Dr. Roger Parrott, Belhaven University

We are halfway through our chapel series and today we are dealing with the issue of attacks and how do we cope with things when we are attacked and how do we hear God when we are attacked.

And this is a pretty tough topic, so I want to warn you this is not an easy one.

But if you missed some of the other topics and they are interesting to you, of hopelessness, anxiety, doubt, loneliness and the ones coming up, you can get them on our BU podcast or they're on Spotify and Amazon podcasts as well.

So you can pick them up there if those are topics of interesting.

But before we get started, I want to circle back to last week for just a minute if we can, talking about loneliness, because I heard from several of you this week with really some awfully nice expressions of how God spoke to you during that message that you need to make some hard decisions about friendship.

And it's not your BU friends where the problem is.

Your problem are friends back home.

But those decisions about friendships are hard.

But remember I said some of our most important choices have to do with friendships and who you invest in and more importantly, who you're going to follow.

And many people would make their life so much better if they would just change their friend group, but they don't because they're scared to death of being lonely.

But if you don't and you're with the wrong friend group, it's going to pull you down.

So have the courage, have the courage to make changes.

Focus on attributes, not just the activities you're involved in, the character of people, not just who friends are convenient, the strength of who somebody is to build you up, not just their status and what they mean to you for your eternal future, not just your entertainment value.

And make some of those hard choices.

And I encourage you to, because when you do, although loneliness is a risk, it will pay huge dividends to you.

But today we're going to talk about attacks and how do we hear and listen to God whom we're attacked.

So would you pray with me?

This is an important topic and let's focus.

Lord, speak to us through those who have gone before us in how to deal with attacks so we can honor you and we can strengthen and serve you better.

We know how to respond when we are attacked.

Your name, we ask it.

Amen.

Now, David, I told you last week was five times he was lonely.

And out of those five times, except for one, the time that he sinned terribly, the other four times it was because he was being attacked.

And I won't go through all Those again with you.

But he was being attacked.

And so we go back to Psalms again with David today, Psalm 27.

That was read for us to hear his cry during times of attack.

This is what David said.

Part of that he said, when evil people come to devour me, when my enemies and foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.

Though a mighty army surrounds me, my heart will not be afraid.

Even if I'm attacked, I will remain confident.

Today we're going to take the attacks David felt the emotion David felt and test them against the four steps of how Elijah learned to listen to God.

If you go back to the first chapel, we had an outline of how to listen to God.

There were four steps it.

And if you take those four steps and apply them to a text and you hear David's heart, you see how David essentially did those four things.

So just to remind you what they were.

In listening for God, we have to have a willingness to hear.

That's where it begins.

So often we don't want God's answer because we want an answer that's a lot more selfish.

And so we have to be willing to hear and we have to respond when God speaks.

Secondly, we have to ask God to direct us.

Too often our asking is a last resort.

We go to God last, after we've tried everything else we can come up with and it doesn't work.

And then we ask God.

No, we need to go to ask God, especially in attacks at the beginning.

We're going to talk about that in a minute.

And then we need to reflect on what we know.

Remember when Elijah finally heard the still small voice, first thing God said to him was, what are you doing here?

He asked him to reflect on what was going on in his life and what he knew.

And the answer is probably not some new insight out there someplace.

It's probably already what you know in your relationship with God.

And we'll look at that today.

And then we see that in David and then get close enough to hear, because if you're not close, you can't hear a whisper.

And then the whisper and the closeness with God is when we hear from.

From him.

So how do we hear for God in attacks?

Look at how David went through these four steps when he was attacked.

Now, I want to warn you about this chapel today.

This is not an easy topic.

The hardest time in your life to listen to God is when you're being attacked.

There isn't a tougher time to actually listen to God than when you're being attacked.

Why?

Because it's personal and it's emotional.

It's both.

And you wrap that together and it is hard to listen to God.

So let's go through the four steps.

First, we've got to be willing to respond and willing to hear.

David said this.

Wait patiently for the Lord.

Be brave and courageous.

Yes, wait patiently for the lord in verse 14.

Starting when you're attacked.

The hardest thing to do is where we need to start.

And that's to wait.

To wait.

You see, when you boil down attacks, attacks aren't about the insults.

Attacks aren't about the unfair things said.

The attacks aren't all the stuff that you eat.

See, on the surface, the attack is really a rejection.

When we're attacked, we're rejected.

You don't want me in your life.

You don't want friendship.

You're attacking me for who I am or what I believe, whatever it may be, attacking me because you don't understand.

And so our initial reaction is to fight back.

Of course it is.

We want to correct the wrong.

You're wrong for attacking me.

I'm going to fight back.

We want to reset the perception.

You're not seeing this right.

If you knew what I knew, if you knew the backstory that I know, you wouldn't believe that way.

Or we want to correct our reputation.

Mostly, we want to cope with our own hurt.

And too often people cope with their own hurt by fighting back.

And the last thing we want to do is wait.

We want to say, when we're attacked, you know, hold my Diet Coke, I'm going to take care of this right now.

Bring it on.

But God says wait.

And David learned to wait, to wait patiently for the Lord when attacked, we want immediate relief.

But God calls us to wait, to trust, to endure.

And that's why we don't want to hear it.

That's not what we want to hear.

We want to hear God's going to go slay them all.

Deliverance may not come immediately, but God's timing is always right.

And if we will learn to wait when we are attacked, it's amazing the difference it will make.

Now, we're not passive in this time of waiting, you see, because actively trusting God's timing is really hard to do.

You've really got to stay focused.

You've really got to be laser focused on it.

Because again, your instincts sort of flash out, your instincts sort of push back.

Because this is personal, this is emotional.

And so we are actively not engaging.

We're dialing it down.

We're putting everything in reset and that's hard to do.

At my house, I'm the IT director because my family doesn't know how to fix computers, and I don't know how to fix computers.

I don't know anything about them.

I run a Mac.

I don't know anything.

I've never read an instruction manual.

But here's what I do know.

Family comes in and says, my computer doesn't work.

My iPad doesn't work, whatever it may be.

I said, did you restart it?

No, I'm using it.

Shut it down and restart it.

Let it sit.

It's amazing how computers will fix themselves when you shut them down and restart them.

Almost everything works better when you unplug for a few minutes and let it reset.

And especially in times of attack, start there, start by.

Don't juice it up.

Just unplug for a few minutes, reset, and God will speak to you.

Well, when it attacks, we got to be willing to hear.

We got to be willing to hear, and we got to be willing to follow.

And that's going to take trust and that's going to take determination.

Because if you're attacked, well, let me say, when you're attacked, if we don't get it settled right at the beginning that we're going to ask God to help us, we're going to get into it, we're going to mix it up, and we're going to make it a whole lot worse before God ever gets a chance to help us.

So we've got to decide ahead of time that we're going to ask God to direct us.

So that's where we want to go in the next step.

We've got to ask God to direct us.

David asked to be in the presence of God.

This is an incredible scripture if you think about it.

He says, I want to be in your presence, God, rather than the presence of my attackers.

You see, because when you're attacked, we are in the presence of attackers.

When you're attacked, they own you.

They own you, and they're in your head and they're in your focus and they're in your thoughts until you get it settled.

And instead, David says he wanted to ask to be in the presence of God.

Instead, he said it this way.

He said, hear me as I pray, O Lord, be merciful and answer me.

My heart has heard you say, come and talk with me.

And my heart responds, lord, I'm coming to you.

God has promised to be there in our attacks, and it's not based on our Circumstances.

Maybe we deserve the attack.

And there's times of that.

Maybe we deserve it.

It's not based on our circumstances.

It's based on his character.

And God will be there.

This is the same David who wrote in Psalm 23 we looked at last week.

Through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me, you see, because here's the issue, and it boils down to this.

Attacks bring us to a fork in the road.

And at that time of attack, you can either seek God or you can seek revenge, but you're not going to do both.

You're going to go one way or the other, and you can feel justified in revenge.

Absolutely.

But it's not going to bring you healing.

And you're not going to be in the presence of the Lord seeking revenge.

If you want to be in the presence of God, you've got to seek him.

Revenge.

It's a destructive force.

Some people get revenge by attacking them the way they've been attacked.

I know people who are really proud of it.

They will say, if somebody strikes at me, I'm hitting them back harder than they ever hit me.

Never going to happen again because I'll hit them harder.

They think I'm the big guy.

I got it.

Is that seeking the presence of the Lord.

Of course it's not.

Some people, when they're attacked, get petty.

They get aggressive, passive aggressive.

They deal with it that way and they attack back in that kind of way.

Some people, they gossip or they try to hurt somebody else's reputation, or they triangulate friendships.

Who's going to pick what side in the attack and go through all that?

Some people try to get a psychological advantage and make the other person feel guilty or play mind games or give them some kind of false hope or whatever may be.

And if you're not in the presence of the God, that's where you're going to be.

Because it's a fork in the road and you're either going to pick God or you're going to pick revenge.

One of the two.

It's a choice to make at the time of being attacked.

You say, well, I want justice.

Well, justice punishes evil.

But I hate to tell you too much in this life, we don't get justice now, we'll get it in eternity.

God's justice is true.

And God's wheels of justice sometimes grind slowly, but they grind really fine.

And justice will eventually come.

But our justice system in the country, our legal justice system, pretty much built to protect the innocent more than it is to punish the guilty.

And so we often don't get justice.

So at this fork in the road, we got a major choice to make that defines us.

It doesn't define our attackers because revenge perpetrates evil.

It just snowballs evil.

It just responds evil for evil and forgiveness defeats evil.

And it's going to be one or the other.

And it's our choice to make.

So we have to ask God to direct this.

Now it's going to be a struggle to ask God to direct you because forgiveness is the only path to God.

And that's a hard thing to do.

And so we don't want to do it.

But that's what leads us to step three.

And that's to reflect on what we do know, especially in times of attack.

Most of the times we don't receive godly's wisdom in a vacuum.

God doesn't say something out of the blue we never ever imagined before.

And all of a sudden I see it clearly.

It doesn't happen very often.

Usually it comes out of scripture, we already know.

It's experiences we've had, prayer life, how godly people have treated you and interacted with you.

And you start to reflect on what you know rather than waiting for a thunderbolt.

And that's what Elijah did.

And that's how most often God speaks to us, when we reflect during times.

But during times of attack, that's hard to do because all of our senses change during times of attack, to a fight or flight moment and to an emotional response rather than a reasoned response.

And so it's hard to reflect in times of attack.

David said, the Lord is my light and my salvation, so why should I be afraid?

Like I am scared to death, but I know God's my light and my salvation, so why be afraid?

The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble?

You see, attacks pull us into darkness, but the Lord is our light.

Attacks make us feel vulnerable.

That's why we hate it so much.

But the Lord is our fortress and there's no danger there.

Our reflection in attacks requires us to give up our way because our way is to fight back.

But this really isn't an option.

In fact, Jesus was very clear with his disciples.

Jesus said this to his disciples.

He said, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me.

To give up my own way when I'm being attacked is to give up that part of me that is so evil, arrogant, that I believe because I've been attacked, my only option is to fight back.

But you know, when you do, resentment grows, and it takes hold in your life, and resentment builds.

Resentment's like a cancer.

It won't kill you all at once, but it'll kill you eventually, because it hurts you so much more than it hurts the person you feel resentful about.

Let's say Doug attacked me.

He never has, but if he did, and I could say, well, Doug, sorry you feel that way.

You didn't understand this, but it doesn't matter.

I just forgive you, and that's okay.

And you can forgive that person and move on.

But if you don't forgive that person, what happens is Doug never should have said that.

He doesn't know.

If Doug knew what I dealt with, he would never have said that.

And you start to build a resentment, and that resentment grows.

So every time I see Doug, I think about what he said, and every time I hear his music, I don't like it more and more because of what he said, and the resentment goes.

It doesn't hurt him one bit.

He doesn't even know.

All this stuff's going on in my head, right?

But it's going on in my head because resentment is taking place.

Hold.

Resentment hurts you so much more than the person you won't forgive.

So we've got to reflect.

We've got to reflect.

And it's hard at that moment because you want to say, well, look what they did to me.

When you say that, I hate to tell you, but I want to say, so what Jesus said, look what they did to me.

Look what they did to me.

I led a sinless life.

I came to love and to care and to heal the sick.

And they crucified me and they beat me and they called me horrible things that weren't justified one bit.

And what did Jesus teach us to do?

Turn the other cheek.

Even on the cross, in the midst of all that, Jesus said, father, forgive them, because they really don't understand what they're doing.

They don't really understand why they're doing this.

So just forgive them.

You see, the bottom line is somebody else may have started the fight in your life, but you can finish the fight with forgiveness.

And in forgiveness, the fight is over.

And that brings us to step four.

It's a time to get closer to God that's really like no other.

Now, all attacks are unfair for the most part.

It's pretty rare that you get a reasonable attack.

Yeah, you're right.

I'm sorry.

I Shouldn't have done that or whatever.

Usually they're unfair.

In fact, David says that in this psalm.

He says, I love this line of this psalm.

He says, they accuse me of things I've never done.

They don't understand.

They don't know the whole story.

They don't know the real me.

If somebody attacks you, they for sure aren't seeing you as a child of God.

Because if they saw you as a child of God, why in the world would they attack you ever?

Even with all the faults you might have or justify, you see?

But the bottom line of life is you can't change anybody but yourself.

You're the only person you can change.

You may wish you could change other people.

It's not going to happen.

You can only change you.

And so during this time of attacks, you've got to be close enough to God that you can change you.

Because attacks make us feel unstable.

Life's going along pretty good.

We're focused on our goals.

We're playing on our team.

We're in the play.

We're dancing.

We're doing whatever it may be.

We got a project going on.

We got this.

Things are happy and good and somebody attacks us.

And all of a sudden it just falls apart, doesn't it?

That consumes us, and we feel unstable and they attack us.

Unfair.

Here's what it is.

When we feel unfairly attacked, we have to remember we are unfairly loved.

Let me say that one again.

I won't put it on the screen.

When we are unfairly attacked, we must remember we are unfairly loved.

God's grace is not fair.

That's why grace is so amazing.

God has forgiven me.

And so who in the world am I to not forgive you?

You see, forgiveness is a decision.

If you're waiting when you get attacked, if you're waiting for that feeling of forgiveness to come over you, you're going to be waiting a long, long time.

It's not going to happen.

But forgiveness is a decision.

But here's the problem with the decision.

I could say I'm going to forgive Doug for whatever he said.

I don't think he'd say anything bad.

But if he could, I'm going to forgive him for that.

And I forgive today.

But it comes back to me next time I see him.

It comes back to me when he plays the piano.

It comes back to me when he sends me an email.

Instead of focusing on being attacked, I got to focus on how much I've been forgiven over and over and over again.

Because forgiveness doesn't happen overnight.

That's not how it works.

When we've been attacked.

When we've been attacked, it hurts too deeply and is rooted too far in to be eradicated.

To just say, I forgive you.

We'll move on like it never happened.

You may say that, but it is not true.

It's going to take you some time.

And so you've got to forgive every time you thought you had it behind you.

It'll come up again if you don't.

And this is what Peter and the disciples talked to Jesus about.

There's a great passage in scripture where they talk to Jesus about this.

And now Peter, you know, he's always wanted to be up front.

He always wanted to have all the answers.

So Peter offers this thing to Jesus and he thinks he's being really magnanimous, really generous.

He says, how should we forgive?

Should I forgive somebody seven times?

And I'm sure when Peter said that, he thought, Jesus is going to love this.

I'm willing to do it seven times.

He's going to think I'm amazing.

And Jesus said, no, not seven times.

Seven times, 70 times is how to forgive.

When you forgive the same person for their attack about 500 times, their attack will finally have no control in your life.

It'll be gone.

But it may take about 500 times.

See, Jesus is really smart.

He knows our sinful nature.

But it's hard to listen to God when you feel an attack, and it's hard to forgive.

And Jesus knows we've got to do it over and over and over again in order to draw closer to him.

Listening for God in attacks will test us about tougher than anything else.

It's a time we got to dig deep.

You got to be willing to hear from God, so you got to dig deep.

You got to want God more than you want revenge.

You got to want it more.

And if you don't want it more, the revenge is going to take over.

It needs to be decided ahead of time because this is too personal, this is too emotional.

When you get attacked, your initial reaction is going to be to lash out.

You got to decide ahead of time.

If I get attacked, I'm going to ask God what to do.

And it's probably going to be to wait.

You got to learn each time around, reflect on it.

I told you, I've been attacked a lot through my life.

You can't be in a public role like I am and not be attacked in an institution where everybody's got a different opinion.

I can't please everybody.

I wish it could, but it can't please everybody.

And so I get attacks.

But, you know, they don't hurt now like they used to.

They really don't.

They roll off pretty quick.

Because I've been through the cycle so many times, over and over.

And each time you do, you learn more.

And God's closer each time.

You draw closer to God when it happens, and the attacks won't matter as much.

Make that your prayer, because God promises it.

And say it with me.

No eye has seen, no ear is heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him, even in attacks.

God bless.

Have a good day.