I preached a sermon, “It’s Okay to STruggle.” It is inspired by a chapter in a book by Federico Villanueva “It’s OK to Be Not Ok: Preaching the Lament Psalms.”

I like to preach the somewhat “Downer” sermons— sermons on struggling, suffering, and sorrowing. I thank there is great power in these types of sermons because they are… real. They speak to our real conditions as humans.

I remember one of the first times I was asked to preach at a church in the Philippines. I told the pastor that I planned to preach on suffering. He suggested that I don’t do that. In his words, “People in the Philippines don’t really want to hear about suffering.”

I am not sure that is true. Perhaps he was being kind to me. Back in 2004 there was still a lot of what feeling that everything sucks in the Philippines, while everything is awesome in the US, Canada, South Korea, England, and so forth. Maybe he felt that a person coming from a so-called “privileged” country telling people in the Philippines about suffering would be a bit tone-deaf.

What I do know is that I found that generally, preaching on suffering was appreciated in the Philippines because… again, it is real. People want sermons that correlate to their lived experiences.

People that I meet at least don’t want to hear sermons that say, “If you are a Christian, all troubles are gone and all prayers are answered exactly the way you want them to be.” That does not relate to their own experiences, and that doesn’t correspond to most if not all of the experiences of people in the Bible.

Anyway, my sermon is available at: https://bobandceliamunson.wordpress.com/sermons/sermon-it-is-okay-to-struggle/