PATIENCE, ENDURANCE, AND HEALING

Many hyper-Pentecostal (HP) groups insist that we should have it all now—wealth and healing. If we don’t get healed immediately, the sick were often told that there was something the matter with their faith. Now, it is more likely the un-healed are told, “There is something within you that is blocking your healing.” But they are not told:

•    “You might have to wait for your healing,” or
•    “It might not be according to God’s will to heal you. Instead, He might be accomplishing something more important within you like patience, endurance, character, and faithfulness,” or
•    “God’s grace is sufficient” and His strength is made perfect through weakness and infirmity.”

These considerations are left entirely out of the HP equation, although they are central to the Bible and our lives in Christ, even though the concepts of patience, endurance, waiting, and perseverance are mentioned many hundreds of times in the Bible. Abraham had to wait 25 years for His promised Isaac. Moses had to endure 40 years as a lowly shepherd in the desert before God would appear to Him in a burning bush and instruct him to lead his suffering people to freedom the very thing that he had previously wanted to do. But meanwhile God was preparing Moses who had become the humblest man on all the earth. And now we await Jesus’ return! Even our Lord waits patiently as He too forbears as our sins destroy:

•    Romans 3:25  [Jesus] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Some of our Lord’s goals could only be accomplished through patience:

•    2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Jesus also had to patiently endure:

•    Luke 12:49–50 “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism [the crucifixion] to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!”

Patiently enduring demonstrates the truth of our Faith:

•    2 Corinthians 6:4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,

If we patiently endure, we shall reap the blessings. There is no promise that we shall receive God’s promises immediately but in “due season”:

•    Hebrews 6:11–12 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

•    Galatians 6:9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

We inherit the promises of God through patience:

•    Psalm 37:9 For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land… 37:34 Wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off.

We need the patience of the farmer who must await the harvest. There is no secret formula to reap the moment we sow:

•    James 5:7–8 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient…

Through patiently enduring, we receive God’s blessings, which we can pass on to others to build the Body of Christ. This also creates love and community:

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

Enduring suffering is also God’s command. Through this God produces character, humility, hope, and gentleness:

•    Ephesians 4:1–2 therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

•    Romans 5:3–4 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

All these promises are foreign to the HPs who claim that they receive their blessings in the here and now. They are forceful motivational speakers who make bold claims. One such speaker, before tens of thousands promised that no one will leave his crusade unchanged.

Can we honestly make such wild claims? According to the Scriptures, we are an insubstantial mist, a sinful nothing:

•    James 4:13–16 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

In any event, we need not worry that we are missing out: Romans 8:26–27 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

PATIENCE, ENDURANCE, AND THE NATURE OF FAITH

Faith often tells us to wait, to endure without seeing the prayed-for results. Abraham had to wait for 25 years to receive the promised son, Isaac. Although he had been commended for his faith (Rom. 4), he often despaired and crashed. After several years of residence in the Promised Land, he despaired of having a son and made his servant, Eliezar, his heir. However, God renewed His promise to Abraham that he would have a son.

Although he believed God (Gen. 15:6), he again despaired and jumped on his wife's suggestion to sleep with her Servant girl, Hagar, to have their son by her. 

Once again, God had to reaffirm His promise of a son to Abraham. However, at this time, Abraham was 99 and his wife no longer had her period. Therefore, he laughed in disbelief (Gen. 17).

However, the next year, both Abraham and his wife Sarah were able to laugh in joy at the birth of their Isaac, meaning "laughter."

We too are made to endure discouragements that place our faith at the breaking point. We, therefore, clutch at our "Eliezars" and sleep with our "Hagars," anything to fill the aching void. We pursue our goals by placing our hope in all the wrong things - secular therapy, unbiblical lifestyles, and mindfulness meditation. 

However, life's discouragements are all part of our Lord's program:

·       “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Our Lord is always in the process of refining our faith so that our hope will be invested in Him alone. Moses became so discouraged with God. He had risked everything for the sake of liberating his people, Israel, and lost it all. He fled to Midian where he became a lowly shepherd. He was so discouraged with God that, when God encountered him in the midst of the burning bush 40 years later and instructed him to return to Egypt to perform the very task that had been in his heart, Moses refused God.

However, God has a blessed purpose for what He makes us endure. During these painful 40 years, God had made Moses into the humblest of men (Num. 12:3), so humble that he understood God beyond what others understood (Num. 12:8). 

We too need to understand the ways of God, lest we despair and lose hope. However, even when we do, our God remains faithful. He restored Abraham, Moses, and even the most righteous Job, who had brought many ignorant indictments against God in the midst of his suffering. However, God humbled him and then restored him.

We too will be humbled through the trials we must endure. However, this is only preparation for something far greater:

·       “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11)

Therefore, let us brace ourselves for what might be a long wait!

“Been There, Done That: Christ Didn’t Work for Me!”

In the course of blogging, I encounter many people who claim,

• Well, I tried Christ and it didn’t work for me!

Many are relieved that Christ “didn’t work.” Consequently, they are now free to live their lives in any manner that they want. However, for others, I sense that this had been a genuine disappointment. They might be angry and defiantly demand proof of God’s existence, but there also seems to be a genuine longing and recognition that their lives are incomplete without God. Many talked of a personal crisis insisting, “He wasn’t there for me when I really needed Him!”

What can we say? Their experience (and the interpretation they place on it) trumps anything we can say. Sadly, we – even Christians – wrongly interpret our experiences. We have wrong expectations about how God will work.

One of the most glaring examples of this comes out of the “prosperity gospel.” According to this heresy, we merely need to follow certain laws, and God will automatically empty His bank into our lap to satisfy our every need, right now!

However, He doesn’t always work this way, and this isn’t the true Gospel. Consequently, many walk away from such churches deeply disappointed, convinced that “God didn’t work” for them.

We all have to labor through our faulty expectations about our Savior and His sometimes mysterious ways. After battling against decades of depression, I was mistakenly convinced that, now with Christ on my side, depression would vanish into nothing more than a distant memory. It didn’t. It even found a new companion – panic attacks – which devastated me for years.

It was apparent that Christ hadn’t “worked for me” – that He even despised me. However, I had nowhere else to go. There was no other hope. I had tried five highly recommended psychologists and psychiatrists, each having terminal degrees, and each had left me worse off than I had been before.

I had never imagined that a person could experience so much pain. I became dysfunctional and found it difficult to even carry on a conversation. I saw death as the only escape from my suffering, since God, evidently, was indifferent to my prayers. My faith was no more substantial than cloths on a line during a tornado. However, there was no other place where I could turn.

During many sleepless nights, I couldn’t even pray or read the Bible. I would simply lie in bed with the Bible on my chest, hoping, against all reason and experience, that somehow this God would have pity for me.

I would try to read the Bible, but it was just words. However, at other times, a simple phrase like, “And God heard him,” would suddenly come alive. No, it actually exploded into a burst of light, burning away all the cobwebs. In a mere second, all of the clouds of depression and panic were driven away – far away. As hard as I would look for them, they could no longer be found. For the day, at least, they had been driven away by a force that transcended anything I could understand.

The depression and panic would return, but so too would these Scripture-borne bursts of healing light. However, they were never at my beck-and-call. Instead, they came as directed by an invisible hand.

I no longer experience these bursts, but perhaps my Lord has deemed that I no longer need them. Perhaps He now expects me to walk by faith and not be sight.

Yet, I am still waiting for Him to address other needs – painful needs. However, I’ve learned some critical truths. Abraham had to wait 24 years for his promised son, Isaac. Along the way, he often despaired of the promise of God. Moses had to wait 40 years for God to equip him to lead His people out of Egypt. Moses had so thoroughly given up on God, that he resisted God’s plan for him to deliver Israel out of bondage.

Waiting in darkness builds character. Passing through the “valley of the shadow of death” is a requirement for spiritual maturity, and it’s going to hurt. Paul warned:

• But we have this treasure [of God and salvation] in jars of clay [our sordid lives] to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Cor. 4:7-11)

Sometimes, God does answer our prayers immediately, but most of the time, He doesn’t. We therefore need to wait patiently. This is a central theme of many of the Psalms. King David even had to lecture himself to wait patiently:

• Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

Waiting doesn’t come easily or naturally. It usually brings out the worst in us. It brought out the worst in Job. He had lost everything and couldn’t understand why. He therefore wrongly charged God with injustice. Finally after much waiting, Job had a private, yet humbling audience with God. Afterwards, the humbled Job was blessed with far beyond anything he had had previously.

We need the right expectations or else we will despair. Peter warned:

• Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. (1 Peter 4:12)

Suffering and the waiting for God to respond is clearly not “something strange.” It is God’s modus operandi.

However, it is also His MO that, “any who come to Him, He will in no way cast them out.” (John 6:37)

I wish I could say more to those who have despaired of God. I guess this essay is just my feeble attempt.

Suffering and the Will of God

It is hard enough to deal with our painful and prolonged trials. However, we tend to complicate matters when we interpret our pain and frustration to mean that God doesn’t love us enough.

What makes matters worse it that we’ve been praying for years for something that is clearly consistent with God’s will – for instance, an emotional healing that would conform us more perfectly into Christ’s image. Consequently, we find ourselves struggling with two things:

1. The painful trial and
2. Our resulting doubts about God.

The first issue is complex. Even though it clearly is our God’s will to conform us into the likeness of His Son – and this He is always performing (Rom. 8:28; Phil. 1:6) – He also uses our weaknesses and infirmities to accomplish this (2 Cor. 12:7-10). Surprisingly, He informs us that “when we are weak, it is then that we are strong [in Him].

Consequently, we don’t know if a particular healing is consistent with God’s will, and if it is, when He will do something about it. However, it is certain that we will all die without receiving all of our prayed-for healings. We will continue to struggle against sin until His return (Gal. 5:17; Rom. 7:25). Life isn’t supposed to be too comfortable here. If it was, we wouldn’t cry out, “Come quickly Lord Jesus.”

The answer to the second issue is more important and more straight-forward. Hardships, even the most intense forms, aren’t proof of God’s displeasure. If anything, they represent the opposite:

·        Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?...Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:7-11)

(I know that you are aware of these things, but sometimes it is helpful to here them from someone else.) Job was the most righteous man on the entire earth, yet God subjected him to the greatest trials. Paul would become the greatest missionary the church has ever known, but God promised that he would have to suffer profoundly, saying:

·        “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." (Acts 9:16)

Suffering is not a sign of God’s displeasure. King David was arguably Israel’s greatest king and a man after God’s own heart. Nevertheless, he suffered greatly. We need only to read the Psalms to see this.

For years, I experienced intense doubt about God’s love for me. I suspected that even if I did make it into heaven, God would only open the doors to me reluctantly. Therefore, I would become the heavenly street-sweeper. I felt as if I was displeasing to Him. I had become keenly aware of my own sins, and so it seemed very plausible to me that I couldn’t be one of His favorites. Clearly, I deserved nothing from Him. As a result, I resented those who I suspected were in His better graces.

What changed? I think that the real change came from God making the truths of His Word very real to me. And as these verses (and others) illuminate for me, I cried copious tears of joy and relief:

·        Galatians 2:20:  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

·        Romans 8:1: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

·        John 6:37: All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

·        Ephes. 3:17-19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

There were also many other verses that spoke to through the tsunamis of depression. They assured me that our Savior is truly who He said He is, and that makes all the difference in the world. I trust that as you continue to seek Him, He will likewise deliver you.

Although knowing who God is is almost everything, it isn’t everything. There is the knowledge of God, but there is also God Himself. If knowledge alone could deliver, we would find little need for God! This would tend to create arrogance and self-sufficiency. Therefore, He requires that we wait patiently for deliverance:

·        I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:13-14)

Waiting is a constant reminder that it’s not about us – not even merely about our faith and knowledge – it’s about our merciful Lord!   

Where is God when I Hurt?

Where was God for all of the suffering and martyred Christians? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Can I trust Him with my deepest concerns? These are questions that arise as quickly as the dust on a hot dirt road, but questions which the Psalms have examined from many different angles.

Disappointment with God had driven one Psalmist to conclude that following God was for naught:

 

• Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. (Psalm 73:13)

God just didn’t seem to be working for him. Instead, it was the wicked who seemed to be inheriting God’s blessings:

• For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills (3-4)…This is what the wicked are like--always carefree, they increase in wealth (12).

The Psalmist admits that he was tormented by the silence of God in the face of this horrible injustice and confusion:

• All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning…When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me (14-16).

However, where his wisdom had utterly failed him, God opened the Psalmist’s eyes to the big picture. Everything then came into focus when:

• I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors (17-19)!

Through this revelation, God assured the Psalmist that although it seemed that God was not at work, He had His own time-schedule. He also assured him that, although he didn’t see God’s blessings, they were rock solid:

• Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you (24-25)

The Psalmist demonstrates that if we have these reassurances, we can endure the worst circumstances. When he saw the grand panorama of God’s plan, he was able to find rest for his tormented soul:

  

• When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you (21-22).

Our Lord doesn’t want to feed our natural arrogance. Therefore, He often allows us to see how unspiritual we really are and how undeserving!

The knowledge of God made all the difference for the Psalmist. It provided all the comfort and elicited all the praise. While the Psalmist had received this revelation in the Temple, we can receive it through the Word and in prayer.

However, there is no assurance that we will receive this revelation in our timing. Sometimes, our Savior allows us to stew for a while. King David certainly did a lot of stewing:

• How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? (Psalm 13:1-2)

It felt that his God had rejected him and had left him without any uplifting revelation. Nevertheless, he knew who God is and recalled His goodness, reminding himself that His grace was certain:

• But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me (5-6).

Sometimes, surrendering to praise is our only recourse as we continue to contain our tears. Meanwhile, we ask ourselves, “God, I don’t understand your ways. Why are You so slow in responding to my cries? And why must I wait for so long?”

Part of the explanation is that we don’t know what’s good for us. We think that having our prayers answered in a timely fashion is good, but we might fail to see the hidden costs. While many are certain that by winning the Lotto, they would be happy, most of the time, such a win was actually a loss. It eventually brought misery.

We also fail to understand the necessity of suffering. Only after thirty-five years of following Jesus can I say, along with David:

• It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. (Psalm 119:71)

In my earlier years as a believer, I was unable to see how much was wrong with me – I wouldn’t allow myself to see this – and how much refinement I required. If these things are true about us, we need to entrust our concerns and demands to God’s will. King David learned that waiting was a virtue, especially in the midst of his pain and uncertainty:

• I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:13-14)

David had learned the necessity of waiting. He concluded by praying that we might also learn the same lesson.