"Making It Through the Hard Times"
- Rev. Ken Streitenberger
Assistant Pastor

the Scripture Lesson:
Hebrews 10: 32 - 39

          I suppose you’ve heard the story about the nun who had run out of gas on a country road?  The nun walked to the nearest filling station –which was not too terribly far away— and the station owner gave her enough gas to get her car started.  However, the only container the filling station owner could find to put the gas in was an empty beer bottle.  That would have to do.

          After the nun had walked back to her car and was in the process of pouring the contents of the beer bottle into her tank, a Protestant minister drove by.  He stopped his car immediately, stared at the nun in amazement a few moments, and then with astonishment in his voice exclaimed, “Sister, we may have our doctrinal differences, but by golly, I’ve got to admire your faith!”  (“The Happy Clergy,”  p. 10)

          And so it is.  We do have to admire faith.  I want to talk about faith this morning.  Especially I want to talk about faith as it is mentioned by the author of the letter to the Hebrews, when he says to them (and by way of them to us), “We are not people who turn back and are lost.  Instead, we have faith and are saved.”  (10:39)

          What kind of faith do I want to talk about?  --Faith in God.  Faith in our Christian community and fellowship.  Faith in ourselves.

          The scripture lesson talks about some hard times the early Christians were having.  The author mentions specifically persecutions, struggles, public insults, mistreatment, imprisonment, suffering, the seizing of their belongings.  –All on account of their new faith.  And the author’s words of encouragement to the Hebrews in the face of those trials is that…

“We are not going to turn back.  We are not going to be defeated.  We are not going to succumb or be overcome.  We are going to maintain our courage.  We are going to persevere.  We are going to make it through the hard times.” 

          And as his basis for this optimism, the author says,

“Because we have something in which to trust.  Because we have a possession that cannot be stolen by scoundrels.  Because we have a faith that will save us.”      

          Do you ever have any hard times?  Do any of us ever have any hard times?  --Why, of course, we do.  Every one of us has a multitude of things pulling and tearing at us constantly.  We have loved ones who are ill –some very seriously ill.  We have roadblocks in our careers.  We have seemingly insurmountable problems in our marriages or in our families or in our relationships.  We have heartbreak because of shattered love.  We have guilt because of a lack of faithfulness on our own part.  We live in a society that is often crippled by selfishness and greed.  Our present-day economy creates anxiety about employment and long-term financial security.  We’ve lost loved ones.  We’ve experienced an uprooting from the place we called home.  We are tired and fatigued.  We are often at our wits end.  The children are noisy.  Our parents are unreasonable.  Our peer group is pressuring us to do things that violate our standards.  We have been treated unjustly.  We have been slandered and gossiped about.  We’re unsure of tomorrow.  We’re scared about the future.  We’re frustrated with today.

          --We, in a myriad of ways, are experiencing hard times.  Some days we don’t think we can survive.  Our patience is wearing thin.  Our enthusiasm for life is waning.  Our hope for tomorrow is chipped and raw.  The pain that we face at the lonely moments of each day is about to get us.  We need a way to make it through our hard times!

          In following the author of the letter to the Hebrews –that we are a people saved by faith— I would suggest three ways we can make it through the hard times.

I.

          The first way is that we put our faith in God.  We realize that God is God.  We take God at God’s word and accept God’s promises.

          The story is told about a missionary who went to China many years ago –before the cultural revolution and the original sealing of the borders.  This missionary had a Chinese friend who worked with and for him arduously.  However, this Chinese friend, whose name was Lo, had never himself completely accepted the Christian faith.  Christianity seemed to him to be more than he could comprehend.  He could not yet claim the promises of God as his own.

          One evening, as Lo attended services in the church, he did fully accept that the promises of God were for him –and not just for everybody else.  It was at a time in his life when he was especially struggling.  The thing that convinced Lo that God loved him was the text of the sermon that night.  The passage was from Matthew 28:20.  It said, “Lo, I am with you always.”  (Repeat)

          Now, not many of us will get such a personalized assurance of God’s presence with us.  But God is with us just the same --even in the hard times.  Perhaps especially in the hard times.  Part of what we need to do in order to make it through those hard times is to remember that God is with us;  accept God’s love and presence;  and allow God to work his calming grace in our lives.

          The theologian Helmlut Thielicke writes in his book “Being a Christian When the Chips Are Down,”  that even a dog can preach a sermon.  (And I know you could have a field-day with that –“even a dog can preach a sermon,” but I would encourage you to try to resist the temptation –or at least wait till next week when Bob is back in the pulpit.)

          To illustrate his point that even a dog can preach a sermon, Thielicke relates two incidents of dogs on board a ship as it crossed the ocean.  He says, the one dog, a large German Shepherd, had been placed on the ship and left in the care of the crew.  The dog’s master was flying overseas rather than sailing.  The dog was miserable.  He lived those days of the crossing in an unfamiliar world with strange scents and strange people that were totally foreign to him.  The floor rocked, there were no trees, and at the railing the world literally came to an end.  As far as that dog was concerned his canine world-view had collapsed around him and he was plunged into emptiness and the void –and he showed it in his disposition and his forlorn look.

          The other dog on board ship was a lap-dog.  And, even though the external circumstances were exactly the same for this dog as for the other dog, there were no waves of sadness or looks of confusion or shoots of anxiety emanating from him.  –The reason?  His master was beside him.  The dog’s master held him on his lap and stroked his head and reassured him.  As the dog often gazed up at the master he would seem to say, to quote Thielicke,

“This is a crazy world;  I have stopped trying to figure it out, but if you are along things can’t really be that bad.  Sooner or later all this nonsense will stop and then I will once more sniff halfway normal smells and find trees that I can enjoy.”  (pp. 70-71)

          Perhaps dogs can preach sermons.  They remind us that the master is beside us;  that we rest securely in God’s hands;  that all of this cannot overcome us.  Eventually it will end and we will have made it through the hard times.

          --Remember what Jesus said?

“In this world you will have tribulation, but stand fast and take courage, I have overcome the world.”            (John 16:33)

 II.

          A second help that can enable us to make it through the hard times is to put our faith in the Christian community;  entrust our cares to the body of Christians;  allow ourselves to receive and be filled with the succor of others of the faith.

          Oh, I know, we are taught from early on that we have to make it in this world on our own.  It’s dog eat dog.  It’s every man for himself.  It’s every woman for herself.  It’s survival of the fittest.  –But that is not at all true.  We are not meant to go it alone in this world.  We are not meant to struggle by ourselves.  We are not created to be granite islands of strength withstanding the pounding of the sea.  –We are social animals that depend on one another.

          Let me read you a paragraph written by a colleague in ministry.  He wrote, in a heart rending chapter,

“…This past year has been the most difficult year of my life.  My wife has been through five major surgeries, radiation treatment, and chemotherapy.  I am thankful that I now know she is going to make it.  During the same year, I suffered the loss of several key staff teammates whose moves were very guided for them, but a source of pressure and uncertainty in my work.  Problems which I could have tackled with gusto under normal circumstances seemed to loom in all directions.  Discouragement lurked around every corner, trying to capture my feelings.  Prayer was no longer a contemplative luxury, but the only way to survive.  My own intercessions were multiplied by the prayers of others.  Friendships were deepened as I was forced to allow people to assure me with words I had preached for years.  No day went by without a conversation, letter, or phone call giving me love and hope.”  (Ogilvie, “Drumbeat of Love,” p. 176)

          Later, as this pastor observes the early Christians and their mutual support for one another, he says,

          “They had each other.  I like to imagine what they said to each other after each traumatic difficulty.  I can feel the encouragement that they gave each other as they bound up each other’s wounds.  Don’t miss the warmth of ‘I couldn’t have done it without you!’ 

--Expressions of mutual affirmation.”  (Ibid., pp. 179-180)

          And then he adds, to us, a word of advice,

“We all need the joy of fellowship.  We were never meant to make it alone.  Our Lord uses the difficult times to break us open to a receptive dependence on our brothers and sisters in the faith.  We need them to remind us of our real purpose and of our only source of power.  Most of all, we need someone to understand what we’re going through and to pray for us and with us.”  (Ibid., p. 180)

          Christians bear one another’s burdens.  How is it that grand old hymn “Blest Be the Tie” sings it?

“We share each other’s woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.”

          And in the mutuality, in the mingling of those tears and prayers, we receive extra strength, extra grace, extra courage to face the challenge at hand.  The community of the faithful works no better than when they rally around the wounds and pangs of a fellow Christian.  We’ve seen it time and time again in moments of crisis.  At the loss of a loved one;  during serious illness;  when disaster or accident strikes –the body Christian surrounds and enfolds with love and support.  We can make it through the hard times by leaning on each other and sharing the faith.

 

III.

          There is one last way of finding help to make it through the hard times.  And this last way requires that we take the initiative ourselves.  But the initiative we need to take doesn’t concern itself with our problems.  Instead it searches out ways we can help with other peoples’ problems.

          And we say, “Are you crazy?  If I’ve got a mountain of problems myself, why do I want to take on someone else’s problems?”  --Because, my friends, when we lose ourselves in someone else’s problems, our own troubles become much more manageable.  One sure-fire way to relieve personal anxiety and malaise is to immerse ourselves in the lives of others.  Jesus said it so many centuries ago, “If you would find your life, then you must lose it.”

          Let me quote to you another Christian who knows from his own experience the truth of this prescription.  He says,

“At the darkest times during this past year, my life was brightened by my work with people.  Each time I needed a lift the most, the Lord would give me someone in trouble and in need of God.  Sharing God’s love in the context of the victory over despair God was giving me personally seemed to help others.  And each time a new person gave his /her life to Christ and started the adventure, I was filled with almost uncontainable joy.  The result was that I could return to the excruciating realities of my own situation with renewed conviction that our Lord could do all things.”  Ogilvie, p. 179)

          One of the most dangerous attitudes for us when we are in turmoil or struggle or despair is self-pity.  When we begin to feel that nobody else has any troubles, nobody else has experienced sorrow like I have, nobody else knows the agony of heartbreak like I do, we are treading perilously close to retreating into a shell of selfishness that is impenetrable even by God.  We are in danger of destroying our objectivity and balance.  We are in danger of robbing ourselves of the power to survive that can only be found by giving ourselves away.

          If we want to make it through the hard times, then we must beware of self-pity.  We must lose ourselves –and our troubles and anxieties— in service to, in prayers for, in succor of others.

* * * * *

          There is no denying we all live in the midst of hard times.  We feel that hardness and we weep often because of it.  But it is imminently possible for us to make it through those hard times:  1)  By putting our faith in God, allowing God to work his promises in us, realizing that God is with us;  2)  By yielding to and accepting the mutuality of a common and shared faith among the sisterhood and brotherhood;  and 3)  By immersing ourselves unselfishly in the hurts of other people.

          Proclaimed the author of the letter to the Hebrews confidently, “We are not people who turn back and are lost.  Instead, we have faith and are saved.”

          Friends, that is our faith.  And that is how we make it through the hard times.