#269 - How to Laugh Through Your Tears

Hello friends, Wayne Stiles here.

You know the only thing harder than waiting on God?

It's wishing you had.

Well that's why I'm excited to host a Bible conference next year

on the topic of waiting on God from the life of Joseph in Genesis.

The dates will be June 12-15, 2025

and the conference will be at the beautiful Glen Eyrie Conference Center in Colorado Springs.

And joining me to lead in worship and to give a concert one evening will be my friend, Fernando Ortega.

Give me Jesus.

You can have all this world.

Give me Jesus.

I hope you'll join me, my wife Kathy, and my team for a wonderful weekend together.

Space is very limited, so take a moment before you listen to the podcast and go to events.waynestyles.com.

That's events.waynestyles.com.

Hello and welcome to Live the Bible. My name is Wayne Stiles, and this is the weekly podcast that

helps you connect the Bible to your life. In this episode, we talk about how to laugh through your

tears. I know that sounds sort of strange, but tears in this life are a given. The challenge

is how do we find genuine joy in the midst of those tears? Although it isn't easy, it is possible,

And the book of 1 Peter gives us a wonderful insight

into how we can actually do it. Such a practical portion of scripture for this day in our lives.

Well, I'll be back in a bit with more, but for now, let's get into this week's podcast.

I'll never forget the day when Kathy and I took our girls to Oklahoma. We've been to Beaver's Bend

National Park quite a few times. I don't know how many times, a bunch,

through the years. And one of the times we were there, our younger daughter, Katie, was just

learning to ride a bike. And we would always take our bikes with us. I mean, it looked like

Grapes of Wrath going down the highway. We'd have our bikes strapped on and every which way. We'd

get there, unload the bikes, and Katie just learned how to ride without her training wheels.

and at Beaver's Bend there are hills galore

and she was riding her bike

and I happened to be at the bottom of the hill

looking up and here she came.

No training.

wheels, no brakes, just 100 miles an hour straight down.

And you know, you look at your child's face,

and you can tell that face that says, I am not in control.

And anyway, so she comes blazing down the hill,

and I can tell she's going to come right by me.

Well, I notice there's a ditch right there.

And so this is not going to end well.

So as she comes by me, I just reach down and grab her and pull her off the bike and just kind of toss her up.

The bike goes sailing off into the abyss, and Katie flops down on the ground right beside me perfectly fine, except a little hurt.

She hopped up hotter than a hornet.

Daddy, why did you do that?

And I just simply pointed to the abyss.

And she didn't.

put the two together. Really, I mean, she just didn't get it. She thought I'd knocked her off her bike.

But didn't understand why I had knocked her off her bike. And as the years gone by, I've never

forgot that incident, particularly because it plays such a profound metaphor to us and our

Heavenly Father. Because I don't know if you've figured it out yet in life. I haven't. Every once

in a while I'll catch a glimpse of the truth, but the reality is we're not in control either.

We are headed down a hill with no brakes and no training wheels. And our Heavenly Father

is all that stands between us and the abyss. And often, God's method for saving us is hurting

us. And that's

a challenge because our assumption is that Father

protect us from all pain. This is what we expected and experienced a lot from our earthly fathers.

But when our Heavenly Father crawls outside of that, and in addition to all the blessings like

heaven and salvation and stuff, He gives us a blessing of a trial or a tribulation.

it gives us what you might call a spiritual pause.

One lady said this to Dr. Les Carter.

I was raised in a conservative church where we were taught to seek God's guidance,

but I've concluded that all that teaching was a crock.

Where was God when I needed him?

Why didn't he give me a better family?

Why didn't he let me marry better men?

God knew what was going to happen to me.

He could have stopped it, but instead, he's letting me wallow in my misery.

It's not fair.

Now, it's real easy to hear this woman's words and to, you know, want to quote a bunch of

verses.

But the reality is, we've all said those things, haven't we?

We have experienced the disappointment, the disillusionment of the Christian life as it

is, as opposed to how we had hoped it would be, or to how we at least pray that it would

be.

The Christian life should bring the good things in life, right?

God's powerful love should protect us from having challenging families, or lost jobs, or lost children, or just pain in general.

But the reality is, his love for us often allows great pain.

I want to invite you to turn with me to a brand new book, to 1 Peter.

as we finish the gospel of Mark

which in a sense is sort of the Gospel of Peter because Mark was Peter's disciple,

and much of what's reflected in the Gospel of Mark sort of has a Peter slant in it,

especially right there at the very end where the angel includes Peter in the forgiveness

of the disciples and the reconciliation that they would experience with Jesus.

So I think it's appropriate also to go to something that Peter actually wrote.

Now understand, 1 Peter was written toward the end of Peter's life.

Peter and his denial of Jesus happened in April of A.D. 33.

1 Peter was written in the 60s, so some 30 years later.

So Peter's had a lot of time to think back through his experience with Christ.

He's had a lot of time with Christians.

in churches. He's had a lot of time to ponder and mull over and mature a lot of the things

that he experienced both in the Gospels as well as the book of Acts. I don't know if

you noticed, but when we get to the book of Acts, the fact that the Holy Spirit has come

helps a lot, but you still see Peter is Peter. He's still sort of, I mean, now he's bold

as before he was running and hiding.

Now he's bold, but he's still bold sometimes and a bit brash and still fears people.

We see that very clearly in a number of cases.

But 1 Peter, we have not only just Peter's words, Peter's courage, but Peter inspired.

Peter inspired as the Holy Spirit flows through this godly elderly fisherman

and Peter records his great

We're actually going to go, Lord willing, through 1st and 2nd Peter, and if I've done

the math right, this ought to take us all the way to the Christmas season.

So great, great books.

I made a chart, but I didn't have it ready for you, for Lisa to include this week, so

I'll give it to her for this next week, and we'll kind of go through that.

So if you don't mind waiting on an overview a little bit more for next week, we'll go

through just the first part of the first chapter one and still get a good sense of what this book's

about. And certainly it's relevance for us in a life that is riddled with suffering.

Peter, 1 Peter, is written to people, to Christians who are suffering. And it's not

written to them to tell them how to get out of suffering, but rather how to make it through it.

You know, there's a number of Johns in the Bible.