Being Lifted by God's Greatness, Pt. 1 (08/28/2022)

Morning everybody. How are y 'all doing? It's good to be back doing this again.

This is a lot of fun. We're going to be just picking up right where we left off about seven months ago.

The last time I was up here it was January and I started a study

I was doing already at that time where I was essentially just trying to kind of piece together the idea of having peace like the ability for us as believers to have peace even in the toughest times.

So I started a study that I was calling peace and tribulation and so I did the first part of that again back in January and you know that was great.

Filled the spot for that day and then here we are today so I'm just gonna again pick up where we left off but don't worry because I will do a little bit of review there just to get us all back on track including myself and then we'll move on to the next section of that study but I'm going to go ahead and pray really quick first.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful day that you've blessed us with. Thanks for bringing us all together once again and just the time that we get to have this time every week to fellowship with each other, strengthen each other, and just edify each other.

It's such a wonderful special time for all of us. I could certainly speak for myself and I just ask you to be with all of us today.

I ask you to please allow this lesson to be edifying for everybody and again just to be with us throughout the day.

We ask all these things in your name. Amen. Alrighty so again I'm gonna do just a quick, well

I say quick, I'm gonna do a recap of what we covered back in January and the first couple of sections or I'll just start with the first section that we covered was essentially okay so like we experience hard times and there can be kind of a kind of a sequence to what we go through when those times start coming up and often you know the first thing that can take place is depending on the level of tribulation we're talking about when

I use the word tribulation I'm using it pretty broadly it could be anything that is just it's kind of throwing a wrench in things if you will.

I mean it could be anything from getting a flat tire on the side of the highway on any given day to the toughest times you can imagine, toughest times imaginable, toughest things that you could go through as an individual or as a family, as a church family, whatever it may be and oftentimes the first thing that you can that you would encounter when going through anything a little bit tough is the mourning aspect of tribulation the lamenting if you will and so the first section that we looked at last time was examples of Old Testament saints, the patriarchs of our faith lamenting through the tough times that they went through and so you know again it all kind of the premise of the whole study is the fact that it can be possible to have peace even in those tough times but it's still a very dynamic thing to go through there's a lot of different things to be experienced there and it normally starts again with kind of the mourning aspect of what you're going through and again it can depend on the severity of the thing but it's still a very natural thing we see a lot of examples especially in the

Old Testament as we looked at last time of saints that were going through various forms of tribulation usually pretty severe and they're lamenting or mourning during that time and displaying is and we'll review a little bit of this but we looked at it in a lot of detail come back in January where they were displaying just very very transparent emotions even discourse directly with the

Lord just not really holding anything back in terms of how they were feeling about what they were going through so we have that we have a lot of examples of it we'll look at a couple of them in a minute but we also as we also covered last time we also have this higher standard especially for all of us in this specific age in the church age on this side of the cross and we have a higher standard that we have before it is okay to lament or to mourn when we're going through really tough times as we kind of yeah as we kind of you know discussed and concluded last time it is okay and it is okay to take our sorrows to the

Lord when we have them but we also have again on this side of the cross a very specific

Christian you know mandate if you will to be joyful in everything that occurs and of course

Philippians 4 .4 is the first place the mind goes when you are thinking about that thinking about the fact that we do have this unique ability that you know maybe the

Old Testament saints had to some degree certainly the world around us does not have and that is kind of a superpower in terms of being able to have peace to be joyful even when the worst things imaginable are happening around us so it's okay to lament but thankfully that doesn't have to be the end game as we kind of concluded last time we do have that higher standard to shoot for as Christians in the

Old Testament I'm sorry in the New Testament as we see many examples of we are promised persecution as followers of Christ that is innate to our position in him we are going to have persecution there's a lot of passages

Galatians 4 .29 1st Thessalonians 3 .3 we looked at all these last time 1st

Peter 4 but we're promised that persecution we're promised tribulation and you know we're all aware that we can have a really tough life that or how tough

I should say that life can be not that we have a tough life but how tough it can be so we know all that and all of again all of that is is promised in the

New Testament I mean the apostles went through the brunt of it and yet as we'll see as we've seen already but we'll see again later they were they remain joyful we're commanded to live life joyfully again

Philippians 4 .4 is just is just the go -to place for that it's a very dynamic thing to try to navigate the tribulation you know maintaining that peace maintaining any amount of joyfulness through every season of life it's not an easy task and it's not necessarily supposed to be an easy task either though it's supposed to be something that draws us nearer to the

Lord there's a purpose and everything and this will be a big part of today's lesson is there's obviously a reason for it we may not understand the reason for it but one thing that is pretty certain is that by the end of it or hopefully even through it throughout the tribulation we may be going through is our relationship with the

Lord is going to be getting stronger I mean if that was the only information we had that in and of itself gives us enough reason to be joyful even in the tough times it can be hard because of our human nature but it is an amazing thing and and so that's something that'll happen is we'll go through it but we'll get closer to him now last time to kind of set the tone for that first section talking about kind of the the lamentations aspect of tribulation the mourning aspect of it we started just you don't have to go here because I'm just going to hit a couple of verses in these spots before we get into today's lesson but we started with Ecclesiastes 3 .1

it's it starts with to everything there is a season there's a time for every purpose under the heaven and then down in verse 4 specifically