Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn. And whether you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform or watching on our YouTube channel at ForTheGospel, I'm so glad and thankful that you joined me for this episode. It is week two of the epic summer sermon series. I want to give you road trip worthy messages that will encourage you in your summer. And this one is going to minister to you deeply. It did for me. So wherever your summer travels take you, the truth is coming with you. This is how to stand strong in stressful times. Delivered by Dr. Charles Swindall, affectionately known as Pastor Chuck or Chuck Swindall, longtime pastor of Stone Briar Community Church, and the president and founder of Insight for Living. This message was preached over a decade ago. And he addresses life's unavoidable pressures. And let me tell you, it could have been preached 50 years ago. It's still as applicable as ever today. Whether it's global unrest, personal trials, challenges you or I are going through. Especially as we make our way through these summer months. When you think about the secret to this, it's going to be really obvious. It's about storing God's word in our hearts, resting in his sovereignty, and leaning on the fellowship of other believers. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, this one is for you. Let's dive in with Pastor Chuck Swindahl and his message titled How to Stand Strong in Stressful Times.
SPEAKER_02I saw Gene Merrill walk up here a while ago, and I realized he's the one who parked beside me this morning. I was sitting in my pickup going over my stuff for this morning, and I looked over, and here was a guy in a baseball cap. Stepped out of his car. I thought he was second base for the New York Yankees when he's walked out there for the 1949 team that played so well. Oh my. Well, if you never forget anything else, I hope you won't forget the sound of singing at Chaeffer Chapel. It's like no other place on the planet. And you take that with you when you leave as a living and vibrant, I hope, vibrant memory of your years at the school. You're sitting where many of us before you have sat. In fact, while driving here this morning, I did a little math and realized it was 48 years ago, at this time, I was beginning my first year at the school. The faculty was much smaller, uh, just as bright, but they were smaller in number, and uh the student body was about 340, as I recall. And um so you couldn't hide. I mean, you were just out there. Uh I remember they accepted me on probation my first year. I was sort of slow academically and uh didn't have all the stuff that is expected of an up-and-coming minister in the making. I was fresh out of the Marine Corps. Uh and so it takes a year on probation to get all the dams and hells out of your vocabulary after you've been in the Marine Corps all that time. Well, at least all the dams. You can use the hells in your preaching, but you I remember I remember Dr. Campbell saying to me as I was going through the process of being registered and and ultimately accepted by the grace of God, he said, uh, you know, young man, we I was sitting there about 75 pounds lighter and a flat top, and my wife sitting beside me, and I'm shaking. He said, We expect you to give this your best. I said, Yes, sir. I planned to do with it. I I promise. And I thought he was going to take blood next. Anyway, he looked at me over the top of his glasses. He said, You know, there are two or three other men that would like to have the seat you're going to be occupying. And uh I said, yes, sir, I know. And um here I am all these years later, and I look back, and I have to tell you, Scout's honor, there's hardly a week that passes that I don't deliberately pause and give thanks for my training at this school. Nobody asks me to say that, nobody promotes that kind of thing. I tell you that from these years in ministry. Sometime I go to passages like Deuteronomy 8, verse 2, you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you, to put you to the test, to know what was in your heart, whether you'd keep his word or not. As the years pass in your life, you will have the opportunity to go through the same three gates in your reflection. Have you been humbled? Are you being tested? And how's your heart? Now, this comes as no surprise to anyone in this room or in the rooms that are watching by closed circuit television. It comes as no surprise to hear that you are in the crosshairs of the adversary's scope. He has one great goal, and that's to bring you down. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows you better than your partner in life, he knows you better than the parents who reared you. He has made a study of you. He knows you in your weakest moment. And coward that he is, knowing he's a defeated foe, he will take advantage of you, especially in your days of weakness. He has done that in my life. He's still doing that. This was the worst summer of my life. We went through tests that we've never gone through before. I don't ask for pity. I simply declare that so you will know. You never get to the place where you are above the fray, or you have sort of arrived with an invisible shield around you that keeps the enemy's darts away. He despises what you are learning to love. He hates the God you serve and the Christ you preach. And if he could possibly discourage you, even in your training years, there will be applause all over that hellish place where he and the demons will ultimately go. So while I applaud your decision to begin your semester and to study at this great place, at the feet of the people of whom the world is not worthy. Hebrews 11, 38. You have the chance to study deeply great theological thoughts, learn the languages, go through the rigors and discipline. That's all part of the training. I hope you will remember the goal of your enemy is the opposite of yours. That's to cut your legs out from under you and bring you down to a place of disqualification. So stay at it. Now I've learned over the years that one of his favorite places to attack is in times of stress. And this place breeds stress. It just breeds it. We had profs tell us when we were in school, you know, when you get out of here, the stress will be even greater. That's a croc. It can't get greater than it is in here. Here you have the deadlines, you have the demands, you are being graded, you are being watched, you are accountable, you are visible out there. You can hide and fake it and get two or three great sermons and preach them all over the country and get away with it. But I can tell you the stress will still be there for various reasons. And so today I decided to address it. I decided to talk about how to stand strong in stressful times. I chose the one who could sit for the portrait better than any other I find in the scriptures, aside from Job, and that's the great apostle. I'd like you to turn to the last letter and the last chapter of the letter he wrote. That would be the fourth of 2 Timothy. And I want to pull a section out that we'll focus our thoughts on, but I want to set the stage for it with a little background. The verses I'm looking at with you are verses 9 through 18. 9 through 18 of 2 Timothy chapter 4. I'm not the first to say that when you look at the letter of 2 Timothy, you're reading dungeon talk. Man is bearded, wrinkled, bruised, barefoot, and cold. If you ever go to Rome, get away from the tour guide long enough to find your way to the Mamertine dungeon. And stoop over and crawl down and sit on that floor. It's even better now than it was then. Back then it was dark and dank, depressing. And the aged apostle has reached the end, and he's full of memories. He's reflecting on the years the Lord has taken him through ministry to people all over. And so in his thoughts, he writes these words to Timothy. By the way, what is before him is an inescapable journey to a beheading. James Stalker, the Scottish theologian and biographer of yesteryear, toward the end of the 19th century, has written a fine work on the life and the letters of Paul, and I draw a paragraph or two from his writings. In all history, there is not a more startling illustration of the irony of human life than this scene of Paul at the Bar of Nero. On the judgment seat, clad in the imperial purple, sat a man who in a bad world had attained the eminence of being the very worst and meanest being in it. A man stained with every crime, the murderer of his own mother, of his wives, and of his best benefactors, a man whose whole being was steeped in every nameable and unnamable vice. That body and soul of him were, as someone said at the time, nothing but a compound of mud and blood. And in the prisoner's dock stood the best man the world contained. His hair whitened with labors for the good of men and the glory of God. Such was the occupant of the seat of justice, and such the man who stood in the place of the criminal. Picture it in your mind.
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SPEAKER_02R. Glover has added a succinct statement that sort of says it all as he portrays the irony of history. The day was to come when men would call their dogs Nero and their sons Paul. But at this time and in this place, the dog sits on the throne. And the greatest of men on earth sat awaiting death. I call that a stressful time. There are no parades, there is no band, there is no music, there are few friends. There was a man alone, if he had a candle under that light, finishing his hours in a dungeon, knowing he would never escape with his life. So, with that as the setting, I turn your attention to some of the things I find within and between the lines that help all of us handle stress. So the enemy doesn't win a victory. Paul writes in verse 9, to the man he loves who is in his early 40s, has traveled with Paul, has loved Paul, has been mentored by Paul. Paul says to him, Make every effort to come to me soon. A little later he writes those very emotional words, come before winter. Kent Hughes, in his fine book on the letters of Timothy and Titus, adds that that would have taken Timothy about five months to journey from where he was to where Paul was. I think he immediately, upon getting the letter, began his journey. The first thing I want to point out is that you stay close to at least one friend when the stress level is high. Write that down. The reason I ask you to do that is because in the months to come you will find yourself, trust me, increasingly more isolated. This chapel will begin slowly but surely to empty. Little by little the crowds will dissipate. Little by little, even faculty members will be absent. Little by little, the blows, the demands, the requirements, the workload will take its toll on you. The worst possible thing you could do is to close off your friendship. Just as you needed friends in your university years, just as you needed them in your high school years, you really need them now that you're engaged in a work that will, by the very nature of the work, isolate you. Everything about my responsibility tends to push me to be alone. To do the kind of work in my study, I study alone. To do the kind of thinking that this responsibility or series of responsibilities requires calls for time alone. There's nothing wrong with time alone. There's something wrong when that's all you have. You need a friend. Why? It will help keep you accountable. A word I never heard once in my four years at Doddle Seminary. But now, thank God you hear it a lot. You need to be engaged in spiritual formation. You need to be involved in learning how to relate. No one is going to ask what your score was in Hebrew when you're out. Nobody is going to check on how well you did in your theology classes, or for that matter, how high you graduated in your graduating class. Those things are important, but they are not the things that will mark your ministry. If you're not careful, you will make those things a higher priority than a friendship with even one close friend. Don't let that happen. At the end of his life, knowing it would require months of travel, realizing he could really make it on his own, he had the Lord, and Luke was there as well, he says to Timothy, Come. I miss you. I need you. Hopefully, through these four years, and for some of you it's three years, for others it's one more year, and you're out. You will cultivate at least one close friendship that will go with you. Hopefully, more than one. More than one. So stay close to at least one friend. Verse 10. Why does he ask Timothy to come? Look for yourself. The connective is an explanatory connective. Because for one who was once close to me is no longer. Demas. Having loved this present world, has deserted me, gone to Thessalonica, Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. I want to say this carefully, but I think it will help you because when you are disappointed by those who were once close to you, it will easily be a time of bitterness for you. So my word of counsel from this section where Demas has left him interesting term in the original, having loved this now age. There was something that was alluring to Demas that pulled him away from the stringent, demanding role of serving alongside Paul. And he just sort of slipped into an easier life in Thessalonica. It doesn't say that he defected the faith, it just says he left Paul. He left him when Paul really needed him. So the counsel I draw from it is get over those who disappoint you. Your ministry will be strewn with the litter of people who disappoint you. I could name three dozen today. And without much effort. This is going to happen again. So while I want close friends, I must realize some ultimately will drift away. If I'm not careful, their drift will so disappoint me that it will affect my ministry. It will soften the blow of my voice and weaken the conviction of my heart. Especially as I try as best I can to draw them back. Demas decided to leave. For whatever reason, we're not told here or anywhere else. There was just a spiritual erosion, silent and subtle. And the next thing Paul knew, Demas was gone. People who walk away usually don't announce their departure. They just quietly leave. Not everyone can handle life when it becomes. To ministry leadership. Get over those who disappoint you. Paul continues saying, only Luke is with me, then adds, if you will, on your way, will you pick up Mark, meaning John Mark, and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service. Now that makes me smile. I'm glad to read Paul here at the end of his life saying, make sure Mark comes. Remember the day when he stood toe-to-toe with Barnabas and they duked it out verbally? Barnabas said he failed us when we were at Pamphylia, but he was young, inexperienced, immature. He was afraid and he saw the rigors as only getting greater. Ultimately, it would have been too much for him. And he sailed back home. Paul said in return, we'll not take a man with us who defected. We need those who were strong of spirit. Now, in your heart and in mine, when we kick in the compassion, we go with Barnabas. And uh and we remember our Savior's words that have to do with coming to him, we who were weak and overburdened, and he will give us rest. And we we want to say to Paul, listen to Barnabas. On the other hand, we understand Paul. He could have even quoted a verse of scripture out of Proverbs. Confidence in an unfaithful man in a time of trouble is like a broken tooth and a foot out of joint. There. Barnabas would have to listen and blink and realize he was a man in whom we lost confidence. And so the story continues. Barnabas and Paul separate. Paul chooses Silas and travels north. Barnabas gets on the boat and sets sail for Crete, his homeland. With his cousin, John Mark. His arm around him, telling him there'll be a better day. This is the better day. Paul at the end, under stress, is big enough to lift up and encourage one who has recovered from a fall. That's the third thing I want you to remember. As your stress grows, as ministry pressures intensify, some of those who have disappointed you will in fact defect. And it will be your great, great temptation, I know what I'm talking about, to write them off. And to remember their fall rather than realize God's grace is at work in their lives. And you will forget that the goal is to restore such a one in a spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted, Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. The goal is not judgment forever, it is ultimate restoration. And Paul, I'm sure, realizes by now Mark has proved himself, and his goal is to lift up and encourage a man he wants rejected. It takes broad shoulders to do that, especially if you are a powerful and influential individual. Especially when you have those that you really don't need, quote unquote, who could fall again and sometimes do. All this to say that as you grow older and as the stress intensifies, may you grow in grace as well as truth. Someone forgave you once, remember? Or twice. Truth be told, all of us have stories that would surprise those sitting right next to us. Not only our stories, but the stories of our children. And we go on. May your ministry be characterized as one who stays close to at least one friend long term. That you're able to get over the disappointment of someone who walks away. And you're big enough to lift up and encourage those who fell but have now recovered. Tychicus, I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak which I left at Troaz with Carpus. Bring the books, especially the parchments. I remembered some faculty members here old enough to remember with me when we dedicated Mosier Library, it was called then, we formed a chain of bodies, namely students, who worked their way down from Davidson, third floor all the way down, out on the pathway and into the library handing books. As we moved the library from that dreadful third floor of Davidson down to the air conditioned and beautiful facilities of what was then our new library, Mosier Library. And we dedicated it, and Dr. Ryrie, Charles Ryrie, came to do the dedicatory address. As we dedicated the building, his words were shaped around the three words out of 2 Timothy 4, especially the parchments. Especially the parchments. As you get older in your ministry and as you grow, you will tend toward laziness. Things that work for you, you'll become better at, more adept at. You'll get better at faking it if you're not careful. Before long, you can be an out and out professional hypocrite, and they'll love you. The problem is you have to live with yourself and you have to give account. So don't go there. Keep loving the books, keep doing original works and the parchments. Keep longing for those opportunities when you can make the most of your time by feeding your mind on the great truths. Read widely, read deeply, read often. I just finished a great book this summer. Great preparation for ministry, Snakes in Suits. It's a great book. It's not a Christian book. So I warn you ahead of time. It talked about the kind of people who are in the workplace who take advantage of other people and help me understand some people that I have worked with over the years and people I've lived near, and tendencies that I see on occasion. Anyway, the reason I mentioned that, it's a book that broadened my mind and made me aware of another slice of life outside my world. But my point here is, he adds, Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Be on guard against him yourself, for he vigorously opposed our teaching. At my first defense, no one supported me, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them. The point I want to make here is to watch out for those who would harm you. Watch out for those who would harm you. By holding close to a friend, you will guard against isolationism. By getting over those who disappoint you, you will guard yourself against bitterness. Putting your arms around and encouraging those who have been restored following a fall, you will guard against pride. And if you watch out for those who would harm you, you will guard against disillusionment. Everywhere you serve, you will have enemies. I used to think that I kind of drew them like flies. I thought there was maybe something wrong with me. And so I remember I was ministering at Irving at the time, and we had a dreadful relationship with one of our elders. And uh I remember deciding I'd come to somebody neutral. So I came to the chaplain of the seminary. And uh it was a uh wonderful few moments with him, uh, Dr. Richard Sumey. Many of you know the name and the man now gone, wonderful, godly man. And I spelled out my story to him, and I thought, I thought he would kind of be surprised. And he smiled and he said, Chuck, I call those people savages. I thought, boy, that's that's helpful. I I never I'm not the only one. And then he gave me a litany of situations in his own life where savages came after him. There isn't a week of my life I don't receive hate mail. There isn't a month of my life someone doesn't deliberately and personally criticize me unfairly. Inappropriately. If they knew the whole facts, they they wouldn't at least say it that way. No, that's par for the course. I'm no martyr. I'm nothing. I I probably never faced a man as mean as Alexander the Coppersmith. On the other hand, no, it's another subject. But you'll be disillusioned. You'll be disillusioned if you put your arms around everyone. Because some will deceive you and some will take advantage of you, and they'll misquote you and they'll misrepresent you and they will want to harm you. You need the discernment of saying, that's a one, that's one I need to stay free of, stay away from, watch out for. At the end of his life, Paul says that. And then finally, um, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me in order that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, that all the Gentiles might hear, and I was delivered out of the lion's mouth. The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed. Finally, keep the Lord in full focus. Keep the Lord in full focus. Keep the Lord in full focus. Continue to let your heart be broken. Continue to let the words of Horatio Spafford bring tears. Continue to sing from the very pit of your being. Continue to love him with your whole heart. Continue to talk to him often, pouring out your soul to him. Continue to release the things you would want to cling to. Even those closest to you. Make the Lord your full focus, and your ministry will be timeless. Not to mention timely. I think what it takes is a willingness, a willingness to let him lead, let him call the shots, let him do the guiding, let him do the defending, and you stay at the task of serving him. One man wrote it like this anonymous writer. I am willing to receive what you give. I am willing to lack what you withhold. I am willing to relinquish what you take. I am willing to suffer what you inflict. I am willing to be what you require. What a way to live. What a way to minister. Stand strong in stressful times. They are coming. The honeymoon will soon be over. And when it hits, watch out. Watch out. The enemy will convince you in a very brief period of time that you need to bail on this place. You need to go back to that job. That crummy job you decided to leave to come to this calling. You'll be tempted to bail on your calling. Don't go there. Our Father, we uh thank you for the uh joy of serving you. Thank you for the exemplary model of a man who not only lived like that but died like that. Thank you for the reminder that it is doable. Now help us all. We're all just sinners. Not a person in here is that far from a fall. We're one decision away from the beginning of a weakness that could lead to a habit that could result in a fall. So use these words, especially during stressful times, that we might be able to say throughout our years, it is well with my soul.
SPEAKER_01In the name of Jesus, I pray. Everybody said.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for joining us today here at For the Gospel. I pray that Chuck Swindahl's message encouraged you to stand strong amidst stressful times and to be rooted in the word, clothed in gospel peace, and strengthened by your spiritual community. If the sermon today has been a blessing to you, be sure to drop a comment and leave a review. Share it with a friend as well. That's probably the best way that you can encourage someone. And be sure to check out Insight for Living if you've never interacted with Chuck Swindah's ministry, faithful, upwards of 91 years old, and for many decades now, opening God's word and delivering it to people with clear, loving, and applicable pastoral wisdom. Next week I've got one that many would consider the classic of all classics. I know some of you are gonna get mad at me and say, come on, you're making us feel old, but let me just say this thing was preached in the year 2000. That's 25 years ago. Time is flying, and it is a classic, and it may very well be one of the best sermons that pushes you and helps you to live for the gospel in whatever God has put you in. So don't miss that one. Thanks for listening, for watching, for sharing, and for supporting here at For the Gospel. Uh, we have weekly video teachings. If you're not familiar with those, be sure to subscribe on our YouTube channel or follow on social media for daily encouragement and resources you can share with others. For more information or to partner with our ministry, go to for thegospel.org. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.