Video Transcript: Phrase Five

I want to welcome you back. We're dealing with the Serenity Prayer. And we're  going to be looking at phrase five accepting hardship, as the path way to peace.  accepting hardship is the pathway to peace that doesn't get. One point being  made here is that life is hard. And it is. I mean, it has great things. Maybe you're  married, you have a family, and you have a great family, a great marriage, or  maybe you don't, even if you do, it's not only easy, the church, the church is not  easy. I just retired from my my church this past December. And I can tell you,  after many 30, some years, leading the church it's not easy. It's rewarding, but  it's hard. Marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. Trying to make a difference in the  lives of the people around and trying to help people. I mean, you want to help  someone. And that can be hard as well, because maybe they don't want your  help. Or maybe, you know, they take your help and they, you know, throw it  away on bad decisions. Accepting hardship, as the pathway that there's, there's  someplace where you want to go, it's a good place. But it's going to be difficult to get there. It's like a journey. It's like getting a canoe or a boat, and you're going  down the river. And ultimately, you want to get to this glorious lake at the end of  this river. But along the way, there's twists and turns and there's places where  the water is rough. There might be even a waterfall that you have to navigate  around here, it take the canoe out and hike around the the waterfall, there's  obstacles in the path to the thing that you really want. And that's true about  almost everything. You want your kids one day to grow up and get married, have great families, Christian homes, but the path to get there is a path of discipline of work of hard work. So that's what this phrase five is talking about. Well, how are  people unwilling to accept hardship? So the prayer is saying, Lord, help me be  willing to accept the hardship. But often, it's usually the thing we're asking for,  usually, the thing we're asking of God, is the thing that we find difficult to do.  That's why we're coming to God and asking him. So people are often unwilling  to accept hardship. So instead of accepting the hardship, they blame, you know, my life is hard because of you. My life is hard because of my boss. My life is  hard. My church life is hard because of the pastor or because the leaders, they  don't recognize my talents or gifts. My marriage is hard, but because of my  spouse, my spouse is making it hard. You know, my spouse is never  encouraging, never says an encouraging word. My spouse doesn't pitch in my  spouse doesn't, you know, you know, pick up the burden of the household. It all  falls on me. Or we blame our children, you know, my family would be great. You  know, if my children actually listened to the things that I said, you know, I do all  this hard work for the family, but then my kids don't, you know, pitch in, they  don't help. And we end up blaming things. Instead of accepting that it's difficult.  We have this notion that life shouldn't be difficult. And if it is its somebody's fault, and it's not our fault, see, what happens when we end up blaming is we don't do anything. It's difficult and it's someone else's fault. And there's nothing I can do.  And we're done. Or denial, denial, we deny the hardship so life can be extremely

difficult. Instead of accepting it, and then dealing with it, what we end up doing is we cover it over. Life is hard. So I'm just not gonna face the difficulty of my  marriage. Okay, my marriage is less than good, but I don't want to think about  that. So what do I do? I spend my time working. I'm like in that sort of a  workaholic often. instead of dealing with life, they, they pour all their frustrations  and all their energy into work, so they don't have to think about anything else. Or you know, today with mass media, you can spend your whole day on mass  media you know texting and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube videos and  you can get lost, I've done that, you know, are you going to YouTube thing you're watching. And then there's suggestions for the next one and the next one, the  next one, the next thing, you know, three hours goes by, and you traveled all  over the universe looking at things. It's all very interesting. But I haven't made  any progress on the difficulties of my life. I'm like escaping the difficulties of my  life. And I'm using, you know, the drug of mass media, or drugs themselves to  help you cope, you know, you don't think about all these difficulties, you're under the influence of something else. Or, number three, how are people are willing to  accept hardship, avoid anything difficult. that you know, they're just going to  avoid it? What Why should I take a class? You know, that's difficult. I gotta take  classes and quizzes and, you know, and trying to improve myself, it's easier just  to not do any of those things. Avoid difficult things. Avoid anything that's hard. So people avoid relationships, or they, they avoid taking responsibility for anything. I think a lot of young people are struggling with that today. It's easier just to sit in  your basement and play video games than to accept responsibility for your life  or for your future and for your family's future and for your marriage and for your  relationship to God taking responsibility for your relationship to God. Talking,  listening repeatedly, prayer Bible with God. It takes personal responsibility to  have a relationship with God. But, but instead, people are like, No, I'm not going  to do anything. I'm just going to go to a church where the pastor does everything for you. I don't want to go through, I don't want to have, I don't want to have to  go through the difficulty of owning my own faith. I'll just rely on the faith of the  pastor, a lot of people do this. They go to a big church, where the pastor is really talented, gifted. And we just love vicariously through him. He is, you know, the  guy walking with God for me. He does all the study, he does all the difficult  lifting. I just sit back, and you know, listen, and hopefully, he can fix all my  problems. Or my wife can fix my problems or my friends can fix my problems or  the leaders in church can fix my problems. Instead of grabbing life is hard.  That's the challenge. That's the challenge God gives us life is hard. Thank God  it's hard. We have stuff to do. And it's, it's rewarding stuff. And when when you  get through something that's difficult, with the help of God, you know, I did  something about this difficult thing. Why do we have to endure hardship Geness. Genesis 3 Adam said, because you listened to your wife this is to Adam God  said because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit from the tree about 

which I commanded you. You must not eat from it. Cursed is the ground  because of you. And through painful toil, you'll eat the food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of  the field by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food. Thorns and thistles in  your life. I think of thorns and thistles in one's life like things that happen that  make all the effort that you put towards some projects worthless. For example, I  showed the very beginning of this class, I showed a picture of you know of the  beautiful sunrise in Georgia in the place that my brother and I fixed up as a  retreat center. About five weeks after we spent five weeks fixing it all up. A  hurricane went through which caused the tornado and it ripped our entire roof  right off. So all the painting, the careful stuff, everything that I did especially in  the one row where I worked really hard to make it all really nice, all for nothing.  you know, I'm trying to grow this beautiful garden and I you know putting a lot of  care and effort. You know, God makes us creative and I apply all those God  given things to this situation. And then five weeks later, it all gets literally blown  away. That's, that's frustrating. And it's easy to say, you know, I'm not doing that  again. But that's, that's what sin is sin makes, can make things frustrating. And,  you know, you have a sense of making progress, and then sin comes and wipes out that progress, but never give up. You know, because God doesn't waste any  of those things. Okay? The difficulties and the hardships, even when it seems  like you know, we made, you know, progress, and then all of a sudden, we find  ourselves right in the same place. And it feels, life can feel that way. You spent  18 years trying to raise your children to believe, live a certain way. And then after 18 years of all your efforts, they turn around and walk the other direction. Like all that effort, all that time, where's the fruit. The fruit is yet to come. Hang in there  with the hardships in your life. So, you know, we have these built in hardships  because of sin. Why do we have to endure hardship Ephesians 6, For our  struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the  authorities against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces  of evil in the heavenly realms. Okay, life is difficult, not only because of what we  see, a hurricane comes and you can see it, you can hear it see the devastating  effects. But there are hurricanes that happened in our lives that we can't figure  out at all. It's like we don't know what's going on in my marriage, what's going on in my family, what's going on with my son or my daughter? What's going on in  my own life, my own relationship to God. And sometimes we don't have a clue.  There's forces at work that we can't even see. But this is our calling. Isn't this  awesome? That God considers us worthy to be in the battle against evil. I mean, life really is this battle between good and evil. And God lets us be participants,  participants in this battle, that we are worthy to be soldiers in the army of Christ.  That's an honor that we have. Hebrews 12 :1-3. Therefore since we are  surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw up everything that  hinders and the sin that so easily entangles okay. Yeah. Because of sin, life is 

hard. The race is hard. very family, you know, making a difference in the  community that you live. But let us run with perseverance. Hang in there, run  with perseverance, the race marked out for us. And how were we going to do  that? That's what the serendipity serenity prayer is all about. fixing our eyes on  Jesus. Who's the pioneer and perfecter of our faith? Again, the Serenity Prayer  is that we're not you know, God, grant me the serenity. This is not serenity that I  muster up that I, you know, contemplate serenity, you know, my whole world is  falling apart, Lord, but I am just gonna, you know, calm myself and close my  eyes and, you know, No, Lord, I need your help with this. I can't just muster  serenity, in the midst of all this chaos. For continuing, continuing, Hebrews 12,  for the joy that was set before him, this is Jesus who that was set before Him,  He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and set down at the right hand of the  throne of God consider him who endured such opposition from sinners. Why?  So that you will not lose hope. Did Jesus endure the cross, he didn't run away  from it. He didn't complain about it. He endured the cross, he faced the difficulty  before him. And then, you know, through God's purpose and God's will, he  accomplished some greater purpose through enduring that hardship. Jesus did  this and he gave us the example, so that we won't lose heart. We, we face  difficulties. We face our own cross, Jesus said, take up your cross daily and  follow Me following Christ is is is a daily hardship. You know Moses, you know  passing the reins to Joshua it's going to take courage, Joshua, this isn't going to  be easy. It's going to take courage to lead these people. It's going to take  courage to be Kingdom people called by God to make a difference in this world.  Hardship is in some ways, the hardships that we face are an honor, that God  God deems us worthy of this hardship. And God is the one that can give us the  faith, give us the resources, give us the courage to face these difficulties and  accomplish the purposes for which he has created us. All right, well, we'll look at the next phrase in the next session.