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All right, good morning. How is everybody? Good to Yeah, good to see you. I couldn't see you at first. Good to see you. Well, welcome again. My name is Harley Rethel, and I'm one of the pastors here at Point Community Church, and I have the privilege of getting to uh speak with you this morning. And I'm excited about that because we're wrapping up a series, and the series we've been going through is called Everyday Church. And the thought with this whole conversation we've had this whole month has been to ask the question what does it mean to be a Christian or a Christ follower each and every day of the week? Because the problem is in our westernized church culture, it seems that some of us are able to come in and do church on Sunday and then check out from our faith the rest of the week. And yet, as we look at God's word, as we look at the scriptures, it's very clear that we're called to much more than that. Being a Christian isn't just about coming to church on Sunday and checking the God box off. It's actually about being deeply committed to Him and living a life that every day honors Him. And so in our conversation, we've talked about several things. The first thing we talked about was everyday salvation. Then we talked about everyday living with a view of eternity. We talked about everyday community on mission. So what has God called us to as a church and as individuals to live like? We talked about everyday living counterculture. That was last week Hope Sway did a great job of just talking about how we're called to live in a way that honors God, even in front of the government and authority that God's put over us. And then today I have the joy of talking about everyday perseverance in the midst of suffering and trials. That's what we're talking about. And I know this isn't exactly a subject that you you throw out there, hey, we're gonna talk about suffering, and everybody's like, whoo, yeah, let's let's go for it. But I am excited about it because I think as we'll get it, we get into this conversation, you're gonna see that this really is good truth that applies to all of us. And so what I'm gonna ask you to do is just pray one more time with me this morning and ask that God would speak to you. So as I'm praying here for these next few seconds, I just ask that you in the stillness of this moment would say, God, would you speak to me as I'm praying? God, thank you for today. Uh, thank you for this opportunity to look into your word and ask for you to reveal truth to us. And as as we do that this morning, I just pray that you'd be faithful to answer that prayer. That as we look in your word, as we talk about this difficult subject, that you would speak very clearly to our hearts and that you would meet us where we're at. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Okay, God is good. I mean, that's we know that. God is good, but in his goodness, he doesn't promise us an easy, a simple life, especially when we come to faith in him. Have any of you ever experienced the bait and switch? Do you know what I'm talking about? The bait and switch, where you you you go for something and it's not exactly what you thought it was when you get it? I uh I had the the privilege of traveling in Japan at one point in my life. I just finished college, I went on a trip there with a friend, and we were on the North Island of Japan, a long way from Western culture, and as we were there, we went to a supermarket, which was an adventure in and of itself trying to figure out what we were buying, looking for food, and uh as we were leaving the supermarket, I remember what we I looked across and there was a bakery in the corner of the supermarket, and I was like, okay, I need to go get some like bread, some normal food, right? Normal for me. So I went over there and I saw that they had those uh what do you guys call them? A jelly-filled don jelly-filled donut. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like this like round thing that's like got sugar on top, and it's like really doughy and good bread, and inside there's that uh, you know, sweet warm jelly. You know what I'm talking about? So I I I see this thing and I'm like, yes. So I I buy it, and I'm headed out of the store with my friend, and as we're walking out of the store, I just take a big old bite out of this thing, right? And it's all that I hoped and dreamed for. Like the sugar on the outside, the the nice warm bread, and then all of a sudden, I hit the middle, and there's cold, dark beans inside of this thing. Now, obviously, I couldn't read Japanese and it was some sort of weird bean roll that was sweet on the outside and sour in the middle, but safe to say I was pretty disgusted and ended up throwing this thing out. I was totally, it was a bait and switch situation in that I thought I was getting something and I didn't get it. And I feel like that's actually true of how some people uh approach the Christian faith. When they hear the Christian message, what they hear sometimes or what they want to hear is that if you believe in Jesus, life will be easy for you. It's like a get out of hard life free card, right? And that's not reality. As we look at God's word time and time again, it shows us that we will experience difficulty and hardship. And that that's a part of life, it's part of the Christian life. And if we were to look today at some of the significant men of the New Testament, like a James, uh, he was the guy who helped establish the church in Jerusalem. If you look at Paul, who was a missionary, who helped spread the gospel through the Roman Empire, if you look at John, who was one of the disciples, who was called, you know, who was very close with Jesus, all of those guys wrote in depth about suffering and hardship. And if we're to look at Jesus himself today, one of the ways that Jesus is described is as the suffering servant. Have you guys heard that? Jesus is called the suffering servant. And this is what he said in Luke 9, verse 23. He says, if anybody wants to come to me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like an easy, cruisy happening life, right? That's that's difficult what he's asking. He's saying, hey, if you want to follow me, you've got to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me. And so your first fill-in-the-blank here this morning, if you're taking notes, I'd encourage you to do that, is this that we will all struggle with hardship and difficulty. That's just the reality. And we need to understand it's not a question of if, but when we will struggle with hardship and spiritual attack. That's really what we're trying to cover here this morning. We're going to talk about hardship and spiritual attack. Now, suffering can look different for each of us. It has three main faces. One is a physical face. Suffering can be a physical thing where it's pain, it's it's disease, it's sickness, right? The second face of suffering can be an emotional face. So that's an example of that would be where there's a severing of relationship, like um a divorce, a loss of a loved one. That's that's a hardship that you go through that's really a very emotional hardship. The third face that suffering can take typically is a spiritual face. For example, uh, you may have a sibling that says, Hey, I want nothing to do with you. I'm sick of being around you because uh I I don't believe what you believe about this God stuff, and I'm sick of hearing about it. People experience that. And that's there's a severing of relationship because of a spiritual hardship. Now, if you want to take this to an extreme, you look at something like what's happening over in Iraq right now. We've got the spotlight on northern Iraq and the things going on over there. Those Christians that are there, they're suffering in all three ways. They're suffering sp uh physically, emotionally, and spiritually as they go through hardships, those Christians that are up there. And so suffering can and will take many different faces, but it's a reality of life. And the interesting thing is we've gone through this book of 1 Peter. It's interesting to note that we've done this everyday church series, and we've gone through 1 Peter chapter 1, 2, and a little bit of chapter 3. The rest of the book of 1 Peter, so from the middle of chapter 3, all through 4, all through 5, is about suffering and hardship and perseverance. And so obviously, Peter's thought, hey, this is a very important subject for people to be aware of in the church. This is very important for me to spend a significant amount of time writing and talking about. And so that's why I think it's so important for us to look at God's word this morning and really ask this question: how does God call us to approach suffering and to handle suffering and hardship? So you next fill in the blank for you this morning is this. In our struggles, God's word gives us encouragement and wisdom to know how to respond. My hope is, as we jump into God's word this morning, we're about to read from 1 Peter, as we do that this morning, my hope is that you'll find two things encouragement, especially if you're in the middle of hardship. And secondly, is that you'll find some wisdom, some truth to know how to respond when you go through hardship and suffering. So, I know that some of you are a little bit scared because I just told you that suffering is covered by three chapters of Scripture. We're not gonna read three chapters of Scripture today. You can breathe easy. Uh, we're not gonna be here till six o'clock tonight. But what we are gonna do is I'm gonna take the first section where we left off from chapter three last week, and we're gonna read that and make some observations, and then we're gonna read uh one of the last sections in chapter five, just a few verses and make some observations out of that. Okay? So that's how we're gonna approach the text this morning. And as you'll see in your notes there, the notes are a little different to what you're probably used to. Rather than fill in the blanks for the rest of the message, I have lines because I want for you to jot down things, truths that you hear this morning, and I just want you to jot down thoughts that that kind of impact you the most. I'm just gonna make a whole series of observations out of the text, and I want to encourage you to jot things down because if you write them down, you have a tendency to remember and be able to recall those things better. So I just want to encourage you to do that. So without further ado, let's go to 1 Peter chapter 3. Would you guys mind grabbing your Bibles with me? If you have those, you can use your Bible app on your phone. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one somewhere nearby that the church has in the seat in front of you. Feel free to grab one of those. If you don't own a Bible, you can take that home with you. First Peter chapter 3. And we're gonna read in verse 13. Here we go. And who will harm you if you were deeply committed to what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you're blessed. Do not fear what they fear or be disturbed, but honor the Messiah as Lord in your heart. Always be ready to give a defence to anyone who asks for the reason for the hope that is in you. However, do this with gentleness and respect, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you're accused, those who denounce your Christian life will be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God after being put to death in the fleshly realm, but made alive in the spiritual realm. So, like I said, we're going to read this scripture, which we just did, and we're going to make some observations out of this scripture. The first thing that I really want to point out to you from this scripture is in chap in verse 13 how it says, be deeply committed to good. And what I think Peter is saying here, he's like I've already pointed out to you, he's getting ready to trans transition the conversation to what we've been talking about everyday church, to talking about suffering and perseverance. He's going to have this long conversation about that. And as he makes this transition, he's saying, hey, everybody, you need to be deeply committed to God. You be need to be deeply committed to good. An illustration of what I think he's trying to say is this. Picture two trees with me, two trees that are growing beside each other, and they look pretty much the same. They're the same size, and they've got about the same amount of branches and leaves. But if we were to look beneath the surface level, one of those trees has a deep and complex root system. The other tree has a very shallow and surface level root system. It's not very deep. Now, picture with me if a wind, a trial, if you would, was to blow against those trees, what's going to happen? One of those trees is going to fall over, right? Because it doesn't have a deep commitment to good. Does that make sense? So I think that's what Peter's trying to say here. He's trying to say, hey, you guys need to realize as we enter into this conversation on suffering and hardship, you need to be deeply committed to your relationship with God. Next observation is this. If you suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. I don't know about you guys, but uh I hear that, I'm like, okay, sure, that's good. I'm glad that's in God's scripture. Uh because when I go through something that's hard or difficult, my first reaction is not typically to be like, oh yay, I'm blessed. This is hard. Right? Is anybody else like that? Okay? Okay, thank you. We got some honest people in the room. Uh whenever we go through difficulty and hardship, typically we don't jump to this conclusion that, oh, I'm so blessed by this. Now, at least at first, that's not what we jumped to. And yet the truth in God's word tells us, hey, if you're going through hardship, you're blessed. There's several other scriptures that talk about this. There's another scripture that says, hey, can consider it all joy when you face trials. Again, I'm like, okay, that's strange. But it's not that strange when we read God's word, because as you read through God's word, you'll notice there's a lot of things that are backwards. They're inverse to what you think would reality should be. For example, Jesus said, Hey, the last will be first. Jesus, who was the creator of the universe, he was the King of kings, Lord of Lords, comes to earth and washes his disciples' dirty feet. That's kind of backwards, right? And so right throughout scripture we see things are backwards, and so we shouldn't be surprised by this that God's word is telling us, hey, when you go through hardship, when you go through trials, you're blessed. And the reality is this, Romans 8, 28, great scripture, it says this we know that all things I love that it says all, not most, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and those who are called according to his purpose. I don't know about you, but I think what if we're to put what Peter's saying and what Paul was saying in Romans in this scripture together, we can pretty quickly see that he's saying, hey, all the difficult stuff in your life, God is able to use that for his name, for his glory, and for your good, your ultimate good, which is his good. Does that make sense? And so I I just think there's a great truth here today in that we need to realize that when we go through hardship, even though it may be hard and difficult, and our first reaction isn't to be joyful, we need to realize that we are blessed in the midst of hardship, because we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love him. Amen? Alright. Next thought that Peter shows us in this text is this He says, Do not fear or be disturbed. When we face hardship and difficulty, typically we get fearful, we get disturbed, and yet we're called not to be those things. The word that describes fear here can be translated as terror that causes you to flee. Okay? That's what he's trying to say. Hey, don't have a terror that causes you to flee. In the midst of suffering, in the midst of doing what is right, believers are sometimes intimidated into running from their belief system or their circumstances. And Peter's saying, hey, hey, you know, in the midst of your struggle, in the midst of your trials, don't be fearful, don't run away. I don't know if you've noticed this, but typically when any any the time anybody goes through a hard circumstance, whether they're a Christian or not, they typically lean into a relationship with God or lean away from God. Okay? So somebody who's going through a hard moment in their life could say if they're leaning out and away from God, they're gonna say things like, God doesn't care about me, or there isn't a God, how could there be a God if this is happening to me? Why would God allow this to happen to me? God must hate me. You've you probably have heard these words before from people. And that's a great illustration of somebody who's leaning out and away from God in the midst of hardship and difficulty. The other choice that we usually have, so it very rarely lets you stay in the middle, is to lean into your relationship with God. Maybe you've been around somebody who, in the midst of hardship, have said, Hey, God, I don't understand this. I don't understand what's going on in my life, but in this moment I love you and I trust you and I need your help. I know that you're near to the brokenhearted. I know that you love me and you have a plan and a purpose for my life, even in the midst of this most difficult thing that I'm going through. And so I think what Peter's saying here is, hey, don't be fearful or disturbed, lean into your relationship with God. Don't lean out from your relationship with God. Make sense? Okay, next thought. Peter goes on to say, honor the Messiah as Lord in your hearts. I love the fact that he says, hey, don't be fearful or disturbed, but so instead of being fearful and disturbed, you need to honor the Messiah as Lord in your hearts. I love that that word is there, that he kind of changes that. And he's basically saying, instead of letting fear being Lord in your heart, you need to let the Messiah, you need to let Jesus be Lord of your heart. And I think it's good for us to ask the question, okay, what does that look like? To let God be Lord in our hearts in the midst of struggle and suffering. One of the best examples I could think of was Daniel and his friends. Do you guys remember the story of Daniel from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament? Here's a guy, this young guy, who's ripped from his family. His family's most likely killed in front of him, and then they're taken away and put in slavery for this king who is a pagan, and yet he continues, as you read through the book of Daniel, time and time again, he continues to honor God with his decisions and with his choices. Beautiful example of what it looks like to honor God in the midst of suffering, in the midst of hardship. Next observation for you. We could say a lot more on that, but I'm gonna keep moving. Next observation is this we need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have. And the truth here, if you're gonna take notes, this is a great one to write down, is this hardship is an opportunity for gospel proclamation. Let me say that one more time. Difficulty or hardship is an opportunity for gospel proclamation. As you go through hard moments in your life, the people around you are watching. They watch you even closer when you're going through suffering, when you're going through difficulty, when you're going through pain. And you have a moment to show them with your life, your actions, and your lips, the words, the things that you say that Jesus is king, that he is Lord, that your faith and your trust is in him. Your hope is in something greater than yourself. Make sense? And so I just really want to encourage you, if you're in the middle of something hard right now, know that you have an opportunity to proclaim Jesus as Lord through your actions and through your words. Next observation is this is that if we suffer, it's better that you suffer for doing something good. Okay? Peter's trying to make a distinction here. He's saying, hey, we can suffer for the wrong reasons sometimes, for silly choices that we make. And God's able to work in and through those. I really do believe that. But he's saying, hey, just be careful. Make sure that if you go through hardship, if you go through suffering and pain, that it's for the right reasons. I have a great example of this in my own life. I went several years ago, I made a choice to ride my motorcycle like a maniac, and because of that, I ended up getting a ticket that meant that I was going to lose my license for uh a decent amount of time. And I went through this whole process of trying to keep my license by doing a traffic offenders program and all this stuff. And it was really, I mean, I can kind of laugh about it now, but at the moment it was actually kind of difficult and strenuous and worrying and all of those things. And I put myself through that because of a choice, a silly choice that I made. And I can tell you today that, like, that is exactly what Peter's not talking about. Okay, so he's trying to say, hey, don't suffer, don't go through hardship for the wrong reasons. If you're going to go through difficulty, let it be because you're honoring God, you're loving God, and you're serving him with your life. Does that make sense? Okay, good. Next and final point from this first scripture that we're looking at this morning is this is that Christ is our ultimate example. He's our ultimate and perfect example of what it looks like to go through hardship in the right way. Now, some of you, when I say that, you're like, well, he was God, so suffering wasn't that hard for him. But if you were here a few weeks ago, you know when we talked about who Jesus was, we talked about how he was God, yes, but he was also man. And if he was man, that means that he had nerves in his body. He had blood. The Bible tells us that he cried, he sweated, he bled, and he died for us. A very like torturous death. And in that moment when Christ died, we now That he went through all sorts of suffering in that he was physically suffering because of obviously being hung on a cross. We also know that he was emotionally suffering because all his friends and his family had abandoned him, and he was spiritually suffering because the Father God had removed himself and placed the weight of the sins of the world on him in that moment. And so if you want to talk about suffering, Jesus knows about suffering. And one of the most beautiful things about being a Christ follower, and I'm saying this today in case there's people in the room who were not Christ followers, one of the most beautiful things is that as a Christian, I have a God who I can turn to who knows and identifies my pain. He knows and identifies with my suffering, with the hardships, with the things that I go through that are difficult. He's not far removed. He knows how that feels. Does that make sense? And I don't know about you, but I find great comfort in that. I great find great just comfort in knowing that he loves me and he understands those difficulties. Listen to what Peter says in chapter 4, verse 1. He says, Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, which is what we just talked about, equip yourselves also with the same resolve. He's basically saying, Hey, Christ has suffered. Know that you can also get through this with his help. Equip yourselves with the same resolve. So as we've talked through this first passage of Scripture this morning, I hope that some of this conversation has been helpful. Because I think a lot of what we've just talked about helps answer the what. How do we deal with suffering? When we have suffering, what do we do with it? How do we cope? How do we what are some of our responses? But I think there's a bigger question looming behind this whole conversation, and the question is why? Why do we even deal with suffering? Why do we deal with hurts? Why do we deal with pains? And there's a couple of answers that I just want to quickly point out to you before we jump into our last scripture this morning. The first reason is that we live in a fallen and broken world. That's why we deal with suffering and pain. If I was to turn my Bible this morning back to the first chapter of the Bible, the very first chapter, you would see that God created the world perfect and sinless, right? You would see that God is the creator and that he made everything just the way it was meant to be. There wasn't pain, there wasn't suffering, there wasn't tears. And yet, man, just a few chapters in decides that he wants to be equal with God. He wants to be as important as God. And so in that moment, man sins, and sin has come and entered our world and entered our lives from there on out. And so we've had to deal with suffering, with death, with disease, with sickness, with jealousy, with anger, with malice, with all the negative things that surround us in our world. And so that is a great answer to the why. That is one of the reasons that we deal with suffering and pain. But there's a second answer that we don't often talk about in church, or at least in evangelical circles. And that other thought is this is that we not only live in a sinful and broken world, but we also live in a world where we have an enemy who is vehemently opposed to God and to us. We bear God's image, and so he hates us. And so it's not a very popular thing to talk about Satan or the devil or demons. But the truth is, God's scriptures tells us very clearly that there is an enemy who does not like us. Let me read for you Ephesians chapter six, verse twelve. It says this for our battle is not against flesh and blood. Basically, he's saying, our battle is not against the things that you see, but our battle is against rulers and against authorities, and against world powers of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. And the reality, the sobering reality today is this is that there is a real enemy, and he hates you. He hates your marriage. He particularly hates your marriage when your marriage is a light to your friends and to your neighbors. He hates your parenting, he hates when you parent well. He is opposed to that. He hates when you're a light in your workplace. He will do anything he can to come against you when you are a light in your workplace. He wants to sideline you, he wants to take you out. And that's the reality today. And so we don't only live in a simple world, we also live in a world where there's an enemy who hates us. And I think some of us need to wake up to that reality today. I really do. And so as we read this next scripture, I want you to have your eyes and ears open because I really believe this scripture is a very important one in helping us realize that there's not only suffering that we deal with, there's also spiritual attack that leads to suffering. And so that's what we're going to talk about as we jump into 1 Peter chapter 5. This is our last scripture this morning. This whole chapter is really good, by the way, but we're going to read verse 8 through 11. Let me read it for us. Be serious, be alert. Your adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. Resist him and be firm in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world. Now the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will personally restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little. The dominion belongs to him forever. Amen. What a great scripture, right? I don't know about you, but as I read the scripture, I really like it because it shows the depth of the darkness that's against us and then the beauty of the light that is for us, right? It's one of those scriptures that holds both of those intention beautifully. Let's make a few observations out of this text. First observation is this there is a very real call by Peter, excuse me, at the start of this text to be serious and to be alert. I don't know if you noticed in the text, it says, be serious, exclamation mark. Be alert, exclamation mark. Peter's really trying to make a point here. And I don't know about you, but if somebody was to come and ask me tell and say, hey, tell me about your Christian faith, I don't think the words that would roll off my tongue would be, oh, I'm well, I'm very serious and I'm very alert. Like that that doesn't naturally come off my tongue. And yet that's what Peter's saying to these believers, to these Christians. He's saying, hey, you need to be serious and you need to be alert. You need to be paying attention. I was really reminded of this actually a couple of weeks ago. I had a very strange day in that I was going through my day, and it was one of those days that I just jumped up and got into my day very quickly, quicker than I should have. And I'm going through the motions of doing everything and doing the tasks that I had that day, and everything just started to pile on top of each other. It was like this dark cloud came above me and just started raining on me. I don't know how to describe it. That's me trying to articulate it. And as I went through this day, it was like everything was discouraging to me. Like things went from bad to worse, and and and it was just one of those days where I was pretty quickly down in the dumps about what was going on. And I'm typically not like this. And so as I was going through my day, I was quite discouraged, and I was driving along the road, and in this moment, it's like God all of a sudden broke through into my day. And it was kind of like we didn't have a real conversation. It was kind of like he was asking me, Hey, what's going on here? What what's going on? And in that moment, he bet met me and basically opened my eyes to see that I was under spiritual attack. I really believed that I was that day. And in that moment, I got right with God, and I was like, God, I need your help. I need your protection today. I need your grace to fill me with with peace and remind me that you are with me. And in that moment, things got better through that day. It was like this turning moment in this day. It was very, very strange. This doesn't happen to me very often, but it all happened just a couple of weeks ago. And the other strange part of it was the next morning I woke up and I had a text message on my phone, and there was a text message from a friend in Houston I hadn't talked to in a long time, who said, Hey, I've been praying for you, and I just wanted to let you know that. I don't know if you guys are doing okay, but I just wanted to let you know I'm praying for you. I don't know if you guys have ever had an experience like that. I was like, whoa, okay, cool. God, thank you for reminding people to pray for me when I'm going through darkness and spiritual attack. And that's just a small, small illustration, but I was very much reminded in that moment that I need to be serious and to be alert. And what that typically looks like for me, not all the time, I'm not perfect at this, but I really do pray God's protection over myself and over our family. And I'd encourage you to do the same. To remember, hey, we're in this spiritual battle. So this is what it literally looks like for me. I'll be getting some time with God in the morning, and I'll say, Hey God, would you just bless and protect not just me but my family? I'll name my kids sometimes. And sometimes I'll say, Hey God, would you protect us physically? Um, and would you keep keep us safe emotionally and spiritually, God, today? And I'll literally get that specific. And I would encourage you that that's a good habit for us as Christians to remind ourselves to be serious and to be alert. That's a good pattern for us to get into. Because obviously Peter's trying to make a very strong point here. Next observation is this we are called to resist the devil and to be firm in the faith. I don't know if you noticed that. He said the devil's going around like a roaring lion. We're called to resist him and to be firm in the faith. There's a great scripture that talks a lot about this in Ephesians 6. We don't have time to go there, but it talks about the armor of God that we put on to resist and to fight the devil. I would encourage you to read it this week. It's actually in the reading guide on the next page in the worship guide, okay? So Ephesians 6, check it out this week. Very good scripture. Great illustration of this, though, is was written by a guy a couple of hundred years ago. There was an Englishman called John Bunyan, and he was in prison, he was suffering for preaching the gospel, and while he was there, he wrote this allegory, this story called Pilgrim's Progress. And in his stories, there's this beautiful, well kind of intense, but beautiful scene where Satan as a dragon comes against Christian on his path. And as they are there on this path, they start doing battle, and and Christian's wearing this armor that God's given him in this battle, but the the intensity of the battle gets so strong in this moment that he's like, I've got to, I'm gonna turn and run. I can't take this anymore. And he goes to turn around and realizes that the armor God has given him doesn't have any protection on his back. There's nothing, and so if he turns around, he's gonna be slain. And so he realizes his only option is to resist, to stand his ground, and to move forward. And so that's with God's help, with God's strength, that's what he does, and he ends up defeating the dragon in this scene. It's an awesome book, good scene. But just point that out to you today because I think that's a beautiful picture of what we're called to as we go through spiritual attack. We're called to stand our ground and to move forward with God's help rather than running from our circumstances, to running from hardship and spiritual attack. Next thought is this is that we can take comfort knowing we're not alone. I don't know if you saw in the scripture there, but let me find the verse for you. It says this uh resist him and be firm in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings, this is verse 9, are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world. There is a great comfort that comes in Christian community. And that's why I really want to encourage you guys that life groups, which are starting up next week, are a great way for you to get connected on a more intimate level. I could actually spend the next 30 minutes telling you story after story of the ways that I've seen life groups connect in and look after people as they go through struggles and hardships. And that's because there's a great value to being plugged into the community of God, the community of faith. And as the scripture very clearly says, we are to take comfort knowing that we're not alone. More that could be said, but I'm gonna move on. Next thought is this is that God personally restores, establishes, strengthens, and supports us. Let me read this for you. I really like this verse. It says, um, who were called into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus will personally restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little. I love the word personally there. The fact that we have a God, like we've already talked about, who is intimate with us, who cares deeply about us. Listen to the language that he uses, restores, establish, strengthens, and supports us. Isn't that beautiful language that he uses to talk about suffering and hardship and God's role in that? I don't know about you, but I hope as you read that this morning that you're encouraged that we serve and we love a God who is real and who is a God who personally cares about what's going on. He is near in the midst of darkness and in the midst of suffering. Second to last thought is this our suffering is not long. I love that he ends that verse by saying, who suffer for a little while. The reality is that life is short. We're told throughout the scriptures that life is but a breath that's here and it's gone. And so, even if you're you're in the midst of suffering right now, I know this may be somewhat hard to hear, but I just want to encourage you that in the scope of eternity, that God is faithful and he wins ultimately, and and you will not have to continue to deal with the hardship that you're in right now. And that's our last thought. God wins. I don't know if you picked up on that in the text. This isn't when we talk about spiritual warfare, it's not one of those things where we're like, yeah, it could go either way. Dunno, it's 50-50. No, we know very clearly that Jesus wins, that he has victory. Some of you said amen as we ended that scripture because you heard as we were reading, it says that he has dominion. Actually, you're going to read it again for us because I really like it. He says this the dominion belongs to him, that is to Christ, forever. Amen? Amen. And so I want you to take some comfort in that today. I really do. I want you to take comfort knowing that we serve a God who wins. And ultimately, he's going to destroy suffering. He's going to destroy death. That's what the Bible very clearly tells us that those things are going to be abolished when Christ returns. And I don't know about you, but I very gladly look forward to that day where we don't have to deal with those things anymore. So I want to just ask you to let me process out loud for a minute. I want to process out loud and just kind of debrief from what we've talked about. We've read a lot of scripture and we've made a lot of observations this morning. But I want to address a couple of quick things. The first thing is this if you are a Christ follower and you're in the middle of a struggle, a hardship, my encouragement, my request to you is that you would ask God, hey, what are you saying to me this morning? We've had this conversation. What are we saying this morning? And then specifically, I want to encourage you to lean in to God. Like I said earlier, hardship never lets you stay where you are with God. You either lean into your relationship with him or you lean out in away. And so my request of you today is that if you're a Christ follower and you're going through a hard moment in your life, please lean in towards him today and let him be a God who personally loves, restores, comforts, and establishes you. That's who he is. So lean in towards him. Second thought is this if you are a Christ follower and you're in a good season of your life where things are going well, where you're not really going through what you would describe as a hardship or a difficulty, my request to you is that you would consider, hey, what is God saying to me? How can I be prepared for what may be laying ahead in life? And specifically, I want to challenge you and myself today to be serious and to be alert. Like we talked about. I don't know about you, but I've found this kind of sobering to think about what's going on behind the scenes. And so I really want to challenge you. If you're in the middle of a smooth sailing part of your life, be serious, be alert. Be faithful in praying God's protection over yourself and over your family. Finally, I I I just want to ask you if you would not consider yourself a Christ follower, if you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, I really want to plead with you this morning that you would consider the importance of having a relationship with God. And the reason that I say this is because I, as I've gone through and looked at this whole topic of suffering these last couple of weeks, and as I've been preparing for this morning, I've been so reminded of the value of having a relationship with Christ. One of the huge benefits of having a relationship with Christ is he gives you someone to look to in the middle of your darkness, in the middle of your suffering. And if you don't have him, you don't have anything in the midst of your hardship. You don't have a way to explain, you don't have a something to look to that's greater than yourself. And I just want to let you know that, you know, having a relationship with Christ, it doesn't mean that you'll have smooth sailing like we talked about at the start, but it does mean that you have someone that you can look to who understands what's going on. And so I really want to ask you to consider a relationship with Him. The other reason that I would encourage that is because we believe as Christians that God's ultimately gonna cure the world of suffering. And I would love for you to be a part of that. I, you know, as a family of Christ followers, we believe that ultimately we're gonna be saved from the death and destruction of this world. And so I think that's something great to look forward to. We have a hope for something more than this. And so that encouragement for those of you who aren't believers is twofold. Firstly, it's because that because you have something to look to in the midst of suffering, but you also have something to look to that's past the suffering. Does that make sense? I think there's great beauty in that. As we wrap up this morning, and as I'm gonna ask the man to come on up, uh we're going to uh I just want to remind you of that illustration of the two trees. Remember we talked about the two trees, one had deep roots and one had those shallow roots. I just want to ask you in this moment as we wrap up this morning to be deeply committed to good. I can talk about a lot of things this morning. I, you know, obviously we've covered a lot of territory this morning. But the truth is that we need to be deeply committed to God. We need to be deeply committed to him. And that's not a a thing to say, hey, you need to have more faith in suffering. What I'm basically trying to say to you this morning is you need to let go and let God be in charge of your life in the midst of hardship, in the midst of suffering, by being deeply committed to him, by deeply looking to him in the moments of hardship and the moments of struggle. Let me pray for us and I'll give you guys some quick instructions.