Deut 8:2 ; Psalm 4 ; Psalm 6 ; Psalm 13:5-6 ; Psalm 17:8 ; Psalm 18 ; Psalm 20 ; Psalm 22 ; Psalm 23 ; Psalm 27:5 ; Psalm 32:8-10 ; Psalm 34 ; Psalm 91 ; Psalm 107 ; Psalm 118 ; Psalm 130 ; Psalm 139 (cf: Job 10 ) ;
OTHER SCRIPTURES
Proverbs 3:5 ; Proverbs 27:6 ; Lamentations 3:22-25 ; 2 Samuel 22:2-29 ; Isaiah 41:10 ; Isaiah 46:16 ; Isaiah 46:34 ; Isaiah 49:14-16 ; Isaiah 53:3 ; Isaiah 61:2 ; Job 1:20-21 ; Matt 6:25-34 ; Luke 4:18 ; Luke 12:4-7 ; Luke 12:22-24 ; Luke 24:15 ; John 4:18 ; John 10:27 ; John 16:13-14 ; John 16:33 ; Acts 17:25-27 ; 1 Cor 4:2 ; 1 Cor 15:58 ; 2 Cor 1:3-4 ; 2 Cor 1:9 ; 2 Cor 1:11 ; 2 Cor 2:14 ; 2 Cor 12:7-10 ; Eph 3:20 ; 2 Tim 4:7 ; Phil 1:6; Phil 4:6 ; James 1:2-26 ; 1 John 4:18 ; 1 Peter 5:7-10 ; Hebrews 12:3 ; Revelation 21:1-5
Wed 18 Apr 2001 - You were God's idea.
"He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world."
Have you ever seen a designer at work? First he starts with - an idea. He sees it, then he creates it. You were in God's mind before you were in your mother's womb. Regardless of whose child, sibling, or spouse you are, you were God's idea. Never forget that!
You weren't born because of what your parents did or didn't do. No, you were born because of something God did. He's the One who mixed the genes that gave you your identity, your personality, and your purpose. He made you, and He doesn't make mistakes! (Ps 139:16)
Think: He didn't allow you to be aborted or miscarried, stillborn, or die of crib death. He didn't allow that childhood accident or illness to take you out. He never took His hand off your life for one moment. You may have been neglected and abused, deprived and denied, but He's the One who brought you through and kept you from losing your mind.
He's also the One who brought you to an understanding of Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour and raised you up so that you could fulfil His purposes - in spite of every effort to destroy you, diminish you, defame you, or discourage you.
The fact is... if you hadn't gone through everything you've gone through,
you wouldn't be the person you are today. And God knows that! He's been in
the process of creating you, fashioning you, moulding you, designing you,
refining you, and perfecting you since the moment He thought of you.Oh yes,
when God thought of you - He had a good idea!
Home > Christianity Today Magazine
Christianity Today, October 6, 1997
What's So Amazing About Grace (Part 1 of 2)
Philip Yancey
It is to the prodigals that the memory of their Father's house comes back.
If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.
Simone Weil
During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world were discussing whether any one belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. "What's the rumpus about?" he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique contribution among world religions. In his forthright manner Lewis responded, "Oh, that's easy. It's grace."
After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God's love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity. The Buddhist eight fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and the Muslim code of law; each of these offers a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional.
Aware of our inbuilt resistance to grace, Jesus talked about it often. He described a world suffused with God's grace: where the sun shines and rain falls on people good and bad; where birds gather seeds gratis, neither plowing nor harvesting to earn them; where untended wildflowers burst into life on the hillsides. Like a visitor from a foreign country who notices what the natives overlook, Jesus saw grace everywhere. Yet he never analyzed or defined grace, and he almost never used the word. Instead, he communicated grace through stories we know as parables; which I will take the liberty of transposing into a modern setting.
A vagrant lives near the Fulton Fish Market on the lower east side of Manhattan. The slimy smell of fish carcasses and entrails nearly overpowers him, and he hates the trucks that noisily arrive before sunrise. But mid town gets crowded, and the cops harass him there. Down by the wharves nobody bothers with a grizzled man who keeps to himself and sleeps behind a Dumpster.
Early one morning when the workers are slinging eel and halibut off the trucks, yelling to each other in Italian, the vagrant rouses himself and pokes through the Dumpsters behind the tourist restaurants. An early start guarantees good pickings: last night's uneaten garlic bread and french fries, nibbled pizza, a wedge of cheesecake. He eats what he can stomach and stuffs the rest in a brown paper sack. The bottles and cans he stashes in plastic bags in his rusty shopping cart.
The morning sun, pale through harbor fog, finally makes it over the buildings by the wharf. When he sees the ticket from last week's lottery lying in a pile of wilted lettuce, he almost lets it go. But by force of habit he picks it up and jams it in his pocket. In the old days, when luck was better, he used to buy one ticket a week, never more. It's past noon when he remembers the ticket stub and holds it up to the newspaper box to compare the numbers. Three numbers match, the fourth, the fifth; all seven! It can't be true. Things like that don't happen to him. Bums don't win the New York Lottery.
But it is true. Later that day he is blinking in the bright lights as television crews present the newest media darling, the unshaven, baggy-pants vagrant who will receive $243,000 per year for the next 20 years. A chic-looking woman wearing a leather mini skirt shoves a microphone in his face and asks,"How do you feel?" He stares back dazed and catches a whiff of her perfume. It has been a long time, a very long time, since anyone has asked him that question. He feels like a man who has been to the edge of starvation and back, and is beginning to fathom that he'll never feel hunger again.
An entrepreneur in Los Angeles decides to cash in on the boom in adventure travel. Not all Americans sleep in Holiday Inns and eat at McDonald's when traveling overseas; some prefer to stray from the beaten path. He gets the idea of touring the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Most of the ancient wonders, he finds, have left no trace. But there is a move under way to restore the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and after a lot of leg work, the entrepreneur lines up a charter plane, a bus, accommodations, and a guide who promises to let tourists work alongside the professional archaeologists. Just the kind of thing adventure-tourists love. He orders up an expensive series of television ads and schedules them during golf tournaments, when well-heeled tourists might be watching.
To finance his dream, the entrepreneur has arranged a million-dollar loan from a venture capitalist, calculating that after the fourth trip he can cover operating expenses and start paying back the loan.
One thing he has not calculated, however: two weeks before his inaugural trip, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and the State Department bans all travel to Iraq, which happens to be the site of the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
He agonizes for three weeks over how to break the news to the venture capitalist. He visits banks and gets nowhere. He investigates a home equity loan, which would net him only $200,000, one-fifth of what he needs. Finally, he puts together a plan that commits him to repay $5,000 a month the rest of his life. He draws up a contract, and even as he does so, the folly sinks in. Five thousand a month will not even cover the interest on a million-dollar loan. Besides, where will he get the $5,000 a month? But the alternative, bankruptcy, would ruin his credit. He visits his backer's office on Sunset Boulevard, nervously fumbles through an apology, and then pulls out the paperwork for his ridiculous repayment plan. He breaks out in sweat in the air-conditioned office.
Suddenly the venture capitalist holds up a hand to interrupt him. "Wait. What nonsense are you talking about? Repayment?" He laughs. "Don't be silly. I'm a speculator. I win some, I lose some. I knew your plan had risks. It was a good idea, though, and it's hardly your fault that a war brokeout. Just forget it." He takes the contract, rips it in two and tosses it in the paper shredder.
One of Jesus' stories about grace made it into three different Gospels, in slightly different versions. My favorite version, though, appeared in another source entirely: the Boston Globe's account in June 1990 of a most unusual wedding banquet.
Accompanied by her fiancé, a woman went to the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston and ordered the meal for her reception. The two of them pored over the menu, made selections of china and silver, and pointed to pictures of the flower arrangements they liked. They both had expensive taste, and the bill came to $13,000. After leaving a check for half that amount as down payment, the couple went home to flip through books of wedding announcements.
The day the announcements were supposed to hit the mailbox, the potential groom got cold feet. "I'm just not sure," he said. "It's a big commitment. Let's think about this a little longer."
When his angry fiancée returned to the Hyatt to cancel the banquet,
the events manager could not have been more understanding. "The same thing
happened to me, Honey," she said, and told the story of her own broken engagement.
But about the refund, she had bad news. "The contract is binding.You're only
entitled to $1,300 back. You have two options: to forfeit the rest of the
down payment or go ahead with the banquet. I'm sorry. Really, I am."
The notion of God's love
coming to us free of charge,
no strings attatched,
seems to go against
every instinct of humanity.
It seemed crazy, but the more the jilted bride thought about it, the more she liked the idea of going ahead with the party not a wedding banquet, mind you, but a big blowout. Ten years before, this same woman had been living in a homeless shelter. She had got back on her feet, found a good job, and set aside a sizable nest egg. Now she had the wild notion of using her savings to treat the down-and-outs of Boston to a night on the town.
And so it was that in June of 1990 the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosted a party such as it had never seen before. The hostess changed the menu to boneless chicken; "in honor of the groom," she said and sent invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters. That warm summer night, people who were used to peeling half-gnawed pizza off the cardboard dined instead on chicken cordon bleu. Hyatt waiters in tuxedos served hors d'oeuvres to senior citizens leaning on aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addicts took one night off from the hard life on the sidewalks outside and instead sipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake, and danced to big-band melodies late into the night.
A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to over react to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.
She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.
Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.
The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car she calls him "Boss"; teaches her a few things that men like. Since she's underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there. She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline,"Have you seen this child?" But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.
After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can't mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she's out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don't pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word; a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she's hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she's piled a top her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.
God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She's sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.
Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it's me. I was wondering about may becoming home. I'm catching a bus up your way, and it'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada."
It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn't she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? Even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.
What's So Amazing About Grace (Part 2 of 2)
Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I'm sorry. I know I was wrong. It's not your fault, it's all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn't apologized to anyone in years.
The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the road, and the asphalt steams. She's forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.
When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That's all we have here." Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smooths her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they're there.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, and not oneof the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They are all wearing ridiculous-looking party hats and blowing noise makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!"
Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She looks through tears and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I'm sorry." "I know" He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We've got no time for that. No time for apologies. You'll be late for the party. A banquet's waiting for you at home."
We are accustomed to finding a catch in every promise, but in Jesus' stories of extravagant grace there is no catch, no loophole disqualifying us from God's love. Each has at its core an ending too good to be true, so good that it must be true.
How different are these stories from my own childhood notions about God: a God who forgives, yes, but reluctantly, after making the penitent squirm. I imagined God as a stern taskmaster, a distant, thundering figure who prefers fear and respect to love. Jesus tells instead of a father publicly humiliating himself by rushing out to embrace a son who has squandered half the family fortune. There is no solemn lecture, "I hope you've learned your lesson!" Instead, Jesus emphasizes the father's exhilaration; "this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found";and then adds, "they began to make merry."
What blocks forgiveness is not God's reticence; "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him." God's arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.
I have meditated enough on Jesus' stories of grace to let their meaning filter through. Still, each time I confront their astonishing message I realize how thickly the veil of ungrace obscures my view of God. A house wife jumping up and down in glee over the discovery of a lost coin is not what naturally comes to mind when I think of God. Yet that is the image Jesus insisted upon.
The story of the Prodigal Son, after all, appears in a string of three stories by Jesus; "the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son"; all of which seem to make the same point. Each underscores the loser's sense of loss, tells of the thrill of rediscovery, and ends with a scene of jubilation. Jesus says, in effect, "Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of those two-legged humans pays attention to me, it feels like I just reclaimed my most valuable possession, which I had given up for lost." To God himself, it feels like the discovery of a life time.
Strangely, rediscovery may strike a deeper chord than discovery. To lose, and then find, a Mont Blanc pen makes the owner happier than the day she got it in the first place. Once, in the days before computers, I lost four chapters of a book I had been writing when I left my only copy in a motel-room drawer. For two weeks the motel insisted that cleaning personnel had thrown the stack of papers away. I was inconsolable. How could I summon the energy to start all over when for months I had worked at polishing and improving those four chapters? I would never find the same words. Then one day a cleaning woman who spoke little English called to tell me she had not thrown the chapters away after all. Believe me, I felt far more joy over the chapters that were found than I had ever felt in the process of writing them.
That experience gives me a small foretaste of what it must feel like for a parent to get a phone call from the FBI reporting that the daughter abducted six months ago has been located at last, alive. Or for a wife to get a visit from the army with a spokesman apologizing about the mix up; her husband had not been aboard the wrecked helicopter after all. And those images give a mere glimpse of what it must feel like for the Maker of the Universe to get another member of his family back. In Jesus' words, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out, "God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found."
If I focus on the ethics of the individual characters in the parables; the vagrant of Fulton Street, the businessman who lost a million dollars, the motley crew at the Boston banquet, the teenage prostitute from Traverse City; I come up with a very strange message indeed. Obviously, Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.
In the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice there hangs a painting by PaoloVeronese,
a painting that got him in trouble with the Inquisition. The painting depicts
Jesus at a banquet with his disciples, complete with Roman soldiers playing
in one corner, a man with a bloody nose on the other side, stray dogs roaming
around, a few drunks, and also midgets, blackamoors, and anachronistic Huns.
Called before the Inquisition to explain these irreverences, Veronese defended
his painting by showing from the Gospels that these were the very kinds of
people Jesus mingled with. Scandalized, the Inquisitors made him change the
title of the painting and make the scene secular rather than religious.
We are accustomed to finding a catch in
every promise, but in Jesus' stories of
extravagant grace there is no catch, no
loophole disqualifying us from God's love.
Each has at its core an ending too good to
be true, so good that it must be true.
In doing so, of course, the Inquisitors replicated the attitude of the Pharisees in Jesus' day. They too were scandalized by the tax collectors, half-breeds, foreigners, and women of ill repute who hung out with Jesus. They too had trouble swallowing the notion that these are the people God loves. At the very moment Jesus was captivating the crowd with his parables of grace, Pharisees stood at the edges of the crowd muttering and grinding their teeth. In the story of the Prodigal Son, provocatively, Jesus brought in the older brother to voice proper outrage at his father for rewarding irresponsible behavior. What kind of "family values" would his father communicate by throwing a party for such a renegade? What kind of virtue would that encourage?
The gospel is not at all what we would come up with on our own. I, for one, would expect to honor the virtuous over the profligate. I would expect to have to clean up my act before even applying for an audience with a Holy God. But Jesus told of God ignoring a fancy religious teacher and turning instead to an ordinary sinner who pleads, "God, have mercy." Throughout the Bible, in fact, God shows a marked preference for "real" people over "good" people. In Jesus' own words, "there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."
In one of his last acts before death, Jesus forgave a thief dangling on a cross, knowing full well the thief had likely converted out of plain fear. That thief would never study the Bible, never attend synagogue or church, and never make amends to all those he had wronged. He simply said "Jesus, remember me," and Jesus promised, "Today you will be with me in paradise." It was a shocking end to a shocking message of grace, a scandalous reminder that grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us.
Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, "Be good." Jesus' stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, "Help!" God welcomes home anyone who will have him and, in fact, has made the first move already. Most experts; doctors, lawyers, marriage counselors; set a high value on themselves and wait for clients to come to them. Not so God. As Soren Kierkegaard put it,
When it is a question of a sinner He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, "Come hither"; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.
Kierkegaard puts his finger on perhaps the most important aspect of Jesus' parables. They were not merely pleasant stories to hold listeners' attention, or literary vessels to hold theological truth. They were, infact, the template of Jesus' life on earth. He was the shepherd who left the safety of the fold for the dark and dangerous night outside. To his banquets he welcomed tax collectors and reprobates and whores. He came for the sick and not the well, for the unrighteous and not the righteous. And to those who betrayed him; especially the disciples, his children who forsook him at his time of greatest need; he responded like a love sick father.
Theologian Karl Barth, after writing thousands of pages in his Church Dogmatics, arrived at this simple definition of God: "the One who loves." Not long ago I heard from a pastor friend who was battling with his 15-year-old daughter. He knew she was using birth control, and several nights she had not bothered to come home at all. The parents had tried various forms of punishment, to no avail. The daughter lied to them, deceived them, and found a way to turn the tables on them: "It's your fault for being so strict!"
My friend told me, "I remember standing before the plate-glass window in my living room, staring out into the darkness, waiting for her to come home. I felt such rage. I wanted to be like the father of the Prodigal Son, yet I was furious with my daughter for the way she would manipulateus and twist the knife to hurt us. And of course, she was hurting herself more than anyone. I understood then the passages in the prophets expressing God's anger. The people knew how to wound him, and God cried out in pain.
"And yet, I must tell you, when my daughter came home that night, or rather the next morning, I wanted nothing in the world so much as to take her in my arms, to love her, to tell her I wanted the best for her. I was a helpless, love sick father."
Now, when I think about God, I hold up that image of the love sick father, which is miles away from the stern monarch I used to envision. I think of my friend standing in front of the plate-glass window gazing achingly into the darkness. I think of Jesus' depiction of the Waiting Father, heartsick, abused, yet wanting above all else to forgive and begin anew, to announce with joy, "this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
Mozart's Requiem contains a wonderful line that has become my prayer, one I pray with increasing confidence: "Remember, merciful Jesu, That I am the cause of your journey." I think he remembers.
This article is an excerpt from What's So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan), now available at bookstores.
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Copyright © 1997 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christianity
Today magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail cteditor@christianitytoday.com.
October 6, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 11, Page 52
The Silver Refiner
Some time ago, a few ladies met to study the scriptures. While reading the third chapter of Malachi, they came upon a remarkable statement in the third verse:
"He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver" (Malachi 3:3).
One lady decided to visit a silversmith, and report to the others on what he said about the subject. She went accordingly, and without telling the silversmith the reason for her visit, begged him to tell her about the process of refining silver.
After he had fully described it to her, she asked, "Sir, do you watch while the work of refining is going on?"
"Oh, yes ma'am," replied the silversmith. "I must sit and watch the furnace constantly, for, if the time necessary for refining is exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver will be injured."
The lady at once saw the beauty and comfort of the statement, "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."
God sees it as necessary to put His children into the furnace -- but His eye is steadily intent on the work of purifying, and His wisdom and love are both engaged in the best manner for us. Our trials do not come at random, and He will not let us be tested beyond what we can endure.
Before she left, the lady asked one final question, "How do you know when the process is finished?"
"Oh, that's quite simple," replied the silversmith . . . "When I can see
my own image in the silver, the refining process is complete."
Arthur T Pierson, "The Bible and Spititual Life (New York: Gospel Publishing, n.d.), 377:
Being determined to perfect His saints, [God] puts His precious metal into
His crucible. But He sits by it, and watches it. Love is His thermometer,
and marks the exact degree of heat; not one instant's unnecessary pang will
He permit; and as soon as the dross is released so that He sees Himself reflected
in the fire, the trial ceases.
Question:
Whenever Christians talk about pain and suffering, someone can be counted on to quote Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." But how can that be true literally? You have acknowledged that Christians go through the same kind of suffering that unbelieving people do. So how can it be said that all their difficulties somehow "work together for good"?
Dr. Dobson Responds:
First, it must be noted from this Scripture that Paul didn't say all things were good. He wasn't claiming that death, sickness and sorrow were really positives in disguise. But he did tell us that God has promised to take these hardships and bring good from them. As long as what happens to me is within the perfect will of the Father, I have no reason to fear; even if it costs me my life. It is an article of our faith that we can trust Him to do what is best, even if it appears contrary to our own wishes or the prevailing attitudes of the day.
I'll answer the question a different way. The laws of physics tell us that energy in the universe is never lost. It is simply transformed from one state to another. So it is with human experience. Nothing is ever lost entirely. God uses every happening to accomplish His divine purposes. For example, missionary Jim Elliot and his companions were speared to death by Waorani Indians in Ecuador. Their sacrifice seemed like an unmitigated tragedy and a total waste of human life. In God's scheme of things, however, it had a purpose. Each of those Indians came to know Jesus Christ as his personal Savior in the years that followed. The gospel was firmly planted among their tribesmen. Thus, Elliot and his fellow missionaries will rejoice throughout eternity with the men who took their lives. That is "good." Romans 8:28, then, must be interpreted from this eternal perspective, rather than a temporal, earth bound point of view.
There are innumerable other examples. Remember the death of Stephen, the first believer to be martyred in the days following the crucifixion of Jesus? What was accomplished for God by the terrible stoning of this faithful apostle? Well, when Stephen's followers then fled Roman persecution, they spread the news of Jesus' death and resurrection to the far reachesof the known world. The "church" was planted in countless communities and cities where the Good News would not otherwise have been heard.
Let's cite an illustration closer to home. A few months ago, we received a phone call here at Focus on the Family from a Mr. Greg Krebs. He wanted to get a message through to me, and this is what he told our telephone representative. Mr. Krebs and his wife have a 21-year-old son named Chris, whom they had been advised to abort when still in the womb. They chose to give him life, and he was born with cerebral palsy. He is also profoundly retarded. His parents do not regret their decision to bring him into the world because they believe that all life is precious. They are thankful for this son, who has touched their lives in warm and wonderful ways.
"God has used him as he is," Mr. Krebs said.
Then he described something that happened when Chris was just seven years old. He said, "My wife worked in a hospital at the time, and I had taken Chris with me to pick her up. She was late getting off, so Chris and I waited for her in one of the family rooms. There was another man there who was not well dressed and, in fact, was a little smelly. I went to the nurses' station to ask how much longer my wife would be, and when I returned, I saw Chris sitting by the man. The man was sobbing, and I wondered what Chris had done to offend him. I began to apologize.
" 'I'm sorry if my son offended you,' I said.
"The man replied, 'Offended me? Offended me? Your son is the only person who has hugged me in the last twenty years!'
"I realized at that moment Chris had a more Christ like love for this man than I did."
Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Krebs, for loving and valuing your son despite his limitations. I agree whole heartedly that there is no "junk" in God's value system. He loves every one of us the same, and He uses each person; even the profoundly retarded; to accomplish some part of His purpose. He will also use your pain, although it is not always immediately possible to interpret it.
To repeat my thesis, when we submit ourselves to the sovereign will of
the Lord, we can say with confidence that in all things; yes, in all things;
"God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according
to his purpose."
The entire Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide is available at Focus on the Family's Online Resource Center.
Dr. James Dobson is president and founder of Focus on the Family.
This article was excerpted from Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference
Guide by Dr. James Dobson with the permission of Tyndale House Publishers,
Inc. Copyright © 2000 by James Dobson, Inc. All rights reserved. International
copyright secured.
Christianity Today, May 22, 2000
Chess Master - God brings victory even from our bad moves.
By Philip Yancey | posted 5/15/00
"Story-writers," said Flannery O'Connor, one of the best,
"are always talking about what makes a story 'work.' "
From my own experience in trying to make stories "work," I have discovered that what is needed is an action that is totally unexpected, yet totally believable, and I have found that, for me, this is always an action which indicates that grace has been offered. And frequently it is an action in which the devil has been the unwilling instrument of grace. This is not a piece of knowledge that I consciously put into my stories; it is a discovery that I get out of them.
My own life story contains details that I regret and may even resent: pain from childhood, illness and injury, times of poverty, wrong choices, broken relationships, missed opportunities, disappointment in my own failures. Can I trust, truly trust, that God can weave these redemptively into my overall story, as "unwilling instruments of grace"?
I think of God's style as ironic. A more straight forward approach would respond to each new problem with an immediate solution. A woman gets sick; God heals her. A man is falsely imprisoned; God releases him. Rarely does God use such an approach, however. An author of great subtlety, he lets the plot line play out in perilous ways, then ingeniously incorporates those apparent detours into the route home. Thus Paul gives thanks for his "thorn in the flesh" because it advances, rather than impedes, God's work through him; and Joseph can look back on his harrowing life and say to his cruel brothers, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good."
In high school, I took pride in my ability to play chess. I joined the chess club, and during lunch hour could be found sitting at a table with other nerds poring over books with titles like Classic King Pawn Openings. I studied techniques, won most of my matches, and put the game aside for 20 years. Then, in Chicago, I met a truly fine chess player who had been perfecting his skills long since high school.
When we played a few matches, I learned what it is like to play against a master. Any classic offense I tried, he countered with a classic defense. If I turned to more risky, unorthodox techniques, he incorporated my bold forays into his winning strategies. Although I had complete freedom to make any move I wished, I soon reached the conclusion that none of my strategies mattered very much. His superior skill guaranteed that my purposes inevitably ended up serving his own.
Perhaps God engages our universe, his own creation, in much the same way. He grants us freedom to rebel against its original design, but even as we do so we end up ironically serving his eventual goal of restoration. If I accept that blueprint-- a huge step of faith, I confess; it transforms how I view both good and bad things that happen. Good things, such as health, talent, and money, I can present to God as offerings to serve his purposes. And bad things, too; disability, poverty, family dysfunction, failures; can be redeemed as the very instruments that drive me to God.
A skeptic might accuse me of flagrant rationalization, arguing backwards to make evidence fit a prior conclusion. Yes, exactly. A Christian begins with the conclusion that a good God will restore creation to its original design, and sees all history as proceeding toward that end. When a Grand Master plays a chess amateur, victory is assured no matter how the board may look at any given moment. In a miracle of grace, even our personal failures can become tools in God's hands. Many people find that a persistent temptation, even an addiction, is the very wound that causes them to turn in desperation to God, so that the wound forms a beginning point for new creation.
Paul Tournier summed up the pattern well:
The most wonderful thing in this world is not the good that we accomplish, but the fact that good can come out of the evil that we do. I have been struck, for example, by the numbers of people who have been brought back to God under the influence of a person to whom they had some imperfect attachment. Our vocation is, I believe, to build good out of evil. For if we try to build good out of good, we are in danger of running out of raw material.
I am certain Tournier would prefer for people never to commit evil in the first place. Unfortunately, that is an unattainable state in this fallen world. Here, the ironic response works best, for it never runs out of raw material.
Related Elsewhere
Earlier Philip Yancey columns include:
Would Jesus Worship Here? (Feb. 7, 2000)
Doctor's Orders (Dec. 2, 1999)
Getting to Know Me (Oct. 25, 1999)
The Encyclopedia of Theological Ignorance (Sept. 6, 1999)
Writing the Trinity (July 12, 1999)
Can Good Come Out of This Evil? (June 14, 1999)
The Last Deist (Apr. 5, 1999)
Why I Can Feel Your Pain (Feb. 8, 1999)
What The Prince of Egypt Won't Tell You (Dec. 7, 1998)
What's a Heaven For? (Oct. 26, 1998)
The Fox and the Writer (Sept. 7, 1998)
Fear and Faith in the Middle East (July 13, 1998)
And the Word Was … Debatable (May 18, 1998)
A Cure for Spiritual Deafness (Apr. 6, 1998)
Jesus' Unanswered Prayers (Feb. 9, 1998)
More Philip Yancey archives
May 22, 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6, Page 112
You will need RealPlayer for these: (go to the basic version which is free)
Coping with the "Slough of Despond" (1)
Coping with the "Slough of Despond" (2)
1 Kings 19:1-21 where Elijah gets discouraged. Chuck makes some interesting remarks, which are also in his book on Elijah at Chapter 7:
First, Elijah was not thinking realistically or clearly,
Second, Elijah separated himself from strengthening relationships,
Third, Elijah was caught in the backwash of a great victory,
Fourth, Elijah was physically exhausted and emotionally spent, and
Fifth, Elijah got lost in self-pity.
This was dealt with by God by:
First, God allowed Elijah a time of rest and refreshment,
Second, God communicated wisely with Elijah and
Third, God gave Elijah a close, personal friend.
Other audio:
The Refreshment of Onesiphorus 1,2 and 3
A Song of Reassurance 1,2 and 3
A Song for Times of Crisis 1 and 2
A Song of Sovereignty 1,2 and 3
Also Chuck's books on Joseph, Esther, Elijah and David are very helpful.
John MacArthur's how-to plan to help relieve anxiety and depression and guide you to a more trusting, God-honoring life. Find deep-seated satisfaction no matter what you're facing. A practical model you can start using the first time you hear it.
We all start somewhere in ministering to others, and the Bible makes it clear that if we are to practice Christ's love to anybody, we've got to do it by using our spiritual gifts. In Christianity with its Sleeves Rolled Up Joni talks about how the people around her exercised their spiritual gifts in ministering to her and her family after her diving accident.
Index to the Letters of John Newton
Strong to the Finish
Your life's race requires help from above
by Craig Brian Larson
When I was in college, I ran cross-country. Our competitions were held on area golf courses. Race officials placed flags on the course to mark the way for runners. A certain color indicated "left turn," another meant "right turn," a third meant "straight ahead."
If the runners wanted a medal, they had to follow the proper course. A runner couldn't decide, "This is a six-mile race, but I've only got four miles in me this morning. I'm going to take a shortcut. I hope nobody minds."
It's true for Christians, too. We have to run the race God intended us to run, not somebody else's race or the race of our own choosing. Yet it's easy to compare ourselves with others. When the race seems tough, it's easy to look at someone else and say, "If I had his race to run, no problem. If I had his pay check, if I had a spouse, if I had his good health, I could run with perseverance."
We're tempted to quit because our course is harder than someone else's, but God says, "I want you to run this race. Don't think about others. Just look at me."
Hitting the wall
At the beginning of a marathon, runners feel strong and energetic. For years, they've followed a regimen prescribing what to eat, how much to train, and how much to rest. They're ready.
Then the gun sounds, and they take off. Sixteen miles into that marathon, though, they no longer feel energetic, do they?
Blisters begin to rub raw; it feels like a knife has lodged in their side. Legs turn to mush, and muscles scream in pain.
It happens in life, too. We get down the road, and there's pain involved. We say, "This hurts, so it must not be God's will."
But pain doesn't mean it's no longer God's will. Sometimes the race God calls us to run is filled with pain. Remember that God didn't call you just to begin a noble task or relationship. He wants us to keep running and be great finishers.
World-class runners have a "kick." A "kick" is a runner's term that means when they get to that last one hundred yards, they can still sprint to the finish line and win the race. God wants us to have a "kick." No matter what the circumstance, God wants us to finish strong.
Never stay down
The 1981 movie Chariots of Fire portrays the true story of Eric Liddell, a man who competed for Great Britain in the 1924 Olympics before becoming a missionary.
One memorable scene that appeared to be Hollywood fiction, actually happened. A year before the Olympic showdown, Liddell ran in a meet between England, Ireland, and Scotland. In the 440-yard event, moments after the gun sounded, Liddell tangled feet with J.J. Gillies of England and tumbled to the track. Dazed, Liddell sat there, not knowing whether he could get up, when the official screamed, "Get up and run!"
He jumped to his feet and pursued the pack, now a full twenty yards ahead of him.
With forty yards to go, he pulled into third place, then second. Right at the tape he passed Gillies, stuck his chest out, won the race, collapsing in total exhaustion.
The next day The Scotsman newspaper reported, "The circumstances in which Liddell won the race made it a performance bordering on the miraculous." Some described it as "the greatest track performance they had ever seen."
Some of you have been knocked down by foolish decisions, by a person, or even Satan himself. When we're down on the track, we're ashamed and depressed. The only real shame is to stay down. God's word compels you,"Get up and run!" Forget what lies behind and run for the prize God has waiting for you.
Philippians 1:6 doesn't say, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day you fail and flop on the track." It says, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ."
An unexpected embrace
It was Monday night, August 3, at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. About 100 meters into the 400-meter semi finals, Britain's Derek Redmond crumpled to the track with a torn right hamstring.
Medics rushed out to assist him, but as they approached Redmond, he waved them off, struggled to his feet, and crawled and hopped in a desperate effort to finish the race.
Up in the stands, a man wearing a T-shirt, tennis shoes, and a Nike cap with Just Do It written across the front, barreled out of the stands, hurled aside a security guard, ran to Derek Redmond's side, and embraced him. He was Jim Redmond, Derek's father.
Arm around his son's waist, Derek's arm around his father's thick shoulders and neck, they continued down the track.
Derek's mom and sister were watching back home on television. His sister, who was pregnant, went into false labor. His mom wept. At the stadium, the crowd rose to their feet and cheered. Finally, arm in arm, the fatherand son crossed the finish line.
If that's the way an earthly father responds to his son who is determined to finish the race, how much more does our Heavenly Father support his son or daughter who says, "I'm finishing, no matter how much it hurts."
God makes his compassion clear in Isaiah 46:34, where he says he has carried us from birth to old age. As he carries you, as you wrap your arms around him, God whispers in your ear: "Stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Cor. 15:58).
One day, like the apostle Paul, I pray I will be able to say, "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith." May that victory be yours as well.
Condensed from Preaching Today (Tape 155), © 1997 Craig Brian Larson.
Used by permission.
Can God Be Trusted?
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. Ps. 91:4
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Many adults can recall a certain childhood feeling that has now pretty much faded away. Unhappily, one of the things that fades away is a childlike feeling of security in the nest. It's a sense that you are loved, protected, and perfectly safe. It's a sense, above all, that somebody else is in charge. In properly functioning homes, children often have this feeling. Adults do not, and they miss it.
Years ago, on the old Candid Camera television program, a very large and dangerous-looking truck driver; a man of about 50; was asked in an interview what age he would be if he could be any age he wanted. There was a silence for a while as the trucker contemplated the question. What was he thinking? Was he hankering for age 65 and retirement so he could trade his Kenworth four-and-a-quarter semi down to a John Deere riding lawn mower? Or was he yearning for age 18 and the chance to go back and take some turn he had missed?
Finally he turned to the interviewer and said that if it was up to him he'd like to be three. Three? Why three? the interviewer wanted to know."Well," said the trucker, "when you're three you don't have any responsibilities."
When I first heard the interview I thought this man was trying to be cute. I now think he said something wistful. What he knew was that when you are a child, and if your family is running the right way, your burdens are usually small. You can go to bed without worrying about ice backup under your shingles. You don't wonder if the tingling in your leg might be a symptom of some exotic nerve disease. You don't wrestle half the nightwith a tax deduction you claimed, wondering whether a federal investigator might find it a little too creative. No, you squirm deliciously in your bed, drowsily aware of the murmur of adult conversations elsewhere in the house. You hover wonderfully at the edge of slumber. Then you let go and fall away.
You dare to do this not only because you fully expect that in the morning you shall be resurrected. You also dare to do it because you are sleeping under your parents' wings. If parents take proper care of you, you can give yourself up to sleep, secure in the knowledge that somebody else is in charge; somebody big and strong and experienced. As far as children know, parents stay up all night, checking doors and windows, adjusting temperature controls, fearlessly driving away marauders. They never gooff duty. If a shadow falls over the house, or demons begin to stir, or a storm rises, parents will handle it. That's one reason children sleep so well. Their nest is sheltered and feathered.
I think children might be alarmed to discover how much adults crave this same sense of security. Adults need to be sheltered, warmed, embraced. Some of us have been betrayed. Some of us have grown old and are not happy about it.
People get betrayed, or they get old or sick. Some are deeply disappointed that their lives have not turned out as they had hoped. Others have been staggered by a report that has just come back from a pathology lab. Still others are unspeakably ignored by people they treasure. Some are simply high-tension human beings, strung tight as piano wire.
To all such folk, the psalmist speaks a word of comfort. It is one ofthe great themes of the Scriptures: God is our shelter. He will cover youwith his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge.
The image here is that of an eagle, or maybe a hen; in any case, it's a picture of a bird that senses danger and then protectively spreads its wings over its young. An expert on birds once told me that this move is very common. A bird senses the approach of a predator, or the threat of something falling from above, and instinctively spreads out its wings like a canopy. Then the fledglings scuttle underneath for shelter. The move is so deeply instinctive that an adult bird will spread those wings even when no fledglings are around!
And the psalmist; who has almost surely seen this lovely thing happen; the psalmist thinks of God. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. The point is that God is our shelter when the winds begin to howl; under God's providence we are defended, protected, perfectly safe; someone else is in charge; someone big, strong, and experienced, who never goes off duty.
In one of his books, John Timmer, my former pastor, tells of his experience as a boy in the Netherlands at the start of World War II. German troops had invaded Holland a few days before, but nobody knew just what to expect. Then, on the second Sunday of May 1940, as the Timmer family was sitting around the dinner table in their home in Haarlem, suddenly they heard the eerie whining of an air-raid siren and then the droning of German bombers.
Of course, all of them were scared out of their minds. "Let's go stand in the hallway," John's father said. "They say it's the safest place in the house." In the hall, John's father said, "Why don't we pray? There's nothing else we can do."
John says he has long ago forgotten the exact wording of his father's prayer; all except for one phrase. Somewhere in that prayer to God to protect his family from Hitler's Luftwaffe, Mr. Timmer said, "O God, in the shadow of your wings we take refuge."
God spreads his wings over us. Here is a picture that all the Jewish and
Christian generations have cherished, in part because it invites usto recover
our childhood feeling of security in the nest. Or, to discover it for the
first time if we have had a terrorized childhood. It's a picture that offers
sublime comfort, and only a pretty numb Christian would fail to be touched
by it.
How true
is the picture of a
sheltering God?
How secure are we in the nest?
Still, a disturbing question pricks us. How true is the picture of a sheltering God? How secure are we in the nest? I wonder whether in 1940, on the second Sunday of May, some other Dutch family begged God to spread his wings over their house. I wonder if the bombs of the German air force pierced those wings and blew that house and its people to rubble.
You read Psalm 91 and you begin to wonder. It offers such comprehensive coverage. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge & help. You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noon day.
Really? I need not fear any of these things? I can sleep in a dangerous neighborhood with my windows open? I shall not fear the terror of the night? My child's temperature soars and his white blood count plummets: I shall not fear the pestilence that stalks in darkness? I can plunge into my work at an AIDS clinic: I shall not fear the destruction that wastes at midday? Really? Is there a level of faith that can honestly say such things even after all allowance has been made for poetic exaggeration?
In his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman writes of his years in the Middle East. One of the terrors of life in Beirut during the civil war there was the prospect of dying a random death. Long-distance sniping and shelling made it hard to tell where bullets or shells might land, and the people who launched them often didn't care. You never knew whether the car you walked past might explode into a fireball, stripping trees of their leaves so that in the terrible silence that followed, scores of leaves would come fluttering down in a soft shower on top of the dead and the maimed.
No one kept score. Police would even lose track of the names of the dead. "Death in Beirut had no echo," says Friedman.
I shall not fear the grenade that flies by day. Could a believer say this in Beirut?
Let us face the truth. Faith in the sheltering wings of God does not remove physical danger or the need for precaution against it. We cannot ignore Beirut tourist advisories, or feed wild animals on our camping trips,or jump a hot motorcycle over a row of parked cars and trust God to keep us safe. We cannot smoke cigarettes like the Marlboro man and then claim the promises of Psalm 91 as our protection against lung cancer. A person who did these things would be a foolish believer and a foolish reader of Psalm 91.
You may recall that in Matthew's gospel Satan quotes this psalm to Jesus in the temptation at the pinnacle of the temple. "Throw yourself down,"says Satan. After all, it says right in Psalm 91 that "God will give his angels charge over you." And Jesus replies that it is not right to put God to the test. God's protection is good only for certain events, and restrictions may apply. Jesus was teaching us that we cannot act like a fool and then count on God to bail us out. God may do it; and some of us can recall times when we acted like fools and God bailed us out. But we may not count on it.
But, of course, some believers get hurt, terribly hurt, by no folly of their own. Suppose a drunk driver smashes into your family car. Suppose an I-beam falls on you in a storm. What if you make the mistake of visiting a great city during tourist-hunting season?
Or suppose you are a devout middle-aged Christian woman who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One June you start to feel sick. So you visit your primary-care physician, who sends you for tests, and then a visit to a specialist, and then more tests. Finally you go back to your own physician, and she says, "Ma'am, I'm sorry to say that you had better get your affairs in order." She says more, far more, about treatments and research and makingyou as comfortable as possible; on and on with all kinds of stuff that is well-meant. But you have grown deaf. All you can think is that you are 46 years old and you are going to die before your parents do and before your children get married.
Whatever happened to the wings of God? Can you get brain cancer under those wings? Get molested by a family member? Get knifed by some emotionless teenager in a subway in New York? Can you find, suddenly one summer, that your own 17-year-old has become a stranger and that everything in your family seems to be cascading out of control?
Where are those wings?
What troubles us is not so much the sheer fact that believers suffer along with everybody else. C. S. Lewis once pondered this. If the children of God were always saved from floods like believing Noah and his family; if every time somebody pointed a gun at a Christian, the gun just turned to salami; if we really had a money-back guarantee against hatred, disease, and the acts of terrorists, then of course we wouldn't have to worry about church growth. Our churches would fill with people attracted to the faith for secondary reasons. These are people who want an insurance agent, not a church. For security they want Colin Powell, not God. We already have people becoming Christians because they want to get rich or get happy.What would happen to people's integrity if becoming a believer really did give you blanket protection against poverty, accident, and the wages of sin?
No, it's not the fact that we have to take our share of the world's suffering that surprises us. After all, our experience and the rest of Scripture have taught us to expect hardship. What worries us is that Psalm 91 tells us not to worry. It says "a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you." This is advertising that sounds too good to be true. In fact, the psalmist says, "Because you have made the Lord your refuge & help; no evil shall befall you." And the statement troubles us. What about Paul? What about Stephen? What about our Lord himself? He wanted to gather the citizens of Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks.What some of those citizens did was to take him outside of town one day and nail his wings to some two-by-fours.
So what is going on in Psalm 91? How are its extravagant promises God's Word to us?
What Psalm 91 does is express one of the loveliest, one of the most treasured; but just one of the moods of faith. It's a mood of exuberant confidence in the sheltering providence of God. Probably the psalmist has been protected by God in some dangerous incident, and he is celebrating.
On other days, and in other moods; other and darker seasons of his life; this same psalmist might have called to God out of despair and a sense of abandonment. Remember that when our Lord was crucified, when our Lord shouted at our God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"; when Jesus shouted this in astonishment, and with maybe even a note of accusation, remember that he was quoting another Psalm (22). Despair or astonishmentat what can happen to us under God's providence; that too is natural and biblical.
Psalm 91 gives us only part of the picture and only one of the moods of faith. With a kind of quiet amazement, the psalmist bears witness that under the wings of God good things happen to bad people. You need another psalm or two to fill in the picture, to cry out that under those same wings bad things sometimes happen to good people.
Psalm 91 says no evil shall befall us. When we have cashed out some of the poetry and then added in the witness of the rest of Scripture, what we get, I believe, is the conclusion that no final evil shall befall us.We know that we can believe God with all our heart and yet have our heartbroken by the loss of a child or the treachery of a spouse or the menace of a fatal disease. We know this is true; everyone in the church knows it. And yet, generation after generation of bruised saints have known something else and spoken of it. In the mystery of faith, we find a hand on us in the darkness, a voice that calls our name, and the sheer certainty that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God; not for this life and not for the life to come. We may be scarred and shaken, but, as Lewis says in one of his luminous sermons, we come to know that it's all right, even when everything is all wrong.
We are like fledglings who scuttle under the wings of their parent. The forces of evil beat on those wings with everything they have. The pitchforks of the Evil One, falling tree limbs in the storm, merciless rain and hail; everything beats on those wings. When it is finished, when evil has done its worst, those wings are all bloodied and busted and hanging at wrong angles. And, to tell you the truth, in all the commotion we too get roughed up quite a lot.
But we are all right, because those wings have never folded. They are spread out to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And when the feathers quit flying, we peep out and discover that we have been in the only place that was not leveled. Yes, we have been bumped and bruised and hurt. Sometimes badly hurt. But the other choice was to be dead; the other choice was to break out of the embrace of God. If we had not stayed under those wings we could never have felt the body shudders and heard the groans of the one who loved us so much that those wings stayed out there no matter what came whistling in. This is the one who protects us from final evil, now and in the life to come; the life in which, at last, it is safe for God to fold his wings.
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. It's not a simple truth, but it is the truth. And we ought to believe it with everything that is in us.
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., is dean of the chapel at Calvin Theological Seminary and author of Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Eerdmans).
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June 15, 1998 Vol. 42, No. 7, Page 45
The Word for Today
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Tues Mar 6 Trim the excess.
"Let us lay aside every weight"
Stop regularly and ask yourself, How will this course of action affect my life and my future? Those who don't ask that question pay a high price.Their inability to trim the excess and get rid of the things that hinder cause them to wreck companies... destroy ministries... devastate children...collapse physically, morally, and spiritually... and keeps them from reaching their life's goals.
They pack in too much mess and empty out too few mistakes, and as a result, they're unable to complete their journey because their bags are too heavy.
In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey says, It's incredibly easy to work harder at climbing the ladder of success, only to discover that it's leaning against the wrong wall. When we do that, we achieve victories that are empty and successes that come at the expense of things that are far more valuable. If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall - then every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. We may be very busy and very efficient, but we will only be truly effective when we begin with the end in mind! This year keep your eyes on your God-given goal! Trim the excess and get rid of anything that keeps you from reaching it. Henry Ward Beecher said, "True strength and happiness consists in finding the way in which God is going - and going that way too." Think about it today!
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The Word for Today
Wed Mar 14 When life throws you a curve
"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Did you hear about the young baseball player who was offered a contract with a major league team? In spring training he performed well and each week he wired his mother back home in Mississippi to tell her about his progress.
Week 1: Dear Mum, Leading all batters; these pitchers aren't so tough.
Week 2: Dear Mum, Looks like I'll be in the starting line up; now hitting 500.
Week 3: Dear Mum, They started throwing curve balls today - will be home Friday.
When Jesus said that in the world you'd have trouble, He was really saying, expect life to throw you some curve balls, then you'll be ready for them. Furthermore, when they come, don't duck and don't run - start swinging in the name of the Lord. Believe God's promises and stand on His Word, for it cannot fail. And remember, until the last inning is over - stay in the game; otherwise, how can God make you a winner? Now listen to these promises:
"By His mighty power at work within us [Note: it's already working within you], He is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope" (Eph 3:20 NLT). Listen again, "Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ." (2 Cor 2:14). And if you need another one, "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." (Ps27:13 NIV). Today those words are just for you!
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The Word for Today
Tues Mar 20 Overcoming your fear
"Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you."
Isaiah 41:10
Dr. E.V. Hill tells the story of a young man taking a short-cut home through a vacant lot late one night. It was dark and tall buildings cast ominous shadows all around him.
Suddenly he became aware of someone following him. The faster he walked, the faster they walked. Frightened and frustrated, he finally turned to see who was there. But when he did, there was no one there. As he turned to continue home, he heard the noise again. That's when he realised that what he was hearing was just his corduroy pants rubbing together.
You may smile, but so often fear is just the result of two things: (1) your imagination; (2) your failure to understand how God works. Listen, "Fear brings with it the thought of punishment." (1 Jn 4:18 AMP). Did you get that? When something goes wrong we wonder, "Is God punishing me?" The answer is probably; "no." Fear and faith will be present with you each day; the one you choose will rule your life.
When you come up against a fear-producing situation, immediately do these three things: (1) Pray for God's wisdom and protection; He guarantees it (Ps 91). (2) Admit your inner struggle. You're not unique, we all battle fear. (3) Stand on God's Word. Listen, "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you" (Isa 41:10 NAS). What more could you ask for today?
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The Word for Today
Wed Mar 21 Are you going through a hard time?
"Praise be to the God... who comforts us in all our troubles."
In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul spells out the benefits of going through hard times. Yes, there are actually benefits. Take a moment today and look atthem:
(1) So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction. (2 Cor 1:4 NAS). Mike Murdock says, "Only the broken become masters at mending." He's right! Built into any problem that forces you to grow or find a solution - is the medicine that can make others whole. When you can say, "I've been there", people listen. Experience is one of your greatest assets - and God never wastes it.
(2) That we should not trust in ourselves. (2 Cor 1:9 NAS). Anything that causes you to turn to God and lean harder on Him - is a blessing! Paul says, "He satisfies every need there is... He is not far from anyone of us..." (Acts 17:25-27 NLT). Yet it's only when we lose a marriage, or a loved one, or a job, or our health, or our peace of mind, that we turn to Him. Every act of God in your life is designed to do two things: (a) to bless you, and (b) to increase your dependence on Him. Think about it!
(3) That thanks may be given. (2 Cor 1:11 NAS). Do you remember what your life was like before you met the Lord? David said, "Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness..." (Ps 107:8). You need to stop today, lift up your heart, and begin to praise God for all He has done for you.Where would you be without Him? It doesn't bear thinking about - does it?
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The Word for Today
Fri Mar 30 Hearing from God
"Along unfamiliar paths I will guide them"
Divine guidance is God's will for your life. You must believe that He wants to speak to you, and that you can hear from Him. One of the purposes of the Holy Spirit in your life is to lead you into God's will - in every situation (Jn 16:13-14). None of us start out knowing how to be led by the Spirit. We all have to learn, and it takes time, teaching, practice - and making mistakes. Yes! After 40 years of ministry, I still make them. But a bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn.
Have a pioneering spirit and be willing to learn from your mistakes. Here are some pointers to help you:
1. Have a regular prayer time. Jesus said, "My sheep listen to My voice... and they follow Me" (Jn 10:27 NIV). Spend time with the Shepherd and you'll get to know His voice.
2. Be careful what you hear. Get rid of the filters of doubt and unbelief that you listen through. Create a faith-filled atmosphere that's conducive to hearing from God.
3. Want His will more than your own. That means crucifying your carnal desires day by day.
4. Know that God leads step-by-step, not mile-by-mile. He won't show you the entire plan, just the next phase.
5. Develop an attitude of gratitude. Grumblers die in the wilderness; only the thankful enter and enjoy God's blessings.
6. Don't move until you have a sense of peace. Listen, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts." (Col 3:15). Allow His peace to rule what's in - and what's out. Today you can be led by God's Spirit.
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Fri Apr 6 To whom are you accountable?
"It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful."
1 Corinthians
4:2 NIV
Accountability means opening your life to a few carefully selected, trusted friends, who'll tell you the truth; who've earned the right to examine, to question, and to counsel you. Solomon says, "Wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy." (Pr 27:6 NLT). Think about that!
People who are accountable usually have these four qualities. Check and see if you've got them: (1) Vulnerable - they're capable of knowing when they're are wrong and admitting it; even before they're confronted. (2) Teachable - they're willing to hear, quick to learn, and open to counsel.(3) Available - they're accessible; you can always reach them. (4) Honest- they hate all that's phoney; they're committed to the truth regardless of how much it hurts.
You say, "That's a high standard." You're right. It's a standard that pride can't handle and fragile egos won't tolerate. They'd rather look good than be good!
Don't misunderstand - I'm not suggesting that just anybody should have access to your life. No, that's dangerous. I said a few carefully selected, trusted friends; ones who've earned the right to come along side, and when it's appropriate and necessary, ask the hard questions, bring perspective and wisdom, and keep you on track. Paul confronted Peter. Samuel confronted David. Who confronts you?
___________________________________________________________________________________
Sun Apr 8 A Hope Transplant
"Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each day."
Do you ever have grey days? Those are the days when dreams turn to nightmares, high hopes take a hike, and good intentions get lost in a comedy of errors - except it hurts too much to laugh. Instead of pressing on the upward way, you feel like telling Bunyan to move over as you slide down into the slough of despond, near a castle called Doubt, owned by a giant named Despair. (Pilgrim's Progress - remember?)
One of the great benefits of Bible reading is perspective. It keeps you clear-headed. Otherwise little things become big things; slight irritations become high drama; motivation drains away; and worst of all - you lose hope!
Cheer up! God's promises are tailor-made for grey days. Just when you think you'll never make it, they're like a beam of light penetrating the fog, dispelling the darkness, and letting you know that all is well - because God's in control! They literally give you a hope transplant.
Listen, "The unfailing love of the Lord never ends!" By His mercies we
have been kept from complete destruction. Great is His faithfulness; His
mercies begin afresh each day ... the Lord is wonderfully good to those who
wait for Him and seek Him"
(La
3:22-25 NLT). Wow! His unfailing love, His mercy, His protection, and
His faithfulness begin afresh each day -even grey days.
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Wed Apr 11 It's a binding contract.
"Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble."
This particular promise was one of my Mother's favourites. She lived it! Widowed at 40, and raising three children on a small pension, there wasn't much to spare.
My sister Ruth says, "It didn't matter how little we had, I'd always find an extra soda bread baking on the old iron griddle, and some how she'd manage to come up with an extra bowl of Irish stew for a neighbour who had even less than we did."
It was usually my job to deliver the bread, or a couple of hot boiled potatoes wrapped in a dish towel, to some home where the father had been laid off work, or the mother was sick, or the children were home alone because the parents were out drinking.
Mum really understood this promise. She knew that if she fulfilled her end of the deal, God would fulfil His. You see, in this verse the word "consideration" doesn't just mean thinking about something. No, it's much more. Webster's Dictionary says, "In law, it is something of value given in order to make a binding contract!" That puts teeth into the deal! It says if we do our part, then God has made a covenant with us, that when we're in trouble we can depend on Him to be there for us. What a way to live!
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Thur Apr 12 What kind of worshipper are you?
"They are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks."
How well do you know God? Do you know that He's not just strong - He's all-powerful? Or that He doesn't just gather information and arrive at conclusions - He's all-knowing? Or that He's omnipresent; which means wherever you go - there He is?
If you can talk about God and feel nothing, you probably don't know Him very well! What is He to you anyway? Your Saviour? Your healer? Your protector? The level you know Him on will determine the level you worship Him on. Therefore the passion of your life should be to know Him better. And you can only do that by spending time with Him!
But be careful; if you seek only His provision and not His presence, you're treating Him like a genie; rub the bottle and out He comes and gives you whatever you want. That's like witchcraft!
Furthermore, how can you say He's Lord of your life, yet fight Him for a dime out of every dollar? (Mal 3:8-10). Come on, let's get serious about this!
When the Jews worshipped God, they laid a sacrifice on the altar, and it went up in smoke. "What's the point?" Simply this: True worship focuses on what He gets out of it - not what we get.
At 72, one of my dearest friends stood in the ashes of his home. Everything he'd accumulated for the past 50 years had been burned up. In tears he looked up and said, "Lord, I'll never again place my focus on anything but You." That's worship, and that's what the Father's looking for today!
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Tues Apr 17 Be determined!
"I have fought the good [worthy, honourable, and noble] fight,
I have finished the race, I have kept [firmly held] the Faith."
If you'll ask Him for it, God will give you - holy determination! It's something that God has in Him, and He imparts it to us through His Spirit. Therefore we're not quitters or the type of people who are easily defeated.
We must be determined to overcome the past; to go forward and not stagnate. We must not be afraid of difficulty - for things worth having never come easy! A good definition of determination is being resolute or firm in purpose. That means you must commit to a thing, and then stay with it.
If you find yourself being double-minded about something, ask yourself what God said to you in the beginning - then stick with it! Don't go in some other direction because of worry, or discouragement, or the opinions of others.
You have what it takes to succeed in whatever you've been called to do! If you've accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of your life, then His determination lives in you - because He lives in you. So fight the good fight of faith, run the race to win, and be determined to take the prize!
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Thur Apr 19 Look for the lifeline!
"Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them."
Did you hear about the farmer whose land flooded? As the waters rose around him, he prayed for God to save him. Just about that time a man on a raft floated by and offered him a hand, but he stayed put and prayed even harder. As the waters kept rising, he climbed up to the roof top where he saw the sheriff waving to him from a motorboat. But again he refused to leave, confident that God would deliver him. Finally an army helicopter lowered a rope ladder down to him, but he refused to grasp it.
So he drowned and went to heaven and complained to God, "I prayed sohard, why didn't You save me?" Where upon God replied, " I sent you a raft, a motorboat, and a helicopter - what else did you want Me to do?"
Child of God, you'll never find yourself in any situation where He won't be with you. The problem is never His presence; it's our perception!
After the Crucifixion, two discouraged disciples were walking home to Emmaus; their hopes lay buried in a tomb. As they walked along, a stranger began walking beside them, warming their hearts with His presence, and comforting them in their loss. At the journey's end, they shared a meal together and suddenly the stranger revealed Himself to them, then disappeared. It was Jesus! He had been with them all the time!
And He's with you too! His presence isn't always accompanied by puffs of smoke or drum rolls, but if you look for Him today - you'll find Him.That's a promise!
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Sun Apr 22 Keep bouncing back.
"We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going."
Do you feel like a failure? Would you like to break out of your negative thinking patterns? If so, look at an area of your life where you keep failing, and do these five things:
1. Check your expectations. Write them down. Then ask yourself, "Are they realistic?" Do I expect to do everything perfectly on the first try? How many mistakes will I allow myself before I succeed? Then adjust your expectations to reality.
2. Try something different! Brain storm at least 20 or 30 new methods and then try at least half of them. Go ahead - if the first 15 don't work, just tell yourself, OK, now I know that it's at least a 16 or 17 step process - and keep going.
3. Utilise your gifts! You'll only be intuitive and effective in the area of your strengths; so use your strengths and get helpers for your weaknesses. There are people all around you whose dreams will come true by helping to make yours come true. Bring them into your life.
4. Learn to bounce back! No matter how many times you fall down, get back
up and start again. Paul J. Meyer says, "Ninety percent of all those who
fail are not actually defeated; they simply quit!" Listen, "We get knocked
down, but we get up again and keep going."
(2 Cor 4:9 TLB).
Get up!
5. Factor God in! Solomon says, "Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He's the one who will keep you on track" (Pr3:5 TM). One of God's ideas, just one, can turn everything around for you, so talk to Him today.
When a Friend Hurts
How you can help her get through her grief
By Sheila Wray Gregoire
"If there's anything I can do to help?" I heard these words repeatedly three years ago on that rainy day when we buried our 29-day-old baby boy, Christopher. Most people who said them acted so awkwardly, I felt as though I had to cheer them up.
But others were more at ease. One friend, Anne, quietly shared how she was encouraged by our reliance on God during Christopher's battle with a serious congenital heart defect. Another friend, Pam, e-mailed me, "I planted some violas for Christopher today, just outside my kitchen window." While neither gesture was extravagant or profound, both shone some light on a very dark day.
Why do some people seem to know what to say to someone in pain, while the rest of us flounder? The reality is, being close to someone who's heart broken is difficult. We don't want to compound her pain by saying the wrong thing, yet we earnestly desire to help lessen her suffering, just like Jesus, who came to "comfort all who mourn" (Isaiah 61:2). When our heart breaks for someone else, we reflect God's sadness. How can we also reflect God's comfort? First we need to understand what comforting does and doesn't involve.
Comforting Isn't Explaining God's Will
When Judy's eight-year-old son, Kyle, was hospitalized with a life-threatening infection, a close relative wrote her to say God was punishing her for not attending church. Needless to say, the letter did little to encourage Judy.
The need to explain people's suffering is natural. Even Jesus was asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2). Jesus replied that things aren't always so straight forward. In this case, the man's blindness was so "the work of God might be displayed in his life" (John 9:3). My friend Melissa confessed that when she first heard of Christopher's illness, she believed it was a result of my husband's previous involvement with role-playing games. But when she gave birth to a still born son a year later, she apologized for judging us.
Comforting Isn't Fixing the Problem
When Judith lost her daughter two weeks before her due date, many people assured her, "At least you know you can get pregnant." Marilyn, who lost her son when she was 21 weeks pregnant, was likewise told, "At least you have children at home." And my husband, who's a pediatrician, often heard, "Think of what a better physician you'll be after having such a sick child." Trying to cheer people by telling them the character-building benefits of their suffering does little to comfort them. Those "benefits" can never compensate for the loss someone feels when a loved one dies.
Comforting Is Making Yourself Available
To comfort a friend is to focus on her feelings, not yours. Once were cognize we're helpless to explain the problem or to fix it, we can concentrate instead on meeting our friend's needs as best we can, perhaps in the following ways:
Be there. We printed 70 programs for Christopher's funeral, but we ran out long before the service began. The number of people who attended over whelmed us. God used their presence to comfort us during that difficult time. When 9-year-old Randy died after an unsuccessful liver transplant, his mother, JoAnn, was moved when 16 intensive care nurses braved rainy, icy weather for 2 hours just to be at the funeral.
We often under estimate the impact our mere presence can have. But a hug, a pat on the arm, or attendance at a memorial service is often as valued as anything else.
Listen. Listening involves encouraging your friend to express her feelings. Pam Vredevelt, author of Empty Arms, says many women find it easier to suffer in silence because others won't initiate discussions about their loss. So if your grieving friend says, "I don't know how I'm going to get out of bed tomorrow," help her open up by asking her a question such as, "What's the scariest part of facing your day?" Then really listen to her answer. Try responding in a way that allows your friend to express what she really feels.
Tell how the person/situation affected you. When Christopher died, I was left with a huge hole in my life while others' lives stayed the same. Telling a grieving person how you were affected by her loved one, even if it was only minimally, lets her know you feel her loss, too. Writing that memory on a card or in a letter is helpful. Over the last three years I've repeatedly turned to my cards for comfort.
Tell her how you've been praying. In June 1998, Brenda's husband, Rob, died suddenly in a car accident. They had three young daughters. The card Brenda found most uplifting explained in detail how her friend had been praying for Brenda and her daughters. When your prayers are wails, and despair is overwhelming, knowing others are lifting up the things you need can ease some of your burden.
Tell her your story. When Christopher died, I was touched by all the women who came to me with their own stories of "empty arms" and babies lost. Being able to share with someone, "I remember when I felt as though I couldn't breathe, let alone eat," helps a friend know she's not crazy, that others have also felt that kind of pain. Be cautious, however, about saying "I understand how you feel"; some people might find this presumptuous. Though every loss is different, you can share your stories to let people know they're not alone. This is the heart of the apostle Paul's urging to "comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Corinthians 1:4).
Offer tangible help. In the days following Christopher's death, we were often asked, "Is there anything you need?" Few people, however, feel comfortable admitting they need help; even if they're grieving. Yet when my friend Rajsaid, "This Tuesday I'm bringing you and Keith dinner," we had no choice and we were grateful. The more specific your offer, the more likely someone will accept it.
Follow through. One of the hardest things about losing someone is that eventually everything on the outside returns to normal, while on the inside you still feel torn apart.
Grief doesn't end when the funeral's over. Though there are days when we almost forget our pain, there are others when the reality of our loss hits us all over again, just as it did those weeks, months, or even years ago. With time those days grow fewer and further between, but they still occur.
To make a special difference in someone's life, follow through with your friends who mourn. Marilyn remembers with gratitude a woman from her church who sent her a card every few months, long after the others stopped coming.
Send a card on the anniversary of someone's death, or on what would have been a birthday or an anniversary. Or you could offer to baby-sitor prepare a special meal.
Don't worry about this reminding your friends of their loss. The grief will always be there. As one woman who lost a child remarked in Carol Staudacher's Beyond Grief: "It's as though people believe if you're not talking about your loss, you're not thinking about it. That's as ridiculous as assuming if you're not thinking about breathing, you're not doing it." JoAnn says that eight years after her son Randy's death, she still receives cards from several friends on the anniversary each March. It touches her to know others think of him, too.
Comforting someone who grieves can be scary, because it reminds us of our fears. We don't have to fix our friend's problem or say anything profound; comforting doesn't have to be onerous. Make yourself available to meet your friend where she is. In doing so, you can surround her with love at a time when she feels most alone.
Sheila Wray Gregoire, a freelance writer and home business owner, lives with her family in Ontario, Canada.
20 Things to Do for a Grieving Friend
1 Give her a hug.
2 Attend the visitation and funeral.
3 Buy her a hardy plant.
4 Baby-sit her children.
5 Walk her pets.
6 Make her frozen casseroles.
7 Pray often and specifically for her and tell her you're doing so.
8 Bake her cookies.
9 Mop her floors.
10 Help her write thank-you cards.
11 Collect photos of the person who died from friends and relatives and make
an album for her.
12 Buy her a pretty journal.
13 Write out your prayers for her and encourage others to do the same. Put
these in a booklet and give it to her.
14 Give her money anonymously (funerals are expensive).
15 Pick up some basic groceries at the store and deliver them to her.
16 Buy her a really comfortable pillow and blanket to help her sleep and
keep cozy.
17 Call her every week to check in.
18 After some time's passed, buy her a devotional on grief, or a good book
on losing a loved one; such as Will I Ever Be Whole Again? by Sandra P. Aldrich,
or When Life Hurts: Understanding God's Place in Your Pain by Philip Yancey.
19 Encourage her to go on walks or drives with you.
20 Keep inviting her to all the things you'd have invited her to before.
Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Today's
Christian Woman magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Today's Christian Woman.
November/December 2000, Vol. 22, No. 6, Page 68
Philip Yancey
Home > Christianity Today Magazine > Columns >
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Christianity Today, July 10, 2000
Lessons From Rock Bottom
The church can learn about grace from the recovery movement.
By Philip Yancey | posted 7/11/00
In earlier times, some theologians wrote "natural theologies" by first explicating the wonders of nature and then gradually moving toward theism, revelation, and Christian doctrine. If I were writing a natural theology today, I think I would start with recovering alcoholics.
It staggers me that psychiatrists, pharmacologists, and scientific reductionists cannot improve on a spiritual program devised by a couple of Christian alcoholics 60 years ago.
Anthropology, original sin, regeneration, sanctification--the recovery movement contains within it seeds of all these doctrines. As an alcoholic once told me, "I have to publicly declare 'I am an alcoholic' whenever I introduce myself at group. It is a statement of failure, of helplessness, and surrender. Take a room of a dozen or so people, all of whom admit helplessness and failure, and it's pretty easy to see how God then presents himself in that group."
The historian of Alcoholics Anonymous titled his work Not-God because, he said, that stands as the most important hurdle an addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not being God. No mastery of manipulation and control, at which alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in the arms of the Higher Power. "First of all, we had to quit playing God," concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself "play God" in the addict's life, which involves daily, even moment-by-moment, surrender.
Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, reached the unshakable conviction, now a canon of twelve-step groups, that an alcoholic must "hit bottom" in order to climb upward. Wilson wrote his fellow strugglers, "How privileged we are to understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection: that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth." The Apostle Paul could not have phrased it better.
The need for humble dependence continues throughout recovery. Although an alcoholic may pray desperately for the condition to go away, very few addicts report sudden, miraculous healing. Most battle temptation everyday of their lives, experiencing grace not as a magic potion, rather as a balm whose strength is activated daily by conscious dependence on God.
One alcoholic wrote me,
I know that I can go out and start drinking today and have all the sex I want with all the women I want and live in a state of continued drunkenness for quite some time. But there is a catch. I know first hand all the misery and guilt that comes along with it. And that is something I want no part of. I have experienced guilt and misery so extreme that I didn't want to live any more at all--and that, my friend, is why I would rather not have to take advantage of God's generosity in being willing to forgive me once again should I go that route. Plus, in my present life, every now and then I think I do manage to do God's will. And, when I do, then the rewards are so tremendous and satisfying that I get kind of addicted to that closeness to God. There is a common saying in AA: "Religion is for people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there."
In correspondence with Bill Wilson, the psychiatrist Carl Jung remarked that it may be no accident that we refer to alcoholic drinks as "spirits." Perhaps, suggested Jung, alcoholics have a greater thirst for the spirit than other people, but it is all too often misdirected.
Early in the AA program, two groups divided over the issue of perfectionism. One, an offshoot of the Oxford Group, insisted on "Four Absolutes" and required its members to commit to a strict Christian creed. The other led by Bill Wilson, started with a dependence on grace, an acknowledgment that its members would never achieve perfection. Absolutes, said Wilson, either turned alcoholics away or gave them a dangerous feeling of "spiritual inflation." Over time, the perfectionist Oxford Group shriveled up and disappeared; grace-based AA has never stopped growing.
We in the church have as much to learn from people in the recovery movement as we have to offer them. I was struck by one observation from an alcoholic friend of mine. "When I'm late to church, people turn around and stare at me with frowns of disapproval. I get the clear message that I'm not as responsible as they are. When I'm late to AA, the meeting comes to a halt and everyone jumps up to hug and welcome me. They realize that my lateness may be a sign that I almost didn't make it. When I show up, it proves that my desperate need for them won out over my desperate need for alcohol."
Related Elsewhere
The Alcoholics Anonymous home page takes forever to download, but it's worth the wait if you are looking for a broad overview of the organization, specific materials to help identify alcoholism, or AA resources in your area.
For a list of articles about the history of AA, check out this site which also hosts AA tributes and Bible links.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is available online from the University of Texas, including an appendix about spiritual experiences and some alcoholics' awakening "God-consciousness."
Earlier this month, The Detroit News profiled Alcoholics for Christ,an organization that puts a bit a bit more biblical emphasis on the 12 steps, while the Associated Press covered an AA convention.
Earlier Philip Yancey columns include:
Chess Master (May 15, 2000)
My To-Be List (Apr. 4, 2000)
Would Jesus Worship Here? (Feb. 7, 2000)
Doctor's Orders (Dec. 2, 1999)
Getting to Know Me (Oct. 25, 1999)
The Encyclopedia of Theological Ignorance (Sept. 6, 1999)
Writing the Trinity (July 12, 1999)
Can Good Come Out of This Evil? (June 14, 1999)
The Last Deist (Apr. 5, 1999)
Why I Can Feel Your Pain (Feb. 8, 1999)
What The Prince of Egypt Won't Tell You (Dec. 7, 1998)
What's a Heaven For? (Oct. 26, 1998)
The Fox and the Writer (Sept. 7, 1998)
Fear and Faith in the Middle East (July 13, 1998)
And the Word Was Debatable (May 18, 1998)
A Cure for Spiritual Deafness (Apr. 6, 1998)
Jesus' Unanswered Prayers (Feb. 9, 1998)
More Philip Yancey archives
July 10, 2000, Vol. 44, No. 8, Page 72
Philip Yancey
Home > Christianity Today Magazine > Columns >
PhilipYancey
Christianity Today, February 9, 1998
Jesus' Unanswered Prayers
When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world.
PHILIP YANCEY
When prayer seems more like struggle than relationship, when I find myself repeating the same requests over and over and even wonder, "Is anyone really listening?" I take no small comfort in remembering that Jesus, too, had unanswered prayers. Three come to mind.
As Luke records, Jesus spent an entire night in prayer before choosing the inner core of twelve disciples. Yet if you read the Gospels, you marvel that this dodgy dozen could be the answer to any prayer. They included, Luke pointedly notes, "Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor," not to mention the pettily ambitious Sons of Thunder and the hot head Simon, whom Jesus would once address as "Satan."
"O unbelieving generation," Jesus would sigh about these twelve, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" I wonder if, in that moment of exasperation, Jesus questioned the Father's guidance.
Technically, I admit, the particular makeup of the twelve does not qualify as an unanswered prayer, for we have no reason to believe that any other choices might have served Jesus better. Yet I find it comforting that while on earth Jesus faced the same limitations as does anyone in leadership.The Son of God himself could only work with the talent pool available.
Eventually, except for Judas, the twelve underwent a slow but steady transformation, providing a kind of long-term answer. John, a Son of Thunder, softened into "the apostle of Love." Peter, who earned Jesus' rebuke by recoiling from the idea of Messiah's suffering, later urged his followers to "follow in his steps" by suffering as Christ did.
The second "unanswered prayer" occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane when, as Luther put it, "God struggled with God." While Jesus lay prostrate on the ground, sweat falling from him like drops of blood, his prayers took on an uncharacteristic tone of pleading. He "offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death," the Letter to the Hebrews says, but of course Jesus knew he would not be saved from death. As that awareness grew, Jesus felt distress. He had no community of support they had all fallen asleep. "Could you not keep watch for one hour?" he chided.
A dramatic change takes place, however, between that scene in the garden and what follows. The Gospel accounts of Gethsemane show a person in anguish. Afterward they show one who, more than Pilate, more than Herod, acts in utter control. At his trials Jesus is no victim; he is serene, the master of his destiny.
What happened in the garden? What made the difference? We have few details about the content of Jesus' prayers, since potential witnesses were all dozing. He may have reviewed his entire ministry on earth. The weight of all that went undone may have borne down upon him: his disciples were unstable, irresponsible; the movement seemed in peril; God's chosen people had rejected him; the world still harbored evil and much suffering.
Jesus himself seemed at the very edge of human endurance. He no more relished the idea of pain and death than you or I do. "Everything is possible for you," Jesus pleaded to the Father. "Take this cup from me."
Somehow, though, in Gethsemane Jesus worked through that crisis by transferring the burden to the Father. It was God's will he had come to do, after all, and his plea resolved into these words: "Yet not what I will, but what you will." Not many hours later he could cry out, in profound summation,"It is finished."
Hebrews mysteriously concludes that, though Jesus was not saved from death, nevertheless "he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered."
How many times have I prayed for one thing only to receive another? I long for the sense of detachment, of trust, that I see in Gethsemane. God and God alone is qualified to answer my prayers, even if it means transmuting them from my own self-protective will into God's perfect will. When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world.
The third unanswered prayer appears in an intimate scene recorded by John, Jesus' last supper with his disciples. Jesus expands the scope of his prayer far beyond the walls of the Upper Room, to encompass even those of us who live today:
My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me.
Disunity virtually defines the history of the church. Pick at random any year of history; pick today and you will see how far short we fall of Jesus' final request. The church, and the watching world, still await an answer.
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Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christianity
Today magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail cteditor@christianitytoday.com.
February 9, 1998 Vol. 42, No. 2, Page 152
Key Bible Verse: "Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Hebrews 12:3). Bonus Reading: Hebrews 12: 4-13
President Dwight Eisenhower described his mother as a smart and saintly lady. "Often in this job I've wished I could consult her. But she is in heaven. However, many times I have felt I knew what she would say."
One night in their farm home, Mrs. Eisenhower was playing a card game with her boys. "Now, don't get me wrong," said the former president, "it was not with those cards that have kings, queens, jacks, and spades on them. Mother was too straitlaced for that." President Eisenhower said the game they were playing was called Flinch.
"Anyway, Mother was the dealer, and she dealt me a very bad hand. I began to complain. Mother said, 'Boys, put down your cards. I want to say something, particularly to Dwight. You are in a game in your home with your mother and brothers who love you. But out in the world you will be dealt bad hands without love. Here is some advice for you boys. Take those bad hands without complaining and play them out. Ask God to help you, and you will win the important game called life." The president added, "I've tried to follow that wise advice always."
Norman Vincent Peale in This Incredible Century.
Personal Challenge:
What tempts you to complain? Ask God to help you develop a "trigger response" of gratitude instead of griping.
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Thought to Apply: Those things that hurt, instruct.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (18TH CENTURY STATESMAN, SCIENTIST, PHILOSOPHER)
Credits: Adapted from— Wednesday: This Incredible Century (Tyndale,
1991)
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January/February 2000, January 5, 2000
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Amazing Grace Monday, July 10
"That's Not Fair!"
Key Bible Verse: "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? (Psalm 130:3). Bonus Reading: Psalm 130
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I told 250 college freshmen, "Three papers are assigned, due by noon the last days of each month. Those turned in late will receive an F." On September 30, 225 students handed in their papers; 25 hadn't finished. Scared, they begged for an extension. I relented.
October 31 came around. Two hundred students brought papers; 50 nervous students came empty-handed. Citing mid term pressures, they asked for another chance. "Okay," I said, "but this is the last time."
On November 30, 150 students brought their papers; 100 others strolled in unconcerned. "Where are your papers?" I asked. One student replied, "We'll have 'em in a couple of days, no sweat."
I picked up my grade book. "Johnson! Do you have your paper?" "No, sir." "F," I said as I wrote the grade down.
"That's not fair!" the students howled. "Lavery! Weren't you late with your paper last time?" I asked. "If you insist on justice, I'll not only give you an F for this assignment, but change your last grade to F."
That's what we do with God. We first plead for mercy, then take it for granted. Because He's gracious, we begin to demand mercy and are astonished by judgment.
R. C. Sproul in Preaching Today
Personal Challenge:
Praise God that He didn't give you what you deserved.
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Thought to Apply: The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation.
C. S. LEWIS (British scholar and writer)
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of Integrity. For reprint information click here.
July/August 2000, July 10, 2000
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The Empty Basket
This Week's Theme: God, Our Provider
Thursday, November 2
Key Bible Verse: "The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek
the Lord lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10).
Bonus Reading: Matthew 6:25-34
When Palestine was partitioned, Mr. Maltar and his family were stranded in Jerusalem. He relates:
Daily our family read the Lord's promises, such as [today's Key BibleVerse and Bonus Reading]. "Children," I said, "we finished the last of our food for breakfast. We have no money. We'll tell this only to the Lord and I'll go out with this basket." So we prayed 'round the empty basket.
At our bank's branch, there was still no money coming through. But as I turned to go, I saw a friend from my home town in the line. He'd left before the worst troubles and banked his money in Jerusalem.
"Maltar!" he cried. "What are you doing here?"
"We were on holiday in our small house in Jerusalem," I replied, "and weren't able to get back home."
"Then you must be having money problems. How are you managing?"
"Fine," I told him, remembering my words to the children, and left the bank. My friend overtook me: "You can't be fine, Maltar, with nine kids to feed." And he dropped a handful of bank notes into the basket.
The children, waiting at the gate, stared in wonder as I returned with an overflowing basket.
Patricia St. John in Finding God Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Respond:
Today, be confident that God cares for your needs.
Thought to Apply:
Dear God: I know you will provide, but why don't you provide until you provide?
Jewish saying
Adapted from Lil Copan & Elisa Fryling, Finding God Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Shaw, 1999).
NOTE: For your convenience, Finding God Between a Rock and a Hard Place is available in the ChristianityToday.com Shopping Channel.
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Key Bible Verse: I was young and I am now old, yet I have never seent he
righteous forsaken or their children begging bread (Psalm 37:25).
Bonus Reading: Philippians 4:11b-13
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Think and pray about these sentence starters on your own. Or, if you meet with other men, use them to trigger your discussion.
God has taught me that failure can . . .
Ways God has humbled me are . . .
I have seen God's grace to me through . . .
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November/December 1999, Vol. 2, No. 6, November 21, 1999
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For Personal Study or Group Discussion
Real Life Application
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Key Bible Verse: And do not forget to do good and to share with others,
for with such sacrifices God is pleased (Hebrews 13:16).
Bonus Reading: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11
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Think and pray about these sentence starters on your own. Or, if you meet with other men, use them to trigger your discussion.
One thing that motivates me to give is . . .
I saw God's generosity to me when . . .
A way I can give more, in a concrete way, is . . .
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of Integrity. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail mail@menofintegrity.net.
To receive Men of Integrity at your home, contact Promise Keepers toll-free
at 800-888-7595. To order multiple copies of Men of Integrity for yourmen's
group, click here.
November/December 1999, Vol. 2, No. 6, November 28, 1999
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Living with Lupus
I've discovered that God can bring good even from chronic illness.
by Rachel Patrick Graves
Twelve years ago, I was a forty-five-year-old mother of two, fulfilled and happy in my second marriage. But when some vague physical complaints began to escalate, I could no longer ignore the fact that something was definitely wrong with me. I'd wake in the morning with stiff, achy hands and arms. While the stiffness wore off within a half hour, by mid morning I was ready to go back to sleep. In the late afternoons, I got flushed and feverish. Even simple tasks such as loading the washing machine became increasingly difficult. With the help of various pain remedies, I worked through my aches and pains to do the things I enjoyed, such as cookingand sewing. But being out in the sun seemed to make my symptoms worse, so I had to give up gardening.
Making appointments with various doctors became routine; but no one seemed able to pinpoint the source of my problems. Although I'd given my heart to Christ in 1976, ending a life of rebellion and pride, suddenly I had doubts about my faith. If I'm really a Christian, I thought, why am I suffering like this? Is God punishing me for past sins? Hasn't he heard my fervent prayers for healing? My questions wouldn't go away.
Then, in the summer of 1987, I took a job as a seamstress in a drapery shop to help pay the household expenses. There I met Carol Ann, who suffered from an autoimmune disease known as scleroderma. As I shared my problems and frustrations with her, Carol began to suspect I might have one of the many types of arthritis. Although she suggested I see a rheumatologist, I knew I couldn't afford to pay another specialist.
As our friendship grew, we began studying the Bible together and praying for each other. I learned that when we as Christians go through a difficult time; be it physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional; God often provides faithful friends to share the burden. Carol Ann became that faithful friend and confidante.
By December of 1988, I'd checked into a diagnostic facility to put an end to the parade of doctors who kept telling me my symptoms were all in my head. A compassionate internist listened to my laundry list of symptoms after giving me a thorough check-up. While reviewing my lab results, he looked at me and smiled. "Mrs. Graves," he said, "all your blood values are within normal limits."
My heart sank. Another dead end. I was actually disappointed at what would have ordinarily been good news. He must have read the look on my face, because he didn't wait for my reply but continued.
"There's one more blood test I'm ordering for you. I'll have the nurse call you in about a week with the results. If you need another appointment, we'll make it for you at that time."
At the end of the week, the nurse called to notify me of my appointment with a rheumatologist at the clinic. Now my concerns intensified. I knew rheumatologists took care of people who have various forms of arthritis. Had Carol Ann been right?
The rheumatologist went through my clinical symptoms carefully, then told me that the results of the antinuclear antibody test (ana) were unmistakable; positive for systemic lupus erythematosus. At the time, I didn't know how this diagnosis would impact my future, but I was relieved to discover a name for this enemy that was torturing me. Surely with modern drug therapy, I would once again enjoy a normal life. I could not have foreseen the long road ahead; or the many ways God would use this disease for his glory.
Over the next four years I struggled through allergic reactions to all the medications prescribed for me. One drug upset my stomach; another brought an intense itching all over my body. Still another caused my tongue and throat to swell.
My symptoms worsened. By early 1989, I had to quit my job at the drapery store. My family agreed that full-time work was too stressful for me. We tightened the budget to make up for the lost revenue. My husband often become annoyed at my inability to keep up with household responsibilities. My son immersed himself in his guitar lessons and practiced in his room with the door shut.
Our financial situation deteriorated as medical and drug bills mounted. We were forced to cancel my health insurance because the premiums were so high. I became uninsurable. But God has graciously kept me out of the hospital, and I pray he will continue to sustain me. Most of my doctors give me courtesy discounts on office visits, and my pharmacist has lowered prices on my prescription drugs. I do have to pay retail prices for the supplements that help me in many ways. My condition costs us about $3,000 a year.
If I'm really a Christian,
why am I suffering like this?
In June of 1989, Carol Ann and I co-founded a support group: the Lupus and Scleroderma Society of Central Florida. This became my focus and outlet for the frustration of battling a chronic illness. We were delighted to have sixteen people respond to that first public service ad that ran in our local newspaper. A local hospital provided a room for us and we began holding monthly meetings. We read everything available on the subject of autoimmune disease. Our local rheumatologist has provided us with slide presentations and literature to hand out. Doctors and nurses in the area have spoken to our group about lupus, scleroderma, and other related conditions.
Through a program of proper medication, massage therapy (for the muscle pain), and careful diet planning (for nutritional support), I've begun to enjoy life in a whole new way. While God hasn't chosen to heal me completely, I now have a positive, grateful outlook on life. I'm more in control of my appearance and emotions, and God's provided me with a unique ministry to others who are also victims of auto-immune disease.
Through this trial, I've learned having a chronic illness is not a death sentence. There are times when I feel healthy and energetic and have helped my husband paint the house, clean out the garage, and rearrange the furniture. I try to nap every afternoon, and three or four days per month I find I must have total rest. My family's supported me by reading and studying as much as I have to better understand my condition.
My son's married and moved away, but both he and his wife pray for me regularly and call twice a month to check on my progress. My daughter is in graduate school in New York preparing to become a teacher. When she discovered I have lupus, she wanted to know if she was in danger of developing it some day. I've told her the truth: There does seem to be a genetic predisposition for a woman whose mother had lupus, but it's not the scourge it once was thought to be. With proper nutrition and exercise, her chances for a long, healthy life are excellent.
The most important lesson I've learned through my experience is that this
disease isn't God's punishment for my past sins. In Jesus Christ, all my
sins have been forgiven. Lupus is a side effect of living in a fallen world;
my responsibility is to use my circumstances to glorify God. And I know he's
given me a ministry to others who are similarly afflicted.
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RACHEL PATRICK GRAVES is a freelance writer who lives with her familyin Florida.
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Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's
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May/June 1998, Vol. 20, No. 3, Page 34
"All life, said the Puritans, must be managed in such a way that it is
sanctified; that is, all activities must be performed, all experiences received
and responded to, in a way that honors God, benefits others as far as possible,
and helps us forward in our knowledge and enjoyment of God as we travel home
to the glory of heaven hereafter. Of the experiences to be sanctified, some
are pleasant and some are painful. The Puritan labels for the latter are
"afflictions" and "crosses"; and bereavement, with the grief it brings, is
one such.
How may an experience be sanctified? By relating it to the truth of the gospel,
so that we understand it in biblical and evangelical terms; by letting it
remind us of truths we might otherwise forget, or not take seriously; and
by disciplining our hearts to accept it in an appropriate way - with gratitude
or self-humbling or whatever.
Of what truths particularly should the bereavement experience remind us?
Said the Puritans characteristically, the three that follow:
1. The reality of God's sovereignty - that we, like everyone else, are always in his hands, and neither bereavement nor anything else occurs apart from his overruling will.
2. The reality of our own mortality - that we, like everyone else, are not in this world on a permanent basis and must sooner of later leave it for another mode of existence under other conditions.
3. The reality of heaven and hell - that we leave this world for one or
the other, and that we should use the time God gives us here to ensure that
as saved sinners we should go to heaven, rather than as unsaved sinners go
to hell.
To what exercises of the mind and heart (attitudes and actions) should the
bereavement experience lead us? Said the Puritans characteristically, these
three:
1. The exercise of thanks giving for all that we valued and enjoyed in the person we have lost and, in the case of a believer, for the happiness to which we know that he or she has now been promoted.
2. The exercise of submission to God, as we resign to him the love done he has taken from us, confess to him that we had no claim on the continuance of that loved one's earthly life, and consciously put ourselves in his hands for whatever future experiences he has in mind for us.
3. The exercise of patience, which is a compound of endurance and hope, as we live through our bereavement on a daily basis.
from A Grief Sanctified - Passing Through Grief to Peace and Joy, J.I.
Packer, Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1997, pp 187-189.
by Kelly Arabie, Women's Ministry Associate
Trusting God in Trials
Holding Your Faith Together When Your World is Falling Apart
Remembering the Heart of God
Recalling the Work of God
Conclusion
Christine fumbles with her keys, swings open the door, and falls sobbing into her apartment. "Why, Lord? Today of all days," she cries. The loss of her job comes as the final blow in a long line of disappointments that began with the divorce two years ago. Then came the death of her father last year. Just last week she got phone calls of her son dropping out of high school and her mom going back in the hospital battling cancer. And now this. How can this be happening?
Tearful questions fill her prayers that night. "Why is it that I do the right thing, but there's no relief? How can You let this happen to me? Where are You, God?"
Sometimes it feels like we're pounding on the door of heaven, yet we wonder whether anyone is even on the other side. Thankfully, we find this same honest expression in the Psalms, where godly men also questioned the Lord. In Psalm 42 the psalmist laments, "Why have You forgotten me?" (v. 9). And in Psalm 43 he cries out, "Why have You rejected me?" (v. 2).
In Psalm 22, David questions God in a moment of sheer desperation.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent. (Psalm 22:1-2 NIV)
It feels like God has abandoned David, left him destitute, rejected him. Have you felt so heartbroken and alone that you only whisper the groans and moans of anguish? Where is God? Has He deserted you? The words pour forth in torrents of pain and emotion, sometimes surging with anger and full of the hurt we feel.
But Psalm 22 goes on. Engaged in a battle between his heart and his head, David says,
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the praise of Israel. (v. 3 NIV)
The battle between knowing and feeling the love of God is one we all face. We know that God has us right where He wants us to be, yet we feel crushed by our circumstances! We lose a loved one, a career, a marriage, a dream. And we cry, "How can I keep trusting God?"
In this psalm, David recalls who God is and what He has done in the past. These two important guiding principles can pull us back from the crumbling edge of doubt and lead us to faith's solid ground.
Remembering the Heart of God
First, God's essential nature is good. He is a trustworthy, delivering, saving, and redeeming God. In our dark night of desperation, the only place we can turn is the One David turned to-honestly crying out to the Lord, turning to Him for refuge. Our hope rests in remembering who God is. He is "the Holy One," says the psalmist (Psalm 22:3 NIV). He is "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness" (Psalm 103:8). And through Jesus, we have direct access to this gracious heavenly King.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
The hope for Christine and for us in the face of financial hardship, emotional heartache, and the sting of death lies in knowing God's character. The Bible reminds us that His very nature is good, not evil. Compassionate, not callous. Faithful. Kind. Trustworthy.
Not only that, in Jesus, we have a Savior who has endured the same stabbing heartache that pierces our soul. Isaiah tells us, "He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). On the cross He cried the same words that David uttered so many years before: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46). Jesus Himself knows what it is like to feel deserted.
Recalling the Work of God
Not only do we find hope in God because His essential nature is good, we also find hope in recalling what God has done. In Psalm 22, David calls to mind how God rescued his forefathers-the many ways He delivered the nation of Israel.
In you our fathers put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
They cried to you and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not disappointed. (vv. 4-5 NIV)
He also remembered God's goodness to him personally:
Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you
even at my mother's breast.
From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother's womb you have been my God. (Psalm 22:9-10 NIV)
We depend on Him because He has shown himself faithful in the past. Remembering His goodness to us in the past helps us to carry on during the seasons of doubt and questioning.
Conclusion
In her pain, Christine could only feel the heartache of losing her job and the frustration of her many struggles. Like a loving Father, God wants us to bring him these burdens, to pour out our fears and hurts before Him. But in the midst of it all, He offers the stability of His character and the reassuring memories of past blessings. As the wonderful old hymn Amazing Grace proclaims: "'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home."
What has God done for you? Can you recall God's work in your life?
Start a journal. Write down verses that teach you specifically about God's heart and character.
Keep visible "God-stones," memorials of God's care, around you at home, in your car, or at the office. These can be photographs, framed art, flowers-anything that reminds you of God's past work in your life. Like the Israelites in Joshua 4, we need tangible reminders of God's impact on our lives.
Visit significant places that God has used throughout your life. Share with a friend what He did and how it affected you.
View your trials as an opportunity to draw closer to God through prayer and reading the Bible. Determine not to let the hardships drive a wedge between you and the Lord.
Draw strength from your church family by joining a group of caring believers who can support you and pray for you as you walk through this dark valley.
Hugh Stowell, "From Every Stormy Wind That Blows"
From every stormy wind that blows,
From every swelling tide of woes,
There is a calm, a sure retreat:
'Tis found beneath the mercy seat.
Ah! whither could we flee for aid,
When tempted, desolate, dismayed,
Or how the hosts of hell defeat,
Had suffering saints no mercy seat?
"Life by the yard is hard, but life by the inche is a cinch"