Where Do You Turn When Life Has Caved In? | Tony Evans Sermon

Dr. Tony Evans reminds us where and Who to turn to when life has caved in and we are running low on hope. God tells us that we can run and not grow weary.

Dr. Tony Evans is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies. The first African American to earn a doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, he has been named one of the 12 Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking World by Baylor University. Dr. Evans holds the honor of writing and publishing the first full-Bible commentary and study Bible by an African American. His radio broadcast, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, can be heard on over 1,400 radio outlets daily and in more than 130 countries. Dr. Evans’ sermons are also streamed and downloaded over 20,000,000 times annually.

One way god gives you new strength is by swooping into your situation.
Grabbing you and lifting you out of it.
It’s when god supernaturally intervenes and blows your mind by turning something around.
And that’s when you get your praise on because he came out of nowhere.
And with Eagle’s wings lifted you out of it.
Is anybody here right now where life has caved in on you recently?
Yeah. Lot of you. What do you do?
How do you How do you move in this scenario? He tells you.
He helps you out. He says, at the beginning of verse 31, yet those who wait for the lord will gain new strength.
He says when light caves in, my way is hidden from the lord.
The justice, the fairness, Do me.
This is not fair. What happened? It’s not fair. This happened now. It’s not fair. I’m going through this.
It’s not fair. He says, what I want you to do is waiter on the lord.
Now the question is, what does that mean?
The Hebrew word for weight is very picturesque.
All of you ladies know it because the word weight means to plap the hair.
It it it was to platt the hair.
When women or men platt the hair, They intertwine sections of hair so that they are tied together in a tight way when you straighten your hair.
It’s loose and hanging down when you plat your hair.
It has been intercoagulated and tightly tied together so that it is no longer subject to the blowing wind because it has been tightened together by plaid.
It was used of a rope where the strands were intertwined to make a stronger rope.
So when he says wait on the lord, he’s not talking about passively sitting down, doing nothing, He’s talking about plotting your life, intertwining all of your life so that everything is wrapped and intertwined with him so that there is a church and the rest of my week.
It’s god, I got started on Sunday morning, but my stuff is so messed up.
My situation is so deep.
I’m going to plot my circumstances, plot my decisions, plot my goal and intertwine them with you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and back again on Sunday.
I’m not gonna just straighten my hair on Sunday and let stuff blow it all week long.
I’m gonna plat this thing so that it is no longer subject to the circumstances.
I am going to wrap up tie up and tangle up my life because when things get bad enough, the problem won’t leave you alone.
So I don’t need what happened on Sunday.
I need to be tied up with the god I met on Sunday.
All we draw to wait on the lord is a hookup that you don’t want to be disconnected from.
In addition, it means to not go outside of god to fix it.
Because the temptation when you’re in a crisis that is knocking you down is to look for other options when you don’t think god is doing anything.
They said my way is hidden from the lord.
Maybe we don’t see god doing anything because we haven’t platted our lives around it.
We just we just paid him a visit on Sunday.
And therefore, the waiting is waiting without his presence being experienced in our pain.
And I know we don’t like to wait at red lights.
We don’t wanna wait at the doctor’s office.
But when you look at scripture, Sarah had to wait for a baby, nor I had to wait for a flood.
Joseph had to wait longer in prison.
Martha Maria, the wait for resurrection to disciples, had to wait for the Holy Spirit.
We’re waiting for the return of Christ Hannah had to wait for a baby.
Ruth had to wait for a husband.
You find people, but when the thing happened that god wanted to happen, those people were connected.
Only when that connection was there, when they had placket themselves, Did they experience whatever god was going to do in their situation?
How do you know that you’re waiting on god this way?
Because the majority of your time you spend in worshiping, not complaining.
You spend your time worshiping and not complaining why because god inhabits the worship and praise and adoration of his people.
So on 130 verses 56, it says you wait on the lord with his word.
If you’re hurting today and life has collapsed, you read isaiah 40. You read Psalm 42.
You read the Psalms are a great thing because it has so many different scenarios, but you you you go over.
God, remind me of who you are. I need your character. I need your presence. I’m looking to you.
I’m wrapped up in you. Because my circumstances have wrapped me up.
Lamitations chapter 3 verse 2526 talks about how good it is.
To wait on god for his divine intervention. However, he chooses to do that.
And if you wait this way, you’re not passively sitting down doing nothing, you’re just not going outside of god to fix it and you’re entangling yourself.
You’re plattening yourself with him. You’re not straightening your hair. So that the circumstances blow it.
You are placking it so that it is tight because that’s how desperate you are.
And by the way, it’s sometimes difficult to decide to go to god when you’re in it.
You need to have the practice of plotting before you get in it so that when you’re in it, you’re ready for it.
See, some folks wanna get close to god because they’re in a crisis.
The idea is to get the close to god before you hit the crisis So you’re already prepared for the crisis when it hit.
What will god do?
In your questions, not questioning, but questions when you don’t cross that line, He says those who wait for the lord will gain new strength.
New strength. That means strength you don’t currently have.
Because as you know, when you’re in a crisis, strength drains from you.
Crises send us the bid. Make us not wanna get up.
Wakes you up in the middle of the night.
It sucks your energy when it’s a deep one or a series of one that won’t leave you alone.
It just, like an illness, it just drains you.
But he says, if you wait on me, I will give you We all have charges for our phone.
That’s because they lose strength. They run down. The power leaves.
So what we do is we gotta take it and put it on the charger to get new strength.
As the phone sucks in the electrical power, it becomes new again.
The phone works, but it can’t work without the power.
But because of life all day, it loses power.
But when you let it wait on the charge, It’s gotta wait.
It’s gotta gotta sit there and wait.
When you let it hang out, hang up, hooked up with the it gets new strength.
And when god gives new strength, you’ll see it in one of 3 ways.
He tells you in verse 31. They will melt up with wings like Eagles.
The first way that god gives new strength is his divine intervention.
When an eagle kicks out an egalet the first time, a baby eagle, it’s trying to learn the fly.
Usually, the first time it can’t fly because it hadn’t doesn’t know yet how to fly.
So it’s just flaring trying to make it. Anybody flailing trying to make it?
But what the eagle will do when it sees the eagle at falling and it’s not gonna make it.
The eagle swoops down, opens its wings and catches the egglet on the wing and lifts it back up to the nest.
One way god gives you new strength is by swooping into your situation, grabbing you and lifting you out of it.
It’s when god supernaturally intervenes and blows your mind by turning something around, by switching something by reversing something.
And that’s when you get your praise on. That’s when you say hitting god good all the time.
All the time Don’s good because he came out of nowhere.
And with Eagles’s wings lifted you out of it. That’s one way. That god gives new strength.
There’s a second way god gives new strength. They will run and not get tired.
God gives new strength when He doesn’t swoop down and take you out of it.
He lets you run through it. He says, you’re gonna run.
You’re gonna run, but I will give you a second win so you can keep going.
I’m going to let you run.
I’m not gonna swoop down and make it disappear, but I’m going to let you run through it.
All of you who get on a treadmill knows what it is to run.
And you know what it is and one of the ways you can run longer when you’re on a treadmill than you would normally run is if you’re watching TV.
I always turn on the news when I’m on the treadmill. Why?
Because by focusing on the news, I can go longer with the breathing.
If I’m just there and I don’t have another focus, I’m thinking about running.
And so when I get tired of running, I give up, but with the news on, with the focus on, it allows me to run longer than I would normally run and I get a second wave says, if you focus on me, even though you’re running, I will give you a second wind So you can go further with this situation, further with this pain, further with this problem than you thought you could go because I’m a give you a second win.
Then there’s a third way. He gives you new strength. Yeah.
It says and they will walk and not become weary.
The first way is he swoops down and just take you out of it.
The second way he doesn’t swoop down, he lets you go through the process of running but it gives you the ability to keep going.
That’s right. That’s right. The 3rd way, you can no longer run.
He says they are walking. They’re walking on the 3rd way.
When you’re on the treadmill, and you’re running and you finish running, they’ll tell you don’t jump off They’ll say, you have to walk.
You have to walk in order for things to settle down, you have to walk for the benefit of the heart slowing down, because if you just jump off with a hard beating, you haven’t given it a chance to make the adjustment on the pace.
You see sometimes life gets so hard. You can’t run.
And you’ve been left to walk. The first way is god’s divine intervention.
The second way is god’s enablement to keep going.
But the third way, when you can’t run anymore because you are now too tired, you’re left to walk.
That’s divine encouragement.
That’s when god doesn’t change the situation he changes you in the problem.
You doesn’t he doesn’t fix it.
You doesn’t turn it around like you pray, but he does something in you that that no longer matters.
That that no longer is the situation.
He’ll bring a person in your life to give you an encouraging word.
He’ll bring a song on the radio to inspire you.
There’ll be a sermon that you thought was prepared with only you in mind.
That’s when all these doing is just encouraging you. Nothing has changed except you. Yes.
Because sometimes god puts us in a position to accept something he doesn’t intend to change.
And so all you can do is walk. Because your running ability is over.
But in all three ways, he’s given new strength strath, you know, I would love to say he only does the eagle thing.
But that’s not true. That plenty of times, he doesn’t swoop down and just switch it overnight.
I would love to say that, boy, he’s gonna give you something to focus on he gonna get you through and you’re gonna have the win to run, but sometimes life just gets tired.
Yes. And you’ll you’ll you’ll get up and go with gotten up and gone.
But what he wants to do is let you know I am there with you and what you’re going through.
They that wait upon the lord will get new strength.