What to Do When You Are Stuck
Sermon notes from Pastor Bryan Loritts at One Community Church on continuing to witness, pray, and rejoice when life feels stuck.
Making pearls when life hems us in
An oyster that cannot expel an irritating grain of sand coats it until a pearl forms. A pearl is the fruit of a frustrated oyster making the most of a situation it cannot escape.
“I haven't come to give you any exits. I haven't come to give you any quick fixes. I have come to try to help us figure out how to make some pearls when life hems us in.”
Ever found yourself stuck?
A diagnosis. Anxiety or depression. A job you dislike, or a season of unemployment. A struggling marriage. Infertility. Difficult family circumstances.
Sometimes it is not one part of life that feels stuck, but your whole life. Whatever your circumstances, you are not alone in finding yourself in a season you cannot quickly change.
Paul writes from prison
Paul and the Philippians love one another. When they hear that he is imprisoned in Rome, they collect an offering and send Epaphroditus to deliver it and encourage him.
Paul writes to thank them and let them know how he is doing. His message is that, even in prison, he has learned contentment.
11 I am not saying this out of need, for I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances.
12 I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation—to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need.
13 I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
Faith in a stuck season
Paul does not write about contentment from a resort. He writes from prison.
Can we praise God when we do not know how things will work out, where the money will come from, or whether a child will return to Christ?
If you feel stuck, you have good company: Abraham and Sarah in infertility, Israel between the Red Sea and Egypt, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace, and Jesus in the tomb before his resurrection.
13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.
Stuck does not mean stopped
Paul says his imprisonment has served to advance the gospel. Pastor Loritts explains “advance” as moving forward in the face of opposition.
Just because you are stuck does not mean that you stop.
This is not a recipe for escaping every difficult season. It is about making pearls in the midst of one.
1. Don't stop witnessing
Paul understands that his imprisonment is for Christ. His situation is not ultimately just about him.
The imperial guards assigned to him become people he can tell about Jesus. As the guards rotate, he keeps witnessing. What looks like confinement becomes an opportunity for the gospel.
“My stuck situation is my mission field.”
A picture, not just a mirror
As a child working on a large puzzle, Pastor Loritts needed the picture on the box to make sense of the scattered pieces.
In a stuck season, we often reach for a mirror: Why is this happening to me? How will I get through it? When will it end?
There is a place for crying and feeling pain. Let others walk with you, lean into your small group, and get therapy. But navigating the season also means asking God for the bigger picture.
How can God get glory?
The question begins to shift from “Why is this happening to me?” to “God, how can you get glory?”
Instead of looking only at ourselves, we lift our eyes and remember where our help comes from.
2 My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.
“This is our mission field”
Pastor Loritts describes visiting the family of seven-year-old Jayden, who needs a heart transplant. Persistent intestinal bleeding has kept him waiting in the hospital while other children receive transplants.
His family does not pretend the experience is easy. Yet they speak about Jesus, the work God is doing in them, and people they have been able to encourage.
We can pray for healing while also recognizing opportunities to speak about Christ to doctors, nurses, and others we would not otherwise meet.
2. Don't stop praying
Paul's faith shows up in prayer while he is still imprisoned. He remembers the Philippians with thanksgiving and prays for them with joy.
4 In every prayer for all of you, I always pray with joy,
Pray for an open door for the word
Writing to the Colossians from prison, Paul asks for prayer. His request is not simply that he be released or that his legal expenses be covered.
He asks God to open a door for the word and help him make the mystery of Christ clear.
3 as you pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.
4 Pray that I may declare it clearly, as I should.
Mirror prayers or bigger-picture prayers?
Pray for healing. Also pray for boldness to share Christ in the middle of illness.
If God answered yes to every prayer you prayed over the last twelve months, would the world change, or just your world?
God loves and cares for you. Prayer can also reach beyond your circumstances to what he is doing in the lives of others.
Do we believe in the power of prayer?
Pastor Loritts tells a story about a church praying against a nearby bar's construction. After lightning causes a fire, the owner blames the church's prayers, while the church denies responsibility.
The irony of the story is that the bar owner appears to believe in prayer's power more than the church does.
The question for One Community Church: Do we believe in the power of prayer? The God who acted in Scripture is still alive and at work.
8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
9 Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
11 So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
Learn to pray “even if” prayers
Pray for God to remove cancer, bring relief from depression and anxiety, provide a job, and renew a struggling marriage.
But also pray: Even if I do not receive the rescue I am looking for, give me strength to remain faithful.
“I'm not in it to be famous. I'm in it to be faithful, God.”
3. Don't stop rejoicing
Paul rejoices because Christ is being proclaimed. He does not wait until he is released, paroled, or pardoned to have joy.
He chooses to rejoice in his stuck situation.
An imprisoned man calls free people to joy
During a visit to Angola State Prison, Pastor Loritts meets inmate pastors and visits death row. He reaches for words that will encourage those who are incarcerated.
Philippians reverses that familiar direction: Paul, the incarcerated person, encourages people who are free. He is rejoicing and calls them to rejoice too.
Joy in spite of circumstances
Pastor Loritts describes joy as the ability to express happiness in spite of one's circumstances. Happiness depends on happenings; joy is not confined to them.
Joy refuses to let loss have the last word: You may take my job or my relationship, but you will not take my joy.
“This joy that I have, the world didn't give it to me, and the world can't take it away.”
Christ entered our worst stuck situation
Our deepest stuck situation was being trapped in sin and separated from God.
Christ came to earth, took on flesh, and dwelt among us. He lived the perfect life we could not live and died the death we should have died.
Joy beyond this season
Hebrews points to the joy set before Jesus as he endured the cross and despised its shame.
Because Christ rescued us from sin, we can spend eternity with him. Whatever happens in this stuck season, it does not have the last say.
Faith beneath the surface
In 2010, thirty-three miners were trapped beneath the ground in Chile. Among them was José Enríquez, a miner and part-time pastor.
Not knowing how they would escape, he gathered the men to remember God's word, pray, and sing. Without a Bible in his hands, he recalled Scripture he had stored in his heart.
His first message recalled Jonah crying out to God from the belly of the fish.
2 saying: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and He answered me. From the belly of Sheol I called for help, and You heard my voice.
3 For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me; all Your breakers and waves swept over me.
4 At this, I said, ‘I have been banished from Your sight; yet I will look once more toward Your holy temple.’
5 The waters engulfed me to take my life; the watery depths closed around me; the seaweed wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I descended; the earth beneath me barred me in forever! But You raised my life from the pit, O LORD my God!
7 As my life was fading away, I remembered the LORD. My prayer went up to You, to Your holy temple.
8 Those who cling to worthless idols forsake His loving devotion.
9 But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You. I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation is from the LORD!”
10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
They were stuck, but they did not stop
The miners knelt in prayer and confessed their sins. They began rejoicing beneath the surface and asked to gather again each day.
For sixty-nine days, they continued praying, witnessing, and rejoicing. While they could not see what was happening above them, engineers were working toward their rescue.
Pastor Loritts points to their rescue as a reason to acknowledge the Lord's help.
2 if the LORD had not been on our side when men attacked us,
You might be stuck, but don't stop
- Don't stop witnessing.
- Don't stop praying.
- Don't stop rejoicing.
Even when it does not feel good, God is good. Praise him in the midst of the season, not only after it ends.
No one standing alone
Pastor Loritts invites those who feel stuck to stand, then asks others to stand with them and pray aloud.
The call is not to explain every circumstance, but to surround one another in prayer for deliverance, strength, and perseverance.
He recalls the biblical picture of one putting a thousand to flight and two putting ten thousand to flight.
Closing prayer
Father God, intervene in stuck situations. Bring healing, provide jobs and financial relief, restore marriages and relationships, open wombs, and bring prodigal children home. We pray against suicidal thoughts in the name of Jesus.
Even if we do not get the rescue we are looking for, give us strength, resilience, and perseverance.
In Jesus' name, amen.
