Facing Adversity

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

  So last night I had a bit of a surprise situation. I was over at a friend's house, new friends, and it was the last game of the Knicks Pacers series. And I'm, of course, I'm a Knicks fan, hoping the Knicks are going to pull it out. And then I discover that we're gonna watch the game and that they are Pacers fans.

So that was a bit of adversity that showed up. Not actual adversity, just sort of funny adversity. But the reality is, for you and I, we face adversity in our life. All of us do. No matter what season of life we're in, there's different kinds of adversity that shows up even when we're younger. You know, we have the adversity of not making a sports team or failing a class or not getting into school we want, or the loss of a relationship.

And those things can feel really hard. And how do we overcome them? As we grow and mature, there's things like job loss and financial mishaps, a health reality that arrives in our life, and all these create adversity in which we have to figure out how do we overcome it.

We're in the series in Philippians. We're trying to figure out how to live a life of grace and peace, and I think one of the things that's really important is to know how to deal with adversity. If we want grace and peace, then we have to know how to face adversity because all of us do, in fact face it.

So today what we're gonna look at is Paul's letter in chapter three, where he basically says, Hey, here's how you can efface adversity because there's the power of the resurrection, and then we wanna press on towards this goal.

And I think he highlights three things that are helpful to us. One, we wanna develop resurrection resiliency. Two, we want to press on towards the goal, so we gotta know our goal. And three, we need to leave the past and pursue the future. So let me sketch each of those out for you.

Paul says that what he wants to know is he wants to know Christ and the power of the resurrection. And of course when we think about Christianity as a whole without the resurrection. Christianity really loses its power. Jesus just becomes another human being who was crucified by the Roman Empire, but with the resurrection, now the cross has significance because sin, death, and evil were overcome. And how do we know that? Because Jesus defeated them and rose from the dead. And in that moment now we have that resurrection power that in fact, even though each of us will face adversity, different forms of evil sin and death in our lives that knock us down, we now have the ability to say we can get back up.

And in getting back up, we connect with the resurrection of Christ, the power of the resurrection, as Paul says. And so for you and I, we have to sort of keep that mentality. Whatever we face, whatever challenge, whatever adversity, whatever setback that we can say to ourselves, Hey, this is not the end. This does not defeat me.

In fact, as I stand back up, as I continue forward, I'm going to experience grace and peace in different ways. Sometimes we experience that resurrection. In which we lose a job, and then our next job is beyond our wildest dreams. Other times it's a long slog. Sometimes we have a health issue and we persevere through the challenge and adversity and get a diagnosis of healing.

Other times we don't win that battle. But the promise that Paul rests on is that even if the adversity overcomes him in this life. That in the life to come, that future is something that he can be certain of so that no matter what he's facing, he can know the power of resurrection. Because whether it's in this life or the life to come, God is a God of resurrection, of restoration, of turning off things to good.

And so one of the things that I think is always helpful for us is to remind ourselves of how we've experienced the power of resurrection in our own lives. So how have you seen it? How have you experienced yourself being able to stand up and go again and how have you recovered and grown because of that and become more and more like Christ, as Paul says, is the goal.

And that's Paul's next point. No matter what he's doing, what, no matter what adversity he's facing, he continues to press on towards the goal and he has clarity around what that goal is. In Paul's mind, that goal is to become more and more like Christ. Now for us, I think one of our challenges, we often have the wrong goal.

So at work we talk a lot about smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time defined, and when we can get that clear, we can begin to make progress and move towards something we can press on towards the goal, as Paul says. The problem for us, I think as human beings is that we usually have goals that are not relevant and they're not achievable.

It's some version of the idealized American life. That's our goal. We think that somehow we can, you know, be popular and pretty and have all the money, and have all the things that people want. Life throws us all kinds of curve balls, and maybe we even get the parts and pieces, but the reality is we don't necessarily find that sense of joy and peace that we're looking for, or it's just not achievable in the ways that we want. Because there's always a little bit more to be had. What we wanna do is we wanna shift ourselves in the same way that Paul does, in which our goal that we're pressing on towards is to become more and more like Christ, more and more human to become fully human. Our true selves are people that Christ has freed us to be, who are kind and gentle, that are peaceful, that they are able to speak truth, that they're able to bear all things.

And so that's the goal we wanna set for ourselves. And the beauty of that is that no matter what we're. Facing, no matter what adversity we're trying to overcome, that adversity can actually be used to shape us, to grow us in peace and patience and kindness and empathy and all kinds of things. And so when we have that perspective, now, we can keep pressing on.

And so it's important to ask yourself, what does it look like for you to press on towards this goal of becoming more and more fully human to become more peaceful, to become more patient, to become more kind, be able to speak the truth, whatever it looks like for you. Come up with a intentional plan so you can keep pressing on towards the goal that is relevant and achievable.

Lastly, Paul uses the language of a race in which he says he forgets what's behind and strives towards what's ahead so that he can hear the prize. He can be announced the winner, and I think this is great advice for all of us. Whenever we face adversity, we often get trapped by the past because it's pesky and we have all the wood or shoulda could haves that we roll around in.

We beat ourself up over, we're like, oh, if I could have only done this. Well, here's the thing. Once it's happened in this world, we can't undo it. Whatever challenge you face, whatever took place in the past that brought you to where you are now, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. And so you wanna leave that in the past.

Now sometimes to leave something in the past, we have to recognize why it came about. We have to reconcile it. We have to acknowledge maybe some of our faults or habits that helped the situation. But then we need to say, okay, what's the next best step? And I think that that's serves us in our life all the time.

I can't do anything about what happened yesterday or even 10 minutes ago, but what I can do is I can figure out what is the next best step for me right now to continue to press on towards that goal of becoming more fully human and to pursue that resurrection resiliency because then now we have a formula in which we can grow and face adversity.

And experience the peace and grace that we desire. Hope this was helpful and I hope you have a great week. We'll continue on in Philippians next Sunday. Take care.