Sifted as Wheat

SERMON: 2011-06-12--lk2211--sifted-as-wheat SOURCE DURATION: 00:48:00.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with an introductory exposition on the word 'sift' (segment [0]). The material continues through various expositions and concludes with a prayer/benediction (segments [537]-[557]), which are integral parts of the overall message. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:41:13.980-00:45:57.380 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now if I were to ask you tonight what the word "sift" or "sifter" means to you, then the chances are that almost immediately the picture that will come to your mind is what? A flower sifter. Now flower sifters come in many different varieties and shapes. We used to have one with one of these crank things that cranks the flower through a sieve, but that broke years ago. So now my wife has settled for this as a sifter. And a lot of you will have one of these in your house. And of course the purpose of a sifter is to separate junk from good stuff. It is to separate coarse particles from finer particles. And historically and biblically, sifting is associated particularly with a grain harvest. And before mechanization, harvesting grain was quite a process. It would start obviously with cutting and typically that would be done with a sickle. You've seen the pictures. Grain would be gathered into sheaves that would be set out in the field to dry. And they would be hauled to the threshing floor. The grain would be separated from the stalk either by beating the grain on the ground or else with a flail. You're very good. Then the process of sifting or winnowing would take place. And winnowing typically would involve gathering the stuff in a basket and pouring it down. We should have a picture here that goes with that. That's still how it's done in Africa today. And you count on the wind to do what? Carry away the chaff and the stalks and do that enough times and you end up with a grain. So now today in a world of mechanization of course, all these processes are gathered together into a machine called a combine because a combine cuts and threshes and sifts and winnows all at the same time. And if you watch a combine go down the field on a hot summer day then there's a cloud of dust and stuff and chaff coming out of the back and the grain is gathered into the box and gathered into granaries. Brilliant machines, combines are, I think. And very labor-saving. Well, it's that image then that the Lord Jesus appeals to here all of a sudden in Luke chapter 22 when he says, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." A quick word on the context. The context is the Last Supper. And as was their custom periodically, in the context of the Lord's Supper, the disciples had this wonderful conversation about who is the greatest. We'd never have those kind of conversations because we're too humble for that. But they had this conversation and then Jesus says, "You are those who have stood with me in my trials and I confer to you a kingdom just as my father conferred one on me so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." And then he says these words, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." In the time that we have, just quickly three things in that little verse that I think is significant for us to ponder. The first thing is that the initiative of this sifting comes from whom? It comes from Satan. "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat." Notice the double name, Simon, Simon, a term of endearment in Scripture, interestingly enough. But notice too, and that's hard to pick up, the "you" is plural. So this is addressed to Peter, but it encompasses all his disciples. "Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat." Now what Old Testament story immediately comes to your mind when you hear that? Where do you have Satan demanding to sift? The book of Job. And the book of Job begins, of course, with this magnificent scene. I mean, it starts with the word, "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil." Then the story goes on to tell us there is this heavenly court. And in this heavenly court, all the heavenly beings come and present themselves to God. They're called the sons of God. And among the sons of God is Satan. And God enters into conversation with Satan. And he says, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." Satan says, "Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and his herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has and he will surely curse you." And then, of course, the story goes on. God gives Satan permission to lay hands on everything that he has but not on Job's body. And there you have the introduction to the book of Job and also the purpose of the book of Job because the purpose of the trials of Job is to demonstrate before all of the universe, does Job serve God for naught? In other words, can God create and redeem a people who will serve God for who God is and not simply for what God gives? And the testing of Job in the book of Job then is to try to determine what kind of stuff is Job made of. And that, of course, is the purpose of sifting. The purpose of sifting is to separate wheat from chaff, not so much in the context of believers versus unbelievers because that's not the context here, but rather in the context of the individual believer's life. What's solid? What is grain that God wants to gather into his grain array? What's the fruit of the gospel? And what is chaff that will blow away? And so Satan takes the initiative in demanding to sift the disciples of God. And in that connection, then, notice two things around that that are very important. And the first is that it is not God who does the initiating. Satan has demanded or has asked to sift you. And that's important because what's the first temptation that comes your way or my way when life gets difficult or begins to fall apart? We all know about the sovereignty of God, and so the big question becomes, "God, where are you?" Is that not true? And why do you allow this to happen to my life? And then a lot of people end up losing their faith because they get this picture of God being an angry ogre sitting in heaven just trying to figure out how I can beat the snot out of one of my children. And that's always the temptation, particularly if you grow up in a history of abusive authority that doesn't understand you and that doesn't care for you. And so it's important in that context to understand that the temptation, the trial, does not begin with God. It begins with Satan. James, you will recall, puts it this way. He says, "When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed." That has to do then with the character of God. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? The character of God is that he allows temptation, he allows trial, but he's not sitting around trying to figure out how I can beat you up. You know, I'm big, strong, mighty, I can do whatever I want in your life. No, no, God has no evil in him. He is not tempted by evil. But temptation happens when there are unresolved places in our lives that Satan can latch onto. And so it's important to have a correct understanding of the character of God. Jesus puts it this way, of course, in Matthew chapter 7, "If you then, though you were evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" God does not initiate this sifting of which Jesus speaks, this separation of the wheat and the chaff. Not only that, but God controls the process. God controls the process, because what does Satan have to do in order to get permission? He's got to ask. Satan has asked to sift you, and that's very clear, is it not, in the book of Job? In the book of Job, Satan comes to God, asks for permission, first to take all of Job's stuff away, and God says, "Yes, you can, but you can't take his life. You can't touch his body." And then, of course, the story goes on. Job loses everything. He refuses to curse God. Now the devil comes back and he says, "Well, you know, anybody can serve you as long as they're strong and healthy and feeling good." And God says, "All right, now you can touch his body." And God, for his own sovereign purposes, allows Job to be touched in that way to demonstrate what is the substance of his heart and the lies by which Satan operates. And it's important then to understand that in the sovereignty of God, in this sifting process that we all will go through by times, God remains in control and he measures out what it is that comes into our lives. And the reason that's important is for two reasons, because Christians tend to fall into two extremes as we often do with most every teaching. The one is that if we're Christians, we're automatically protected and nothing can ever really come to us and if something comes to us, it must all be bad and we must all be wrong. The story of Job illustrates that's not the case. The world is far too complex and there's nothing automatic. But at the same time, the other extreme is for people to live in fear that somehow or another the devil's got it in for them and I'm powerless to stand against that and that's not true either because you see, the reality is, and let's get this very straight, that if the full power of hell is unleashed at any one of us at any given time, don't you ever think that you could stand in your own strength? Let's understand that when life is going good and there's a hedge of protection around us that we can get pretty cocky and we can think, "Well, you know, I'm a good Christian, God loves me and he's looking after me." But if you've ever been in a situation where your walls have been breached sovereignly, and you know that you know that you know, but you live only by the virtue of God's grace, true? But God measures what we can take and Paul puts it this way, he says, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." Because you see, God knows exactly the kind of stuff that we're made of and because He knows exactly what we are made of, we don't need to live in fear that, "Oh my goodness, what's going to happen? I'm going to get bowled over, death is going to come my way, tragedy is going to come my way, God's going to test me, how am I ever going to..." God will not give you more than what He prepares you for and what He equips you for. Now I often say, you know, what God thinks we can handle versus what we think we can handle are two very different things, so let's be clear on that. But God remains sovereign. And so Jesus picks up on that too, doesn't He, in Matthew chapter 10, when He says to His disciples, "In the context of being sent out into the world and coming under attack, who of us knows that the greater a threat we are to the kingdom of Satan, the greater is the viciousness that comes against us at one point or another in our lives." You're not a threat when you're floating along like a log in the river getting washed out to sea. Start cutting across the current to the land or to the shore, you discover just how strong that current is. Jesus puts it this way, He says, "Don't be afraid of those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul, and hell are not two sparrows sold for a penny, yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father, and even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid, you're worth more than many sparrows." Satan takes the initiative. God gives him permission under certain circumstances, but God limits what He is allowed to do for the greater purposes of His glory. That's the first thing I want us to note in this particular passage. And second thing I want us to note is that the key to survival in this cosmic battle of testing, the key to survival is the intercession of Jesus. "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail." Three things very quickly in that one line that are very helpful for us to understand. The pronoun "you" is now single. So it's no longer about everybody in general. He's established a principle, but now Peter, it's about you. And notice the name is Simon, not Peter. Why? Peter is his new name. That's the new character that Christ knows is going to be established in him. Simon is the old Peter. What do we know about the old Peter? He had hoof and mouth disease. He was a passionate man, but he had a huge overestimation of his own ability. And so why does Jesus focus on Peter here? Well, because Peter, of all the disciples, other than Judas, was most prone to fail the test. You know that? Why? Because Peter is overly confident about himself and his own ability. You notice how the passage goes on. What does he say? "Lord, I am ready to go with you ere, to prison and to death." And you can read all the gospels, and what do you find every time when Jesus is talking about his disciples betraying him? What does Peter say? Everybody else will leave you. They're all a bunch of flakes. But me? Ha! I love you so I will die for you. And there's a lesson there, in case you haven't caught it. It's not our weaknesses that do us in. You know that? It's our strengths that do us in. Our weaknesses we are aware of. And if you know that you've got a lame foot, you're going to guard it a little bit, aren't you? You're going to watch where you walk. And if you've got a sore back, then you're going to tend to that a little bit. And if you know you've got weaknesses in character, or there are areas of life where you know you're not very strong, and if you're committed to following the Lord Jesus, then you want to be careful there. And so we're not so open to falling flat in our fannies. But it's in those places where we think, "Yeah, I'm pretty good. Lord and me, we have a relationship. We get along all right." And no, I'm sure you never feel that way, but you know, I can only speak for myself. There are those moments then when you think, "Well, you know, I've got it together, right?" And that's where we get tripped up. Because what do the Gospels say, or Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, "Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." And please don't ever think that you are beyond temptation. With all the stuff that's going on, a friend of mine was in conversation with one of the other pastors, and they were talking about me and the situation that I happened to find myself in. And my friend was trying to defend me a little bit, and he said to this pastor dude, "What would you do if you found yourself in that kind of situation?" And my good pastor friend, and I love him dearly, but here's what he said. He said, "I would never let myself get caught in that kind of situation." And I hope the man is right. But I'll tell you, I would have never thought in 100,000 years that I'd find myself where I find myself. So a little humility becomes us, "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." You with me here? Be careful in those places where you think you've got it together, because if ever the raw power of hell comes at you, you only stand by the grace and the power of God. You may think you got it all figured out. You may think you know where you're going. And all it takes is for the swirl of hell to come over you, and you don't know top from bottom and bottom from top, because most people don't know the awful reality of what spiritual warfare looks like. And if you find yourself spinning sometimes in all this stuff that's going on, please understand that we're not fighting against flesh and blood, but we're fighting against principalities and powers that are bound and determined to keep us from reaching the last and the lost and the least, no matter what kind of language we put it into. The kingdom of God comes with power. So Peter is prone to falling flat on his face, but Jesus is ahead of the game, because in the passage, what does it say, Peter, I, or Simon, I have prayed for you. Satan is going to sift you, but I've been ahead of the game, and I have already prayed for you that your faith may not fail. Let me tell you something. I've been privileged over the years in walking lots of people through lots of very deep places and, I think, one of the gifts that the Lord gives me is the gift of discernment so that I almost always know at the beginning of that journey who's going to make it and who's not going to make it. And I can tell you that the people that are going to make it are a people who, regardless of what they have gone through in life, and some people right in this room have gone through more hell in life than most of you can ever possibly imagine, but the people that make it are the people who are deep in their heart. There remains a little flame of fire that Satan never manages to put out. It may be covered by 10,000 layers of junk. You from the outside might never see that little flame of fire that remains deep at the core of somebody's being, but God guards that spot so that that person is not destroyed and there is a grain of faith and hope and love that remains there. And all I can attribute that to is to what in our circles we call election because God has His elect. And when you are elect, there is the intercessory prayer of Jesus that says, "Father, limit the destruction that comes at that person's soul. Don't let the flame die out. Keep that little flame of fire alive." And then when people like that hear the gospel, when they get surrounded by people who see them, people who are safe, people that carry with them the grace of Jesus, that little flame, I don't know how else to describe this for you, this little flame begins to burn brighter and brighter and brighter until eventually it bursts forth with the grace and the life and the power of God because empowered by the spirit of Jesus, this person now gets the strength to will to obey God, gets the strength to will to deny evil, gets the strength to say no to Satan, gets the strength to say yes to Jesus and they get transformed from darkness into light. And Jesus says to Peter, "I prayed for you, Peter, because I don't want to see you destroyed." And the key then in that is this thing called faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. What happens when life comes at you with all its horror and all the power of hell? Well, I can tell you what happens is that faith, hope, and love begin to spiral down until at the place of destruction it's all lost. But when you're elect and when Jesus prays for you, for all the stuff that you go through, there's a little piece inside you that says, "I will not cease putting my hope and my faith in God." Peter was at the crucial moment of his life where his whole future that he had thrown everything into for the sake of Jesus was about to be sacrificed. Talk about spinning out. Jesus says, "I'm praying for you that your faith will not fail." Not only that, but if you've ever been in a situation where you've blown it and blown it big, then you will know that one of the tragedies of blowing it big is that it's hard to believe there's a way out. How many of us here have ever found ourselves in a situation where you've been tempted into sin and you have given in, you've crossed a line, and you're terribly ashamed and guilty as Peter was later on, and you say to yourself, "Well, I may just as well throw myself into it now. I've started drinking, so let's go for the full shot. I've started living in an area of immorality, and, well, you know, I'm dirty now. Let me just plunge myself." Do you know what I'm trying to say there? Imagine the horror of Peter when he discovers that he's betrayed Jesus. How can God ever take me back? How can God ever forgive me, and how can I ever start again? Let me read you just a little piece here from one of the women who has been recently attending our church road in the context of all this stuff that's been taking place over here. As you know, one of the concerns in the congregation with all the stuff that's been going on is when do the rest of us get a voice, right? And so a lot of people have been writing down their stories, but this particular lady gives me permission to share this with you. She says, "Growing up in church was fine until adolescence when I found there was no way as a teen that I could tell the lie. As a result, I grew to know God as a condemning father and proved to myself that I would always fail and repeatedly backslide. I rebelled terribly and left home at 16 to find my own way in the world. Throughout my life, God repeatedly had his hand on me, and I tried numerous times again to go to church. I repeatedly failed and found myself hiding from God, ashamed, alone, and afraid for my soul. I always ended up giving up and falling deeper into worse situations as I became more broken and learned how to numb the pain in numerous ways. I only lasted for short terms at church until my issues would come up again. I would smoke, drink, gamble, whatever, and prove to myself that I did not belong at church and I would then again leave. I even tried Christian counseling and because of trust issues would not be honest enough with them so they could help. I could not bear to have them know what I was really like on the inside or they might turn me away." And begin to tell you the situations that I ended up in and the torture those places wreaked on my very core. I turned to all sorts of coping mechanisms which just proved further to me that God could not love me. Even knowing that salvation was by grace, I always felt I fell from grace and did not deserve God and could never achieve sanctification. I am just now learning it is a work in progress and that I will take time to undo all my stuff. She goes on to tell the story then of how she used to go by church here all the time and this particular Sunday came into church and started attending here and then it was one of those services where we talked about God's love for broken people. And she goes on to say, "Lord, don't let him give an altar call and don't let them play just as I am." Guess what happened. Oh, it was gorgeous. And she goes on to say, here's how she puts it. She said, "God, don't let them play just as I am because if they do, I'll know for sure. You want me to go down there in front of all these strangers." I was at the back of the church hiding out. "I have memories of all the other times I had done this and failed in the long run to stay and the course flooded in. Well, they did indeed play that song and I was weak and trembling as I excused my way out into the aisle and down to the front and then she met me and I said to her, talk to me." That's my best pastoral counsel. And for the first time in years, it started to come tumbling out. Everything I had been hiding was now exposed. My dirt laid out for someone else to see and this woman is marvelously on her way after a lifetime of brokenness to discover the reality of God's amazing and saving grace. Jesus says, "I've prayed for you, Peter, that your faith will not fail." She goes on to say, "Towards the end, if this ministry stops, so does my healing. And being this is my last kick at the can for me, I am devastated to think where that will leave me." Aren't those sobering words? Isn't that what some of us fight for? That the last and the lost and the least can come and discover the healing grace of Jesus. And here you see the difference between Peter and Judas. They both denied Jesus. They both wept bitterly. Judas was convicted. Oh, I have betrayed in his own blood. But his remorse was not repentance. It was just self-pity and he went out and he hanged himself. But Peter, for whom Jesus had prayed, had faith so that when Jesus called him back. And if you haven't read that story recently in John chapter 21 where Peter restores Jesus, it is a beautiful scene because Jesus comes to Simon and he says, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these?" Because remember, Peter had said, "Even if everybody betrays you, I will not." And he says, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." And then Jesus says, "Feed my lambs." And then he says, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love me?" And he said, "Lord, you know that I love you." And Jesus says, "Take care of my sheep." And the third time he says, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" And Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said, "Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you." And without going into it in the Greek, there's a play on words there because there are different words for love that is being used. And the word is agape, do you love me with the kind of love where you will lay down your life for me? That's the kind of love that Peter claimed before he knew his own heart. He said, "If everybody forsakes you, I'll die for you." He laid claim to agape love. And now when Jesus restores him, a sober Peter says, "Lord, you know that I have brotherly affection for you. I no longer claim to be something other than what I really am." So it starts with Satan who takes the initiative in this purifying process. Peter perseveres because Jesus does the interceding for him as he does for you and me because that's one of his primary jobs now at the right hand of the father. He rules over everything, but he also intercedes for you and me. And every time your situation and my situation comes up before God and the devil comes trumping around saying, "I want him or I want her," there is Jesus who says, "Just a minute. Father, this person belongs to me and nothing is going to separate them from my love and for your love because he intercedes at the right hand of God the Father." But there's a final thing in this little verse that would be helpful for us to ponder for a few moments. And that is that the purpose of this sifting is what? To make us more fruitful. The purpose is so that we can better help others. I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back and the word is converted, when you've stopped wandering away, when you're through your pity party, when you stop beating yourself up, when you stop thinking God can't possibly love me, God can't possibly use me, I'm too bad, I'm beyond redemption, when you have come back into the fullness of God's forgiveness and love and restoration, says Jesus, then strengthen your brothers. Strengthen your brothers. Let me tell you something. A lot of us think that our most effective ministry happens out of our places of strength and our places of success. Is that not true? I mean, how many times do we not beat ourselves up and say, "Well, who am I that I could talk to my neighbor? Who am I, you know, to give direction to my kids? I've blown it. I have failed. And if only, you know, I had it together like this and then we will put leaders sometimes up on a pedestal because, well, you know, they're supposed to be all of that and then if ever they should fail, whether in the real world or in the imaginary world, then we don't know how far we can throw them." But I want you to understand something, that in the reverse values of God's kingdom, our most effective ministry very often comes not out of our places of strength, but out of our places of weakness and brokenness. In the literature, they often talk about the wounded healer. Peter was a wounded healer. Because you see, when you're living in strength and your life has always gone your way and you've never failed, then a number of very interesting things happen. People can envy you because you look like you have it all together. And they will maybe admire you for being strong, but they will probably not ever really trust you with the broken places or the shame places in their lives because they will know that intuitively you don't understand where they're living or what their shame is. And so the word here to Peter is, "Peter, when you have turned, strengthen your brethren." And in this restoration scene that we were just talking about in John chapter 21, Jesus says repeatedly, "Peter, now that you know who you are, that you know those places where you have failed and where I have redeemed you, now you can not only feed my sheep, but you can feed my lambs." Because you'll have the sensitivity of heart. You'll have the compassion of God. And you'll have the wisdom to be able to gently gather those who are with young, in the words of Isaiah the prophet, and carry them. Do you understand what I'm trying to say here? Most of you know the story of Charles Coulson, his book, Bored Again, how in the Nixon administration back in the early '70s, he was a powerhouse in the government and has often been quoted, although wrongly, that he would run over his own grandmother to get what he wanted. And how he got caught up in that whole Watergate scandal and then served, what, 18 months in jail or something like that. And if you know his biography, then you will know that he says that his greatest successes in life did not come out of his greatest strengths and accomplishments, but it came out of his greatest failure. Because it was his 18 months in prison that enabled him to identify with the prison population, and that in the providence of God ultimately became the foundation of prison fellowship. And all over the world today, his organization is on the forefront of helping prisoners know the reality of Jesus Christ. That's the upside down value of God's kingdom. And Paul puts it this way. He says, and this is 2 Corinthians chapter 1, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." And how many of us know that we intuitively turn to those who have been through what we're going through. And God's whole process then in sifting the wheat, God's whole process of separating the wheat from the chaff in our lives is never to just make life miserable for us, but it is to purify our love for God and to purify our love for people. So out of the pain and the difficulty of our own journeys sometimes, the grace of God can flow unhindered through us and bring blessing and life to multitudes of people all around us. That's the price you pay. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and die, it cannot bear fruit. I'm going to end this morning by showing you a video that many of you will have seen before. We've used it once before in the service. It's Laura's Stories, a song called Blessing, or Blessings, I believe it is. And before we play that, let me give you the background to it, because you'll appreciate the song more if you know the background. Laura and her husband Martin are married seven years, and about a year and a half into the marriage, they began to discover that her husband Martin was starting to show some strange symptoms. She'd ask him to load the dishwasher, and he'd forget, and she'd ask him to do other stuff and he didn't remember. She went and talked to her doctor about it, and he said, "Well, you know, you're married to a man," and sent him off for counseling, which didn't accomplish a great deal. But eventually they discovered he had a brain tumor, and surgery and treatment and a lot of prayer, and five years later now, he has recovered to a very large degree, but there still are disabilities in speech and areas of brokenness that may never get healed. And of course, when that happens, the question is, "God, where are you?" And the song comes out of that. So please listen carefully to the words. I'll [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:41:13.980; remove through 00:48:00.000] come back up after that in closing prayer, and [CUT] then we'll wind up to service. ♪ We pray for healing, for prosperity ♪ ♪ We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering ♪ ♪ Yet love is way too much, to give us lesser things ♪ ♪ 'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops ♪ ♪ What if your healing comes through tears ♪ ♪ What if a thousand sleepless nights ♪ ♪ Are what it takes to know you're near ♪ ♪ What if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise ♪ ♪ We pray for wisdom, your voice to hear ♪ ♪ We cry in anger when we cannot feel you near ♪ ♪ We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love ♪ ♪ As if every promise from your word is not enough ♪ ♪ And all the while you hear each desperate plea ♪ ♪ That long that we'd have faith to believe ♪ ♪ 'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops ♪ ♪ What if your healing comes through tears ♪ ♪ What if a thousand sleepless nights ♪ ♪ Are what it takes to know you're near ♪ ♪ What if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise ♪ ♪ When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win ♪ ♪ We know the pain reminds this heart that this is not ♪ ♪ This is not a home ♪ ♪ It's not a home ♪ ♪ ♪ 'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops ♪ ♪ What if your healing comes through tears ♪ ♪ And what if a thousand sleepless nights ♪ ♪ Are what it takes to know you're near ♪ ♪ What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life ♪ ♪ Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy ♪ ♪ And what if trials of this unlife, the rain, the storms, the hardest nights ♪ ♪ Are your mercies in disguise ♪ Father, I'm so grateful that when Satan demands to sift us, that Jesus has already prayed to the Father that our faith might not fail. And Lord, I'm sure that I speak for all of us that in all of our hearts there is a curious mixture of wheat and chaff, gold and ross, places where we know you, places where we love you, places where we trust you, and places, Lord God, where faith and trust and hope and love are far, far away. Thank you that you love us enough to put us through the refiner's fire. Thank you that you care enough and that you have enough confidence in your own saving power and in the intercession of Jesus to know that we will come out like gold refined by fire. And Lord, if there's one thing that I pray for myself and if there's one thing that I pray for this whole Church, that as you walk us through this journey, we'll come out the other end, purer, more holy, more righteous, more passionately in love with you and with your purposes than ever before, so that streams of living water flowing forth from us might bring life and light and healing to the nations. So Lord Jesus, come, do your work, accomplish your purposes, and may, when we have turned the ability to strengthen our brethren and our sisters, increase a hundredfold for the glory of God. And all God's people said amen and amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:48:00.000; resume after this marked segment]