Nothing can separate us

Continuing his series on getting out of a rut, Pastor Devon Ortiz preached from Romans 8. Verse 28 says "all things work together for good," but he warned against stopping there. The promise is "to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Good does not necessarily mean good for you right now. It means good for your overall, in line with God's purpose, and it comes with a qualifier: loving God with all of your heart, soul, and mind. Verses 35 to 39 then ask, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" and answer that in all these things "we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." Anyone battling loneliness or depression should know that nothing on this planet can separate them from that love. Some of us have been in a rut so long that we see no way out, he said, and some do not want out because of the work it will take. His charge was to stop blaming the circumstances.

Blame is as old as sin

He turned to Genesis 3, where the serpent asked, "Yea, hath God said?" It is good to have questions about the word of God, Pastor Ortiz said, but it is another thing altogether to question it. Many Christians have been swayed by knowledge, deciding they have matured past God's boundaries, and he has never seen one of them become strong in the faith. Eve saw that the tree was good for food, but that was never the question. Until then they had lived without fear, insecurity, or anxiety. Adam and Eve gained knowledge that led them further from God, and they hid among the trees, as many Christians now run from the presence of God while checking off church and service. When God asked, "Where art thou?" it was not for His own information.

Then came the excuses. Adam pointed to Eve, and Eve pointed to the serpent, and nobody took responsibility. Pastor Ortiz said that in 21 years of ministry he can remember only one person in his office saying, "I'm the reason." Usually it is a spouse, a job, stress, finances, health, friends, the past, the church, or the pastor. And blaming circumstances almost always ends up blaming God, as Adam did when he spoke of "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me." He cited a study in the United Kingdom that followed close to 9,000 young people from birth and found that about a third of the link between early hardship and depression at 18 traced back to one belief: outside forces control my life. A rut will nearly always go back to some event we had no power over, Pastor Ortiz said. We can either say we are stuck because of it, or realize that we have a God with no boundaries, no limitations, and all power.

Thirteen years without a choice

Pastor Ortiz walked through the life of Joseph in Genesis 37 to 40, stopping at each step to ask how much control Joseph had. He did not choose the land he lived in, his father's favoritism, the coat of many colors, or his brothers' hatred. He had no say in being stripped and thrown into a pit, being sold for twenty pieces of silver, or who bought him in Egypt. He stood firm against Potiphar's wife and could not control her lie. He rose to second in charge in prison, interpreted the butler's dream, and could not control the butler's memory: "Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him." That was thirteen years of trouble, Pastor Ortiz said, and Joseph never got to choose once.

He then spoke of his own childhood: being teased relentlessly over his skin, his greased hair, his hand-me-down clothes, and his size, being called dumb at school, and being mocked for carrying the big family Bible to class. He brought that Bible for reading time and chose the book of Job, because his mother had told him he needed to learn how to work. An uncle told him, "You can't control how other people's attitudes are, but you can always control yours." He had no control over any of it, he said, and God used all of it to frame who he is now.

The question Paul asks

Verse 35 lists seven threats: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword. Paul never asks whether trouble will come. He asks whether trouble will separate you. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and no one in the room could say they had no struggles. So how does this get anyone out of a rut? Maybe the situation does not need to change, Pastor Ortiz said. Maybe you do. Maybe it took Joseph thirteen years of being pushed aside to become who God needed him to be, and maybe Paul had to pass through the very things he once put other Christians through. If you keep carrying a chip on your shoulder over your difficulties, he said, you have not yet learned what God wants you to learn. Verse 36 says, "For thy sake." Some of the hardship in our lives is not just that life is unfair, but that God has set it for His sake. Years of being teased prepared him for a life of being watched and criticized by people he does not know. If a marriage, finances, or spiritual growth is not going the way you want, he said, ask what God is trying to teach you.

How to stop blaming

Name the wrong and release it. In Genesis 40 Joseph could say plainly that he had been stolen away and had done nothing to deserve the dungeon. Hurt does happen, and Pastor Ortiz said he was not making little of anyone's loss. But we name it without blaming where our life is because of it. Now what are you going to do with it? Keep blaming, or be better because of it?

Look for God in the pit, not only after you get out. Genesis 39 says twice that "the Lord was with Joseph," and everywhere he went God gave him favor. He went further down and further up at the same time. Blame trains our eyes on what went wrong, he said, and faith trains our eyes on Jesus. He challenged the church to write down one place that week where they saw God's hand in the midst of a problem.

Serve faithfully in the place you never chose. The young people did not choose this church, he said, but they need where God has planted them, and anyone who fights that will always feel like a victim. In Philippians 1:12 Paul says the things that happened to him "have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." Pastor Ortiz recalled pouting for a month after a church turned him down as pastor, until an older pastor told him that if he wanted to leave he could go, but if he was going to stay, he needed to stop with the attitude. Blame waits for a better situation and then says it will obey. Faithfulness obeys now.

Read the end of the story. Each hardship works together for good for those who love God. Second Corinthians 4:17-18 calls it a "light affliction, which is but for a moment," and says "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." We often picture blessing only as material things, he said, and miss God's eternal blessing to hold on to something we will lose in a few months. If you want out of your rut, stop blaming, and look for His hand, His work, and His will right where you are. He closed by thanking God for the difficulties, not because we love them, but because He brings us through them.