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.