Embracing Suffering: Radical Acceptance in Advent

"Radical acceptance we're in the advent season we're looking forward to Christmas and all that we celebrate then and learning how it is that the incarnation of Jesus makes it possible for me to be able to accept to live in a spirit of surrender I can't but God can to be open to all of life to what is good but also what is painful to not have to go around judging or rejecting other people to be able to accept them just as God has accepted me to be able to accept God's love in my own life I don't have to reject myself I don't have to resist negative feelings I can recognize God in them I don't have to resist my circumstances." [00:18:88]

"The idea of accepting suffering doesn't mean that anything that comes back into my life I just have to passively accept if you can stop suffering and there's no good reason not to then by all means do it my friend Kevin hey Kevin just went through rotator coat cuff surgery and uh he's suffering a little bit he's got pain medication to help with that but he's like the bionic man now he is increasingly artificial and so by all means if you can do that do that but there's lots of suffering that we cannot change and the incarnation of Jesus his entering into human life and even human suffering enables us to offer our suffering to him." [00:70:08]

"Paul writing to young Timothy second Timothy the second chapter and Paul says accept suffering then or join with me in suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ now you may have never thought about that as a Christmas verse but it actually is we experience suffering not as people that have no purpose not as people that have no hope but the way that a soldier does the soldier recognizes I am part of a cause that is much greater than myself and whatever suffering that I endure can go into that." [00:112:08]

"This season of advent is a time Fleming Rutledge writes about this in a wonderful little book called advent this season is a time when we don't just look back often in advent we think about Christmases that we really liked a lot when we were growing up we get kind of nostalgic or we think about when Jesus came the first time in Bethlehem but Fleming writes the primary direction of the advent season throughout most of the history of the church has not been looking back it's actually looking forward to when he is coming again and it is the hope that comes from looking at when he is going to return that it enables me to receive his coming right now in this moment and to offer my suffering to him." [00:151:84]

"Peterson says that you can either go through life as a tourist or as a pilgrim and if you're a tourist you think life is just about a collection of great experiences entertain me wow me impress me let me get some good souvenirs let me go on Instagram and show you what a wonderful life I am leading what great experiences I am collecting what fabulous appetites I'm satisfying but a pilgrim kind of like a soldier is on our way to something and that something is not just a geographical destination it is life in God's presence and God's power in God's favor when I become a person that I am not yet and the way for all of this was cleared by suffering." [00:212:72]

"In Israel for many many centuries God made sense and the way that history was unfolded unfolding made sense and seemed to be leading some place a lot the way that often it does in our life I go to school I graduate maybe I get married maybe I get a job so that I can experience a really good life well for Israel what that looked like was this uh their story began in slavery in Egypt but then God acted and they were freed and there was the exodus and then they were led to mount Sinai and they got Torah they got the ten commandments and then they went to the promised land they crossed the Jordan and then there were a series of judges like Gideon and Samson and then they got kings king David above all and then all of this life made sense and they were on their way to being a great nation maybe the greatest nation and then there was kind of a hiccup and the kingdom was divided then the north and south and then and then and then came the absolute disrupter and that was the exile and they lost everything they lost the promised land they lost the monarchy they were ground under the heel of these powerful oppressors in Babylon and what they did not know what no one could have guessed was God was going to use the exile the death of one dream to give birth to a much greater but very surprising dream that he would begin another kind of kingdom and it wouldn't be an earthly kingdom so that idea that Israel had we can be like other nations only greater more powerful militarily greater economic wealth they would have to die to that so that one day the earth could be invaded by a little child named Jesus and the government would be upon his shoulders but it would not be a earthly government and this is why uh politics is forever extremely limited in our day because our world needs to be fixed from the outside." [00:278:64]

"God says behold I am creating a new heaven and a new earth see they would not have known the need for that if it were not for the exile God says I will create a new Jerusalem fixing up Jerusalem fixing up America fixing up California fixing up wherever you are is not an earthly project it can only be done by God and he has begun that little invasion through the person of Jesus and Jesus came in suffering love to take on our sufferings and what that means is whatever exile I am experiencing right now I can accept yep change it if I can if there's repairs make them if there's a relationship that I can help restore restore it but sometimes I can't sometimes there is a relationship that I cannot fix sometimes there is a failure that I cannot retrieve that I cannot set right and then I come as a pilgrim and then I trust I don't have to try to make my suffering look less than it is I don't have to indulge in self-pity and have the spirit of a martyr I give a long obedience in the same direction I continue on like a soldier like a pilgrim." [00:403:28]

"Esau Macaulay who is an African American professor of New Testament at Wheaton College my old alma mater wrote a book called reading while black African-American biblical interpretation as an exercise in hope and he writes about while he is seeking to provide a really good childhood for his children one of the things that he's recognizing is he says I cannot help believing that my children have lost something the determination born of suffering I wish I could give them that feeling he writes about how when he grew up in poverty without a dad that suffering was the context from which my mother taught me about the value of education it formed the background of my pastor's sermons in black churches of my youth it's in the New York Times the only God I have ever known was one who cared about my black body and my black soul that suffering was a unifying factor in all my deepest friendships." [00:541:04]

"Peterson writes about how he read that phrase in Frederick Nietzsche Nietzsche of course was not a believer in God he was an atheist and he believed in the will to power that if you just majestically choose what you want to do with your life and then stick to it merely a long obedience in the same direction will make your worth life worthwhile and Peterson says no it's in the direction of Jesus the one who came to give his life and suffer for us interestingly enough that book itself was rejected by 17 publishers before somebody accepted it Eugene himself was a model of a long obedience in the same direction so that's the invitation of advent today I want to invite you to think about an area where you are experiencing exile maybe it's your health maybe it's your family maybe it's financial maybe it's regret for something wrong that you have done maybe it's one of those three o'clock in the morning demon Sam talks about that just kind of gnaws at you whatever it is it has been taken into the person of Jesus God incarnate who has invaded our world who in Bethlehem two thousand years ago established a little beach head and and the battle is his." [00:612:24]

"The god and the devil are engaged in a great war and the battlefield is in the human soul and so we accept our suffering and we offer it to god he will redeem it there will be a new heaven and a new earth he will see to it." [00:695:83]