Strategies for Standing Firm Through Coronavirus

Welcome to family life to. Thanks for joining us this is a this is the virtual additional family life today as we are not side-by-side as we normally are, but were separated as were supposed to do and and Dave. I think this is a time when all of us are adjusting to new normal. We don't know how long this normal is going to be the new normal, and all of us are having to be reminded regularly of what we know is true because we forget or we doubt or we get distracted and and those reminders are important. Yeah, I guess.

I mean, I had to tell you I wake up every morning in the first thing I want to do and I usually do this is go to the word of God. And I'm saying that because the first thing I don't want to do is go to the news that my phone opens up and notifications are waiting for me just catch up on what's happening in the world in its pretty much bad news and I tell you a couple days I just couldn't resist and I had to see how many cases how many deaths what's going on in Michigan was going on. Í you name it.

I gotta tell you I found myself almost depressed. I was very discouraged and scared fearful worried about economy future. The church and I tell you this is I've never experience anything like it. I'll think any of us have and and and it's one thing for us to have to try to figure this out for ourselves, but then when were leaving the family and we got kids involved in were thinking. I gotta go to help them make sense of this and I'm not sure I'm making sense of it myself. You're talking to a lot of moms who are trying to figure that new rhythm out arch and I think it's hard here because we may be feeling anxious and scared, and I think our kids pick up on those thing for a Marine death, and they see it in a file.

I agree with Dave.

Even with young kids needing air around you all the time even to claim worship you think the word for me right now is the most important thing in my life. It's my stronghold and anchor tell you when I'm in it I can just go to bad places and so I think even memorizing Scripture. Our kids maybe thinking sempre sans together and teaching them how I get my mind stayed on Christ. I think those practices could be really essential even in this time I said to her church recently. I said I will give you a very simple verse to memorize the nine words long and you and your kids. Everybody should have this one memorized Psalm 56 I think it's first three when I am afraid I will trust in you and that's just one of those things we need to have in the forefront of our thinking during these days were getting some help this week in trusting in the Lord and understanding what God is up to in the midst of the coronavirus from Dr. John Piper John welcome again to family life to thank you. It's an honor to be here. You have us spent the better part of the last couple of weeks praying and meditating and writing and thinking about how we can look at and think rightly about our current moment and about the coronavirus and all that were living through in these days the up the audiobook and the e-book of what you've written, are available on our website@familylifetoday.com for any of our listers who would like to go and download those that are available for free. The printed edition of the book will be available here in a few weeks and there's information available on our website of listers would like to order copies of this book and let me just say I think this is a book not just to get and read for yourself, but this is the kind of thing I want to be handing out the neighbors. I will be passing on to others who are asking spiritual questions in this moment in a way that I haven't seen people asking spiritual questions in the last decade and John speak to that. This does seem to be an unusual moment for us to be engaged in evangelistic lady, at least in America to think yes when everything is rosy in your healthy your family is healthy and your business is prospering. You are inclined to feel self-sufficient. More than when you have cancer or coronavirus or the whole world seems to be collapsing around you and so you yes I think when people feel vulnerable. They are in touch with reality because they are vulnerable. We are not God and we tend to feel like God when all is well and so I think this is a golden moment for us to speak into people's lives. My but dad was an evangelist is in heaven now, I believe, and he used to say Joni, it's a lot harder to get people lost the news to get them saved. That may be an overstatement done exactly what he meant. After all my years of ministry that would be true especially.

I think in the prosperous West. Perhaps, at least there's a unique kind of self-sufficiency here where we have so much available to us and I would say God is helping people feel lost. Helping people feel desperate helping people feel like they really are. In other words, it's a reality check. It's a it's a heavy dose of reality, we are always vulnerable. Just think of it I go to bed at night I lift my arm like this and take my pulse and think fast right now.

I'm excited with, you guessed I tell you think any one of the house. Any one of those could just be my last just like that. I have zero control over that. Isn't that amazing amazing and so nobody who pauses feels vulnerable. Feels desperate Nozick to meet their maker. Any minute. Are they ready know they're not ready. He said his Savior would embrace the Savior sleeping peacefully get rid of all my guilt at all. My condemnation yes now I can sleep that.

But now you have to take your polities have to look out the window is gone.

The city shut down what's got up to and he's up to a reality check.

So when we speak to people.

I would think it's the most natural thing in the world to say. While easy to be afraid, isn't it makes you think about God makes think about death makes you think about eternity, doesn't it.

If they say no more talk about that okay, but my guess is, very few people to say that today so yeah it's a golden opportunity. You when first Peter 315 is quoted in good times, no when people ask you a reason for the hope that is in you. Most of us feel kind of weird because nobody does. Why don't they. Because everybody's fine.txt was spoken into persecution and suffering. And if you're in the middle of suffering and persecution or suffering and disease, and your hope is strong in your joy is undaunted in your serving other people, then people might begin to say what are you hoping like you think this is going to turn around in a few weeks you think the economies come roaring back and all your 401(k)s can be restored. What no that's really not that's really not what I'm think and then you can say the reason for the hope that is in you and your book that God is calling us to repentance. While there's still time look like repentance met Hanoi in the Bible means change of mind change of heart. It's a transformation. It's a turn around its flipside is face or I would say this since Jesus is the one who use that more than anybody in the New Testament. What were the two big alternatives to that and one was love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and the other was whoever loves son or daughter more than me is unworthy of me who Evelyn's mother father was a me is unworthy of me.

So Jesus is saying love God with all your heart. Love me more than you love anybody those of the alternatives to repentance, so I think the answer is, and that repenting means bringing your life into alignment with the infinite value of Jesus when I say infinite value of Jesus I mean I mean value in his beauty as a person, infinite, eternal, beautiful, perfect, morally glorious person and I mean all the work that he did in dying for us and rising. I mean his rain today. I mean his coming. The total reality of Jesus Christ is infinitely valuable more valuable than life more valuable than health mean some 63 three since the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.

So when people get to the point where Jesus and his love in their lives is better than health and better than life.

They have now come to the goal of repentance. I think that's the essence of what God is calling for.

That's my prayer.

What I when I bow in prayer which I I did again this morning I ask God, oh God grant that millions of people would be stoned out of the slumbers of unbelief and brought into the experience of seeing the beauty and the glory, the sufficiency, the worth of Jesus Christ and bring their whole life into alignment with his infinite worth. And I have to say I was at the grocery store is one of the few places I've been over the last two weeks but I was at the grocery store and as I was checking out I just asked the young woman was Doing the check I said what's your name, and she told me I said my wife. I just want to pray for those of you who are helping us with that be okay.

And right there in the checkout line I just stopped and prayed for her that God would keep her safe and that he would keep her protected and thanked God for her doing this, and John. It was interesting that opened up a conversation. She started asking me about where I go to church and tell me about her grandmother who was a very godly woman as she continued to check me out. We were able to engage very comfortably around spiritual issues and I gave her the website for our church and invited her to tune in and watch the Sunday service with us.

We have some unprecedented opportunities here in this day to engage as I think we've never had before. That's awesome.

May the Lord give us all grace to be that to compassionate and that courageous. I think that's a beautiful beautiful thing you are, you preached a sermon years ago.

I don't know if you remember you were preaching on Matthew six and you said in that sermon I wake up anxious virtually every morning for whatever reason, it's a very real experience that I hate and have to deal with every day. I'm wondering if that's still true for you. If it's an increased anxiety that you're experiencing in these days and what you do with your own anxiety because were all feeling it right now yeah I think that's the thorn that I'm going to take to my grave I is just it's built into my either my DNA or my mom and the way I was raised. I think it's a flaw think it's a character flaw just like everybody's got different kinds of flaws and in one of mine would be a proneness to two feel guilty or feel anxious. In answer the question.

Coronavirus has not made that worse because test just frankly not where my anxieties come from. I'm not prone to be anxious about dying or about sickness or about the world coming to an end or about America becoming a footnote in the history of the world, though still not cause me to be, and shall cause me to be anxious is the possibility that I may not be a Christian. I think that everything I've ever done might be a farce as her horrible horrible thoughts right and so.

Nevertheless, my warfare is the same. I think as everybody's and I take heart from the fact that the Bible says when I am afraid I will trust in you not before I fear I will check in you, and therefore, I will never, I will never fear you are not supposed to be afraid. It's a sin fear if there's a promise that we don't have to be afraid. And yet, everybody's afraid in the Bible is so clear when I am afraid I will put my trust in you. So that is a rhythm of warfare that happens to every single one of us. And Paul says at the end of his life. This is just so encouraging to me that I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I've kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory waste waiting for me and Jimmy give it to everybody else who loves the appearing of the Lord.

Well, I think what that means is till the day he died.

He was fighting for faith. That's where the fight is every day all day long.

We fight for faith and I think the way we fight is by the word of God in the spirit of God and prayer. We take promises we preach them to ourselves. We call down the Holy Spirit by prayer upon those that the eyes of our hearts would be open to see what is the hope of our calling and the greatness of our inheritance the power at work in those who believe and God comes. He sweetly comes in the midst of our early morning or late night anxieties and he takes those promises like a balm in the break over the break over us with the peace that passes all understanding. So good to ask you and it probably goes along with plaintiff, as we talk to our kids who are fearful or who are anxious, who are on maybe during high school or middle school. Questioning God's goodness, how do we help and understand God's goodness and in the mix of this pandemic will if my grandchildren could visit me. They came over the other day but they didn't come in the house and my answer is if I had kids at home. I would be telling them stories from the Bible and then some from church history, but especially the Bible stories in which it is crystal clear that God is sovereign God is good God is wise God does not keep us from pain. He does not keep us from hard times.

He brings us into them in order to do good and then you tell them stories to hear the stories I would tell him tell the story of Joseph in the Old Testament right so 13 years now actually graphic I draw a graph of this one time for my church of house horrible life became for Joseph sold into slavery lied about left in prison after 13 years. The reason becomes clear can be made vice president of Egypt and save the people of God from starvation he didn't have a clue. That's what God was doing for all those years didn't know why, but I think kids will take hold of that and love that same thing with Ruth the story of Ruth in the Old Testament, she loses her husband she loses two sons she loses one daughter-in-law she loses her country all owing to a famine.

She comes home just the Lord has dealt bitterly with me and it looks like everything is ruined her life is totally ruined and it's not it's not really she's got Ruth. Ruth is going to bear a child. The child can be related to her and the child is going to be the ancestor of Jesus. Same thing with Esther. Same thing with Jesus and Jesus is the worst, the most important one to tell kids I member one time somebody asked the group who killed Jesus and he said Pilate killed Jesus. The soldiers killed Jesus know the crowds, they killed Jesus to know his father killed it.

Jaws dropped will probable it was the Lord who bruised him.

It pleased him to put him to grief.

When you look at your kids with their jaws dropped. And you say content for us.

He did it for us and he raised him from the dead, and he reigns in heaven today so all that horrible experience was planned. Scripted by God in the Old Testament for his son to suffer and die and end, and I will bring you right into their lives with Romans 832 he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for so will he not with him freely give us all things.

You say you kids were all things that God will give us since he didn't spare Jesus. He promises to give us all things because he didn't spare Jesus and then you they give out their answer. He said let's look at the verse that follows in the verse that follows is what can separate us can tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, and then you get this word know we are being killed all day long we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered. That's one of the things that he gives us about your kids are saying house at a gift say no.

You know all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We've got to teach our kids the radical understanding of the sovereignty of God in the midst of suffering that God plans. Painful things for his children for their good. If they don't have that category.

The probably give up on the face of such a star kids. I think all of us need to be reminded just a God desperate little kids. Please daddy, please help me understand what's going on now, talk to my neighbor scared to death. He doesn't believe in God.

He thinks God is the cause of all this evil in the world and he wakes up, stricken with fear and I get to walk across the front yard and stand 6 feet away and I can I get to share some words because he he's asking question. Even though he's mad and he scared what would you say so much of what I would say would depend on what I know about him and what we've said before on and what he's looking like and feel like right now but I think since since he's thinking about God's being a bad God not denying that he is God I would probably go to the bigger issues within the world's issue of suffering and so you know, in God's mind thousand years assessment day and the day is this a thousand years, and eternity is going to be very long and you and I both are going to be there very soon. Even if this pandemic goes away tomorrow we are going to die and we can spend eternity somewhere and God is a God that is just and merciful. He has shown his justice in judgment and he is shown his mercy in sending Jesus into the world and I want to spend eternity with you. And there is one way that we can be together in this and that is for you to receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord, and the treasure of your life.

That's how good God is that he would suffer what the cross suffered. I go there and and in a sense I would deflect the other issues. Not if he wants to circle back. I'm happy to do that.

I got all kinds of biblical things to say and I think you can build out from the cross and from the core of the gospel to those other things because God oversaw the crucifixion of his son, which was worse than the coronavirus if he oversaw the crucifixion of his son, which is worse in the crowed of ours in God can be a good God even in overseeing the the coronavirus so much of what I would say to people in a situation that are going to pin on every moment, how they responding what they're looking like what they're saying but that would be my guess of how John we have just been through the celebration of the resurrection of Christ as the church around the world. This is a unique season to be reflecting on his resurrection and the hope of the gospel, how should this recent celebration of the resurrection. Encourage us and inform us to live in the midst of the coronavirus this week will the Bible makes explicit the connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of believers. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you than he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also. So I think at this moment when we all feel our mortality more than we usually do. It's perfect to say we just celebrated Easter in Christ. Easter is going to happen to every single person that beliefs and make that connection for people and the opposite connection if you reject Christ you enter into eternity without Christ.

If you embrace Christ, then your body is raised from the dead, you're given a glorious body like his glorious body.

Peter says in first Peter 321 and you live with Christ in joy forever and ever so the line between Easter or the resurrection of Jesus and his triumph over death that line to our hope and our resurrection is explicit and clear and unbreakable in the Bible, we have hope for our resurrection, precisely because Jesus was raised from the dead, and I think Edie is right to draw people's attention to eternal hope. Not just temporal hope. If you would ask me should be. Should we care about people's temporal well-being as opposed to their eternal well-being. The sentence that I have used now for 10 years is Christians care about all suffering especially eternal suffering or Christians care about saving all life especially eternal life or Christians care about all injustice, especially injustice against God. I think it's right to draw people's attention in the midst of temporal suffering to eternal hope you know you know when when Christians back in the plagues, especially the first two centuries became risk-taking loving caregivers for those who were dying when nobody else would. The reason that made such an impact on the world is to reason, not just one.

One reason was they had answers to people's biggest questions and the other reason was they were willing to risk their lives to bring people some measure of relief and the answers they had was you know if you die in the next few days. I can tell you how to be happy forever in God. There is a way that God has made for you to come home to him, not as an enemy and a judge but as a a friend and that news made a big difference. People know when there's no more hope in this world and if the only hope you have to offer people. Is this world, then you haven't got a very good message and that is the reason the Easter story is the greatest story of all time. It gives resurrection power the people that have no power to have joy they could never manufacture in this world to have life.

They could never manufacture. This will what what a grace giving life-giving message we have to offer. We have the answer, and everyone is looking for that answer. So let's use this opportunity to bring that to the world and and John, you've given us a tool to be able to help do that with this book that you've written.

Thank you for the last two days they have been an encouragement and full of hope for me. I'm sure for a listers, and thanks for the book were grateful to have your own family like today. Thank you, pray that with you that God will break into many people's lives and let me just encourage her listers once again your book which is called coronavirus and Christ. We are making that available free for family like today listers you can go to our website family like to.com and you can download the audiobook or the e-book the print edition of this book is gonna be available here in a couple weeks there's information on a website about how you can order a copy of the print book once it's available but if you'd like to get the audiobook or the e-book now it's available for free and thank you Dr. Piper and the folks who desiring God for making this available for family like today listers or grateful for that. I'll find the link on our website@familyliketo.com so you can get the audiobook or the e-book for free.

There's also a link on our website that will give you information about other resources were making available here at family life, family life, TV, a weekly presentation that's available online. You can find out@familyliketo.com and our team has been putting together resources to help your family make the most of this season of confinement and social distancing. And I know every couple of days.

Folks are looking for new resources, new things to do to engage with the kids go to family life to date.com there's a link there to what were calling not canceled because family is not canceled loving your neighbors is not canceled. There's a lot that's not canceled in the midst of the coronavirus so you can go to family life today.com and all the information you need is available. There that tomorrow we will talk about the importance of friendships, healthy, thriving, friendship relationships, and we live in a culture that is chronically lonely. Kelly Needham is going to join us to talk about how we deal with loneliness and how we pursue friendships which are more important now than ever talk about that tomorrow. I hope you can be with us for that think our engineer today. Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Dan Wilson about the pain. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of family life, family life today is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. Accrue ministry help for today hope for tomorrow