God is Working
What can you say to friends with lost jobs, lost savings, or lost hope? We can sum it all up with three meaningful words found in Romans 8:28, "God is Working." February 8, 2009.
At the time of the writing of this sermon nine of my friends had lost their jobs, as of yesterday ten of my friends had lost their jobs, as of today I discovered that twelve of my friends have lost their jobs. On Friday the Labor Department reported the staggering statistics that 3.6 million Americans have lost jobs since December 2007. And then like a punch to the stomach they reported that half of those people lost jobs in just the last three months. These are terrible times. Job complained during his suffering, “Does not man have hard service on earth? Are not his days … like a slave longing for the evening shadows … without hope” (Job 7:1,2,6)? But even working as a slave would seem better to some people right now than not working at all. “My eyes will never see happiness again” (Job 7:7), Job cried with many hopeless people struggling in our economic recession. Just as Job’s friends came to him with ill advice, some have tried to comfort the recently unemployed. “At least you got a severance package … Don’t worry, other people are losing their jobs too … You can always collect unemployment.” Unfortunately those empty words don’t calm the fear and frustration.
So what can help? What can you say to your friend when he tells you he lost his job, or to your sister when she loses hope because even with her new degree she can’t find work, or to your parents when they reveal they’ve lost almost all their retirement savings and they’re not even 70-years-old? And what role does the church play in this recession – or are we just another on its list of helpless victims like an article in yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suggests? We can sum it all up with three meaningful words found in Romans 8:28. God is Working.
The only worker on this planet guaranteed that he will never lose his job is God. He never sleeps or goes on vacation or gets tired. He doesn’t answer to a board or a boss and so he can’t get fired. Jesus once explained, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17). An economic stimulus package offers no guarantees to anyone. For people of God the answers and hopes we need are not found in reversing the recession or finding a job or rescuing investments. These fluctuate and can even fail. God, however, will never leave us, ignore us, or forget about us. God is Working.
Okay, we get it, God is working, and he’s working today as much as he was working on the fourth day of creation, when the Israelites crossed the sea, and when Jesus drove out demons. Great, he’s working, but he must be working somewhere else today because I really don’t see him working in the lives of my friends who lost their jobs or in the foreclosed homes now sitting empty while their previous occupants look for a place to stay. “Where are you God?! You make these great promises and they sound so good when we memorize them as third-graders but then we grow up and life gets real, more difficult and complicated. And we worry about the world spinning out of control and we can’t make any firm plans for the future because we don’t know if the economy will crush us then worse than it is crushing us now.” And fear grips not just our wallets but our hearts, and it squeezes harder and harder, choking faith. Then it’s so easy to become obsessed with employment, investment, or retirement that we can’t think straight, our head spins, and we get scared of God’s work in our lives. Like Peter when his faith gave in to fear, obsessed with the storm as he started sinking instead of walking on the water with Jesus.
With numerous warnings the Bible cautions imperfect people against trying to work too much and too hard to get right with God. But, during troubled times, when we are assured we’re already right with God, working too little on making decisions of faith or no longer trying to work our faith into daily living is sinful too. It neither glorifies God nor sets a godly example to others who observe us despairing of any hope just like the pagans. Dow-Jones averages, interest rates, and unemployment projections do impact our lives, but when we act like they have greater say over our future than God, we make him and his work second place in our hearts.
If you’ve never kept a prayer book by your Bible for your daily devotions, I’d encourage you to try it some time. Prayers written by others and then spoken in your own heart have a way of taking you to places you might not go otherwise. They also have a way of saying what you wanted to say but you didn’t know how. One book I’d suggest is called, Prayers for People under Pressure by Donald L. Deffner (Northwestern Publishing House, Milwaukee, WI, 1992). It offers some different sections about dealing with stress. One prayer says this: “Put my priorities in order, Lord. Teach me from your Word that who I am is worth much more than what I do. The uncontrollable is in your hands. My body is your temple. Hope in you can outlast the direst of circumstances. You never give a problem without a promise, so let me live with present challenges rather than grieving over the loss of past treasures” (p. 82, punctuation added). That prayer believes God is Working.
How do I pray more like that? How do I find the courage to say those words during these terrible times? How do I come to believe that God is Working in my life and in the life of my friends who lost their jobs? Not by researching Labor Department statistics, reading news articles, or listening to the clamor of fear all around.
The answer to the question, “Where is God working?” is found only in God’s Word, and it happens to be right here: “In all things God works.” There are no gaps here. God didn’t stop working in your life last year when you forgot to pray or your last pregnancy when you lost the baby or last week when you were let go from work. God didn’t stop working in your life when you couldn’t afford to retire or when you didn’t put your faith in action. “All things.” There are no exclusions here. God doesn’t stop working when you let him down or when you look for worldly hope. God doesn’t stop working when you feel guilty or start giving up. “All things.” God is Working on good days and bad days. God is Working in health and in illness. God is Working in prosperity and in pain. God is Working on Sundays and on Tuesdays. God is Working in church and at the Laundromat. God is Working in this recession right now.
Certainly we rejoice in his general kind of work waking up the sun every day and watching sparrows. And that’s enough to boost our faith, but there is so much more for believers. Better than his general work, his is a special, saving work for “those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Part of God’s saving work is calling you – to be saved, to belong to him, to believe in him, to live under him in his kingdom here and hereafter. You know when you’re winding down at the end of the day and you just want to sit down and relax and you look at your to-do list realizing it’s not even half done, mostly because you have some voice mails to return. But you don’t want to call anyone, you don’t want to hold a conversation, you just want to relax. God has never felt that way. These verses in Romans go on to say that God actually was working to call you long before he engineered thermodynamics or decided to make grass green. Before you were born, even before the world was born, God was working for you. So do you think he’d let you down now? The Bible says, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). God’s work for you began in eternity, continued at creation, and at his crucifixion and resurrection, continues during this recession, and will continue when Jesus returns and after he returns in eternal glory. Today God works to answer your prayers, forgive your sins, and provide you with blessings that are still too many to count even in a bad economy. His purpose for you goes way beyond present life circumstances both in time and in scope, so look beyond circumstances in faith to find that God is Working.
“In all things God works for the good of those who love him.” God has only one result in mind for his work in your “all things.” Good. He doesn’t say exactly how. He doesn’t say exactly when. He just says, “All things will be good.” Think of your worst trouble right now. God is working in it, and he’ll make it good. So how does that change us? Well, Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and it changed her so that she insisted on making supper for him and his disciples. Jesus drove out demons from people and it changed them so that they immediately went and told others. Jesus prayed for his disciples and they found new strength to follow him. 2 Timothy 3:17 says that believers are “thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Equipped by God’s promises today, you can do a whole lot of good during some really bad times. You can make it a goal to encourage one new person each day this week with otherworldly assurance that counters the climate of fear with God’s promises. You can pray for those hit harder than you in the recession, and more than that you can help them even if you need to be helped yourself. You can revisit your saving and spending priorities with renewed vigor of faith, so that both individually and as a church we can do our best even as we struggle to provide more ministry to more people who are coming to us looking for answers. You can in all things do good works for God knowing that God works for your good in all things. So let’s pay attention to the statistics of the Labor Department, to unemployment projections, to news articles, and to Wall Street, remaining alert to announcements that effect the economy around us, but let’s listen all the more to some better news, yes, the best news that is sure and full of hope. The work of God in our lives for our good, and our faith in him, are not in a recession! Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on February 8, 2009
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