Faith, Obstacles that Test

That old cell phone? Dead laptop? Gaming console from 14 years back? Britain’s Royal Mint is turning tech trash into treasure. A cellphone's motherboard, for example, contains gold, because it needs to conduct electricity well. Seventeen and a half cell phones yield enough gold to produce a wedding band.

Eshe Nelson writes in a NewYork Times article: "The mint expects to process about 4,500 tons of e-waste, which includes circuit boards from televisions, computers and medical equipment, each year." The process is arduous: "the gold is leached from the circuit boards in a patented solution, which oxidizes the gold to make it soluble. The solution, saturated with gold, goes through another chemical process to make the gold solid again. It looks surprisingly like ground coffee, but 100 grams is worth about $8,405. That powder is refined till it is 99.9 percent pure, formed into long rods, then heated and cooled to make it malleable. The result in the hands of an artist: a pair of 9-karat gold hoop earrings worth $1,000.

Possible Preaching Angle:
The intense work to refine gold is nothing compared to the refining process that God uses to refine the faith of believers.

In a remarkable story of perseverance and hope, a 47-year-old mother of five from Cookeville, Tennessee, has graduated from Tennessee Tech University after losing her sight in 2020. Despite the challenge of blindness, Amanda Juetten graduated magna cum laude, refusing to let her condition define her or limit her aspirations. “I want people to know that blindness doesn’t have to stop you from pursuing your dreams,” said Juetten.

Throughout her studies, she relied on assistive technology, the support of her family, and her own determination to overcome obstacles. “There were days when I felt overwhelmed, but I kept telling myself, ‘You can do this,’” she said. One professor remarked, “Her dedication to her education and her family is truly extraordinary.” Another classmate added, “She’s shown all of us what’s possible when you refuse to give up, no matter the circumstances.”

Now a proud graduate, Juetten plans to use her degree to advocate for the blind community and help others facing similar challenges. “I want to be a voice for those who feel unseen,” she explained. Her story is a testament to the power of determination and the importance of never losing sight of one’s dreams, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we refuse to let our limitations define us, we are called to trust that God’s purpose for our lives remains—He can use our greatest challenges as platforms for His glory.

When talking about the harms of social media today, one of the first problems people mention is FOMO—fear of missing out. Scroll through Instagram and see your friends having fun at a party you weren’t invited to. Check Snapchat to find everyone’s Bitmojis together on Snap Map without you. This feeling of constantly missing out, we’re told, is a major cause of anxiety and depression for Gen Z.

But that’s not true anymore. More often, it’s the opposite. We want to avoid the risk, the rejection, the awkwardness, the effort, and energy that the real world demands. Our major problem isn’t fear of missing out. It’s fear of taking part.

Look at how many young people are scared of doing everyday things. Not just fear of learning to drive, or getting a job—but scared to order in restaurants. Can’t walk into a cafe. Don’t want to open their door for a delivery. Under the hashtag #socialanxiety on TikTok, which has nearly 3 billion views, young people are sharing symptoms, describing debilitating anxiety, even recording their panic attacks in public.

One British TikToker hosts a series called “Doing Things You’re Afraid of To Show You It’s Okay.” In the series, she films herself facing challenges like getting in an elevator, asking for help in a supermarket, and asking for directions. It’s great to see someone working on their anxiety — but what’s alarming is how popular these videos are, and how many users say they have the same fears. Meanwhile forums like r/socialanxiety on Reddit–which has over 400,000 members–are filled with teenagers and young adults admitting that they are afraid of the real world. They feel much more comfortable online.

Many young people even fear making phone calls, and avoid it as much as possible. One study from last year found that 90% of Gen Z say they have “phone anxiety,” writing down scripts before they speak.

Across social media, there’s also a growing celebration of missing out. The phrase “JOMO” (Joy of Missing Out) is catching on, along with TikToks, tweets, and memes about the relief of cancelled plans. They say this is about wellness and self-care but that just sounds nicer than self-isolation. Missing out is good for our mental health, we tell ourselves. We’re better off inside.

Gen Z is the first generation who had a phone-based childhood, who spent their formative years in a pandemic, who have had less face-to-face interaction than any other in history. The only world they’ve ever known is one where they can get everything they need without interacting with another human: self-service checkouts, delivery apps, online porn, online lectures, and online communities.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The only thing scarier than the real world is never being brave enough to enter it. The life to be afraid of is the one unlived. Learn to trust God and live life. Discover the gifts and abilities that God has given to you. Get up. Get out. Give it all you’ve got. Fear missing out again. And then refuse to do it any longer.

As a young adult, writer Andrew Leland was diagnosed with a rare disorder that caused him to become blind. In a New Yorker article, he notes that throughout history people have either bullied or coddled visually impaired people. But he gives an example of one school that empowers the blind by challenging them to achieve new heights of independence. Leland writes:

In 2020, I heard about a residential training school called the Colorado Center for the Blind, in Littleton. The C.C.B. is part of the National Federation of the Blind and is staffed almost entirely by blind people. Students live there for several months, wearing eye-covering shades and learning to navigate the world without sight. The N.F.B. takes a radical approach to cultivating blind independence. Students use power saws in a woodshop, take white-water-rafting trips, and go skiing. To graduate, they have to produce professional documents and cook a meal for sixty people.

The most notorious test is the “independent drop”: a student is driven in circles, and then dropped off at a mystery location in Denver, without a smartphone. (Sometimes, advanced students are left in the middle of a park, or the upper level of a parking garage.) Then the student has to find her way back to the Colorado Center, and she is allowed to ask one person one question along the way. A member of an R.P. support group told me, “People come back from those programs loaded for bear”—ready to hunt the big game of blindness. Katie Carmack, a social worker with R.P., told me, of her time there, “It was an epiphany.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, our heavenly Father will stretch us by “dropping” us into challenging situations.

In an issue of CT magazine, author and college president Krish Kandiah writes:

One of my earliest memories is of holding my mother’s hand on my first day of school. I was so nervous as I entered the classroom that I wouldn’t let go. The warmth of her fingers reassured me as my heart pounded in my chest. When I felt scared and alone, she was my lifeline and my security.

I was reminded of that day a few years ago as I sat in a dark room, once again holding my mother’s hand. The silence was deafening as I strained to hear the muted words coming from the dehydrated mouth of a woman whose body had been ravaged by cancer. This time my mother held on to my hand, seeking reassurance from its warmth in her time of distress. The comforter had become the comforted.

Those were heartbreaking days. One moment I was praying for a miraculous recovery, the next for the end to come quickly. I was also haunted by God’s conspicuous absence. What I would have given during those long, languishing hours for his still, small voice of calm.

Turkish theologian Ziya Meral, writes: Where is God when millions of his children are being persecuted in the most brutal ways? Why does he keep silent in the middle of persecution but speak loudly in the middle of conferences with famous speakers and worship bands? I have prayed many times like Luther: “Bless us, Lord, even curse us! But don’t remain silent!”

Meral’s struggles eventually led him to consider Jesus’ own experience: “The greatest glory Jesus brought to God was not when he walked on the water or prayed for long hours, but when he cried in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and still continued to follow God’s will. (He did so) even though it meant isolation, darkness, and the silence of God. Thus, we know that when everything around us fails, when we are destroyed and abandoned, our tears … are the greatest worship songs we have ever sung.”

Vivian Prodan was born in Communist Romania under the brutal totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceauescu (“Chow-sches-coo”). A place where questioning a government directive could lead to imprisonment, physical torture, and death. The best way to avoid trouble was to remain silent and try to blend in. But Vivian became obsessed with finding the truth. After graduation, she went to law school and became an attorney. Vivian writes:

One evening a client came in to discuss some paperwork. He radiated joy and peace and without thinking, I confessed, “I wish I had your sense of peace and happiness.” He asked, “Do you go to church?” “Yes,” I replied. “On Christmas and Easter. Why?” He said, “Would you like to come with me to my church this Sunday?”

The next Sunday I visited his church. The pastor read John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life.” I could not believe what I heard. Someone was claiming to be the truth? I felt as though the verses he shared were written specifically for me. For the first time in my life, everything made sense. I accepted the pastor’s invitation to trust in Christ as Lord and Savior. From that moment on, I would dedicate my life to pursuing and speaking the truth, no matter the cost.

Vivian began defending fellow Christians facing imprisonment for transporting Bibles across the Romanian border, sharing their faith, or worshiping privately in their own homes. This quickly made her a target. Many days her tires were slashed. She was kidnapped, bullied, pushed into moving traffic, and beaten by the secret police. However, the greatest test was yet to come.

Late at night my legal assistant peeked into my doorway: “A big man in the waiting room says he wants to discuss a case. That’s all he will tell me.” I was taken aback at how enormous he was. As he sat down in front of my desk, a sneer formed at the corner of his mouth. Slowly, he reached into a shoulder holster, drawing a gun.

He aimed his gun at me and said, “You have failed to heed the warnings you’ve been given. I’ve come here to finish the matter once and for all.” I heard a distinctive click. “I am here to kill you.”

I was alone with my killer. And yet, I was not. I began silent, fervent prayers, recalling God’s promises. His Spirit breathed peace into my panicked heart. Then I sensed his message: “Share the gospel.” I knew that behind those hate-filled eyes he had an immortal soul, and he needed to know about the love God has shown in Jesus Christ. At once emboldened, “Have you ever asked yourself: Why do I exist? or What is the meaning of my life?”

He slid his gun back into the holster. Vivian leaned forward. “You are here because God put you here, and he has put you to a test. Will you abide in God or in the will of a man—President Ceauescu?” His eyes softened.

Hebrews 9:27 says, “People are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” But the good news is that God has prepared a way out for every one of us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

As she continued to talk with him, he appeared more peaceful. Finally, he said, “You are right. The people who sent me here are crazy. I do need Christ.” He promised, “I will come to your church as a secret brother in Christ. I will worship your powerful God.”

And with that, my killer walked away saved—a brother in Christ. He went on to enroll in seminary, and we have even kept in touch. He, like me, had found the Truth. And neither of us will be afraid to speak it ever again.

Sales were stagnant at the insurance company where Daniel P. Amos worked as the chief executive. So, he decided to take a huge risk with a novel ad campaign that poked fun at the company’s name. The TV commercials featured an obnoxious white duck often getting injured and then loudly quaking “Aflaaaac.” The little-known business soon became a household name. Aflac’s stagnant US sales doubled between 1999 and 2003.

Amos told The Wall Street Journal that leading a company always involves taking risks. He said, “I like to manage risks [since] everything we do is risk related. [If you avoid risks] you are really not taking a broad enough perspective for a company to succeed.”

Amos, now 70, learned to evaluate risks while studying risk management and insurance at the University of Georgia’s business school. Among his risk-taking advice he gave this nugget: Never risk a lot for a little. He added that he lives by that risk principle every day of his life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Many things about following, serving, and leading for Jesus involve risk. We can’t avoid it. But with Jesus we never have to worry about risking a lot for a little. Our risks for him are always worth it.

Braulia Ribeiro shares how God taught a first-time missionary group to depend on him:

In 1983, I was part of a first-time team of Brazilian young people going to plant a mission station among the Paumarí. I was chosen because I had some training in the Paumari language with the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

We traveled on a small boat to reach Lábrea. From there to a small river where the Paumarí were, there were no transport boats available. We would have to hire a private boat to take us there. We would be the first missionaries to reach this particular village.

The only money our little team had left was a few hundred dollars we put aside to buy supplies and food to stay in the jungle for three months. “What do we do, Lord? Should we just stay here waiting?” I felt that I had received Matthew 13:46 from God. It said, “he went away and sold everything he had.” Is God saying that we have to use all our money to pay for the boat ride?

And that was exactly how things went. We hired the owner of the smallest boat we could find. The price he charged amounted to the exact figure we’d saved. We set out with food for only the short trip, no kerosene, or other supplies. After five-day trip we found a man with a large canoe that was available to take us the rest of the way to Maniçoã Lake.

We got out of the canoe in front of the first hut. I shouted from the land in my broken Paumarí, “Ivaniti?” – “Is that you?” An old woman answered me from the top, “Ha’ã hovani!” – “Yes, it’s me!” She did not seem to find it strange to hear me speaking her language.

We all climbed up to the hut and sat ceremoniously on the floor. After a good hour of conversation about the trip, she asked what we were there to do. I said, “We are missionaries. We want to help you to know Jesus, the Son of God.” The lady looked at me with a puzzled expression and started shouting for her grandson, Danilo. “Come over, Danilo. The missionaries have arrived. Take them to their home.”

“Our home?” I asked. She pointed to an empty tall hut nearby. “Danilo and I built this hut two summers ago, preparing for your arrival. We heard in the radio about the Creator God, and how his Son, Jesus, wants to help us. I said, ‘If that is true, he will send us his people.’ So we built the hut for you.”

We were placed in our “home,” and from that day on, we were fed with abundant fish, manioc flour, and jungle fruits. For the whole six months we stayed with the Paumarí we were well taken care of, never needing a cent of the money we applied to renting the boat. We had nothing to offer them except ourselves, and that was all they needed.

Noriyuki Morita developed spinal tuberculosis when he was two years old. It was so severe that he was hospitalized for nine years. He was told that he would never walk again, but he eventually learned how to walk again at the age of 11, when a surgeon fused four vertebrae in his spine. As an adult, he gave up his job in engineering and became a stand-up comedian as well as becoming a member of the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improvisational group. He eventually went on to become a very successful actor and was Oscar-nominated for his performance as Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Paul says “In my weakness I find my strength” (2 Cor. 12:7-9). You may have struggled with the circumstances of your life. Try to embrace them. Allow yourself to be shaped by them. Perhaps your weakness will become a unique strength.

Mariam Aly, an assistant professor at Columbia University, has tried everything to keep her students from cheating. In her cognitive neuroscience class, she gives her students a week to complete an open-book exam. And, as part of that exam, the nearly 180 students in the class have to sign an honor code.

But they're still cheating. And dealing with student misconduct is the worst part of her job. Aly says, "It's just awkward and painful for everybody involved. And it's really hard to blame them for it. You do feel disappointed and frustrated. Students are facing unprecedented levels of stress and uncertainty.”

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077--more than three times the previous year's number. At the Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before.

Annie Stearns will be a sophomore this fall at St. Mary's College of California, where misconduct reports doubled last fall over the previous year. During the pandemic, the challenges of learning online were entwined with social isolation and additional family responsibilities. On top of that, tutoring services and academic resources scaled back or moved online. Some students, facing Zoom burnout, stopped asking for help altogether. Stearns explains, “If you're in class, and then you have to go to office hours, that's another Zoom meeting. And if you have to go to the writing center, that's another Zoom meeting. People would get too overwhelmed with being on video calls and just opt out.”

The story goes on to say, “We're going through such an unprecedented time that (cheating is) bound to happen. They prefer to take the shortcut and risk getting caught than have an email conversation with their professor because they're too ashamed to be like, 'I need assistance.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We are living in unique and extremely stressful times. Each of us will be tested in various ways, whether in academic honesty, sexual purity, substance abuse, apathy, depression, or anger issues. We must keep trusting God and lean on his strength and his Spirit to “pass the test.”

In an interview about his book (2020), apologist Timothy Paul Jones was asked:

In your final chapter, you talk about how one barrier to the faith is the way Christians, both throughout history and today, have used the Bible in ways that are abusive to the Bible. So many today find it difficult to trust a book that was used to justify the Crusades or used to justify chattel slavery. How would you answer the individual who’s struggling with that objection?

Jones replied:

Well my answer is the Beatles’ White Album. As we all know, the Beatles’ White Album, especially the song “Helter Skelter” was used by Charles Manson as an excuse for the Manson murders. He felt like the White Album was calling him to commit all of these murders, and yet nobody has ever indicted Paul McCartney for those murders. And the reason that they haven’t is because of the fact that the misuse of the White Album doesn’t reflect on its creator. Just because the White Album was misused doesn’t mean the creator of it was at fault. And I think we have to help people recognize that: The Bible is used [to justify terrible things]. But was it rightly used for these things?

In 1960, two men made a bet. There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager. The first man was Bennett Cerf, the founder of Random House. The second man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss. Cerf proposed the bet and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words.

Dr. Seuss took the bet and won. The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Since publication, it has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history.

At first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke. A talented author plays a fun game with 50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story and the lessons in it can help us become more creative and stick to better habits over the long-run.

What Dr. Seuss discovered through this little bet was the power of setting constraints. Con­straints are not the enemy. Every artist has a limited set of tools to work with. Every athlete has a limited set of skills to train with. Every entrepreneur has a limited amount of resources to build with. Once you know your constraints, you can creatively figure out how to work with them.

There are a lot of authors who would complain about writing a book with only 50 words. But there was one author who decided to take the tools he had available and make a work of art instead.

Possible Preaching Angles:

God has also given us constraints, such as, lack of education, lack of resources, a painful past, a besetting sin, or physical disabilities. But as we rely on God to overcome, we showcase his power and bring glory to him (2 Cor. 12:7-9).

Much of the world looks upon the adrenaline junkies who jump out of "perfectly good airplanes" as crazy, but jumping from 25,000 feet without a parachute or wingsuit? That would just be suicide, right? Not anymore. Luke Aikins plummeted from an airplane at 25,000 feet without any kind of parachute, landing neatly in a square 100-foot by 100-foot net set up to catch him. He landed at a terminal velocity of 120 mph. Utterly crazy and even stupid, right? The guy has a wife and a four-year-old son.

But there is another angle to this story. Aikins was clear that this stunt involved a ridiculous amount of training. For starters, the 42-year-old has over 18,000 jumps to his name. Then according to CNN, "He prepared for the stunt by doing dozens of jumps—each, naturally, wearing a parachute—aiming at a 100 square foot target, opening his chute at the last possible moment. In his practice jumps he would pull the cord at 1,000 feet, something he had to get special dispensation for. He said in the runup to the jump that he had consistently been hitting a much smaller target, giving him greater leeway with the full-sized net."

As Aikins said, "Whenever people attempt to push the limits of what's considered humanly possible, they're invariably described as crazy. I'm here to show you that if we approach it the right way and we test it and we prove that it's good to go, we can do things that we don't think are possible." Okay, so the guy still might be insane, but he does have a good point: Proper training will get you to places you never thought possible.

Possible Preaching Angles: Faith isn't just a blind leap into the dark. It is always a step that involves risk, but it is also based on good and sufficient reasons.

Oscar Isaac, the dashing X-Fighter pilot Poe Dameron of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was raised in an evangelical household. "My dad was a man of extremes," he told GQ magazine. "So if God spoke to my father one day and said we were not supposed to have a TV in the house, it was suddenly gone." Isaac, who would play the father of Jesus in the 2006 The Nativity Story, did not have the faith of his father. He describes his religious separation as a "slow amputation." Dameron says religion is akin to the acting experience:

A director is always thinking, "What is the right combination of words that I can say that will unlock the right response in you? If I can say the right thing, it will unlock this thing in you, but if I say it wrong, the opposite will happen." Religion is a very similar thing. Like, somebody was meditating long enough that they put the right sentence together and thought, "If you say these words in exactly this way, you'll know how to live, but you have to say it exactly like this."

Kayla Mueller, 26 years old, was captured by ISIS, and on February 10, 2015 U.S. officials confirmed that Muslim extremists had murdered her while in captivity. In the spring of 2014 as a captor she wrote to her family. The letter begins with Kayla's assurance that she has been treated well, and is "in a safe location, completely unharmed + healthy." The 26-year-old aid worker goes on to apologize touchingly to her family for the suffering that she has put them through because of her captivity. Then comes her central proposition: "I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator b/c literally there was no else."

Kayla, who was involved in the campus ministry at Northern Arizona University, goes on to relate how "by God + by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall." She adds: "I have been shown in darkness, light + have learned that even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it."

She concluded, "Please be patient, give your pain to God. I know you would want me to remain strong. That is exactly what I am doing. Do not fear for me, continue to pray as will I. By God's will we will be together soon. All my everything, Kayla"

The great British physicist Stephen Hawking has emerged in recent years as a poster boy for atheism, especially in light of his heroic struggles against Lou Gehrig's disease. But the new film about Hawking's life, A Theory of Everything has been called a "God-haunted movie."

In one of the opening scenes, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, and tells her that he is a cosmologist. "What's cosmology?" she asks, and he responds, "Religion for intelligent atheists." "What do cosmologists worship?" she asks. And he replies, "A single unifying equation that explains everything in the universe." In another scene Jane asks, "So, I take it you've never been to church?" When Stephen replies "Once upon a time," she asks, "Tempted to convert?" Stephen replies, "I have a slight problem with the celestial dictatorship premise."

Later on in the film, Jane challenges him: "You've never said why you don't believe in God." Hawking counters, "A physicist can't allow his calculations to be muddled by belief in a supernatural creator," to which she responds, "Sounds less of an argument against God than against physicists." In one of her two published memoirs, the real Jane Hawking argued, "However far-reaching our intellectual achievements … without faith [in God] there is only isolation and despair, and the human race is a lost cause"

This spirited back and forth continues throughout the film as Hawking settles more and more into a secularist view and Jane persists in her Christian beliefs.

Possible Preaching Angles: The movie does not come to any hard and fast conclusions about faith and doubt, but it does provide an interesting way to set up a sermon on worldviews, atheism, secularism, or faith and doubt.

It is easy to say we believe in God as long as we remain in the little world we choose to live in; but get out into the great world of facts, the noisy world where people are absolutely indifferent to you, where your message is nothing more than a crazy tale belonging to a bygone age, can you believe God there?

You perhaps have heard of the old sales managers' device of holding up a large piece of paper with a small orange spot down in one corner. He says to his salesmen, "What do you see?" They all report that they see that orange spot, and he says, "That's your weakness as a salesman. You see the spot and don't see all of the open opportunity before you."

We don't want to focus on our discouragements, because as one thinks in one's heart, so one is.

At the spiritual level, planning means taking the initiative. It's not about sitting around until you are absolutely certain God is calling you to a particular task, direction, country, or ministry. Nor is it waiting for the doors to open so you can go there easily. Planning is an act of faith. Jesus never told his disciples to wait for an invitation. He told them to go.

I used to carry my aged mother up and down the stairs of our home here in Chicago. And she would grab onto the banister while I was carrying her up or down the stairs and hold on to it so tightly we couldn't move.

I'd say, "Momma, you have to let go of the banister or we can't move."

And she looked at me with her plaintive little eyes and said, "I'm afraid you'll drop me."

I said, "Momma, I'm going to drop you right now. When I count to three, I'm going to drop you!" And then she would let go, and we'd go two more steps, when she would grab on again.

That is in microcosm my interaction with God. I'm hanging on to the banisters of life. I'm hanging on to these little things that make me feel secure. But God loves me more than I love my little mother, and God would never let me come to any harm. God knows where we're going.