Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.45UNLIKELY
Fear
0.12UNLIKELY
Joy
0.54LIKELY
Sadness
0.59LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.74LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.65LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.7LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.92LIKELY
Extraversion
0.08UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.9LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.5LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Welcome to our second in our series called ‘What would Jesus say’… and this week we are thinking about ‘ what would Jesus say to someone who is struggling’.
1 - Tiered and Weary
I was thinking about a good illustration to help us think about the idea of ‘struggling’ and then I remembered that it was my wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago.
The link between marriage and struggling is entirely coincidental, honestly.
I want to tell you about our honeymoon...
February,
Lake District,
snow, blizzard.
Reasonably equipped, knew what I was doing.
But it got me thinking that life is a bit like
...being lost in some remote mountains.
you’ve walked for hours,
it’s cold and it’s snowing.
Night is not far away,
and you have no idea where you are,
or how to find shelter or safety, let alone get home.
Your mobile phone is dead.
You have blisters,
no food left,
no tent,
the map has blown away,
your dog is injured and needs carrying.
At this point you wish you had a Jack Russel , not a St Bernard.
The only thing you can do it painfully trudge in one direction,
just blindly hoping that you’ll find a house or road,
rather than a cliff or a flooded river before it’s too late.
But if you’re honest, you have no hope at all.
If you are visiting us today, and you are struggling with life, perhaps life feels a bit like that.
Lost, with no hope.
Or perhaps you are fairly regular here, but you don’t profess to follow Jesus, but life is a struggle for you as well.
Or perhaps you are regular here who does follow Jesus.
Well we too are probably struggling with life in some way or another.
You see, when it comes to struggerling, we are all friends here.
We share that common curse of humanity.
We all experience different struggles,
disease
abuse
depression
parenting
not being able to have children
debt
addiction
abandonment
bereavement
blisters, cold and an injured dog on a mountain.
or simply the hard hard grind of life.
We all seemingly have different thresholds,
But we all share a common understanding that life brings suffering.
Perhaps your life is like being lost in some remote mountains.
We’ve walked for hours, it’s cold and it’s snowing.
Night is not far away, and we have no idea where we are, or how to find shelter or saftey.
Our mobile phone is dead.
We have blisters, no food left, no tent, the map has blown away, your dog is injured and need carrying.
You wish you had a pug, not a St Bernard at this point.
Perhaps some of you have not experienced too much yet,
but if there is one testimony common to all humanity,
The only thing you can do it painfully trudge in one direction, just blindly hoping that you’ll find a house or road, rather than a cliff or a flooded river before it’s too late.
it is that struggles will come your way.
And I think there are 2 ways main way we deal with it:
1 - We surrender to it - admit that we are at a loss as to how to defeat suffering.
We know it’s hard,
we are often at our wits end.
We desperately hope that one day it will all get better,
but ultimately,
we know even if it does,
something else will begin a whole new world of suffering.
And at the end of the day,
we’ll die from something anyway.
We are weary and tired.
It might even be escapism, perhaps mentally or even physically, pursuit of fitness (((((, mediitation, sport?, fix one thing at a time but confident of victory (IVF, surgery etc)))))
Some of us have perhaps even turned to additions to dull the mental or physical pain.
Some have simply decided life is rubbish.
Many of us will simply strive to deal with one suffering at a time,
hoping to make it though to the next problem.
That doesn’t sounds as weak as it may at first.
This I think is how most of the world deals with suffering.
2 - We believe we have overcome it - this is to have the answers,
have that positive state of mind that we can win this battle of suffering.
I don’t mean the one off suffering,
like we just mentioned,
dealing with one thing at a time,
I mean we have conquered suffering.
We’re above it.
We might believe ‘love can fix everything’.
Or, ‘it’s all in the mind’.
It’s the hight of positive thinking and the self help mantras.
You can be anything you want to be,
overcome anything you face,
simply by believing you can, or have.
It’s the spiritual escapism side of yoga,
that empties the mind of this world and allows you freedom.
It’s meditation that connects you with a mystical side of life,
to escape real life.
or it’s religion that promises a wonderful life.
I wonder which category best describes you?
1 - Have you surrendered to struggles, dealing as best you can (or not) with each as they come, but knowing you will never be free, you are weary and would love some rest for your soul.
2 - Have believe you have overcome struggles, you are free and rested.
I’d suggest that most of us are in category 1,
and even those who think (or would like to be in catagory 2)
have found their struggles keep coming.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9