RECOVERING FROM LIFE’S DISASTERS
Rick Warren
ECCL. 8:14 “Sometimes something useless happens on earth.
Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to
Bad people.” (NCV)
HOW TO RESPOND TO TRAGEDY
1. ______________ MY GRIEF.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Matt. 5:4
“Pour out your heart to God, for he is our refuge.” Ps: 62:8
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in
spirit.” Ps. 34:18
2. ______________ FROM OTHERS.
“Carry each other’s burdens …” Gal 6:2
“By helping each other with your troubles, you obey the law of Christ.” (NCV)
“Look after each other so that not one of you will fail to find God’s best
blessings.” Heb 12:15 (LB)
3. _______________ TO BE BITTER.
“Some people have no happiness at all: they live and die with bitter hearts.
Job 21:25 (GN)
“Watch out that no bitterness takes root among you… it causes deep trouble,
hurting many in their spiritual lives.” Heb 12:15 (LB)
The antidote:

___________ what cannot be changed.
“…Reach out to God…then face the world again, firm and courageous…”
Job 11:13, 16

Focus on what’s _______________, not what’s lost..
“No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will
for you.” 1 Th. 5:18 (LB)
4. ___________________ WHAT’S IMPORTANT.
“Jesus said… Life is not measured by how much one owns.” LK 12:15 (NCV)
“We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.”
1 Tim. 6:7 (NIV)
5. ____________________ ON CHRIST.
“I have learned the secret of being happy at any time in everything that
happens, I can do all things through Christ, because he gives me strength.
Phil 4:13 (NCV)
HOW?

Lean on Christ for Stability!
“Those who trust in the Lord are steady as Mount Zion, unmoved by
any circumstance.” Ps. 125:1 (LB)
“You, Lord, give true peace to those who depend on you..” Is. 26:3 (NCV)
“Such a person will not be overthrown by evil circumstances. God’s
constant care of him will make a deep impression on all who see it.
He does not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may happen. For he
Is settled in his mind that God will take care of him.” Ps. 112:6-7 (LB)

Listen to Christ for direction!
“I know what I am planning for you,” says the Lord. I”I have good plans for
you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a good future.”
Jer 29:11 (NCV)

Look to Christ for salvation!
“God is our protection and our strength. He always helps in times of
trouble. So we will not be afraid even if the earth shakes, or the
mountains fall into the sea.” Ps. 46:2 (NCV)
“We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we would never
live through it… we saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but
that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who
alone could save us… And he did help us and saved us… and we expect
him to do it again and again.” 2 Cor 1:10 (TLB)
RECOVERING FROM LIFE’S DISASTERS
Rick Warren
Good morning. Let’s take out our outlines. Well, of course we all
know that this week the worst fire in the history of Southern
California hit Orange County, and the results were devastating to
many, many people. It was a total disaster. One hundred and thirty
thousand acres burned according to Orange County news. Twenty five
thousand people were displaced at some point during this last week.
The physical recovery has already started, but the emotional recovery
from this disaster will take far longer. Now what I want to do this
morning is a little bit different because of what happened this week. I
want to just briefly share with you some principles on how do you
recover from tragedy. Then I want to have Pastor Steve come and tell
you about what Saddleback is doing to respond to this tragedy, in fact
before the fires were even out we were already mobilizing relief
teams.
Now, you may not be in a disaster right now, and if so, that’s great.
But it’s just a matter of time, because life is full of tragedy and you
will go through a tragedy, if not a fire, something else at different
times in your life. Because the Bible teaches that this is not a perfect
world. Because there is sin in the world people do wrong things and
suffering results. The Bible is brutally honest about this. Notice this
verse in your outline. Eccl. 8:14. Read it with me. “Sometimes
something useless happens on earth. Bad things happen to good
people, and good things happen to bad people.” (NCV) What he’s
saying here is that we don’t always get what we deserve. There are
two mistakes that you can make regarding disaster. One is to think all
the good things that happen to me prove I’m good, and that all the bad
things that happen to me prove I’m bad. That’s wrong. That’s just
wrong. In Luke 13, Jesus is talking about two tragedies that happened
in His day. He said you know there were a bunch of innocent people
up there worshipping at the temple and they came in and were brutally
slaughtered. And he said there was a tower that fell on eighteen
people and killed them. And He posed the question, “Who sinned, that
caused this tragedy?” Was it a result of their sin? And then He
answered His own question. He said, absolutely not, absolutely not!
Now, that doesn’t negate cause and effect. Most of the problems we
have in life are our fault. Would you agree with that? The vast
majority of them are. We do reap what we sow, but not always. And
sometimes we suffer innocently. You see, not everything that happens
is God’s will. When I hear people hearing about the fire and they say,
“Well, it must have been God’s will”, I have a spiritual term for that.
“Baloney!”. It makes me want to puke. Can you say puke in church?
Because it’s just not true! Don’t blame God for the fires. God’s
grieving too. God’s will is not always done.
Now God could have stopped those arsonists. We talked about it last
week. Real simple. Just take away their free will, their freedom to
choose. But to be fair, He’d have to take away your free will at the
same time. As I said last week, our greatest blessing in life, God’s
given us the freedom to choose, is also our greatest curse because we
often choose the wrong thing. And when I choose the wrong thing
innocent people suffer. Does that make sense? God’s will is not
always done in this world folks. That’s why like for instance 2 Peter
3:9 says “It is God’s will that all should repent and none should
perish”. Question, do all repent? No. Do some perish? Yes. Why?
God will never force His will on your will. That’s why we’re to pray
in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
Why? Because God’s will isn’t always done on earth. How’s it done
in heaven? It’s done perfectly. And so we’re to pray, “God, just like
your will is done perfectly in heaven, we want that to be done on
earth”. If it was being done, we wouldn’t have to pray for it.
Now my purpose this morning is not to explain suffering, because that
would take me a whole series of what God says about the many, many
reasons and causes, but to instead talk to you about how to handle it.
Look on your outline there. I want to give you five principles just
quickly, and you can take these home and study them this week. Five
principles on how to respond to tragedy. If you’ll write these down.
1. RELEASE my grief.
Now let’s look at the first one. When you go through a tragedy,
which is inevitably going to happen, the first thing you need to do is
release your grief. Why? Because tragedy always creates strong
emotions. Did you feel any emotions this week? Yes, fear, maybe
anger, worry, maybe some depression, maybe a little resentment, grief
over those whose lost things. And these feelings are scary. We don’t
know what to do with our feelings. If you don’t deal with them, your
recovery from a crisis always takes far longer than it should, if you
stuff it down. See some people are stuffers. When they have
emotions, they don’t know how to handle so they deny them, they
ignore them, they push them down. In fact many people use God as
an excuse for this. They think God wants everybody to go around all
the time with a happy face. Folks, life isn’t always happy. God
doesn’t expect you to be smiling all the time.
Notice what Jesus said here, Matt. 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.” Write on the side of it, “It’s ok to
grieve.” You have to face your feelings. You don’t repress them,
push them down, you don’t rehearse them—torturing your self by
repeating it over in your mind. You release it. You tell what you feel
to God.
Notice this verse, “Pour out your hearts to God, for He is our
refuge.” David’s a great model to this in Psalms. God wants to
comfort you in a tragedy. The Lord is close to the broken hearted,
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
I’ve actually met some people that think it is wrong for Christians to
cry at funerals. Well if they’re a believer and they’re going to heaven,
you don’t have to cry for them, but you can cry for yourself because
you miss them.
Blessed are those who mourn. Grief is a part of life. And so the first
thing you got to do is release your grief because if you don’t feelings
pile up and they will eventually explode in some form or another. If
you don’t talk it out, you’ll take it out on yourself or somebody else.
Now once you begin to let those feelings out, you release your grief,
next,
2. RECEIVE from others
Notice these verses, “Carry each other’s burdens…” Gal. 6:2 “By
helping each other with your troubles, you obey the Law of Christ.
(NCV) It is a big mistake to isolate yourselves from others when
you’re going through a crisis. Now usually that’s what we want to do,
we want to get all by ourselves; nobody understands our problem.
But you need other people in a tragedy. You need their perspective,
you need their support, you need their encouragement, and you just
need their presence.
God says we need each other, notice this verse: “Look after each
other so that not one of you will fail to find God’s best blessings.”
Heb 12:15 (LB) He’s saying, to make it through a crisis, we need not
only the promises of God, we need the people of God.
Now this is why I’m so adamant about you need to be a part of a
church family. I’m not just talking about being just an attender, I’m
talking about being a member of a family. Because when a crisis
comes, if you don’t have those relationships in place, whose going to
hold you up?
Many years ago when the church was much smaller there was a
couple in this church that had come for five years. And he came
down with cancer and he was in the hospital. And they called and
said, we’d like somebody to come from the church and visit. I
happened to be in another state teaching a conference. I called long
distance. I said the church is very small, we don’t have a lot of staff,
but I would be glad to send you somebody. Tell me anybody you
know in the church and I’d be glad to send him or her to you. They
had come for 5 years and they didn’t know one person. They later got
bitter from that and they left the church because they thought the
church didn’t care. It was their fault,-- because they never established
any relationships.
God says, we need to receive from each other when we go through
tragedy. We need to encourage each other.
3. Refuse to be Bitter
Refuse to be bitter. Read this verse with me Job 21-25. Some people
have no happiness at all. They live and die with bitter hearts. Now
you’re going to have to decide when you go through those tragedies,
those disasters, “Am I going to allow this to make me a bitter person,
or better person?” And he says here, you can have a choice, “you can
either choose happiness in life or you can choose bitterness.” It’s
your choice, but you can’t have both. And if you choose bitterness in
your life, realize you’re not hurting anybody else with it, you’re
hurting yourself. And you’re guaranteeing you won’t be happy,
because you can’t be happy and bitter at the same time.
You know, it’s amazing to me as I’ve watched the TV interviews this
week, the dramatic difference in the way people have reacted to losing
their homes. Phenomenal! To watch some people who say, “well,
yeah we lost it and I’m grieving and I’m sad, but we’re going to pull
ourselves together and we’re going to rebuild. We’re just going to go
at it again”. Other people just fall into bitterness, and anger, and have
a pity party and basically say, “my life is over”. It’s not over. See,
one of the things I’ve learned, in being in the ministry for many years,
is that there’s absolutely no correlation in life between your
experiences and your happiness. None whatsoever! Because I’ve seen
people who had absolutely the worst experiences in life; things that
would shock everyone of us, and yet they maintain this happy,
cheerful, positive attitude, because happiness is a choice. You’re
about as happy as you choose to be. That’s why, I’ll just be honest
with you, I have no place in my life for whiners. I really don’t. I
don’t have any place for whiners. Why? Because in the ministry I’ve
seen people who had every right in the world to whine and didn’t. I
mean, they had every reason in the world, the disasters, and the crisis
that they’ve seen in their life and they still maintained a positive
attitude. And then I’ve seen other people who almost nothing has
gone wrong in their life; almost nothing, and they still complain, and
cry and whine about everything.
Happiness is a choice. You refuse to be bitter, because bitterness
always hurts you most. Notice this verse: “Watch out that no
bitterness takes root among you. It causes deep trouble, hurting many
in their spiritual lives.” I was watching on TV the other day,
yesterday, I was just channel surfing. You ever do that? You know.
With 50 channels you can surf a lot. You can catch that wave a long
time, you know. And I was channel surfing and I caught this guy, a
preacher with cerebral palsy, have any of you ever seen this guy on
TV? Here was a guy who said I lost my mom, and I lost my dad
when I was a little kid and I got cerebral palsy. He couldn’t even
speak very well, and he said the 11th commandment is this: Thou
shalt not bellyache. Refuse to be bitter, because it causes problems in
your own life. It never changes anything. Blaming others never
changes anything. It only makes you feel worse. You know, this
week, Tom and Chaundel’s little boy Luke, who’s 2 years old; Tom
was reading him a story on, I think it was Friday night, and he said,
“Luke, who made the trees? And Luke said, “ Luke did.” And Tom
said, “No, you know Luke, God made the trees. Who made the
mountains, Luke?” “Luke did” He’s just laughing each time. He
thinks this is really funny. “No, God made those mountains. Who
made the stars, Luke?” “Luke did.” “No, no, God made the stars.
Next morning at breakfast, Luke spills his milk. Tom comes in and
said, “Luke, who spilled the milk?” “God did.” Now isn’t that
human nature? OK, if anything good happens in my life, I did it. If
anything bad happens in my life, it’s God’s fault.
Have you ever noticed what insurance companies consider to be ‘acts
of God’? Hurricanes, disasters, floods, fires; and honestly, you know
what real ‘acts of God’ are? When a baby’s born, when a person is
healed, when a marriage is restored, when a family gets back together.
That’s an act of God.
How do you keep from being bitter when the inevitable tragedies of
life are going to come? You do 2 things:
1. Accept what cannot be changed. Quit trying to fight it.
Accept what cannot be changed.
Job 21:25 says “Reach out to God, then face the world again firm and
courageous. Listen faith is not pretending everything is great in your
life; faith is not Pollyanna saying, “oh, it’s all wonderful”. Faith is
facing the facts and not getting discouraged. Can you write that
down? Faith is facing the facts of life, and not being discouraged by
them. That’s what real faith is. It’s not pretending everything’s great.
Everything’s not great. There are bad things in the world. And bad
things do happen to good people, but faith is facing the facts without
getting discouraged. You see there’s very little in life that you can
control. In fact, I’ve discovered that the most important things in life
you can’t control.
I want my kids to grow up and love the Lord with all their hearts. But
you know what, I can’t control them. That’s going to be their
decision. And the jury’s still out, and that bugs me no end. What I’m
saying is this: The only way to overcome some problems in life is to
accept them, and to get on. Your past is past. It’s over. It can’t
continue to hurt you unless you allow it to. Accept what’s been done.
It’s not going to change. Now get on with your life. And that’s the
second thing:
2
You focus on what’s left. Not what’s lost.
Focus on what’s left, not what’s lost. Notice this verse: No matter
what happens, always be thankful. For this is God’s will for you.
What’s God’s will for me in a crisis? It’s that I be thankful, no matter
what. For the problem? Of course not; God doesn’t expect you to be
thankful for a tragedy. But you should be thankful for what’s left, not
what’s lost. And you choose to focus on God’s goodness, because
gratitude and depression cannot exist in the same body. You want to
get over depression, start making a list of all the good things in your
life. You cannot be grateful and depressed at the same time. And the
fact is, there are people in this world who would love to have your
problems. They’d love to have your problems. They’re worried
about am I going to get a meal in the next month, not how am I going
to make it. Like that old expression I complained I had no shoes until
I met a man who had no legs. You focus on what’s left, not what’s
lost.
4. REMEMBER what’s important.
Disasters have a way of clarifying values. They have a way of
pointing out what matters and what really doesn’t matter. They define
your values, notice this verse: “Jesus said…Life is not measured by
how much one owns.” Lk 12:15 (NCV)
What is he saying here? Don’t confuse your net worth with your self
worth. Don’t confuse your possessions with your purpose in life.
Don’t confuse what you’re living on with what you’re living for. A
man’s life does not consist of what he possesses. Now many of you
face this week if you were in one of the evacuation areas. What do I
take with me?
Many of you know Kay and I moved near Dove Canyon, and literally
behind me is nothing but Cleveland National Forest. 3000 acres. So
for a day and a half, I watched the planes from the Ortega fire on the
ridge behind the ridge of our house. I could see the flames very
clearly, wondering if the wind would change and come toward our
house. People were evacuating in our area so we decided to pack up a
few things. We casually went through the house and said, what
should we take with us. We got the van about a 1/3 of the way full
and then said, that’s it. That’s all that really matters. The rest is just
stuff. We took pictures and home videos of the kids. You know what
you discover in a tragedy is that the greatest things in the world aren’t
things. What matters are relationships. And honestly when I was
wondering if that fire would come over the last ridge, as I looked
around, I kind of felt like Paul. All those things that I thought were
valuable just aren’t valuable. What matters is the health and safety of
my family. One of things that we can be grateful about this week is
that in 130,000 acres burnt, not one person died.
Look at this verse, 1 Tim 6:7 “We brought nothing into this world,
and we can’t take nothing out of it.” You’re never going to see a
hearse with a U-Haul behind it. Here is the point, if you want real
security, you must build your life on something that can never be
taken from you.
Can you lose a home? Yes. Can you lose a career? Yes. Can you
lose a marriage? Yes. Can you lose your health? Yes. Can you lose
your youthful beauty? Yes. Can you lose your relationship with God?
No.
If you want real security, then you build your life on something that
can’t be taken from you. Because God says, “ I will never leave you
or forsake you.” Paul says it like this, “I am persuaded that He is able
to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” I’m
not able to keep my commitments; He is able though. Honestly there
are sometimes I don’t feel like being a Christian. I say, God I would
like to put my faith on hold for about 4 hours while I go do
something. But God keeps the commitment. Once I place my life in
His hands, the Bible says, “they are in my hand and no man can take
them out.” So can’t you jump out of God’s hand? How big is God’s
hand? Is it so small you can just fall off the edge?
5. RELY on Christ
“I have learned the secret of being happy at any time in everything
that happens, I can do all things through Christ, because He gives me
strength.” Phil. 4:13 (NCV)
HOW?
 Lean on Christ for stability!
“Those who trust in the Lord are steady as Mount Zion,
unmoved by any circumstance.” Ps. 125:1 (LB)
“You, Lord, give true peace to those who depend on you.” Is.
26:3 (NCV)
“Such a person will not be overthrown by evil circumstances.
God’s constant care of him will make a deep impression on all who
see it. He does not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may
happen. For he is settled in his mind that God will take care of him.”
Ps. 112:6-7 (LB)
Listen to Christ for direction!
“ I know what I am planning for you.” Says the Lord. “I have
good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a
good future.” Jer 29:11 (NCV)
Look to Christ for salvation!
“God is our protection and our strength. He always helps in
times of trouble. So we will not be afraid even if the earth shakes, or
the mountains fall into the sea.” Ps. 46:2 (NCV)
“We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we
would never live through it…we saw how powerless we were to help
ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the
hands of God, who alone could save us… And he did help us and
saved us… and we expect him to do it again and again.” 2 Cor 1:10
(TLB)