Sermon Tone Analysis

What to Do in Tough Times

James 1:2–12 LB

Idea from William Crews

On May 22, 1997, at three o’clock in the morning, the doctor came out of the intensive care unit at our local hospital to tell me that our thirty-seven-year-old daughter, Rhonda, had succeeded in doing what she had been trying to do since she was sixteen years of age.

Rhonda was beset with severe depression early in her life.

And at age sixteen for the first time, she took an overdose of prescription drugs, attempting to take her own life.

And in the succeeding twenty-one years, more times than I can count, Rhonda tried over and over and over again to end her life.

That morning at three o’clock the doctor came out to tell me that our daughter was dead.

I went into the room where the body of my daughter lay and said good-bye to the little girl who had always been daddy’s girl, the little girl whom I had held in my arms only hours after she was born.

But she was gone.

Our family was ushered into what was for us a new experience.

As a pastor, I had always been with other people in times like that, and often faced the struggle of knowing exactly what to say or what not to say, but our family had never experienced loss like that.

About three weeks later, the Southern Baptist Convention was meeting in Dallas, Texas, and I had been invited by a friend to preach in his church that Sunday morning.

When he heard about Rhonda’s death, he called and offered to release me from preaching in his church.

I thanked him for his consideration, but I said I would preach again, and it probably would be better if I preached in front of people I did not know.

So I agreed to preach that Sunday morning in his church.

But as I thought about that, I wondered, /What will I preach about this first time since Rhonda’s death?/

Then I remembered a sermon I had prepared in a class at Southwestern Seminary, “What to Do in Tough Times.”

I had preached that sermon many times across the years, and God had always seemed to use it to benefit the people who heard it.

It was something that I knew to be true because it was in Scripture, though I had never actually experienced in my own life.

I realized as I thought through that sermon prepared in a seminary classroom that what I had discovered in that text in seminary many, many years before was something God was trying to do in my life at that very moment.

And I shared on Sunday morning with this church that message and how God was helping me with the toughest time that I had ever faced in my life.

Some of you even now are facing a tough time.

Others of you have, and most of you will.

What I share with you comes from Scripture, but it also comes out of my own experience.

I believe God wants us to handle tough times His way.

One day many years ago in a time when it wasn’t easy to be a Christian, a pastor stood and spoke to a small group of people on that Lord’s day, and here is what he said:

Dear brothers [and sisters], is your life full of difficulties and temptations?

Then be happy, for when the way is rough, your patience has a chance to grow.

So let it grow and don’t try to squirm out of your problems.

For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete.

If you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him, and he will gladly tell you, for he is always ready to give a bountiful supply of wisdom to all who ask him, and will not resent it.

But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to tell you, for a doubtful mind will be as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind; and every decision you then make will be uncertain, as you turn first this way and then that.

If you don’t ask with faith, don’t expect the Lord to give you any solid answers.

A Christian who doesn’t amount to much in this world should be glad, for he is great in the Lord’s sight.

But a rich man should be glad that his riches mean nothing to the Lord, for he will soon be gone, like a flower that has lost its beauty and fades away, withered and—killed by the scorching summer sun.

So it is with rich men.

They will soon die and leave behind all their busy activities.

Happy is the [person] who doesn’t give in and do wrong when he is tempted, for afterwards he will get as his reward the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him (James 1:2–12).

God is doing four things in my life to help me through a tough time.

I. Trials Have a Godly Purpose

First, if I am to get through a tough time, I must agree with God that all trials have a godly purpose in my life.

When I was pastor in Portland, Oregon, our church went through what we preachers would call a time of renewal or a time of revival.

It wasn’t a meeting.

It wasn’t about a person.

It was one of those times when God’s Spirit blows across a congregation, and the kinds of things that God alone can do begin to happen—families put back together and folks being saved whom we had prayed for for many years, and just that wonderful reconciling way in which God’s Spirit moves among His people and does the thing that God alone can do.

As that was happening in our church, I began as the pastor to think, /How did this happen?

What did we do?/

Maybe if I could discover some secret to this thing, I could write a book and become famous.

So as I began to try to analyze that and discover how all this got started, I discovered that it actually started in my own home, and I had been unaware of it.

My wife, Jo Ann, to whom I have been married for forty-six years, was diagnosed about thirty-five years ago with what was called then manic depression.

It is called bipolar disorder now.

It is a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes excessive mood swings.

Persons can be high, or they can be low.

Because they are not balanced, it can go back and forth, and you never know exactly where they are going to be.

And we discovered in Seattle, Washington, that she was manic-depressive.

As a part of the process of dealing with that, someone suggested to her that she read a book.

I went home one day for lunch to our home in Portland, and she said, “I am reading this wonderful book that I think you would enjoy reading.”

I said, “Well, what is it?

I like to read books.”

And she said, “It’s a book by Hannah Smith entitled /The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life./”

“Well,” I said to her rather proudly, “I have that book.

In fact, I have had that book for many, many years.

In fact, I have a hardback copy of that book.”

She had a paperback.

I said, “I’ve not found that book to be particularly interesting.”

And I did what most men do with their wives’ suggestions: I ignored it.

I did not read the book.

I was home for lunch a couple of days later, and she asked, “Have you read that book?”

Well, rather indignantly, I said, “You know, you brought that up several days ago, and I told you then and I will tell you again that I have a hardback copy of that book.

And I have not found that book to be of any particular interest.”

Again, I did what I had done the first time: I did not read the book.

I came home the third time for lunch, and she brought the subject up again.

She said, “Have you read that book?”

Well, I didn’t have to do anything about the indignation.

It was all over me then.

I said, “I’m telling you for the third time.

I have a hardback copy of that book.

And I have not found that book to be particularly interesting.”

She said, “Sit down!

I am going to read it to you.”

She began to read the book to me, and it is a great book if you can get past the first chapter.

Forget the first chapter; get to the second chapter and move on through it.

It was a great book, and out of that book some small groups were formed in our church.

In reading that book, this thing that God was doing in our church began to happen.

My wife liked that book except for one chapter.

It is entitled “Is God in Everything?”

In that chapter, Hannah Smith quotes that little Bible verse that you and I learned in Sunday school that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom.

8:28 KJV).

She said that is more than a Bible verse for kids to learn in Sunday school.

She said that is literally true.

Nothing happens in your life that does not pass through the hands of God.

He has His own purpose for allowing it to take place in your life.

My wife had a hard time with that.

Her father had been murdered when she was five.

Her mother died when she was eight.

She had been pushed from family to family, and here now she was suffering from an illness for which there seemed to be no cure.

She had a hard time believing God had anything good to bring out of that.

But I want to tell you that you will never, ever successfully handle a hard time until you agree with God.

You don’t have to understand God.