1 Peter 1:6-9 - 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Trials...we all face them, but it's how we handle them that sets us apart. We talked tonight about how God uses trials in our lives is very similar to refining gold. When gold is mined from the ground and rocks, it is full of impurities. It needs to be melted down into a liquid state in order to be made pure. The dross, or debris in the gold, rises to the surface and then can be skimmed off...leaving nothing but pure gold behind.
Similarly, we have a lot of impurities in us. We have attitudes. We are selfish and proud and jealous and just plain ugly sometimes. God often has to put us in the fire to get rid of those bad character qualities! Our fire comes through difficult circumstances....trials. Maybe that looks like an illness or a sick parent. Maybe it is trouble at school, money problems for our family, a hurricane wipes out our house...who knows?!
One thing is for sure. When life's trials come our way, Satan tries to use them to bring out the worst in us. But God allows them to come our way to bring out the best in us. Satan hopes we will become uglier when difficult things come our way. He wants us to throw temper tantrums and scream at God and have bad attitudes to those around us. God wants us to trust Him more, to make us persevere, grow our patience, test our faith in Him. And if we pass God's test, the reward is that we are more like Jesus than we were before God tested us.
We used popcorn and Ted Kennedy as our object lessons tonight. Ted was an athletic kid, who looked forward to playing football in high school. When he was 12, Ted had a pain in his leg that would not go away, so his mom took him to the doctor. It turns out, Ted had bone cancer. He had to have his leg amputated to save his life.
- We held up a popcorn kernel.
At that point in his life, Ted felt hard and utterly useless—like our kernel. But the surgery, his recovery, and the attitude of faith he had to develop to keep going did something to him.
- We added popcorn kernals to our hot-air popper and turned it on.
When God wants us to become better people, more like Jesus, sometimes He will allow hardships or “heat” to accomplish His purposes.
Ted gave up football, but he started to walk on his artificial leg, and he started to ski on just one leg. Then he started to water ski. Eventually he tried snow boarding. Ted’s dad was a famous senator, Edward Kennedy. They went skiing in Colorado just months after Ted’s amputation, so the newspaper people all followed along and took pictures. One reporter asked, “Don’t you help him with his skis, Senator?” Senator Kennedy replied, “No, he usually helps me get mine on.”
Ted would never have chosen to lose his leg. Obviously his pain and suffering is not the type of thing anyone looks forward to. But because of it, he sort of “turned inside out” like the popcorn soon will in the hot-air popper. And in just a few years, Ted was indeed a changed person because of his circumstances.
Ted may have gone on to play football in college. Instead, he went on to try Xtreme sports with a prosthetic leg and not let anything stop him from trying the things he wanted to. He gained national attention when he grew up because he became a lawyer and one of the nation’s foremost supporters for people
with disabilities. He became a great encourager to other teenagers who had been diagnosed with cancer.
- Pop corn started popping.
Ted was turned inside out. Now, we don't know whether or not Ted was a Christian. Only God knows that. But in John 12:2, Jesus said, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.” And it’s like these popcorn kernels. If they get heated enough, they will “pop” and grow into something better just like we will if we rely on Jesus to help us grow as people through difficult circumstances. And it takes 356 degrees Fahrenheit for popcorn kernels to begin popping! That's some serious heat!
So the next time we feel some heat, the next time we’re sick or we get bad news or something goes terribly wrong in our lives, we can look at it as, “God will use this situation to make me pop...to make me more like Jesus.”
Romans 8:28 says, “All things work together for the good of those who believe.” Sickness, bad news, terrible circumstances – all of it will transform us from the inside out.
Indeed, what we see as a burden can be made into a bridge for our progress if we will allow it. Just check out these ants!
