Life in a Nutshell (Part 1) – Jamie Rasmussen – 8-4-2013

Jamie Rasmussen, Head Pastor of Scottsdale Bible Church, took a brief hiatus from his series on Galatians to preach on “Life in a Nutshell.”  This 2 week series is a study of Job and what God wants us to know about life and living for Him.

Jamie’s main point this week is that Life is filled with circumstances that are not fair.

We see this illustrated through Job’s story.  Job was a blameless man (Not blameless as in PERFECT.  He was a sinner like all of us.  But he was blameless as in “undefiled, complete, upright.”)  The catastrophies and calamities that came upon Job had NOTHING to do with what Job did or did not do.

In other words, by earthly standards Job didn’t deserve what happened to him.

As Jamie preached, he made the point that none of us will ever live a “fair” life.  (As for me, I’m pretty grateful for that!  If I received what I deserved I suspect things wouldn’t go well for me at all.  But I digress…)

So what can we do in response to this knowledge?  We have two choices:

1. Demand/Expect life to be fair.  This was Job’s friends’ philosophy (Read Job 8:3-6)

2. Accept the fact that life will NOT be fair all of the time and adjust our expectations accordingly.

We need to understand that when circumstances are beyond our control, they’re beyond our control.

Next week in Part 2, Pastor Jamie will walk us through what God has to say about all of this.  I can’t wait!

My Takeway:

I totally GET this sermon and was SO grateful that Jamie preached on this.  There have been many times in my life when I could truly relate to Job (Hey…we ALL can when it comes to facing adversity, right?)  But I’ve lived it out…what it looks like to try to make life fair.  And that’s REALLY not a pretty way to go.

When I finally gave my life up to TOTAL submission and surrender to Christ, that’s when I learned to have Job’s attitude of worship in spite of the difficulties.

I’ve seen with my own eyes and felt with my own heart the differences between living in such a way as to look for the “why” behind things and letting go completely and trusting God with ALL circumstances.  I lived as a single mom for 8 years.  During that time I knew 4 years of wealth, success, and abundance – and 4 years of barely making it by.  4 years of building up the things this world says we should have – and 4 years of losing it all.

It wasn’t until I realized that my life had one purpose – to live God’s will – that I stopped trying to make sense of my circumstances.  HE can do with my life whatever He chooses.  I was bought with a price when Jesus died on the cross.  When I accepted that, my life was no longer my own.  It now belongs fully to God.  So who am I to question circumstances?

At any rate, this message is one that I get fully behind!  The message to rise above circumstances and understand that life will not always be ideal but IS always worth it is the driving message behind the Strong Single Mom Network (an organization I founded and launched in 2010 to help Single Moms.)

My takeaway is to remember this message. And to encourage you to see what I see – what Job saw – that a life lived in full surrender to God’s will IS a life that God can use!  And in the end of this life, we’ll stand before the Lord.  The circumstances of this life will fade away, and what will be left is God’s glory.  So live for God’s glory!

Life in a Nutshell, Part I from Scottsdale Bible Church on Vimeo.