Focal Point

Dave Droege: Today on Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: The reality is that we've got to open the door, let people know what's going on, because we need each other's help to clean up, to help out, to support us, to be able to stand up in the midst of whatever struggle God has has purposed and decreed for our lives. Don't be afraid to ask for help, and if you're strong and everything's good right now, it's smooth sailing for you, great, get to your small groups this week and say I'm here to put your interests before my own.

Dave Droege: Some cars feel every pebble on the road. Others are built like off-road trucks, but even those can snap an axle on the wrong rock. Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez teaches the practical requirements of comfort, showing why our trials aren't meant to be weathered alone and why the thanks that follow God's relief are meant to be shared. And if this is your first time listening, we'd like to mail you Pastor Mike's booklet Seeking Comfort with our compliments. Just reach out at focalpointradio.org. Well, now here's Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 10. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. And on him we've set our hope that he will deliver us again. Now, what kind of deliverance do you have in mind? When Paul does go to get his head chopped off in 2 Timothy 4, he says God will bring me safely into his kingdom. He knows bring brought safely into his kingdom is a kind of deliverance. Look up again at verse number 7. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

You will have comfort. There's the deliverance from despair. God will deliver you from that. He will. That's what the Bible promises. Paul ends up getting a no from God three times in 2 Corinthians 12. You remember that? I prayed that this thorn in the flesh would go away, and God says no, no, no, you're going to live with a chronic illness. And he lives with that as far as we know from all of his writings to the end of his life. So the chronic illness didn't go away, but you know what went away is all the despair about his chronic illness.

He was okay cuz he said God's God said his grace is sufficient for me. He could stand up straight, though the outer man is decaying, and certainly in his mind certainly must have been his chronic disease, the inner man is being renewed day by day. Here's the deal. You need to have the deliverance in your mind, not the kind that the prosperity gospel preachers will tell you about in their arenas, but the kind that God really promises, that whatever comes your way, no matter what difficulty you have, God will allow you to stand up straight and stand up strong with courageous perseverance so that you are not defeated.

One day you're going to die. One day you're going to be physically defeated, but you're never going to be someone who's lacking the deliverance of God if you're a child of God and you got to live like that. Turn to one passage with me real quick on this, Romans chapter 8. In Romans chapter 8, if I said to you pick a chapter of Romans that is going to encourage you, you'd think of Romans 8, but you may forget the context. The Christians in Rome were being persecuted. They were suffering. If you have any doubt at that, look near the end of this chapter when it says in verse 36, as it's written for your sake, we're being killed all the day long.

We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. That's the mindset at least circumstantially among the Roman Christians. This is hard, and it was going to get really hard. Nero, Diocletian, I mean the Roman emperors that wanted to eliminate and and and and extract the Christians from Rome. I mean this was a bad time. They were living in the catacombs at one point under persecution running from the officials of Rome. It's going to be hard. But my favorite verse starting this whole thing, at least this part of the discussion in verse 18, Romans 8:18, he says I considered that the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Do you understand where do you get delivered ultimately at the end of this road? And whether your heads get chopped off or you get killed or whatever happens, talk about deliverance. The glory that's going to be revealed to you and I mean we're not even going to be able to compare how bad the bad was on earth to how good the good is there. That's the picture. And he says it's going to be so good. Now, I know verse 19 he says creation it just can't wait to be done and to get to the place where the sons of God are revealed in all their glory.

That'll be good. Creation was subjected to futility, and we've read this twice talking about the need for comfort. We know it's because the world has been cursed in Genesis 3 and it's all about futility at this point. But in verse 21 creation knows if we personify creation as knowing anything, of course God knows that creation is going to be set free from its bondage to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. It's going to be so good for the children of God. For we know the whole creation verse 22 has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth, and that's not a fun afternoon, right?

That's hard until now, until the present day. And that's the first century 2,000 years ago, for not only creation, but we ourselves. We know what it's like to suffer. That's how this all started in verse 18. We're groaning inwardly. We can't wait for our adoption and that's the ultimate deliverance, the redemption of the body. You may have a redeemed spirit right now. God may have purchased your spirit out of the slave uh holding of of of sin, and you may now be forgiven. But here's one thing, your body is still laden with sin and corruption, and it's dying.

And there's all kinds of persecution going to hurt your body, but one day the redemption of your body is going to solve all that. Now, that is the hope of the Christian life. In this hope we were saved. Hope, if you had it, well it wouldn't be hope. You can't talk about hope in a prosperity gospel church cuz it's all about the here and now. But I've told you multiple times it's not about the here and now, it's about the then and there. And here he says it for hope. Man, we wouldn't be hoping for what we see, but if we hope verse 25 for what we don't see, here's our word will wait for it with flipsis and those are two great words.

The pressure, the downward pressure of I can't take it anymore and Hupo under Meno to remain, to stand up, to to be there, to not give up, to hold up under the pressure of suffering. And of course the agency of that is the people of God. The source of that is God himself. God has a good plan. He wants to keep you strong, waiting patiently, enduring courageously. Number three, you need to affirm God's good plans. You need to say God does have a good plan, and the plan is to get me through all the sufferings of the present time, and they are going to be so small compared to how great the glory of the next life is going to be.

Back to our text, 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 11. Paul's still going through it, and he says this in the present tense. You also must help us by prayer. Let's just stop right there. It's as simple as that. Number four, request prayer support. The Apostle Paul incessantly requests prayer support, and of course he does. Then I think you should not think you're above that. When was the last time you asked for prayer? You need to ask for prayer. Well, some of you don't even have the context to ask for prayer. You need to be in a group where your chairs are face to face, people that know you and care about you and learn about who you are.

They know you, you know them, and you can share what it is that you need help with in your prayer life. You need to find a small group, be a part of that small group, and make sure you ask for prayer, to have people come together when you have to raise your hands and say I need prayer. You need to request prayer. Look at this prayer in Romans 15. This is amazing. One example, I thought of all the examples of the Apostle Paul and I wasn't exhaustive, so I won't give you a number cuz I didn't do the count, but all through I mean I can think of 1 Thessalonians, I can think of Philippians, Colossians.

Paul is asking here in Romans 15 again for prayer, but just look at the way he saddles them with the burden of praying, which again should be a privilege for us. But he says it this way, verse 30. Romans 15:30. I appeal to you, brothers. Well, that's even a strong start, but it gets worse. By the Lord Jesus Christ, by the king, right, the deliverer, the Christos, the Christ, the Messiah, and by the love of the Spirit, by the third person of the Godhead because he's he's the Spirit who loves. Think about this, that you This is good.

Soon that you strive together, that you struggle together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf. Now, you don't need that big preamble to asking for prayer in your small group, but you ought to know that this is the kind of of prayer request that Paul's saying this is only I just appeal to you by the authority of Christ, by the authority of God's Spirit because the God's Spirit is love. Man, would you just do more than just throw up a a simple prayer? Could you struggle with me in prayer for this thing that I'm facing?

There's nothing unbiblical or selfish about that because he's not asking I just need a boat in the harbor off the Mediterranean. I hope in Caesarea I can get a you know a I don't know a a a a stand-up paddleboard. Can you pray for that? No, he says you know what? I I have something I need you to pray for, and that is that I can be delivered from the unbelievers that want to kill me, the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.

I I need to get to you guys and I need to be delivered from the people that are threatening my life. And I need to make sure that the ministry that I'm I'm bringing to Jerusalem in the midst of their famine that that would be well accepted and that it would get there safely. I just think we need to be more forward about asking for prayer. Jot it down, no time to look at it, but James chapter 5 verses 13 through 18. It starts with a very simple statement. If you're suffering, you better be praying.

Whenever you suffer, you need to pray. And then it immediately talks about expanding the prayer circle all the way to a discussion about you know how effectual a prayer is from a righteous person, which is great. One of the reasons I want to expand the prayer circles, I like to hit a few of those people to pray for me. I want to expand the the prayer circle to have the effectual prayers of a righteous man accomplish a lot. I mean that's just an interesting statement. And then he talks about Elijah. And that's why by the way the next line that comes in that passage in James chapter 5 should remind you don't have to find the the five most godly people in the church to pray for you.

It says Elijah, who had a nature like ours. I mean I know he did a lot. And he talks about how he prayed and changed the weather. But he's just a every Everyone in your small group has a nature like Elijah, human being. I can show you passages, I've even showed you one in this series about Elijah wanting to die. He had a He had a death wish. He was suicidal. And yet he was someone who prayed and God changed things. You know the people in your small group are as good as Elijah when it comes to their prayers if they are willing to righteously come and wrestle in prayer for whatever it is you're struggling with.

God may not change your circumstance like he didn't with Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, but he can change your heart. He can let you stand up with joy, to sing in the dungeons of Philippi, in stocks, hymns before God at midnight. That can happen. God can lift you up. That's the paraklesis that we've been trying to talk about for the last three weeks. Request the prayer support. Middle of verse 11 back to our passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 1. So that I want everyone praying for me here, Paul says, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Here's the problem with you going through your struggles alone. Number one, you're leaving on the table the number one way God wants to give you comfort, strength, courageous boldness in the midst of your of your struggle. You're leaving that all on the table. You need the body of Christ. You should have utilized them. But here's one of the the collateral damages that come from that. When God does take you through that, if indeed he does and he lets you stand up strong through the midst of that struggle, who's going to be thanking God for that?

You. I mean I hope you. But what if you had six people that wrestled in prayer through the struggle that you're facing and you get to share with them the blessing of deliverance and you now stand strong and you say I have incurred the comfort of God. Man, I'm not crying myself to sleep every night this week. God has changed the circumstances or he's changed my heart or he's changed both. Then everybody gets to participate. All this thing we do before we get up to the preaching, all the worship that we sing, all the thanksgiving, all the things we do to praise God, if it's not fueled by specific things, then it's pretty hollow.

Real worship takes place when people are being thankful to God for specific things. We're praising him, not only for who he is, but for what he does because of who he is. And you know if you come into this thinking about the five, six, seven things that God has done for the people you've been praying for, then your praise is filled with with fuel. And we need more of that. Sometimes our worship is pretty flat in our own hearts because we don't have much to to to praise God for because we're not involved in the sufferings of other people.

He says I want the prayer circle expanded. You must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessings granted us through the prayers of many. And what is that? The kind of deliverance he talked about in verse seven, the kind of deliverance he talked about in verse 10. Number five, you should always thank God for relief. One passage on this, and I think I take you to Psalm 116 at least one of the verses in the small group just discussions this week. I hope you do get to your small group and get to these questions.

But let me read a little bit of the context that I don't point you to in Psalm 116. Look at this with me. They want a great psalm, unattributed psalm, but here it is in verse one. The psalmist says I love the Lord because he's heard my voice and my plea for mercy. I love the word mercy because even the struggles and sufferings sometimes you feel like I got myself into this jam. Well, even so, we're calling on God to get us through the struggle, the mercy, right? I know I don't deserve this, but God, I prayed that you would help me, and you did because you inclined your ear verse two to me.

Therefore I'll call on him as long as I live. This is good. The snares of death encompassed me verse three. The pangs of Sheol of the grave laid hold on me. I suffered distress and anguish. Man, I was down. I mean maybe like Paul despairing even of life. Then I called on the name of the Lord. Oh Lord, I pray deliver my soul. Now, gracious is the Lord, the right and righteous Our God is merciful. He preserves the simple. I'm no one great, but here I am. God is answering my prayer. When I was brought low, he saved me.

Return, oh my soul, to your rest. By the way, if you did a there's a apex a one-time Greek New Testament word that's used in Colossians as Paul talked about the comfort he got in Colossians 4 from his friends. And the word agora. You know the word agora? Uh like the marketplace, the buzz of the marketplace. It's it's a compound word, and it talks about the buzz of all the marketplace, so to speak. Last that's the image in the word. It's all calmed. You know it's like going to a busy like the Spectrum or something in the midst of the height of all the people that's shopping at Christmas and then going there at 3 in the morning when you know somebody just barely sweeping up.

And the the calm and the quiet It's like that's the picture of of that's one it's translated comfort in in Colossians 4. The comfort that comes, the calm that comes. And I I love that that phrase right there and and basically paints that picture. Return, oh my soul, to your rest. Calm now, be calm for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. Verse eight. You've delivered my soul from death and my eyes from tears and my feet from stumbling. Man, I was crying myself to sleep, but you fixed it. You fixed me. I'll walk before you in the land of the living.

I 'm going to stand up straight. I'm going to get up and go to work. I'm going to do this stuff that you've called me to do. You got me through this. I believed even when I spoke. I am greatly afflicted. I said in my alarm all mankind are liars. Now, I know Paul quotes this as the truth cuz certainly it is objectively true, technically, right? People grow up, they all lie. And that's stated in the New Testament as a universal thing, but here's a statement of of despair. You know he's saying I I was calling out.

I was just so greatly afflicted, and I was alarmed. This is kind of like Psalm 73 when Asaph said I was like a brute, I was like a beast before you. Like everybody's a liar. I can't trust in anybody. This And this is a statement of the despair of someone being really down. And he says in verse 12 which got me through it. What am I going to render the Lord for all his benefits to me? I'll lift up the cup of salvation. I'll call in the name of the Lord. I'm going to pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of his people.

I can't wait to get to my small group to tell people this. I can 't wait to rejoice and praise God in the multitude, in the throng as Psalm 35 says. I I'm going to go and pay my I'm going to sign up for the next ministry. I'm going to go serve. I am going to go give. I am going to do I can't wait. I mean here's a supercharged Christian life because God got that person through the difficulty. And the Bible says get people involved in this. Not only will they be the source of it, but you'll fuel their lives in worship like the person that goes through this deliverance.

I'm fixing the road by my house thankfully cuz it's been a mess, but one thing I've learned about them trying to smooth out the roads is it gets worse before it gets better. They tear it up, man. It's torn up in in a horrible way. I mean the pavement's uneven, and they do something just to grind it out to where your tires scream at you when you drive by it. There's bumps, there's holes, there's potholes. It's There's plates, there's all kinds of things, and it's just it's a it's like riding on uh Ghost Rider at Knott's.

Did you ever ride that ride? I I don't believe how any of us believed it was good when we were kids cuz it it rattles your teeth out of your head. And that's kind of what it's like driving through some of this construction zone. And um one thing I noticed, no matter what your car is, and there's some cars that look pretty beefy out there, the big Ford Broncos and the four-wheel drives and the cyber trucks or whatever, but you know everybody struggles through this. Not only is it dusty and dirty and bumpy, but it just I mean there are sections of this that just flip your car around.

Now, here's it's kind of like people. There are some people that are like the Mini Coopers of your small group, right? They're low to the ground and they feel every bump, I'm assuming. I have never driven one, but whatever, the genteel kind of car. And every little bump every speed bump, you know just messes messes with their lives. But even the big trucks sometimes hit some some rough road that even messes up the I mean you watch the whatever, you don't maybe watch, but they you know like the the Baja 500 or whatever where these big gigantic trucks with these giant wheels and huge suspension and still they hit the right rock or they hit the right you know obstacle and and and they break an axle or their their wheel flies off or whatever.

Even big trucks and small cars all alike when they run into something that messes up the exterior of their life, everyone's going to notice that. And there are people that come to your small group and they got a flat tire so to speak, and you know they lost a loved one. Oh man, we need to care for them. Gone through a divorce, they're business, they're out of work, whatever, and you know they're struggling. But just know there's a lot that goes on in the inside. Like I was heading home and I have everything nicely balanced on my dashboard and all the pockets and everything, and you hit certain parts of the road and it throws everything on the floorboard.

Um and and so the interior of our lives can be messed up. The exterior maybe just a little dusty. No one knows how bad it is on the inside. But we can feel totally disheveled in our own hearts. Maybe we even feel the place that our interior life is so messed up we can't even keep going. But the reality is that we've got to open the door, let people know what's going on cuz we need each other's help to clean up, to help out, to support us, to be able to stand up in the midst of whatever struggle God has has purposed and decreed for our lives.

Don't be afraid to ask for help, and if you're strong and everything's good right now, it's smooth sailing for you, great, get to your small groups this week. And say I'm here to put your interests before my own. We need to hold each other up. We need to help each other through this life. In this world we're going to have tribulation, but we need help to hold on tightly to Jesus's word that we're supposed to take heart that he's overcome the world. The yet the best is yet to come and the good that he has planned for us.

He's going to work all things together for his ultimate good and the conformity of our lives to Christ. So let's lean into this this week. Several hymns written in the wake of people's pain, this old Swedish hymn. This gal had lost her uh her family. Her father had died in a boating accident. She wrote these words day by day. With each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here. Trusting in my father's wise bestowal. I've no cause for worry and no cause for fear. Let's pray God give us that kind of perspective. We know what's right, we know what's true.

It's hard for our hearts sometimes that are so uh so hurt, so frustrated, so pained by so many circumstances. And I just pray that we'd be much more invested in each other, much more honest about our struggles that you provide for us the comfort that only comes from you through the people that you have appointed to be around us in this season of our lives. Thanks for this congregation, for every part in it, every person in it. I mean that God every person. We regenerate Christian in this church has such an important role to play in each other's lives.

So help us, God, to be involved even now, even starting now in the lobby, in the parking lot, through texts this afternoon, through phone calls this week, through meetings throughout the week. Just let us encourage each other and all the more as we see the day drawing near in Jesus's name. Amen.

Dave Droege: That's Pastor Mike Fabarez on Focal Point finishing the practical requirements of comfort from 2 Corinthians chapter 1. And the end of our series When Life Beats You Up. Revisit this message or the whole series at focalpointradio.org or open the free Focal Point app and keep every lesson queued up for the week ahead. Pastor Mike closed today in Psalm 116, a soul told to return to its rest because the Lord has dealt bountifully with it. That's the voice of someone who reached the end of their strength and found God waiting there. You'll hear that same voice all through Psalms of Trust, a book by Pastor HB Charles Jr.

The book starts with a simple premise. Sooner or later, every heart has its blues, and God draws near to the brokenhearted, the crushed in spirit, and the afraid. Across 10 psalms, Pastor Charles shows how believers in every generation have carried their fears to the Lord and come away steadier. In Psalm 27, David asks for one thing above everything else, to dwell in the house of the Lord and gaze on his beauty. It would make a thoughtful gift too for someone in your small group who's running on empty. Request Psalms of Trust with a donation to Focal Point this month.

Call 888-320-5885 or visit focalpointradio.org or mail your gift to Focal Point Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. Pastor Mike said worship comes alive when we've watched God answer specific prayers. Many of the clearest answers to prayer we witness begin with the questions listeners bring to ask Pastor Mike live, a parent at the end of their rope, a new believer unsure where to start. Your monthly gift puts you in the middle of every one of those conversations long after the call ends. Become a Focal Point partner today by calling 888-320-5885 or sign up online at focalpointradio.org.

How do you give to God when every paycheck is already spoken for? And could anyone actually see the temple veil when it tore in two? I'm Dave Droege, and Pastor Mike takes those questions on and more on Ask Pastor Mike live Friday here on Focal Point.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Hi, Pastor Mike here. God's word promises it'll never return void. So wonder how is God's word moving in your heart right now? Drop us a line. Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to be praying for you here. Just go to focalpointradio.org and then be sure to join us again tomorrow right here as we continue to explore the depths of Scripture. We'll see you then.

Dave Droege: Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.