Session 1: A Troubled Heart

Hi, I am so glad to be here with you tonight. It is a joy to gather with women who are passionate about the Lord and His Word and also will give up a Friday night and a Saturday morning to come hear someone they don't know and listen to what she has to say. So I don't take that for granted. I'm very grateful. So it's so exciting for me to be here, and you may be thinking, why am I here? Why is Andrea Lee here? And I want to answer that in a couple ways before we get started. So the first is that I belong to a church that's really similar to Jefferson Park in Atlanta, Georgia. And my pastor and his wife know Keith and Lisa, and they connected, and that's how I literally got here. And the second reason I'm here is because God loves to use weak lowly people to do his work. He does that to show that the fruit of their lives comes from his power and his might and not their own. 1 Corinthians 128 says that God uses what is low and despised in the world so that no human being might boast in his presence. God uses weak, foolish people to highlight Jesus's amazing power and wisdom. He's the only one worthy of our gaze for eternity. So I'm here because I'm the most unlikely person to be here, and you'll probably know that by the end of the night. So another part of the reason that I'm here is because I love God's Word. I believe it is sufficient for everything that God has called us to be and to do and that He uses, the Holy Spirit actually uses the Bible in unique ways to accomplish change that no other thing can do. So I have experienced how the Holy Spirit has used the Bible in my own life and how it reorients the lives that I serve as a biblical counselor. The theme of our time is walking together through trials. Suffering is a reality. for everyone, even believers. And I'm asking our Heavenly Father for us to see and embrace the ways he uses suffering in our lives as he describes in his word. God has given us all that we need in his word to love him and serve each other when we suffer. So let me say a quick prayer and we'll get started. Heavenly Father, I am so glad that I can approach your throne of grace because of Jesus. We are here because you have called us to yourself and given us light in our hearts, the light of the knowledge of the glory of who you are. I pray that my words, weak though they may be, will shine the light on your beauty, your glory, and your greatness tonight. Please be with me. I need your help and I need you to do what no human being can do. We need the Holy Spirit to work in us Soften our hearts so that we love your word and want to obey it. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Before I launch in, we are going to have a question and answer time tomorrow afternoon, I think. We will have cards on the tables in your discussion rooms. Please feel free. I'm imagining that what I'm going to say is going to provoke some questions. And if you would like to write them down, we'll have someone read them, and I will seek to respond as best I can tomorrow. So please feel free to do that. Okay, I'm gonna share some of my story tonight. You're gonna hear about some of the trials that I've walked through and what God has taught me through them. I'm also gonna talk a little bit about biblical counseling, what it is, and why I love it. This will set the stage for our time tomorrow when we're gonna get more specific about what we need to do and who we need to be when we walk with others and disciple them when they're suffering. Here's the main idea that I want you to walk away with tonight. God uses suffering to make us rely on him and not ourselves. God uses suffering to make us rely on him and not ourselves. This is so important to know. God tells us that suffering has a purpose. It's not meaningless. It's not random. It's actually accomplishing something. It's producing something. Everything from headaches and stomach bugs and cancer to unkind bosses and rebellious children and harsh husbands are all under God's design and are working to fulfill his purposes. Elizabeth Elliot has a very simple definition of suffering. She says, it's wanting what you don't have or having what you do not want. If you think about that for a minute, it kind of sums up everything that we would label suffering in our lives. But when we learn to rely on God in our trials, He equips us to walk with others in their trials. We come to know Him as we depend on Him. So I want to tell you how He's done that in my life and then show you in scripture where I get this idea. My parents are both believers and are committed to the local church, and I was actually eight years old when I heard a British evangelist give a clear picture of my spiritual condition, how my sin separates me from our holy creator God, and how we deserve judgment and wrath. Because God was working, I knew I had no hope in myself of being reconciled to Him. After the service, I talked to my parents about what I was feeling, and I knew that the guilt that I was experiencing was more than a feeling. It was something that was more objective than just a feeling. I couldn't make up for the ways that I had broken God's law. In that moment, God gave me the faith to believe that Jesus is the Son of God whose death paid for my sin, whose perfect life provided for my righteousness, and whose resurrection showed God's power over the penalty of sin. God gave me life in Christ by repenting and believing. As I grew, God used a trial in my family to show me more of my heart. My younger brother was really angry and violent from a pretty young age, and my life and my family's life was filled with conflict and chaos. My parents really struggled to manage his rebellion, even from a very young age. It was really interesting. But as I watched the dynamics of my parents and my brother, I also saw really clearly how my sin had immediate consequences in my family. So if I provoked my brother or irritated him or demanded my own way, there were immediate repercussions for me and for everybody else. And so although it was my brother that was sinning too, I came to understand how what I was doing was so destructive and that I was powerless to stop repeating the patterns of sinful behavior by myself. I knew I needed Jesus. Now, I had already become a believer, but instead of turning to Jesus, the only one who could really rescue me from all of this and give me the wisdom that I needed, I often tried to do the rescuing myself. So I didn't stop believing in Jesus, but I developed an unbiblical approach to dealing with my brother's anger and the pain in my family. I avoided anything that might incite conflict. Just avoid conflict at all cost. I strove to deserve protection and love and tried to be perfect so that my parents didn't have another thing to worry about. I figured if I worked hard enough that my brother's anger wouldn't destroy our family. So I focused on my performance in order to gain approval and attention. And this pattern of self-justification, which is what it really was, became the operating mode of my heart. Even though I would tell you that I needed Jesus desperately, I truly believed that. I wasn't consciously turning away from Jesus. I was actually pursuing Him daily, but I didn't know that there were some subtle shifts that were taking place in my heart that were leading me away from relying on Christ. So God, in his grace, slowly began to challenge this unbiblical thinking. During my freshman year of college, my fears about my brother just continued to grow. And by this time, he was really heavily involved in drugs and alcohol. And during a visit home, he threatened my then four-year-old baby brother. So it was me, and then I have a four-year, my other brother is four years younger, the one that was kind of crazy. And then we had a younger brother who's 14 years younger than I am. So I was 18. My brother was 14 and my baby brother was four. And I went home and I had found hypodermic needles and drugs and I confronted my brother. I said, you can't have this here. Our little brother could find this and really, this could be really bad. And he said, if you tell anybody, I will hurt him while you're not here. And the fear just like took my breath away. I realized that I had no control. I could not prevent my brother from hurting our baby brother. And so this episode kind of launched me. It was just kind of a crystallization of what was happening. And it kind of launched me into, deeper into this performance mentality. And I compared myself physically, academically, relationally, And I knew that I wasn't measuring up. I was pushing myself really hard, but I always fell far short of the goals that I thought I needed to reach. Looking back, God's grace is so evident. Even during the dark times that I was facing during college as I worked through some of this stuff, I didn't question Jesus' identity or atoning work or the Bible's authority or just the perfection of God's word. I knew that Jesus alone had the words of eternal life. But I didn't have enough theology to process what was going on in my heart. I had these huge holes that made my troubles much more painful, so I began a desperate search for how God and His Word made sense of my suffering. Things got a little worse before they got better. Things were happening physically that were just declining physically. and they landed me in several doctor's offices with mandate to get counseling and prescriptions for clinical depression. So I started with an on-campus support group and it's just so interesting to see now from my perspective as a biblical counselor that I've kind of experienced secular therapeutic counseling and then some other types of counseling before I actually arrived at what I love to do now. So this on-campus support group, there was no mention of God or of my sin or the hope of a risen savior, and so I didn't spend much time there. I eventually connected with a Christian counselor, and I always felt better after I left her office. She was a dear, sweet woman, but I wasn't actually changing. She was kind and patient, but she never opened the Bible. She never prayed with me. And at the time, I actually didn't see this as a problem. Even though I sought out Christian counseling to help me discover more about God and my relationship to him, my time with this counselor didn't center on the hope of the gospel or on God's word at all. So I knew Jesus was the answer, but I didn't know how the pieces fit together. I didn't understand God's process of change for every believer. It's so clear in God's word, but I just was clueless. But these experiences were preparing my heart so that when I finally encountered counseling that was truly biblical, I was so ready. Now, by this point in time, I had finished my degree in accounting and Spanish at the University of Tennessee. I had passed the CPA exam. I was working in a tax and audit firm. Also, by this time, God had kindly brought my husband into my life, my future husband. His name is Darren. We met on a blind date, and we were married six months later. I don't advise that. It's just part of my story, but it's worked for us. And we've been married for over 12 years now. Early in our marriage, Darren was picking up on some of these thought processes that were creating so much kind of chaos in my own emotional life. And he kept encouraging me to confront them. He encouraged me to obey God when my emotions felt out of control. And his encouragement and wisdom helped me to keep taking steps of faith that moved me closer and closer toward God's design for my emotions and God's desire for my obedience. Darren even lovingly addressed the need, what I thought was a need, to remain on antidepressants to be stable. So we were working on a lot of physical factors that had contributed to my state of mind. I was really low in some key vitamins. My thyroid wasn't functioning properly. I was actually able to taper off and discontinue some of the medications. with the help of my doctor. I say that tentatively. It is part of my story, but I want you to hear that that is not a condemnation of medication. It is useful and helpful, and please don't stop taking any medication unless you talk with a doctor or a biblical counselor. And I would encourage you, if you feel maybe some guilt or sadness or just fear about the medication you're taking, please do talk with someone. Talk with a biblical counselor. You can talk to me about my experience. I'm happy to share more. So I just wanted to put that little aside in there. So I was coming off of these antidepressants. My husband was helping me. I was still continuing to struggle with some depression, some hopelessness, perfectionism, fear. Darren kept pointing me to Christ. He helped me understand that I often dealt unbiblically with anger, my own sin, and suffering. I acted as if Christianity was a works-based religion. I was utterly focused on how not good enough I was, and daily life was just a continuous reinforcement of how not good enough I was. I was totally focused on me. So there was a key turning point that came a few years later when a biblical counselor reinterpreted my troubled feelings through the lens of God's word. My painful emotions were not low self-esteem, as many even believers and professors had told me. They were actually pride. I was focused on myself and my lack of gifts and abilities. I was self-absorbed because I felt like I was a failure. My self-hatred was a mask for pride. Biblical counselor Stuart Scott says, prideful people believe that they should be the source of what is good and that they should be the accomplisher of anything that is worthwhile to accomplish. And I kind of chuckled because that so described me. I knew that I wasn't doing that and I was just, I thought I was, you know, I'm not fulfilling my purpose in life because I am not doing, I'm not the accomplisher of everything that's good. So Dr. Scott, he has a little booklet called From Pride to Humility that is gold. I love this booklet. And he goes on to list 30 characteristics of a prideful person and several more beamed with neon lights in my life. Pride is being focused on the lack of your gifts and abilities, focusing on yourself and wanting to be elevated. Pride is perfectionism, striving for everything to be perfect so you can feel good about yourself and feel in control. Pride is being consumed with what others think, which is fear of man. Pride is being devastated by criticism. And that was one of the hardest ones in my marriage. My husband would, in his role as my spiritual leader, address things in my life, and I would come apart. I would cry and be devastated for days. And he said, Honey, when you respond like that, it makes it really hard for me to do my job. And I thought, I can see that you would never want to ever do that if I respond like this. And so even that helped me to know I need to serve my spouse by not being devastated when he corrects sin, but looking to the cross more quickly. So when my biblical counselor started talking to me about my pride, my response was actually, it really surprised even me. I laughed with joy because I could repent of pride. I could ask God to forgive me and change me so that I wanted to be focused more on His glory and His power and not myself. It was like a ray of hope shone in my heart. So I wanted more. I wanted to understand more of God's diagnosis of my heart and how the anti-fruit of the Spirit, so all the things the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit, I call that the anti-fruit of the Spirit, how all of that was a reflection of the ways I worshipped myself and created things instead of God. So I began to study some basics of biblical counseling, and what I learned only increased my desire to know more. I deeply wanted to know about God, how God's word meets people in the middle of their sin and problems and suffering. The Bible alone has the power to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No other counseling approach can claim that. And this is from Hebrews 4.12. I just, I love that verse. The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of bone and marrow and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And a lot of times I tell the women that I work with, I said, this is why I'm a biblical counselor, almost in this one verse. It's because the word of God, our hearts are deceitful and wicked and we need help to understand ourselves. And the word of God is that. So by this time I was working at a nonprofit organization that focused on marriage ministry. And I often found myself on the phone or face-to-face with these women who had really deep, complex relational issues. I prayed with them and I listened, but I actually wanted to grow in skill and using the rich resources of God's Word to help. So my husband very kindly allowed me to go back to school, and I quit my job too. That was really great. and I attended the Master's University in California. I spent three years growing and learning so much, and then I did an internship at our home church while completing my degree, and I now counsel under the leadership of the elders of Mount Vernon Baptist in Atlanta. Okay, that's some of my story. You can see that my heart was troubled for a long time, not only because of the circumstances, but because of my responses to those circumstances. My suffering is not noteworthy, but the truth that God taught me through it is. God used suffering to make me rely on Him more and less on myself. So I want to show you why this is true from God's Word. Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 1. Okay, a little background on 2 Corinthians. I've come to love this book. 2 Corinthians was written by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul to the church Paul planted in Corinth. Corinth is a city in southern Greece and it was something of a boomtown in Paul's day. It was a pivotal trade city And many people came to Corinth to seek their fortunes. There wasn't quite as much stratification of society in Corinth at this point in history, and so it was kind of the Wild West, so to speak, of the ancient world. And this is one of the most personal letters from Paul in all of the New Testament because in it he is defending his ministry as an apostle and the message of the gospel. Those two things had become so intertwined, Paul's credentials as an apostle and actually the message he proclaimed. So he's kind of defending both so that the Corinthians will know that he is actually, he's true, he's the real thing. he is answering all this criticism. And the criticism, one of the main parts was that Paul had actually suffered too much to really be a valid apostle. These false teachers in the Corinthian church argued that Paul couldn't have been an apostle because he suffered way too much. For example, 2 Corinthians is where we find the list of what Paul endured as a Christian. And let me read it, you don't have to turn there, but it's this crazy list of suffering in 2 Corinthians 11, 24 through 27. Paul says, five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once stone, three times shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, robbers, my own people, Gentiles, the city, danger in the wilderness, at sea from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. This list is mind-boggling. But the Corinthians didn't see it as a badge of honor. We look at that and go, oh, I don't suffer. If that's what suffering is, I don't suffer. But the Corinthians went, I'm pretty sure if you're really an apostle, you wouldn't suffer like that. So the Corinthian church, some were so focused on external success and charisma, and they wanted a leader who embodied their cultural idea of success. And suffering was not part of their leadership metrics. These false prophets tried to destroy Paul's reputation, and the very message he proclaimed, they thought Paul's suffering discredited him. But Paul said, actually it's the opposite. My suffering is evidence of God's purposes at work. It's not God's condemnation on me. So how will he start this letter to these people in the midst of the conflict that they're facing? So let's look at verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. Paul begins his letter by comforting the very people who had caused part of his suffering. Paul is praising the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who he calls the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. Actually, that word comfort appears ten times. just in verses three to seven. And it's a word that means renewal of strength through encouragement. I love that. Renewal of strength through encouragement. So Paul is talking about comfort that comes from God to those who are suffering in any affliction. Our God is a God of abundant comfort who cares for his people when they suffer. Now jump down to verse eight. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. Paul was suffering. He was utterly burdened beyond his strength. He actually despaired of life. He felt that he had received the sentence of death. He thought he was going to die. He was in deadly peril. And then Paul tells us God's purpose in sending this affliction. Verse 9 says it was to make Paul rely on God and not himself. That means Paul's suffering had a purpose. It was accomplishing something. It wasn't meaningless or random. It wasn't a mistake. And I wanna say to you, no matter the context of your suffering, in any affliction, these words say, whatever affliction that you're in, God comforts you. Think back to my testimony. There was suffering because of the circumstances that God providentially placed in my life, like my brother and his rebellion. There was also suffering because of the way I was responding to my suffering. I tried to perform and achieve instead of trusting God and believing in him. There was also suffering because of my own idolatry. I wanted praise and glory for myself, and I strove for perfection. And I am wondering, and I hope I get to hear a little bit later on, I'm wondering what some of the trials in your life are. I know it's something exhausting, and it's painful, and confusing, and heart-wrenching. So if we're gonna learn from what Paul, and he experienced all those things, exhausted, pain, heart-wrenching, confused, how do we learn to rely on God? If that's God's purpose, if that's one of his key purposes for us, how do we do that? What does it look like? So we're gonna look at the text, and we're gonna see four ways that God encourages us to rely on him and not ourselves when we suffer. So here's number one. The first way we can express reliance on God is by gratefully embracing the people of God. Look back at verse 8. So this is amazing. Some of the Corinthians were actually attacking him and slandering him, and yet he shared how he had been struggling. I don't know about you, but I don't like people who have been attacking me to know that I'm struggling. I want to put up a really strong front. Paul doesn't do that. He knows that they are brothers in Christ and so he welcomes them into his internal experience of suffering. He didn't hide what he was going through when he thought he was going to die. It's fascinating. I think this points us to one way that we rely on God and we fight reliance, self-reliance. We let others know that we are struggling. Paul didn't try to handle it alone. He knew he needed other believers to endure. If you tend to kind of retreat into yourself or pull back or withdraw when you struggle, I want you to consider whether this might be a lack of trust in the God of all comfort who uses other people to comfort, to bring that comfort. As you think about gratefully embracing the people of God when you suffer, I want you to listen to how biblical counselor David Powelson describes people who can walk with us. So I want you to think on two levels. Think of who this person could be for you and how you could be this person for someone else. Who is the person I most trust? who will handle with care the fine china of my honest struggles, who will draw me out and listen well, who keeps confidences, prays thoughtfully, and is willing to speak candidly with godly wisdom. Who is the person most sensible, straightforward, humble, believing, experienced, and courageous? None of your friends is perfect, but God puts imperfect people into our lives who are also wise and caring and trustworthy, the kind of person you want to be for others. Who can share the burden with you, will cast your cares on God, and will encourage you? Close quote. Who came to mind for you? I would love to hear your answer. Maybe nobody came to mind. Maybe these questions filled you with a little bit of sadness because you don't have a person like this in your life. And maybe you've opened up in the past and been hurt. I know that that's probably a reality for someone here. I understand. But I want to encourage you that there are people like that here at Jefferson Park. I don't know many of you, but I know God's grace. And I know that he puts people, imperfect people, into his body his church for our struggles, to support us in our struggles. So pursue women here in the body of Christ and seek someone who loves God and is full of compassion, and then share a struggle. You will be fighting self-reliance and fulfilling God's purpose, one of God's purposes, for your suffering as you gratefully embrace the people of God, even when they aren't perfect. Okay, that's the first way. Gratefully embrace the people of God. Here's the second one. Hope in God. The second way we demonstrate reliance on God is by hoping in God. Look at verse 9 and 10. We felt that we had received the sentence of death but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. Paul set his hope. He fixed it on God, the only God who raises the dead. This is true hope. This hope will not disappoint. Paul was utterly convinced that God would deliver him. Now, God had delivered him from the immediate danger of death he had been in in Asia. We don't know exactly what that was. We have some ideas from the rest of the letter. But Paul knew he needed an ultimate deliverance. Paul knew he would face death later in his life, that he would actually physically die. Yet he is confident, his hope is not misplaced, because he's confident that God will deliver him from the final enemy, death itself, by giving him eternal life and his son. Now we are tempted to place our hope in all sorts of things. I know I am. And this is a form of self-reliance, because we are choosing what we think will make us happy. It's not directed toward God, it's something we want, and we decide, if I have that, I will be satisfied. And let's call this false hope. False hope always leads to despair. When I place my hope in meeting, achieving my goals, or looking a certain way, or having a happy family, or finding a godly husband, or having kids that behave, I am destined for despair. Why? Because making a good thing an ultimate thing is idolatry. It can never deliver. So our desires can be wrong in direction, we can just completely want the wrong thing, or they can be wrong in degree, where we want a good thing too much. Both are idolatry. Those things will never satisfy in themselves. We were created to worship God and hope in him and in his word and not in any created thing. So when we place too much worth in a created thing, we've turned to a false hope. Hoping in God is critically important to survive the trial that you are in. And it is critically important so that you can help others have hope when they are suffering. Dave Furman is a pastor in Dubai, and he has an excellent book called Being There. And it's about his own story of physical suffering. He doesn't have the use of his arms, and it's an incredible pain often. And he says, if you are not abiding in Christ, then your ministry is empty and useless. You are like a dry sponge without an ounce of hope to squeeze out to another. Now Paul loved abiding in Christ. And so did the prophet Jeremiah. Every morning, Jeremiah put truths about God's faithfulness into his mind so that he wouldn't lose hope or lose heart. So listen to Lamentations 3, 21 through 26. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. So right from the very beginning we see that something we think about gives us hope. Here's what it was. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. And then he starts talking to God. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him. It was a decision. I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. So Jeremiah and Paul both meditated every day on God's faithfulness so they didn't lose heart. Their hope was not in circumstantial relief, but in God's care and comfort. So we can rely on God by gratefully embracing the people of God, and we can rely on God by setting our hope, fixing it on God. Here's the third way. We rely on God by praying. Super simple. Paul talks about this in verse 11. You also must help us by prayer. This is the way you can help us. This is what Paul's saying. You can help us by praying so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. Paul was convinced that prayer would draw help from God that would come in no other way. That's amazing to me. My words to God will bring help from Him that come in no other way. He also knew that the prayer is the very opposite of self-reliance. It's the essence of humility. You pray because you don't have the wisdom and the help and the strength and the grace that you need. You need it from outside of yourself. One author says, prayer equals helplessness. And if you think about it, when you stop and pray, you don't have as much time to get other things done. Spending time in prayer is proof positive that you believe that God's activity is more effective and more important than your activity. So, so convicting when I read that. Prayer directs your focus to God and to his resources. So when you pray, you freely acknowledge how weak and poor you are. So Paul encourages the Corinthians and us to let our suffering be known and to ask for prayer so that God will be glorified. Paul's focus is on God getting the glory. It's not on relief. He says pray for us so that lots of people will look at God and see how amazing he is. So here's how I might bottom line it. We suffer, we pray, and we ask others to pray. God delivers, maybe not from the circumstance, often not from the circumstance, but he delivers comfort, he delivers hope and help. We are blessed, we thank God, and others thank God because of how they see God work in our lives, and then God is glorified. So Paul wants God to be praised and thanked for his comfort and deliverance, and he's totally convinced that God will do it. Paul's suffering did not make him question the certainty of God's goodness and care. All right, the fourth way. Let's look at one last way we can rely on God in this passage. It's found in verse 12. For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. Paul had a clear conscience because he didn't interact with the Corinthians based on earthly wisdom. He used godly wisdom. His suffering taught him to offer God's grace-filled gospel instead of earthly wisdom. And this is how he interacted with the Corinthians from the very beginning of his time with them. So if you turn back one book to 1 Corinthians 2, we'll look at the very first few verses there. 1 Corinthians 2. Paul says, and I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty wisdom or speech. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." So all along, Paul wanted Christ to be the main attraction, not the supposed wisdom of Roman philosophers or pop culture or health and wealth. So what does earthly wisdom sound like? If we're shooting for godly wisdom, what does earthly wisdom sound like? You can look at Pinterest or Facebook for kind of the latest bite-sized nuggets of supposed wisdom of the world. I did a search on hard things, hard times, to see what would come up on the internet, and some of it was humorous, most of it was heartbreaking. I think it can be summed up like this. Me first, my way, right now. Whatever it takes to get me first, my way right now, that's earthly wisdom. Earthly wisdom focuses on my agenda and my comfort above all. God's purposes and sovereignty are completely out of sight. Earthly wisdom is the logic that we use to get what we want. It's the way we justify pursuing what we want right now that's not been submitted to God. I'm really good at that, really, really good at that. Isn't it tempting to take matters into our own hands and devise ways to justify our wants? Don't we search for human wisdom to figure out a solution to our problems? Paul didn't do that. He was sincere and not manipulative because he trusted God. He left it in God's hands. He was holy and not conniving because he knew who designed the details of his life. And he was genuine, not controlling, because he didn't demand his way on his timeline. He knew that suffering was meant to make him rely on God, not his own resources. So he looked to God for wisdom. The shocking paradox of Jesus's life had gripped the Apostle Paul. Paul knew the Corinthians were tempted to believe that real Christian leaders are successful and powerful and prosperous. Paul knew that part of his calling as a Christian was to share in Christ's suffering. And we see that in verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 1. God himself came to earth as a man named Jesus, and Jesus didn't wear a crown of a king, he wore a crown of thorns. He served his disciples instead of demanding their service. He suffered for people who misunderstood him and treated him as an enemy. Jesus did for Paul and for all who repent and believe in him what we could not do for ourselves. Our suffering has purpose, but it can never save us. Only Jesus's suffering can deliver us from the wrath of God and the punishment we deserve. That's because Jesus is God. For Christians, Jesus is our sin bearer. If you are not a believer and you're here tonight, God beckons you. to turn from your sin and trust that Jesus has taken the penalty your sin deserves and that his power can break the power of sin in your life. Paul knew that Jesus' suffering means that we can experience God's comfort. Jesus suffered what we deserve so that God's comfort is abundantly available to us. Paul experienced incredible suffering, and his suffering uncovered his hidden self-reliance. And our suffering uncovers our hidden self-reliance. It is so difficult to detect when we are self-sufficient, when the waters of our life are calm. But the storms of life reveal what we are really trusting for our sense of well-being and security and hope and contentment. We have seen that self-reliance is dangerous and moves us towards sinful responses to our suffering. We isolate ourselves and turn to false hopes. We stop praying and seek earthly wisdom. So this self-reliance is the opposite of how God wants us to live. He wants us to rely on him. He wants us to see the poverty of our own resources and turn to him in our weakness by gratefully embracing the people of God, hoping in God, praying fervently, and using godly wisdom. God uses the keen edge of our weakness to prompt him to turn to prompt us to turn to Him. John Piper has a short phrase that I love. He says, the giver gets the glory. The giver of the help, the giver of the wisdom, the giver of the comfort, and the giver of the mercy gets the glory. Our trials show our weakness, and this drives us to the only source of comfort there truly is, our Father of mercies and God of all comfort. God loves when we seek Him and He loves to prove Himself worthy of the full weight of our trust and He gets all the glory because He can give and give and give. Psalm 50 verse 15 says, So don't rely on yourself. God is your deliverer. You have the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who is eager, willing, and totally worthy to be relied on. He loves it when we come to him with our neediness. J.I. Packer has a little book called Weakness is the Way, and in it he says we need to be aware of our limitations and to let The awareness of our limitations work in us humility and self-distrust and realization of our own helplessness. Thus we may learn our need to depend on Christ our Savior and Lord at every turn in the road and to practice that dependence as one of the constant habits of our heart. So as we practice dependence on Christ as a constant habit of our heart, we are being equipped to help others when they suffer. And this gets to the very heart of discipleship. When we rely on God, when we suffer, we will be ready to work alongside the Holy Spirit to achieve his purposes in the sufferings of others. Let me pray for us. Father, we delight to remember and call you the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. And we know that one of your chosen vessels, the Apostle Paul, created that name for you in the midst of unbelievable suffering. Thank you for his testimony. Thank you for his witness to your faithfulness and comfort and care no matter what comes. Help us to fight self-reliance by turning to you, embracing the people of God, hoping in you, praying using your wisdom instead of the world's wisdom, to move forward. Thank you so much for these women. I am so grateful that they have come tonight and so humbled that they would sit and listen to me. I pray that you would work your purposes in their lives and that you would meet them where they are tonight. Father, I pray for a rich time of discussion and that our hearts would be open to you and to each other as we share and process what we've talked about tonight. We pray that many would give thanks on our behalf as we share our struggles and that you would get all the glory. We pray this in Jesus' precious name. Amen.