Our Struggles and How to Deal with them

There are some aches and pains – some heaviness of spirit – that are simply prayer- resistant. No matter how many people we have praying for us or the depth of our own faith, some infirmities will doggedly remain. Why? While sometimes, it is God’s will to deliver us, there are times when this is not part of His will.

For example, take Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” After Paul had prayed numerous times for God to remove it, God’s answer was “no!” Without this infirmity, Paul would have become insufferably proud to his own detriment, as God’s servant. Instead, this thorn would make him weak so that he would become and remain strong in the Lord (2 Cor. 12:7-11).

On other occasions, God did deliver him from painful trials, but first he had to learn a necessary lesson:

·        We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

There is no secret to getting God to remove the yoke of trials. If anyone claims that there is one, just show him these verses:

·        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. 4:10-11)

Trials have been ordained as part of our daily diet – our daily bread. We require them! If we are going to manifest Jesus in our lives, the old self must continually be put to death. No pain, no gain!

Meanwhile, how do we deal these trials? I must admit that I have been struggling lately with numerous afflictions. Perhaps the Lord will remove them, and perhaps He won’t. I continue to pray and have others join with me in prayer, but I also look for the joy to carry me through them. This continually turns me back to the Scriptures. Hebrews informs us of how Jesus appropriated this joy:

·        Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. (Hebrews 12:1-3; NKJV – all others are NIV as usual)

How are we to resist discouragement and the temptation to sin? Hebrews doesn’t say that if we just pray long enough and hard enough, the pains will disappear. Instead, we are to endure by looking to Jesus’ example! He took His eyes off the temporal – the expectation of the Cross – and set them upon the eternal ((2 Cor. 4:16-18). He was able to endure because of the “joy that was set before Him” – His glorious return to the Father.

How are we to do this? I think that our focus must be heavenward. We have to meditate day and night (Psalm 1) on those verses that illuminate our ultimate hope (Phil. 4:8-9).

Jude completes his doom and gloom epistle with an admonition about this hope:

·        To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—(Jude 24)

Despite the apostasy Jude had detailed, he promised that God was not only able to keep us but also to present us “before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” Clearly, the promise of “great joy” transcends this world. Instead, we are admonished to look towards the fulfillment of this hope in the next world.

Hebrews informs us that Abraham didn’t live in a palace but in a tent. His hopes were therefore invested in another place:

·        For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:10)

We are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13), and our hope is in another world – the very thing that our Lord wants:

·        Instead, they [people of faith] were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:16)

Our hope has to be invested in the Promised Land, and trials will enable us to have this hope:

·        Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

Peter reasons that without the “painful trial,” we will not be overjoyed when our Lord is revealed. Instead, we will be too comfortable here and probably tell Him, “Lord, great to see you, but could you just postpone for a couple of months. We have an awards dinner coming up and a trip to the Bahamas. And then there’s the new Chronicles of Narnia movie!”

It’s not easy to envision heaven. However, John assures us that we will be just like Him:

·        Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3)

This hope has to be primary for us. It is also transformational. John suggests that, before all else, heaven will be a matter of being with Him and like Him. However, he does not help us to envision what this will look like. However, other verses give us an inkling:

1.      We will be immortal (1 Cor. 15:53-54).

2.      We will be perfect in knowledge (1 Cor. 13:12).

3.      We will shine like the sun (Mat. 13:43).

4.      There will be no tears or curse (Isa. 25:7-8; Rev. 21:4)

5.      We will judge the world (1 Cor. 6:2-3) and minister to the nations (Rev. 22:1-5).

I want my focus to be heavenward. I intend to memorize Revelation 22:1-17 to keep me focused there. However, Hebrews also gives us another hardball admonition about dealing with life’s hardships. It’s one that I need – one that unmasks my self-pity. We mustn’t be tempted to think that our problems are so much greater than those of others:

·        In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (Proverbs 3:11-12) Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 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 12:4-11)

Others have shed blood and have experienced horrible forms of victimization. I haven’t. In comparison, my suffering is minimal. Besides, we must never forget that these afflictions are a sign of God’s love. Hebrews also reminds us that it’s going to be painful. We shouldn’t expect to be able deny the pain away, but there’s a reason for this – spiritual growth.

Our eyes do not tell us everything we’d like to know. Neither does the Bible, but it does tell us what we need to know. It may not be a GPS, but it is a trustworthy roadmap. It may not tell us everything about our sojourn, but it does give us the final chapter, and this hope will win over our thoughts and dreams.

AN ADDITIONAL THOUGHT: Although prayer may not get us everything we want, it can give us what we really need - the peace of God:

• Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philip. 4:6-7)

This is His promise to us! 

Hidden Blessings

The sweetest blessings are the ones far beyond our reach – the ones that seem unattainable, the ones for which we must wait the longest. The Book of Ruth is a book of delayed and completely unexpected blessing.

Because of a severe draught, Naomi and her husband left Israel to settle in a foreign land – Moab. Her husband died shortly after this. Her two sons married women of the land. However, before they conceived, both of her sons died and Naomi was left with two seemingly barren Moabitess daughters-in-law – Orpah and Ruth – and without hope of grandchildren.

It seemed as if her life was over. She had lost everything. It even seemed that “the hand of the Lord had gone against” her. She therefore ordered her daughters-in-law to return to their families where they would have better prospects of finding a real life.

Meanwhile, Naomi had heard that the draught in Israel had lifted, and she was determined to return. Orpah returned to her people. However, Ruth wouldn’t, and she memorably pleaded:

• “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

Nevertheless, Naomi had despaired of her faith in the wake of such misfortune. Upon her return to Bethlehem, when she was greeted by her old friends, she responded with gloom:

•  “Don’t call me Naomi [pleasant],” she told them. “Call me Mara [bitter], because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (Ruth 1:20-21)

Back in Israel, the young Ruth proved her virtue. Instead of receiving the attentions of young suitors, she offered herself to Boaz, Naomi’s relative – the one man by whom Ruth could bare grandchildren for Naomi (Ruth 3:10)!

By the inscrutable grace of God, she conceived immediately and bore a child named Obed. This turned out to be such a wonderful and unexpected blessing that:

• The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel!  He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.” (Ruth 4:14-15)

Grandchildren were considered a great blessing, far more than they are today. There is no doubt that the women had any idea that their invocation regarding a “guardian protector” was prophetic. However, Naomi’s grandson Obed had been fated to beget Jesse, and Jesse, David the King of Israel.

We cannot contain such honor unless we have been prepared for it through periods of tears and loss. The more the cistern is carved and scraped out, the more water it will hold. The more disappointments and hardships, the greater capacity to contain blessing! Otherwise, the weeds of pride and arrogance, which abound in fertile soil, would choke out whatever good might be growing alongside.

Instead, we require a regular pruning to keep us healthy, as Jesus explained:

• “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:1-2)

Some trees will kill themselves by their own growth if not pruned. However, the Lord is close to those He has cut back, the broken-hearted (Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2). Through David would come the promised King Messiah, and in His lineage, we can find many of the broken-hearted. The foreigner Ruth, a Moabitess, is accompanied by the prostitute Rahab, and a woman who had lost a number of husbands – a woman who had to seduce her father-in-law, Judah, in order to have children.

Naomi had no idea of the glory that would proceed from her. She had thought herself a victim of God, but He was preparing for something glorious through her – for the Savior of the world.

Miracles: We Don’t Know what we Need

Life is tough! Why doesn’t our God nourish us with a steady stream of miracles to encourage us through the doubts and doldrums? On top of our perplexity about this, we must also suffer the taunts of the atheist:

• “Well, if you’re God really cares about saving us, He’d provide us with enough miraculous evidences so that we could believe in him and not have to suffer hell.

However, even though Scripture assures us that we already have enough evidence (Rom 1:18-20; 2:14-15; Acts 14:17; Psalm 19), it never seems to be enough. However, Jesus instructs us that we are blessed with this miracle-lean diet.

The Apostles, with the exception of Thomas, had been blessed with a miraculous and unexpected visit by the risen Christ. He suddenly appeared to them as they shivered with fear behind locked doors. To prove to them that it was He, He showed them His pierced hands and side, and they rejoiced (John 20:20).

However, when they reported this visitation to Thomas, he stubbornly refused to receive their testimony. Instead, he insisted that he should be granted the same visitation. Otherwise, he refused to believe.

Amazingly, Jesus condescended to grant the defiant Thomas his request. Thomas then believed. However, Jesus reprimanded him:

• Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29) 

Who was it who believed without seeing? Everyone had seen! It seems that, after the humiliation of the Cross, seeing was necessary for believing. All had abandoned Jesus and even the faith. The Apostles were running scared! They needed the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection appearances to restore their faith, and that’s exactly what they had been granted:

• After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

Besides, those who subsequently came to faith did so through the miracles performed by the Apostles’ (Acts 2:43). Who then believes without seeing? Us!

Right afterwards, John refers to those who would believe, not on the basis of seeing, but on the basis of apostolic testimony:

• Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

There would be a change. John wrote his Gospel so that we would believe. He didn’t anticipate a plethora of future post-resurrection appearances. Instead, faith would thereafter rest primarily on Scriptural – testimonial - evidences rather than on seeing miraculous evidences.

This sounds like discouraging news – a step in the wrong direction.  However, Jesus assures us that “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29)! How can this be?

This certainly doesn’t mean that we will never have miraculous evidence. Before I was brought to faith in the Messiah, I had a miraculous Divine encounter as I was bleeding to death from a horrible chainsaw injury. I was so overwhelmed by the presence of God that nothing mattered to me but Him and that He was there to protect and love me.

I was miraculously rescued and spent the next four days in the hospital. Meanwhile, I knew that this unknown Savior was with me. Therefore, on the following day, when my surgeon instructed me to exercise my half-cut-off wrist or loose its mobility, I blew-off his instructions. I knew correctly that God – whoever He was – was all-powerful. Therefore, I wouldn’t listen to the surgeon.

Miracles can prove costly. I was foolish. I made a wrong assumption - even though I was given a strong dose of God’s truth during this encounter - and lost the mobility in my hand. Although I needed this miraculous encounter, I lacked the knowledge to handle it. I didn’t understand that although God is omnipotent, this doesn’t negate our responsibility to act prudently, as I had wrongly assumed.

Subsequently, I came to a faith in Christ. However, I never had another encounter. I certainly wanted one and prayed for many, but it was not to be. Consequently, as I experienced great trials through my faith-walk, I began to believe that I had made a wrong turn somewhere, or perhaps God didn’t love me I had initially believed. I needed miraculous reassurance, but it wasn’t to be found.

I therefore had to settle for what I had regarded as “second best” – the Words of God. However, these seemed to be a poor flimsy substitute for the “real thing” – an encounter with God Himself. Often, reading the Bible seemed hollow and sometimes confusing, but there was no other place to turn.

In retrospect, 36 years of it, I now see that this – depression and a miracle-lean diet – is exactly what I needed to enable me to absorb that growth-food that we all require but fail to esteem.

If I had been able to live out my Christian life by the seeing of the miraculous, I would have gladly done so. However, what gladdens us is not necessarily good for us. The Apostle Paul warned us that “we walk by faith not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Why? When we grope our way through the painful “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” we learn valuable lessons. David thanked God for these:

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

Why do affliction and a miracle-lean diet grow the most fragrant roses? Because they teach us to turn from self-trust to God-trust:

• We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

A miracle-rich diet breeds complacency, and complacency does not breed a self-examination that humbles and ultimately edifies. We are made to eat humble-pie until we learn a necessary lesson – that it’s all about our Savior:

• But we have this treasure in jars of clay 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. (2 Cor. 4:7-10)

We do not know what is good for us. We think that winning the Lotto will make us happy, but it usually destroys those it touches. We are convinced that miracles will grow us spiritually. However, a miracle-rich diet is like living in a palace where we never learn and are never challenged to grow and dig deeper. It’s like feeding an Olympic athlete on a diet of ice cream and cake. It’s to be surrounded by gold and not growth-promoting clay.

Peter was chosen by His Lord to feed His sheep. However, Peter had to first know what it was like to live in a jar of clay. He needed to have his self-confident wings clipped by denying his Lord three times. This taught him humility. However, that would not be his last lesson. Jesus promised that he would grow old and loose his self-sufficiency along with his confidence, and then face martyrdom (John 21:18).

Our reaction is “Why me?” Peter asked about John - whether he too would have to suffer martyrdom? We want the answers. We want to walk by sight and not by faith. We want to be in control, but jars of clay are not supposed to be in control.

A miracle-rich diet makes us fat and self-satisfied. It answers all of our questions and doesn’t force us to dig deeply into the word for answers. We cannot handle all of the blessings that our Lord wants to ultimately give us. Money can make us proud and self-satisfied. Success leads to self-trust. A steady diet of miracles can numb the mind and growth. No wonder that we are more blessed without them.

Sorrow, Praise and the Psalms

What do we do when our hopes and dreams fall far short of our expectations? We can rephrase this problem a little differently for the Christian: What happens when the circumstances of our lives fall far short of the promises of God, leaving between these two extremes a confusing chasm?

The Psalms can teach us a lot about this chasm and how to deal with this tension. The Psalmist often cried out about this disparity between his life and what his God had promised him. Often, he complained to God about His “failure” to bring his life into conformity with His promises. In Psalm 43, the Psalmist complained that, instead of rescuing him from his evil and God-rejecting enemies, God had “rejected” him – the righteous one – in contradiction to His promises! However, it’s important to realize that the Psalmist wasn’t merely kvetching. He began his Psalm with an expression of trust:

·        Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men. (Psalm 43:1)

Clearly, he knew that God is faithful and worthy of our cries for help, or he wouldn’t have turned to Him. Nevertheless, as the Psalmist turned to God, he was also reminded of the fact that he had a beef against Him - his feelings and life-circumstances tell him that God has “rejected” him and he was understandably angry – that must first be resolved.

How can we turn to God, when we know that we are angry with Him and think that He has been unfaithful. We intuitively know that we are being hypocritical when we put on a smile and ask God for something, while we are dissatisfied with him. We first have to lay our cards on the table in hope of resolving our issues, and we all have them!

   

·        You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? (Psalm 43:2)

In essence, he is saying that things shouldn’t be this way, even worse, that God has failed him. God had promised to be his “stronghold” – his protective shield – but instead, the Psalmist finds himself “oppressed by the enemy.”

This just shouldn’t be. It is the Psalmist who had been wronged! It is he who had placed his trust in the Lord, while the others had rejected Him!

How did the Psalmist live with this tension, this disappointment? For one thing, he was transparent before his God, telling Him just what he felt. However, he didn’t take matters into his own hands and bolt, as many of us do when we feel betrayed by God. Instead, he had the wisdom to know that, despite his grief, disappointment and anger, God was his only hope. He had nowhere else to go. He therefore had to remain teachable. He had to trust in God, but his feelings were dragging him in another direction:

·        Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. (Psalm 43:3)

Our fears and pains often close in upon us like a bear-trap, gripping our minds into ruts of obsessive thinking. We need our Lord to lift us up with His “light,” His mountain-top perspective, bringing us into a place of truth.

Our feelings don’t always shed light. Instead, they can be like back muscles in spasm at the slightest misstep. We require a divine perspective powerful enough to overshadow the gloom and doom like a bright light that dissolves the shadows. The Psalmist knew that he was suffering from emotional myopia and that he needed God’s light to help him to see beyond his gloom:

·        Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God. (Psalm 43:4)

The light would restore him to sanity and also bring him back so he could see God as “my joy and my delight.” We don’t always see how our shadows blind us. Our pain causes us to focus in narrowly open ourselves and to lash out at everything else. I would guess that repeated spiritual failure had taught the Psalmist about his blindness and his utter need for God’s light.

I thank God for teaching me how foolish and blind I can be. He has stripped me of much of my self-trust. Mercifully, He has broken me so that I’d have to cry out for His light to regain a stance of praise.

While the Psalmist’s circumstances might not warrant praise, he knew that praise is the doorway into the transcendent light that can banish all the shadows of confusion and deception. Some might think that praise is a manipulation to get what we want from God. However, if praise is manipulative, it is intended to “manipulate” our feelings – our mental rut – not God:

·        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 43:5)

The Psalmist had first issued his plea to God, but now he preaches to his own soul. In view of a millennium of God’s recorded compassion and graciousness, his soul was not acting reasonably by charging God with rejecting him, and he knew it. Consequently, we don’t need to see His deliverance before we praise Him. We can start praising Him now, anticipating His future mercy.

In actuality, the Psalmist had every reason in the world for hope and praise. Praise is not contrary to truth, although it might be contrary to our present circumstances. Instead, it is the highest expression of truth – a veritable cry of assured victory. Praise acknowledges what we believe and have always professed – that God will rescue us, despite our present pain and failures!

Our behavior must be liberated from the tyranny of the now – our feelings and mental ruts. Praise is liberating. It places our focus on the one source of hope, freeing us from fear and self-obsessions. As we praise Him, our problems often begin to melt as the morning fog.

Praise is soul-medicine. Isaiah wrote about donning “the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3). Praise is one of God’s gifts to us. Knowing this, the Psalmist counseled himself that the elixir of praise was the very medicine that his “downcast…soul” required.

Many who don’t receive enough sunlight get depressed. I think that the same can be said about praise – we need large doses of it - especially now as we praise the Son.

   

Our Need for Hardships

We often wonder why God hasn’t been blessing us more, at least in the way that we want to be blessed. Well, perhaps the “blessing” is bad for us. Perhaps we can’t handle it. A recent article looked at what has happened to those who have had the “blessing” of hitting the Lotto:

• Callie Rogers blew a 2003 U.K. lottery jackpot of $3 million on shopping, cocaine, friends and breast augmentation and told reporters two years ago she was working as a maid. William "Bud" Post squandered his 1988 Pennsylvania prize of more than $16 million on houses, vehicles and bad businesses before going bankrupt and serving time for firing a shotgun at a bill collector before his death in 2006.

• Are these outcomes rare? A recent study of Florida lottery winners suggests no. Economists at the University of Kentucky, University of Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt University wanted to answer a public policy question: What happens when individuals in financial trouble are given large lump sums? So they collected data from nearly 35,000 winners of up to $150,000 in Florida's Fantasy 5 lottery from 1993 to 2002, and cross-referenced this information with state bankruptcy records.

• Their findings, published last fall in The Review of Economics and Statistics, show that a big lottery score does little to reduce the likelihood of bankruptcy. More than 1,900 winners went bankrupt within five years. That number implies that 1% of Florida lottery players (winners and losers) go bankrupt in any given year, about double the rate for the broader population during the study period.

Before we point the accusing finger at God, perhaps it might be more realistic to humbly  reassess our indictments. Perhaps God knows better what we need than we do. This had even been the case for the Apostle Paul. He often prayed that God would remove an undisclosed physical ailment. However, Paul later learned that what he had regarded as a “curse” was really a blessing:

·        To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. (2 Cor. 12:7)

We tend to become conceited when things are going too well for us. This was even the case with Paul. But by the grace of God, he learned his lesson:

·        That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:10)

We too must learn to rejoice in our hardships. They too are part of God’s grace, however painful they may be.