Sermon Starters: Great Is Your Faithfulness

 Great Is Your Faithfulness

Location: North Collins Wesleyan Church, 6/27/21
Text: Lamentations 3:19-33

Introduction

• No word from my son at boot camp. It's easy to sing, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" when everything works out ok.
• That's not the context of the verse in Lamentations. Ancient siege warfare was brutal... Think the cities of Germany after WWII.
• That's the context of Lamentations--the destruction of Jerusalem. We need to be mindful of and thankful for God's faithfulness in the great times, the normal times, and, yes, the bad times.

1. We need to be mindful of and thankful for the faithfulness of God in prosperous times.

• "There are no atheists in foxholes," but there are plenty practical ones who are well-off.
• Screwtape's advice in Screwtape Letters--"Prosperity knits a person to the world."
• A man from my childhood. Had everything. Appeared to be solid Christian. Left the Lord for years pursuing pleasure, even though he still believed all the right things. It took at accident to snap him back into reliance on God.
• Sometimes God lets us go, and we experience the trajectory of our choices.
• Job is an example of someone who was mindful of the faithfulness of God in prosperous times.

2. We need to be mindful of and thankful for the faithfulness of God in boring, ordinary times.

• A road experience I barely remember, because it turned out ok. The potential benefit of forgetting your keys.
• My dad not being chosen for a certain privilege in the army and the fate of those who were.
• The nearly unnoticed privileges we often have. I don't struggle with headaches, and I have Excedrin if I do.

3. We need to be mindful of and thankful for the faithfulness of God in really hard times.

• The author of Lamentations was. Read 3:31-33 again. God doesn't want anyone to suffer.
• Job had it right. We came naked into the world, and so we will leave. Dust we are and to dust we will return. The Lord gives; the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
• We talk about rights a lot in America. I'm very grateful for them. But really we are nothing without the Lord. If we could get that straight, we would be much more thankful in all circumstances.

Conclusion

• I don't always practice what I preach, but there was one time when some people thought I had experienced an injustice. I don't necessarily see it that way. But people made comments on how well I took the event. What I was thinking was, "I came naked into the world. I will leave the world naked. The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."