I don’t think most of us need another person telling us to “cheer up.” When life is hard, when a marriage is strained, when work is exhausting, when anxiety rages, or when the future feels uncertain, shallow encouragement does not help very much. We do not need to pretend everything is fine. We need something deeper. Something strong enough to hold us when everything is not fine.

For the last three weeks, we’ve been asking what it means to live as people who are sent by Jesus.  This Sunday, we’re going to make it personal.  We’re going to ask one simple question: What’s your part?

But before you answer that question, I want to encourage you to spend some time this week looking back at what God has already been saying to us and asking what the Spirit may be saying specifically to you.

In John 20:19–22, the disciples were hiding behind locked doors when the risen Jesus came and stood among them. He spoke peace, showed them his wounds, and then sent them into the world with the power of the Holy Spirit.  The hope that came to them was never meant to stop with them.

There are stories in the Bible we wish had never happened. Second Samuel 13 is one of them.  Amnon, one of David’s sons, becomes consumed with desire for his half-sister Tamar. He manipulates the circumstances to get her alone, ignores her repeated pleas to stop, overpowers her, and sexually assaults her. Then, having taken what he wanted, he casts her aside.