A STRATEGY FOR
SURVIVING DIFFICULT TIMES
Faith can take a beating in difficult times. During our
struggles we face the toughest questions about God: Where is God when life
hurts? Does God care about my troubles?
Meanwhile,
Satan moves in to take advantage of the pain we are experiencing and create
more doubt. His methods are so subtle and sly that we don’t always recognize
that it is him causing our confusion. Satan will take our questions about faith
in God and trip us up. He will even deceive us into ignoring him and leaving us
to wallow in blame and shame for the way we feel about God.
Peter
tells us that the devil is like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Kevin
Richardson is known as the “Lion Whisperer.” Richardson works with lions and
has even lived with, fed, and slept with lions in the wild. He has spent his
life getting to know lions and what he has learned is that you cannot rely on
static rules but on instinct.
There
are risks to living with lions. In one incident, the lions were in a good mood.
Two 400-pound lions threw Richardson to the ground and another female jumped on
him. He emerged with his face red. As he left, one lion smacked his shoulder
with a paw. Richardson has been clawed and bitten often. It is the nature of
lions to scratch each other and they regard Richardson no differently. The key
to his relationship with lions is that he knows these lions and knows the
dangers.
Personally,
I would not turn my back on a lion. And if you live with wild lions that are looking
for a weakness, for a moment when your guard is down, or a good place to ambush
you, you will want to be on constant alert.
Satan is
like a roaring lion. He will attempt to destroy your faith anyway he can. So
Christians need a strategy for surviving difficult times. Peter gives us this
strategy in his concluding words: To grow a strong faith in difficult times we
must humbly trust in God while resisting the devil’s attacks.
1. Release your Anxiety
Peter’s strategy begins where we left off last Sunday,
with humility. It has been said before, but it bears repeating: humility was
not an attractive quality in the ancient world. Humility is counter-cultural –
that is, humility is not the normal reaction to life’s problems and challenges.
But it is the example of Christ when he was on trial before the chief priests
and Pilate. Humility was Christ’s attitude in coming down to live as a man.
Humility then, is our approach to life too as disciples of Christ.
But why
is humility so important in the face of anxiety? Peter said, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s
mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him
because he cares for you,” (5:6-7).
Anxiety
is a reaction to trouble. We are overcome with worry, we get anxious about
solutions and results, and we experience biological side-effects. The Greek
word translated “anxieties” comes from a word meaning to divide. Anxieties
divide our minds, so that we cannot concentrate on anything else. Worries and
anxieties distract us from the productive things God wants us to do and consume
us by diverting all our thoughts into channels of fear.
Why do
we need to humble ourselves in difficult times? Because at the heart of anxiety
is the proud notion that I can handle things by myself. We put ourselves in the
driver’s seat because we need to be in control. But then we are shoving Jesus
aside, the One who we say we trust for everything, and we are really saying, “I
don’t trust you.” We then rely on our own abilities to get out of the mess we
are in. We throw up a prayer perhaps, just to make sure God is included.
Peter’s response in our vernacular is: Get over yourself and let God be God.
Cast all
your anxieties on God, Peter commands. That same expression is found only in
one other place in the NT, Luke 19:35. The disciples bring the colt that Jesus
requested just before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and they “threw their
cloaks on the colt.” They cast their cloaks on the donkey to make a saddle for
Jesus. The meaning is quite powerful. Throw your anxieties on God because he is
strong enough to bear them.
Jesus
taught that anxiety about life is one of the blocking agents that can choke out
God’s word. For God’s word to be fruitful in our lives we need to forget our
daily worries and trust in God’s faithfulness (Mk. 4:19).
There’s
a story about a boy who was walking along the road carrying a heavy load. A man
came along in a horse-drawn cart and offered him a ride. The boy climbed in the
cart, but he kept the heavy load on his shoulders. When the man asked him why
he didn’t put the load down on the cart, the boy replied that he didn’t want to
burden the horse![i]
That’s the reality – we carry our burdens needlessly.
F.B.
Meyer once said, “Treat cares as
you treat sins. Hand them over to Jesus one by one as they occur.” We may have
to do this repeatedly all day long, confessing our lack of faith, praying at
times, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”[ii]
So the first step in our strategy
for surviving difficult times is to RELEASE YOUR ANXIETY. Paul wrote, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in
everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to
God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus,” (Phil. 4:6-7).
2. Resist
the Devil
Sometimes
you should run, like when the Bible says, “flee
sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18), and then there are times when you need to
stand your ground. This is where you stand.
Peter said, “Be self-controlled and alert,” (8a). Another way of saying this is
“be sober.” To be sober is to be free from intoxicants both spiritual and
physical. A physical intoxicant would be “loving the things of this world.” A
spiritual intoxicant is anything that creates apathy in your spiritual life and
draws you away from God.
Why is this a prelude to resisting
the devil? Because Satan uses our healthy passions and turns them into
obsessions, he uses good things for bad purposes, and he uses the commonly
accepted worldview of pleasure to blind us to the dangers of materialism and
hedonism. Be alert to the devil’s schemes! When a lion is on the prowl – don’t
sleep.
“Your
enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to
devour,” (8b). Let’s unpack this sentence:
“Your enemy” – Peter uses the plural “your” here so
that he is talking to the church. The enemy of the church is Satan. He opposes
the work of God in the church. Everything that God wants to build, Satan wants
to unravel.
“the devil” – The term “devil” is the Greek translation
of the Hebrew satan, which means
“adversary” or “opponent.” This spiritual adversary, shadowy in the OT, was
developed in the period between the OT and NT, then appearing in the NT as
Satan or the devil. “Devil” means “slanderer” and he will lie to you,
whispering his destructive words in your ears. (Job 1).
“prowls around” – Peter pictures him roaming through
the earth stealthily, as in search of prey or plunder.
“like a roaring lion” – A figurative expression that tells us
Satan is a dangerous foe. It comes from Ps. 22:13, “Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.”
And Paul used the “lion” expression to describe his deliverance from his
enemies, “And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth,” (2 Ti. 4:17).
“looking for someone to devour” – The devil has only one intention – to
destroy you. The word “devour” means “to gulp.” He means to deal with you as
quickly as he can and move on.
The response to such a dangerous
opponent is surprising. A lion’s roar can be a fearsome thing, melting hearts
like butter. Peter says not to fear but to resist him.
This is the only place where Peter
talks about spiritual powers of darkness in his letters. He does not want to
cause his readers to lose focus of the gospel nor to ignore the true enemy of
the church. C.S. Lewis famously said there are two dangers in talking about the
devil: There is the danger of seeing Satan in everything – sickness, sin, car
trouble. And there is the danger of ignoring him altogether – we then blame
people, government, spouses, ourselves and God, while Satan chuckles to himself
because he gets none of the blame.
He is real and we need to resist
him. Here is what Peter does NOT
mean by resisting Satan:
1) Resisting
Satan does not mean attacking him. Paul was reluctant to take him on in Acts
16:16-18.
2) Resisting
Satan does not mean mocking or belittling him (Jude 8-9).
3) Resisting
Satan does not mean “rebuking,” “binding,” or otherwise trying to “defeat him.”
Resisting Satan simply means that we
refuse to submit to him and standing fast against his attacks with God’s help.
Peter wrote a lot about submission in his letter – submitting to rulers,
masters, spouses, church leaders and so on, in faith and because of our faith.
The key to this spiritual struggle is faith. Jesus said to Peter that Satan
wanted to sift him like wheat but Jesus would pray that Peter’s faith would not
fail (Lk. 22:31-32). Satan’s attacks are against our faith, so the key to
standing fast is faith, or believing God.
When Satan lies to you about who you
are, telling you that you are no good, a sinner too far gone, worthless, a
lousy Christian or what have you, Peter says RESIST THE DEVIL. Don’t listen to
him; listen to Jesus and who he says you are.
3. Remember
God’s Grace
Rather than trying
to find Satan behind every bush, Peter reminds us to focus on God’s grace.
Identifying the source of evil, confusion, and deception in the person of Satan
is important, but looking to Jesus and trusting in his grace will make Satan
flee already.
In Peter’s reminder we find many
grace principles:
a) By God’s grace you are not alone. Peter said, “…you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the
same kind of sufferings,” (9b). Whatever you have suffered, others have
suffered too, and have come out of it. Many men struggle with pornography in
silence because of the shame of it; some women struggle with self-image and how
others perceive them. But when we open up to each other we find that we share
each others’ struggles. The fact of the matter is that exactly: we all
struggle.
b) By God’s grace we know the God of
grace. He is not the
God of a little bit of grace. He is not the God of a lot of grace. He is the
God of all grace. His grace is like the ocean, a limitless supply that keeps
breaking over our lives time and time again. It will never run out. But we need
to humble ourselves, cast our anxieties on him, and ask for his gracious help
in times of trouble.
c) By God’s grace we are called to his
eternal glory in Christ.
You didn’t come to Him by your own strength or effort. He called you. He didn’t
call you to condemn you, but to bring you to His eternal glory in Christ. You
will dwell in His presence throughout eternity. In your trial, look ahead to
what God has promised for those whom He has called, and you can trust Him to
bring you through it.
d) By God’s grace your trial will not
last forever. In some
of my darkest times in my life, 1 Peter 5:1-11 was my lifejacket. I would cling
to the promises of God, especially that my inner turmoil would not last
forever. And lo and behold the clouds of darkness passed over and the sun shone
again. “After you have suffered a little
while…” These trials are temporary.
e) By God’s grace he will make you
stronger than you were before the time of testing. God “…will himself restore you and make
you strong, firm, and steadfast.” The word “restore” can also be used in the
context of mending fishing nets or preparing them for use. God is fixing the
holes; he’s mending us in the trials, making us more effective, making us
stronger. Nothing exposes sin or behavior problems like a trial. And through
those trials God can address them, making you firm and steadfast in your walk
of faith.
The God of all grace does this for
you. “To him be the power for ever and
ever. Amen.”
REMEMBER GOD’S GRACE. This is our
best weapon against the ungracious barbs of the devil.
There are
two lions in the Bible. Okay, in truth, Peter says that the devil is like a roaring lion, a metaphor
of his ferocity. The other lion could be said to be metaphorical too, but the
word “like” is missing. In
Revelation 5:5, John hears one of the elders in heaven say, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of
Judah, the root of David, has triumphed,” (Rev. 5:5).
When John finally looks at the place
where the Lion sits, he sees a slain Lamb, standing in the center of the
throne. This is a scene of victory and hope, a scene that pictures everything
that Peter has described in his letter. This scene of the Lion of Judah, the
Lamb that was slain, is the motivation for standing fast against the devil and
resisting his attacks; it is the motivation for living a holy life, the life to
which Christ has called us.
Whatever you are struggling with
today, be it spiritual or physical, mental or emotional, financial or
relational, remember that there is a Savior who has suffered everything you
have. You are not alone. You are not forgotten. You are important to Jesus.
Release your anxiety to him. Resist the devil. And Remember God’s grace.
To him be
the power for ever and ever. AMEN
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