Roots slipping on this edition of Key Life, not Time 101. Hey, if you're into stuffy, turn off the radio now because this is Key Life, designed to be honest, straightforward and street smart. Here's Steve Brown with the Teaching for the Day. Thanks, Mike. Hope you had a great weekend and I hope your time of celebration and worship was as good as my time. And that your pastor, Sirman, minister to you deeply, the way my pastor, Sirman, minister to me. If you're just joining us, we're in the midst of a break. We had been spending a considerable number of months on an Old Testament survey. And I said, if we ever ran out of steam or got boring or it was just too much, we were going to stop for a while, take a break and then come back to it. And so what I'm doing, given the fact that a significant amount of time has passed and we have some time to kind of put things into perspective since 9-11. I want to take these weeks by way of a break from our major series and talk about pain and suffering and broken ropes. And by the way, most of this material comes from my book when your rope breaks and you can get that at a local bookstore or you can give us a call, we'll tell you how you can get it here. At any rate, we're taking some time to look at the problem of suffering and pain. Now, if you have been listening, I'm going to go back to that Old Testament survey. If you've been listening, we spent a considerable portion of time telling you the bad news and saying the Bible says deal with it. Don't you follow those Christians who say, let's tiptoe through the tulips with Jesus and everything will be happy and everybody will be fine. And it will be wonderful praise Jesus because that's not what the Bible says. The Bible never lies to us about the fact that we live in a fallen world. And we spent considerable time talking about that. Getting the bad news out of the way, we turned to some very good news. We talked about God's love last week. We talked about your broken rope having a purpose. We talked about some definitions of love and how important that definition is. We said that God is promised that you're going to make it through and not only that, you're going to make it through with his help, you are not alone. Some good news that you need to remember when your rope is broken. And then last week we talked about how your broken rope is redemptive. And then we spent last Thursday talking about you having a fellow sufferer even Jesus. He came not to just keep you from suffering, but to suffer as you must suffer. And this week I want to give you a not tying 101. What do you do when your rope is breaking? Now before we turn to that, and by the way, have your Bible there. These are not my ideas. These are all from the scriptures. I have wonderful ideas, but God told me that on this broadcast I'm supposed to teach the Bible. And so that's what I do. And I'll be referring to different texts throughout the Bible as we go along. But before we turn to the book, let's go before the throne. Father we're glad we belong to you, we're glad that you've always been faithful in the past, you're faithful now, and you always will be. But Father we're still scared sometimes, and we're still confused sometimes, and we're still afraid sometimes. But we have learned that this is the best place to be in your presence. Father, meet us at the point of our need as you define our need. We pray that you would forgive our sin, that you would empower us, that you would give us the joy that comes only from your throne and the peace that comes only from you. Father, heal and cleanse and change. We're here and you're sufficient. Father, we praise you, and we worship you because you're worthy of our praise and our worship, and we pray for the one who teaches that you would forgive him his sins, or they are many, we would see Jesus and him only, and we pray in Jesus name of Him. You know something? The Bible doesn't talk much about the reasons for the pain and suffering that we have to go through. If you've ever read the book of Job, you're aware that Job is not the place to go for answers to the problem of evil. The book of Job asks the question, if there is a good and loving God, why do we have to go through so much pain and suffering? By and large, the book doesn't provide answers to that question, and except in general terms neither does the rest of the Bible. Now, although we don't understand sometimes the reasons why ropes break, they do break. The question before the house then is this, what do you do? I mean, when things are really bad, what do you do then? Now, I'm going to show you some of the ways this week, God gives His grace, that His unmerited favor or help to those of us who are believers. That means the means of grace, now that's a formal theological term for the ways of God in which He enables us to persevere in our salvation. Now, although I'll not be speaking of the means of grace in a technical or restricted sense, the idea is the same. God is very practical, He doesn't leave His people helpless. Now, in order to help us understand the means of God's grace, I'm going to preface each one of these different means of grace with the adjective honest. Now, if there's a problem Christians have in dealing with pain and suffering, it's a problem with honesty. Now, I certainly don't mean that Christians are outright dishonest, at least most of the time we don't lie. But we often conceal untruths in spiritual language and pious platitudes. And as a result, the truth gets lost in our maze of spiritualization. You hear non-Christian saying that they don't go to church because they're hypocrites in the church. That's drivel. If you find sinners in the church, that's where they're supposed to be. There are two kinds of people in the world listening up, sinners who know they need God and sinners who don't know they need God. The first group, if they properly understand the Christian faith, are in church. When Pagan's talk about hypocrisy, they usually refer to people who say being in the church makes them good. The fact is that if a person is a part of the church, he or she is proclaiming before the whole world that he or she is a sinner. The church ought to be the local chapter of sinners anonymous. The fact that Christians or sinners doesn't make Christians hypocrites in reality, it proclaims the truth of the gospel. Now, people who are part of the church are hypocritical when they proclaim to each other that they are better or smarter or more beautiful, or wiser or more spiritual or pure or more loving than they really are. Healthy dose of honesty is one of the best things that you can do when you're going through a difficult time. So let's talk about it. Honest prayer. Telling God the truth. Honest prayer can really help when your ropes broken and things are really bad. One of the beautiful things about the Psalms is the honesty of the Psalmist with God. More often than not, the Psalms constitute candid, straightforward prayers. Listen to this from Psalm 69, 1 through 3. And there are examples after examples. Listen to this. Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there's no standing. I've come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. I'm weary with my crying. My throat is dry. My eyes fail while I wait for you, God. I remember the day it became apparent that I was going to have to withdraw from graduate school and give up my dream of being a pastor. I was at Boston University graduate school of theology. It was a really difficult time. My wife and I were living in a slum apartment. She was pregnant. We didn't have any money. I was working two jobs just to keep going. I was getting up at 3.15 in the morning and doing a morning show in Boston. And then coming to this seminarian going to school and then going back as the production manager and doing that. I was tired and discouraged. So you know what I did? I put an on a plane in Boston so she could go visit her mother in Georgia. And I headed toward the beaches of the North Shore. I didn't know much about God in those days. But I knew enough to know that I was in great pain about my situation and I was quite angry at him. And I told him so. If you'd been there, you would have winced at the angry words which flowed from me as I shook my fist and gone. I didn't understand what he was doing. We were in a strange city with all these Yankees. Both of my daughters were Yankees now so I have to be careful. Working with strange people trying to do the impossible. And you, I said to God, you don't care. You've deserted us. That was about the nicest thing I said to him. Later as I began to learn about God, I was ashamed of the things that I said. But then later when I knew him even better, I knew that the only person in the world who could have understood my feelings was God and that I had gone to the right person with them and said exactly the right thing. Do you go to God when you're hurting and say, praise Jesus, it's fine. It's not fine. Don't tell him you think it's fine when you don't think it's fine. Do you go to God and say, I belong to you and whatever you decide, that's fine. It hurts really bad but I'm doing this for you. If you don't feel that way, don't say that to God. God knows what you think. He knows when you're scared and you're afraid and you're lonely and when it hurts really bad. And real honest prayer will help when it's real and it's honest. You think about that. Hey listen, if you don't have our winter magazine, I'd like to send it to you. Three of charge as long as supplies last. I wrote a couple of articles. Our God reigns and crosses and crowns. The magazine has a question and answer column. A lot of good material about Lake Berkeley Fellowship. I hope you guys can come. We have a great time there. And then there are a lot of resources to get you and those you love home with, free to enjoy and faithfulness to Christ as you're crowning achievement. It's free. All you got to do is let us know. Call 1-800-keylife-24 hours a day or write key life. Post office box 5,000 Madeleine Florida. 32794 or key life Canada. Post office box 32150. Cambridge, Ontario. In 3H5 and 3, or you can email us at Steve at keylife.org with your regular mailing address. When I say it's free, I really mean that. But I really mean what I'm going to say too. If you could help us financially, I sure would appreciate it. I promise we'll squeeze every time we'll be faithful. And if you help us, it will make you a part of a small minority of people who help so many of us. You can charge it on your MasterCard visa, discover card and for any contribution of any size, I'll send you the cassette teaching a new year's examination. Hey guys, I got to go but one other thing. Key life is a listener supported production of key life network. And if you could help us, it will make you a part of a small minority of people who help us.