Sermon Tone Analysis

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Anger
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Anger
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\\ Ever hear of the “bend-over-back-over toe-hold”?
If you have you must be from Nackawic.
It’s when someone gets you in a hold that there is no escape from.
Try as hard as you will, there is no way out.
Can’t you just visualize it from the name?
I’ve seen that at the High School level.
Elaine and I used to attend wrestling matches at Falconer High School.
The places would be packed.
The conflict on the mat was entertaining but watching the mothers of the combatants was the best.
You could tell the  mother’s of the kid who was on the bottom.
They would be beating their husbands, losing all sense of dignity.
I remember the coaches and other floor officials literally holding mothers back as they would storm the ring to pull someone off their child
 
Sometimes life locks us up in the same way.
In the old “bend-over-back-over toe-hold”.
Try as hard as you might, there’s just no evident way out, you’re pinned to the mat and your mother is no where in sight.
You wish it were as simple as a physical wrestling match.
Paul the apostle, one of the greatest figures in the history of the church, writes a record of his own extremes struggles in 2 Corinthians 1:3-11:
 
/ " Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who* comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.*
For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.
And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia.
We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that *we despaired even of life*.
Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.
*But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.*
*He has* delivered us from such a deadly peril, and *he will* deliver us.
*On him we have set our hope* that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers.
Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many."
(2 Corinthians 1:3-11, NIV) *[1]* /
 
I think that there is great knowledge and awareness to be gained when we face life’s “bend-over-back-over toe-holds”.
This struggle that Paul mentions is severe.
/“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia.
We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that *we despaired even of life*.
Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.”/
“. . . .
we despaired even of life.”
The times when life hits us with such force that we ask ourselves whether or not we want to live or whether or not we can endure.
I’ve seen that with some dear folks in particular who have had trouble stacked upon trouble.
They have a Job experience when where all news seems to be bad news and it just doesn’t stop coming.
I think that there may be some insight for us in the scripture that will help us to face the problems that we are currently bound by and perhaps help for those that await us.
1.
*/First of, Paul tells us that He is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles./*
He is ever present and ever active in our lives.
I don’t know about you but I talk a lot to God when I face difficulties.
I breathe prayers constantly.
Some of my prayers are questions as to why I should be facing this or that.
Some are cries for direction as to what steps I should take.
But I feel like the Apollo 13 crew when things go askew and the essence of the cry is: “Houston, we have a problem.”
I watched that movie again a few weeks ago.
It wasn’t a fictional story you know.
This really happened and those in distress were not merely those in the space capsule.
In the control room there were an army of people who were helping the astronauts in peril through every unexpected twist.
I remember the one assignment where they were given a collection of materials available in the space capsule and were instructed to construct a device that would filter the carbon dioxide out of the air so that they could continue to breathe.
I remember watching them labor over the preservation of battery power, calculating which systems to shut down and which were necessary to maintain so that they would be able to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere.
You know there are problems that we have to find our way through in life.
They don’t go away, they have to be navigated.
None of it is fun but life holds those challenges for us.
We have to find answers with what we are given.
God gives us what we need.
With direction we can do much with little.
Often the answers come from what we already have not what we don’t have and God’s role is to “comfort” us or “coach” us through the situations that we encounter.
He will not take away every problem that we face but He will provide “comfort” as we work our way through.
Some of you have been in tight situations before and you have watched and listened and tried to act on His direction and you found your way home.
*/2.
/**/Secondly, he tells us that there is no wasted experience in our lives.
/*
*/“. . .
so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God./*/
For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.
And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”/
He comforts us so that we can be a comfort to others.
I know that there are for me, those areas of deep hurt that have produced in me a passion to help others find their way through pain.
I have a passion for kids whose parent’s divorce.
There are times when divorce happens and I have to say that there are times when it should.
It’s not God’s perfect plan or intention any more than it is the intention of any couple to divorce when they marry.
No one likes divorce and no one wins.
I don’t know what it is like to face that as a spouse.
I want you to know that I feel pain for people who experience it.
But I do know what it is like to experience it as a child in a home where your mother and father are destroying one another day after day.
It is a miserable experience and I have over the years, extended myself to people who are facing this obstacle.
For me the experience of God’s help through that time is something that I want to allow to overflow through my life to others.
And you as well have learned through painful experience and you have felt God’s help and touch in these times.
What you have experienced is meant to be passed on to others.
To partner with God in mission control to reach out to someone else stranded in space.
*/3.
/**/Sometimes we have to be forced to take a step back to find the help that we need./*
/“Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.
*But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”*/
There are times when our trials remind us of our own limits and our limitations.
They provide accurate information about the kind of shape that we are in.
One of the worst things in the world is to be blinded by pride and to overestimate or sufficiency.
I taught Tae Kwon Do for several years.
One of the things that I learned quickly was that earning a black belt did not mean that you could single-handedly take the world on.
It didn’t mean that you could conquer any enemy.
What it taught me was that if someone wanted to damage me physically, they had to want to do it badly enough to get hurt themselves.
I have discovered that most of life’s bullies don’t want to hurt people that bad.
We used to say that when you were a white belt you were nothing, and when you were a black belt you were a dangerous nothing.
The bottom line in TKD was that a person who earned a black belt had mastered the basic skills and techniques so that with continued practice they would find continued improvement.
But you could always see the ones who had the attitude that once they earned the black belt, they had it together.
As I read about the life of Christ, I am reminded that he was continually in a pattern of engagement and withdrawal.
He would minister to people intensely and then try to disappear – to become inaccessible.
I think this was out of necessity.
You can only grab the bull by the horns and hang on for so long.
The bull will outlast you if you try to outmuscle it.
The same is true with our problems if we don’t learn this same pattern of engagement and withdrawal.
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