Dalton First United Methodist Church Podcast
God is in Control - Pastor Steven Usry
God is in Control - June 11th, 2023
Sometimes, profound theology comes in simple sentences. Take for example the story of renowned theologian, Karl Barth, and how he answered a student's question about God in just a few words. Join us as we reflect on the theology in our own homes, through the prayers we say with our families, and the impact of a simple prayer like "God is great, God is good, Let us thank Him for this food." Lastly, we invite you to join us in prayer, thanking God for His love and grace, and reflecting on the power of placing our faith and trust in Jesus.
Learn More at daltonfumc.com
God is in Control - June 11th, 2023
Sometimes, profound theology comes in simple sentences. Take for example the story of renowned theologian, Karl Barth, and how he answered a student's question about God in just a few words. Join us as we reflect on the theology in our own homes, through the prayers we say with our families, and the impact of a simple prayer like "God is great, God is good, Let us thank Him for this food." Lastly, we invite you to join us in prayer, thanking God for His love and grace, and reflecting on the power of placing our faith and trust in Jesus.
Learn More at daltonfumc.com
You are listening to the Dalton First United Methodist Church podcast. To learn more about Dalton First United Methodist Church, visit us online at DaltonFUMCcom. We hope that today's message from Pastor Stephen Usry inspires and encourages you. I want to invite you, if you have your worship guide close to you there, to open it. On the very back you'll find a message outline for today. I always provide a message outline as a way of helping you follow along. It's also a way for you to dive into the scriptures a little better, to see the scriptures. I'll be inviting you to circle some things and note some things today, today even number some things and fill in the blanks, but that message outline is provided for you to engage with in whatever way you will. This past week let me tell you a real quick story I had a mother tell me that her child loves the message outlines and sits there awaiting those things to appear on the screen so they can fill in those things. And just it helps. It doesn't just help children, i think it helps all of us really. Hopefully remember and let God's word sink in a little bit.
Speaker 1:And before we dive into the message today, i want to say a special word to the choir. Thank you for that gift this morning of just give me Jesus, amen. Church. Wow, you know, by the way, i'm going to plug them for a minute. All right, they're looking for people. If you want to come and join them this summer, here's the deal. Two things, they said. You don't really have to sing, you can just make a joyful noise. That's fine. And you don't have to wear a robe in the summer. How about that? So if you want to join them, when you guys meet on Sunday afternoons right two o'clock, they'd love to have you join them. They're looking for members. You want to join that choir and have some fun. I think you guys enjoy it, don't you? They would love to have you.
Speaker 1:You know, i think a lot of people don't know it. They don't, they don't realize it, but I went to school right up the road from here. I don't know if you've ever heard of Lee College. Now it's called Lee University. They stepped up in the world since I was there in Cleveland, tennessee, i did.
Speaker 1:I was at the University of Georgia for Vince Dooley's last year that was my freshman year in school I watched him carry Vince Dooley off the field. Oh, i'm sorry, i'm a Georgia fan. I forgot to say that, but anyway. but it was during about three three-quarters the way through that year that God started to knock on my door. I'd been called since I was 13 years of age and it was about going to prepare myself for ministry and I was in music and so I looked at music schools Belmont, over in Nashville, lee, up in Cleveland and visited several schools and it was Lee that I chose to pursue the rest of my undergraduate career.
Speaker 1:Well, when you go to Lee, it's a Christian school everybody has to take Bible classes. You have to take Old Testament, new Testament, you have to take ethics, you in everybody graduates, everybody graduates from Lee, everybody with a minor in biblical education. Well, i'm an I hope it's okay to say I'm a competitive person and sometimes an overachiever. Okay, and I thought, if I'm gonna do all that work for a minor, why not take a few extra courses and make it a major? so I double majored. I was a vocal performance major and I was a biblical education minor and I studied Bible in undergraduate school and I share that story to tell you this.
Speaker 1:It was right towards the end of my senior year in college that I took a class. It was on that Bible theology side and the class was called systematic theology. Systematic theology is a class in which you think about all that you know about God and you try to put it in some structure, in some system, if you will. Don Bowdell, the distinguished Don Bowdell, was the professor of that class and it was. I made it all the way to my senior year in college till I finally found that class. Have you ever been to that class before that? you went to it and about halfway through you said well, if I worked as hard as I could work, the best I can do is a B. Have you ever been there before? I was a solid. I made a solid C in systematic theology. I'm just going to confess all right, i made a solid C, but I learned so very much.
Speaker 1:Now, for many people the idea of a system taking all that you know and trying to put it in some system is kind of a foreign thought. And I was only 21 years old. How good is a 21-year-old going to be able to take everything they know about God and put it into some kind of structure? But for our final thesis on that class, professor Bowdell said this. He said you must write a paper and you can think about it however you will, but whatever you're, as you try to address all that you know about God in one paper, you must have a central thread that grounds it all. If you want to look at it like it's a spider web, and what is the one central thread that will ground the entire web? If you want to look at it like it's a house, what is the cornerstone of the house that you'll build everything that you know about God off of? What an incredibly challenging thought to give a 21-year-old right. I know 21-year-olds they think they know everything, but the reality is they're still pretty light, right.
Speaker 1:So I talked to some of my classmates What are you going to put as the cornerstone of the house as you try to write this paper? And we all had different ideas. There were some people who said my cornerstone is going to be God is love. There it is in the Bible. That's a pretty good cornerstone, don't you agree? Everything that you would build off of that you know about God is that God is love. Another one of my classmates said I'm going to build it off of God is good And everything else that I'm going to share that I think I know about God. It speaks into his mercy, it speaks into his justice, it speaks into his care. How will you?
Speaker 1:In the 21 years of age, i wrote a paper and I want to tell you what I put as the cornerstone of my house, and I'm sharing this with you, to invite you to think about what you would put as the cornerstone of your faith, that everything else you know about God is built off of. For me, at 21 years of age, i picked that God is sovereign, that He's king, that He is a king that will bring His will to pass. He's a good king, he's a loving king, he's a king that is merciful, he's a king that is just. And I wrote a paper about how God, as king, grounds everything I know about who God is. And I wrote all about 21 years of age, that I thought I could know about God. And can I tell you I'll look back on that moment And I think God was in that moment for me Because, at 21 years of age, i can tell you now, as a husband, as a dad, as a pastor who's been in ministry for about 30-something years, i can tell you that the fact that God is king gives me deep peace. You know, the truth of the matter is, in every one of our lives, struggle is going to come, pain is going to come, there's going to be transition, there's going to be all kinds of tumult Jesus promised us that, by the way. Right, but in all those moments, even from 21 years of age, there is something that has grounded me that, in it all, god is king. He never slips off the throne, he never is surprised that the king is on his throne and that he will bring his will to pass.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to read a scripture of a woman who was going through a lot of trouble, and this woman had incredible faith. But the reason I picked this scripture for today is simply this You know, if you don't really ground yourself and understand that God is king and that God is sovereign, that the king brings his will to pass, there's a chance that you might go through struggle, that you might go through trouble, that you might go through pain and one day just forget that. Just forget it and maybe begin to doubt that the king is really in charge. My hope for you is that, even as we look at the life of this beautiful woman's story, that you would remember and see how God works through even the hardest things in her life. Let's look at this woman in Mark, chapter 5. The Bible says a large crowd followed and pressed around him. Jesus had just gotten off the boat. He'd just been on a lake tour, if you will. And now there's people everywhere around him. And the Bible says that there are so many people It's literally. Can you picture it? They're pressing in and it's hard to move through the streets.
Speaker 1:And there was a woman there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. Let me pause right there for a minute. This scripture tells us six things about this woman. You might want to just mark them in your margin. You might want to take a pen and number those things, but we just read five of those things In verses 25 and 26,.
Speaker 1:It tells us five things about this woman. Note those five things. The first thing it tells us is she'd been bleeding for 12 years. 12 years, that's a long time. Right, she'd been bleeding for 12 years. Secondly, it tells us she had suffered a great deal.
Speaker 1:When I read that, i don't think it's necessarily just talking about the bleeding that's going on. I think there's probably some psychological struggles going on emotional, maybe even relational struggles that this woman has had because of what's happened in her life. She'd been bleeding for 12 years, she'd suffered a great deal and then, thirdly, she had been to many doctors. By the way, you've been there before You've been to a doctor. You thought you hoped, you really hoped they were going to be able to help you, but in the end they might have promised you some things that didn't come out the way you hoped. It would be For this woman, if you're really going to understand her story. She had been to many doctors. Imagine how many doctors have said, okay, that's enough of that, we'll get you better, we're going to take care of this now. And then another doctor came and went. She'd been bleeding for 12 years, she suffered a great deal, she had been to many doctors and, fourthly, she had spent all she had. She's broke, she's been trying to get better so much that she's dry, she's out, she doesn't have anything.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing here, number five. It says instead of getting better, what did she get? Worse? I mean what a plight.
Speaker 1:This woman is going through an ordeal. She's going not just a short one, by the way. Sometimes when you go through struggle and pain, it's not a short deal, right. Sometimes it can last an inordinately long time. And boys, in those moments have we begin to ask her, ask questions, and then sometimes they're not the best questions. I mean, what's the biggest question we ask when we're going through a spot like this woman? It's the question why? Why, by the way, not a very good question, because you're, most of the time, never going to get an answer to that question. A far better question is God. What might you want to do through this? Keep reading with me. In the Bible.
Speaker 1:It says and this is one of my favorite parts when she heard about Jesus. By the way, that's just a few words, that, but can you imagine what she heard about Jesus? That there was this guy that was teaching about the kingdom of God and that everywhere he went, life was blooming and people were being, miracles were happening. Can you imagine the hope that began to purge in her? Maybe, just maybe. This is where my healing is. She had heard about Jesus and she came up behind him in the crowd and she touched his cloak because she thought And now we get to the sixth thing we learn about this lady. She thought to herself if I can only touch the hem of his garment, i will be made whole.
Speaker 1:This woman had been bleeding for 12 years. She'd suffered a great deal, she'd been a mini doctor, she'd spent everything she had. Instead of getting better, she only grew worse. But here's the sixth and most important thing we learn about this woman Even with all of that going on, she is filled with faith. Her faith is still there. She trusted God once. What is best for her. She's not giving up hope. Her faith is strong, even though the struggle has lasted and gone on and on and on and on. She reaches out. You know the story. She reaches out, she touches it and immediately what did that feel like? by the way, immediately in her body, she knew it's over. She'd been made whole, she was complete. The bleeding had stopped and Jesus' new power went out from him.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna read the rest of the story in a few minutes, but let's pause here for a minute. This morning I don't have seven points for you or five points for you. I just got two simple thoughts, all right, two very simple thoughts that I wanna remind you, especially if you are going through your hard moment right now. If you've got your pen, i want you to invite you to fill out that first one, and the first one is this this woman reminds of this my problems have a purpose. God is in control, he's sovereign, he's king, and because I know that he's on the throne and he's a good king and a loving king and a merciful king, when I go through struggles, i can remember God's in control and that he is going to bring his will to pass and that my problems have a purpose.
Speaker 1:Let me say that a little differently. Your life is not an amalgamation of a lot of random things that have happened to you. No see, as Christians, we don't believe that, we don't believe anything like that. Your life is not a random series of events that have just happened to you. No, no, no, not if you are a Christ follower. You know, the book of Job reminds us that Satan couldn't even come and touch Job without going to God first.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things we have to remember is that there is this beautiful thing about your relationship with the king. Now get this. He's king. It's a big thing to say that God is king and you have a relationship with the king. That means that the things that come into your life good, bad, ugly, indifferent, they come through. If you will a God filter, everything that happens to you, because you are a subject of the king, will come by some way of him allowing it. That may be hard for you to grasp.
Speaker 1:Now let me be very clear about what I'm saying and what I'm not saying. I am saying that your life is not a random series of happenstance, lucky, chance things. We don't believe that. But what I am not saying is that everything that has come into your life is by God's hand, that he designed it, he planned it. No, no, no, no, no. You know better than that. Right. There's pain, there's war, there's abuse, there's death, there's all kinds of horrific things that God was not the author of. But what I want to remind you of is that, no matter what happens in your world, the king can bring about his plan, his will and his goodness.
Speaker 1:You know Romans 8, 28, paul's words say And we know that in all things, god works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. A very famous scripture. Most people commit that to memory, but most people never read the 29th verse immediately after that. And verse 29 says For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. We all have problems and some of us lived charmed lives compared to others, but the reality is for all of us, we will go through pain and struggle And in those moments we must remember that God is in charge, that he's the king, he's sovereign And that he can use the problems that come into my life for a purpose. What is that grander purpose? To form the image of Jesus in us. Now I told you just two simple faults. Your problems have a purpose. Write this one down.
Speaker 1:And my prayers have an impact. My prayers have an impact, they really do. When you pray, god hears And your prayers make a difference. And so, understanding that God is in control, when you bow your knee, when you humble your heart, no matter what you're going through, you are talking with the king. You're talking with the king. Jesus said it this way when he was trying to help people understand how much their prayers have an impact. He said ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find Knock on the door will be open to you. This is Jesus' understanding of his Father as sovereign, as a king. Listen, church. We need to be praying and asking and seeking and knocking. This is important for our church If you're a leader in our church. This is important for your family If you're a mom or a dad. This is important for your family If you're a grandmother or granddad. I believe there is great power in prayer.
Speaker 1:Go back to this woman. She'd been struggling so long. How did she not give up hope? How did her faith stay strong? I am assured that it's got to be from her, her prayers. It's certainly not from the journey, it's certainly not from the doctors. Somehow the Lord has encouraged her in her spirit that when she hears Jesus is close. By what does she ask? What does she ask herself? Surely, if I could just there's a faith statement there if I could just touch the hymn of his garment. You know your problems have a purpose. Always, never, ever forget that. Always know that. And your prayers have an impact. What happened? Let me finish that story.
Speaker 1:The Bible says she reached out and touched Jesus. She was made whole. Jesus turns around to those around him and says somebody touch me. Power just went out. And one of his disciples says somebody touched you, everybody's touching you. What do you mean? Jesus said no, no, no. And Jesus starts looking, looking through the crowd for who it is.
Speaker 1:There's this beautiful moment where this woman does not she could have, she could have tried to stay hidden. She steps out, she says it was me. Jesus looks at her and he says some beautiful words. He looks at her and he calls her daughter. This is a beautiful term, a term of care, a term of nurture. I feel maybe in that moment He knew her suffering and he knew the length of her suffering and he knew how she had held on to hope and to faith. And he looks at her with compassion and he says daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace. Can we pause right there for a minute? We read that word and we just run right past it. Go in peace.
Speaker 1:But in their understanding, and even in the Greek term, that is there what he really was. What he really was telling her was go in shalom. Shalom is far bigger than peace. Shalom is wholeness, it's completeness. See, she had come that day by faith, she had touched his robe, she had fought through the crowd and now she was whole And Jesus looked at her and said go in shalom, go in shalom. He said.
Speaker 1:Let me read that, what did he say? And be freed from your suffering Church. I'm so thankful to be your pastor When I want to challenge you and you'll always hear me. Challenge you towards for you to always believe in the goodness of God and in His greatness and to trust Him, and to believe even when it looks like the odds are stacked against you, even when you feel like giving up, and maybe even when the pain and the heartache and the struggle has gone on for years and years and years and years. Always remember that your problems have a purpose and that God will bring good and form the image of Jesus in you if you allow him and your prayers have an impact. As I get ready to close this message, i want to share a simple thought with you. I don't know if you've ever heard the name, carl Bart.
Speaker 1:Carl Bart is a famous Swiss theologian. He died in 1968, but his influence was phenomenal. And Carl Bart, as a famed theologian, one time was giving a lecture in Chicago while he was in the States. He was giving a lecture and at the end of the lecture he did a Q&A And in the Q&A a student raised up their hand and they asked an incredible question. It was, i guess, somewhat like my little thing about what are you going to build your systematic theology or faith on A person? just a theological student raised their hand and they said Dr Bart, can you sum up all that you know about God into one simple sentence? What a great question. What a great question. And the student was just hanging there wondering if this famed theologian would even answer the question. And Carl Bart did answer the question that day in Chicago. He said, yes, i can. I learned it at my mother's knee. And then Carl Bart, this phenomenal writer, theologian, global voice, said these words Jesus loves me. This I know. The Bible tells me so.
Speaker 1:When I first heard that story of Calvary, i'll never forget it Because I thought what a phenomenon. He could have gone to so many things, this phenomenal mind. He could have thought about All these things he knows about God, but he brought it down to just this simple, simple thing. Why am I sharing that with you? Because it caused me to reflect on my childhood. You know, i know I told you at 21 that I was thinking about God as king and I was thinking about my theology. But I think some of the deepest theology happens in the home, it happens at the kitchen table, it happens from our mothers and our fathers and our grandmothers and grandfathers growing us up in the faith. And as I thought about it, i'm not Calvary, i'm not nearly as smart or as wise or as talented, but I thought, i sort of think, can I sum up my theology in one simple sentence? I don't know that it's perfect, it's probably not, but I want to tell you the answer that I came up with for me At my home.
Speaker 1:Every time we had a meal breakfast, lunch or dinner we said the same prayer. Nobody prayed special words different. Every time. We all said it out loud, wrote every meal And I bet somebody in this crowd you probably prayed the same prayer or something like it. When you were growing up we would say this little prayer God is great, god is good, let us thank Him for this food. By His hands we are fed. Thank you, lord, for daily bread. Every meal, every meal, we said that same God is great, god is good, let us thank Him for it. Every full voice from the table. Can I tell you that I think I didn't realize it at the time. I think it's some of the greatest theology about God as king. I learned sitting at the breakfast table, lunch table, dinner table. God is great And God is good. He is a great king. He is a good king.
Speaker 1:Oh church, no matter what you go through, never, ever, forget that If you happen to be here today and you've never, like this woman, placed your full faith and trust in Jesus for you to be made eternally whole, i'd invite you, as simple as asking the Lord Jesus to come into your life, confessing your sin and believing that God loved you so much that He sent His son of the world. You can do that now. I invite you to pray with me, if you will. God, thank you so much for your love and your grace. Where would we be without it? Thank you that you love us so much that you sent your son to show us the way, and thank you so much, god, that, because we have placed our faith and we place our faith and trust in Jesus, that you can remove our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. Oh God, thank you for salvation and thank you that you can now call us daughters and sons of God.
Speaker 1:God, help us, no matter what we go through, to always put our faith and our trust in you. Though the times change, though the storms come, god, we will trust in your goodness, we will trust in your greatness, that you are the King and that you will bring your goodwill to pass in our lives. Lord, help us, even in this day, to have shalom in our lives. Your wholeness, your completeness, made from your touch, your forgiveness And God. Help us to give shalom to the world. We thank you for your good word in our lives, jesus, help us to follow you close and always put our faith and trust in a good and a great King. We pray this in your most holy name, jesus, amen, amen. Church.