Patience, Perseverance & Accommodation (Chester UMC)

Following God, being one of God's people, part of God's

nation is not easy and and God never promised that it would be

easy to faithfully follow God, like faithfully.

To faithfully follow Jesus is is fraught with difficulty,

challenge, obstacles, even opposition, sometimes violent

and even lethal opposition. Jesus told his followers that

when he said things like in this world, you will have trouble,

but take heart, I've overcome the world.

Or when he said things like if you want to follow me, you need

to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

Jacob was learning this as well, that following God, being part

of God's plan for this world is a challenge.

It's a struggle. He was promised even before his

birth that he would be the heir to the covenant that God had

made with Abraham. That even though he was the

younger of the brothers, that he would receive the promise that

he would rule over his older brother.

That he would be the one that would carry on this line, This

promise that God had made. That his descendants would one

day possess all of that land and that through his descendants,

all the nations of the world would be blessed.

So it's possible that Jacob, having grown up with this story

told to him by his mother, and then and then taking advantage

of his brother's short sightedness and his father's

blindness, gaining the birthright and the blessing that

Jacob thought, ah, it's going to be smooth sailing for me.

God's on my side. God's made these promises to me.

It's going to be great. It's going to be nice, it's

going to be wonderful. And then the bottom fell out of

it all and he spent 20 years of his life struggling and fighting

and battling just to survive. Running for his life from his

brother, arriving at his, his uncle Laban's house, his mom's

brother's house, falling in love with his daughter, his youngest

daughter. Laban cheated him there.

And when he was thought he was marrying Rachel, Laban sent Leah

in to be married instead. And then he ended up working a

total of 14 years for Laban to be married to the one daughter

he wanted to be married to, plus the other daughter that he

didn't want to be married to. On top of that, he continued to

work for Laban for 20 years. Jacob spent with Laban and it

was a struggle all of the way through.

This is part of the life that we have as followers of God.

As followers of Jesus, we are not promised a Rose Garden.

We are not promised an easy journey.

We are not promised a life free from struggle.

In fact, we are promised that if we make this decision, there's a

good chance we'll struggle more than we would if we weren't one

of God's followers. We have a challenge in our world

today that that that seems to be.

We want to insulate ourselves, our kids, our grandkids,

everyone around us from all of the pain and suffering that we

possibly can. I saw a report this week.

I I haven't fact checked it. It sounds reasonable to me.

So we're going for it's true, might not be true.

Fact Check me, you know, let me know on this, but I don't have

time to Fact Check everything I hear, particularly if I agree

with it. So why bother fact checking?

But it was a study done of playgrounds and there were

pictures of playgrounds from 2530 years ago.

You could die on those playgrounds.

Remember? We had a slide at my elementary

school on pavement. It was like 12 feet up, barely

any hand rails at all. A metal slide that on hot days

was like an iron cast iron skillet.

We loved it. We had swings that you could, we

jumped out of the swings at recess.

We had the board seats on them rather than the foldy seats.

And you could, you could, you could jump a long way on those.

That was on the gravel on the good days.

On the bad days it was mud and I didn't like the mud, so I didn't

jump out of the swings on the bad days.

Then they showed a picture of current playgrounds where where

nothing is taller than this and everything is plastic.

And the person was making this assertion.

And this is this is the part that I haven't fact checked, but

it seems reasonable. We're going to you, you see, if

you think it's reasonable as well.

He said, you know, obviously we don't want our children dying,

right? He said.

But psychologically, children do better going into adulthood if

they've had to deal with actual danger where they could get

hurt, not dead, but hurt. That that learning how to be

safe in a dangerous situation is an important skill for children

to have. And if they never face a

dangerous situation, they never learn that skill.

Learning how to overcome and work through an injury is an

important skill for children to have.

I never got injured badly on the playground.

Not sure how. I've been clumsy my whole life.

Never got injured bad. I did break my finger playing

touch football of all things. My uncle tagged me a little

harder than I was expecting and I landed on a finger and it

snapped and was in a cast for a little while on that.

Not a big injury, but an injury. My brother broke his foot.

My son has been to the emergency room.

He was in the emergency room more times in the first three

years of his life than I've ever been in the emergency room.

We got it. Suffering is a part of life and

to insulate ourselves or our children or our grandchildren

from all suffering doesn't protect us.

It it prevents us from developing the muscles, the

physical muscles, the emotional muscles, the mental and

spiritual muscles that grow when we have to work through and

persevere through adversity. This, I believe is part of the

reason why we get this story of Jacob and Leah and Rachel and

their long struggle. Their long struggle with Laban.

Jacob with Laban as his father-in-law, Rachel Aleo with

Laban as their parent who they described as having sold them

and then squandered what they got from it for them when he

sold them. I am confident that the life

they lived over that 20 year period was not the life that

they would have preferred, Not the life that they had planned,

certainly, and probably not the life that they had wanted.

But they struggled. It was a struggle all the way

through from the get go dealing with the lies and the deception

and the dishonesty. And then if we take Jacob at his

word, his father-in-law repeatedly changing his wages to

try to cheat him. Oh, you can, you can have all

the spotted sheep and goats that are born this year and those

will be yours and and then too many are born spotted.

So Laban changes. No, no, it's the street.

Well, no, it's the plane. No, it whatever it is just doing

everything he can to make life harder for Jacob.

And God did not stop Laban from doing that.

God did not stop Laban from lying.

God did not stop Laban from selling his daughters.

God did not stop Laban from trying to cheat Jacob.

God did not. God did not send down a

messenger to threaten Laban. God did not wrap Jacob, Rachel,

Alia, and bubble wrap to make sure they never got any bumps or

bruises as they went through life.

Instead, they had to struggle through.

And they did struggle through and they did the best that they

could in that struggle, including some, some things that

we now know are just silly. We'll eat the mandrakes and

that'll make me fertile and make my husband hopefully amorous

and, and and and then I'll have a baby.

It didn't work out. Didn't work out, Jacob.

Once Laban started messing with his wages, Jacob did all sorts

of crazy things. I, I don't know.

And I checked on this, I did Fact Check this, and this

apparently was a thing that it was believed that that what a, a

mother sheep or goat was looking at at the time of conception

affected what they gave birth to.

So. So Jacob got sticks and he put

stripe sticks out near the water in the place where the sheep and

the goats were breeding so that the female sheep would see

stripe sticks or then spotted sticks, all of these kinds of

crazy stuff. We know that there's no truth to

that whatsoever, but they were doing whatever they could to

work through the struggle. This is this is the reality that

we have. The long struggle of faith

requires patience and perseverance through pain.

Eugene Peterson, who did the the The Message translation of the

Bible, I don't know if you've ever come across that or not.

He was not a scholar. He was a pastor, an active

pastor with what he did through his professional career.

And he has talked in in his books about a long obedience in

a single direction, not giving up on a thing because it's hard,

not turning away because it's challenging, because we get

hurt, because we stumble, because we fall.

But a long obedience in a single direction.

And this is what Jacob and Rachel and Leah we're learning.

Following God a long time in a single direction doesn't mean

always doing the same thing. Jacob moved away from home, and

then he started a family, and then he's moving back to where

he left. It's not always doing the same

thing, but it's always following God wherever God is leading.

And sometimes that looks the same over a long period and

sometimes it looks different over a long period.

But it's not turning away to do something just because it's

easier. The Olympics are full of these

kinds of stories. And, and, and this is true

whether you're talking Summer Olympics or Winter Olympics.

I will confess upfront, I have not watched a single minute of

the Olympics. I don't know whether that makes

me unpatriotic or not, but just can't get my brain into the

Olympics this year. So I'm not there.

But I've been hearing stories and reading some of the stories.

And the stories behind the games are, I think, as interesting as

the games are themselves sometimes.

And you would the German ski jumper who's afraid of heights

and and, and receive psychological counselling and

training just so he can do what he's doing and winning gold

medals. There's perseverance in that

perseverance. There's AI believe it was a

cross country skier, a woman, I cannot remember which country

was from. She was from did a 10 kilometer

race with bruised ribs because she had been injured the week

before. I fell down the steps and stayed

in my bed for three days. I am.

I couldn't go 10 kilometers in cross country.

Skis of my life depended on it. Maybe if a bear was chasing me

now, he would catch me. Ilia Milanin, the American

figure skater who has been nothing but successful

throughout his entire career, I read, I believe had won fourteen

straight competitions before something happens and his final

round for his long program and ends up in 8th place and now

having to struggle with what comes next.

After all of that, the Olympic, the men's hockey team, I

understand they had two goals called back in the early rounds,

but they're still struggling on and persevering and not giving

up and not whining and not complaining, just continuing to

do the work. And for all of those folks on

the half pipes and the ski jumps and the slaloms and the the

moguls and all of that stuff, for every successful run we've

seen, they have fallen and wiped out 100 times, maybe more.

And when you're going downhill that fast, it's got to hurt.

Every single time you wipe out Lindsey Vonn breaking her leg,

you know there's pain. It was one of the guys I believe

is from England and men's skeleton who has broken his back

twice. The first time he broke his

back, it ended his Taekwondo career and so he went into the

much safer sport of skeleton. I don't get that.

He broke his back again and he's still racing.

He's still racing. I always wanted to play

professional sports. I was never willing to do what

it took to play professional sports.

Just not. And what, when I found out, I

was like, Oh yeah, no, not going to happen.

Not going to happen. I don't love it enough to put

that much time and energy into it.

Not going to happen. Wouldn't have mattered anyway.

But here's the thing. Everything good that's worth

doing is worth persevering through the pain and the

heartache and the struggle. And I'm convinced of this, that

everything that's worth doing will involve pain and heartache

and struggle, whether it's whether it's athletics at a high

level, whether it's friendship, marriage, raising children,

caring for elderly parents, these things, these things.

I'm seeing smiles back there at that one.

I, you know, these things are challenging and they're hard and

they're filled with pain and uncertainty and difficulty.

And we make as many mistakes, maybe probably more mistakes

than there are successes. Yeah.

We switch Olympics and go to the Summer Olympics.

My gosh, there's those girls that do the balance beam and

women that do the balance beam, how many times they fall and

smack their heads and bang their shins and, and hit their knees

working on those balance beams before they can do those amazing

things that they do up there. You, you can't get from the

beginning to the Olympics without pain, without suffering,

without heartache. Paul describes the Christian

life as preparing for a race, as athletics, or preparing for a

fight or wrestling match or a boxing match.

That's the metaphor, one of the metaphors that Paul uses to

describe life, to say it requires training, it requires

discipline, it requires sacrifice.

There will be heartache and pain and suffering and failure all

along the way. But the athletes do that for the

prize. And Paul says the prize that we

are striving for is so much greater than a trophy, so much

better than a medal. It is life forever with Jesus

and the Kingdom of God. Now we're only one week out of

the most boring Super Bowl in history, but I'm going to I'm

going to leave the Olympics and talk about football because my

favorite story of perseverance is Rudy Rudiger.

Anyone remember Rudy Rudiger that made a movie about him a

number of years ago. True story.

Rudy in the movie was played by Sam Wise Gangi, and and that was

interesting. He did a great job.

OK, so no one got that joke. That's all right.

Look it up later. It's funny.

Trust me. Trust me, Rudy was a a a small

kid with very little athletic ability from Indiana and he grew

up watching Notre Dame football and his dream was to play for

Notre Dame. And his coaches told him you

have no chance of playing for Notre Dame.

And he went to Notre Dame anyway.

And he discovered he had no chance of playing for Notre

Dame. He wasn't big enough.

He wasn't strong enough, and he wasn't fast enough.

And the simple fact was he wasn't smart enough to be a

student at Notre Dame and get good enough grades to be on the

team. And everyone around him was

telling me to quit, give up on this.

This is crazy. This is nuts.

This is stupid. This is dumb.

And Rudy refused. And what he managed to do was

get on the practice squad where he got the snot beat out of him

day in and day out by the starters.

And he worked and he worked and he worked and he suffered and he

worked. And he got a tutor to help him

with his school work so he can maintain his academics so he

could be at Notre Dame. And it's, it cost him.

There was sacrifice, there was suffering, there was pain, there

was injury, there was heartache all along the way.

But he did it until finally, and it was a beautiful thing.

In the last game of the of his time at Notre Dame College, the

coach put him in for one play and he got to make a tackle and

his dream came true. Perseverance.

It takes perseverance to achieve anything worth achieving, to

receive anything worth receiving, whether that's

whether that's a trophy, whether that's the opportunity to play

for your favorite team, whether it's a place in the Kingdom of

God, It requires perseverance, it requires patience, it

requires sacrifice through the pain.

One of the thing I love about Rudy's stories, though Rudy's

story is that it's also a cautionary tale and and further

inspirational. I don't know if you know what

happened to Rudy after college, but the bottom fell out of

Rudy's life. His dream was done.

What happens when your dream has been fulfilled at the age of

2223 and the bottom fell out of his life.

He got into debt, he lost everything he had.

He was homeless, living in his car, and then faith and God and

other sources of help intervened through faith and through God,

and he became a motivational speaker.

And it's done OK for himself. It's done well for himself.

I like that part of the story because one of the things it

tells me and I think tells us is that what our goal is matters.

What our dreams are matter. And and having the goal of

playing college football is a great goal.

That's a great. But one day that goal will

either be unfulfillable or it will be fulfilled and most of

your life will still be ahead of you.

And if we set our goal on a thing that that is that we, we

will never get and we know we'll never get, or if we get set our

focus and our goals and our hopes and our dreams on

something that we can get and achieve, you know, too early or

too soon, then what do we do with where does the motivation

come from after that? Where does the hope come from?

Where does the desire to, to persevere and to suffer and to

strive? This is one of the beautiful

things about having our sights set on Jesus.

Is in one respect we'll never achieve it, not in this life.

It will always be a struggle and and we can never achieve it on

our own. But our hope is in the end by

the grace of God, we will become like Jesus because we will see

him as he is and all of the pain and all of the heartache and all

of the suffering will have been worth it.

The other good thing in this whole thing is that through the

long struggle, God accommodates our weaknesses and our

frailties. God didn't condemn Rachel for

turning to Mandrake's to get fertile and pregnant.

God didn't condemn Jacob, say, oh, well, you know, he's, he

should just be praying to me instead of putting up those

stripe sticks. You know, we don't want him.

He let him do those things and God still blessed him.

God still blessed him. And in the end God made it clear

to Jacob, you have a lot of sheep, not because you put up

sticks, but because I blessed you and I gave you the sheep and

I gave you the wealth. And Rachel, you have a baby, not

because you ate the mandrakes, but because I gave you a baby.

God accommodates our weaknesses. God works with and through us as

we are combinated. Rudy's weaknesses now.

We never became a starter for Notre Dame, but he learned so

much more, struggling with less, than he ever would have learned

had he been gifted with a lot of natural athletic ability and

talent. That work of struggling through,

of needing the help, of needing the extra, of needing the

support taught him more than easy success ever would have

taught him. God accommodates us.

God recognizes our weaknesses. God sees our weaknesses, our

frailties, whether it's physical, mental, emotional,

relational, psychological, whatever our weaknesses and

frailties are got to, I can work with that.

I can work with that. God looks at you, looks at me,

looks at us and says, you know, I, I can work with that.

I can do what what we need to do with that group of folks, with

other people. And it's not in spite of

sometimes, but even through those weaknesses that God makes

his presence and his power most known and most clear and most

felt. God has purpose for all of us in

this world, for us as a church, for us as individuals, for our

family, for our children, for our neighbors.

God has purpose. Realizing that purpose will

require struggle, patience, and perseverance through the pain.

God did not design this world, for whatever reason, to insulate

us from suffering or to insulate our children from suffering.

God has designed us to grow through suffering and through

pain, and we can expect that along the way.

And that's why Paul says we rejoice in our sufferings.

I haven't reached that point yet.

I'm just going to be honest. I have yet to go.

Oh yeah, more pain. Not even once.

Paul's beyond being that I can aspire to that we can aspire to

that at the time when the pain isn't too much, we can we can

acknowledge. OK, yes, I see.

I get it, God, that that I don't like the suffering, but the

suffering is good for me. So I'm not able to rejoice in my

suffering, but I'm at least willing to for you to make me

able to rejoice in my suffering. But one thing Paul and Jesus

make very clear is that trying to avoid suffering is no way to

follow Jesus. It's no way to live our lives.

It's no way to raise our kids. It's giving the opportunity and

the space and the freedom to venture, to try to fall, to

fail, to hurt, to suffer, to get back up and try and venture

again. This is this is the hope that we

have not a life free of pain and suffering, but Jesus with us

through the pain and suffering, God accommodating our

weaknesses. And in the end the prize that we

have is Jesus himself, in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.