Focus on God in Difficult Times

Easter 7 2013

Acts 16:16-34; Ps 97; Rev 22; John17:20-26

Father Adam Trambley

May 12, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

Focus on God in difficult times to help God work in difficult places

The theme for today is focusing on God in difficult times to help God work in difficult places. 

Let’s start with today’s reading from Acts.  Paul and Silas have come to Philippi, the first European city to receive the Gospel.  Some people have already received the good news from them, and Lydia is providing them a place to stay.  But they meet a girl with a demonic spirit who annoys them.  The spirit, which is the same kind of spirit as the spirits from the priestesses at Delphi, has the girl follow Paul around and say, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”   These words don’t sound so bad.  They are true.  But can you imagine if during every sermon, as I was about to make an important point that would change your life, someone stood up and yelled, “This preacher knows his stuff and is telling you important things, so you should all sit quietly and listen.”  In no time,  we’d all be wishing for the days when we only had a screaming baby or two to deal with.  Eventually Paul has had enough, finally loses his temper and casts the spirit out of the girl.

Now, just as an aside, we might like, when people annoy us, to turn around and cast a demon out of them.  The problem is that very rarely are we annoyed by demons.  Usually people annoy us because they are exhibiting the same qualities and behaviors that we don’t like so much about ourselves.  So unless we are being tailed by Greek prophetesses while we are evangelizing, if someone annoys us, instead of exorcism, we should probably pray for the person annoying us. We should ask God to remove any similar character flaws we have.  Then we should try to practice the opposite virtues in our own lives.  By focusing on God when we begin to feel annoyed, we give God the invitation to transform our character in ways that are good for us.

Now once the demon is gone from the slave girl, her masters cause trouble.  They stir up the anti-foreigner sentiment in the city, and bring together a mob to falsely accuse Paul and Silas.  The petty magistrates cave to the crowds and have them beaten and thrown in jail.

In the middle of the night Paul and Silas are in the inner cell, which probably means no windows, or airflow or any other kind of basic human comfort.  They also have their feet in stocks, keeping them from moving.  They are at best bruised and sore, and possibly have some broken ribs or serious internal injuries, and no one bothered to disinfect the cell before they were put into it, making their cuts and abrasions opportunities for infection.  The odds of them falling asleep that midnight are slim to none.  So in the midst of all their pain and disappointment, they do the only thing they can do.  They pray and sing hymns to God. 

They pray and they sing hymns to God, and, scripture tells us, the prisoners were listening to them.  On a day when nothing has seemed to go right, they are now given the opportunity to change some lives.  What kind of witness to a powerful and faithful God did the rest of the prisoners hear that night when these two Christians started praying and singing in the midst of their own trials?  What kind of hope was brought into that place of despair when the prisoners in the inner cell, with their feet in stocks, started praising God?   What kind of light was brought into that dark place at midnight, when the other prisoners didn’t tell them to shut up but were listening to them?  Paul and Silas focused on God during that difficult time, and God worked in that difficult place.  Lives were touched.  We’ll hear in a moment what else happened.

Before moving on, however, I want to stop and ask if sometimes we have been in similar situations. Probably not beaten up and in the inner cell with our feet in the stocks, at least I really hope not.  But sometimes life is physically painful.  Sometimes we can’t find a comfortable position to sleep in at midnight.  Sometimes we are unable to be at home, and those around us are not the first choice of companions.  Maybe we’re in a hospital or nursing home; maybe we are stuck in hotel off the freeway; maybe the judicial system has gotten a hold of us, justly or unjustly.  And maybe we want nothing more than to curl up in a ball and feel sorry for ourselves until people come and fix things for us.  And maybe such an attitude would be perfectly understandable.  

But maybe, just maybe, God has something else in mind for us.  Maybe God wants us to focus on him during our difficult times so that he can be at work in those difficult places. 

I have found that when I wake up in the middle of the night, or if I can’t sleep, God usually wants me to pray.  We can always lie in bed and get more and more agitated about why we are still awake, or we can call to mind the people and places that need our prayers.  We can picture God’s light brightening anxious situations.  We can feel God’s love encompassing people in need.  We can see God’s healing grace washing over the sick and dying.  We might even experience God’s presence filling our homes, or this church, or the entire region.  And, by the way, taking time to pray might just calm us enough to go right back to sleep when we’ve prayed what we were supposed to pray.   Now we may not want to start singing loudly at 3 a.m. if others are in the house with us, but the prayers we offer will matter, and we’ll feel much better in the morning than if we were just tossing and turning, or channel surfing, or reading the Facebook posts of everyone else who couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and should have been praying too.

We also have opportunities to pray and minister to others in hospitals, nursing homes and other places of institutional residence, including, like Paul and Silas, prisons.  Every day, medical and other staff have life and death decisions to make, unpleasant duties to perform, a sometimes stressful environment.  When patients find ways to minister to them for the sake of Jesus, real witnessing can occur.  Additionally, other patients are continuously dealing with pain, taking new medications, and undergoing surgical procedures.  If you are a Christian in a hospital, your prayers may be the precise door God wants to go through to bring someone healing, peace and recovery.  A focus on God in those difficult times helps God be at work in that difficult place.

Once Paul and Silas started praying and singing, pretty soon an earthquake occurred, opening all the doors

and unfastening everyone’s chains.  Now I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that if I’m sitting in jail with my feet in the stocks, and God sends a big earthquake that unlocks the whole place, I might just take it as a sign to leave as quickly as possible.  But Paul and Silas don’t.  They aren’t focused on getting someplace more comfortable or going back to Lydia’s for a warm bath and something to eat.  Instead, they are focused on God.  And God has something else in store.  Paul, as a Roman citizen, knows what would happen to the jailer, and how hard it would be for the jailer’s family, if all the prisoners escaped. So he stays.  And Silas stays.  And somehow they convince all the other prisoners to stay too, which may be the biggest miracle in the whole passage.  And when the jailer goes to kill himself, Paul stops him.  Then after literally saving the guy’s life, Paul offers the jailer and his family an opportunity to save their souls, as well.  They jump at the chance and come to believe in Jesus.  Then the jailor washes Paul and Silas’s wounds and gives them a good Greek dinner.  In this unexpectedly good, but still difficult time, Paul and Silas stay focused on God and God brings salvation to an entire family.  Definitely worth sticking around the jail for.    

Sometimes we find ourselves with unexpected opportunities during difficult times.  Sometimes blessings manifest themselves such that we could escape from all trials, but if we are focused on God, we might find more productive ways to use those blessings for ourselves and others. 

Maybe finances are tight, or even terrible, when something breaks our way – a bequest, a raise, a new part-time job, or whatever.  We might be able to use that boon to get ourselves where we feel we want to be.  However, if we focus on how God might be able to use our blessing, we might find that we can be generous to those in need in some way, and still get to where we need to be.  If we are generous, we might have to be prudent and disciplined for a while, but we be able to open a door for God to be at work in the lives of others, as well as in our own.

Or maybe we have a strained relationship with someone, and we suddenly no longer need to regularly interact with them.  We could just say good riddance, or we could remain focused on how God wants to use us in that relationship.  We might find that stepping back a bit gives us the perspective to help minister to the other person and show them God’s love. 

Or, on Mother’s Day, we might think about the end of nine months of pregnancy and who knows how many hours of labor, and how, when it is all over, instead of running to the nearest spa for a long nap, we have a chance to love this newest child of God. 

So when we find ourselves in difficult situations – situations that are rarely as unfortunate as the one Paul faced in Philippi – we can choose one of two attitudes.  The first is to focus on ourselves, and the difficult situation usually remains difficult for us.  The second, however, is to focus on God.  Whether in a dark spot where we may be the only avenue to bring in light, or whether opportunities for escape are presenting themselves, if we stay focused on God during difficult times, we will help God work in difficult places.