Perceiving the Past, Perceiving Our Future: Part Three
Perceiving God’s God Work Right Now!
Nehemiah 2:17-20; Luke 14:16-24
Central Presbyterian Church, June 17, 2007
Rev. Dr. Thomas Boone

Twenty-three years ago I sat in a large arena with 19,000 other college students mesmerized by Billy Graham, and inspired by his words and the work of the Spirit in my life at that time to turn from a career in law to a career in full time ministry. This week, I sat in my family room listening to him again equally mesmerized by words that were the most inspiring of my week. When his wife, Ruth, slipped into a coma he said to the public that she was sliding home, but those aren’t the words I’m talking about. When asked about his relationship with Ruth through this time of illness, Billy Graham described it as being the closest it had been in their 60 years of marriage. Even though their individual illnesses forced them to sleep in different beds during the past several years he had never been closer to her, known her more intimately, shared more with her as a partner and as a best friend, than he had with her lately. When tragedy strikes a person of deep faith, he only sees God’s goodness. Humbling, isn’t it?

Billy Graham has reminded me of an important aspect of faith in this life. It’s not always obvious, but even when life seems more like a fight than it does a picnic God’s goodness to us abounds. Those things that we may experience tragically as humans are opportunities to see God working as people of faith. But, I must admit to you that it’s hard to say this without grimacing because of the pain that accompanies these words.

A woman developed an aggressive form of breast cancer at a young age. She had four children and a husband who loved her dearly. A year after the initial diagnosis she was in a hospital bed, about to be discharged home and into hospice care. There was nothing more that anyone could do. She died one month later, despite the prayers of thousands for physical healing. How does someone find God’s goodness in this?

I don’t believe in preaching sermons that are pie-in-the-sky fluffy things that just try to make people feel good about themselves and their situations. Life’s tough, and sometimes the words we need to hear should be as tough as life. When we find ourselves wondering where God is or when we’ve stopped being able to perceive the good thing that God is doing in our lives that’s a sure sign that we’ve lost our focus. It’s not what we want to hear, I know, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Verse 19 of Isaiah 43 states a truth, and then asks a question that will be viable for as long as there are humans on the earth. The truth is this: God is right now doing a new thing in us. The question is this: ‘Do you not perceive it?’ The question that God is asking assumes that if we can’t perceive God’s work then something’s wrong, not with God, but with our focus.

I’ve known circumstances where anger was justified, and I’ve allowed anger to cross over to rage. I know what it means to lose my Jesus-focus on account of a loved one being wounded, or because finances have become too overbearing, or even because I’ve been forced to consider choices that when I was a kid I never conceived I’d have to make. I know that I’m not alone here, which is why when I say that what was good for me to remember is equally good for you. When I’ve lost sight of God’s work, it’s because I’ve allowed the obstacles to block my view.

Sometimes those obstacles arise because God acts in a way different than how we think He should. Just because God is acting and doing something new in our lives doesn’t mean that circumstances change.

A bomber pilot from World War II sat with me over coffee one day and we talked about some of the stories of his life. He was not a Christian when he was flying, and he admitted to me with a smile while shaking his head that he was a bit on the rough side in those days. On one late evening after they had dropped their bombs over Berlin and were headed back to the base, he told me, how the squadron was attacked by more fighters than he had ever seen in a dogfight. The air battle he described was intense, and he lost more than half his crew. Several bombers were knocked out of the sky, and his barely made it back. I asked him how he made it out of the fight, and he told me that it was God. He told me that He had a heart-to-heart with God in the middle of that fight and asked that there be someway for him to make it out, and then he saw a point of light on the horizon and felt like he needed to head that direction. It wasn’t until years later when he became a Christian that he thanked God for that light on the horizon that was his way out of the worst air battle he would ever be part of.

I’ll share one story that someone relayed to me a couple of weeks ago after my sermon that introduced this series. A group of enemy soldiers was pursuing a man so he ducked into a cave and looked out to see where his soon-to-be captors were. He prayed fervently that God would rescue him, thinking that God might use some tragedy to strike them down. Nothing happened. He saw a spider weaving a web across the cave, and the soldiers kept coming toward him. He prayed more, that God would save him. And, still they came toward him with no sudden tragedy striking them. He watched the spider casually work at its web and he feared for his life. He begged God to rescue him from his sure capture or death. Just as the soldiers were on top of the cave some of them looked right at where he was laying, and they passed on. Then he realized what had happened and how God had worked. With the spider’s web across the cave, the soldiers knew that no one could’ve gone into the cave so they passed by it.

In both of these stories God’s good work wasn’t to remove the circumstances, it was to preserve these people through their grim circumstances. You see, whereas the evil one intends to use life against us, God intends to use that same stuff for good. The evil one would enjoying nothing more than to take the tragedies, hardships, anger, and fear we encounter in life and use them to destroy us and our faith in Jesus.

This is the story of Nehemiah. When you drive by a construction site you’ll likely see one guy there who has all the charts in front of him. He’s got a cigarette case in his pocket, his skin is weathered and tanned, his hands large, and he looks seasoned by the hard work of managing his construction company. That was Nehemiah. Nehemiah wasn’t some scholar or priest, he was a man of the earth who knew how to build things, which is why the people came to him and enjoined him to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls. He wasn’t a military man or a politician, he just knew that God had used people around him to give him a vision to rebuild the walls of God’s holy city and give His people an identity again. It was a high calling given to a man who, to look at him, would not appear as a particularly holy man. There’s a bit of Nehemiah in each of us.

None of us feels particularly called to do God’s highest calling. What distinguishes Nehemiah was that he perceived that God wanted to do a new thing and for whatever reason had called him to the task, so he simply followed. In the book of Nehemiah we read that he faced ridicule, budget problems, internal squabbles, and time constraints. He had to perceive God’s good work in the midst of equipment problems, weather situations, and threats from enemies. But he clung to the promise that despite what was going on around him God intended to do a good thing.

You may not be a Nehemiah building a wall, but each of you face a problem that threatens to overwhelm you and drown you in a sea of chaos that blinds you from God’s good work that’s going on right now. The tools that the evil one uses against us are all the same, it’s just the circumstances that are different from one person to another. Do you struggle to fight off fear and it’s children: anxiety and anger? Do you struggle in the daily battle against self-loathing or feelings of worthlessness? These are powerful allies against the peace of God, the hope we have in Jesus, and vision that the Spirit gives us to see that God is working right now. When we can’t see God working, the problem isn’t that God has stopped, it’s that we’ve allowed these tools of the evil one to get in the way.

As a result, we tend to make excuses for why we aren’t keeping our focus on Jesus. In the passage from Luke 14 we have a picture of a God who just wants to bless us. He’s created this party for us, but rather than accept it, we make excuses why we can’t participate. Maybe you don’t have oxen that you need to try out, or maybe you’re not newly married, like the people in the story, but I’m sure you’ve made your fair share of excuses, at least I know I have. Maybe its bankruptcy or divorce. Maybe it’s a spouse who has cheated on us, or we’re just too busy. Maybe we use our kids as an excuse. Whatever it is, it’s wrong. God wants to bless you, and sometimes we’d rather wallow in our misery than experience the party. When that happens, we’ve lost our Jesus-focus. And you know what? It’s easy to do, I’ve had it happen plenty.

So how do we sustain a Jesus-focus when there’s plenty in life that keeps up the barricades between us and God? I’ll share with you what has been shared with me, and these are the three P’s: prayer, promise, and perseverance. The most important thing you can do to get yourself refocused on Jesus is to surround yourself with prayer warriors. Often we’ll go through something and don’t have the energy to pray, but that’s when we need people who pray sacrificially for us. Surround yourself with people who believe in Jesus, and who will pray for you whenever you come to mind.

The next most important thing you can do is to “Pick a Promise.” Scripture is laden with promises, and some of them are going to ring truer for you at certain times than at others. So pick one, and make it your constant recitation. One I’ve used typically is “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.” Another one is “God works out all things for good for those who love God.” Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that we have a God who has promised us things, so pick one and cling to it like you’ve never clung to words before.

The third thing to do is to persevere. God doesn’t make life easier for us because we’re His children, He just provides us with a way through it that won’t destroy us. Perseverance is hard; it’s gutsy; and it’s not for the light-hearted. When life comes at us hard, a persevering person will say what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4: One of the dearest passages for me is from 2 Corinthians 4. I may be “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” As people who persevere we say to the evil one: give us your best shot, or your worst, because with our God by our side we will be the victor.

Speaking of victors I want to let you know what happened to the man whose wife died of breast cancer. I found out years later that he remarried, and now through his business success he has become one of the larger donors to breast cancer research that has subsequently led to the successful treatment of many women who face this hardship. He provided a testimony to a men’s retreat in CA where he lives that his faith had never been more alive than it was during his wife’s cancer, and his story has brought many men to the Lord.

No matter what it may look like to you, “I am doing a new thing in you,” God says. The question though is “can you not perceive it?” Hallelujah, for there is a way to perceive it. Amen.