Recovery From Life's Disasters

It’s sad to say, life has it’s share of tragedy and chances are, you will go through a tragedy. Maybe not a shooting, but something else at different times in your life. Because the Bible teaches that this is not a perfect world. Because there is sin in the world people do wrong things and suffering results. The Bible is brutally honest about this.

Ecclesiastes 8:14, “Here is a another enigma that occurs on earth: Sometimes there are righteous people who get what the wicked deserve, and sometimes there are wicked people who get what the righteous deserve. I said, ‘This also is an enigma.’” (New English Translation)

What he’s saying here is that we don’t always get what we deserve. There are two mistakes that you can make regarding tragedy. One is to think all the good things that happen to me prove that I’m good, and that all the bad things that happen to me prove that I’m bad. That’s wrong.

In Luke 13, Jesus is talking about two tragedies that happened in His day. He said you know there were innocent people worshipping at the temple and Pilate’s people came in and brutally slaughtered them. Then He said there was a tower that fell on eighteen people and killed them. And He posed the question, “Who sinned, that caused this tragedy?” Was it a result of their sin? And then He answered His own question. He said, "Absolutely not, absolutely not!"

Most of the problems we have in life are our fault. Would you agree with that? The vast majority of them are. We do reap what we sow, but not always. Sometimes we suffer innocently. You see, not everything that happens is God’s will. When I hear people hearing about the fire and they say, “Well, it must have been God’s will”, I have a spiritual term for that. “Baloney!”. That’s just not true! Don’t blame God for the shooting. God’s grieving too. God’s will is not always done.

Now God could have stopped the shooter. Real simple. Just take away their free will, their freedom to choose. But to be fair, He’d have to take away your free will at the same time. Our greatest blessing in life, God’s given us the freedom to choose, is also our greatest curse because we often choose the wrong thing. And when I choose the wrong thing innocent people suffer. Does that make sense? God’s will is not always done in this world folks.

2 Peter 3:9b, “God’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Do all repent? No. Do some perish? Yes. Why? God will never force His will on your will. That’s why we’re to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Why? Because God’s will isn’t always done on earth. How’s it done in heaven? It’s done perfectly. And so we’re to pray, “God, just like your will is done perfectly in heaven, we want that to be done on earth”. If it was being done, we wouldn’t have to pray for it.

Now my purpose is not to explain suffering, because that would take me a whole series of blogs about what God says about the many, many reasons and causes. But to instead talk to you about how to handle it. I want to give you five principles on how to respond to tragedy.

1. RELEASE my grief.

Now let’s look at the first one. When you go through a tragedy, the first thing you need to do is release your grief. Why? Because tragedy always creates strong emotions. Did you feel any emotions this week? Yes, fear, maybe anger, worry, maybe some depression, maybe a little resentment, grief over those whose lost things. And these feelings are scary. We don’t know what to do with our feelings. If you don’t deal with them, your recovery from a crisis always takes far longer than it should, if you stuff it down.

See some people are stuffers. When they have emotions, they don’t know how to handle so they deny them, they ignore them, they push them down. In fact many people use God as an excuse for this. They think God wants everybody to go around all the time with a happy face. Folks, life isn’t always happy. God doesn’t expect you to be smiling all the time.

Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” It’s ok to grieve. You have to face your feelings. You don’t repress them, push them down, you don’t rehearse them—torturing your self by repeating it over in your mind. You release it. You tell what you feel to God.

I’ve actually met some people that think it is wrong for Christians to cry at funerals. Well if they’re a believer and they’re going to heaven, you don’t have to cry for them, but you can cry for yourself because you miss them.

Blessed are those who mourn. If you morn, you are blessed. Grief is a part of life. And so the first thing you got to do is release your grief because if you don’t feelings pile up and they will eventually explode in some form or another. If you don’t talk it out, you’ll take it out on yourself or somebody else. Once you begin to let those feelings out, you release your grief.

2. RECEIVE from others

Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” It is a big mistake to isolate yourselves from others when you’re going through a crisis. Now usually that’s what we want to do, we want to get all by ourselves; nobody understands our problem. But you need other people in a tragedy. You need their perspective, you need their support, you need their encouragement, and you just need their presence.

Now this is why I’m so adamant about you need to be a part of a church family. I’m not just talking about being just an attender, I’m talking about being a member of a family. Because when a crisis comes, if you don’t have those relationships in place, who's going to hold you up?

A few years ago, there was a couple in a church I was in that had come in and out for years. The man came down with cancer and he was in the hospital. His wife called and said, we’d like somebody to come from the church and visit. I happened to be in another state teaching at a conference. I called long distance. I said, "I am out of town, but I would be glad to send you somebody. Tell me anybody you know in the church and I’d be glad to send him or her to you." They had come for all those years and they didn’t know one person. They later got bitter from that and they left the church because they thought the church didn’t care. It was their fault,-- because they never established any relationships. God says, we need to receive from each other when we go through tragedy. We need to encourage each other.

3. REFUSE to be Bitter

Some people have no happiness at all. They live and die with bitter hearts. Now you’re going to have to decide when you go through those tragedies, those disasters, “Am I going to allow this to make me a bitter person, or better person?” You can have a choice. You can either choose happiness in life or you can choose bitterness. It’s your choice, but you can’t have both. And if you choose bitterness in your life, realize you’re not hurting anybody else with it, you’re hurting yourself. And you’re guaranteeing you won’t be happy, because you can’t be happy and bitter at the same time.

One of the things I’ve learned, in being in the ministry for many years, is that there’s absolutely no correlation in life between your experiences and your happiness. None whatsoever! Because I’ve seen people who had absolutely the worst experiences in life; things that would shock everyone of us, and yet they maintain this happy, cheerful, positive attitude, because happiness is a choice. You’re about as happy as you choose to be.

That’s why, I’ll just be honest with you, I have no place in my life for whiners. I really don’t. Why? Because in the ministry I’ve seen people who had every right in the world to whine and didn’t. I mean, they had every reason in the world, the disasters, and the crisis that they’ve seen in their life and they still maintained a positive attitude. And then I’ve seen other people who almost nothing has gone wrong in their life; almost nothing, and they still complain, and cry and whine about everything.

Happiness is a choice. You refuse to be bitter, because bitterness always hurts you most. Hebrews 12:15, “Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.”

Refuse to be bitter, because it causes problems in your own life. It never changes anything. Blaming others never changes anything. It only makes you feel worse.

Have you ever noticed what insurance companies consider to be ‘acts of God’? Hurricanes, disasters, floods, fires; and honestly, you know what real ‘acts of God’ are? When a baby’s born, when a person is healed, when a marriage is restored, when a family gets back together. That’s an act of God.

How do you keep from being bitter when the inevitable tragedies of life are going to come? You do 2 things:

A. Accept what cannot be changed.

Quit trying to fight it. Accept what cannot be changed. Faith is not pretending everything is great in your life; Faith is facing the facts and not getting discouraged. Faith is facing the facts of life, and not being discouraged by them. That’s what real faith is. It’s not pretending everything’s great. Everything’s not always great. There are bad things in the world. And bad things do happen to good people, but faith is facing the facts without getting discouraged. You see there’s very little in life that you can control. In fact, I’ve discovered that the most important things in life you can’t control.

I want my kids to grow up and love the Lord with all their hearts. But you know what, I can’t control them. That’s going to be their decision. And the jury’s still out, and that bugs me no end. What I’m saying is this: The only way to overcome some problems in life is to accept them, and to get on. Your past is past. It’s over. It can’t continue to hurt you unless you allow it to. Accept what’s been done. It’s not going to change. Now get on with your life.

B. You focus on what’s left. Not what’s lost.

Revelation 3:2a, “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain...” What’s God’s will for me in a crisis? It’s that I be thankful, no matter what. For the problem? Of course not; God doesn’t expect you to be thankful for a tragedy. But you should be thankful for what’s left, not what’s lost. And you choose to focus on God’s goodness, because gratitude and depression cannot exist in the same body.

You want to get over depression, start making a list of all the good things in your life. And the fact is, there are people in this world who would love to have your problems. They’re worried about am I going to get a meal in the next month, not how am I going to make it. You focus on what’s left, not what’s lost.

4. REMEMBER what’s important.

Disasters have a way of clarifying values. They have a way of pointing out what matters and what really doesn’t matter. They define your values. Luke 12:15, “And He said to them, ‘Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.’”

What is he saying here? Don’t confuse your net worth with your self worth. Don’t confuse your possessions with your purpose in life. Don’t confuse what you’re living on with what you’re living for. A man’s life does not consist of what he possesses.

1 Timothy 6:7, “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” You’re never going to see a hearse with a U-Haul behind it. Here is the point, if you want real security, you must build your life on something that can never be taken from you.

Can you lose a home? Yes. Can you lose a career? Yes. Can you lose a marriage? Yes. Can you lose your health? Yes. Can you lose your youthful beauty? Yes. Can you lose your relationship with God, because some outside from has taken it away from you? No. You are the only one who can walk away from it, but God will never drop you and leave you.

Honestly there are sometimes I don’t feel like being a Christian. Have you ever said, “God, I would like to put my faith on hold for about 4 hours while I go do something.” But God keeps the commitment. Once I place my life in His hands, the Bible says, “They are in My hand and no man can take them out.”

5. RELY on Christ

Isaiah 26:3, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”

Psalm 112:6-7, “6 Surely he will never be shaken; the righteous will be in everlasting remembrance. 7 He will not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”

Psalm 46:1, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

Psalm 91:1-2, “1 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.”