did?

In your view, does God ever bring down suffering on his children? Does he offer good gifts to his children?

How does God feel when people suffer? Does God ever intervene during times of crisis in the lives of his

people? Does God always intervene? What makes it important to you that Jesus pictured God as a kind, loving,

merciful parent, not a monster?

Prayer: You are our kind, loving and merciful parent, God. As your child, you long to give me good gifts. Help me to receive them and know that you will cover me as I walk through tragedies. Amen.

Saturday, January 16 – Read Romans 8:22-28 – The apostle Paul faced many hardships. We never find him asking, “Why did God send that mob to attack me?” or anything like that. We never find him sighing, with resignation,

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“Nero’s madness and injustice are just God’s will. Everything happens for a reason.” Paul did express a profound truth that even when bad things occur, God’s power could and did force them to ultimately serve a good end.

“We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called

according to his purpose.” What does this mean to you? What does it mean for the strength of your faith?

What did Paul mean when, in verse 24, he said, “We were saved in hope.”? In what ways can we nurture hope

in our hearts.

Prayer: God, help me to trust that you work to bring all things together for good. I love you. Amen.

Theme: Half-Truths “Everything Happens for a Reason”

Sermon preached by Jeff Huber

January 9-10, 2016 at First United Methodist Church, Durango

Scripture: Deuteronomy 30:19-20

19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 20 You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

VIDEO Sermon Intro

SLIDE “Everything Happens for a Reason”

I would like to invite you to take out of your bulletin your Meditation Moments and your Message Notes. If you’re watching at home or online, you can download this resource right off of our website. There is a space there for you to take notes and I would like you to use that today because we are going to talk about a complex topic and deal with some important theological ideas. I really hope you will think about these things in the coming week and you can use that space to write down those things you want to remember and reflect on. You will then find daily Scripture readings which tie back into today’s message and give you an opportunity to explore these ideas deeper as you read God’s word each day and spend some time in prayer. Today’s sermon really should be about a six hour lecture, but you will be relieved I’m going to cram it all into about 32 minutes so please take some time to think about it in the days ahead.

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We begin today a five part sermon series on the kinds of things that we often say as Christians, or the other Christians might say to us, and yet we haven’t carefully examined them and if we are honest we recognize that they are only half-truths. They seem to be true but when we really dig into them we realize it’s not entirely captured in a simple phrase. Today we are going to focus on this phrase which appears on screen. Let’s say together.

SLIDE Everything happens for a reason

Have any of you ever had that said to you? I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand, but have you ever said that to somebody else? I’m guessing that we probably have and I have to be honest and say that I said that, particularly when I was younger. I said it to be comforting and we usually say it when people are going through something tough or difficult. When we say that everything happens for a reason we are not usually talking about cause and effect. There is cause-and-effect in the world and that if we do some things we know that other things will happen.

Typically, when we say to someone who is going through a difficult time, “Everything happens for a reason,” what we mean is that God has this plan and we can’t see the plan yet, boat whatever hard thing we are going through must be a part of God’s plan. It will be okay in the end because God wanted it to happen. We wouldn’t necessarily say it in those exact words, but we often are implying this if we’re honest. Whatever someone has been through in their life that is hard, God wanted to happen for some good reason that they just can’t see yet. We have a number of other phrases that we say which say something similar.

“It was meant to be.”

“It must’ve been there time.” We say that when someone dies.

“It was part of the plan.”

“It must’ve been the will of God.”

So today I want us to question these phrases and assumptions and ask if everything does really happen for a reason. Is everything happening because God wanted it to happen for some plan that God has that we can’t quite see just yet? Is that plan immutable? God has this plan in place and there is nothing we can do to change it? Let’s see what Eric and Andy, two roommates, think of this.

VIDEO Eric and Andy

SLIDE Does everything happen for reason?

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We are going to wrestle with this today and I’m going to suggest to you that this phrase, “Everything happens for a reason,” is something you might consider scrubbing from your list of things to say to comfort people in difficult times, because I just don’t think it’s true and it actually causes more pain than comfort. I’m going to offer you three critiques of this phrase.

SLIDE It removes personal responsibility for our actions.

The first problem is that if everything happens for a reason, then it removes any personal responsibility or accountability for our actions. If it all is happening according to God’s plan and God’s plan is immutable, and God is not going to change his plan because God wanted it to happen, then whatever we do is because God needs us and wants us to do it. So we cheat on our wife and its okay because God planned it. It happened for a reason. There must be some reason that we can’t see. Yes, we did a horrible thing, but it wasn’t the devil that made me do it. It was God because it was a part of God’s plan.

Somebody is texting and driving and they kill somebody. Everything happens for reason? That’s part of God’s plan? It wasn’t the young person’s fault who is texting course because God put them up to it because it was part of God’s plan. A young man is drinking and he drives any kills four innocent people but it’s not his fault because his parents spoiled him and that must be part of God’s plan because everything happens for a reason. I read an article this last week by someone who said we should worry about gun control or the mass shootings that we see happening in our country because it must be part of God’s plan and everything happens for a reason.

There’s a second reason why I struggle with this idea of everything happening for a reason. It’s implied in the first.

SLIDE It makes God responsible for all of the horrible things that happen in our world.

I challenge you to watch the news this week and argue that everything that happens is something that would honor God or that God would want to have happen to teach some cosmic lesson. The two-year-old unzips his mother’s purse in a Walmart and pulls out a handgun. He thinks he’s playing with a toy and he kills his mother. God wanted that to happen? Airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and God wanted 3000 people all perish at one time? It was all their time at the same time? We still don’t know what caused the downing of the Malaysia flight which killed almost 300 people last year but we

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don’t need to search for the black boxes because it was a part of God’s plan. There is nothing really to learn because the whole thing was orchestrated by God. Every rape and every murder and every act of child abuse and every war and every terrible storm and every earthquake and every child dies of starvation are all part of God’s plan? Everything happens for a reason and God has a good reason for it but we can’t just see it yet. Is that how it works? If so, then it implies that God ultimately made it happen and is a murderer and child abuser.

SLIDE It leads to fatalism.

The third thing I struggle with in this idea of everything happening for reason is that it leads to fatalism. Fatalism says that whatever happened is going to happen. Whatever will be, will be and we can’t change it. There is no reason to try because it’s going to happen. Why would we need to put on a seatbelt? If it’s my time and I’m going to die in a car accident, then I will die in a car accident whether I have a seatbelt on or not. There is no reason to put on a seatbelt. There is no reason to work out or eat properly or take care of your body, which some of us might like if we are honest. If I’m going to get heart disease then I’m going to get heart disease because it’s part of God plan. It doesn’t matter how much I work out or take care of myself because it’s part of God’s plan for me to do I have a stroke or have some other horrible thing happen. If everything happens for reason then it leads to the idea and thought process that we can’t change what is going to happen so we shouldn’t even bother to try.

If we end up with cancer, and there is no reason to see the oncologist because God gave us the cancer and if we go see the oncologist and we are fighting against God’s plan. This calls into question the entire medical profession. Why should we go see doctors and have hospitals, because if they are going to operate on us they are taking a way that something God gave us? We should stick with whatever God gave us, no matter how horrible the disease, because whatever happens, happens for a reason. Healthcare workers are really not the hands of God, bringing healing to our bodies, minds and souls, but they are actually working against God’s plan.

Let’s consider the areas of politics and sports. Whoever gets elected must be the person that God wants to have in office so don’t say anything bad about them. Don’t give money to their opponent in the next election. Why give money in elections and why even work for anyone to be elected because it all will happen according to God’s plan anyway, right? There is no reason to even vote really because God has a plan. Don’t challenge our politicians on policies that you

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don’t like because they were put there by God to do what they’re doing because as part of God’s plan.

The NFL playoffs are starting in some of you are excited because your team is in but there is really no reason to root for them because God has already decided who is going to win the Super Bowl and they wear the colors of the sunset. If God has already decided who is going to win the Super Bowl than there really is no reason for any team to practice. What’s the point of learning new plays? What’s the point of trying your best? Whoever is going to win is going to win and whoever is supposed to lose is going to lose because everything happens for a reason and it’s all part of God’s plan. When we take this simple belief to an extreme it can easily lead to fatalism.

SLIDE Divine Providence

When we begin to ask questions about this line of reasoning, that everything happens for reason, we are dealing with theological realities and something that we call divine providence. The word providence has the word provides in it and this idea is about how God provides or governs what happens in our world. Christians believe that God is overseeing all of creation, including what is happening on our planet. But exactly how and to what degree does God provide? What does that look like? We are going to look that just a moment.

SLIDE God’s Sovereignty

Closely linked to this idea of divine providence is another idea about God’s sovereignty. Someone who is sovereign is someone who is dependent on no one else because they are the highest authority. Our Jewish friends say regularly in their prayers that God is the, “King of the universe,” and that is how we understand God as followers of Jesus Christ. If God is King of the Universe and there is no higher authority than God. Christians believe in divine providence and in God’s sovereignty, but Christians differ on how we interpret those two ideas.

Some Christians believe that every single thing in the world is happening because God tells it to happen. God is in essence micromanaging every single detail in all of creation all of the time. That’s at one end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum we find Christians who believe that God is more hands off with everything that happens in creation. We might think of God in this way as an absentee landlord, who created everything and then stepped away. Some Christians see a middle way in between those two extremes which is what we want to talk about today.

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GRAPHIC 1 Institutes of the Christian Religion

John Calvin was a lawyer who became a pastor and he was one of the great reformers. At the age of 27 he wrote the book, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. It was a very important book in the Protestant Reformation and much of Protestant theology is found in this book, although there are others who disagreed with things in the book. Calvin lived from 1509 to 1564 and he was known as someone who had an extreme view of God’s providence. He believed that God governed everything down to the minor details. If he had known about cells, he would’ve said that even cells were functioning according to God’s direct command and will. When it came to the weather, Calvin said things like this.

SLIDE “No wind ever rises or rages without God’s special command.”

Today it was 3° when he woke up this morning because God determined it would be 3° in Durango today. It snowed a lot this week because God told it to snow and he wanted children to stay home from school on Thursday. Every kid believed in God on Thursday, right? The days before meteorology, this made sense, as it did to some of the biblical authors who believed that God withheld the rain and brought the rain depending on his wishes and will.

Today we have weather forecasters who can give us the forecast for tomorrow or the next 10 days which are sometimes really accurate and sometimes really off. Are they predicting what God is going to do? Or are they predicting what happens with weather patterns and El Niño?

Calvin and biblical authors didn’t know about fertility what we know today and didn’t realize that sometimes it was an issue with the man’s reproductive system, but they would use words like, “God was closing up her womb. God was opening up their womb,” when one became pregnant. Today we see fertility doctors. If it is God closing up a womb then who are we to go see fertility doctors to have them change that? Why do we just accept this as the will of God?

Calvin believed that even our thoughts were not our own but were placed there by God. We don’t really have original thoughts. We think we are thinking and making a decision but God is actually even guiding those thoughts in our minds. This led Calvin to say that everything that happens in life, good or bad, “is fixed by God’s decree.”

One corollary for this for which Calvin is known is the idea that no one actually chooses to be a Christian nor rejects Christ on our own, but instead is foreordained or predetermined or predestined. He said that before the world was

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created, God had chosen the elect and the damned. Before we are born it is already decided that we are going to accept Christ and we can’t reject Christ because God has chosen it for us. God’s grace would be irresistible to us if we are part of the elect and we will spend eternity in heaven. But if you happen to be part of the damned, then before you were born it was determined to be so and no matter what you did and no matter how hard you might want to be among the elect you could not accept the grace of God and you are consigned to hell no matter how you live your life or try to respond to the gospel. God determines even the thoughts of the human heart.

Many Christians struggle with this idea which is called Calvinism or also theological determinism, meaning that God has predetermined everything that has happened and will happen. To be fair, there are many things I really appreciate about John Calvin. He said many beautiful things like this.

GRAPHIC 2 Although the stars do not speak even in being silent they cry out.

While I appreciate many things about John Calvin, the idea of predestination is not one of them. This concept in Calvinism has seen a resurgence among young Christians in the past few years, the idea of God controlling everything and speaking of events that happen as God’s sovereignty and that everything is certain because God has determined it. I tend to believe that in a postmodern age where things are changing so rapidly, people are longing for some certainty. When things are going tough and you are dealing with a third divorce or the loss of your fourth career it can seem very appealing that God is in control and we don’t need to worry about what happens next or what we’ve done to bring us to the place in which we find ourselves.

It seems appealing until it isn’t. It’s not too appealing to think that your child has been preselected to spend eternity in hell. It becomes challenging to see all of the horrible things done in the world and then say that God planned for those things to occur. Is that really how it works?

John Wesley came along in the 1700s, about 200 years after Calvin, and said that this wasn’t right, especially the idea that God predetermined who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. There is no grace or mercy in that understanding of God. Wesleyan and theology would say that this idea is inconsistent with a God of mercy, justice and love. While there are many things we can appreciate about Calvin, this is one that is challenging for many of us.

We can find Scriptures to support this idea, but the overarching theme

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seems to be that God created human beings and then gives us a mind to reason with, a heart with which to feel and the body which can move and affect change in the world. We are meant to exercise dominion on this planet on God’s behalf. If you start at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis you will find the first creation story and at the end of that story we find these words that God speaks to the first male and female he created.

SLIDE 28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

God, who is sovereign and the ruler of all things, has said to the human race, “I am putting you in charge of what happens here on earth.” God is still ruler but God has given us responsibility to exercise dominion over what happens. God gives us freedom to make choices, good or bad. God puts us in the place of being responsible for what happens on the planet and we can’t blame God or say it’s part of God’s plan when we do something which is wrong or misses the mark. We are the one who exercise dominion on God’s behalf when it comes to much of what happens on the earth.

A few books later, in the book of Deuteronomy, we find Moses at the end of his life. He has led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They have wandered in the wilderness and they are now on the edge of the Promised Land. He is an old man, filled with wisdom, and he reminds them the Law of God and the 10 Commandments he spoke in the book of Exodus and then he says these words we find in Deuteronomy 30.

SLIDE 19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!

Moses is showing them the path that leads to life in the path that leads to death. In one path we obey God and we hold fast to God and we love God and we love our neighbors and we seek to do God’s work in the world. On the other path we live just for ourselves. We don’t care about God or anyone else. This path leads to pain while the other path leads to life. He goes on with these words.

SLIDE 20 You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land

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the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Moses is begging them to choose life. If we don’t really have a choice and God has already chosen those who will be faithful from before they were born, then why would Moses say this.

One of the great ideas in Scripture is that God created us with the capacity to reason. God tries to speak to us and lead us and guide us so we might live for him and according to his purposes, and that this world might be a place where there is justice and love that prevail. But we have to decide to do that because God did not create us to be robots or automatons. We can also decide to walk away from that path. We’ve been given the gift of dominion and freedom, choices and decisions that we can make. This is part of what makes us human.

In the second creation story we find in Genesis we find the story of Adam and Eve in a garden. There is a tree and they are told they can have anything else in the garden but what’s on that tree. Have you ever wondered why that tree is even there? If God knew that we were going to eat from it, why would God put the tree there to begin with? This story is an archetypal one which tells us that God created human beings, you and I, with the capacity to choose. Part of being human is to make choices. God communicates to us because he hopes that we will take the path of life. That is God’s will for us. Yet we also have the ability to take the path which leads to pain and hurt for ourselves and others, and we often choose that path.

When I was in high school I rebuilt three different motorcycles as part of my auto shop class. The first two were smaller dirt bikes but the last one was a Honda CX 500 turbo. It was an awesome bike and it was fun to ride and I mostly kept it under the speed limit. The wind in your face in the pavement just under your feet whizzing by was exhilarating and I also knew that I could die anytime I went on that bike. We had three people in my high school class die in motorcycle accidents my last year of high school and I eventually made a decision to sell the bike because of that. I don’t blame God for killing my friends on the motorcycle and I wouldn’t blame God if I had been killed because that would’ve been my decision, just like it was theirs.

I like to ski and I like to ski fast, especially in fresh powder. When you go to buy your lift ticket you can read on the back of it some very important information which is that you cannot sue the state of Colorado if you die while skiing. You agree to hold the state harmless because the activity of skiing has

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inherent dangerous risks. If you’re going to go river rafting on the Animas River you sign a piece of paper which says you won’t sue the company if you drown. Most of you in this room have been skiing or river rafting even with all of those risks.

Likewise, when it comes to our faith, do we blame God when we hit a tree and get paralyzed while skiing? God didn’t even invent skiing the way we do it and yet we want to blame God when a tragedy happens on the ski slope or on our motorcycle? The only way to play it completely safe in life is to lock yourself in a room that’s padded and have somebody slide you sanitized food under the door every day. I’m guessing that none of us want to live that way, because part of the joy of living comes with risks that many of us willingly take. That’s not God doing when those risks end up with the wrong outcome.

So if God is not pushing buttons and pulling levers, does God do anything all in our world? What is God doing anyway? The opposite of predestination or theological determinism is Deism, which was held by many of this country’s founding fathers in the 18th century. You have theological determinism on one side and Deism on the other end of the continuum.

SLIDE Theological Determinism………………………….Deism

Deism is the idea that God created everything and gave us a brain and the laws of nature and then God stepped away completely. This is that idea of the absentee landlord. It’s all on us and God is not involved in our world it all. A part of that is very appealing but that excludes the idea that God set the Israelites free from slavery in Egypt. It excludes the idea that God speaks today through Scripture. It excludes the idea that Jesus was sent by God to show us the way, the truth and the life or that he suffered and died for us on the cross. It excludes the idea of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us and guiding us and leading us. All of those would be God’s intervention in the world and in history and Deism says that God is not involved at all. We are merely fish in a fishbowl and God is watching.

Most of us, if were honest, fall somewhere between these two extremes. We believe that God is actively involved in our world but God is not forcing everything to happen. God works in and through us.

I think about this by thinking about what routinely happens in my life. Every morning I wake up and I say, “Here I am God. Please use me to do what you want with me today. Help me to honor you and live for you.” I feel like my mission is to pay attention when I am moving throughout my day. I am meant to be watching

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to see if there is someone who needs something and if there is some way I’m supposed to respond to God’s grace and love in my life by serving others. I have noticed that God speaks, even though it is never really an audible voice. Because I am spiritually hard of hearing, like most of us, I am not certain if it is God speaking to me or indigestion or stress or a random thought. I have come to trust over time that when I hear that urging that I should pay attention.

My sister gave my mom a Fitbit for Christmas, and I know some of you have them as well. As a side comment, what does it say we give a loved one a fitness bracelet for Christmas? My mom and my sister both got them and were wearing them one of the days we spent together when I was in California after Christmas. You are supposed to get 10,000 steps in and then it beeps at you or vibrates and they kept waiting for that to happen. I actually have one that called a Misfit that I wear, which my sister thought was pretty appropriate that I would wear one with a different name. Mine you tap twice and it tells you the time and then it tells you how far along you are on your goal with a series of lights that light up.

These bracelets are supposed to remind me to get a good amount of exercise. What’s interesting, is that they don’t make me walk or swim or ride my bike. All it can do is vibrate on my wrist or glow at me. If I am not active for a long period of time then it begins to vibrate as a way of reminding me to get off my behind and go do something. When I get to the appropriate level mine celebrates by having flashing lights go all the way around and it’s pretty cool. I was actually with a two-year-old recently who enjoyed simply tapping it and watching the lights go round and round and round. It’s kind of like a party on your arm!

GRAPHIC 3 Misfit

This device can’t force me to do anything, but it can nudge me to do something. That’s my experience of God working in my life. I feel these nudges from time to time and I have a choice whether I want to get off my behind or whether I want to sit dormant. The other day I was supposed to meet somebody for lunch and they had to cancel because of the snow. I got my car to go get something to eat and I headed towards one restaurant and then I felt a nudge to go in a different direction. Whenever that happens, I wonder if God is up to something. I walked in to pick up my food and there was a young man sitting at a table by himself and his eyes caught mine and he quickly came over and reached out his hand and said, “Pastor Jeff, I can’t believe you’re here. I came to church for the first time in my life on Christmas Eve with my wife. We have been going through a really rough time and I wondered if God was even real and I was asking

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him to show me a sign and then you walked in.”

I have to tell you, when one of you say that to me, it’s a lot of pressure! Mostly, it feels like a holy moment. Is that coincidence? Or was it a God incidence? Is it just about paying attention and being in the right place at the right time? I think those things happen for a reason but I don’t think everything happens for a reason. I think we are meant to pay attention each day and we go out on God’s mission and God uses us and works through us. We have dominion and every day we have the opportunity to be Jesus Christ to the world. We find joy when we do that. I know I felt like I was in the middle of a God moment during that encounter this week. Somehow this person felt encouraged and strengthened and blessed in that moment. I think that is how God most often works.

Most things happen in life because we make decisions, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Sometimes we collide with the laws of nature. Sometimes we hurt others and sometimes we are hurt by other people. Somebody posted this on their Facebook page this last week.

GRAPHIC 4 Everything Happens for a Reason Stupid

“Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes the reason is that you’re stupid and you make bad decisions.” That might be a little harsh, but it does capture the reality of our lives sometimes, doesn’t it?

Yes God created everything, but God also gave us a brain and the ability to make decisions and to have dominion and to affect change in the world. God’s spirit leads us. The Scriptures help us to understand God’s will. Jesus helps us to see God’s will in the flesh and came to change us from the inside out. We are meant to be on a mission every day, to be God’s hands and voice in the world. And we recognize that sometimes horrible things happen and that’s part of life, but the horrible things will never have the final word. The resurrection of Jesus shows us that not even death will have the final word.

I once heard a retired United Methodist pastor put it this way,

Suffering is not God’s desire for us, but it occurs in the process of life. Suffering is not given to teach us something, but through it we may learn. Suffering is not given to punish us, but sometimes it is the consequence of our sin and poor judgment. Suffering does not occur because our faith is weak, but through it our faith may be strengthened. God does not depend on human suffering to achieve his purposes, but sometimes through

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suffering his purposes are achieved. Suffering can either destroy us or it can add meaning to our life.”

Paul writes in Romans 8:28 words that many Christians have memorized. It can seem trite when we just blurted out to others, but I find it very profound and helpful.

SLIDE 28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

I think it’s important to note what this does NOT say. Paul is not saying that God makes bad things happen in our lives for some good reason that we just can’t see yet. It does say that whatever happens in our lives, God can use it for good. God can redeem suffering. No suffering will be wasted in God’s hands. When we put our suffering and hurt and brokenness into God’s hands, God will bring something good from it. The suffering and hurt and pain will not have the final word in our lives if we give it to God and when we trust in him.

This has been my experience in life, and my guess is that it has been for many of you as well. God has done his best work and some of the most painful experiences in my life. Somehow God has taken those moments and brought out something good and beautiful. I am the person I am today largely based on those painful experiences and what God did with them in me. I can either allow them to destroy me or I can allow God to use them to make me into something I could never be without those experiences.

I don’t believe God makes those painful experiences happen. I don’t believe God gives his children cancer or causes somebody to rape another person or abuse their children. I do believe that God can force good from those moments when we trust in him.

I want to encourage you not to have an overly simplistic faith which says that everything happens for a reason without examining how and why you say those words. The day is going to come when each one of us will walk through something hard and we will find that philosophy doesn’t work anymore. I hope that you will reflect upon this before you get to that experience because it will happen for every single one of us, and I can tell you for a fact that it is much harder to wrestle with these questions when you are in the middle of it.

Austin was three years old when he was hit by a car and rushed to the hospital. His parents Todd and Kathy held their son as he passed away. They had

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Austin baptized in the emergency room, not because he wouldn’t go to heaven without being baptized, but to remind his parents that God covered this child in these moments. The family could’ve easily turned away from God in the loss of their child but instead they turned towards God and grew deeper in their faith. Kathy wrote this about that experience at her faith.

“At the time I had people tell me that it was, ‘Austin’s time.’ I was having a hard time believing in a God who would plan to take my child at age 3. I learned that tragedies weren’t necessarily a part of God’s plan, but that God gave us free will and sometimes bad things happen. Understanding this has helped me turn to God instead of away from him. Since Austin’s death, I believe that my faith has grown and continues to grow. His death changed the way I view God and my faith. I no longer have a naïve, childlike faith where God protects you from all harm and makes everything okay. It’s a deeper faith that has been tested through tragedy. I know that God doesn’t promise me a pain-free life, but he does promise to always be there, to love me, comfort me and guide me. My faith gives me something that people without faith don’t have—hope—hope for the future and hope for the knowledge that I will see my son again one day.”

Between the picture of a micromanaging God who makes everything happen and an absentee landlord who isn’t involved at all in our world, is the truth I think about God—that God created us and gave us freedom and dominion. This world is beautiful and magnificent but sometimes is dangerous. Sometimes our freedom comes into conflict with the laws of nature and sometimes our freedom brings pain to other people and to ourselves. God walks with us through the hell that we walk through on Earth. God doesn’t will it or want horrible things to happen, but when they do, God promises not to let us go—to never leave us or forsake us. Put into God’s hands, God promises to force that evil to accomplish some kind of good and he says to us, “Not even the painful and horrible things that happen in life will have the final word.”

That’s the hope I think we have in Christ and that’s what I believe about God. Sometimes things do happen for a reason, when we open ourselves up and we allow God to use us. Sometimes things happen for a reason because we your other people make bad decisions. Regardless, God promises, “I will never leave you, abandon you or forsake you. I will walk with you through the dark moments and force them into the light so they can bring about something good.”

I believe that is our hope as followers of Jesus Christ. Would you bow with

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me if you are willing?

SLIDE Prayer

Oh God, how grateful we are that we are not alone—that you created this magnificent cosmos—that you created a planet in such marvelous ways and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are grateful that we are not pawns on a chessboard—that you don’t simply pull the levers and push the buttons in life, but instead we have freedom. We are grateful that you have called us to exercise dominion on your behalf on this earth, to take care of this planet and the people on it, to be the presence of Jesus Christ in the world for our sisters and brothers. Please help us to pay attention, to be used by your Holy Spirit, to be a part of your work in the world.

Help us to trust you when life is hard and difficult, to recognize that you will not leave us nor forsake us, and that you will force evil to accomplish good. We give you thanks God that suffering and evil will never have the final word. This year we entrust our lives to you and pray that you would use us, guide us and lead us, in your holy name. Amen.