GOOD TROUBLE

Isn’t it amazing? You have successfully overcome five months in the year 2020. As much as the impact of the pandemic is still living with us, the evident presence of God cannot be denied. One of the things I have seen is the “trouble” this event has caused many and my message for you this week is centered on that.

The current situation is one that looks to ridicule every feeling of hope. However, don’t join the community of people who have written off the year, professing negative things about it. The disciples had been in this kind of a situation before, and, the feeling of pain and hurt is almost same. Let me take you through how this trouble is good.

Jesus had told the disciples he was going to die and come back to life. What Jesus had come to do was to take up flesh so as to be able to retrieve what man (Adam) lost in the flesh. It would not be possible to do so without taking up flesh; if He had done the assignment outside of the flesh, man would have seen living the life of God as what was possible only as a spirit without a body.

Jesus came to the earth doing good, performing miracles and pointing men to the kingdom. The disciples had seen who they had always heard about in the book of prophecy. They thought that was the climax of Jesus’ existence. The joy of following Him around, doing miracles and hearing the word from God through Him could not be traded for anything. It’s a feeling no man would have wished ended. That stunt of your master walking on water and even you doing a three minute skit of same, providing food for over 5000 men and casting out demon anywhere and everywhere was a real deal that anyone wouldn’t want to end, at least, not soon.

All of these are diverse forms of what some enjoyed in the past years before the sudden change occasioned by the pandemic visited the earth. Just like the disciples, we sometimes don’t desire that the current goodness be taken away, and, when the reality of it being taken away confronts us, we want to fight it.

So, Jesus told Peter He was going to be killed. Peter refused vehemently, calling Jesus aside to preach “salvation” from death to Him when in reality Salvation from death would only come after He dies. Jesus chastised Peter because he had reacted in the flesh. And like a dream, the day the disciples never wanted to come confronted them; Jesus was taken away and they all fled. He was crucified on Friday and agony crept into the life of the disciples. The whole ecstasy of the experience disappeared almost immediately. That’s how devastating it was.  

This signified trouble!

They had boasted in many places about having the Messiah. They had confronted those they wouldn’t have faced ordinarily because they believed Jesus was with them. And suddenly they could not even face the public; a whole Peter who said he could die for Jesus had to deny Him for shame in the presence of a small girl. Do you know how humiliating it is to see the person who you have always believed would be everything messiah being treated as nothing and he is there helpless? That is the same situation happening now with some of you in your marriage, business, career, finances etc.

I can imagine the lineup of goals you may have written down for the year, promises made and all the projections that in all human calculation could not be altered being dismantled all of a sudden by a pandemic. Those who have lost their jobs could never have imagined in the last three months that “the master” who they depended on was going to be off. Fear and anxiety, thoughts on how to survive, measure up with social status and meeting up basic needs becomes a normal.

This looks really like a big trouble! The “messiah” they believed in and left everything for could no longer do as the “messiah”.

However, Jesus went to the Hades; He took the authority from the Devil. Jesus returned to life having died on Friday and there was celebration on Sunday as He rose to life. The trouble of Friday was forgotten having heard that He had resurrected on Sunday. And this is the climax of our Christian faith. If Jesus didn’t rise up from the dead then there would be no proof of our faith, but He rose and that’s the source of our victory. Today, the world celebrates that resurrection without remembering it was the trouble of Friday that gave birth to the victory of Sunday. So, it was a good trouble after all. Men never wanted the trouble but that was the only channel to eternal salvation that we all now enjoy.

I know the troubles around you now are not palatable. They can’t be desired. The same way Peter never desired or imagined Jesus being killed and taken away from them. But it had to happen for the greater good.  Many have experienced what was never imagined in this period. But, I want to tell you, instructively, that the trouble you may be going through presently as His child is a Good Trouble.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain." John 12:24

Sunday will soon be here!

Be Innovated

Olufemi Ibitoye