Before getting into this sermon, I’d like to play a song by Bebo Norman entitled, “In Your Hands.”
I didn’t know I would love you when I looked into your eyes
But now I have a heart I cannot keep
And the greatest of fear is that you’ll leave me here
Stranded in this water so deep
So don’t you turn away from me
Because my heart and my hopes, they’re in your hands
If I don’t seem certain
It’s just a common fear from a common man
But I am in your hands
Just so you know, I have never done this sort of thing before
I’ve never given up my very soul
But I have heard a voice like none I’ve heard before
And it’s a voice that never grows old
Don’t you turn away from me
Because my heart and my hopes, they’re in your hands
And if I don’t seem certain
It’s just a common fear from a common man
But I am in your hands
I am in your hands
I know…I am in your hands
I want to start by sharing 3 stories of powerlessness.
The first story relates to how this church began for me and Jackie. I’ve been thinking a lot about our church in recent weeks, how we started, where we are now, the direction that God seems to be leading us in the future. On Friday and Saturday right before that first time we met as a Pasadena chapel over there on Villa St, Jackie and I were in the hospital. Jeremiah was getting treated for Kawasaki disease, a rare condition that if untreated within the first 10 days can cause permanent heart damage. I remember taking turns with Jackie holding him for 16 hours straight. He was not 2 years old yet and he was connected to an IV and other tubes in order to get a steady flow of immunoglobulins. As a parent, there is nothing that makes you feel more helpless and powerless than watching your own child suffer and there is absolutely nothing you can do. I couldn’t fix him. I couldn’t take his place. I couldn’t guarantee his health. God had to make the treatment work and all I could do was pray and wait.
My second story of powerlessness happened a couple of months ago. My brother Jason is a medical resident at Harvard along with his fiance, Betty – and Betty’s mom was struck by a car as she was crossing the street at dusk. Apparently, the driver, a 30 year old guy didn’t see her, maybe he was on his phone or texting, and the mother passed away a couple of hours later.
What do you do when sudden tragedy hits? And Jason and Betty called us that Sunday night. They don’t go to church so they didn’t know what to do, we hadn’t dealt with this kind of situation before so we didn’t know what to do. I called P Daniel and Abraham JDSN and with their prayers and advice, our entire family drove up to Northern Cal to be with them. And the whole time we are driving up, I felt completely powerless like this invisible weight was on my shoulders and it was slowly crushing the life out of me. I’ve been a Christian for how many years and I graduated from seminary and I wanted to be strong for their sake, but I had no power. Betty has a younger sister and they lost their father 6 years ago to cancer and just the thought of seeing 2 daughters without either parent was a burden too heavy to hear. I was powerless.
And as I was praying on the drive up, I really believe God gave me that song that we listened to a moment ago. Read lyrics.
It was God’s promise to me that Betty, Jason, all of us, are in God’s hands. And my prayer while driving up was, Lord, I can offer words of comfort, but unless you show up, I am just speaking words into thin air. God had to show up to comfort and all I could do was pray and wait.
My third story of powerlessness happened 2 weeks ago. It was about 11:30pm at night and that’s around the time I get my second wind and so I left my house to prepare, ironically, for this message. And as I was parking my bike and about to sit down, a homeless lady approached me for money. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to these types of requests because as a college student at Berkeley, we were literally bombarded by dozens of homeless people asking for handouts as we walked from our dorms to the campus each day. But this time, I felt prompted to hear her out.
Her name was Joanne. I didn’t want to just give her money because you never know what they are going to do with it so I sat down and she began to share. And it became evident over the course of the next few hours that she was suffering from mental illness. Along the way, she said she was a believer so I shared the gospel with her to make sure. And as we were talking, she would abruptly interrupt me here and there and ask, am I still beautiful? And I said, of course you are and what’s important is the fact that Jesus thinks you are his most beautiful daughter. We shared an early morning meal together at Dennys, we prayed, I gave her some money and we parted ways.
And as I reflect back on our encounter, like the other 2 stories, I am struck by a deep sense of powerlessness. Many details of her story were contradictory so maybe she was conning me, yet I don’t deny that she probably was abused, she probably was abandoned by someone, and she most definitely was suffering from some mental illness. And to such a person, what can I say or do that will make any difference? God needed to show up and my prayer was that God would speak to her personally in her moments of clear thinking. Her issues were totally out of my league and all I could do was pray and ask God to intervene.
This world is all about power. Who has power, who doesn’t. Look at me everyone because I am a person in a position of authority so you should fear me or respect me. If you need some counsel, come to me because I have life all figured out. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll take you under my wings. This is the language of the world where the powerful rule the rest.
But in those moments of life and death, when your loved one is sick, when you encounter a person like Joanne who needs more than some advice, we are reminded that we don’t have any real power. It doesn’t matter what school we graduated from or how much we make, or how long we’ve been going to church, our powerlessness gets exposed when circumstances hit us that are beyond our control and we meet people with problems that have no easy solutions.
We have all had moments when we felt utterly powerless. Either powerless to help someone, powerless before some circumstance, powerless to even change ourselves after many years of struggling over the same sinful habit.