Category Archives: Suffering

Bewilderment, Daily Struggles of Life, Doubt, God's care, God's goodness, Humility, Perseverance, Prayer, Psalms, Scripture, Struggles, Suffering, hardship

The Trust Fund

Posted by admin on August 18, 2010 at 4:06 pm.

 

How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you (Ps 31:19).

 

                Unanswered prayer is the grief of many Christians today. There are usually no answers to the questions of “Why does He delay to answer me? Doesn’t He see how much I am suffering?”

 

                As one who has wrestled with these questions many times, I have taken great comfort in Psalm 31:19. It seems that the Lord has a “savings account” of His goodness toward me that I will one day be able to cash in. Perhaps a better illustration would be a “trust fund,” because it is an account that cannot be drawn from whenever I would like. Someone else determines when I will receive it.

 

                To access this “trust fund” of God’s goodness to me I must exercise the same kind of faith that a child with a financial trust fund would exercise. It is only a matter of time before I will receive my store of God’s blessing. I must trust that the Word of the One that is managing this fund is true. The only difference is that the time for me is uncertain while the child will know when his inheritance will be given to him.

 

                While I am waiting for the display of His goodness the verse tells me the two things I must continue to do: fear Him and take refuge in Him. These are not passive, but active verbs. “Fear” carries the idea of seeking Him wholeheartedly, rather than in just a perfunctory way. “Taking refuge in Him” is an admission of our own weakness and inadequacy.

 

                Some believe that this verse suggests that the display of God’s goodness to us will be apparent to all at the Judgment, but my opinion is that the phrase, “in the sight of men,” is that it will be here on earth, just at a later time. David had earlier stated, “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Ps 27:13).

 

                The Lord has His goodness in store for those who trust Him. We don’t always understand why He tells us that we must wait, and it sometimes distresses us when people around us are looking for external evidence of His reality, but He has His purposes, and those purposes are perfect.

 

                Spirit of God, descend upon my heart. Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;

                Stoop to my weakness mighty as Thou art, And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

 

                Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh; Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear:

                To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh, Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

(George Croly, 1780-1860)

Suffering, Walk with Jesus, preachers

Authentic Preachers

Posted by admin on May 31, 2010 at 9:57 am.

Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit (2 Cor 2:17).

                It’s hard to imagine that the early church had their version of the TV preacher, but apparently it was so. Every age has its share of charlatans and hucksters.

                I Timothy 5:17, Paul tells us that a good teacher is worth “double honor” (meaning salary), yet here he claims that he is not “peddling” the Word. Clearly he is making reference to his motive as a preacher.

                To the outside world, the job of a preacher appears pretty easy. We “only work one day a week.” It’s not a physically demanding job. The surroundings are pretty clean (except my office!). Those who have good entertainment and organizational skills can draw a sizable crowd and appear “successful.” But the preachers that I know recognize that there is an internal pressure that the outside world cannot understand. It is the pressure of leading people to engage the Word of Truth for themselves, a pressure to help others remain true in the face of extraordinary societal influences to deny the existence and authority of Christ – all the while remaining authentic themselves. In a world that is increasingly superficial and that justifies its shallowness, it is a frustrating and heavy responsibility – and not getting any easier.

                Another of the pressures that afflict the preacher is referred to just a few verses later (4:2) in this letter: the pressure to compromise, “distort” (NIV) or “adulterate” (NASB) the Word of God. Since the general knowledge of Scripture is at such a low point in our society, this can go undetected (and does) for many years. Some people really do think that “you can make Scripture say whatever you want it to say,” but not without compromising the plain sense of the text. But many false preachers in our day bank on the fact that the average attendee has never opened the Bible, so the preacher will never be challenged. He can say what he wants and manipulate their opinions as he chooses. Not so for those who properly feel that internal pressure of authenticity.

                It is really amazing that Paul would have to make the statement that he didn’t “peddle the Word of God.” It should have been obvious to anyone who looked at his life that he didn’t endure multiple stonings, shipwreck, beatings, etc. (see II Cor 11:24f) just to make a few shekels. Yet apparently there was the accusation that he had to refute by this letter.

                As in Paul’s day, there will always be those who look upon ministry as an easy way to separate the naïve from their money, but, in the words of Jesus, “they have their reward.”

Daily Struggles of Life, Death, Discipleship, Humiliation, Perseverance, Struggles, Suffering, hardship

A Choice Group

Posted by admin on May 18, 2010 at 4:48 pm.

For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world (1 Cor 4:8-13).

                It’s no wonder that there is a high dropout rate among people in ministry, if this is what we can expect! The consolation, of course, is that the retirement is “out of this world!”

                The United States Marine Corps calls their people, “The few, the proud, the marines!” because they are an elite group. They don’t mind a high dropout rate because those that do stick are choice men and women. There is a character about them that nothing but hardship can create. It is what makes them elite; it is what gives them confidence in each other in tough times; it is what makes them valuable to our nation.

                But as impressive as the military is, the character that has been tested by the hardships of ministry is even more so. The New Testament describes these as “men of whom the world is not worthy” (Heb 11:38). They are humble because they have been humbled; they endure because their eyes are fixed on the One who endured for them. They are not all impressive by the standards of this world; indeed, there were not many “wise…influential… [or] noble” (1 Cor 1: 26), but there is a quality about them that makes them precious to the Church and to her Lord. He can rely upon them to represent His interests before a watching world. And He will one day reward their faithfulness, whether or not it receives the applause of men.

                The famous words of Theodore Roosevelt apply to these people: “The credit belongs to the man in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

Daily Struggles of Life, Decisions, Repentance, Restoration, Struggles, Suffering

A Jewel for His Glory

Posted by admin on May 2, 2010 at 7:09 pm.

 

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will (Eph 1:11).

                A seminar speaker once made the observation that the foolish decisions that we make are not completely irreversible. We can always repent and turn from our wrong ways and be restored. Even when those decisions have consequences that cannot be reversed, God is always in the restoration business.

                He made his point by using the idea that we are like a diamond in the rough. God’s perfect design might be that we would be a large diamond for His glory and praise. His hands hold the hammer and chisel, but if in our sinfulness we make a decision at the wrong time (that is, we move while He is preparing to remove some impurity), He can still make a perfect diamond from our lives – just a bit smaller.

                We will never be able to re-visit the decisions in our lives to find out what might have happened. Those things are sealed in the mind of God, but His purpose and plan are never out of reach, never beyond His ability to restore. He is able to re-convene the circumstances of our lives to accomplish what He desires.

But restoration is a function of a tender, repentant spirit. He will be first in our lives and He will test His place there by the decisions that we make. If we persist in a spirit of stubborn willfulness – rebellion – He will “tighten the screws” to make us realize that rebellion, and the consequences will be increasingly severe until we repent. There are times – documented – when He removes people because they persist in their rebellion. Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) and the sinful man of I Corinthians 5 (potentially) were such cases, but there are many more apart from the text of Scripture.

No one is beyond restoration; no one has so fully rebelled that God is unable to make a perfectly faceted jewel from his life. But the key to the “size” of that jewel is our repentant spirit.

Church Today, Daily Struggles of Life, Pain, Struggles, Suffering, Training, hardship

Basic Training

Posted by admin on April 4, 2010 at 8:14 am.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Gal 6:9

                For the past few days I have not had the opportunity to write because I have been away from home at my son’s graduation from Basic Military Training (BMT). He is now an Airman in the USAF. We are very proud of him.

                One of his buddies joined us for lunch one day just after a ceremony because his family had not yet arrived. As we talked about the BMT experience, he told us that there was one day, about 2-3 weeks into the training, that things got so bad that he had to duck into the latrine to keep from crying and giving up. The comment was made in our conversation that everyone reaches that place in any significant endeavor. I thought to myself, “How true…how many times I have ‘ducked into the latrine’ myself to keep people from seeing that I was ready to give up ministry.”

                The verse above is only representative of the thrust of much of the Scripture, encouraging us to press on despite adversity. Adversity tests our resolve; it helps us understand our true motives, some of which would not really be known without the trial.

We in the human race are very adept at deceiving ourselves. God, of course, sees our true motives, but often we sugar-coat our attitudes with noble thoughts of how good and pure we are. NOT! Trial helps us see ourselves for who we are. Jeremiah was right when he wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9).

The USAF (and the military as a whole) has always understood the necessity of BMT. My son understood going in that the purpose of these two months would be for the Training Instructor to “get into his head.” God wants to do the same.

Jesus' Teachings, Messiah, Pain, Scripture, Sin, Struggles, Suffering, hardship

Hang on Jesus’ Words

Posted by admin on March 5, 2010 at 5:20 pm.

Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. Luke 19:47-48

                Things certainly are different in our day! Today we ignore, rather than “hang on to,” His words. The difference between the response in the time of Jesus and our own is not a matter of the delivery because the Holy Spirit has breathed life into the words of Scripture just as the breath of Jesus carried them through His lips. It is also not because men are innately different today than in that day. I would suggest that the reason we don’t hang on Jesus’ words because we don’t have the motivation that they had in the time of Jesus.

                The people of Jesus’ day were looking for a Messiah, a deliverer. They were oppressed by an authoritarian political regime that didn’t care about their Jewish laws and practices. Rather than being the head, they were the tail (see Deut. 28:13-14) because they had not paid attention to the Lord’s commands. His judgment upon them had led to their subservient position.

                People in America today – even Christians – are not looking for a Messiah, at least not a Messiah like Jesus. We are too comfortable in our position on top of the world. When our bank accounts run dry, when our health gives out, when our families decide to blow us off, then we’ll hang on Jesus’ words. But probably not before, unless we have been trained well (and sometimes, not even then!).

                I’m glad that the Church can be there when life happens for people in our world, but the truth is that the fix is not an easy one. It’s always simpler to get into trouble than to get out of it, because the source of that trouble is always sin. Sometimes it’s the original sin that plagues all mankind on this side of heaven, sometimes it is a specific sin that has led to our circumstances. But either way, the remedy is Jesus – His death for us or His words to us.

                I am very thankful for the easy life God has blessed us with in America with our many freedoms and creature comforts and I recognize their Source, but I fear that unless we wake up and hang on his words again like our Founding Fathers did, we’ll repeat the cycle that plagued the Jewish people.

Church Today, Military, Struggles, Suffering, hardship

On Service

Posted by admin on March 2, 2010 at 11:02 am.

“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”  (Luke 17:7-10)

                My son recently joined the US Air Force. Right now he is in Basic Training learning his rightful place. Although we as parents didn’t succumb to the prevalent societal opinion that his “self-esteem” was fragile and needed to be constantly propped up, he did know the security of a family that loved him and cared for him, and, I believe, he would express that if he were asked.

But there is something good about learning that we are on the bottom of the ladder; there is something good about understanding that we are the servants rather than the masters. We in the American Church have fallen into the vile condition where we expect God to do our bidding rather than the other way around. We want to be the General, not the Private. Hardship is unknown to us, or, if we do experience it, we expect some fantastic reward at the end. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that our “chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”Note the order of this. “Enjoy” follows “glorify.” We don’t glorify God IF He lets us enjoy life; we glorify Him and the result will be that He will give us joy, though there is no promise that the joy will be immediate.

All of the saints of Scripture understood this principle. A cursory reading of the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 will reveal that hardship was their lot, and they didn’t complain about it. Paul told Timothy to “suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 2:3). While we tend to see these great saints as exemplary – and they are – they probably would not have considered themselves to be exemplary, just servants.

Hardship refines us, burning away impurities in our lives, especially the impure thought that we deserve more. It is especially important that we see this when we are young. Jeremiah wrote, “It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth.” When we bear this hardship and still can see God as loving and merciful toward us, our lives will be characterized with joy in the end (consider Psalm 90:14).

Military service often changes our young men and women. We often hear that “it makes a man out of him” or matures him. It is interesting how being immersed in a strict authoritarian structure makes us mature. I’m anxious to see how it affects my son; I’m praying that it will impact his spiritual life in a similar way.

AB Simpson, Heaven, Miracles, Resurrection, Scripture, Suffering

The Rich Man and Lazarus

Posted by admin on March 1, 2010 at 3:33 pm.

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” (Luke 16:27-31)

The text here comes from the story about the rich man and Lazarus. (Traditionally, the rich man’s name has been “Divies” because it is the term used in the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, for the rich man, but the name is not in Scripture.) Lazarus was a poor beggar who often would sit at the gate of the rich man’s home and beg. But he believed (apparently) and was rewarded with heaven while the rich man suffered in Hades. Jewish legend suggested that when a believer died he would go to Abraham’s bosom, so Jesus was using this idea to make His point, not necessarily condoning any truth to the legend.

The rich man, while in agony, called upon Father Abraham to soothe his agony by sending Lazarus and when that was not possible, he asked him to send Lazarus back to his family that was still living so that they could be warned. Abraham explained that they had the Scriptures, but the rich man thought that someone coming back to life would more clearly convince them. But Jesus put the main point of His story in the words of Abraham, “If they don’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they won’t be convinced if someone rises from the dead.”

There is a specific and a general application to this. The specific application is that the skeptical religious leaders would not be convinced when Jesus Himself rose from the dead. This is, at least in part, because to believe in Him would likely doom their careers within the Jewish Sanhedrin. These positions were acquired at great cost of time and effort. We might compare them to political careers in our day. Very few men are willing to risk their careers to believe in Jesus – then or now. Truth just isn’t that important to most men in our day.

The general application is that no matter how many or how stupendous the miracles, they will not convince the skeptic, unless they are convinced by the Scriptures. If a person will believe it will be because he chooses to listen to “Moses and the Prophets” (aka, the Scripture).

This principle is really a major factor in the decline of the Church in our day. People have things backward – they want the miracles rather than the Scripture. It’s too hard and time-consuming for many to dig into the Scripture; we’d rather just have a quick, easy miracle, or some other “feel-good” entertainment. And there are always churches that will try to accommodate them. But Dr. A.B. Simpson had it right when he penned the verse, “Once it was the blessing, Now it is the Lord; Once it was the feeling, Now it is His Word; Once the gift I wanted, Now the Giver own; Once I sought for healing, Now Himself alone.”

Christ's afflictions, Daily Struggles of Life, Pain, Struggles, Suffering

The Fellowship of His Sufferings

Posted by admin on February 17, 2010 at 4:54 pm.

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings (Phil 3:10).

                C.S. Lewis wrote that “Pain is God’s megaphone.” In other words, it is often how He gets our attention. Sometimes pain is the natural consequence of our sin; sometimes it is the indirect result of the original sin that grips the whole human race; sometimes it is a test of the enemy of our souls; and sometimes it is the privilege of the believer to share in the sufferings of Jesus.

                The concept that we as Christians would experience pain and suffering willingly in order to know Him better is foreign to us in Western Christianity in this era. Even though we may reject the “health and prosperity” teaching that is popular in some corners of Christendom, most of us still believe deep down that if we please God He will make us happy and satisfied. We can’t understand why he doesn’t make us “successful” if we really are pleasing to Him.

                But this world stands opposed to God’s Truth, and if I am on His side, why should I expect to be popular and successful according to the world’s system? According to Jesus, God’s system says I am successful if men reject me because I follow Him (see Matt. 5:11). Shouldn’t I expect to be treated as He was and is treated by this world? Shouldn’t I be willing to endure the pain of rejection that He bore, if I am “in Christ”?

                The old hymnist, Isaac Watts, had it right:

               

                Am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the Lamb

                And shall I fear to own His cause Or blush to speak His name?

 

                Must I be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease

                While others fight to win the prize And sail through bloody seas?

 

                Are there no foes for me to face? Must I not stem the flood?

                Is this vile world a friend to grace To help me on to God?

 

Since I must fight if I would reign, Increase my courage, Lord.

I’ll bear the cross, endure the pain, supported by Thy Word.