Why Following Jesus Doesn’t Mean You Won’t Have Bad Days

- And a great story of live chains. And hey, I'm so glad to be here. I'm so glad you decided to come as well this weekend. My name is Mike. I'm one of the pastors that are church down in Tampa called Grace Family Church. And just so excited to be here because I love your church. I love your pastor, PMC, Pastor Mark. You call him PMC, so PMC. Love him and Linda and the way God's using them. Love Pastor Emily, she's like a spiritual little sister to me. And love what's happening here in the move of God that continues to happen here at Church of Hope. And the fact you decided to come this weekend for the house party, which is a fun weekend. I saw some of you guys, you have the color full things, the deals. I appreciate you shutting them off for the message because they would be so distracting in here. So glad you let me come and hang out with you guys. I was actually here a few years ago, but able to come back. I love being able to come back. Let me show you a picture of my family. Just for context, my wife and I have been married for 21 years. And then my son on the left, Carson, his name is Carson, it's K-A-R-S-T-O-N because we wanted him to be able to spell his name

every time he told people his name for the rest of his life. He's 18, freshman at Southeastern University, plays football, little football player. And then on the right is our 16-year-old named Bryden because we also wanted to make his life complicated. We never met another Bryden as a kid before. We saw that as a street sign. My wife and I were running the Columbus Marathon and we saw the street sign in Columbus, Ohio at different times and we're like, we like that name. So we named him after that street named Bryden. And what you don't know though is if you've ever ran a marathon, you don't like they just like line the streets. We actually went back with Bryden to Columbus, Ohio to like see the street that he was named after. It was in by far the worst part of town we had ever been in before. So we got him out. He like pointed to the sign. And then when we got back to our car, there were like three guys like walking around our car like looking at it. Like, and it was like, like guys, we gotta get out of here. Like, come on. But man, our family's praying for you and they love the fact that we're able to be here and I'm able to be here and connect with you guys because we're starting a series today, talking about things that Jesus didn't say.

The series is called Jesus didn't say that. And the idea behind the series is that there are certain phrases that are associated with Jesus that Jesus never said. There are certain thoughts and ideas that we sound good until we assume they're in the Bible. They sound good. We assume Jesus said them. And then we kind of tuck them away into what we believe about God as part of what he said. Like a couple of phrases that I was thinking of is love the sinner, hate the sin. Jesus never said that. Jesus never said love the sinner, hate the sin. It's not one of his, he didn't say that. Another one is when God closes a door, he opens a window, right? He opens a window. Like God never, Jesus never said that. That was never a phrase that he used. How about cleanliness is next to guidance? No, your mom said that. Jesus didn't say that, but you're like, your mom used that against you and you thought it was Jesus. It wasn't Jesus, it was your mom. How about this? If you ain't first, you're loud. That's Ricky Bobby, everybody, that's challenging at night. But there are a lot of phrases that we just kind of tuck away and they sound good, they sound spiritual.

Maybe we've been taught and we kind of tuck them away. And the reason why we're talking about this for the next few weeks is that there are some of these phrases that Jesus never said. But when you begin to associate those phrases with what he said, it kind of shapes your theology. Your theology is what you believe about God. And when your theology gets shaped by things that Jesus never actually said, your beliefs get off. And if your beliefs are wrong, then you'll act wrong. And honestly, throughout Christianity, one of the biggest things that's actually hurt Christianity and hurt the church is that there are a lot of people who believe certain things about Jesus is not really what he taught, not really what he said. And yet people start acting in certain ways. In fact, for some of you, maybe you're back to church for the first time in a long time. But honestly, the reason why you walked away from church is because there are people that when you went into a church and you had someone on stage and they taught certain things, but the people didn't live it out. And the way they acted, they weren't kind, they weren't loving, they weren't, like they didn't reflect the teachings of Jesus. And it hurt you and you walked away from church. It's because they ascribed some things to Jesus and it got tied up in their theology and they believed wrong and so they acted wrong.

And so for us, if you're a Christ follower, it's super important for us to understand what Jesus said and allow what he said to shape our theology, shape our behavior as we continue to shape our beliefs. And so today we're talking, we're picking off the series but it gets associated. This concept gets associated with him, is that if you follow Jesus, you won't have bad days. If you follow Jesus, you won't have bad days. There's this thing in Christianity that is the idea that if you just follow God and you do the right thing and you pull the right levers and you act a certain way and you show up to church and then you kind of pray and maybe read your Bible every once in a while. If you can just figure out what the right levers are, then God will make your life easy and you never have difficulty. And I think it comes from, honestly, our belief that like, if you're good with your boss, then work will be good. If you're good with the teacher, school's good. If your parents like a politician or a police officer, like you kind of get away with them. And so we think that because we're in with God that life just should be easy and no bad things should happen. Which is a crazy concept when you think about it because what happened to Jesus? Jesus was beaten and died on a cross. And when you look through all of his disciples, all his apostles, when you look at Peter, he was his right hand man.

Peter was arrested and beaten and then martyred. And if you look at the apostle Paul, Paul was jailed so many times and ended up being martyred. All of Jesus' disciples except for John were martyred. They were killed for their faith and then John wasn't killed for his faith. But John was boiled alive and a pot of oil. He survived it, but that's a tough thing to survive everybody. That was a tough day. So the idea is Christians that we kind of have this idea that we shouldn't have bad days as Christians, but it really has permeated our faith. And so then when bad things happen to us, we ask the question, "God, why would you let this happen?" In fact, the question that I get all the time as a pastor is, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" But that's with the premise that bad things shouldn't happen or won't happen to good people. But here's the challenge with that thought process. It's that most of the bad things that happen to me, outside of sickness, most of the bad things that will happen to me happen because the people around me. And so most of your bad in your life has happened because someone acted a certain way or they did a certain thing or they didn't do the right thing or they didn't follow the right thing. And so what we're saying is that if nothing bad should happen to good people, essentially, I want God to control all of your behavior.

So as long as God controls your behavior, you can't hurt me. But also, if that's true, then God should also control my behavior so I can't hurt you. So if nothing bad is gonna happen to good people, the only way for that to happen is for God to essentially control us and take away our free will and make us robots. And none of us believe that should happen. And yet when bad things happen to good people, we question and we wonder why. But Jesus never said bad things won't happen to good people. In fact, Jesus says in John chapter 16, in this world, you will have trouble. If you consider yourself a good person, you consider yourself a bad person. No matter where you're at, there's gonna be trouble. You're gonna have issues. Your marriage, you're just gonna go through tough seasons. With your kids, you're gonna go through tough seasons and your job, you're gonna go through tough seasons. Financially, you're gonna go through tough seasons. In this world, you will have trouble. The difference is, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, is that we can do this, what he says next, we can take heart because he says, "I have overcome the world." So as Christ followers, it's not that we're not gonna have bad days, but Jesus is with us in the midst of our bad days

and we can trust him even when we go through bad days and we can take heart. And there are three reasons why we can take heart when we go through trouble. So if you're in a season of trouble, let me encourage you that it's not that you're not gonna go through trouble, but you can take heart. The first reason why we can take heart is we can take heart because he uses the trouble. If you're in a season right now of trouble, the God will use your trouble. The Apostle James, who was actually the brother of Jesus, he wrote the book of James and he writes the book of James to Christians who at the time, they were being arrested, they were being persecuted, like life was not going very well for them and he writes the book of James to these early Christians and it's actually James is actually the first New Testament book that was written. So in the history of time, he wrote the first book and all these Christians were going through hard times in chapter one, verse two. So the very beginning of this letter, he says, "Consider it pure, let's say it together, pure joy. "Consider it pure joy with my brothers and sisters, "whenever you face trials of many kinds." Which is such a crazy concept to think, "How do I consider it joy going through trials? "You say we're going through trials, "how do I consider it joy?"

He says, "The reason why we consider it joy "is because you know that the testing of your faith so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. What James says is the reason why we consider joy, consider it joy when we go through trials, when we experience troubles, when life gets tough, is because God is doing a work in you to mature you. God's process for maturing you is trials. God's process for growing you is through the trouble. So God doesn't keep you from the trouble, but he uses a trouble to grow you. I showed you a picture of my kids, cars in my oldest, what we've had a rule with our kids growing up is we want you guys play in sports, they play sports all the time, and we want you to cycle through sports before you landed on one. He's landed on a football now, but we had him play every sport. And the first time we had him play soccer, he had never played soccer before, but we were like, we want you to play soccer. And he is this competitive, strong-willed, driven kid. Anybody else have a strong-willed child? I mean, like, I love the fact like we wanna raise strong kids, but when you raise a strong kid, that's a tough deal. Like God bless them when they're older, but God save you when they're younger 'cause they're hard kids to raise.

And he is this driven, strong-willed kid. And when he played soccer during the first game, we realized, oh, we're gonna be in trouble because this ultra-competitive kid was, he had never played soccer before, but on his soccer team, he was far and away the best soccer player on their team, which was not good. He was not good at soccer, and everyone else was terrible on his team. And their team, the first game, they got beat so bad. And my competitive sons walking around to his teammates going, like just like frustrated, they don't know how to play soccer. Like he's just, like he's not doing great. The third game, the third game, he walked over to me and he goes, I wish I wore glasses. I'm like, you wish you wore glasses. I'm like, why do you wish you wore glasses? He said, so I could hand him to the ref and tell him, here, you need these. I'm like, that's actually pretty good. Like, yeah, you know, one of the things, one of the things that I probably caught me off guard about parenting, I don't know if any other parents would get this, I never knew this would come. That sometimes when your kids do bad things, like you're proud of them, like anybody else? Like three weeks ago, my 16 year old snuck out

for the first time. He came home, he said, what do I need to come home? We told him what time to come home. He came home, he woke us up, said good night, plugged in his phone, got his bed ready, turned his fan on in his room, and then went out in the back door and out the fence and snuck out for the first time. And the dog was barking. It's the only reason why we knew that he snuck out because he plugged his phone into, he tracked his phone. He didn't bring his phone with him. So he snuck out and then essentially we caught him about 10 minutes later, but we caught him like, dude, what are you doing going through it? But we caught him and it's like, hey, he's in trouble, but also there's a problem, right? I'm like, my man, like good job, dude, way to go. Like my oldest son at church camp almost gotten a fist fight because someone like, they were playing a game, this kid fouled him hard. My son grabbed his hat, took it off this kid's head and threw it on the ground. It was like the most disrespectful outside of punching him that he could've done. And I'm watching him from far away. I'm a pastor at the church where their church camp is, watching the PK almost get in a fist fight and there's a little part of me. I'm like, all right, like it's weird.

I never knew that one, I never knew that as a parent, there's a part of like, hey, you're in trouble, but also like, okay, he did it. Like there's a little bit of that. And so when my son said, hey, you know, here's, and I'm like, okay, we gotta do something about this. Like he's on the ground, like stomping on the ground. And so he and I sat down after his third game and I said, all right, we gotta change this because it doesn't look like your team's gonna win. Like it doesn't look like you guys are gonna do well. And you cannot quit the team. You said yes to the team, you're in the season. Like that's a rule for us, you're in the season, but you have to learn how to lead and losing. And so I talked to him, I said, all your kids, all your teammates are looking to you and you're not being kind to them, you're gonna change that. And so just kind of like walk through that, of encouraging your teammates and loving in your teammates and like not being overly critical of your teammates and you gotta encourage them as you go through it. And we got to the last game of the season and it looked like, okay, it's gonna be close and then it ended up not being that close and they lost every game of the season. And I remember, I said, hey buddy, you gotta go. And he walked over and he high-fived and hugged his teammates and told him good job and good season and good season and he walked over to me

and like fell in my arms and just like sobbed 'cause he was so frustrated that they didn't win the whole season and when I look at where he's at now, playing college football, the fact that God led him be in a season where they lost the whole season was one of the best things in the world. And I don't know what season you're in right now and what you're going through, but God will use the trouble you're in right now to grow you for whatever's coming next. And you can't see what's next, you don't know what God's gonna do, but God is working in this season right now. And here's what I would say, if you've been praying God changed this, I don't wanna go through this, I'm struggling with this, if God could change it and miss it, like he could change it in a moment, but if he doesn't, if he doesn't change the outside, then we have to assume that God is actually doing a work on the inside. If God isn't moving all of this, then he must be trying to move me. So the reason why we consider all joy is we recognize that God is doing more on the inside than he is doing on the outside. And so I'm gonna choose to trust. I'm gonna choose in the midst of the scenario, say God, I don't know how you're working, I can't see how you're working.

God, I sure don't like the season I'm in, but I am going to trust that what you're doing in me is greater than I want you to do away from me. And so God, I'm gonna trust you. And if you're in a season of trouble right now, one of the best prayers that you could pray to God, it's God, I trust you in this season and change me and grow me and mold me and mature me because the person you want to become, God's helping you to become that person through your trouble, not away from your trouble. He doesn't want you to go around problems, he wants you to go through the problem because that's where the growth happens. And so God will keep you there and God will lead you through it and God will grow you through it. But consider it joy, here's what we don't do. We don't blame others, we don't complain, we don't whine, like if you do that, you deflect the maturity away. But we have to know that your trouble is for your good and God will use it to grow you. So we take heart because he uses the trouble. And here's what I'm gonna encourage you with that. Thank God for the trouble. Thank God for the trouble, thank God. God, thank you for letting me be in this situation because I know you're using it for me. The second reason why we take heart is we take heart

because he is with you in the trouble. It got us with you in whatever trouble you're going through right now. And we see this when you read the book of Acts, you see it in the life of the Apostle Paul so much. The Apostle Paul got arrested, got in trouble, got beat, like he went through so much. And there's a story in Acts, chapter 26 and 27 where Paul actually is, he's arrested and then he appeals to Caesar because he wants to actually make his case before Caesar and there's a Roman citizen at that time. If you appeal to Caesar, they would send you to Rome. And so he sent him to Rome and on his way to Rome, they're about to put him on a ship and God speaks to him and says, hey, if you get on that ship, that ship, there's gonna be a shipwreck. Well, he's a prisoner, he's gotta go on the ship but he goes to the captain says, captain, we need to go another way or else we're gonna shipwrecked. Well, the captain is listening to a prisoner. He doesn't listen to Paul. He's like, yeah, whatever. And then basically ignores Paul and they go on the ship and they go on the ship and they end up in a storm and in Acts, chapter 27, verse 20, it says, now when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and no small tempest beat on us, all hope that we would be saved was finally given up. Like they realized we're in trouble.

But after a long absence from food, then Paul stood in the midst of them. Now think about this, he's a prisoner on the ship. They haven't had food for a while, all hope is gone. They realized we're probably gonna die. And Paul stands up and he says, man, y'all should've listened to me. Like I love that he's like, I told you so. Like you should've listened to me. He said, you should've listened to me and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss. And now I urge you to take heart for there will be no loss of life among you but only of the ship. For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and to whom I serve. Saying do not be afraid, Paul, you must be brought before Caesar. And indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you. Therefore he says it again, take heart. And the reason why Paul can say take heart is he understood that God was with him. When we understand God is with us, we can take heart no matter the storm and no matter how hopeless the situation. Has anybody ever went skydiving? Anybody ever gotten skydiving? Okay, a few of us, you'll understand, go on skydiving. When you go to a skydiving place, this is good in case you go,

you need to have this expectation. When you go to a skydiving place, everyone who works at a skydiving place look like they should work at a skydiving place. Okay, you've never asked a kid, what do you want to do when you grow up? People work at skydiving places basically because every other option has fallen through. Like it is, it is, they couldn't pass the drug test, and I'm telling you, they do not drug test at the skydiving place. I'm pretty sure it's almost a requirement. If you're going to jump out of planes for a living, you need to be a little high. Like it is, it is like, you show up and you're like, "Ah, when I stand across from the 22-year-old guy who's like, hey, I packed your shoot." I thought, "I don't trust you to pack my lunch. Like you pack my parachute? I'm going to jump out of this plane." And he's explaining these things and I'm like, "My man is, he is so high and he just packed my shoot." And then all I see is a broken down plane on the runway and I'm like, "When does our plane get here?" And he goes, "No, that's the plane." I'm like, "That's the plane." It was, it was the type of plane that even if we weren't trying to jump out of it, we may need to jump out of it. Like it looked that like it was, "I'm not sure I was going to make it." And we get, we get over this plane and I'm 6 foot 4 and this is not super easy. We get over this plane and I don't realize that the only seat in the plane is the pilot seat. So I'm like, "Where do we sit?" He goes on the floor. And if you've ever sat on the floor of an airplane, like I've only rode commercial, so I've never even thought about sitting on the floor of an airplane. So we get in this plane and it's really small and we're sitting up and we're kind of like curled up right here and we start taking off and I'm sitting right next to the door and the door is not sealed. Now in any movie I've ever seen, if the door is not sealed, what happens? You get sucked out of the plane and I'm like, "Well, it's going to end quicker than I thought it was going to. Like this is not great." So we get up there that didn't happen. We get up there and the guy, the 22-year-old, I'm so scared of heights by the way. And we get up there and the guy, the 22-year-old, he actually leans over and he's like, "Are you okay? Like, are you okay?" And I'm like, "No, I'm not okay. I'm not doing okay." And so we're sitting there and we get up to the clouds and I see the clouds out the window

and he leans over and goes, "We're halfway there. Halfway there, if we're going to die, let's just jump out of the stupid plane." And so we get up all the way to 10,000 feet and he goes, "All right." He opens up the door and then you kind of come over and you hold on to your things and then you step out onto, it's like a pole that holds the wheel, you step onto that, then you count one, two, and then you've realized I made a terrible mistake because all you can think is like there's no way this ends in a positive way. Like, I'm going to die. And all you can see is the chaos and all you can feel is all you can hear is the noise. It's so loud as you go through it. And everything around you, it's like you're almost in shock because it's just crazy. And when we hit storms in our lives, it's very much how we feel. It's so consuming, like your financial situation, it's like you can't think of anything else. Your work problems right now, the conflict you're going through, it's like you can't think of anything else. Your marriage, it's almost like you can't enjoy life because that's just not okay right now. And you feel like, I don't know what to do and you're so consumed with it. And honestly, you have no peace. And you feel like it's Rob Peace and you can't sleep and you lay awake at night and you wake up in the middle of the night and you're not peace. And you feel like you're falling to your death and you don't know what to do. But the part of the story that I didn't tell you is that when we got up to 10,000 feet, the 22-year-old said, all right, I need you to turn around, I turn around. And then he got closer to me than any man ever, ever. And I was so happy about that because what he was doing is he was strapping himself to my back. And I was like, make it tighter, bring it in, whisper in my ear, sway together, whatever you need to do because I didn't have a parachute on. He had a parachute on. I had never been skydiving before. He had been skydiving before. I was losing my mind. He wasn't. And you may feel like you're falling to your death right now and you think you're alone, but God is with you. And you may not know what to do, but he does. You don't know how this is going to work out, but he does. You're not sure how you're going to handle it, but he does. It doesn't matter what you're going through. You're not going through this alone. And what I've seen people do in the past, and I would encourage you not to do this when you're going through this time and you feel so alone, you feel so chaotic, the amount of people who unbuckle from God and decide, I'm going to go out. listen, this isn't the time to unbuckle.

This is the time to lean in. This is the time to say, God, it's so out of control, but I am going to trust that you are with me because God knows what's happening and God's got you. And he's gonna walk with you, even in the midst of it, that in our trouble, in our trouble, God is with you. He is with you no matter what you're going through and he's with you in the struggle. And so my encouragement to you is if you're going through a season of trouble and you feel so alone, listen, we have to be able to allow him to step into the situations and allow ourselves to trust him even in the midst of the situation. There's a verse in 2 Timothy 1, 9, it says, God did not give you a spear to fear, but a power, love, and a sound mind. And you know what I've realized is that fear works in our lives to take away your power to make you think you're not good enough, takes away your love by making you think you can't trust anyone and takes away your sound mind by thinking you need to control everything. And when the spear to fear comes in, which by the way, social media, news media, like so much of our world is trying to get us to collapse a fear and not trust and not be okay and have issues, but when the spear to fear comes in, it takes away your power, your love, and your sound mind. And so if you walked in and you don't have peace, it's because you've got a lot of fear

to come into your life and we have to say, God, I'm gonna trust you in the midst of the storm, I'm gonna trust you no matter what's going on, because he's with you. And the third reason why we should take heart is we can take heart because he is bigger than the trouble. In John chapter, the verse we've been reading, it says, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. God is bigger than your issue. God is bigger than your struggle. God is bigger than your challenge. There's a lady at our church, her name is Tracy, and Tracy has brain cancer and lung cancer, and it is paralyzed her right arm. She can't move with the right arm. She walks because her right side is being paralyzed, and every week she comes to church, and at the end of service, she does what you guys do. We have a prayer team down front, and at the end of every service, she is down front every single week, but she doesn't come down for prayer, she's on the prayer team. And every week, people come down, and she prays with them with her one working hand, and because she understands that God is bigger than my cancer, and God is bigger than my sickness, and God is bigger than my struggle. God is bigger than my issue.

God is bigger than your finances, and God is bigger than your marriage, and God is bigger than your kid who's walked away and living a crazy life, and God is bigger than what you're going through right now. And when we're in a season of trouble, we should hear the two things I would encourage you to do. The first is, is pray and say, "God, I want to give this, "or I want to cast my cares on you," it says in the Bible, "cast your cares on him because he cares for you, "and invite him into your trouble." In fact, thank you. Being together in this space today is really good. If you've never begun a relationship with Jesus, I'd like to invite you today to start following Jesus. It's not about your behavior. It's not about your church attendance. It's about the reality that Jesus is for you. God's not manage you. He's madly in love with you. Would you right now pray this prayer with me? Hey, God, it's me. I've sinned, and I know it, and I can't fix me. But today, I receive you, Jesus, as my Savior. I believe that you died on that cross for me, and that you were buried for three days, and then you became alive again. And I invite you into my life to guide me and direct me all the rest of the days of my life.

And with that prayer, my friend, welcome to God's family. I'd like to continue our friendship. If you would email me, [email protected]. I'll follow up with you, and together, we'll celebrate Jesus in your life. Peace. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)