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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. In academic circles, it is quite common to hear people talk about earned or unearned degrees. An earned degree is one in which the student has pursued through classes and personal study

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and writing, and has achieved a degree such as the Ph.D., and it is awarded with proper celebration. An unearned degree does not make it necessary for a person to attend classes. It rather is given to the individual who, in the course of her or his life, lives out

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the academic disciplines earned and learned long before. Now the Apostle Paul had both an earned and an unearned degree. He had the finest education that was available in his day, and also a marvelous nobility of spirit.

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There was to be found in him not only orthodoxy, but also orthopraxis. Yet I would suggest that when we read the words of the Apostle Paul today, we do not usually think of them in academic terms. No, we think of them in terms of the authenticating evidence of his own life.

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We understand that when Paul said, "Be ye imitators of me," he was referring more to his way of living than to his opportunities for learning. Paul, you see, had his Ph.D. degree, his doctorate in character. It was forged in the formula and the crucible of his own life, and he offers to us counsel

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as to how Christian character may be attained. He says, in the passage just read in your hearing, that we are to rejoice in our sufferings, to meet our sufferings with fortitude, and that when we do this, the suffering and the fortitude will together form in us Christian character.

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Now focus with me for a few minutes on this thought of the great apostles. He says we are to rejoice in our suffering, which suggests that there is profit to be found in problems. One of the things that is found is that life is not fair.

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It has always amazed me that so many people can look at the evidence of all the accumulated centuries and still say that they think life is fair. Paul goes to great lengths here in Romans 5 to point out that the good suffer just as the evil do.

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They hurt just the same. No one lived a more splendid life, a more perfect experience, than our Lord Jesus. For other heroes and heroines of the faith have followed after him in remarkable ways, guided by his Spirit, and yet they have suffered death in terrible and almost inconceivable

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ways. They have suffered in spite of their goodness. And what Paul says to us is that if we live like them, then we can expect to suffer also because life is not fair.

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Now there's a very real sense in which this is a good thing because if you see, we were each rewarded with some blessing of God every time we did something good. We would soon find ourselves in the position of bargaining with God. In other words, we would do what we did not because of its own goodness, but because of

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what we would get out of it. We would discover ourselves to be the kind of persons who didn't do a right thing simply because it was right, or made a sacrifice simply because a sacrifice is called for. Rather, we would be being good for the wrong reasons, forgetting from God the things that

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we wanted to get. Now life is not fair. There is a cross stuck into the very middle of it, and to live as a Christian in an unfair world is to feel that cross, and that's part of what gives you Christian character.

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Another profit that we can find in our problems is that we get out of ourselves only as much as life requires of us. You've heard it said of someone, "She's had it too easy." What they're suggesting is that this person has had such an easy life that they do not

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have the energy and the enthusiasm that are necessary to live a significant life. A soft life often leads to soft people. H.G. Wells says in one of his novels, "But what shall we do if we find no one who opposes us?"

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What he is suggesting is that it is not until we are challenged that we begin to reach toward our real potential. Now I'm sure all of you are aware that our Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row earlier this week.

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Have you thought to yourself about how hard this last year has been for that hockey team? The coach they loved with all their hearts died. The team was sold, and when a team is sold, there is much confusion and angst associated with that.

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Our star player, Mario Lemieux, was hurt many times and hurt seriously. Other players, like Bob Urey and John Mullen, were also hurt and had to miss a lot of time on the ice. Yet the team went on to win the championship.

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And at the celebration held this last Thursday afternoon, it was interesting to notice how many of the team members, when they stepped up to the microphone to speak, said exactly these words, "It is adversity which gave us character." Our star left winger, Kevin Stevens, I think, put it best when he said, "We were as good

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as we had to be." So when life gives us problems, remember that it is making greater demands of us. But because the demands are greater, the significance and the potential that we produce will be greater.

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That is another step toward your doctorate in character. And finally, another profit to be found in problems is that in the hardest of times, we find ourselves most led to lean upon God. You know, I've always thought that in an interesting kind of way, suffering is one

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of the most interesting proofs of God's existence. If God is who we think he is, he is a moral being. And therefore, everything that he makes, including the universe, is morally centered. Now if a person goes against the moral law of God, if an individual or a group violates

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that law, they are going to bring upon themselves that which will cause them a great deal of pain and hurt. If that didn't happen, it would imply that there was no morality in the universe and no moral God who made the universe.

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Now you see, it is our sin and the sin of other people that causes us to hurt and other people to hurt. And this leads to brokenness. But Karl Barth has written that it is in brokenness that we encounter God.

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It's when we are thrown down that we pray up. You have seen many depictions of artists on canvas in which they have attempted to paint angels. And almost always these angels are radiant with beauty and light.

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But my favorite picture of the angels was painted by G.F. Watts. Watts paints two angels in the room of life. One is radiant in white and beauty, but the other one is dressed all in dark colors, almost

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black. Yet the face on this black or dark angel is even more radiant and beautiful than the face on the other angel. Why?

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Because it is the dark times, it is the dark moments, it is the dark angels that lead us most to depend upon God. It's in our brokenness and in our weakness that we find ourselves crying out to him. And as we do this, we grow in Christian character.

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So Paul says we rejoice in our sufferings. But the second factor in his formula for Christian character is this, that we must confront our problems with fortitude. Now what is fortitude?

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We talked about it last week. Fortitude is first of all to recognize that everyone has problems of one kind or another, and this relieves us of the burden of self-pity. Paul emphasizes again and again in Romans 5 how we all have hardships.

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The second thing that's involved in fortitude is that we control our problems and do not let our problems control us. That is, that we move in that hope which is given to us by God. And Paul says in the third and the fifth verses of this chapter that this hope will not disappoint

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us. And the third element in fortitude is that we follow only the counsel of Christ and of other Christians. We are promised in the fifth verse the presence of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God at Pentecost.

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And therefore when we have the wisdom of God being poured upon us, then we can grow in fortitude, in strength, and in courage. But unfortunately there are many people who never seem to get enough boldness to claim Christian fortitude.

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They know that it includes self-esteem, which is given by Christ. They know that it includes self-control, which is given by Christ. They know that it includes self-dedication, which is given by Christ. And yet they do not seem to be able to grasp it to themselves.

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Why do they miss it? Well I would suggest that they miss it in the first place because they fear the process of change. You know, one of the reasons that a hospital will partly put to sleep through some dope

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or other narcotic a patient before they take that patient to the operating room is so that that patient won't, when he or she gets into the operating room, look around and see all these cold, sharp, hard, almost brutal-looking instruments which are going to be used upon them in the process of the operation.

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Many on seeing this would say, "Thank you, but I'd rather be sick." The point is, you see, that sometimes we must endure pain in order to become healthy again. I've always liked the story of the two little boys who met their father at the door when he came home one night, crying.

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It seems that they had gone to their goldfish bowl and found that their goldfish had died. So their father, trying to direct their attention in positive ways and lead them away from their tears, said, "Well, we'll have to have a funeral." So first of all, they selected a plot.

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And then they dug the grave. And then they gathered flowers and put them around the grave. And then the father took his cigarette case, which he hadn't used for many years, he gave up smoking a long time ago, and this was to be the casket.

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And they went to the goldfish bowl to get the fish, to put it into the casket. Only there was the fish swimming around gaily in the bowl. The fish was not dead at all. Thereupon one of the little boys looked at the other and said, "Let's kill it."

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You see, they had become so involved in what they were doing that they didn't want to change it. They'd rather have the funeral than the fish. And there are a lot of people who are caught up in the things of death and they hold on

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to them rather than rejecting them and taking life. And they do this because they're afraid of the process of change that is involved. They're unwilling to pay that price. Well, there is pain in change.

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But no pain is forever. Please hear that. No pain is forever. Not even the pain of death is forever.

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Death is not terminal. Death is transitional. And therefore, when we take that step that leads us to become more strong in our fortitude, whatever pain we experience in that change is going to gently pass away.

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Why? Because Paul says here, "Our hope will not disappoint us." Which means, to put it in rather crude terms, when you're in hot water, don't just sit there and yell.

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Take a bath. And in that cleansing power of change, you will be moving a step closer to Christian character. Another reason that a lot of people do not have the courage to reach out and grasp fortitude

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is this, they forget that that which is unsolvable may still be quite manageable. We've all read about people, for example, who had amputations or who went blind and yet went on to live remarkable lives. There was no way they could grow another limb.

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There was no way in which they could gain their sight again. That was unsolvable. But they managed their lives in significant and victorious ways in spite of these difficulties. I always think of Patti Wilson, who lives in San Diego, California.

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Patti suffers from grand mal epileptic seizures. She'll have them for as long as she lives, barring some medical discovery which is not yet anticipated. Now Patti wanted to build up her strength, and so she took up running.

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And she decided that she would like to run from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a distance of 400 miles. And when her parents asked her why, she said, "To build my own self-confidence and also to inspire other epileptics."

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Well she set out on the race and she completed it. And when she came home to San Diego, and of course the story of what she had done was in all the papers and on the television and the other media, many wrote her letters of thanks for the example she had given.

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She wasn't home two weeks before she announced that she decided she wanted to run from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon, which was a distance of 1,000 miles. Well everyone got behind Patti in her run, but she had only run the first 28 miles when she broke a small bone in her foot.

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The doctors looked at it and said, "You can't go on." She said, "Can't you wrap my foot?" They said, "Yes, we can wrap your foot, but then you'll develop blisters." Well she said, "My mother is a nurse and my mother can take a syringe and with that she

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can take out of the blisters all of the fluid that has accumulated there." In other words, she wasn't going to let anything stop her. Well as a matter of fact, she did not run the 1,000 miles to Portland. Instead she decided to take the scenic coastal route and ran 1,300 miles to Portland.

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Here you see is a demonstration of the spirit of someone whose problem may not be solvable, but it is still manageable. Paul says, "All things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to his purpose."

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And that means that we are going to encounter things in our lives which are beyond our capacity to solve. But it also means that even these things can be managed in such a way that they are woven into the warp and woof of our experience through fortitude and faith to become part of a life

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which is beautiful to behold. You don't have to have solutions to gain Christian character. You just have to have courage enough to try. And finally, Paul suggests to us that a lot of people don't reach out for fortitude because

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they think that they have to do what they're going to do all alone. Such people have to answer this question. Do you really want Christian character or are you more anxious to protect your pride than to gain success?

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See, there are a lot of people who don't want to call on anybody else for help. They don't want to call upon God. They don't want to call on anybody else to assist them. They are very vain individuals.

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In fact, they put their vanity before their victory. But when you go to a group like Alcoholics Anonymous or when you go to a group like Substance Abuse Anonymous or Gamblers Anonymous or Theos or Trio, you discover in all of these groups individuals who are pursuing the same goal and they're helping each other.

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Paul writes this letter to the Christians who are at Rome. He does not write to one individual. Here is a small company of believers in the imperial city of the largest and most evil empire on the face of the earth in that day.

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Paul doesn't write to one person. He writes to a whole company of Christians there because he wants to call them to support one another. Dwight Eisenhower was asked on one occasion who the bravest person he ever knew was, and

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he replied, "The bravest person I ever knew was my mother." He said, "For example, I remember one day we were playing cards in our house. Now I don't mean the kind of cards with which you play bridge or poker. My mother was too straight-laced to have any of those kind of things in the house."

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He said, "She was not an educated woman, but she was deep in the things of the Scriptures. Well, we were playing this game with children's cards from a children's game, and I got a very, very poor hand, and I began to complain about it. And my mother put down her cards, and she said, 'Boys'"—Ike's two brothers were there—"put

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down your cards.' And then she looked at her son and said, 'Dwight, you are here in the midst of the love of your home, surrounded by people who love you, and you have been dealt a bad hand. But don't you understand that we will all help you get through the playing of that hand?'

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And 'Boys,' she continued, 'remember this. When you get out of this hout and out of the presence of one another, when you get out into the world, there are going to be some times when you are dealt very, very unfair, dishonest, unloving hands.

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But wherever you are, under whatever circumstances, you can still call upon God, you can still experience the Holy Spirit, you can still call on other Christians to help you bear your burdens." Paul says, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

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Sharing your CHD is not an individual effort, it is a team effort. So how rich are these five verses from Romans 5? Paul says, "First, we are justified by faith, we have access to God," which means we are in his presence all the time, "we will ultimately share God's glory."

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But he says, "We still have troubles, but in troubles, remember, there are profits to be found in problems. You learn that life is not fair. You learn that you will put out only as much as you are required to put out, and you learn

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to lean more and more upon God. This is the way you gain fortitude. And those who hold back and are unwilling to go after fortitude need to remember that no hurt is forever.

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All change involves pain, but that pain passes away. You need also to remember that because something is unsolvable, that does not mean it is unmanageable. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." "Just try," Paul says.

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And it also teaches us that Christ and other Christians are standing ready to help us. Paul sums all of this by saying, "Our Christian hope will not be disappointed." My sisters and brothers in Christ, success may not be certain always, but failure is never final.

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What appears to be the end of the road is only a bend in the road that leads us to sharing nothing less than the glory of God. I bid you then on this Pentecost Sunday to examine your own soul and spirit and to ask yourself, "Am I growing in my Ph.D. degree?

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Am I claiming the character Christ wants me to have?" Let us pray. O God, if thy spirit opens any heart this day for this truth to enter, may it enter on the wings of thy spirit and be empowered by thy spirit.

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And if it is thy will that nothing should come of all these words and all this talk, then for that too we glorify you, because we know that you cause all things to work together for ultimate good. And what we lose today may make us only more certain about winning tomorrow.

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Bless listening hearts then now or whenever thou dost wish to, to the honor and glory of thy Son, in whose name we pray. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]