We Wear the Mask, But We Don’t Have to

The days stretched on like a bad movie that would never end. I wore a cheerful mask as I meandered through my day. I was found myself floundering in the darkness of depression. Sometimes you look at someone and wonder what’s going on behind their eyes. “How are you doing?” friends would ask. “I’m good . . . ” I uttered robotically.

But if you looked close enough behind the mask, you could see I was unraveling. There’s always more happening underneath the mask.

GRASPING FOR WORDS

Some suffering is brought on by our sin and other times suffering happens without invitation. Our hardships are colorful and various. Instead of finding the words to explain our pain, it’s easy to mask our trials with the subtleties of “I’m good," “Things are fine," or if you’re talking to other Christians, “I’m blessed!" We put on the mask of cheer because this is expected of us.

Paul Laurence Dunbar communicates similar sentiments in his poem “We Wear the Mask:”

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, — This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.

I marvel that out of the labors of suffering, beauty such as this can be birthed. The Psalms remind us that corporate and individual suffering can’t be divorced from the human experience. They so eloquently reveal what’s happening underneath the mask. They do not hold back how bleak life in a Genesis 3 world can become. They show the intensity of our pain and the goodness of our God.

When the Worst Has Come

If you live long enough, there will be a point when your worst fears become reality. Your marriage goes from bad to worse when you find the divorce papers in your mailbox. Your oldest child proclaims, “There is no God!" despite your best efforts to train them in the way they should go. You find yourself struggling, again, with the same sin that has been a snare most of your life.

Perhaps, you receive the paralyzing news of the death of a parent or loved one. You feel the pulse of your own heart as the doctor mumbles, “There isn’t a heartbeat.” You sigh at the long road ahead as your people are marginalized, disenfranchised, or enslaved by fellow humans. The list goes on.

The people of Israel were no strangers to suffering. Yes, God chose them to display his glory to the nations, but this privilege did not exempt them from years of pain. In Psalm 129, the psalmist removes the mask, and we witness the metaphorical and literal scars which reside underneath.

In verses 1 and 2, the psalmist sings twice that, “since my youth they have often attacked me." As a people, their suffering was long and consistent. Throughout their history, they went in and out of enslavement to other nations. From the cries of Egypt (Ex. 3:7-8) to the lion’s den in Babylon (Dan. 6), the Israelites experienced consistent attacks. Across generations, some of their worst fears happened over and over again.

In verse 3 the psalmist paints a beautifully disturbing word picture describing physical pain as they sing how “plowmen plow over [their] back; they made their furrows long”. Plows are sharp tools used to break up the earth to plant seeds. Furrows are the long narrow trenches made in the ground by the plows. The mask is off, and here we find the home of the tears and desperation of the suffering.

ATTACKED BY SIN

Similarly, the final stanza of Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask,” removes the mask as he speaks of this long road of pain:

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To Thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh, the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask.

And this is the case for us. While we may not be enslaved, we still experience attacks. Our attacks may be our sin patterns, spiritual warfare, or an actual enemy who seeks to destroy our reputation by gossip. Enemies are seeking to kill us, bringing many of our fears to reality.

Suffering Together

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Psalm 129 is the call for all of Israel to say, “since my youth they have often attacked me." This Psalm speaks of the collective suffering of a group of people. It gives words to the corporate cries of the oppressed.

My ancestors penned many poems and songs like this when they were, and in some ways still are, oppressed by fellow humans. Littered throughout the beautiful words of negro spirituals and poems written by African-American men and women are the collective pronouns of “we," “our” and “us." African-American poet, Melvin B. Tolson, displays similar sentiments as Psalm 129 in regard to the collective nature of suffering in his poem, “Dark Symphony.” He writes:

Oh, how can we forget Our human rights denied? Oh, how can we forget Our manhood crucified? When Justice is profaned And plea with curse is met, When Freedom’s gates are barred, Oh, how can we forget?

Some may not feel this collective “we” in which these poems and some psalms speak, but we can learn from them. We learn of the nature of the church community—we were meant to suffer alongside one another.

As one body (1 Cor. 12:26) we not only worship with one another, but we feel deeply with one another. As Romans 12:15 says, we “Rejoice with those who rejoice, [and] weep with those who weep.” We draw near to our brothers and sisters in the faith, and we see what is underneath the mask. We don’t disregard it or explain their suffering away; we weep with them.

Through bearing burdens together, we become a tangible expression of the comfort of Christ to them. To even begin to do this, we must be close enough to our brothers and sisters in Christ to know what is going on in their lives and to see behind the mask.

God’s Righteous Character

In the suffering of his people, Tolson writes, “When Freedom’s gates are barred/ Oh, how can we forget?” As Psalm 129 reminds us, the goal of our suffering is not to forget it, erase it, or ignore it.

Psalm 129, and all the Psalms of Ascents, were written to celebrate seasonal feasts in Jerusalem. The Israelites sang these songs corporately and regularly. They sang about their oppression and the Lord’s deliverance. In singing, they forced themselves to remember. Faith helps us to see that God will work in the future—like he has done in the past—because of his consistently righteous character. As one quote renders it, “What God has done for his people formerly are, in effect, promises too. Faith may conclude that the Lord will work in like manner in the future. If he delivered others who rested in him, he will deliver me if I trust in him now. He is the same yesterday and forever.”

In Psalm 129:2, the Israelites sing that their enemies have not prevailed against them. If we were to read only verse 1-2, we might conclude that the Israelites were the reason their enemies didn’t overcome them. We may assume they delivered themselves from their enemies.

HOLD FAST TO THE PROMISE

As we read on, verse 4 reveals salvation didn’t come from the Israelites own strength and efforts but from the Lord’s righteous character. They could sing “the LORD is righteous” (Ps. 129:4) because they drew on years of history which proved the Lord’s faithfulness to them. He delivered others—and by faith—we can believe he will deliver us as well.

We, too, can hold fast to this same promise. For centuries God has kept his Word to his people. He stayed true to his unchanging and righteous character. The ultimate evidence of his deliverance is through the person and work and Jesus Christ who delivered us from the bondage of sin. And in a myriad of smaller ways, he will do the same for us.

Our deliverance may be different than we expect and slow coming. Perhaps instead of removing us from the struggle, he will mold and shape our character, integrity, and faith in it (Rom. 5:3-5; Jas. 1:3). If we find ourselves in the dark night of the soul—before the face of our Father and in the presence of his people—we can remove the mask. We can mourn and remember the faithfulness of our God. And we can recall, he loves to shine his light into the darkest places.

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SharDavia “Shar” Walker lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Paul. She serves on staff with Campus Outreach, an interdenominational college ministry, and enjoys sharing her faith and discipling college women to be Christian leaders. Shar is a writer and a speaker and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Christian Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

God In Our Waiting

Paul once said he had learned the secret of contentment, but he never had to shop at a grocery store. Everyone has their hang-ups, and this is one of my many. Every time I walk through those automatic doors and grab a shopping cart (or “buggy” where I’m from), I know I’m entering a minefield of frustration and impatience.

It's like the engineers who designed the shopping carts didn't consult with the engineers who designed the width of the aisles to allow two shoppers to pass with ease. Some shoppers seem to think their carts are holograms and can be walked through as if they were immaterial. As I shop, thoughts run wild in my head:

Why do five people need to be looking for spices the moment I need to be? Who had the bright idea of putting water pitcher filters in the hardware section? Who goes through self-checkout with 35 items at DMV-level speed?

My shopping experiences sometimes morph into moments of inner rage. I don’t want to be this way.

I want to be grateful I get to shop for food at all, with little concern about having enough to pay for what I need.

I want to see people as God sees them, but then someone forgets how to use their credit card in front of me. It’s a trivial example of a deeper reality of my humanity.

Waiting is not easy.

ALREADY, NOT YET

Paul wrote, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom 7:18). Many theologians have ascribed Paul’s reflections here to the Christian experience. Regardless of what Paul specifically meant in this instance, the sentiment itself could describe how Christians often feel.

We are thankful for the gospel’s promise of adoption and grace extended toward sinners like us (Eph 1:5-6), but we are discouraged when our flesh continually presumes on the riches of his kindness (Rom 2:4). We love the thought of receiving “new wine,” but this old wineskin of a body seems to be the wrong place for it (Mk 2:21-22). We live as a “new creation” right here and now (2 Cor 5:17), but a day will come when we are made new, indeed, sinless (Rev 21:5).

Here lies the already-but-not-yet reality of the Christian life, and the answer is not very satisfying: wait.

Why does God make us wait, specifically as it relates to the presence of sin in our lives? Isn’t he aware of how much we hate waiting? Hasn’t he seen us on the interstate or getting off a plane? We’re living in a push-notification, fast-food, tweet-able, convenience-store world; isn’t it about time he catches up with the rest of us and stops the waiting already? Hasn’t it gone on long enough?

Our microwaves and two-day shipping services have conditioned us to believe that waiting is wasting. But God never wastes our waiting.

LEARNING THROUGH WAITING

In fact, it’s only through our waiting that God can teach us certain aspects of himself. There is a reason God has not eradicated the reality of sin yet in us. To make us wait is not to punish, so much as it is to demonstrate and instruct. There must be something redemptive about waiting, as difficult as the tension might be, for God to deem it necessary for each of us.

Psalm 130 is a window through which we see the goodness of waiting and the “okay-ness” of the already-but-not-yet tension that marks Christian living. This psalm is recognized by Bible scholars as one of the seven Penitential Psalms. It's found right in the heart of the Songs of Ascent, a collection of laments, praises, and prayers that frame a sort of “pilgrim’s progress” toward right worship of God.

There's an emphasis on both the individual and communal aspects of sin and penitence. Therefore, this psalm has something pointed to say both to the Church at large as well as to the individual Christian when it comes to sin and hardship and how they relate to our waiting. In particular, it offers four reminders for the person facing sin and hardship.

1. God meets our misery with mercy (Ps. 130:1-2)

Our Father loves us too much to shield us from being brought to the depths. He is not like the over-protective parent who works tirelessly to keep his children free from struggle. We cannot know we are empty until we truly feel it. He will never coerce us into the wrong decision; rather he knows that it is in the depths that his children abandon all attempts at quick fixes and self-help, and turn their gaze upward.

This first stanza is the first of three instances where the Psalmist uses both “LORD” (Yahweh) and “Lord” (Adonai) to describe God. “Yahweh” was considered too holy of a name to speak when referring to God, and “Adonai” was often used in its place.

But the two names have specific and differing points of emphasis regarding the character of God. “Yahweh” is often used in Scripture to point to the covenant faithfulness of God toward his people, while “Adonai” is often used when describing the power and sovereignty of God.

In verses 1-2, God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that God is both faithful and sovereign in hearing our prayers. Our prayers do not fall on apathetic ears or into incapable hands. He is attentive to our cries for help from the depths of our sin. He mercifully ordains our misery, that he might display his power and faithfulness to us.

2. God meets our confession with forgiveness (Ps. 130:3-4)

One of the main reasons many Christians struggle with confessing wrongdoing is that it is simply humiliating. We feel more exposed than the Emperor with his new clothes, like a tabloid will be telling the world in bright and bold letters what we have done.

But as the psalmist recognizes, we are all exposed in the end. Why should we fear confession when we have all fallen short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23)? In verses 3-4, God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that God is both faithful and sovereign in spite of our personal sins.

When we confess our sins, God clothes us with the garments of salvation (Isa 61:10). It is only through the way of confession that we come to understand being forgiven. And even more so, God allows us to go through the difficulty of confession “that [he] may be feared.” When we confess our sins, God will manifest his forgiving power in our lives, which will spark worship in our hearts.

3. God meets our hope with promises (Ps. 130:5-6)

Our only hope of being rid of the battle with sin once and for all is if God makes it so. It is hopeless for us to attempt in our own selves to finally eliminate sin. God must intervene, and therefore we must wait.

The psalmist says in our waiting for the Lord, we must hope. The way Scripture talks about hope is not the same way the world talks about hope. The world’s hope is frail. It's quasi-confidence, with little to bank on other than chance. I hope the Bears win tonight. I hope I have studied enough. I hope life slows down soon.

But the Christian hope is not a shot in the dark. It is grounded not in sheer luck, but in a person. And not just any person, but Yahweh and Adonai Himself. God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that our hopes aren’t hanging in the air. God not only hears us and forgives us but he has also given us his Word to form our hope.

He is worthy of being trusted with our hopes because he will do what he says he will do. His Word itself is power (Rom. 116), and therefore guarantees it.

4. God meets our world with redemption (Ps. 130:7-8)

The hope we're guaranteed is redemption. God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) are not only applied to us in an individual sense but in a communal sense as well. Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, but he’s more than that. He is also our shared Lord and Savior.

Sin has affected us not only as individuals but also as a community. The Fall ushered in a host of fault lines and distortions in our hearts and in our world. But through the cross, redemption is available to those who trust in him.

And, get this: it’s coming for the world God’s people live in, too. There is “plentiful redemption” available to the community and the nation of Israel, an inside-out “making all things new” that we await (Rev. 21:5).

AND NOW WE WAIT

Waiting isn’t easy. No one said it would be, not even Jesus. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world” (Jn 17:15).

Jesus’s plan for our growth is not escaping or fleeing—it’s going through the refining fire. It’s being exposed of our inabilities, confessing our need for God, trusting that his Word is worthy of our hope, and anticipating the work he intends to do in us and around us. It’s all bound up in the psalmist’s words: “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits.”

Perhaps our best shot at living a life of gospel witness is to choose the way of waiting. To slow down and ignore the shortcuts, to stay the course and fight our sin, to hold fast to his Word, and to endure in the world he is making new. Like watchmen in the black of night, we know our task during the dark is hard, but the dawn of morning is on the way.

The waiting will be worth it.

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Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.

Suffering Doesn’t Have to Keep You from Giving Thanks

“How’s Jesus treating you today?” I asked her, taking a seat at her bedside. Hospice had recently brought in a hospital bed to make it easier to help her in and out. That word—hospice—signaled to all of us that in the eyes of medicine, the end was near. It was just a matter of time.

To most people, it didn’t seem like Jesus was treating her well at all. But she saw things differently.

It took her a moment to answer. Her mind was alert, but her speech had been severely impaired by the pressure of the tumor in her brain. “I know Jesus loves me,” she said, “because he sent you to visit me.”

HUNGRY FOR GRACE

Amid suffering, her eyes had become finely attuned to recognize the grace of God. My friend was on her deathbed, yet she had the clearest sight of anyone I knew.

She was so hungry for grace that she was ready to recognize and receive any gift that came her way. She could easily have rejected the little gifts—like me of all things!—because they weren’t the gifts she really wanted (like healing and wholeness).

She had become adept at recognizing streams in the desert. Her context of disease, suffering, and impending death did not deaden—but rather, amplified—her ability to receive the grace God was lavishly pouring out on her. How is this possible?

HOW GRATITUDE IS CONNECTED TO SPIRITUAL HEALTH

In Romans 1, The Apostle Paul connects gratitude to spiritual health:

"For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images" (Rom. 1:21-23, emphasis added)

Spiritual decay begins when God is no longer recognized as the gift giver. When we separate God from his gifts, the gifts eventually take his place. Ceasing to give thanks is the beginning of this long downward spiral away from God. Ingratitude leads to spiritual death.

On the other hand, gratitude leads to spiritual vitality. Show me a grateful person and I’ll show you someone who is growing spiritually. Gratitude—hunting for grace and saying “thank you” when you find it—is a discipleship issue. A life of following Jesus should be increasingly marked by gratitude.

THANKSGIVING IN THE CRUCIBLE

The first followers of Jesus took it as a given that discipleship is worked out in the furnace of suffering. Peter reminded his flocks to “not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Pet. 4:12). Jesus himself promised a crucible, not a coddling, for those who follow him (see John 15:18-20).

This difficult setting for a life of discipleship isn’t obvious to all because a tension exists in our mind between gratitude and suffering. We find it difficult to believe that a young mother dying of cancer could find anything to be grateful for. We wonder at her ability to draw closer to her Savior at the same time she draws closer to her death.

Scripture, however, reminds us that gratitude best finds its meaning in the face of suffering. Thanksgiving regularly holds hands with lament, a reality understood by the psalmists. Over half of the psalms include lament—or giving voice to the reality that human life is regularly marked by the presence of suffering—such as:

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5).

In light of who God is—“my salvation and my God”—the downcast poet calls himself to hope amid turmoil, to rejoice amid tears, and to give thanks amid lament. Gratitude must come even, or perhaps especially, when it doesn’t make sense; a reality understood by Abraham Lincoln.

WHY THANKSGIVING IS CONNECTED TO LAMENT

On October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the famous Thanksgiving Proclamation, marking the last Thursday of November as a national day of prayer and repentance. He wrote this proclamation at the height of the Civil War, within two weeks of one of the bloodiest battles in American History.

The juxtaposition of thanksgiving and tragedy doesn’t seem to make sense. But Lincoln understood the deep connection between gratitude and lament. He saw gratitude as lament’s counterbalance and knew that the way forward for a broken nation would somehow walk the narrow road between the two. Neither could be left out, for thanksgiving without lament would become naive optimism, and lament without thanksgiving would degenerate into hopeless cynicism.

Thanksgiving makes true lament possible because it anchors tragedy, brokenness, illness, pain, and suffering in the person of God. Without God, lament can never find resolution or meaning because it’s detached from an object: someone to whom we can lament. Thanksgiving is the formational practice of thanking that very same Person, providing a relational context where Godward lament makes sense.

PRACTICE THANKSGIVING

A life of following Jesus is a life increasingly marked by gratitude. If you want to become more like Jesus, say “thank you” more often. “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you,” wrote Paul (1 Thess. 5:18). But how?

The foundational work of thanksgiving is to hunt high and low for grace and, having found it, to say “thank you” for it. We can train ourselves to “give thanks in all circumstances” by implementing habits of gratitude, such as:

Say “thank you” more than “you’re welcome.” Jesus called his disciples to exercise hospitality toward those we wouldn’t normally invite to our table, especially those who can’t repay us (Luke 14:12-14). In this instance, it would be easy to see ourselves in the role of benefactors: giving freely from our abundance. But what if Jesus wanted us to see that even in our acts of generosity we should have eyes to see grace coming towards us rather than going out from us? Even in our generosity, God is the one extending undeserved grace to us: “…and you will be blessed” (Luke 14:14).

Say “thank you” for difficult things. God is constantly trying to train us to see his hand in all things. We are at risk of missing his work when we limit the ways we think he can act. That flat tire you had when you were already running late for work? Say “thank you.” The conflict at work that keeps you up at night? Say “thank you.” Could you even say “thank you” for a marriage on the rocks? For losing your job? For a cancer diagnosis? James would say so: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1:2-4).

Say “thank you” to others regularly. Write thank you cards. Speak words of affirmation. Making saying “thank you” a regular practice. As you practice saying thanking those around you, you will find yourself regularly on the hunt for grace in the lives of others. Not only that, but you will teach others to say “thank you” when they may never have thought to do so.

Keep a running “thank you” list and review it regularly. This is one of the easiest ways to train yourself to hunt for grace: every morning (or evening), write down at least one thing you’re grateful for. At family meals, rehearse aloud even the smallest graces of God—warm food, shelter, sleep, chocolate, good music, friends. Finding things to be grateful for in the mundane is the training ground for grateful disciples.

GRATEFUL FOR GOD’S GRACE

Gratitude is a recognition and affirmation of the grace of God. There can be no spiritual maturity without thankfulness.

As you pursue a life of discipleship, practice saying thank you in the mundane things, in the difficult things, and even in the unexpected situations. The Thanksgiving holiday is a great time to start.

May you find yourself—even when despair seems right—inadvertently and unconsciously “giving thanks in all circumstances” to a God who is constantly pouring his grace out on you.

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Mike Phay serves as Lead Pastor at FBC Prineville (Oregon) and as a Staff Writer at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He has been married to Keri for over 21 years, and they have five amazing kids. You can follow him on Twitter (@mikephay) or check out his blog.

The Hazardous Work of Discipleship

I was slumped over my computer triaging my inbox when a knock broke my concentration.

“There’s a guy asking to speak to a pastor. He’s . . . well, he’s crying. Can you go talk to him?”

I said sure, and inhaled a long, slow breath as I prayed over what lay ahead.

He was sitting with his back to me when I arrived. I recognized him. He thanked me for seeing him, his head slightly bowed like he was in the principal’s office.

He wasn’t sure how it happened. Things had gotten out of hand, one thing had led to another, and somehow he had spent the night in jail. The details were fuzzy. Their flesh wounds were not.

“Something’s got to change with me,” he said. But he had no idea what that meant. “I don’t want it to go on like this. What do I do?”

This is the hazardous work of discipleship. The part no one prepares you for.

when you don’t know what to say

I intentionally say it’s the hazardous work of discipleship—not the pastorate—because sooner or later every disciple-maker finds themselves in conversations they weren’t prepared for. These conversations are loaded with questions that don’t have easy answers and are smeared with the filth of sin.

“When someone’s life is falling apart, we need to offer robust truths that stand the test of time.”

In times like these, disciple-makers need something substantial to grab hold of and to offer to drowning disciples. Flimsy Christian phrases about “seasons of life” and “God having a plan” simply won’t do.

When someone’s life is falling apart, we need to offer robust truths that stand the test of time—truths like those in Psalm 124.

Dangerous Discipleship

Written by David likely after a time of great onslaught and suffering, this psalm “better than any other describes the hazardous work of all discipleship and declares the help that is always experienced at the hand of God,” wrote Eugene Peterson.

The first five verses declare the dangers of discipleship:

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters.

Where would we be without God? In every time and place, the church has faced physical or spiritual persecution, and sometimes both. Beatings, torture, marginalization, spiritual warfare, lust, greed, death; these are commonplace among God’s people.

What believer has not known a threat that rose so steadily and powerfully around them that they thought they might be carried away by the flood? What believer has not known the suffocating pressure applied by people bent on demeaning or destroying their character?

“If it weren’t for an almighty, all-powerful God we would surely be carried away by the raging waters; we would surely be swallowed up.”

But it is in these moments, at just the right time, that our Lord comes to the rescue. “Imagine what would have happened if the Lord had left us, and then see what has happened because he has been faithful to us,” wrote Charles Spurgeon. If it weren’t for an almighty, all-powerful God we would surely be carried away by the raging waters; we would surely be swallowed up.

“This psalm, though, is not about hazards but about help,” Peterson writes. “The hazardous work of discipleship is not the subject of the psalm but only its setting.” The psalm now turns to what happens in such a hazardous setting.

Why the Caged Bird Sings

After calling us to look back and see the Lord’s rescuing hand, David beckons us to celebrate our escape by magnifying the Rescuer.

Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped!

When all our friends and help have evaporated and all hope is lost, then God breaks the snare and sets us free. Our deliverance comes by the hand of God, so we must thank him properly, for he snatched us out of danger like a helpless mouse in the snake’s fangs or a bird who narrowly escapes the snare. “We rob [God] of his due if we do not return thanks to him,” wrote Matthew Henry. “And we are the more obliged to praise him because we had such a narrow escape.”

Spurgeon, in his commentary on these verses, lingers on the bird and snare imagery:

“Our soul is like a bird for many reasons; but in this case the point of likeness is weakness, folly, and the ease with which it is enticed into the snare. Fowlers have many methods of taking small birds, and Satan has many methods of entrapping souls. . . . Fowlers know their birds, and how to take them; but the birds see not the snare so as to avoid it, and they cannot break it so as to escape from it.”

We are helpless, like a caged bird, as much as we wouldn’t like to admit it.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a poet born to emancipated parents in June 1872. He went on to become one of the first influential African-American poets in America. In his poem titled “Sympathy,” he writes of the desperation of being another man’s property:

“I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore — When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!”

Though we are not enslaved to other people today, we have all been slaves to sin (Rom. 6:16). But if you are in Christ, the gate of your cage has burst open and you have been set free! Spurgeon writes,

“Happy is the bird that hath a deliverer strong, and mighty, and ready in the moment of peril: happier still is the soul over which the Lord watches day and night to pluck its feet out of the net. What joy there is in this song, ‘our soul is escaped.’ How the emancipated one sings and soars, and soars and sings again.”

Brothers and sisters, rejoice at your rescue and freedom in Christ! God has snatched you out of the darkness and brought you into his marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). He has grafted you into his family, making you his very own son or daughter (Rom. 11:17). Who is this God who rescues sinners and adopts them as his own?

The Lord Who Made Heaven and Earth

Recently I was teaching a class on what the Bible says about immigrants and refugees. My wife walked in a few minutes late after dropping our kids off, so she sat at a table in the back with one other woman. We paused for discussion and they got to talking.

My wife discovered the woman was here as a refugee after fleeing persecution for her Christian faith in Eritrea. We asked about her family. One of her brothers-in-law is in prison for his faith; the whereabouts of her mentally ill brother are unknown, she told us through tears.

The next day my wife wanted to text her and let her know we’re praying for her. But what do you say in a situation like this?

My wife sent her Psalm 124 and told her we were thanking God that she escaped and was able to come to America. The psalm meant so much to the woman that she read it to a group of Eritrean ex-pats who pray regularly for their country, then they prayed the song for their loved ones back home.

OUR CREATOR AND COMFORTER

The final verse of Psalm 124 tells us, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Yahweh, the great “I Am,” is our rescuer. He is our strength and shield, our shelter from the storm. He is the omnipotent, omniscient one who created heaven and earth. He is not a weak god incapable of saving but an Almighty God with whom all things are possible (Matt. 19:26).

This is who our help is in! Our Creator is our Rescuer. “He made heaven for us, and he will keep us for heaven,” Spurgeon wrote. He will not abandon us forever, though for a short time we may suffer. This is the God—the truth—to whom we point desperate disciples in times of great need and trouble. This is the truth to whom we point ourselves when in desperation or despair.

When we praise the God who made heaven and earth, we start to see our lives in the proper perspective. We begin to realize God is shaping and forming us through our suffering into men and women who look like his Son. When we worship God as Creator, we increase our trust in God as Comforter.

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Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of four, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

Why Does God Permit So Much Evil?

God has all power and all knowledge and is second to none. No equals and no competitors. The fact that evil is rampant in his creation is no surprise to him. It’s there only by permission. Fromtime to time, evil may seem to be running wild, but in fact it’s always on a leash. And we should be grateful that we’ve never seen how bad it could become.

Exactly why God allows evil in his creation, he doesn’t bother to tell us, and he doesn’t need to. He is God. We can’t understand everything about God, but we have enough information to satisfy many of our basic questions. In many cases, God chooses to let us go through whatever evil or trouble we may be facing at the moment. He could have prevented it and allowed us an easy skate, rather than the tough slog some have to endure. He could end it entirely but probably won’t until he’s through using it for his purposes.

An Intruder in God's Good Creation

If we take a close look at both the Old and New Testaments, we notice something interesting about evil’s presence in the world. It is considered an intruder into God’s good creation but is allowed to prowl about for a time, and with a considerable degree of freedom. Yet it’s always within bounds.

Sometimes it may look as though it exceeds all limits, and whereas good often seems to run out of steam, evil seems never to tire. But just when we think God’s hands are tied, he yanks the chain and brings it to heel. He is ruler of all. Evil is evil and good is good, but whereas God never uses good for evil purposes, he often uses or blatantly exploits evil for good purposes. He does this by turning it upside down and inside out.

The stories of the patriarchs in Genesis are wonderful illustrations of evil being exploited for good. One of the clearest pictures comes to us in the account of Joseph. Young Joseph is mistreated, violently abused, tricked, kidnapped, enslaved, falsely accused, and imprisoned. Yet every time he is kicked and abused, he is mysteriously bumped up one more rung of the ladder. He moves from the deep hole in the beginning of the story to the position of the prime minister of Egypt at the end.

God used all the evil directed toward Joseph as raw material to construct not only his preservation from starvation and death but also the rescue of those who abused him as well as the salvation of the entire nation he served. As Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

This pattern presented early in the Bible became the blueprint for how God has chosen to deal with evil in his realm for the rest of history. He may permit a certain amount of wickedness to occur, but he always reserves the right to twist and use it for his own purposes. We see the same design in the New Testament.

What we see in Genesis continues throughout early church history, through the centuries of the martyrs, in the subsequent eras of the church, and up to the present day. This is God’s will for the remainder of time until he brings down the curtain and calls humanity to final judgment. After every tiny scrap of evil is dealt with in the complete justice and fairness of God, he intends to recreate a new heaven and new earth where evil is no longer even a possibility—where only goodness and righteousness will exist.

The manipulation of evil for good ends is one of the most exciting aspects of God’s program on earth. He uses the bad things around us in ways we couldn’t possibly expect. He brings good out of the bad not in spite of it but because of it.

The Grand Master

Let’s examine a very earthly and human analogy of this. For example, it’s common practice to exploit the intentions of others for our own ends in a variety of ways. Consider the game of chess. As the competition progresses, the better of the two players cleverly ascertains his opponent’s game plan. He has two options. He can block and frustrate the plan immediately, or he can so arrange his own strategy to account for it, to absorb it. In this way, while his opponent is cheerfully fulfilling his own scheme, he’s also unwittingly fulfilling that of the superior player.

Just when he thinks he’s about to proclaim victory, he’s suddenly checkmated. The game is over.

So it is with God. He’s the Grand Master of chess, who can at any moment impose his own plan over ours (or anyone else’s), so that no matter what, he can bring the game to his own decreed conclusion. We may deliberately live a life of rebellion and selfishness, discarding his will at every point, or we may live a life of Spirit-empowered obedience and self-sacrifice. Whichever course we take, he wins in the end. By scripting his own plot to overarch ours, he allows us to fulfill our plans but ultimately to bring about his will. In this way, evil is both exploited as well as judged, good is rewarded, and God is the victor.

Of course, this is not a perfect analogy, since there are no exact earthly parallels to how God’s nature and sovereignty are involved in human life. God is entirely unique and profoundly mysterious. He is revealed to us only in part. As I said, this revelation isn’t everything we want to know, but it’s enough to grasp the basics of what he wants us to know. The main point of comparison here is that the superior being uses the activities of the inferior for his own will.

Over the years, our family has discovered that some of the best things that ever happened to us came as a direct result of the worst things that ever happened to us. If we take the apostle Paul seriously “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), then we’ll eventually see how God still writes his superior, more sophisticated script over all others.

No matter what evils befall us, good (even excellence) may be brought out of them. This is one of God’s favorite things to do. This point is too important to pass over lightly.

And we need to remember, just as it is Satan’s purpose to take all that is good and turn it toward evil ends, so it is God’s purpose to take all that is evil in the lives of those who love him and turn it for good. The commandeering and exploitation of evil for good is one of the most powerful aspects of God’s strategies on earth. He skillfully manipulates the bad things around us in ways we couldn’t possibly expect or imagine.

A Truth We Need to be Fixed in Our Minds

We need to fix this truth in our minds. Between now and the final act of history’s play, God has determined to allow evil to roam about on a chain, not free to do anything and everything it wants, but to do much that we wouldn’t want. Evil will always be an intruder and an invader. As long as we dwell on this planet, we’ll always live in occupied territory. Evil will be relatively free (within God’s prescribed limits), but it will always be under the ongoing judgment of the Ruler of all things. Each and every day he will choose to exploit what evil determines to do and to turn it toward his good purposes.

Again, evil will continue to accuse, blame, abuse, misrepresent the truth, destroy, and pillage, but it will remain on a leash. It will never be totally free and will do no more than it’s allowed to do. God defeats it handily, takes it prisoner, and redirects it to bring the good he intends.

Why do I repeat myself? Simply to underscore this critical point: whether people choose to do evil or good in this life, God has decreed that he will write his will into the script of human history and bring it to its conclusion in exactly the way he has purposed.

We can oppose God’s will and do the most terrible things, or we can do everything in our power to try to please him. In either case, he’s able to enter into our own worldly troubles and sins and in some mysterious way bring out of them ultimate good—both his and ours. Without doubt, evil, and all those who love it and are given to it, will face judgment and destruction. But it is to God’s glory that we turn from it and live.

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Taken from Resenting God: Escape the Downward Spiral of Blame, (c) 2018, Abingdon Press.

Dr. John I. Snyder is author of Resenting God and Your 100 Day Prayer. As an ordained Presbyterian pastor, John has served congregations in the United States and planted churches in California and Switzerland. He is the advisor and lead author for theology and culture blog Theology Mix (www.theologymix.com), which hosts 80+ authors and podcasters and visitors from 175 countries. He received his Doctor of Theology degree magna cum laude in New Testament Studies from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He also has Master of Theology and Master of Divinity degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

The Blessing of Being Wrong

“YOU’RE WRONG!” Several middle school students I once ministered to competed in regional debate tournaments twice a year. They were well prepared on the topic of debate: they knew the rebuttals and oratory tactics to land their points, and how to demonstrate the logical flaws in their opponents’ arguments. Neatly dressed and armed with little index cards of research—and cut-throat for winning the competitions—these students were preparing for debating and defeating contrasting world-views.

When it was time for a tournament, I would famously offer any student debating in the competition $20 in hard cash if they would, in the midst of their debate, stand up, point at the other side, and yell “YOU’RE WRONG!” and then quietly sit down again, thus ending the debate.

Whether they wanted to avoid the scolding and potential embarrassment of losing the tournament for such a brash tactic, or whether they were unsure of my ability to pay, I don't know. But no one ever took the risk.

Hearing “YOU’RE WRONG!” is an awakening. I for one don’t like it. But I need to hear it. “You’re wrong!” forces me to look at my situation or point of view and assess where I may have missed a turn. Sometimes, being told I’m wrong leads me to hunker down into my convictions and stand my ground. No matter what, it’s always an awakening moment. There’s a blessing in being wrong.

Painfully Aware

The poet of Psalm 120 had a moment of awakening: “In my distress I called out to the Lord.” The weight of discovering he’d been wrong was startling and traumatic; it crushed his soul. He felt misery and anguish, a blend he called “distress.” Before we can appreciate the psalmist’s awakening, we have to understand his story.

Three times a year the Hebrews were required to leave their homes and journey to Jerusalem holy days of festival celebration. Their pilgrimage was an embodiment of the life of faith. Moving to Jerusalem was “ascending the hill of the Lord,” all the while asking, “Who can do this?” (Ps. 15; 24). As they traveled, a liturgy took shape to remind and provide “a guidebook and map” for the journey of faith, as Eugene Peterson would say. This liturgy was captured in fifteen Psalms—Psalms 120-134—affectionately known as the “Psalms of Ascent.”

Every so often I realize that an important date is so quickly approaching that unless I shift into high gear, there is simply no way I’ll be prepared. I’ve never waited to buy Christmas presents until Christmas Eve, but there have been a few close calls for birthdays and other holidays. The thought of missing the date gives me a much-needed awakening.

I imagine there were some busy Jewish families that would share that moment of sheer fright when they realized the festival was merely a day or two away. Pulling together a few essentials and getting out of the house was hectic and hurried. The frustration of living so far away and making the journey is heard in the psalmist’s cries: “I have stayed in Meshech . . . I have lived among the tents of Kedar,” as if to say, “I am so far from the city, so far from God’s place, so far away from being who I should be.”

The journey to Jerusalem was hard and perhaps painful, but necessary. Realizing our distance from God can get us moving. We hear “YOU’RE WRONG!” and realize we’re so far in the wrong direction that unless we get moving right now, we’ll never catch up. Welcome to repentance.

Becoming aware of his distance from God was the only way the psalmist could be changed. Awakening to his reality was the only way he could be moved. This is exactly what God wants for us.

The Refreshment of Repentance

Repentance is described by many as an emotion. We often hear of repentance in terms of sorrow, anguish, or contrition. While the awakened sense of wrongness that comes with repentance does bring true sorrow, repentance isn’t merely an emotional response. In the psalmist’s case, there is anger at his own decisions, disgust over his apathy, and desire for a new life. But his emotions don’t tell us he’s repenting. His actions do.

The singular verb, “called,” of Psalm 120 tells us how to respond to God when awakened to our sin. It directs us to action. After hearing “YOU’RE WRONG!” he realized the sinfulness of his hometown had worn off on him, and he called out for help: “In my distress I called to the Lord.”

Left to himself, he’d always be stuck, always be distant from God, always among those who love war. That was the painful realization of his heart and soul. He longed for peace, for justice, and for nearness to God.

Repentance must be an action for us too. We have restitution to make, changes to implement, steps to take. But repentance cannot and will not be real and refreshing until we make the first step—crying out for help.

So many self-help systems are geared around willpower; washing your face, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and other simple strategies. But growing near to God though takes another path—helplessness. The false notion that “God helps those who help themselves” falls short. God helps those who cannot help themselves, and so they cry out to him in desperation.

The refreshment of repentance is not in the actions we take or the sorrow we feel. The refreshment of repentance starts with the awareness that “YOU’RE WRONG!” coupled with the cry “GOD, HELP!” We can’t fix our wrongness but we can cry out for help.

Promised Reprieve

The full opening verse of Psalm 120 speaks for the whole: “I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me.” He was wrong and weary, misguided and messy. Far from home and far from God. Yet God answered him. This is the blessing of being wrong. But it’s only for those who are aware they are wrong and need some help. God answers those who realize they’re wrong and cry out to him.

What resounding hope and help this is for stagnated and sedentary disciples like you and me! No matter how wrong we are, no matter how painful the awareness of our sinfulness, God is there to meet us when we cry out. He’s there to bring a blessing when we are wrong.

Instead of self-importance or righteousness or religious performance, all we have to offer God is a cry for his help. He meets all our weakness with all his strength. This is the promise for those of us who hear, “YOU’RE WRONG!” and answer, “Yes, it’s true! God help me!” For those who will cry out in need and desperation for help and rescue from their sin, God promises he will answer. His answer gets us moving. His grace silences the shout of “YOU’RE WRONG” and tells us “Come, home!”

What are we waiting for? The loving, open arms of the Father are open to us. Let’s allow the painful awareness of our sin to urge us to cry out for his help, and let’s start on the road to God. He’ll not only meet us on the way, but he will also bring us the whole way there.

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Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and That Word Above All Earthly Powers. He writes personally at jwritebol.net. You can read all of Jeremy’s articles for GCD here.

How to Cultivate Communal Comfort in Your Suffering

Suffering powerfully highlights what has always been true—we were not created for independent living. Suffering reminds us that God’s grace doesn’t work to propel our independence but to deepen our vertical and horizontal dependence. The strong, independent, self-made person is a delusion. Everyone needs help and assistance. To fight community, to quest for self-sufficiency, is not only a denial of your spiritual need; it’s a denial of your humanity. Suffering is a messenger telling us that to be human is to be dependent.

My friend TobyMac so wonderfully captured with these words: “What does it look like to admit your need and open the door to God’s warehouse of provision?” Consider these seven steps.

1. Don’t Suffer in Heroic Isolation

There’s nothing noble about bearing down and suffering alone. In fact, it’s a recipe for disaster. Everyone has been designed by God for community. Healthy, godly living is deeply relational. Worshipfully submissive community with God and humble dependency on God’s people are vital to living well in the middle of the unplanned, the unwanted, and the unexpected.

The brothers and sisters around you have been placed in your life as instruments of grace, and as I’ve said before, they won’t be perfect instruments, they won’t always say and do the right things, but in the messiness of these relationships God delivers to us what only he can give.

In my own suffering I’ve had to fight with the temptation of self-imposed isolation. I know I need the presence and voices of others in my life who can say and do things for me that I could never do for myself, and I know that the relationship I have with these people is God’s gift of comfort, rescue, protection, and wisdom. Are you suffering in isolation?

2. Determine to Be Honest

The first step in seeking and celebrating the gift of the comfort of God’s people and experiencing how they can make the invisible grace of God visible in your life is to honestly communicate how you’re handling what you’re going through. Honest communication is not detailing the hardship you’re going through and letting all the people around you know how tough you have it. Complaining tends to drive people away and to attract you to other complainers, which is far from healthy and helpful. Rather, every sufferer needs to be humbly honest about the spiritual battle underneath the physical travail so that brothers and sisters around you can fight that spiritual battle with you.

And don’t worry about what people think of you. Remember, you don’t get your identity, peace, security, and rest of heart from them but from your Lord. No one in your life is capable of being your messiah; people are tools in the hands of your Messiah, Jesus. It would be impossible to fully communicate the depth of the comfort, strength, and counsel I have gotten at crucial moments of spiritual battle from the dear ones God has placed in my life. Are you humbly and honestly communicating to others about how you’re handling your hardship?

3. Let People Interrupt Your Private Conversation

You have incredible influence over you, because no one talks to you more than you do. The problem is that there are times when it’s very hard to say to ourselves what we need to hear. The travail of suffering is clearly one of those times. It’s hard then to give yourself the hope, comfort, confrontation, direction, wisdom, and God-awareness that every sufferer desperately needs.

So you need voices in your life besides your own. You need to invite wise and loving people to eavesdrop and interrupt your private conversation, providing in their words things you wouldn’t be able to say to yourself. And don’t take offense when they fail to agree with your assessments; you need these alternative voices. They’re not in your life to hurt your feelings but to give you what you won’t be able to give yourself, and that in itself is a sweet grace from the hand of God. Who have you invited to interrupt your private conversations?

4. Admit Your Weakness

Doing well in the middle of hardship is not about acting as if you’re strong. God’s reputation isn’t honored by our publicly faking what isn’t privately true. The grave danger to sufferers is not admission of weakness but delusions of strength. You see, if you tell yourself and others that you are strong, then you won’t seek and they won’t offer the enabling and strengthening grace that every sufferer needs. And remember, the most important form of weakness that we all face isn’t the physical weakness that accompanies so much of our suffering but the weakness of heart in the midst of it.

Determine to be honest about your weakness, and in so doing, invite others to be God’s tools of his empowering and transforming grace. When you suffer, you view weakness either as an enemy or as an opportunity to experience the new potential that is yours as God’s child. Is your habit to admit or deny weakness?

5. Confess Your Blindness

This side of eternity, since sin still lives inside us and blinds us, there are pockets of spiritual blindness in all of us. As you walk through your travail, there may be inaccuracies of belief, subtle but wrong desires, wrong attitudes, susceptibilities to temptation, wrong views of others, struggles with God, and evidences of hopelessness that you don’t see.

So in love, God has placed his children in your life to function as instruments of seeing. They offer to you insight that you wouldn’t have by yourself. Because they can see what you don’t, they can speak into issues in your life, and by so doing be not only instruments of seeing but also God’s agents of rescue and transformation.

It’s humbling but true of every sufferer that accuracy of personal insight is the result of community, because sin makes personal insight difficult. Since we all have areas where we fail to see what we need to see, we need to welcome those whom God has sent into our lives to correct and focus our vision. How open are you when those near you help you see things in yourself that you don’t see?

6. Seek Wise Counsel

It’s dangerous to make important life decisions in the midst of the tumultuous emotions and despondency of suffering. Often in the middle of hardship, it’s hard to see clearly, to think accurately, and to desire what’s best. The shock, grief, and dismay of suffering tend to rattle the heart and confuse the mind.

When you are suffering, you need to humbly invite wise and godly counselors into your life. I’m not talking here about professional help, although that’s good if necessary. I’m talking about identifying the wise and godly people already in your life who know you and your situation well, who can provide the clarity of advice, guidance, and direction that is very hard to provide for yourself.

Don’t be threatened by this; it’s something we all need, and wise sufferers welcome it and enjoy the harvest of good fruit that results. Have you invited wise and godly counselors into your life to help you decide what would be hard to decide on your own?

7. Remember That Your Suffering Doesn’t Belong to You

2 Corinthians 1:3–9 reminds us that our sufferings belong to the Lord. He will take hard and difficult things in your life and use them to produce good things in the lives of others. This is one of the unexpected miracles of his grace. When it seems that my life is anything but good, God picks it up and produces what’s very good in the life of another. Every sufferer needs to know that the comfort of community is a two-way street. Not only do you need the comfort of God’s people, but your suffering positions you to be a uniquely sympathetic and insightful tool of the same in the lives of others.

Your suffering has given you a toolbox of gospel skills that make you ready and equipped to answer God’s call to be an agent of his comfort in the lives of fellow sufferers. God calls you not to hoard your suffering but to offer it up to him to be used as needed in the lives of others. And there’s blessing in taking your eyes off yourself and placing them on others, because it really is more blessed to give than to receive. Have you hoarded your suffering, or seen it as a means for bringing to others the good things that you have received?

Yes, it’s true that the God of all comfort sends his ambassadors of comfort into your life. They’re sent to make God’s invisible presence, protection, strength, wisdom, love, and grace visible. So welcome his ambassadors. Be open to their insight and counsel. Confess your needs so that God’s helpers can minister to those needs. Live like you really do believe that your walk through hardship is a community project, and be ready for the good things God will do.

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Content taken from Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense by Paul David Tripp, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Paul David Tripp is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization. He has been married for many years to Luella and they have four grown children. For more information and resources visit paultrippministries.org.

Unquenchable Love and Unconquerable Hope

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtain­ing the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Pet. 1:6–9)

The year 2016 marked the centennial anniver­sary of America’s National Park Service. In celebra­tion of the anniversary, a particular issue of National Geographic contained some amazing photos of several parks—as only National Geographic can capture. Now, I pride myself on having a Jed Bartlet-like appreciation for the national parks, so when I looked at these photos, I was captivated. They were unlike anything I had seen. In a single image, you could see both day and night, shadow and light, sun and moon. The photographer, for hours at time, took thousands of pictures, and with the aid of technology, “com­pressed the best parts into a single photograph.” The result is a massive and sweeping image comprised of thousands of smaller photos.[1] Yet, the more I looked, the less certain I was that I liked it. For these photos are attempts at seeing what is not meant to be seen— a full day all at once. The scenery was beautiful, yet odd. It was unnatural. Frankly, it wasn’t real.

When we face trials for which we don’t know the outcome or don’t understand the purpose, and strug­gle with wanting to know all the answers at once, it is like we are wanting to see a full photo of the end and the beginning, in one frame. But were we to see such, I think we would be disappointed. It likely wouldn’t make sense, for it is neither real nor what God intends. God, in his kindness and wisdom and mercy, uses trials and hidden things to draw us closer to himself, and even when we can’t understand the outcome or the purpose, joy is revealed in the process.

After Peter reminded his exiled readers that they have a living hope in a God who has saved them and will strengthen and sustain them to the end, he turns to address their trials and suffering.[2]

THE END OF SUFFERING

When enduring the onslaughts of a cynical age, we’ve seen how looking in to find Christ Jesus, our living hope, cannot only sustain until the end of time, but also provide strength for the present. Peter rightly acknowledges that this kind of reliance will lead to joy, much like the supportive James 1:2 that instructs believers to “count it all joy” in the face of trials. With the end still in view, Peter also reminds that these tri­als are only “for a little while” (1 Pet. 1:6). This is not Peter’s attempt to minimize them or belittle the pain and challenges they produce, but to offer another bol­ster of hope that even the longest of trials will, in fact, end. Trials and sufferings are a part of a post-Genesis 3 world. They were not what God intended when he created the world. Whether the result of sin, physical malady, or material loss, trials and sufferings do not escape the believer in Christ (John 16:33) and, indeed, can serve as painful instruments of the evil one.

As we behold and experience the trials that are a shared burden in this world, believers often under­standably question why God allows such to happen. Even though God, in his faithfulness and wisdom, may never allow his children to have the full under­standing of why he permits suffering, Peter’s words here give a great deal of insight and help. Trials, of all kinds, test our faith in crucible-like ways—ways that will show the greatness and goodness of God and result in our greater praise to him. This is, in part, because he endures the trials with us. The living hope we have of Christ himself within us is even better than the appearance of an additional man alongside Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace (Dan. 3:25). Through Christ, in every trial we have a shield of faith “with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Eph. 6:16). When we are tempted, God is faithful and “will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but . . . will also provide the way of escape” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Often the way to rejoicing is the way of weakness through suffering, and a powerful New Testament portrait of this is the life of the apostle Paul revealed in 2 Corinthians. As J. I. Packer explains in is marvel­ous book Weakness Is the Way, the testimony Paul gives shows

"pain and exhaustion, with ridicule and con­tempt, all to the nth degree; a tortured state that would drive any ordinary person to long for death, when it would all be over. But, says Paul, Christ’s messengers are sus­tained, energized, and empowered, despite these external weakening factors, by a pro­cess of daily renewal within."[3]

Paul begins 2 Corinthians declaring that “we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). From this reliance comes “good courage” (2 Cor. 5:6) and the ultimate lesson that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

Packer writes Weakness Is the Way from personal experience. He has lived a life of “physical and cogni­tive weakness” due to a head injury as a child. Yet, Packer’s early learning to rely on divine strength has sustained him. Writing in his eighth decade, after recovering from hip replacement surgery, he shares of his growing “acquaintance with Satan’s skill in gener­ating gloom and discouragement.” Yet, in these years, he reveals, “[m]y appreciation of 2 Corinthians has also grown as I have brooded on the fact that Paul had been there before me. . . . The whole letter is an awe­some display of unquenchable love and unconquerable hope.”[4] By looking in at Christ Jesus, both Paul and Packer show us the way to the fountain of our hope. 

LOVING WITHOUT SEEING

Much like C. S. Lewis’s Orual, Peter’s readers never saw Jesus in the flesh. Yet, despite their exile, trials, and sufferings, they loved him and believed in him. Peter’s commendation of them comes from a man who knew something about faith without seeing. Peter was there when Jesus, in response to Thomas needing to see to believe, said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Of course, Peter also knew much about love for Jesus, as part of his early discipleship involved his restoration by Jesus asking him three times about his love (John 21:15–17).

Therefore, when Peter writes of this faith and love resulting in an inexpressible joy (1 Pet. 1:8), he writes of what he knows. When he was with Jesus before the crucifixion, Peter saw him with his eyes, but did not fully love him. Only after the Resurrection, did Peter truly see Jesus with love and joy—and then once Jesus ascended to heaven, Peter continued to love him even without seeing him—to an inexpressible extent.

While the believer’s joy may not find adequate words for expression, we can get a glimpse of why by the idea that it is filled with glory. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul recounts the time Moses came down from the mountain and—his face being filled with glory to such a degree that the Israelites could not look at him—wore a veil (Exod. 34:29–33). Yet Paul says that the Spirit has “even more glory” (v. 8), and believers in Christ are able to “[behold] the glory of the Lord” (v. 18) and will one day see Jesus face to face.

Jesus Christ remained Peter’s fountain of hope, even though Jesus was no longer on earth. Thus, Peter relays how much more it is true and possible for other believers to love Jesus without seeing him.

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[1] Patricia Edmonds, “Photography That Layers Time,” National Geographic 229:1 (Jan. 2016): 144.

[2] A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 6:75.

[3] J. I. Packer, Weakness Is the Way (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 99–101.

[4] J. I. Packer, Weakness Is the Way (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 99–101.

Excerpted with permission from Mere Hope: Life in an Age of Cynicism by Jason G. Duesing. Copyright 2018, B&H Publishing Group.

Jason G. Duesing serves in academic leadership at Midwestern Seminary and is the author of Seven Summits in Church History, and editor and contributing author of First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, Adoniram Judson: A Bicentennial Appreciation of the Pioneer American Missionary, and other works. He is married to Kalee and together they have two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve.

4 Ways to Foster Faithfulness in the Face of Futility

The mammoth ship started sinking into the bone-chilling North Atlantic waters. Distress rockets exploded into the sky. You could hear the pandemonium and sheer terror over the buckling, twisting steel. Amidst the chaos, eight musicians began playing a serene, unearthly melody; “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” as rumor has it. They kept playing when it was their turn to get into a lifeboat. They played faithfully until their untimely end, the sweet, soft sounds echoing off the unforgiving waters.

This April marked 106 years since the Titanic sank into the Atlantic, killing well over 1,000 passengers. Those musicians have mystified historians for the past century. What was going on in their minds? How could they keep playing in the face of certain death?

FAITHFULNESS IN THE FACE OF FUTILITY?

In the account of their last hours, we see a picture of faithfulness in the midst of seeming futility. So many times, we find ourselves in dim and seemingly hopeless situations. We might not aboard a ship sinking into frozen waters, but our hearts sink from the loss of a loved one, a battle with cancer, or feeling the weight of our bodies getting older and falling apart. We might not face certain death, but we have witnessed the death of our dreams; the death of what we thought our lives should look like.

Our day-to-day circumstances can feel like waves threatening to drown us in sorrow. The tempest tempts us to look away from our Savior and down into the swirling abyss. Too often we let circumstances take the rudder of our ship, steering us forward instead of into God’s promises.

We are so often faithless. But the good news is that God is faithful in the midst of our faithlessness (2 Tim. 2:13). God is committed to his people and his promises. But how can we be faithful to God in the midst of turmoil and trouble? How can we have an unwavering, unflinching trust in him? God’s Word gives us four ways.

1. ASK AND SEEK

First, the Bible tells us to ask and seek for faithfulness. The Greek word for faithfulness in the Bible literally means “being full of faith.” It means being reliable, steadfast, unwavering, not wishy-washy or fickle. God imparts this gift of faith through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and through the hearing of God’s Word. "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (RoM. 10:17).

If we are to be completely dependent on God to open our eyes of faith, our prayer should be, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). We should spend time daily reading and preaching the gospel to ourselves because God works in hearts through his Word by the power of his Spirit. God’s Word is our light when we find ourselves in dark, distant waters. His Spirit will be our bravery when everything is falling apart.

2. REMEMBER AND REMIND

The second way the Bible tells us to foster faithfulness is simply by remembering. When we reflect on what God has done in our lives, we can say, "The Lord’s loving-kindnesses indeed never cease; for his compassions never fail; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness" (Lam. 3:22-23).

The tossing waves won’t be so threatening when we know our God is bigger than the oceans. Our circumstances will seem trivial in light of eternity. Let’s choose to remember how God has been faithful, and let those memories embolden us to keep playing a beautiful tune to the glory of God in the midst of trouble and travail.

Not only do we need to remind ourselves what God has done, but we need to remind others of his faithfulness. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:12-13).

Telling others what God has done in our lives protects them from the enemy’s lies and from doubting God’s promises. We need to hear stories of God’s faithfulness daily, and so do our brothers and sisters. Like the eight musicians who played their way into their icy graves, we need others to stand with us, playing the song of God’s faithfulness into the long, cold night.

3. SURRENDER AND ABIDE

Third, the Bible tells us we can foster faithfulness by surrendering and abiding. The fruit of faithfulness is not the fruit of our works, but the result of the Spirit’s work in us. If you are in Christ, you are like clay in the potter’s hands. He is the one molding and shaping you in his image. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

When we abide, or remain in unbroken relationship with God, seeking to know him, to be like him, and to surrender to his work in our lives, we will bear the fruit of faithfulness in due time. But we can only do this by God’s keeping power.

We can take comfort that God is steadfast in his commitment to sustaining us. The Lord “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,” (1 Cor. 1:8-9).

4. REPENT AND OBEY

When the Titanic hit the gargantuan iceberg that doomed the “unsinkable ship,” most of the passengers were asleep because it was midnight. We too fall asleep. We get comfortable and lose the urgency in following Jesus. We give our allegiance to the idols of comfort, control, approval, or power.

Let’s heed this stark warning Jesus gave to the church in Sardis: “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you” (Rev. 3:2-3).

Jesus’ words here are startling and might even seem harsh. But when he called his people to follow him, he told them to take up their cross—to die to themselves—daily. Let’s search our hearts and ask the Lord to show us the sins we cling to. If we find we have been faithless, let’s repent and turn back to following Christ with all our might in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We can know God’s grace is sufficient and his power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). We can be confident that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Whichever comes first, Christ’s return or our last breath, let us be found faithful, by God’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s power. Let’s be on our guard, daily repenting from sin.

FINDING CALM AMONG THE STORM

As the Titanic disappeared into the dark waters, there was a faithfulness amidst the chaos and dread. Eight musicians played a lively tune as they met their earthly deaths.

In this world, we will have trials and tribulation but let’s be found living faithfully to the glory of God. May our lives be a startlingly beautiful, hopeful harmony resounding in the ears of the world around us.

When the storms of life come, let’s play our song all the louder, clinging to God’s promises. Let’s live lives that burn brighter by the day instead of sinking into the night. Let’s press forward by God’s grace power until we hear those sweet words from our Lord: “Well done, good, and faithful servant … enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21).

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Delilah Pugsley is a wife, friend, sister, daughter and a Christ-follower serving in a church plant in Mid-Missouri. She writes on her blog https://www.graceinreallife.com, and you can reach her at delilahpugsley@gmail.com.

3 Tear-Wrought Lessons on Suffering

If you haven’t experienced pain or sorrow or loss, you’re either young or dead. We’re all faced at some point with the fallenness of our world and brokenness of our own hearts. A parent buries a child, a family is ripped apart by divorce, a spouse is shattered by a diagnosis. It seems we might break under the weight of such pain.

When the pain gets so heavy we don’t think we can bear it, we ask the inevitable question, “Is this worth it?”

Paul has a startling answer to that question in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Is this some kind of Christian pep talk? No, Paul is not sharing a limp-wristed inducement, but tear-wrought lessons from his considerable suffering (see 2 Cor. 11:23-28). He shares three lessons we can all learn from as we face a world that’s not as it ought to be.

LESSON 1: SUFFERING HURTS

Paul first acknowledges suffering by calling it suffering. He doesn’t diminish the reality of sorrow and loss and sin. He calls it what it is—suffering. And sometimes considerable suffering, at that.

We often run from or ignore sorrow and disappointment. Or we try to somehow minimize it, numbing our pain. These coping methods won’t really help us cope at all, not in the long run, because we’re running to ourselves to fix our problems instead of running to God. But when we run to God and his Word with our pain, we discover a Father who acknowledges our pain and a Son who experienced it.

God knows our pain. He is not lounging in a La-Z-Boy in heaven while we’re struggling to keep our heads above water. Hebrews 4:15 reminds us “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

When we lose a loved one, when we cry until we can’t cry anymore, when we suffer abuse at the hands of others, when we endure chronic pain, we can run to a Savior who in every way knows what we’re experiencing and sympathizes with us.

Suffering hurts. And Jesus knows it. Run to him and listen as he validates your pain and acknowledges your suffering.

LESSON 2: GLORY HEALS

Paul’s second lesson is that our suffering—considerable as it is—is hardly worth comparing to the weightiness of the glory that is to be. Elsewhere he says that “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). Light affliction?! Is Paul invalidating his first lesson that our suffering is truly terrible? No. He’s saying that relative to eternal glory with Christ, our afflictions, no matter how unbearable, will seem momentary.

Paul says our glory will not only be eternal, but it will be weighty. This seems like a strange combination of words. We know suffering can be weighty, but glory?

Though it sounds foreign, when we think about the joys of a lifetime of marriage, of raising children from infancy to adulthood, or of deep and long-lasting friendships, the word weighty seems fitting. Or consider even a moment of happiness—when your new spouse says “I do,” or you hold your newborn or newly adopted child for the first time or enjoy a meaningful conversation with a close friend. Certainly words like fluffy, light, insignificant, or faint don’t describe these pleasures.

No, the joy we experience in such blessings is real, substantial, significant, and large. Real joy is weighty. And it is precisely the weightiness of such joys that make our grief so weighty. Yet it seems like the weight of pain always outweighs joy, doesn’t it? Can the weight of joy or glory really outweigh the heaviness of our trials, like Paul says?

If a glory this heavy seems impossible, consider this. The same God who provided the joy you’ve experienced with your spouse or parent or child or friendship is the same God who knows what eternal glory awaits you—and he says they can’t be compared! The glory that God has prepared for every one of his children is that heavy.

Eternal joy is greater than our suffering in length of time and in quality. Christian, catch God’s perspective. See that eternal joy is weightier than even our greatest sufferings here and now.

LESSON 3: FAITH HELPS

What is it that makes this eternal, heavenly glory so transcendently, seriously glorious? That it is centered on Christ (Col. 3:4; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 John 3:2). Admittedly, to the skeptic, this may sound more anticlimactic than floating around on clouds and playing harps. But for anyone who has seriously considered the character of Jesus Christ, and especially for those who have found in Christ the only perfection that will satisfy a truly good God, this resonates. The joy of a consummated relationship with Christ is weightier than any suffering on earth will ever be.

The joy of heaven is not just that there will be "no more death or pain or tears." The joy of heaven is that there is no more sin to keep us from living with and being like Jesus Christ completely and forever. Unhindered and uninterrupted fellowship with Jesus is the greatest joy heaven has to offer.

Suffering will exist, for now, no matter what your worldview. But if you don’t believe in God, then you will just be looking for another solution to the suffering, another way through the suffering.

The eternal glory Paul speaks of will also happen no matter what we think about God. One day this world and our suffering will come to an end, and one day believers in Christ will be enabled to live with him forever. No one can keep this from happening.

Faith in Jesus Christ is not only the means of salvation; it is also the means by which we enjoy salvation’s promises and assurances even now. Faith is the umbilical cord that connects our infant-like perspective on suffering to the nourishment available from a God who knows what it’s like to suffer as we do.

Recognizing the bigness of God, and of his grace through Jesus Christ, will feed our souls in the midst of this momentary suffering by granting us assurance of a glory infinitely weightier than even the most crushing pain.

IS YOUR SUFFERING WORTH IT?

Is your pain and suffering worth it? Is your crippling anxiety and grief worth it?

Yes. Your suffering is truly suffering. Your pain is truly heavy. But if you’re in Christ, you have a Savior who has experienced everything you have and more. He knows exactly how you feel and precisely what you need. He knows your suffocating at the hands of suffering, and he wants you to set your eyes on the eternal weight of glory he’s preparing for you.

May the weighty joy of the Christian faith be yours, now and for all eternity.

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Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the “Daily Devotion” app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.

Spelunking Our Way to Salvation

My favorite Batman movie is The Dark Knight Rises. And not just because it has Christian Bale, and not Ben Affleck, playing Batman. I love this film because it resonates with my soul. Batman’s back is broken in a battle against the evil Bane, and the Dark Knight is left for dead in a dark, inescapable pit. Bruce Wayne, our strong hero, is broken, hopeless, confused, and trapped in a deep cave.

Caves are dark, musty, disorienting, and lonely. And sooner or later, we all end up in one.

Not literally, of course. But in the course of life, our souls stumble into caves of brokenness, pain, hurt, grieving, and suffering. We feel like David fleeing his family, friends, throne, land—everything—because his son Absalom betrayed him. This is the cave.

LIFE IN THE CAVE IMPACTS EVERYTHING

Loss brings us to the cave. Loss of friendship, loss of dreams, loss of family, loss of hope. Often, loss is accompanied by even more loss, as friends, fans, and supporters who were around distance themselves.

The cave feels like rock bottom. The damp, cold, walls are all you have to cling to.

Life in the cave impacts everything.

Your finances, marriage, and career can be great, but it doesn’t matter—you’re in the cave. What brought you here hurt so deeply that the pain bleeds into every part of life.

If part of you is in the cave, all of you is in the cave.

WHAT DARKNESS BRINGS TO LIGHT

In the cave we are stripped of every hope other than Jesus. Hobbies, entertainment, food, and iPhones—none of these can help. They can distract from the pain, but some caves are just too dark to find comfort in distractions.

In the cave our pride is crushed. We become more aware than ever that Jesus—only Jesus—will never leave or forsake us. We are stripped of all the idols that are so prevalent outside.

In the cave we find out how much we really love Jesus, and how much we really trust him.

Caves are lonely, but you’re never alone in the cave. We have a God who does some of his best work in the cave. This makes even the darkest of caves beautiful.

The God of the Bible is a good God. He uses our pain and suffering, our brokenness, to bring about something beautiful. He uses all things for the good for those who love him (Rom. 8:28). He woos us in the cave.

CAVES REVEAL US

Spelunking is the exploration of caves. Spelunkers grope around in the dark with headlamps lighting their way. They never know what they might find, but in the end, the adventure reveals something about themselves.

I wouldn’t wish time in the cave on anyone, yet I wouldn’t trade my time there for anything. I’ve been in it more than once, and I would rather not enter it again.

Yet I know I would not know Jesus the same way I do today without times in the cave. Just as a miner delves deeper into the mountain to uncover flecks of shimmering gold, there is beauty in the depths of our cave because God is committed to mining our hearts and revealing the stone encasing them.

Caves reveal our hearts, and they reveal our closest friends. Jonathans reveal themselves to Davids in the cave. No friend can live there with you. Only you and Jesus can dwell there, but true friends can and will visit you in the cave. They will enter your pain, listen, pray, comfort, point you to Jesus and help in any way they can. It is these friends that help you see the dim, distant light that is the way out. These friends are priceless. They have seen the way out, and even though they don’t dwell in the cave, they can offer tremendous hope.

Jesus uses friends and family to help us take our first wobbly steps out of the cave. He uses them as a due north, a compass in the midst of a confusing, lost and dark time. That doesn’t mean everyone who abandons you is not a true friend. Certainly, some are inch-deep friends, but many just do not have the courage, maturity or time to visit you in the cave.

Some are in a cave of their own, and some are in such a time of joyful frolicking outside they don’t even recognize others are in caves. Don’t hold on to bitterness. While it reveals your truest and deepest friends, the cave also grows our compassion for those in caves and those who have no idea what this pain is like. We bear with one another and we grow in learning how to share one another’s burdens.

PURIFIED FOR COMMUNITY

While the cave is a very lonely place, the Lord never intends to use it for isolation, but as a furnace to melt away the impurities of superficial, self-centered community, purifying us for community with him and a newfound compassion for others.

Time in the cave deepens our longing for authentic Jesus-centered community, marked by dependence, brokenness, vulnerability, confession, and love. He reveals true friends, but also makes us into true friends, the kinds of friends that would visit others in the cave.

Jesus and Peter are restored after Jesus enters his cave, but Judas and Jesus were not. Finding the way out doesn’t mean every relationship is restored, but that every person is forgiven and Jesus is fully trusted to be the just judge. Confess all that you can confess, own all that you can own, and leave God to judge the rest. This helps us get off the floor of the cave.

Look to Jesus. Trust Jesus. Some things will reveal themselves over time as you wait upon the Lord. Sometimes the Absaloms show themselves to be Absalom, and the Jonathans show themselves to be Jonathan. Other times we never know. Either way, trust in Jesus. He is trustworthy.

THE ULTIMATE CAVE IS EMPTY

How do we know he is worthy of our trust? Because he willingly entered into the ultimate cave in order to keep us out of an eternal one.

Jesus left a heavenly paradise willingly to enter a cave on Earth. He was respected, followed, sought after and had a ministry that impacted villages, cities, towns and drew audiences from royalty to peasants and the sick. He walked with close friends, had moments of validation and appreciation both from people and from the Father. He knew life on Earth outside the cave.

He also knew ministry in the caves. He was a man of sorrows. He wept. He knew betrayal, abuse, false accusations, and abandonment. He knew physical, spiritual and relational pain and torment.

On the cross, he took on the sins of the world. He took every man, woman and child’s personal cave, all the sin they committed to get there, and all the sin committed against them that sent them there.

Jesus entered a very real cave. He was beaten, mocked, abused, abandoned and buried in a dark, cold, musty cave and left breathless, lifeless, dead. The king of heaven was crucified on a cross and buried in a cave. He didn’t have to do this. But he chose to out of love for us!

The Dark Knight Rises ends with Batman learning from his past and coming out of the cave stronger than ever. He defeats Bane, saves Gotham, and marries Catwoman.

Jesus is better. He defeated the ultimate cave. The stone was rolled away, the cave is empty, and Jesus is alive!

Jesus heals, restores, saves and resurrects. We have hope new life will come bursting forth from our deep, dark caves because Jesus Christ burst forth from his.

We get to ask for help, prayer, and friendship and be honest about our condition. And even in the darkest cave, we can have hope, knowing no cave is permanent for those who have trusted in Jesus.

And one day he will make all things new, even us. He will shine brighter than the sun, wipe away every tear, and turn every dark cave into a life-giving meadow! All creation will join together in worshipping and praising our King Jesus! And we will frolic for all of eternity, together in community, with him.

In the meantime, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, in both the meadows and the caves. Let us rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn. Living like a true friend to those around us who are in the meadow or in the cave, always pointing to the one who truly will never leave them or forsake them, always pointing to Jesus!

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Jake Chambers is the husband to his beautiful bride Lindsey, and a daddy to Ezra, Roseanna, Jaya and Gwen. Jake is passionate about Jesus and helping others meet and follow Jesus. He helped plant Red Door Church in San Diego and enjoys serving the local and global church through preaching, teaching, listening and praying.

Why Are You Suffering? Here's God's Answer

Job, his wife, and his three friends agreed on two things. Our lives are “few of days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1), and God’s hand is intimately mixed up in our troubles. But strife and perplexity set in among them when they tried to explain exactly how God and troubles connect. They argued about the cause of Job’s troubles; no one understood the backstory of cosmic drama. They argued about what God was up to; no one understood that God had purposes for good beyond human comprehension and he was not punishing Job. They argued about the validity of Job’s professed faith and faithfulness; no one understood that Job was both the genuine article and a work in progress. And they argued about who needed to do what in response to affliction; no one understood that the Lord would show up, that he would be asking the questions, that his purposes would be fulfilled. The Lord himself described Job as “a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). But who could have predicted the tumultuous journey that proved that fact?

WHERE IS GOD IN YOUR SUFFERING?

Thousands of years later, we humankind are still short-lived and still much afflicted. And our troubles still perplex us. Why is this happening to me? Where is God? What is he doing? What does faith look like? How does the Lord show up? Why is the journey so tumultuous?

And what difference does it make that in between Job’s afflictions back then and your afflictions right now, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us? Job said:

I know that my Redeemer lives,


and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

yet in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see for myself,


and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27)

Job’s Redeemer came to him at last. The Lord answered out of the whirlwind, and Job said, “Now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5). But we see even more clearly. From where we stand, we see Jesus Christ. We see more of who the Redeemer is. We see more of how he did it. We say more than Job could say: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). We see. But our lives are still “few of days and full of trouble.”

3 TRUTHS ABOUT SUFFERING

When you face trouble, loss, disability, and pain, how does the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ meet you and comfort you? How does grace and goodness find you, touch you, work with you, and walk with you through deep waters? You probably already know something of the “right answer.” Consider three sweeping truths.

1. God doesn't promise to keep us from suffering

First, it is obvious from both Scripture and experience that God never establishes a no-fly zone keeping all problems away. He never promises that your life will be safe, easy, peaceful, healthy, and prosperous. On the contrary, you and I are certain to experience danger, hardship, turmoil, ill health, and loss. And some of God’s beloved children live lives particularly fraught with physical pain, poverty, isolation, betrayal, and loss. For all of us, death is the inevitable and impending final affliction. We humankind are mariposa lilies in Death Valley after rain. We flourish for a moment. Then the wind passes over us, and we are gone, and no trace remains. That’s the description of God’s blessed and beloved children according to Psalm 103:15–16. And, of course, people who are estranged from God also live brief and troubled lives. We cannot read God’s favor or disfavor by assessing how troubled a person’s life is.

2. God doesn't promise earthly goods

Second, it is obvious from Scripture and experience that we also sample joys and good gifts from God’s hand. The mariposa lily is beautiful in its season. Most people taste something of what is good—familial care perhaps, and daily bread, occasional feasting, a measure of good health, friends and companions, moments of beauty, opportunity to become good at something, committed love, children’s laughter, a job well done, the innocent pleasure of resting after working, and perhaps a restful sleep. There are no guarantees of any particular earthly good, but all good gifts may be gratefully enjoyed.

Some people seem unusually blessed with temporal joys. Job enjoyed unusually good gifts at both the beginning and the end of his life—Satan had accused the Lord of giving Job a cushy life as a bribe for faith. And arrogant people, at odds with God and self-reliant, may also enjoy an easy life of good health, growing wealth, and the admiration of others. That’s how Psalm 73:3–12 describes people who flourish though they deem the Lord irrelevant. We cannot read God’s favor or disfavor by assessing how easy and trouble-free a person’s life is.

3. God works through suffering

Third, it’s obvious from Scripture—and it can become deeply rooted in experience—that God speaks and acts through affliction. As C. S. Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[1] Suffering reveals the genuineness of faith in Christ. And suffering produces genuine faith. For example, when you struggle under affliction, the Psalms become real. True faith deepens, brightens, and grows wise. You grow up in knowing God. When you are the genuine article, you are also and always a work in progress.

Suffering is both the acid test and the catalyst. It reveals and forms faith. It also exposes and destroys counterfeit faith. Afflictions expose illusory hopes invested in imaginary gods. Such disillusionment is a good thing, a severe mercy. The destruction of what is false invites repentance and faith in God as he truly is. Suffering brings a foretaste of the loss of every good thing for those who profess no faith in the one Savior of the world, God’s inexpressible gift, the Lifegiver. Affliction presses on unbelief. It presses unbelief toward bitterness, or despair, or addiction, or ever more desperate illusions, or ever more deadly self-satisfaction—or to a reconsideration of what lasts. To lose what you are living for, when those treasures are vanities, invites comprehensive repentance. We can read God’s favor or disfavor by noticing how a person responds to affliction.

YOU CAN FIND HOPE IN SUFFERING

God’s hand is intimately mixed up in our troubles. Each day will bring you “its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34). Some difficulties are light and momentary—in your face today and forgotten tomorrow. Other hardships last for a season. Some troubles recur and abate cyclically. Other afflictions become chronic. Some woes steadily worsen, progressively bringing pain and disability into your life. And other sufferings arrive with inescapable finality— the death of a dream, the death of a loved one, your own dying and death. But whatever you must face changes in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the promise that you, too, will live. Faith can grow up. You can learn to say with all your heart, in company with a great cloud of witnesses: “We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:16–17). We can learn to say it and mean it, because it is true.

If you are someone who has taken the book of Psalms to heart, if you’ve pondered the second half of Romans 8, if you’ve worked your way through Job, if you’ve let 1 Peter sink in, then you’ve already got the gist of how God’s grace works in hardships. But there are always new challenges. The wisdom to suffer well is like manna—you must receive nourishment every day. You can’t store it up, though you do become more familiar with how to go out and find what you need for today.

GOD'S ANSWER IN YOUR SUFFERING

How will God actually engage your sufferings with his grace? You may know the right answer in theory. You may have known it firsthand in some difficult situations. And yet you’ll find that you don’t know God well enough or in the exact ways you need to for the next thing that comes your way.

We take God’s hard answer and make it sound like a pat answer. He sets about a long slow answering, but we’re after a quick fix. His answer insists on being lived out over time and into the particulars. We act as if just saying the right words makes it so. God’s answer involves changing you into a different kind of person. But we act as if some truth, principle, strategy, or perspective might simply be incorporated into who we already are. God personalizes his answer on hearts with an uncanny flexibility. But we turn it into a formula: “If you just believe x. If you just do y. If you just remember z.” No important truth ever contains the word “just” in the punch line.

We can make the right answer sound old hat, but I guarantee this: God will surprise you. He will make you stop. You will struggle. He will bring you up short. You will hurt. He will take his time. You will grow in faith and in love. He will deeply delight you. You will find the process harder than you ever imagined—and better. Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life. At the end of the long road you will come home at last. No matter how many times you’ve heard it, no matter how long you’ve known it, no matter how well you can say it, God’s answer will come to mean something better than you could ever imagine.

He answers with himself.

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[1] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940; repr., San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 2001), 91.

Content taken from God's Grace in Your Suffering by David Powlison, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

David Powlison (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a teacher, a counselor, and the executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He is also the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling and the author of Seeing with New Eyes, Good & Angry, and Speaking Truth in Love.

Even in Your Pain, the Church Needs You

For the body of Christ to be healthy we must depend on each part of the body. The church at Corinth seems to have demoralized those members whom they assumed were less gifted or hurting. Perhaps some of those struggling wondered whether they should even be regarded as part of the church body. Those of us who are hurting are reassured that the body has need of every part. Every part must play its role, or the body won’t function as well as it could. It would be ridiculous if our whole body were one nose. Not only would it be gross but it also couldn’t walk or talk. Every one of us is different, and that’s a good thing. We are not all good at the same things. In the sport of cricket, the best bowlers are not any more valuable than the best batsman. In baseball you need both hitters and pitchers to have a successful team. In both sports the elders have to play well. All have a part to play.

This is why we continue being in community with God’s people all the days of our lives. When one part of the body leaves the body, the whole body hurts. The church needs you! Individual members cannot contract out the work; they must do their role for the good of the body. Romans 12:5 says, “In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Christianity is not a spectator sport. We don’t stay in the seats and watch other Christians get in the match. I recently watched all-time tennis greats Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal play in the Australian Open final. It may be the last time these two greats play one another in a major championship. It was incredible to watch these two rivals. But nothing compares with actually playing the game yourself. Watching is fun, but nothing beats getting out on the court and playing your best.

You may feel as if you have nothing to give others—you are in so much pain, your trial is tremendous. You get exhausted by just getting yourself ready in the morning. But one of the best things you can do as you struggle in your trials is to serve others. This is what you were made to do. God made you to play your part. You were not an accident. In 1 Corinthians 12:18, we see that “God arranged the members of the body.” He put them together. God makes no mistakes; he created you just the way he wanted to. There was no casualty in creation. You may not feel as if you can serve in the way you would like to, but you are important to the health of the church. Sam Allberry gives this illustration in his book on the church:

"Take a pen, a piece of paper and a timer. How many times can you write your name in 30 seconds? Now try the same exercise but without using your hands. You can put the pen between your toes or hold it in your mouth. My guess is, you didn’t do so well the second time round. Once you remove certain parts of the body, even simple tasks get harder. It reminds us of how much those with disability deserve our admiration. And it also reminds us of what our church misses out on when we are not there—part of the body is missing. Your church needs you."

When you reject Christ’s body, the whole church loses something. We need each other, and the wonderful fact is that the Lord has uniquely made you and can use you not in spite of your circumstances but because of your circumstances. This is a wonderful truth!

I’ve noticed that my nerve pain has given me a unique experience with chronic pain and disability that has allowed me to speak into people’s lives in profound ways. I had very little sympathy for others before I myself needed sympathy. Now I understand (at least a little bit more than I used to) the physical and emotional pain that comes with failing health. But what if I steered clear of the rest of Christ’s body? What if I saw my trial as a parenthesis or break in my church involvement and distanced myself from God’s people for a time? I would miss out on God using me. Hurting friend, God can use you in extraordinary ways. God has sovereignly ordained to use hurting people to comfort other hurting people. Paul writes:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Cor. 1:3–4).

Being unhealthy or struggling with some trial shouldn’t cause you to stop your church involvement. You shouldn’t think that you’ll get involved once you’re healthy. The church needs you now. I love seeing how one of our church members, Sneha, deals with extreme physical pain and yet works hard to join us for corporate worship even when she doesn’t feel well. Sneha understands that she needs the church now more than ever. And she’s a blessing to us. Even when she’s writhing in pain in her apartment, she will call church members to encourage and pray for them. Ladies will come to her apartment so that she can teach them the Bible. That’s what Paul is talking about when he says God comforts us so we can comfort others. The reassuring thing for those who are hurting is that God doesn’t cast us aside in our trials, but he is actually preparing us to be used in ways beyond what we could even imagine. Paul continues:

"The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together" (1 Cor. 12:21–26).

This is great news! Even when we are hurting and we may be weaker than the other parts, God uses us. Even when we may feel like we have nothing to give, what does Paul say to us? He says all parts are indispensable. Hurting friend, you are indispensable in the plan of God! The word weaker in this context actually has the idea of being sick. The meaning emphasizes the complete unimportance of the member. But Paul says, “We need those members!” The body of Christ can’t do without them. Paul writes that those parts actually deserve greater honor. It seems counterintuitive, but in God’s grand design, your trial might be the moment of your most significant ministry. Could that be the case in your life right now?

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Content taken from Kiss the Wave: Embracing God in Your Trials by Dave Furman, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Dave Furman (ThM, Dallas Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of Redeemer Church of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which he helped plant in 2010. He previously served in various churches in the United States. More than ten years ago, Dave developed a nerve disease and struggles with disability in both arms. He is the author of Kiss the Wave: Embracing God in Your Trials and Being There: How to Love Those Who Are Hurting. 

Endure Today for the Joy of Tomorrow

Seth Godin recently wrote:

“For the creator who seeks to make something new, something better, something important, everywhere you look is something unsatisfying.

The dissatisfaction is fuel. Knowing you can improve it, realizing that you can and will make things better—the side effect is that today isn't what it could be.

You can't ignore the dissatisfaction, can't pretend the situation doesn't exist, not if you want to improve things.

Living in dissatisfaction today is the price we pay for the obligation to improve things tomorrow.”

But there’s a problem, isn’t there? If living in dissatisfaction today is the price we pay for the obligation to improve things tomorrow, how many “tomorrow’s" do we have to face before improvement comes? Improvement hardly ever comes on our own timetable.

Just walking through the halls of our churches, it’s easy to grow discouraged over the things we want to change. Each Thursday when I plan my following week, it seems I never have enough time to work on the growing list of “long-term vision” items I want to pray through and work towards.

THE SLOW MARCH TOWARD THE FUTURE

Take solace in the reality that we aren’t alone in our slow march towards the future. Growing takes time.

A technology curator recently said, when commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone:

“Anything that is going to become a billion dollar industry in the next 10 years is already 10 years old. . . . That completely changes how we should approach innovation. There is no invention out of the blue, but prospecting, mining, refining and then goldsmithing to create something that's worth more than its weight in gold.”

We forget what existence was like before the iPhone, and, even then, we probably take its advent for granted. Think about your everyday usage of a smartphone. Whether you’re scrolling through a feed, posting a photo, or using an app, so much of your daily life has been shaped by this invention. Even though we live in the world shaped by the iPhone, we rarely stop to think about the decades of research, innovation, and failure that had to occur to make the iPhone’s world-changing release possible.

Just like the iPhone and other innovations, our churches won’t change overnight. Yet we so often think this is how change will (or should) happen. This leads us to make some unwise decisions. For example, we see things as we want them to be instead of as they are, and expect our people to do the same; we think our people will receive change with joy; we think we’ll refine and processes and introduce new procedures with instantaneous success.

Why do we expect these kinds of results with so little time and friction? We are so unwilling to be dissatisfied that we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that change will be easy and painless.

The real issue is our endurance and perseverance; our inability to live in dissatisfaction today so we can see satisfaction tomorrow. Instead of seeing dissatisfaction as fuel for a change we pray is coming, we see it as a frustration that warrants complaining.

So how do we endure? How do we continue to recast the vision, continue to garner support, and stay positive through it all? We look to Jesus.

JESUS’ ENDURANCE AND TENACITY

In Jesus, we find a model of endurance and tenacity. One of the most striking examples of this is found in John’s account of Jesus before Pilate. Jesus appears so resolute, so firm. There’s not even a hint of doubt or uncertainty.

John 18:33-35 explains,

“So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?’ Pilate answered, ‘Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?’”

Jesus’ answers are so tenacious that he threatens to put Pilate on the defensive. Jesus is steadfast in his resolve to endure the cross. What fuels his steadfastness and resolve?

John 18:36-37 continues,

“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’ Then Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king.’”

Here we see the key to Jesus’ endurance and tenacity: Jesus kept his eyes on the Kingdom and the will of the Father instead of the present opposition. In his exchange with Pontius Pilate, Jesus stands firm. He sternly responds, declaring the audacious claims of his other-worldly kingdom. Knowing the cost. Knowing Pilate’s defense. Knowing the coming verdict from the crowd.

Yet he does so with joy.

ENDURANCE TODAY LEADS TO JOY TOMORROW

Hebrews 12:2 tells us we are “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

When we look to Jesus, we see he was resolute before Pilate—before the cross—for the joy set before him. Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was to come.

What was the content of that joy? After verse 2, we read “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Heb. 12:3). The joy set before Jesus—the joy for which he endured hostility and the cross—was that you and I might not grow weary or fainthearted.

Jesus’ joy in enduring the cross is an example encouraging us to endure: “Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed” (Heb. 12:12-13).

Jesus was pleased to endure the cross to lift our drooping hands, strengthen our weak knees, and make our paths straight.

THE PLEASURE OF ENDURANCE

Jesus was pleased to endure the cross to strengthen our hands for the work of ministry—so work with patience, with fervor, with tenacity, and with perspective.

Jesus was pleased to endure the cross to strengthen our knees to continue praying—so pray with patience, with intensity, and with great expectation

Jesus was pleased to endure the cross to make the paths of our feet straight—so establish plans, processes, and procedures within your church, and trust the Lord to bear fruit.

Hebrews 2:13-14 appears to allude to Isaiah 35:3-4: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’”

Trust that as you work, as you pray, and as you plan, the Lord will respond with graciousness and favor.

What was the joy set before Jesus? The joy for which he endured the cross? Our perseverance. Our ability to endure. Our ability to press on; not growing faint or weary; not having drooping hands or weak knees or walking crooked paths.

Jesus’ willingly endured the cross for the joy of helping us endure and persevere, work patiently, wait for his timing, and seeing us live beyond worldly satisfaction.

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Chris DiVietro is husband to Liz and daddy to Aletheia, Judah, and Evangeline. Chris is senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Reading, Pa and has a PhD in Organizational Leadership. Chris is happy to be back living in the north after five hot years in South Carolina.

The Baffling Call of God

August 5, 2014 was the darkest Tuesday of my life. My mother, critically ill with the Ebola virus, was returning from Liberia to the United States for treatment that we hoped would save her life. The previous ten days had been a whirlwind of emotion. On July 26 my father had called late in the evening from Monrovia to say that mom had contracted the disease. She was serving as a nurse’s assistant in the isolation unit of a mission organization hospital when she became ill. Since Ebola was becoming an epidemic in West Africa, international news media quickly inundated us with requests for information regarding my mother’s condition and the family’s response.

I had placed it in my mind that mom would—like so many overseas missionaries before her—lose her life to a foreign disease. We’d been told there was no possibility of transport from the small house where she was being isolated to a first-world medical facility capable of better fighting the virus.

So it was a great surprise when we learned that she would be medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She was due to arrive on August 5.

THE RIGHT WORDS FOR THE MOMENT

As my father and I spoke during the time between mom’s diagnosis and her transport and arrival in Atlanta, he shared how timely and encouraging Oswald Chambers’s devotional had been to him. He would read My Utmost For His Highest outside the bedroom window of the house where my mother was growing more and more ill, and it would sustain his heart through the gravity of the situation.

When my brother and I arrived in Atlanta we too began to read Chambers’s meditations along with some close friends. On the morning of August 5, as we awaited mom’s nationally televised arrival and transport to Emory, we read the entry titled “The Baffling Call of God.”

Confident of God’s call on my parents to serve Him in Africa, I was baffled by what they were enduring for the sake of the needy there. Furthermore, as I dealt with my own weary and broken heart, I was baffled at what God was doing in my own life. None of it made sense.

It all seemed like failure—and the conclusion of the matter would be death. I could relate to the disciples when they heard about Jesus’s mission to go to the cross: “They understood none of these things” (Luke 18:34 ESV).

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS

We live in a cause-and-effect world, so trials and suffering bear down on us in ways we would never imagine. We desire—we insist on—lives that are clear-cut and explainable. We hate it when circumstances we can't control threaten our comfort and security.

When hardships, suffering, and trials hit our lives, our faith can be jolted deeply. It’s not uncommon for sufferers to bellow out to God, “Why?” And yet Jesus “led every one of [His disciples] to the place where their hearts were broken.”

Suffering feels like failure, like complete and utter defeat. The world calls it foolish.

From a certain perspective Jesus’s life looks a lot like this. As he left his family and carpentry trade at the age of thirty to begin an itinerant preaching ministry, he confused his family. They heard the reports of His ministry and miracles and concluded, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

He labored for the kingdom of God without a place to lay his head or call home (Luke 9:58). His teaching became difficult to understand, and the number of those who followed him dwindled (John 6:66). As he confronted the religious establishment, he created powerful enemies who sought to have him killed (Matthew 26:59). One of His own friends and followers betrayed him for a small sum of money. He was slandered, beaten, abused, mocked, rejected, unjustly tried, and ultimately executed as a criminal, in shame and disgrace.

The cross is foolishness if the “Savior of the world” hangs dead upon it.

FOOLISHNESS TURNED TRIUMPHANT WISDOM

Yet, from another perspective—the biblical one—we can see our sufferings in another light. The apostle Paul called the cross the wisdom and power of God. He saw from God’s standpoint a “tremendous triumph.”

Through the suffering and death of Jesus we have one who can stand in our place for our sins—and take them away. We have one who can mediate on our behalf and reconcile us to God. We have one who, by laying down His own life, won righteousness, peace, and life for us. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Following the utter defeat of the cross, the powerful resurrection of Jesus on the third day verified, vindicated, and validated all the suffering he endured for our sake. “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:12–14 ESV).

BAFFLED BY OUR SUFFERING

This leads us back to our own trials. The Scriptures show us we should not be surprised by “the fiery ordeal” (1 Peter 4:12). The Christian life is one that includes persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). We can expect difficulty and trials as marks of discipline from the hand of a heavenly Father who loves us and longs for us to be mature and complete (James 1:2–4, Hebrews 12:5–11). Suffering is a mark of the Christian life.

Still, like so many in the world today, we want to know the reason behind it.

But the gospel allows us to move ahead without having all the answers, without knowing perfectly the purposes of God. This doesn’t mean we can’t ask the "why" question or ponder the bigger picture; we simply become, as Chambers states, “less inclined to say—‘Now why did God allow this and that?’”

If we see the goodness of God in the seemingly foolish decision to send his Son to die on our behalf, then we can embrace his call to what may feel like an “unmitigated disaster” in our own lives.

CAN I TRUST GOD?

This is what the whole of faith truly boils down to: Can I trust God?

If we affirm that God is trustworthy and does all things for His glory and our good, then we can live with an unparalleled freedom to receive both the triumphs and the trials of life from his gracious hand. If all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28), then we are liberated from having to hold all the answers in our own hands.

The baffling call of God, although it can bewilder us, is ultimately a safe and rewarding call. It’s a release from the ever-present desire to control and maintain all things by our own power. It means I can be a child, safe in the hands of an omnipotent and gracious God, and he will lead me through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).

Whatever God may have planned for my future—whatever he may have planned for your future—he is working out his purposes.

THE LEISURELINESS OF FAITH

As the air ambulance carrying my mother landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base outside Atlanta on August 5, I could only wonder at the baffling call of God. The aims of God’s work and call in the life of my family were not clear. The anguish and turmoil of our hearts swelled as we became a public spectacle of suffering. My parents’ mission to Liberia looked like an utter failure.

And yet, in God’s hands and by his power, we could trust his great purposes. As a child of God I could cling to his mercy and ask for his grace in my pain. I could trust “the wits and the wisdom” of God, to use Chambers’s phrase, that ultimately everything would be okay—even if that meant my mother’s death.

I could even trust God’s baffling call when mom’s health made an incredible turn for the better. I could rest with joy when God healed her of the terrible Ebola virus. I could trust his providence when he called my parents back to Liberia—back to the mission—even when others might argue the cost was too great.

I can walk with a leisureliness of faith because what looks like failure to the world is, from God’s perspective, the fragrance of life.

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Taken from Utmost Ongoing: Reflections on the Legacy of Oswald Chambers, © 2017 by Discovery House. Used by permission of Discovery House, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and Make, Mature, Multiply. He writes personally at jwritebol.net.

You can read all of Jeremy’s articles here.

We Can Suffer Because Christ

“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” – Hebrews 13:13

The Hebraic audience needed to hear this. The author of Hebrews is ministering to them as who they are—societal outcasts, persecuted for their new-found faith in Christ.

The author of Hebrews knows their struggles. He knows this congregation intimately, and he is speaking to them specifically to encourage them not to give up; to hold firmly to their profession of faith to the end (Heb. 3:12-14). He is once and for all telling them to abandon Judaism and embrace wholly the Christian faith in spite of their present sufferings.

Most importantly, the Hebraic author is saying, “We can suffer and endure because Christ has suffered and endured.”

THE REALITY OF OUR SUFFERING

While our suffering as American Christians is different than what the early Hebraic church experienced, the exhortation to persevere in the midst of trials and tribulations remains the same.

Many of you reading this are suffering presently at no fault of your own as you deal with:

• Cancer
• The loss of someone you love
• An abusive relationship
• A strained relationship because of your commitment to Christ
• A commitment to a life of celibacy for the glory of God that leaves you feeling lonely at times
• A lost job
• A disability

Your trials can lead you to question your faith. It did for some of those in the Hebraic church, and they lived within the same generation as Christ. We live two thousand years removed from the time of Christ. How much more do we need to be comforted by his Word?

A LIFE-SHAPING ENCOUNTER WITH SUFFERING

I think back to my Grandma Janie. For most of her adult life she was confined to a wheel chair and cared for at a nursing home. She was unable to do many of the tasks I take for granted on a daily basis. Furthermore, she was unable to do many of the things a mother would want to do for her children. She died when I was 17, and I think of her often. I think of her not just because she was my Grandma, but because of how she endured her suffering.

In all my memories I have not one of her complaining. I have not one memory of her being angry or bitter or unpleasant. My Grandma was joyful, and not in a superficial way. Her joy came from deep within. It was the kind of joy that could be seen and felt by others. As a child, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but her life and legacy shaped the way I view suffering. You see, my Grandma Janie didn’t waste suffering.

My Grandma allowed her suffering to be used as a means by which she could rely more on God.  Her intimacy with her Savior was evident. The memory of it is quite vivid to me. She prayed to him. She read the Scriptures. She communed with God, and that intimate communion was evident in her posture and speech. It was evident in the way she prayed for her children. It was evident in the way she suffered until her death.

What was my Grandma Janie’s secret? I believe she “went outside the camp” and looked to Christ. Her faithful legacy of suffering reminds me that we can persevere even in immense agony. And we don’t have to suffer timidly, barely hanging on. We can suffer with immense joy.

COUNT IT ALL JOY

James taught us this, didn’t he? He said, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1:2-4).

From a biblical worldview, no suffering is meaningless. God is working in the darkest shadows of our lives to conform us into the image of Jesus. God uses suffering so that he may build us up. Certainly, this is folly to the world, but Christians know that it is true.

Our joy isn’t contingent on God changing our circumstances. If that were the case, my Grandma would not have reason to be joyful. Our joy is found in knowing our Savior who suffered. Our joy is found in knowing the Holy Spirit is changing us through our suffering and making us new day by day.

FINDING COMFORT THROUGH THE SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit can minister to you as he did the Hebraic church. The Holy Spirit can minister to you the way he ministered to my Grandma. He is pointing you to your faithful Husband, Christ, who, “has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). The Word reminds God’s suffering church that, “For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Jesus endured the worst suffering of all. Every single sin his church would ever commit was laid on him—the sinless, spotless Lamb. And every ounce of God’s wrath was poured out on him.

There is no more wrath left for God’s church.

My brothers and sisters who are suffering: Look to Christ! What a treasure it is to suffer as a believer and to declare utter dependence on him!

Go outside the camp and bear the reproach that he endured. Persevere.

SEEK THE CITY TO COME

When we look to Christ and model his perseverance, we can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, seek the city that is to come even in the midst of our suffering.

“For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” – Hebrews 13:14

There is much benefit in meditating on the city that is to come. My whole being aches for this day. This is the city where there is no more suffering or pain. This is a city where people are in awe and consumed for eternity by the glory of God and the supremacy of Christ over all things. This is what the Apostle Paul was looking forward to in Romans 8 when he states,

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. – Romans 8:18-25

Christian, you are not alone. God is near and a very present help in trouble (Ps 46:1). You are his possession. He chose you before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), and you can have confidence in your future inheritance as you joyfully suffer and wait to acquire possession of it (Eph. 1:14).

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Joey Tomlinson lives in Yorktown, VA with his wife, Brayden and their son, Henry Jacob. He has served as a pastor at Coastal Community Church for over 10 years and is pursuing his doctorate in biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also blogs over at Servants of Grace.

Blessed Are the Persecuted?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. – Matthew 5:10-11

When I was recently speaking on the subject of Christian persecution, I told my wife how intimidated I was to make this topic piercingly relevant in our comfortable modern culture, with so much religious freedom. Her reply helped open my own eyes on the subject. She suggested we perhaps can see this issue best through its opposite: if being persecuted for righteousness’s sake means being insulted or rejected because we are speaking the gospel for Christ’s sake, then its opposite is being accepted, popular, or enjoyed because we are not speaking and living publicly for Christ.

When we consider the issue through this lens, we starkly see how applicable it is, how far short we often fall as Christians of enjoying the blessedness of unpopularity for Christ’s sake. And now the Beatitude that perhaps seemed least applicable to begin with becomes the most searching and convicting!

Am I truly hungering after righteousness? Then it will be evidenced in rejection for righteousness’s sake! Am I poor in spirit? Then I will not hesitate to be shamed by the world in order to speak well of my Savior.

What does it mean to be persecuted for righteousness?

What Jesus means by “persecution” is explained in his own words in the surrounding context. In verse 11, we see that persecution includes: being reviled (insulted, reprimanded, despised, rejected) and having people say negative things about you for Christ’s sake.

We must be careful to notice that Christian persecution always centers on Christ, not us. It is for Christ’s sake—not just our own unpopularity, our difficulty getting along with people, our offending people (even with the truth) by unkind and inconsiderate words or manner. (Remember 1 Peter 2:20: “What credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God”).

Yet we don’t see anything in Jesus’s description of persecution about being burned at the stake, chased out of your home, or thrown in prison—even though many of his disciples would eventually face these violent responses to their Christian testimony! Rather, the words Jesus chooses in order to describe persecution highlight the personal rejection and social isolation. Interestingly, Peter writes to those who are suffering physical consequences for their Christian faith, and his emphasis almost exactly mirrors that of Jesus: “if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed” (1 Pt. 3:14), and “If you are insulted [same word as “reviled”] for the name of Christ, you are blessed” (4:14).

Do we think there’s something unique about our culture or our generation, that the greatest deterrent to living and speaking publicly for the glory of Christ is what other people will think and say? Certainly not! Think about it: the difficulty of losing your house or being put in prison would be far less if your entire community and culture embraced what you were standing for and welcomed you afterward with open arms. Likewise, not losing your house or being put in prison does not shelter you from the serious and daunting loneliness, shame, and rejection that any culture can heap on those whom they despise and deride.

Have we been persecuted for righteousness?

In light of Jesus’s description of Christian persecution—which does not necessarily mean doing prison time, but will always mean sacrificing my personal popularity in order to speak well of Jesus in front of others—have we experienced the blessedness Jesus’s promises here?

Have I been passed over for promotion, have I had to stick out at a social event, have I been ostracized by my classmates, have I received odd looks or peer pressure for what I won’t let my children do for Christ’s sake? (Let’s not kid ourselves: peer pressure is not just a problem for kids! It is just as much a danger for adults.)

The point of Jesus’s beatitude is not just to make us feel guilty but to help us realize we are either trusting in the approval and acceptance of others or we are trusting in Christ’s promise: “You are blessed if you are insulted for me!”

This means any time I avoid speaking about Jesus, or go along with the crowd in order to fit in or not be rejected, I am disbelieving Christ’s assurance that it is a greater blessing and happiness to be reviled for Christ’s sake than it is to fit in for my own sake.

And it also means that we cannot excuse ourselves from this beatitude by just saying, as we often do, “Thank God we don’t live in a country that persecutes Christians.” Every country, in every generation has persecuted Christians when those Christians are boldly speaking well of Christ and living out his Word! Paul put it in no uncertain terms, didn’t he? “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). If we are not in some sense despised by, reviled by our unbelieving culture and co-workers and community then it necessarily means we have in some way been hiding the light of Christ. Those who bravely, although joyfully and winningly, speak well of Jesus in public will always suffer for it in an unbelieving world.

Some Bible-students have suggested this is the one beatitude not describing or based on personal character and actions. Yet Jesus insists it has everything to do with who we are and how we are living: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn. 15:19; see also 17:6-14). The goal of course is not ever to be “persecution” in and of itself, but speaking and living publicly for Christ… which Jesus says will always lead to severe social rejection on some level.

Are we being persecuted? More specifically, can you think of an instance in the last week in which you were insulted or rejected because you were publicly speaking and living for Christ? In the last month? The last year?

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What is the promise to those who, in boldly proclaiming the fame of Jesus Christ, suffer personally for it? “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

They appear to lose all; but not so, for they gain assurance that all is theirs. Everything on earth may be taken from them, but they have the astounding and everlasting promise that heaven is theirs.

The world opposes the name of Jesus Christ, either by discounting him or by ignoring him; it always has, and Jesus says it always will. The world is speaking evil of Christ; if Christians do not speak well of him, who will? Is Christ well-spoken of by you?

It is interesting and revealing, is it not, that we often thank God for the blessing of not being persecuted? Meanwhile, Jesus says the opposite! Blessed are those who are persecuted for his name’s sake. Your situation is a happy one when persecuted for Christ’s name because your life is counting for the only thing in all the universe that really matters and lasts.

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Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the "Daily Devotion" app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.

Four Anchors in the Crucible of Pain

Last August I resigned my post as pastor for discipleship at a church I deeply loved. Uncertain if I would again land in a fulltime vocational expression of ministry, I accepted a job in the marketplace in an unfamiliar city with very unfamiliar people. A day before the orientation process began at my new job, I answered an emergency phone call that my 66-year-old father had fainted and was in need of an emergency quadruple bypass. Due to the severity of the situation, he was bumped up in the surgery queue and underwent the procedure on a Wednesday.

While in surgery, he suffered a septal-wall heart attack that caused his heart to endure ventricular fibrillations three times. His liver went into shock, his kidneys went into failure, his heart scarcely worked, and the doctors inserted a mechanical heart pump to sustain his life.

Now on full life support—with a ventilator to support his breathing, 24-hour dialysis to remove the waste from his body that was accumulating due to his failed kidneys, and the pump that was running his heart—the doctors induced medical paralysis and downgraded his condition from critical to grave.

I felt lost.

Prayer to Plea

What began for me as a simple prayer for Jesus to sustain my father on a Wednesday became, by Sunday, an all-out plea for the sovereign power of Christ over life and death.

Dad remained in a medically induced coma for 21 days. It was no small thing to see the strongest man I have ever known rendered utterly incapacitated by the failure of his own body. And in that hospital room, I hardly had time to process the disappointment and disillusionment of leaving ministry as a vocation.

My life was in need of an anchor, and like never before I felt as though all the anchors of familiarity I had held on to were now wrenched from their footings. Life for me felt very adrift.

In that place, my often repeated plea—“Come, Lord, Jesus!”—became my tutor, bringing me back to Romans 5:1–5, and tightening my grip on four anchors holding me in place in the crucible of pain.

Anchor #1 – Peace in the Person and Finished Work of Jesus

“Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). We all suffer this side of heaven, but in these moments we see that our pain does not shape the finished work of Jesus; rather, the finished work of Jesus shapes our suffering.

The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, who was faithful to finish the work his Father set before him, is the plan of restoration for God’s elect. This reconciling work transfers us from condemned enemies deserving of the full weight of God’s wrath to adopted sons and daughters who are inheriting an unblemished kingdom.

For the Christian, it is of utmost importance that we grasp this understanding of faith and how it not only secures our past, present, and future peace; it is our peace. The second coming of Christ will consummate a glorious new beginning in which evil, suffering, and death will be eradicated as far as the curse of sin is found. Our hope in that glorious day is intimately linked to the belief that Jesus has fully and perfectly justified us in his finished work in the here, in the now.

Anchor #2 – Peace in the Accessibility of God

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2). Not only do we stand in all of the benefits that justification brings; we stand in Christ. We were justified in our embrace, by faith, of the justifier himself. This is unmerited, unwarranted, and unadulterated grace. This is what it means to be united with Christ.

Not only does our union with Christ affirm future promises of the restoration of all things, it also enables us to firmly stand in deep grace despite a world currently subjected to the curse of the fall, and in all of the daily insecurities and questions we will face along the way.

Anchor #3 – Peace Leading to Unfailing Hope

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3–4). There is a peculiar way in which suffering shapes us. As we are united with Christ in his life, we are united with him in his sufferings as well, and as Hebrews 2:10 tells us, Christ was perfected through such hardships.

Suffering is a worker: it works for the good of God’s children (Rom. 8:28). We should expect no less; rather, we should pursue joy in the midst of pain, for God is using it to shape us into the image of Jesus.

Glorification awaits for when Christ returns to consummate all things under his rule and reign. And we long for this day! But we also take great hope in the present that he is transforming us from one degree of glory to another in the here-and-now (2 Cor. 3:18). Once again, as we are united with Christ even in our sufferings, it is Christ who is transforming us. And if it is Christ who is transforming us, then we have all we need, for we have all of Jesus.

Anchor #4 – Peace in the Presence of God Himself

“Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Of all the anchors that held my soul in place in those critical moments of life, perhaps the strongest one was God’s commitment to give me all of himself.

God is the gospel—even in the pain. He is the one we get. He is the prize. He is the treasure. He is the everlasting anchor.

The Father sent his beloved Son to reconcile us to himself. Because of the Son’s work, we now have the Father. And because of the Father we have all of the Son. As if this was not enough, then the person of the Holy Spirit joins in to make the love and security of the triune godhead a reality inside of our hearts.

God gives all of himself to us so that, when it feels like all of life gives way and everything is desperate and unfamiliar, he is then my hope and stay.

As the old hymn says, “His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood; when all around my soul gives way”—when everything in life seems desperate and unfamiliar—“he then is all my hope and stay.”

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Scott Fitzgerald is the Executive Pastor of Metro Church of Northwest Arkansas. He is currently pursuing his MDiv at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and blogs at thethrillofhope.com.

Wrestling with God

When I was nineteen years old, a doctor told me I might have a disease that would allow me only a few more years to live. I had been ill, and, because of my not-so-enviable family genes, a team of doctors was analyzing me in a clinic far from home. I left the clinic that night, knowing the details of the disease and contemplating what it would mean for my life. Back in the apartment where I was staying, I began to send messages to a friend back home in Oregon. I detailed the symptoms I was experiencing, and the ones coming if my diagnosis was accurate.

The very places we already inhabit are places that we have been sent with the good news of Jesus

His response: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised.”

My response as I read those words: “Jerk-face! Who says that when a friend shares hard stuff?”

Thankfully, I only thought it and didn’t type it back to him. It had taken thirty minutes before I began to question if he was right. If God rules the world, does all I have belong to him anyway? Am I called to praise him even when I wrestle in suffering?

My friend’s message initiated my struggle with God, with pounding questions in cycles of suffering to come.

Indescribable Loss and Incompetent Comforters

Job was blameless in the eyes of God, as well as rich in commerce, greatness, and family. He feared God, caring about what God thought first and foremost. There was still a cosmic debate. Satan questioned Job’s motivations, so God allowed Satan to take Job’s possessions, children, and, eventually, his health. His response was what my friend referenced—he praised God (Job 1:21, 2:10). Nevertheless, Job mourned.

As good friends, the comforters gathered first with kindness in silence. However, when the silence was broken, so was the peace. After Job’s opening expressions of despair and anger came a deluge of accusations, assumptions, and insinuations. Job’s friends knew God better than Job, so, of course, they were right. “Job must have sinned,” they said, “or God would not have allowed this evil to happen to him.”

They were master over-simplifiers. They turned the biblical wisdom literature into formulas. “Bad things happen to bad people and good things to good people,” they reiterated incessantly. Job must be bad. His only hope was to repent so that God could restore him.

Job defended himself for three rounds, responding to his friends before the cycle began again. “I am innocent,” he maintained. His friends were wrong. In his grief, Job described his pain and the character of God, all the while he was pleading for God to do something, to respond. Job knew God had put him where he was (19:6-7), yet he also knew that God would vindicate him. God was righteous and still his hope (27:1-22).

Then a fourth junior team friend speaks; Elihu comes with a more moderate position. He says that neither the friends nor Job is right, and, with an air of authority, he declares that he knows. While his argument isn’t perfectly correct either, he does shift the conversation from centering on Job and humanity’s iniquity to the majesty and faithfulness of God.

In my apartment late that fearful night, I didn’t have accusers or bad theologians as friends. But those did come later—“Your suffering was generated by God’s anger at your sin.” This allegation related to my health, my circumstances, as well as other kinds of suffering. Like Job, I’ve sometimes responded with strong words to those who told me this. Like Job, I’ve wrestled with questions about physical, emotional, and relational pain. Like Job, I’ve needed to hear from God himself.

The Astounding Interview

The LORD God answered Job out of a whirlwind. God gave him the interview he had been begging for. But the conversation consisted of questions for Job to answer, rather than the planned questions for God. God brought perspective through this correction, reminding Job of his place. He allowed Job to reexamine who he was and who God was. Job was not God. Job does not see it all. Job did not create the world; he does not rule it now. So can Job judge God? Can he evaluate if God is doing what he should?

God reminds him of the wild, dangerous, and beautiful world that exists. Through the examples of the Behemoth and the Leviathan, God shows Job this world is not tame. It is complex. Job responds with faith, faith in God’s words and God’s role. He changes his mind and is finally comforted.

In all of this, God does not condemn Job and is not provoked to punishment. He vindicates Job and tells the “friends” that they need Job’s prayers to avoid punishment from God, whom they represented falsely.

Faith in Pain

I find great hope in the fact that the struggle of Job was not condemned. Job fought to understand. He sought to know the character of God combined with what he saw happening to him. God saw and engaged. And he held him up as the righteous one among his friends. God vindicated Job by showing him that his suffering was not due to sin. But Job needed more. Later in history, the Redeemer Job hoped for came to bring the fullness of his hope (Job 19:25). Jesus mediates for us so that we can come to God with our questions and wrestle with hope. Hope because we know his response will be only love and discipline, never God’s anger towards our sin—because our Redeemer took all of that forever.

The book of Job doesn’t answer why God allows suffering. It doesn’t give us impersonal truths to cling to; instead, the focus lands squarely on faith—the faith of Job to trust in the One who he knows is allowing him to suffer. The book of Job models choosing hope in redemption from the God who brings pain into our lives.

Many years later, I am still alive. The next morning the diagnosis the doctors had feared was eliminated as a possibility. But the truth still remained—God gives and takes away. I wanted to praise him no matter what. Suffering, hardship, and pain come to us in this dangerous world. Sometimes it is because of our own sin, directly or indirectly. Other times it is not.

I still wrestle sometimes. We will all likely wrestle like Job at some point in our lives, asking God to answer. The same God-in-the-whirlwind will engage us as struggling sufferers with truth. He will meet us with a reminder of what our Redeemer has done, as the full answer to our suffering. He will comfort us with hope. And he will humble us by telling us that he is still God.

Yes, Lord, you are. And we praise you.

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Taylor Turkington has worked for a church in the Portland area for the last six years, teaching, discipling, and training. She loves being involved in the equipping and encouraging of people for the work God has given them. Before her church life, Taylor worked as a missionary in Eastern Europe and graduated from Western Seminary with an M.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies. Currently, Taylor is a student at Western in the D.Min. program. She loves teaching the Bible and speaks at seminars, retreats, and conferences. Taylor is a co-founder and co-director of the Verity Fellowship.

Speak into Suffering

When my first daughter went to be with the Lord, one friend wrote to me, “There are no words.” There are no words to describe, quantify, or eliminate the pain of child loss—it was a depletion of my person in nearly every possible manner. There are no words for the kinds of suffering we can endure on this earth. Experiencing that kind of depletion is not a reason to despair with hopelessness, for it can give way to great rejoicing. Through it, the abundance and sufficiency of Scripture become unmistakable. There are divinely-inspired words—that can never be depleted—to speak into intense suffering.

Disciples devour and dwell on the things of God found in the Scriptures. We pray. We kill sin in our lives. We serve others.

Many who have not personally experienced intense suffering feel depleted of words the minute they hear about someone else’s deep pain. Perhaps that is you. You feel you cannot relate well to others’ agony. Perhaps you have heard the widespread advice that the best approach to someone who is suffering is to be present and only listen. Or, perhaps you have only had occasion to read or learn about what not to say when someone is suffering, so you are at a loss for exactly how to act or be. God’s Word is an abundant, sufficient help for you too.

The God Speaking There

In The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom was familiar with her own suffering and that of others. She recounts that women with of her in a Nazi prison camp would encircle her and her sister, pressing in closely and attentively, as they read the Word of God (thanks to a Bible God miraculously provided).

Precisely during this level of suffering, they desperately needed and wanted the Word. The God speaking there—through those pages—was their only hope. This remarkable account shows the Word bringing hope and light to a dark and, from an earthly perspective, hopeless circumstance.

So as a Church, as disciples, as teachers, as leaders, as friends, as one who is suffering intensely—right where we find yourself—let’s do well at speaking Scripture into suffering. To do so, we will need to learn the Word itself—not just verses we pluck from the book, but the meaning of passages and, then, the application of passages to our overall theology and the way we view the world.

And, ethen, we need to become good listeners. I have learned that there is no substitute for these—learning the Word and listening—and that when they are done well, I have much more to offer someone who is suffering in addition to myself.

As disciples—right where we find yourself—let’s do well at speaking Scripture into suffering

Think about your life and heart. What often results in your own spiritual growth? You have an ache. And you bring it to the Lord and his Word. Whether through an article, a conversation with someone else, a lecture, a small group meeting, a sermon, a book, reading the Bible in the quietness of your home, you have a realization about that ache. That is, you learn what the Bible speaks into that ache.

When you do, you grow. You are made more whole with the truth of his Word. One experience like this after another is what carried me through grief.

So, if you have a suffering friend, listen for the ache when he or she speaks. If you cannot identify it or if you do not yet know how the Bible speaks into it, then be satisfied with being a good listener—after all, you would only be speaking for the benefit of your friend. Make no assumptions, for a response of Biblical perspective to the ache they feel, might not be the words you think they need to hear.

Identifying the Ache

But do know, if you can indeed identify another’s ache and can grow to interpret and apply the Bible well to the aches you begin to hear around you, then trust that the Word of God is your sufficient and most compassionate resource to share with someone who is suffering.

When suffering is new, resonate with the ache. A sorrowful reaction to suffering is Biblical.

• When everything in life now feels meaningless, remember that there is a reason for this feeling—the world is not as it should be (Ecclesiastes).
• When the experience of grief is life-consuming, remember how consuming was David’s grief over his baby’s impending death (2 Sam. 12:15-17).
• When suffering makes you feel lonely, read the Psalms to know you are truly not alone.
• When you feel angry with the woeful way of the world, think of Jesus’ troubled, even angered, response to death because of death’s impact upon those grieving the loss of Lazarus (Jn 11:33).
• When this life feels full of anguish, think of Jesus’ anguish in the garden of Gethsemane. The burden he felt when anticipating the cross demonstrates the miserable state of the world (Lk 22:44).
• When suffering makes you feel ostracized, take heart that you are in good company when suffering (1 Pt 4:12).
• When suffering makes you feel misunderstood, look to the account of Job and the mistaken assumptions of his friends (Job 4-31) or to the gospel accounts to see how constantly Jesus was unappreciated, misunderstood, unrecognized for who he is. People are flawed.

Longing for Hope

Listen for the aches longing for light, hope, comfort, or purpose amidst suffering.

• When friends and family members do not meet all of your needs, be encouraged that the comfort we receive—even when given through others—is comfort ultimately from God (2 Cor. 1:4).
• When you see debilitating sickness or death overcoming your body or the body of someone you love, remember that we believers will one day have resurrected, glorified, and redeemed bodies just like his heavenly one (1 Jn 3:2; 1 Cor 15:42).
• When the force of emotion is strong, and your words won’t suffice to express your heart, take comfort that the Holy Spirit himself intercedes for you (Rom 8:26).
• When you feel forgotten in your suffering, remember that God memorializes every tear that falls from your eye (Ps 56:8), just as he knows the number of hairs on your head (Lk 12:7).
• When suffering severs a relationship, remember the ultimate relationship forsaking willingly endured within the Godhead for you (Matt 27:46). God understands.
• When you do not feel the compassion of others, remember that Jesus’ suffering (Is 53) and overcoming-power makes him a High Priest, who relates to us and causes us to overcome with power too (Heb 4:14-16)—giving grace for the present and the promise of heaven.
• When death or the fear of death seems to conquer you, remember that he has ultimately defeated death (1 Cor 15:55-57).
• When you feel distant from God, dwell upon the truth that he has given a love that no suffering, pain, or heartache can pull away from you (Rom 8:38-39).
• When suffering makes you feel unmoored, haphazardly walking through life while wondering when you will finally be free from earthly concerns, remember that you are truly and solidly anchored through Christ to the world to come (Heb 6:19).
• When suffering makes life feel slow, remember that by God’s definition—given the eternal state—this suffering is light and momentary (2 Cor 4:17).
• When you need to be reminded of the treasures that can come alongside of suffering, learn why Jesus said that it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting (Eccles 7:2) or why Peter said that faith refined through suffering is gold (1 Pt 1:7). God’s glory can be evident in your faithfulness, giving you purpose and joy.

Stuck When Suffering

Listen for the ache of being stuck when suffering. 

• When you experience unending bitterness toward God, look to the story of Jeremiah, who also felt bitterness at his intense suffering. Hear how patient and sure were the words of exhortation and restoration that God spoke to him (Jer 15:18-21).
• When others avoid you or when you are tempted always to avoid others who do not fully understand, think of how you might give someone opportunity to enter into your mourning or suffering with you. Then, take heart that when you can share their joy, it truly becomes your own (Rom 12:15).
• When you can think of no reason to not blame God for the suffering that has come into your life, look to Genesis 3; the original sin of Adam and Eve is what broke the world. God is One in whom there is no darkness (1 Jn 1:5), who created the world good (Gen 1:31), who cannot tempt with evil (Jas 1:13), and so, cannot be convicted of wickedness, malice, or evil.
• When you simply cannot understand your suffering within God’s sovereign plan, rest content that his ways are beyond yours (Rom 11:33; Matt 18:2).
• When suffering makes you stuck in a cycle of looking only inward, remember that you have gifts that can be employed for others’ good and God’s glory (1 Pt 4:10).
• When you, Christian, are having difficulty being grateful for what you do have, remember the wrath from which you have been saved (Rom 5:9; 1 Thess 1:10).
• When escaping from suffering has become your focus, remember that Jesus Christ, and his good pleasure, is your reward (Matt 25:23).
• When you are tempted to blame yourself for circumstances beyond your control, remember that God has purposed all of the events in your life and the lives of those you love—including birth and death, and every circumstance in between (Ps 139:16)—just as he planned from the beginning of creation that Jesus would die for us (1 Pt 1:20). Remember his sacrificial love as the reason to move forward, and move forward in devotion to him.
• When you question if your suffering has any meaning or purpose, trust in the sovereignty of God to bring his purposes to fruition through the circumstances of your life, all of which are a part of his plan (Gen 50:20; Job 42:2).
• When you question what miracle of goodness God can bring from your suffering, meditate on Romans 5:3-5 and trust that suffering can teach you, give you a depth of knowledge of God like never before, and bring encouragement when the genuineness of your faith becomes evident (1 Pt 1:17).

Applying Scripture to All Our Aches

Whatever the circumstance, listen for the underlying yearning or longing. Let’s keep learning how to carefully apply Scripture to all of the aches we experience. The process of teaching and discipleship is God’s to lead faithfully.

And our aches are often the impetus and route God uses for our growth to increasingly display his glory through changed and faithful lives; the kind of lives that display his glory like this are grown from his Word.

While it’s not ours to invent or assume others’ aches, it is ours to listen well, to acknowledge back to the sufferer what we hear, and trust that for every need of the heart, God has spoken abundantly and sufficiently in his Word. You can learn skillful application of his Word to human aches and be empowered to give others more than yourself—you can speak his Word.

Take heart that this is your source of compassion for the sufferer, and this is your source of comfort when suffering—for putting his salve of truth skillfully into our aches is always our good.

If or when a circumstance of suffering comes into your life that cannot be described in words, remember, he speaks.

Behind the Mask

• What could you add to these lists since it’s not exhaustive?
• How has God spoke through your suffering?
• How have you listened poorly or well when others have been suffering?
• What hope do we have in the midst of sufferings?

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Lianna Davis (@liannadavis) is wed to Tyler and mom to two girls, one who lives in heaven and one who lives on earth. She serves with Hope Mommies, a non-profit organization sharing the hope of Christ with bereaved mothers, and is co-founder at Of Larks, a blog for theologically-minded women writers and readers.