Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Introduction

I never like to start off a message with bad news.

When I taught public speaking at the Christopher’s Course we always taught the students to start with an attention grabber.

Perhaps a good story that people could relate to.

Bad news is never a good attention grabber.

Who wants to start off hearing about bad news.

Say something thought provoking or tell a funny story.

But to start off with a downer, bad news, not a good way to start.

Well if it makes you feel better, you already know the bad news.

You can’t go through life with experiencing it.

Everyone does.

Here it is - you can’t, no one can go through life without experiencing problems and no one can go through life without experiencing problems or life situations that do not scar them.

Problems or life situations that do not bring hurt or that you think you will never be able to get over or work through.

Problems or life situations that may cripple you from really experiencing a full life.

Every one of us have some sort of life scars and many of us keep them to ourselves and do not share them with anyone else, not even our closest friends or even our spouses.

I have good news however, you don’t need to let these scars hold you back or prevent you from having a full life.

Your scars can heal and they can be used by God to make you a scar healer for others.

Scar or Heal

Scar or Heal

When we face life’s problems we have a choice in the way we allow them to effect our lives.

We can allow them to scar us or we can seek healing to overcome them and use them to grow is us into more mature human beings.

Over my years as a Pastor I have seen people go through similar situations.

One will become broken and be scarred the other, initially broken, but find healing and renewing.

I am sure you can think of such people.

Someone looses a child and they never recover from it.

Another person loses a child and they become a driving force to prevent it from happening again to someone else.

You may have heard about MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

This is a Texas based organization was founded on September 5, 1980, in California by Candace Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver.

There is at least one MADD office in every state of the United States and at least one in each province of Canada.[6]

These offices offer victim services and many resources involving alcohol safety.

MADD has claimed that drunk driving has been reduced by half since its founding.

We have a couple on our Pastoral Charge - Dave and Maureen Jenkins who lost their daughter Maggie to brain cancer and have become advocates for research into childhood cancer.

Candice Lightner, Dave and Maureen Jenkins and hundreds of others could have let devastating life situations keep them in a pit of despair.

Instead God used them to help others to deal with their life scars.

Working to heal our life’s scars

There are many who develop life scars and manage to move beyond the devastating effects of those scars.

Unfortunately, there are far too many who may move beyond the scars, but continue to carry them with them.

Many go on to do helpful things and meaningful things because of the scars, but they continue in spite of doing meaningful things do them still being scared.

They never really heal.

The pain of their problem continues to eat away at them.

We as Christians we know that like anyone else we suffer life’s problems, small and large, but we do not have to let them colour our life in a negative way.

We know that we can heal through them.

William Barclay a New Testament Scholar says this.

The answer to this suffering lies in endurance.

The Greek word for this endurance is hupomone.

The keynote of hupomone is not grim, bleak acceptance of trouble but triumph.

It describes the spirit which can not only accept suffering but triumph over it.

Someone once said to a sufferer, “Suffering colours life, doesn’t it?”

The sufferer replied, “Yes, but I propose to choose the colour.”

As the silver comes purer from the fire, so the Christian can emerge finer and stronger from hard days.

The Christian is the athlete of God whose spiritual muscles become stronger from the discipline of difficulties.

William Barclay, ed., The Letters to the Corinthians, The Daily Study Bible Series (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster John Knox Press, 1975), 170.

We can choose to let Life’s scars colour how we see life or with the help of Jesus we can choose the colour.

Stop for a moment, perhaps you regardless of how old you are have allowed a problem, a calamity, a devastating situation shape your life and hamper you from experiencing the kind of life God intends for you or perhaps you know someone who is in such a situation.

You look at them and know that what they have faced is eating away at them, destroying their life.

We also know others who have chosen not to let the scars determine their lives.

And we know people who not only have chosen not to let let the scars determine their lives, but have truly moved from scars to healing.

Calling on God’s Comfort

Calling on God’s Comfort

We as Christians know that not only is this possible, but it is God’s plan that we find healing from life’s scars.

In our passage today verse 4 starts off by saying that God comforts us in all our affliction.

The word affliction in Greek is thlipis. in secular Greek it literally meant to press, squash, hem in.

This is exactly what life’s problems can do to us and make life unbearable.

But listen to this word in the context of the passage.

Our God is the God of mercy and comfort.

He does not leave us to wallow in our pain.

He comes along side us (if we allow him) as we go through hard times, and if necessary picks us up and carries us when we don’t think we can go on.

Do you remember that verse in the 23rd Psalm

The valley of the shadow of death literally means the valley of deep darkness, black, impenetrable gloom.

But note the verse does not end with our walking in this darkness alone.

It declares a glorious promise - you are not alone in the darkness and you do not have to stay in the darkness.

God is there to comfort you.

William Barclay again says,

Christian comfort is the comfort which brings courage and enables a man to cope with all that life can do to him

William Barclay, ed., The Letters to the Corinthians, The Daily Study Bible Series (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster John Knox Press, 1975), 171.

Barclay misses the fullness of God’s comfort.

God’s comfort not only brings courage and enables us to cope.

God’s comfort lifts us beyond coping to healing.

It’s like a person who had been diagnosed with cancer.

It is totally different to be told that you will be helped to cope with your cancer and that you are healed from your cancer.

God brings healing.

Helping others heal life’s scars

Helping others heal life’s scars

We can’t end here.

It gives only half the story about how to heal life’s scars.

It’s fine to say that if we turn to God he will heal us from lives scars.

But how do we just pray and zap we are healed.

Of course that possible, but not usually the way God works.

God works in community.

The church is many things, but it is one very important thing - a healing community.

Anyone who says that they have or are going though life scar free are either in denial or lying.

Life scars are inevitable.

They are part of our spiritual brokenness.

So God has given us the Church Community as our support system.

Friends it was not accident that the 12 Step program of AA was based on Bill W’s experience with what was called the Oxford Group lead by Rev. Samuel Shoemaker and Episcopal minister in the US.

The fundamental ideas of AA - supporting one another through the crisis and devastating effects of alcohol was christian based.

Listen to this.

now hear this clearly and deep in your soul, God...

God puts flesh and blood on his comfort.