Good morning again. Judging from the feedback after I delivered last week’s message, I know I accomplished my objective of providing you folks with much needed comfort, encouragement and hope. So here’s part 2 of “Don’t Ever Give Up!

When I think about all the sorrow, suffering, and death every human being experiences, I have to say, if it wasn’t for my God given faith, I would rather have died a long time ago. To think of winding up a cemetery buried in a flip-top box, and eventually becoming protein for worms would make my life meaningless and absurd. I’m happy to say I haven’t felt like this since I became a Christian over forty years ago. Since that time I’ve become a relatively positive, optimistic guy who views his life as having meaning and purpose.

Early in my new life in Christ I was introduced to a teaching known as “The Sovereignty of God.” I’m happy to say that I know what, why and who I am.

What am I? I am a human creature created by God.

Why did He create me? He created me for His own glory.

Who am I? I am a re-born creature who is in the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus.

Knowing that fact is one of the most important blessings I have ever received. I’m also happy that I’m a Biblical Christian. Allow me to explain. I believe that all Scripture is from God. In other words, I believe the truth of the following verses. Sometimes I’ll quote the same passages twice in order to amplify their meaning.

¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)

⁴ For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15:4 (NIV)

The scriptures tell us that everything that human beings experience, the good and the bad, is from God. With that firm conviction settled in my mind I have been able to handle my divinely ordained trials. That isn’t to say there haven’t been times when I felt like throwing in the towel and giving up. I have! I’ll get to that in a moment, but first I want to advise you not to try to get God off the hook as far as all the suffering, sorrow and death in the world goes, and attempt to shift the blame elsewhere. He won’t allow you to. For example, consider the following Bible passages.

¹¹ “Who makes mouths?” Jehovah asked him. “Isn’t it I, the Lord? Who makes a man so that he can speak or not speak, see or not see, hear or not hear? Exodus 4:11 (TLB)

¹¹ GOD said, “And who do you think made the human mouth? And who makes some mute, some deaf, some sighted, some blind? Isn’t it I, GOD? Exodus 4:11 (MSG)

⁶ The Lord kills, The Lord gives life. ⁷ Some he causes to be poor And others to be rich. He cuts one down And lifts another up. 1 Samuel 2:6-7 (TLB)

⁶ GOD brings death and GOD brings life, brings down to the grave and raises up. ⁷ GOD brings poverty and GOD brings wealth; he lowers, he also lifts up. 1 Samuel 2:6-7 (MSG)

¹³ [See the way God does things and fall into line. Don’t fight the facts of nature.] Who can straighten what he has made crooked? ¹⁴ Enjoy prosperity whenever you can, and when hard times strike, realize that God gives one as well as the other—so that everyone will realize that nothing is certain in this life. Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 (TLB)

¹³ Take a good look at God’s work. Who could simplify and reduce Creation’s curves and angles To a plain straight line? ¹⁴ On a good day, enjoy yourself; On a bad day, examine your conscience. God arranges for both kinds of days So that we won’t take anything for granted. Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 (MSG)

⁵ I am Jehovah; there is no other God. I will strengthen you and send you out to victory even though you don’t know me, ⁶ and all the world from east to west will know there is no other God. I am Jehovah and there is no one else. I alone am God. ⁷ I form the light and make the dark. I send good times and bad. I, Jehovah, am he who does these things. Isaiah 45:5-7 (TLB)

⁵ I am GOD, the only God there is. Besides me there are no real gods. I’m the one who armed you for this work, though you don’t even know me, ⁶ So that everyone, from east to west, will know that I have no god-rivals. I am GOD, the only God there is. ⁷ I form light and create darkness; I make harmonies and create discords. I, GOD, do all these things. Isaiah 45:5-7 (MSG)

³⁷ For who can act against you without the Lord’s permission? ³⁸ It is the Lord who helps one and harms another. Lamentations 3:37-38 (TLB)

³⁷ Who do you think “spoke and it happened”? It’s the Master who gives such orders. ³⁸ Doesn’t the High God speak everything, good things and hard things alike, into being? Lamentations 3:37-38 (MSG)

⁶ The alarm has sounded—listen and fear! For I, the Lord, am sending disaster into your land. Amos 3:6 (TLB)

⁶ When the alarm goes off in the city, aren’t people alarmed? And when disaster strikes the city, doesn’t GOD stand behind it? Amos 3:6 (MSG) Remember, don’t ever try to get God off the hook.

Can you imagine how broken-hearted God must be because all too many Christians won’t take time to be holy nor will they take time to learn everything they possibly can about their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ; the sinless One who allowed Himself to suffer and die an agonizing death on their behalf?

¹⁸ But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. 2 Peter 3:18 (NIV)

¹ From: Simon Peter, a servant and missionary of Jesus Christ. To: All of you who have our kind of faith. The faith I speak of is the kind that Jesus Christ our God and Savior gives to us. How precious it is, and how just and good he is to give this same faith to each of us. ² Do you want more and more of God’s kindness and peace? Then learn to know him better and better. ³ For as you know him better, he will give you, through his great power, everything you need for living a truly good life: he even shares his own glory and his own goodness with us! ⁴ And by that same mighty power he has given us all the other rich and wonderful blessings he promised; for instance, the promise to save us from the lust and rottenness all around us, and to give us his own character. ⁵ But to obtain these gifts, you need more than faith; you must also work hard to be good, and even that is not enough. For then you must learn to know God better and discover what he wants you to do. 2 Peter 1:1-5 (TLB)

Now I would like to share excerpts from Paul Wolfe’s outstanding book: “My God is True! Lessons Learned Along Cancers Dark Road. Although I purchased it in order to help those of you who are, in one way or another, dealing from cancer, little did I realize how much it would help me too.

In the books forward, Sinclair Ferguson writes: Paul wanted to learn everything he possibly could about Jesus and so he went to seminary and graduated on May 26, 2000. He became a living illustration of the teaching of the following passage of scripture.

¹ “I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. ² He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. ³ John 15:1-27(MSG)

“Paul tells the story of God’s providence in his life, traces the path-where he is now able to detect it-of God’s wisdom, and recounts the evidences of God’s faithfulness. He does this in a spirit of deep consciousness that since the Lord has employed the skill of surgeons and doctors to  preserve his life, like his apostolic namesake, there must still be ‘fruitful labor’ for him in the purposes of His heavenly Father.

²² As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. ²³ Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better ²⁴ . But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here. ²⁵ So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues. Philippians 1:22-25 (MSG)

Ferguson continues, “Wolf’s story is written within a “deep sense of the undergirding sovereignty and grace of God, His faithfulness, and His wisdom-a recognition that His ways are higher, deeper, and wiser than ours.” If you heard or read the first part of this sermon and combined it with what I have and will share this morning, you should be able to                              connect the dots of how Wolf’s remarks also relate to me. “While this is a story of a young man’s pain, his struggles, his journey through a valley of deep darkness, it is also a story of love-Paul’s love for Christ, his shared love with his wife Christy and their family circle. It is a testimony of what it means to belong to the living fellowship of Christ’s people, the church.”

Speaking of himself, Paul tells his readers that, “Suddenly on April 23, 1999 my cancer diagnosis sent the signal loud and clear, that it was not our script we were living, but, God’s. It was our Father’s providential way of saying, ‘Paul and Christy, not so fast.’ Suddenly we were confronted with the possibility that Christy would be a widow on the day that was to be her first wedding anniversary. It was, to be sure, an abrupt awakening, but it was no more abrupt than was necessary, Christy and I needed to be awakened-again to the reality that God is in charge. Our pride was wounded, but make no mistake, it was a good, merciful wounding.”

“Understandably, we wondered, (as so many do in similar circumstances) why this is happening to us. We had to remember in that moment and in so many moments later that, though we did not know the precise details of God’s plan, we certainly knew his grand design: he was bringing about his own glory and our good, orchestrating every detail of our lives to that end. We knew that even my cancer he had brought to pass in order to bring us closer, somehow, to the realization of our own destinies in his plan, including our being brought more and more into conformity to the character of Christ.

In fact, that very comfort then became a calling: we knew, not only that God would bring about the realization of those purposes, but also we had to play our part as those who must seek and find. We knew that our duty in this was just what it had always been: to trust in Him, to love those around us, to seek to grow in godliness. You see, sometimes when we are suffering we get so wrapped up in wondering about the things we cannot know that we end up overlooking the things we can know-the precious promises of Scripture about what God’s grand purposes are, the clear commands of Scripture to love God and neighbor every day, and the Lord’s summons to his disciples to seek and find grace on their way to glory. The main things have not been left mysterious. The only question is, will we open our eyes and see them there, printed plainly on the pages of the Bible, and believe?

Let me be clear: we also knew that our calling was to fight this dreadful disease. The reign of God over our lives-including over our choices-does not mean that our choices are not real, and so it should never lead to passivity. There was a good fight to be fought, the fight against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and almost as soon as I was diagnosed we strapped on our boxing gloves. But we did so knowing that the outcome of that fight-whether the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat-was in the Lord’s hands. We also knew that even if I lost the cancer-fight our heavenly Father would use that defeat to bring about the most thrilling victory of all: my entrance to the presence of my Savior.

THE TEACUP

There was this couple who used to go to England to shop in the beautiful stores. They both liked antiques and pottery, especially teacups.

One day in a fine shop, they saw this beautiful teacup. The man said, “May I see that? I never have seen one quite so beautiful.” And the lady handed it to him. As she handed it to him, suddenly the teacup spoke: “You don’t understand,” it said, “I haven’t always been a teacup. There was a time when I was red and I was clay. My master took me and rolled me and patted me over and over and I yelled out, ‘Let me alone.’ But he only smiled and said, ‘Not yet.’

“Then I was placed on a spinning wheel,” the teacup said, “and suddenly I was spun around and around and around and around. ‘Stop it! I’m getting dizzy’ I screamed. But the master only nodded and said, ‘Not yet.’

“Then he put me in the oven. I’d never felt such heat!  I wondered why he wanted to burn me. I yelled! I knocked at the door. I could see him through the opening and I could read his lips as he shook his head, ‘Not yet.’

“Finally the door opened, he put me on the shelf and I began to cool. There, that’s better,’ I said.

Then he brushed me and painted me all over. The fumes were horrible. I thought I would gag. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ I cried. He only nodded, ‘Not yet.’

“Then suddenly he put me back into the oven not like the first one. This one was twice as hot and I knew I would suffocate. I begged. I pleaded. I screamed. I cried. All the time I could see him through the opening nodding his head, saying, ‘Not yet.’

“Then I knew there wasn’t any hope.  I would never make it. I was ready to give up. But the door opened and he took me out and placed me on the shelf.

One hour later, he handed me a mirror and said, ‘Look at yourself,’ and I did, and I said, ‘That’s not me, that couldn’t be me, it’s beautiful. ‘I’m beautiful!”

‘I want you to remember then,’ he said, ‘I know it hurt to be rolled and patted, but if I just left you, you’d have dried up. I know it made you dizzy to spin around on the wheel, but if I had stopped, you would have crumbled.

I know it hurt and it was hot and disagreeable in the oven, but if I hadn’t put you there, you would have cracked. I know the fumes were bad and when I brushed and painted you all over, but if I hadn’t done that, you never would have hardened.

You would not have had any color in your life, and if I hadn’t put you back in that second oven, you wouldn’t survive for very long because the hardness would not have held. Now you are a finished product.

¹ I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful Christians in Ephesus. ² I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ. ³ How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. ⁴ Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. ⁵ Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) ⁶ He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. ⁷ Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! ⁸ He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, ⁹ letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, ¹⁰ a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth. ¹¹ It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, ¹² part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. ¹³ It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. ¹⁴ This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life. ¹⁵ That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the Christians, ¹⁶ I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. ¹⁷ But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, ¹⁸ your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians, ¹⁹ oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength! Ephesians 1:1-19 (MSG)