May 22nd, 2022 I Never Promised You a Rose Garden John 16:17-33
I first heard the words of today’s sermon title when I was in college. The song came over the radio in a country themed song. The words: “I beg your pardon; I never promised you a rose garden.”
Perhaps that’s a good place to begin today’s sermon: “The rose garden world of perfection is a lie.” The fact is, pain, struggle, difficulty – they are all normal parts of life. And everyone who lives very long in this world is going to experience his or her share of them all.
Every choice has consequences. Some choices bring good consequences. Other choices bring bad consequences. It depends upon the choice. So, sometimes we bring difficulties upon ourselves by the choices we make. Sometimes our troubles are the results of choices made by others. And sometimes they just come, through no apparent choice they just come, we don’t know why. But we do know that difficulty is a normal part of life. And if we are not ready for that, we might as well sign off, because the difficulties are here!
Some will tell you when you are facing challenges just think positively. Put on rose colored glasses and everything will begin to look and feel like a rose garden.
I feel sorry for those people who have never learned to accept struggle as a normal part of life. They are utterly unprepared for what lies ahead. They take their Pollyanna philosophy and look out at life through their rose-colored glasses and everything is great, just great, until someone they trust disappoints them. When such things happen, they are shattered. They are utterly unprepared. They never knew life could be like that!
Usually, when such things happen to us, our first reaction is to ask, “Why me?” But, don’t you see, such a question comes out of a rose garden picture of life. A better question is, “Why not me?,” because the experience of difficulty in life is normal!
One of the things that impress me about Jesus is that he is a realist about life. In talking with his disciples, he said, honestly, “In the world you have tribulation.” That’s the way it is. He never promised them and he never promised us a rose garden. He never promised that life would be easy or that it would be painless. In fact, almost from the day they began to follow Jesus, the disciples were in trouble. Much of the New Testament was written from prison cells. Few, if any, of the disciples died natural deaths. No, Christian discipleship did not involve a rose garden. That was not the promise!
Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation.” We might as well accept it. We might as well expect it. That’s the way it is. But that’s not all Jesus said. Over against the tribulation, the beating we will take, over against that, there is a promise. He said, “But be of good courage. I have overcome the world.” In other words, the promise is not that we will be spared the struggle, but that by his grace we will be equal to the struggle!
At the cross, Jesus faced the worst that life can do: betrayed by a friend, abandoned by his followers, put through a mock trial on trumped up charges, ridiculed, tortured, beaten, and then killed. The power of evil in this world nailed Jesus to the cross and left him there to die. He knew about life’s tribulations all right. But the power of evil did not have the final word – he did! On that first Easter he rose from the grave and conquered those evil powers. And because he did, we can too. We need not be subject to them. “Be of good courage,” Jesus said. “I have overcome the world.”
We are not promised a rose garden. But Jesus promises us that in whatever wilderness we find ourselves, we will not be alone, but that he will be with us. And his grace and strength will be sufficient for us. The good news is that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us.
Therefore, we are equal to anything. We can cope with anything. We can overcome anything. God can even use our difficulties and bring something good out of them. All of that is possible because of God – God’s grace and God’s power.
I don’t know about you, but my experience tells me that not only will I have to take some beatings in life, but also that, apart from God, I will be beaten – utterly broken and defeated. Alone, I cannot stand up to life. That’s why, for me, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” I like the way Jesus talks to his disciples. He says, realistically but also compassionately, “In the world you have tribulation. But be of good courage, for I have overcome the world.”
Without struggle there is no growth, and without pain there is no depth. Struggles and difficulties are an essential part of life. Oonce they occur, God can work with us to use them, to bring something good out of them. That is not to say that God allows difficulties so that He can use them. Not that. But once they come, for whatever reason, God can use them and even bring something good out of them.
There is no question that in life the times of greatest anxiety, the times of greatest inner turmoil were are the times of greatest growth. When things are going well for us, we tend not to think new thoughts or try new patterns of living. We just put life on cruise control and drive on from day to day. That’s called stagnation. But, when life confronts us with a question we can’t answer, with a problem we can’t solve, or with a situation with which we can’t cope all by ourselves – such experiences push us all into new ways of thinking and feeling and acting. And that’s called growth!
Of course, difficulties in and of themselves do not produce positive results. We all know people who have allowed the painful experiences of life to make them bitter or so discouraged that they give up and stop trying. Everything depends upon what we do with the difficulties which are a normal part of life. The “Why me?” question isn’t helpful. Resentment doesn’t do us any good. Mere stoic acceptance is no better.
The best answer is the Christian answer. The Christian answer begins with God, with the kind of God we have come to know in Jesus. God loves us everyone. God cares for us more than we care for ourselves. God doesn’t intend for bad things to happen to us.
Like any good parent, God wants us to have the very best that life has to offer. But He doesn’t promise us a rose garden. He doesn’t promise even us Christians an exemption from the normal difficulties of life. What He does promise is to be with us. He does promise that His grace and strength are sufficient for us. He promises to take the circumstances of our lives and work with them to bring something good out of them. He promises to win the final victory and that we will share in that victory!
We face our difficulty squarely. By the grace of God we cope with it as best we can. And then, so often, we discover that that very difficulty has introduced us to a new dimension of life, and has become the means by which we begin to fly!
Jesus never promised us a rose garden. He said, “In the world you have tribulation. (That’s the way it is.) But be of good courage. I have overcome the world!” And you can too!