Wrestle Until You Rest

In one paragraph

This message came from Hebrews 12:3-11, a passage about why God's people suffer and what God is doing through it. The pastor walked the congregation through the hard reality that discipline is not a sign God has abandoned his children, but a sign that he claims them as his own. The goal was not to make suffering feel easy but to help people wrestle through it until they find genuine rest in God's...

Read together

1. Hebrews 12:1-11 the main passage preached through in sequence
2. Hebrews 10:32-35 cited to show the original audience had already endured suffering and seizure of property
3. Proverbs 3:11-12 quoted as the source of the exhortation about not regarding lightly the discipline of the Lord
4. 2 Corinthians 7 referenced to distinguish godly sorrow that produces repentance from worldly sorrow that produces death
5. Psalm 13 quoted as the psalmist wrestling with sorrow then arriving at trust in God's unfailing love
6. Psalm 139:23-24 sung as the hymn Cleanse Me at the close of the sermon

Talk about it

1. The pastor described wrestling with God through hard circumstances until finding rest in Him rather than in anything else. What has that wrestling looked like in your own life, and what did you find yourself tempted to rest in instead of God?
2. The passage from Hebrews says 'those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines.' How does that truth sit with you when you are actually in the middle of a painful season, and how is it different from how it sounds when things are going well?
3. The pastor drew a distinction between sorrow that is according to the will of God and the sorrow of the world, saying the first produces a repentance without regret while the second produces only death. Can you think of a time when sorrow pushed you toward God rather than away from Him? What made the difference?
4. The pastor in the video, abducted by Boko Haram, said he had never been discouraged because 'all conditions that one finds himself in is in the hand of God,' and he refused to hold an offense against the men who took him. What does that kind of response require, and where do you feel the tension between holding people responsible for their actions and trusting God's sovereignty over those same events?
5. The pastor said that for those who have been trained by discipline, it afterward yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Is there a hardship you have come through where you can now see God's goodness on the other side of it? What would you say to someone who is still in the middle of that hard season and cannot yet see the other side?