Finding Hope and Purpose in Disappointment

I want to invite you right now to identify a disappointment in your life as best you can tell the primary one that you carry in your heart right now and bring it to God and I want to bring to you into me a promise to claim to build a life around not just to give you a greater sense of comfort although it will do that but to persevere to continue to take action to fill your life and your day with meaning. [00:00:21]

I had lunch just a little over a week ago with someone who is becoming a friend, and he is paralyzed from the neck down, went through a horrible accident, and then after that his wife left him and said terrible things about him made up stories about him and other things going on with his family that were just very very difficult and he wanted to meet to encourage me he wanted to know how how do people do that. [00:01:15]

And what he basically does is to take a look at people who the world says not them, can't be them and says no actually it is them when the kingdom of God comes to them when they decide through becoming a friend with me to live together with God then purpose and meaning and joy in life is available precisely to the people that the world says it's not available to you. [00:02:01]

Then there are the seriously crushed ones the flunk outs and the dropouts and the burnouts the broken the broken the drug heads and the divorced the HIV positive and the herpes written the brain damaged the incurably ill really the baron and the pregnant too many times or at the wrong time the overemployed the underemployed the unemployed the unemployable the swindled the shoved aside the replaced the parents with children living in the street the lonely the incompetent the stupid the emotionally starved or emotionally dead and on and on and on. [00:03:01]

Is it true that Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal? Pause there for a moment I didn't know about this line it's from A Hymn which I don't ever remember having sung growing up written a couple hundred years ago called Come Ye disconsolate communist counselor people who have no apparent consolation no place to find comfort all you who languish here at the mercy seat that's where God says at the seed of Mercy fervently kneel here bring your broken heart tell all your anguish Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal that's the promise that's the claim. [00:03:45]

That is precisely the gospel of Heaven's availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes Earth has no sorrow whatever it is whatever you have gone through or are going through that heaven cannot heal and you don't have to wait till you're dead Jesus offers to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present Kingdom regardless of circumstances. [00:04:46]

The condition of Life sought by human beings Through the Ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus, not money, not good looks, not success, not reputation, and then we go even deeper, even the moral disasters will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus count on him make their companion in his kingdom. [00:06:23]

Murderers child molesters the brutal the bigoted drug lords pornographers war criminals and sadists terrorists the perverted and the filthy and the Filthy Rich can't we feel some sympathy for Jesus contemporaries who huffed at him this man is cordial descenders and even eats with them sometimes I feel I don't really want the kingdom to be open to such people. [00:06:55]

As Jonah learn from his experience preaching to those wretched ninevites we can't shrink God down to our size Jonah so badly didn't want the ninevites to be saved that when he finally went there to preach to him he delivered the worst sermon in the history of the world 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown we're told in the Book of Jonah rather comically that's the whole sermon don't even talk about God doesn't call him to repent no clever little illustrations just 40 days everybody's getting it and they turn to God and they repented. [00:07:38]

But here are the foolish weak lowly despised of the world whom God has chosen to cancel out the humanly great among them indeed are a few of the humanly wise the influential and the socially Elite they belong here to God is Not disturbed by them God's willing to accept even them but the Beatitudes is not even a list of spiritual Giants it is the common people the little people to whom Jesus says you're the light of the world you are the salt of the earth. [00:08:36]

Whatever disappointment you're identifying in your life in your marriage or you're not being married or your loss of a marriage or your children or you're not having children or your loss of a child in your work in the death of a dream Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal and it begins now the condition that everybody is searching for is found in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus. [00:09:12]

So come to the mercy seat right now take a moment tell him you're anguish bring him your broken heart let God offer you right now his love and his Blessing and you keep going today you do not quit you look for him beside you you ask in the midst of the disease that is racking your body or the accident that keeps you paralyzed a prisoner in a chair or whatever it is that you're going through you ask now how can I and my friend Jesus help other people today. [00:09:39]