So my name is Justin Emanuel and I serve as the production
director here. Thank you.
I need my movie buffs. Raise your hand if you know The
Karate Kid 1984, the original Ralph Macchio.
Keep your hand raised if you think Daniel Larusso is the main
hero. What if Daniel Larusso isn't the
hero? He's the problem.
What if everything you thought about The Karate Kid was
backwards? Raise your hand if you've seen
How I Met Your Mother and you know Neil Patrick Harris's
character, Barney Stinson. Barney had a theory.
He argues Johnny Lawrence, the blonde kid from Cobra Kai you
thought was the villain, is the hero.
Think from Barney's perspective, Daniel went after Johnny's
ex-girlfriend. Daniel went after Johnny's face
and he got in his face at the beach.
Daniel beat Johnny in the tournament with an illegal crane
kick to the face. And Johnny, he's a high school
kid trying to win back his girlfriend and defend his
championship while dealing with the toxic coach.
On the surface, Daniel's the hero, but from Barney's
perspective, Daniel's the bully, and Johnny's the real Karate
Kid. Same story, different
perspective on the hero. And perspective changes
everything. Right now, we're watching our
lives from our perspective and from where we're sitting.
When pain and suffering come, when we're in crisis, when life
falls apart, the pain can seem pointless.
I know, because in my suffering I thought it was meaningless,
that I had to be the hero of my life and dig myself out of my
pain. But what if God is watching the
exact same situation and seeing something completely different?
Same story, different hero. People talk now about main
character energy, right? That we're supposed to be the
star of our own movie. There's a problem when we're the
star. We have to fix everything.
We have to bear the weight of everything.
We have to make sense of everything.
And the problem is that we can't.
We're not the heroes of our story.
We're the supporting character. And our pain, God uses it to
write his story about our true main character, Jesus Christ.
And that's our big idea. Your pain is God's pen.
Write that down. Your pain is the pen in God's
hands and he is a writing the story about his Son Jesus that
you don't see yet. The pen doesn't control the
story, the author does. Let me show you in John Chapter
11. Picture this as we get there.
Jesus is 3 years into his public ministry.
He's got this motley crew of disciples, fishermen, tax
collectors, nobodies. Think Master Splinter and the
Teenage Mutant Ninja disciples. It's just and Jesus is
performing miracle after miracle.
That kind of power attracts opposition.
In John 10, the religious leaders just tried to stone
Jesus for trying to prove that he was God.
So Jesus and the disciples went away to lay low.
Now word reaches Jesus that Lazarus is sick.
He's sick. And Bethany, the same place,
they just tried to stone him. John Chapter 11, starting in
verse one, continues the story. Now a certain man was ill,
Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his
feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.
So we have Lazarus, Mary and Martha.
These are three siblings and they're friends of Jesus.
Their house became a regular stopping point between Jerusalem
and Jericho for Jesus and Lazarus.
Is ill really ill? Growing up, did you have someone
in your house that always had a cure all?
Mom, grandma, what was it for you?
Was it ginger ale? Was it rub some dirt on it, walk
it off? Was it Big Fat Greek Wedding and
spray some Windex on it? Put some Windex on it.
Was it Vicks? That magical blue tub that
somehow cured everything from the common cold to a broken
heart? What was it?
I'm sorry, grandma. There's no amount of Vicks
that's going to make Lazarus better.
He's on the edge of death, powerless, No strength left.
Every family remedy has failed and the physicians treatments
have run their course. This is a crisis and in their
crisis verse 3 tells us so. The sisters sent to him saying,
Lord, he whom you love is ill. They knew they couldn't do
anything about it, but they knew Jesus could.
Jesus responds in verse 4. This illness does not lead to
death. It is for the glory of God so
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
Jesus sees the same situation differently.
Mary and Martha saw crisis. Jesus saw an opportunity to
bring glory. This brings us to our first
shift. Write this down.
Your crisis is God's platform. What we see is crisis.
God sees as a platform for His power and His glory.
So your crisis isn't meant to destroy you.
It's meant to set the stage for God's power to be shown, but
it's only how you respond to your pain.
So I've been watching this show about vampires called What We Do
in the Shadows. And in there there's this
character, Evie Russell. She's an emotional vampire.
She feeds off of pity and sympathy.
She generates conversations that talk about nothing but her pain,
and her goal is to keep the sympathy going so she can gorge
herself. And as I'm watching this show
and thinking about things, I realized something that was me
and my pain. That I am a recovering emotional
vampire. As an emotional vampire,
everything became about my pain. Many of you experienced this
with me in the breezeway. You'd come up happy to talk, and
then within 60 seconds I made it about me.
I made it about how my ADHD messed my week up, how I failed
because of my OCD. I see your faces and they drain
and you would be exhausted because I would take every
conversation and make it about me and my pain and my problems.
As an emotional vampire, I fed on sympathy, not solutions, Man,
when someone said I'm so sorry, I don't know how you're going
through with going through it, man, it was this rush.
It's like finally someone understands me.
I became addicted to the validation.
And when sympathy dried up, I'd find a new crisis to keep the
pity supply flowing because if I got better, I'd be normal
Justin. And normal Justin didn't get
that kind of attention. As an emotional vampire, my pain
became my identity. I used my disorders as a get out
of jail free card. Oh, I can't do this because of
my ADHD. I'm going to fail.
Because my OCDI wasn't managing my conditions.
I was hiding behind them. I was using them as a shield
against responsibility. I wore my pain like a badge.
Many of you I introduced myself as hi, I'm Justin.
I have ADHD and OCD. So if I mess up that's OK,
right? I wasn't Justin, follower of
Jesus, loved by God. How is Justin the guy with
disorders and problems? And I was comfortable there.
See, if people expected me to struggle, that I wouldn't be
responsible for getting better as an emotional vampire, I
drained everyone around me. Emotional vampires don't just
feed on sympathy, they drain the people they love.
In therapy this year, I had this mental picture of a train
passing by. And in the window window was my
pastors, my friends, the staff here, family back home.
And I realized two things. These are people who loved me
dearly, and I was the jerk who dumped on every single one of
them. People stopped asking how I was
doing, not because they didn't care, but because they'd leave a
conversation with me exhausted. I even drained myself.
I'd hear myself complaining and as I'm saying the words in my
head, I'm going. I don't even want to listen to
me right now. Then my mentorship group sat me
down. I said, Justin, we, we love you.
You become exhausting. Every conversation circles back
to your pain. You're not looking for help,
you're looking for an audience. You're putting on a show and
it's leaving everyone around you drained.
I had a choice. Do I get defensive and walk out
or do I hear the truth? They were right.
I wasn't the victim of my pain. I became an addict of it.
I made it my identity and it was destroying me.
Do you remember what I said in the beginning?
That when we're the main character, we have to fix
everything. We have to make sense of
everything. We have to bear the weight of
everything. That was me.
I was the main character of my own misery, and I couldn't fix
it. I hated what I saw, but instead
of working on it, I escaped. Video games, YouTube, anywhere
that would take me somewhere. But here inside I was screaming.
There was something wrong that I needed to change.
But my pain muffled my screams and I kept on going until my
mentorship group confronted me. And that's when everything
changed. Because everything changes when
I stop being the main character. When I got out of the way and
let Jesus take center stage, I didn't have to worry about
fixing me. I didn't have to bear the weight
of my story. I didn't have to make sense of
my life. Jesus did.
And the people around me, they weren't drained anymore because
I wasn't searching for pity and sympathy.
They didn't see me with my problems anymore.
They saw Jesus working in and through me as he transformed me.
So be honest with yourself. Does any of this sound familiar?
In your life, not someone else's?
Your life? Do your conversations circle
back to your struggles? Are you more comfortable in
crisis than in healing? Do people seem exhausted after
talking with you? Have you made your pain and your
problem as your identity instead of Christ?
If you're thinking that's me, welcome to the club.
You don't have to live that way anymore.
Your pain is real, I am not dismissing that, but how you're
handling it is hurting you and everyone around you.
They say that hurt people hurt people, and right now you have
weaponized your pain instead of bringing it to God.
Scripture says we're supposed to bear one another's burdens, but
you can't just unload your pain on the people around you while
you refuse to bring it to Christ yourself.
That's asking people to carry what you won't.
Surrender to Jesus. Keep going this way and you're
going to push away everyone in your life.
Make the change now before you find yourself alone.
And if you're there alone with your pain, God's still there.
God still loves you. God is waiting for you to bring
it to Him. So you have a choice.
Are you going to use your suffering as a shield, hiding
behind blame and being a victim and watch every one of your
relationships die, or surrender it to Jesus and let the healing
begin? Your pride, your pain, your
fear, your whatever it is, is what is holding you back from
the one and only one who can heal you from what you are
suffering through. Bring your pain to Jesus and
here's what that looks like. If that is you this week, find
someone in your life you trust, a strong believer, a mentor,
someone from your community group and go, I need help.
I've been handling my pain the wrong way.
Can you pray with me? Can you keep me accountable?
And then be receptive to what they have to say in their
counsel to you. Now, if you're thinking that's
someone I love and care about, how can I help them?
Keep pointing them to Jesus? Pray.
Set boundaries where you need to, but remember that you can't
carry what only God can carry. Jesus is the one who can heal an
emotional vampire. Bring them to Jesus, and if they
refuse to let God work, you may have to love them from a
distance. It's not abandonment, it's
wisdom. Pray, point them to Jesus and
trust God to do what we cannot. And if you're thinking I don't
do that or I'm past this, you might be right.
You may be past this and God has brought you through it.
God wants to use your story so that someone younger can see
what he has done in your life. Keep going, but remember that
even the most mature believer stays teachable.
That the moment we stop being teachable and we think we're
past things, that's when we become vulnerable.
That's when our growth stops. Because the reality is when it
happens to you, we are all one crisis away from making
ourselves the main character. So the choice is yours.
Stay focused on your crisis and drain everyone or surrender it
to God and become a platform where God displays His glory.
Let's continue in verse 5. Now Jesus loved Martha and her
sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus
was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was
what he'd love them. Does your Bible say what He
stayed two days longer? That doesn't make sense.
For the three siblings, this only deepens their pain.
Lazarus isn't sick anymore, He's dead.
And Mary and Martha go from watching their brother be sick
to now grieving his loss. And they appealed to Jesus to
heal him. And Jesus didn't come.
If Jesus loved him, why didn't he come?
Why wait, knowing Lazarus is already dead and they're in
their grief? Have you been there?
You've given your crisis to Jesus and things didn't get
fixed. You found yourself crying out.
God, if you loved me, why didn't you show up?
The text gives the explanation Jesus delayed because he loved
them. That's our second principle for
today. Write this down.
God's delays reveal God's deeper love.
What we're seeing is delays God is seeing as revealing A deeper
purpose behind our pain. This is how God often writes.
He sometimes used delays on purpose so he can reveal more of
Jesus. By allowing Lazarus to die and
to stay dead, Jesus was setting up a platform so that only God
could be the one who could raise him.
Look back at verse 4. Jesus says this.
This illness is for the glory of God.
Before their message even reached Jesus, Lazarus has
already died. So why did Jesus wait two weeks
more? Two days more?
Well, you'd have to know Jewish burial customs.
See, when a Jewish person died, they would bury them the same
day. And for three days they believed
that there was a spirit that hovered over, looking for a way
to get back in. But on day 4, the body would
start to change, and the spirit would go.
And now death is final. Death is permanent.
Sounds morbid, sounds theological, sounds boring.
Who knows? The Princess Bride.
There we go, breath of fresh air.
This is a case of mostly dead versus all day.
Day one, Day 2, day three, Mary and Martha are going to go He's
dead, he can't talk, and Miracle Max is going to go Nope, he's
mostly dead, which is slightly alive.
Jesus waited for day 4 because on day four, mostly dead becomes
all day. So now as Jesus arrives on day
4, the miracle Max of Bethany can look at Jesus and go, well,
Rabbi, he's all dead. There's only one thing we can
do. Go through his clothes and look
for loose change. Four days in the tomb, no
possibility of revival by human means.
This wasn't cruelty. The delay was strategy.
Jesus wanted to ensure that when he raised Lazarus, it would be
unmistakable that only God could do such a thing.
If Jesus came and he healed Lazarus when he was sick, they
would say he was a good doctor. Jesus brought Lazarus back when
he was mostly dead. Miracle Max would have said he
was a great doctor. But to bring someone back, Four
days in the tomb, body decaying, all dead, no hope.
They could say that only God can do this.
Picture the scene, Mary and Martha, the sealed tomb.
They've been there for four days in their grief, 4 days asking
what if Jesus showed up? Four days and now the body
begins to decay and then Jesus shows up and he says roll away
the stone. They say it's too late, it
stinks in there. Then Jesus said, did I not tell
you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?
God's delays are not denials, they're setups for greater
glory. When He makes you wait, He's not
ignoring you. He is setting something up in
your life that you can't see yet.
Isaiah 3018 puts it this way. Therefore, the Lord waits to be
gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy
to you. Did you catch that?
The Lord waits. God sometimes delays on purpose.
He didn't abandon you, He's setting up something greater.
So when God doesn't show up on your timeline, it doesn't mean
He doesn't care. So in your delays, you can
interpret God's love by your circumstances, or you can
interpret your circumstances by God's love.
Now I know some of you are in here and you're thinking Lazarus
came back, but mine didn't. My marriage didn't.
My career didn't. My loved one didn't.
My health didn't. I can't promise that God would
bring back what you've lost. What I do know is that Lazarus
himself died again. Lazarus's resurrection was for
proving that Jesus had power over death.
Even if God doesn't resurrect your marriage, your dream, your
health, Jesus still has the power over death.
If you've lost someone you love, that grief is so raw and just in
your chest. When you breathe, your pain is
seen. God is not distant.
He's not punishing you. When Jesus came to the tomb, he
wept fully knowing that he was about to raise Lazarus.
Jesus grieves with you right now, the resurrection promises,
and that you'll get them back today.
It's that death does not get the final word.
John 1125 Jesus says I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
For the believer, physical death is not the end.
A believer's last breath on earth is immediately followed by
their first breath in eternity with Jesus.
God's purpose isn't always to change your circumstances, it's
to reveal who Jesus is through them.
Romans 818 would say. For I consider that the
sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the
glory that is to be revealed to us.
God's greatest work isn't removing pain, it's sustaining
you through it. Now there's one more perspective
shift and it might be the most challenging.
Let's look at verse 11, Jesus talking to his disciples.
After saying these things, he said to them, our friend Lazarus
has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.
The disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will
recover. Now Jesus had spoken of his
death, but they thought he meant taking rest in sleep.
Verse 14, Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died, and
for your sake I am glad that I was not there.
So that you may believe Jesus is glad he wasn't there, not glad
that Lazarus died, but that by Lazarus's death a greater thing
would be accomplished, that it would give evidence for everyone
to see that Jesus is God. Look again at verse 15 so that
you may believe Lazarus's story isn't about Lazarus, it's about
Jesus. Your story is not about you,
it's about Jesus. And that's our Third Point for
today. Write this down.
Your pain writes Jesus story for others.
God wants to use your suffering, not waste it.
Use it so that others would believe your pain.
Is the pen writing a story about Jesus that others will see?
Right now we have moments like this in our church.
Some of you are sick. Some of you are seeing family
members suffer. Some of you are seeing them die.
You're seeing your careers fail, your marriages fail.
You're seeing all of these things.
Here's what I need you to see. Your pain is not pointless.
God sees it and he wants to use it so that others would believe.
Your Co workers? They see how you handle that
impossible boss. Your neighbors, they notice how
you respond when life falls apart.
Your kids are asking, is your faith real when it costs you
something? Your friends wonder if this
whole Jesus thing still works. When the bottom falls out in
your life, this can be how you respond in your personal crisis.
It can mean how you respond to global and national tragedies.
I was a high school senior in New York City.
On September 11th, 2001. We were in homeroom.
We heard a rumor that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
Then we watched live on TV as the second plane hit just 10
miles north of us. And then the towers fell and the
announcement came over the speakers.
Anyone who has a family member working in the towers or a first
responder on duty, please come to the library.
I watched half my class stand up and walk out not knowing if
their family members were alive. In the days that followed, the
ashes from the rubble reigned over Staten Island for days.
Unspeakable tragedy. Yet from those ashes, God was
moving. In the days that followed, my
future pastor LED teams that provided care for the
firefighters responding, they provided food, care, comfort,
just a hug. And that movement became the
catalyst that would later birth Crossroads Church in Staten
Island, the church that eleven years later would become my
home. Crossroads is where I was.
Disciples, Crossroads is where I got my calling for ministry.
Crossroads is where I served for 10 years.
Hundreds have come to faith and still come to faith in Christ
because of Crossroads Church. It's the same church that was
born from the literal ashes of America's worst tragedy. 24
years later, God is still riding with those ashes because
crossroads exists. I'm here.
And because I am here, you are hearing this message.
When you stop asking why is this happening to me?
And you start asking who might believe because of how I respond
to this. That is how you take your
suffering and let it be a stage for God's glory.
Because here's the story God is writing with the pen of your
pain. He's writing that Jesus is
powerful enough to handle what you can't.
Jesus is loving enough to be trusted in the delay.
That Jesus is supreme over death itself.
And that story written through your suffering is what brings
people to faith, not your strength.
His in my life today. It's not pain free, but in the
pain God is still writing. I wake up in the mornings and
that emotional vampire wants to come back.
I want to be the main character again, but God reminds me.
My place in my story is as the supporting character and my
story is to be a life used by God so that others would believe
your crisis. Right now someone is watching
how you respond, and one day you will stand before Jesus and He
will show you everyone who has come to faith because you
allowed God to use your crisis so that they would believe that
you would see the glory fully revealed, that you would see the
full story. So until then, surrender your
pain, trust God's timing, and be the platform where Jesus
displays His glory. There's one more way God rides
with pain, the ultimate one. At the cross, everyone saw a
tragedy. The disciples saw their dream
destroyed. But God was revealing something
different. At the cross, God was writing
the ultimate story, your salvation.
See, Jesus died on the cross not because he deserved it, because
you do. On the cross, Jesus took the
punishment for your sin, for your rebellion against God.
He died, and on the third day he rose again, defeating death
itself. And maybe you're realizing right
now there is more to life than my pain.
Romans 10/9 says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved. If you'd like to surrender to
God today with every eye closed and with every head bowed,
repeat this prayer after me. Jesus, I know I am a Sinner.
I cannot save myself. I want you to save me and adopt
me into your family. I surrender everything to you,
my pain, my suffering, my circumstances.
I receive your promise of forgiveness and eternal life.
Be my Lord, please Jesus, if you just prayed that prayer for the
first time, would you be brave enough to raise your hand so I
can see? Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You can put your hands down and Amen everyone.
Let's look up here if you have put your faith in Christ.
Welcome to the family. In a moment, there's 2 tables in
the back that say I raised my hand.
We want to celebrate with you. We have a gift for you.
But for all of us, here's what you can do starting today.
First, respond differently. When you find yourself turning a
conversation back to your pain, stop.
Take a breath. Thank God for one thing in your
life, and let the conversation be about what the other person
has to say. Second, choose to trust God's
timing over your timeline. When anxiety hits about God's
silence, pray. Pray.
Lord, I choose to trust you in your timing.
Let His delays draw you closer to Him in your prayer life, in
your Bible study, in your devotion and desperation for
Him. Third, invite someone into your
crisis. Ask a trusted person this week
to pray. You don't have to have it all
together to simply say I am struggling and I need help.
Will you pray with me? Would you all stand with me?
Our prayer team is coming to the front right now.
You've come in with your pain, with your suffering.
You do not have to be alone with that.
Come to the altar, pray with our team.
Do not leave here the same if you put your faith in Christ.
Head back to those I raise my hand tables.
Now the rest of us. The altar is open.
You move as the Lord leaves church.