In The Midst of the Storm How do you connect with God / Being In Tune with God in the midst of a storm? The Storm? The Shooting at Connecticut The Shooting at Fashion Island What happens to the children? In Newtown, CT 20 Children slaughtered were between 6 and 7 God is merciful and compassionate and does not judge children who lack the ability themselves to judge. Children do not have the ability to understand that an affirmative response to the Gospel is the condition for salvation. Luke 18:16 …the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. The 20 children, victims of the CT Massacre are in Heaven

God is grieving as much as us Sometimes something useless happens on earth. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. (NCV) Eccl. 8:14 It is not God’s Will God is grieving as much as us Some things we will not understand until we get to heaven Was it because of Sin? (Luke 13) About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. 2 “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered? 3 Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. 4 And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? 5 No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.” Luke 13:1-4 The answer was a definitive No! Not everything bad that happens in your life is your own fault. That doesn't negate that we do reap what we sow, that most of the problems we have in our lives we really bring on ourselves. I'm my biggest enemy. I cause most of my problems. But the fact is, sometimes in life you are going to be an innocent victim. Sometimes in life, you are going to be hurt when you don't deserve it. And sometimes in life, you will have loses that are unexplainable. What do you do with those? Is it God’s Will? I'm sure there are some pious people out there who will say, "It must have been God's will!" Baloney! It's just not true. The Bible says "God is not the author of evil." Don't blame God for all the bad things of the world. He's grieving as much as you are. God could stop drive by shooters. It would be real easy. All He has to do is take away their freedom to choose and then they couldn't do it anymore. But to be fair, He'd have to take away your freedom to choose too. God has a will for your life but you also have a will and you often (and so do I) choose to go "my way" instead of His way. Whenever that happens people inevitably get hurt.   God will not force His will on us. The Bible says it is God's will that every person come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, develop a personal relationship, be saved, and go to heaven. Obviously that isn't true. Everybody does not go to heaven. Everybody does not develop a relationship to Christ and follow in His ways. Why? Because God's will is not always done. That's why we are to pray, "Father, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," because in heaven it's done perfectly but on earth it's not. It is not my job Here today to explain to you all the tragedies of life, all the disasters, all the losses. I can't. Some things we're just not going to understand until we get to heaven. But I can give you the hope of the Bible that says what to do in how to handle these situations…

Release Your Grief… God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Matthew 5:4 Pour out your heart to God, for He is our refuge. Psalm 62:8 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18 1. RELEASE MY GRIEF This is the first step on the road to recovery. Tragedy always produces strong emotions -- loss, anger, fear, depression, worry, sometimes guilt. These feelings are scary to us and we don't know what to do with them. When you have just had a major loss - you've been handed a pink slip, or someone in your immediate family is all of a sudden taken away and they're not there any more -- we have enormous feelings that bubble up within us. If you don't deal with them now, it will take you far longer to recover.   Some of you have never dealt with grief in your life. You're stuffers. You push it down. You pretend it's not there. You play like it doesn't exist. That's why thirty years later you're still struggling with emotional stress in your life from losses that occurred in your life 20, 30 years ago involving your parents, a former partner, a friend who betrayed you, or some hurt that you've held on to all these years. There's even a myth that says, God wants me to walk around with a smile on my face all the time. The Bible doesn't say that anywhere. They have this idea that I should never be sad, I should never grieve, I should never hurt. God wants me to always go around saying, "Praise the Lord!" Whether it's a parent who gets Alzheimer's or a child who gets cancer or a husband or wife who get laid off from work or somebody stabs you in the back, that you should always walk around with a big smile, like it's no big deal and you should never grieve over these losses. Jesus taught the exact opposite. In Matthew 5, He says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." It's OK to grieve. If you don't cry at a funeral you might want to ask "What's wrong here?" When somebody is a Christian and they die they go on to heaven, so we don't grieve like the world. We're not grieving for their sake, we're grieving for our own sake. We're going to miss them. What do you do with your feelings? You've got to deal with them. You must release your grief. You don't repress it -- stuff it down. You don't rehearse it -- go over and over it in your mind. You release it -- you give it to God. You cry out to God, "God, I hurt! I'm grieving! This is a tough one to take." If you want a good example of this, read through the book of Psalms where many of them David spills his guts and says, "God, I'm in a tough time right now. I am really, really hurting." You cry out to God. (Psalms) Those of you who are going through a loss right now, if you don't release your grief, if you don't just go ahead and pour it out and let it come out, it will eventually. Because feelings that are pushed down fester, and eventually they explode in a much worse situation. Release your grief.

Give to and Receive From Others Carry each other's burdens Give to and Receive From Others Carry each other's burdens. Gal 6:2 "By helping each other with your troubles, you obey the law of Christ." (NCV) Look after each other so that not one of you will fail to find God's best blessings." Heb. 12:15 (LB) 2. I MUST RECEIVE FROM OTHERS.   That is often difficult for many of us to do -- to receive from other people. Galatians 6:2 "Carry each other's burdens." The New Century Version says, "By helping each other with your troubles, you obey the law of Christ." Again, this goes against our nature. It is human tendency when we're hurt, when we've had a loss, when we've gone through a difficult time what we want to do is pull back in. We want to draw into a shell, build a wall around us. We want to pull everything in and say, "I don't want to be around people right now. I'm hurting too much." That's exactly the opposite of what you need. During this trying time, you need not only the support of other people, but you also need the perspective of other people. When you're in a season of loss you don't see the whole picture, your pain narrows your focus and you need other people who can help you see the big picture. We need each other dramatically in the season of loss. So I release my grief and then say, "It's time to let other people minister to me. Let them help. Let them comfort. Let them offer suggestions. Let them sit with you and grieve with you." And don't be embarrassed about it. That is one of the reasons God created the church. We are a family and we are to care for each other. That's why, as your pastor, I'm telling you all the time a little preventive advice: Get involved in a small group now, before the crisis. Join the church and get to know some people now. Get involved and get into ministry so you know some people now and so that those relational bridges will be in place before the inevitable time of loss comes. Because it is coming. I say this to you out of love. Out of care and concern for you. Discuss in your CG, CG Leaders and Members, you MUST care for one another…  Hebrews 12 "Look after each other so that not one of you will fail to find God's best blessings." To make it through this season we not only need God's promises but we need God's people to help us. When you go through the storm… you release your grief, you receive from others and ...

Accept What Cannot Be Changed Refuse to be Bitter Some people have no happiness at all. They live and die with bitter hearts. Job 21:25 Watch out that no bitterness takes root among you. It causes deep trouble, hurting many in their spiritual lives. Hebrews 12:15 Accept What Cannot Be Changed Look at what’s left, rather thank what’s lost 3. REFUSE TO BE BITTER Job 21:25. Job, of all people, had a reason to be bitter. He said, "Some people have no happiness at all. They live and die with bitter hearts." Notice the contrast. You're going to have to decide in your life, whether you want to be bitter or whether you want to be happy. Because you cannot be both. You can't. When bitterness is in your heart, happiness walks out the back door. Until you kick bitterness out there won't be any happiness. But when you invite happiness to come back in the front door, bitterness walks out the back door. They both can't live in the same house. In every situation, you've got to decide, "Am I going to be bitter or happy?" It's a choice. Bitter or better. It's an attitude that you have to choose to be a part of.   Happiness is a choice…. (Testimony) There is absolutely no correlation between your happiness and your circumstances. I have seen people who were in the most abject, terrible situations of depression -- raised in the ghetto, no mom, no dad, abject poverty, racial prejudice -- and seen these folks maintain an incredibly positive attitude of "I'm going to do something with my life, I'm going to make my life count." And they go on to succeed and be fulfilled and find meaning and purpose in life. Yet I've talked to some people who have had almost nothing major ever go wrong in their life and yet they constantly whine. Every morning they Rise and Whine! I've been in ministry 25 years and if you're a whiner you don't want to get close to me. I have very little patience for whiners. I've seen situations where two people in the exact situation facing the exact same crisis and problems -- one comes out saying "We can make it. With God's help we'll do it. Let's get going." And the other is saying, "This stinks. It's terrible. Life's over!" You are as happy as you choose to be. Happiness is a choice. You can learn to be happy in basically any situation. But you've got to refuse to be bitter. Nic Vujicic – Story Most of the world would love to have your problems. You say, "You don't know my house bill!" I know millions of people who would love to have a house bill. We're worried about Are my kids going to get C's or B's or A's this year in school while many people around the world are wondering, "Are my children going to last another week because we haven't eaten in ten days?" It's like the old phrase: "I complained I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no legs." It's all a matter of perspective. Bitterness causes you to get so self centered, you forget how much good there really is in the world. Bitterness never changes anything; it only makes you more miserable. Hebrews 12:15 "Watch out that no bitterness takes root among you. It causes deep trouble, hurting many in their spiritual lives." When you allow bitterness to build up in your life because of the season of loss, you're only hurting yourself. You're going to be hurt by other people intentionally and unintentionally in life. You have been hurt and you will be hurt some more in the rest of your life. But the bitterness you allow to build up will never hurt anybody else. It just hurts you. And it makes you miserable. We love to blame other people for our unhappiness. We love to blame other people for our problems. Salah Government for not having Gun Control… Churches yg bilang this is because of the SIN of the nation… (People love blaming others…) Isn't that typical? That is human nature in its most blatant form. If anything good happens in my life "Thank you! I did it all myself!" If anything bad happens to me, "It's God's fault!" We blame it on God. Have you ever noticed in an insurance policy what are considered to be Acts of God? Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, disasters. That's what the world thinks are acts of God. An act of God is when a baby has been born -- that's a miracle; when a marriage has been put back together when you thought there was no way it could come back together; when a hurt has been healed, when a body has been restored, when somebody has been addicted to some substance has been set free -- that's an act of God. Refuse to be bitter in the losses of life. How do you do that? Two things: 1. Accept what cannot be changed. Job 11 says "Reach out to God, then face the world again, firm and courageous." Many of you do not really understand what faith is. A lot of people think faith is ignoring reality and pretending like something isn't really that bad. For instance, if somebody in your family gets cancer and you say, "No, he doesn't have cancer" -- that is not faith. It's pretending. If you get laid off and your income is no more and you have no promise of where you're going to get your money next week and you say, "Everything is OK." That's not faith. If you come down with some sickness and you say, "I'm not sick". That's not faith, that's stupidity. Faith is not denying reality. Faith is refusing to be discouraged in the face of reality. It's not pretending you don't have a problem. It's refusing to be discouraged in spite of the problem. That's what real faith is. For years, we faced one problem after another as a church trying to buy at least 50 acres of land in Orange County which obviously seemed impossible to everybody. We didn't deny the problem. We just refused to be discouraged by it. That's faith. As you grow in your Christian life and as you grow in emotional maturity, one of the marks of emotional maturity is you begin to realize that most of life is beyond your control. The most important things in your life are beyond your control. Every Christian parent wants their kids to come to know Jesus Christ, grow up and live a godly life. You can do all you want to but you can't control that. They have a free will just like you do. The most important things in life are beyond your control. Sometimes the only way you can manage an unmanageable situation is through acceptance of it. Acceptance is the first step to peace. When you've lost a loved one, when you've walked away from a fresh grave, all the wishing, hoping, praying isn't going to bring that person back. The only way to peace is acceptance. "Lord, help me to accept the things that can't be changed, to change the things that can be changed and the wisdom to know the difference." Accept what can't be changed. 2. Look at what's left, rather than what's lost. 1 Thes. 5:18 "No matter what happens always be thankful for this is God's will for you." Be thankful for the problem? Be thankful for what you have left. And be thankful that God is still with you. And be thankful that God can bring good even out of the bad. Your past is past and nothing is going to change it -- not worrying about it, not resenting it, not being bitter about it, rehearsing it over and over. You need to choose to focus on God's goodness. A lot of you walked in here depressed. And you're discouraged about a problem or situation in your life. The antidote to depression is gratitude. Make a list of a hundred things you can be thankful for. Look at what's left, not what's lost. Are you still alive? Put that one at number one. Are you a Christian? Do you have Jesus in your heart? Put that at number two. Do you live in America and have freedom and opportunity? Put that at three. Is there a place that you can get some counsel and wisdom (like Saddleback church)? Put that at number four. Start making a list and come up with a hundred things you can still be grateful for. And you will watch the clouds of depression begin to rise and vanish. Gratitude is one of the antidotes to depression. You can't be grateful and depressed at the same time. It's what you focus on.

Turn to Jesus “I am the vine; you are the branches Turn to Jesus “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers” John 15:5-6 Those who trust in the Lord are as secure as Mount Zion; they will not be defeated but will endure forever. Psalms 125:1 WITHOUT JESUS You will WITHER - It’s all about JESUS – YOU WANT TO HAVE OPEN SKIES – YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO HEAR DIRECTION, GUIDANCE, RECEIVE SOMETHING FROM GOD – You need Jesus JESUS IS THE PICTURE OF INVISIBLE GOD – EVERYTHING IS MADE BY HIM, THOUGH HIM and TO HIM!! WITHER = DRY , You will be DRY – You will be discouraged – You will be BURN OUT! – YOU WILL BE TIRED!! YOU WILL QUIT APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING TUNE IN to JESUS MAKE SURE YOU CONTINUE TO PUT YOUR FAITH IN JESUS FAITH IS THE ONE THING THAT TURN IT ON!! DO YOU TRUST HIM with Your Life! DO YOU TRUST HIM WITH YOUR FUTURE! DO YOU TRUST HIM if God wants you to break your unhealthy relationship – GOD HAS A BETTER future Husband or wife for you Do you Trust Jesus – If God wants you to Go – He will show you the way!! THE POWER OF GOD CAN TRULY FLOWING IN YOUR LIFE THROUGH FAITH IN JESUS!! Pastor… I have turned to Jesus… I speak to HIM EVERY WAKING MOMENT…. I TELL HIM EVERYTHING, I GRIEVE, I POUR EVEEYTHING UNTO HIM… BUT it’s still un clear…

Tune in to Jesus (Listen) Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:21 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. John 10:27 We often Turn to Jesus, but We don’t LISTEN… We have the same dilemma in hearing from God. We’re surrounded by literal noise and voices all day long. We hear messages that directly compete with what God is trying to tell us. And in the midst of this environment, it can be hard to tell what’s God’s voice and what’s the voices of others. Right here is where I might come in and say something like, “the problem is you need to turn off your surround sound so you can hear God’s voice.” But I won’t say that. Because surround sound is the world we live in. THE FACT IS OUR WORLD IS TOO NOISY. But We can complain all day that our lives are really busy. That there’s too much noise. But guess what, that’s not changing. Yes, we can and should hit the off button on the surround sound and periodically take breaks by spending time in silence or taking a vacation. But these are short-lived moments at best. After they’re over, we’re right back to the 95% of our life that is spent in surround sound. With real noise, real demands, and real distractions. And it’s the place we really need to hear from God. Many Christians think that in order to hear God, they need to spend a week in the mountains. Or maybe go real crazy and take a short-term vow of silence at a monastery. I have news for you, the same God who speaks in the mountains and monasteries is also speaking to you in the middle of your crazy, noisy day. You just need to learn to tune in!

Story of Elijah… One of the Greatest Prophets Lived during Ahab and Jezebel’s Time (Evil Times) Many Miracles No Rain, Then Rain (Rain Maker) One of his if not THE biggest miracle… (Pictured Above) This is where we pick up the story of ELIJAH HE was connected to the source already! He was Plugged in and TURN ON – He had Faith in God – Eveidence – Miracles, Supernatural thing happen But when the things that he hoped for didn’t happen – When Things that he wished for didn’t happen – He got discouraged, disappointed. He Started to TUNE IN to Different Channel and frequency! Slained the Prophets of Baal Became a fugitive Ran and Hid… Frequency of Self Righteousness I have been very zealous – Saya kurang apa? What else do you want I did this and that for you – That’s focusing on EFFORT and SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS – It’s all God’s doing! Not even Elijah’s doing

Tune in to Jesus (Listen) The Lord said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” 1 Kings 19: 11 ELIJAH RAN for 40 days… depressed and HID IN A CAVE – Finally GOD TOLD THEM TO GO OUT OF THE CAVE!! God wants you to get out of the cave of your own thought – Cave of depression, cave of discouragement and hopelessness!! Go out and stand on the mountain – Go out from your cave – START PAYING ATTENTION to Me!! I want to speak to you – I want to listen to you! And the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 13 So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”1 Kings 19:10-13 EARTHQUAKE, WIND, FIRE – SOMETIMES WE ALSO LOOK FOR GOD IN THE SPECTACULAR THING – WE WAIT FOR MOSES BURNING BUSH EXPERIENCE WE WAIT FOR JESUS TO SHOW UP IN A BLAZING LIGHT AND A HUGE ECHOING VOICE LIKE TO APOSTLE PAUL THAT MADE HIM BLIND FOR THREE DAYS AND THEN AFTER THE FIRE THERE WAS A STILL SMALL VOICE!! And ELIJAH HEARD IT!! GOD ENCOURAGE HIM and RESTORE HIM and REMIND HIM OF HIS PURPOSE AGAIN – AND ELIJAH WENT ON

God has been speaking The Problem: We don’t recognize His Voice We are not listening We are not in tune If we want to hear from God, we’re simply going to have to learn to be able to filter out all of the noise and all of the static and tune into God’s frequency. Don’t confine yourself to the mountains or the monastery. God is speaking to you in the middle of you surround sound life. Even today. Even right now. Yes, it’s difficult. But that fact should not lead you to think it’s impossible to discern God’s voice in the midst of all the noise around you. It should lead you to tune in and pay attention more than ever.

The Lord will guide “me” continually, giving “me” water when “I am” dry and restoring “my” strength. “I” will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. Isaiah 58:11 Release Your Grief Give to and Receive from others Refuse to be Bitter Turn to Jesus Tune in to Jesus