Healing From Life's Hurts // When Life Falls Apart

Genesis chapter 37 this morning.

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

Genesis 37, and we are starting a new series entitled Healing from Life's Hurts.

How many of you have ever been hurt before?

Alright?

How many of you have been hurt physically before?

As I'm getting, and you guys don't say a word.

As I'm getting a little older, 40, I'm knocking on the door.

Things just don't quite work like they used to.

Right?

How many of you um how many of you have learned that as you get older, things don't quite work like they used to?

Yeah, Preston.

Yeah.

And the other day, my sweet, loving, kind, compassionate mother, she looked at me and she said, Well, you just wait and see when you get to be my age.

I said, Thanks for the encouragement.

Mom, love you too.

But some of the worst hurts in life are not physical.

They're emotional.

They're relational.

They're mental.

They're even spiritual.

And part of living in this broken world is we all get hurt.

What we're gonna do over the next several weeks is we're gonna walk through the different types of hurts that all of us experience one time or another, or maybe we're currently experiencing because of the broken world that we live in.

And today we're gonna start off this series by talking about what do we do when life falls apart.

You ever had life fall apart?

No.

He never has.

You ever get the email?

You get the call, you have the conversation that you never thought you'd have.

And your life gets twisted upside down in a matter of moments.

About this.

Have you ever done the right thing and things still fell apart?

It's like I'm doing the right thing, so shouldn't things be working better for me in my life?

Like, how did this happen?

Because you know, I I I I was at church on Sunday.

I I read my UVersion Bible plan three days in a row.

How come this is happening to me?

We go to a text of scripture that's really fascinating because you have somebody that does all the right things and their life still fell apart.

This person did the right things and the people closest to him still betrayed him.

He was abandoned, he was sold into slavery, he was forgotten about.

And there's a question we're gonna kind of wrestle with this morning, and it's this is what if when life falls apart, there's a God who can hold you together?

Because life is going to fall apart at times.

Some of you are living in that moment right now, and when life falls apart, it can be disorienting.

When life falls apart, it can make us question God.

When life falls apart, we can think, how did I even get to this place?

Now, some of us, when life falls apart, we try to act like we have ourselves together, like I'm good.

Everything's fine.

Let's just be honest.

Because it's just us here.

What better place to be real than in a church building, right, with your church family?

Let's not have our Sunday church face on like everything's perfect.

Bless God, brother.

What do we like?

We have these overwhelming emotions when life tends to fall apart.

And we're gonna learn about a guy whose life fell apart when he was 17 years old.

What was his name?

His name was Joseph.

Everybody say Joseph.

Ready?

And we're gonna see how God held him together even when his life fell apart.

Let's pick it up in Genesis chapter 37.

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

If you're ready for it, what'd you say?

Amen.

Joseph said in verse number 16 of Genesis 37, he says, I'm looking for my brothers.

Can you tell me where they are pasturing their flocks?

Now think about Joseph.

Joseph had 10 older brothers.

Yes, I said that right.

Can you imagine having 10 older brothers?

If you asked my sister, she would have said, My younger sister?

She would have said having one older brother was plenty enough.

Joseph had 10 older brothers.

And his dad, whose name was Jacob, had sent Joseph to go and check on his older brothers.

So he goes to find him.

And verse 17, the man says, They've moved on from here.

I heard them say, Let's go to Dothan.

So Joseph set out after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

They saw him in the distance.

And before he reached them, before he reached them, look what it says, they plotted to kill him.

Well, that escalated quickly.

See, Joseph was raised in a dysfunctional family where Dad Jacob favored Joseph, who was the second youngest, above all the other brothers.

And this was one of the reasons why his brothers hated him.

So his brothers decide, hey, let's uh let's figure out a way to kill him.

In verse 24, Genesis 37, they took him and they threw him into a pit.

The pit was empty without water.

At least they threw him in an empty pit.

Then they sat down to eat a meal.

I love that.

It's like, hey, let's plot to kill our brother.

Let's throw him in an empty pit, and let's just sit down and eat a meal.

You know, normal day.

Sit down and eat a meal.

When they looked up, there was a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, and their camels were carrying aromatic gum and balsam and resin going down to Egypt.

Verse 27.

They see these guys coming and they have a bright idea.

Come on, let's sell him.

Let's sell him like he's a like he's an animal.

Like he's a commodity.

Let's sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites and not lay a hand on him.

For he is our brother, our own flesh.

And his brothers agreed.

And Joseph is sold for 20 pieces of silver.

At 17 years of age.

And in this time, when somebody is sold into slavery, life as they know it is over.

They have no future.

They have no hope.

And Joseph, at 17 years old, is gonna go to a country of Egypt.

He's gonna go to Egypt and sold to somebody in Egypt in a place where nobody knows about him and he doesn't know anybody else.

And in that country, he is going to seemingly be forgotten about.

But what Joseph is gonna learn, what Joseph is gonna learn is even though he was forgotten, there was a God that did not forsake him.

That even though he was forgotten about, there was a God that was not going to forsake him.

Now on the surface, you would think, man, God must have forsook him.

I mean, this guy is gonna be taken to Egypt.

He sold into slavery, didn't do anything wrong, his brothers just hate him.

God must have forgotten about this guy.

But in chapter 39 of verse number two, it says something.

It says, the Lord was with Joseph.

Can we say that underline phrase together ready?

The Lord was with Joseph.

The Lord was with Joseph.

Hold on, Joseph was a slave.

Joseph was betrayed by his brothers.

He was ripped away from his family.

His life had fallen apart.

But scripture says that the Lord was still with him.

And when our life falls apart, here's what we need to remember.

We need to remember that God hasn't forsaken us.

Joseph's circumstances changed.

God's presence in his life did not change.

Now we know that we have God's presence in our life.

If we've made the decision to turn from our sin and put our faith and trust in Jesus to be our Lord and Savior, when we do that, Ephesians tells us that the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us.

So now God's presence is with us everywhere we go.

But when life falls apart, it doesn't always feel like God's presence is with us.

It feels like God's forsaken us.

It can feel like God has done something to us and God is trying to hurt us because we didn't plan for this to happen.

And sometimes our feelings can feel overwhelming.

You ever had an overwhelming feeling in your life?

Have you ever felt something where it was like it was so strong that you thought your feeling was true?

And then, and then years later, or maybe months later, or maybe minutes later, you look back and you're like, oh, that feeling was not true.

That feeling was off.

Sometimes our feelings can be so real that they that we can't distinguish between feelings and fact.

It's like when I was a when I was a teenager, I was hungry all the time.

I mean, goodness, I still am hungry all the time.

And I I'd say, Mom, we don't got anything to eat.

I need something to eat.

There's nothing nothing to eat, mom.

She said, No, there's like plenty of things in the in the fridge, in the cupboard.

I'm like, mom, no, there's nothing.

I already looked.

She was like, okay.

She was like, there's this, there's this, there's this.

It wasn't that there was nothing to eat, there was just nothing that I liked.

Nothing that I felt like eating.

In that moment, my mom very lovingly but clearly said, Here's the facts, buddy, there is food you can eat.

And sometimes in our life, our the facts are hard to distinguish from our feelings because our feelings are so strong.

And here's something though about feelings is your feelings are real, but your feelings aren't always reliable.

They can be real, but they're not always reliable.

And when things are hard, it can feel like God has forgotten us or forsaken us.

But the truth is when people forsake you, there's a God, when people have forgotten you, there's a God who won't forsake you.

And when you understand that God hasn't forsaken you, this is what it does.

It gives you confidence.

It gives you hope.

It gives you courage because when life is difficult, it's easy to lose confidence.

It's easy to lose courage.

It's easy to not be overwhelmed with everything around us.

It's easy for us to live our lives like Eeyore.

It's really hard to have confidence, to have confidence and move forward when life falls apart.

But what God's presence does is it gives us the ability to take one more step.

I want to illustrate this.

I'm gonna ask the uh the media guys to turn out the lights.

We're gonna have some fun.

Everybody say, ooh.

Oh, all right.

So some of us, some of us just got a little uncomfortable.

You know, sometimes when life falls apart, it can kind of feel like this.

What once you could clearly see, you no longer can clearly see.

And sometimes it can leave us paralyzed.

We don't even know what to do.

But this is what God's presence does, knowing that God is with us.

What God's presence does is God's presence gives us, watch this, it gives us light.

And it gives us the ability to take one step.

It gives us the ability to take another step.

Now, maybe not five steps, maybe not 10 steps, maybe not 20 steps.

But if we know that God is with us, it gives us the ability to take the next step in front of us.

Thanks, guys.

You guys can turn the lights back on.

If you're like me, I don't just want to know the next steps, I want to know the next 20 steps.

And I want to know where the road ends up.

Give me the destination.

But you realize it takes no faith if you know how everything's going to turn out.

It takes no faith if you know all of the details.

And God says without faith, it's impossible to please him.

And the way that God operates is God operates on the principle of faith and trust in him.

So what God does is God invites us to take a next step.

And you don't need to know exactly where you're going if you know who's with you.

Some of you are like, hey, I'll follow God in this way if I if God will tell me how it ends up.

Hey, if I if I know what the road, if I know that I'm gonna get something that's gonna make me happy over there, then I'll take the next step.

You ain't following God, you're just following an idealized version of yourself.

You think God's here to try to make all your desires exactly what you want them to do and meet all your dreams and hopes and all that?

No, no.

Jesus says if you're gonna follow him, you need to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow.

If you know who is with you, you can take the next step to follow him.

And when life falls apart, when life falls apart, you need to know that God's presence is still with you.

And you need to know that because God's presence is with you, you can choose to take the next right step.

See, this is when things get hard.

You know, it's one thing I can be like, hey guys, God's with you.

Everybody's like, Yeah, God's with me.

Maybe at the 8 45 service.

Some of y'all a little sleep this morning.

Just kidding.

But actually having action to do the next right thing, taking the next step is difficult.

Look at what it says about Joseph in Genesis chapter 39 when he when he went to Egypt.

Genesis 39 · chapter mention

It says his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything he did successful.

And Joseph found favor with his master and became his personal attendant.

And Potiphar also, that was his master, Potiphar also put him in charge of his household and placed all that he owned under his authority.

Y'all, Potiphar, a big Whig person in Egypt, gave this random Jewish boy that he bought for 20 pieces of silver, he put him in charge of his entire house.

Like everything I own, you got a question?

Talk to Joseph, he's got the answer.

Who does that?

That's like you, like hiring some random teenager to help you, and then you're like, oh, by the way, like you're gonna be responsible for my entire business, everything that I do.

What?

What was it?

What was it?

It was that Joseph did the right thing, time after time after time.

That Potiphar saw that God's presence was with Joseph.

And what happened?

God elevated Joseph.

But here's the thing: if you read about Joseph's life, is things didn't get easier, things ended up getting harder for Joseph.

If you read the rest of Joseph, some of Joseph's story in Genesis chapter 39, Potiphar uh he he had a wife.

Genesis 39 · chapter mention

She she she wasn't a good wife.

Potiphar his wife noticed Joseph and says that she saw that Joseph was handsome and good looking.

He was probably like one of the boys in the FCC youth group.

She saw Joseph, she's like, hey, I want you.

Joseph is like, I can't have you because you're married to my master.

You're married to somebody else.

Potiphar's wife is like, I don't care.

I want you.

So she pulled out her Spotify, put on some 90s RB, and tried again.

It says, in fact, she she tried day after day after day.

And Joseph said, I'm gonna do the right thing day after day after day.

And then Potiphar's wife, that that knucklehead of a woman, she said, Potiphar, you'll never believe Joseph tried to sleep with me.

He tried to he's trying to Potiphar's like, oh, you don't do that to my girl.

Nobody try to sleep with my girl.

Joseph, you're going to jail.

And Joseph spends years in jail.

He did the right thing.

And things still fell apart.

And here's the thing about Joseph's life, and here's the thing about your life, is God's presence didn't mean that Joseph's circumstances got better right away.

It just meant that God was with him every step of the way.

See, some of us in our life, we want circumstances to turn around just like this.

We're like, oh, I've been doing the right thing for like a week now.

Yet, never mind, I've been living my entire life this way, but I've been doing the right thing for this long.

How come things don't turn around right away?

God doesn't promise that everything will turn around right away, but he promises that his presence will be with you every step of the way.

And because his presence is with you every step of the way, you can do the right thing even though it's the hard thing.

Because God was with him in the pit.

God was with him as a slave.

God was with him in Potiphar's house.

God was with him in the prison.

And can I just say, when it comes to taking the next right step and doing the next right thing, yes, it's hard, but all of us will choose our hard.

For some of us, it's really hard to surrender our will to God and follow God.

But I know it's so hard.

Okay, then live the way of the world and see how that goes.

And live your life in addiction and dysfunction and live your life dependent on alcohol and porn and weed and see what that does.

Yeah, it's too hard to follow God.

Okay, then do that.

It's too hard for me to just render my will and take steps of growth in my faith because then I'll have to trust and then I'll have to give this up and then I'll have to be faithful.

You think God's out to get you, bro?

You think God's like, I want to ruin your life?

Choose to go the other way.

And every one of us in our lives, we have to choose our hard.

We can choose to do the right thing, even if it's the hard thing when life falls apart, or we can choose to do the easy thing to make us feel better in the moment.

And there, and there is thousands and thousands of stories that people that live their life away from God and they look back to a time where they had an opportunity to surrender, to repent, to follow Jesus, but they chose to go the other way, and now they say, Man, if I could go back.

But I have good news, there is a God of grace, and there's a God of mercy, and there's a God that redeems brokenness, and there's a God that looks past, looks past some of the things that we have done because Jesus did it for us.

He died for us.

So now all that's left for God for us is God's grace and God's mercy.

And because of his present presence, we can do the next right thing.

We can take the next right step.

Man, some of y'all came here, you didn't expect to hear all that.

I'm just saying, man, we're gonna preach and tell you the truth here, right?

I uh a couple a couple weeks ago, my sister, she got she got married in Hawaii.

So obviously, because uh because we love my Sister, we were willing to suffer for Jesus and go to Hawaii.

That's the only reason why.

So there was a there was a day where we decided we were gonna go see a volcano on the other side of the big island.

It was a two-hour drive, two hours.

Now, when it comes to driving, there are two types of people.

There are those that when the gas tank hits a quarter tank, you think, I gotta go fill up.

Any of you like that?

Okay.

Then there are others of you that are like me that you don't even think about filling up the tank until that light pops on.

And those of us that are like that, we drive people, the quarter tank people, we drive them crazy.

Angela's a quarter tank person.

I'm a light person.

So we were driving to go see this volcano two hours away, and there was a sign on the side of the road that said, no services next 50 miles.

Don't worry, 90 miles to empty.

90 miles to empty.

What I didn't realize is we were starting to climb up a mountain.

Now I'll say when the sign says 50 miles to empty, and I said, I literally verbalized it.

I said nope, or 50 miles, no services, 50 miles.

I verbalized it.

I said, we're good, 90 miles to empty.

Angela gave me the look out of the corner of her eye.

We got this.

So we're we're we're climbing up this mountain, and um my 90 miles to empty starts dropping like it's a countdown to Armageddon.

And my parents and Angela, they're enjoying the scenery, and I'm sitting there doing mathematical calculations in my head.

We're gonna run out of gas.

We're gonna die on this mountain.

They're gonna find our bodies, and somehow my dad is still gonna make fun of me at our funeral.

So I found a random construction worker and I pulled over and I went up to him.

I'm like, dude, I was like, we have like no gas.

Like, there's like another 20-something miles to the bottom of this mountain or whatever, whatever it is before a gas station.

We have like, it says like no miles to empty on our gas tank.

What do I do?

He looked at me like I was an idiot, which was fair.

And then he said, he says some very comforting words to me.

He said, Don't worry, it's gonna be okay, because this has happened to me before.

I was like, Oh, I'm not the only idiot around, okay?

He said, the rest of the way is downhill.

So all you have to do is coast.

Don't really touch your gas.

At the bottom of this mountain, there's gonna be a gas station.

You're gonna be okay.

I've never been to the gas station, I never been to the end of the road, he has.

This is what I did.

I did the next step, next right thing.

Get out in the car, turn it on, buckle my seatbelt, put the GPS on, asked them to pray.

And wouldn't you know?

We made it to the gas station, and we didn't run out of gas.

And the light people in the room, we win, we win.

Just kidding.

I had never been to that gas station before.

I had never, I had never been to the end of that road before, but here's what I knew I could do.

I knew that that guy had been there before, so I could trust him and I can do the next right thing.

And some of you right now, you're in a circumstance where things are overwhelming.

Here's what you got to know.

You can trust God and you can do the next right thing.

Maybe you can't do the next 20 things, but you can do the next right thing, whatever the next right thing is in your life.

And when things are overwhelming, you don't know what to do, here's what you do.

You do the next right thing.

That's all you can do because you can trust the God who's with you.

I want to suggest a few ways in closing of how we can do the next right thing, of possible ideas of that.

Here's the first one is one, go and talk to somebody that's godly.

Don't isolate yourself.

Scripture tells us that in counsel is safety.

There are a few things in my life that has helped me more than humbly seeking counsel and just saying the words, I don't know what to do, this is how I feel.

Next, number two, process your emotions with God.

If you've been denying or suppressing your emotions because they're painful, I get that.

But can I say healing is on the other side of processing your emotions?

Healing doesn't happen by suppressing and denying your emotions.

Number three, forgive.

When life falls apart, sometimes it's because of choices somebody else made.

And when we choose not to forgive, this is what it's like doing it's like putting ourselves in a prison and expecting the other person to be hurting.

They don't deserve my forgiveness.

Okay, then be bitter your whole life.

Forgive.

And next, lastly, choose to do whatever the next right thing is to do.

For some of us, the next right thing is to trust Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior, to make the decision, to turn from our sin, understand that Jesus died on the cross for you, and believe in Jesus, and let today be the day that you give your life to Jesus Christ.

Here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to invite our worship team to come up to the stage, some of them, and I'm going to invite our prayer team to come up to the front.

We're going to have a closing song.

We're going to sing a closing song together before we baptize.

Here's what I'm going to invite some of you to do.

We did this at the 845 service.

I'm going to invite those of you where you might be going through something that you would simply come forward and you would ask one of these people on our prayer team to pray with you.

It's very simple.

Very simple.

You just come forward and it says, Hey, would you pray for me that I would have the courage to take the next right step?

Would you pray for me that I would remember that God has not forsaken me?

We're going to have a time of invitation and we're going to invite you to pray and receive prayer.

Let's all do this right now.

Let's all stand to our feet.

I'm going to have a word of prayer.