He suffers with us and for us

In a previous post I told of an interview with Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack, in which she says that she would not choose to have her arm back if she could. Bethany has a remarkable faith in God, and she encourages each of us to believe that God loves us , and that no matter what happens God still has a plan for our lives (Jeremiah 29:11). So Bethany has a ministry to bring hope to those who have lost hope. But Bethany is not the only person who suffered significant loss, and could later say she would not choose to reverse it. I am thinking of Joni Eareckson Tada who, as a young teenage girl, broke her neck in a freak diving accident and become permanently paralyzed from the shoulders down. Though she did not come to this easily, she is reports “If I were asked to choose between being in this chair (her wheelchair) knowing Him, and not being in the chair but not knowing Him, I would chose to be in the chair".

My description above as “not coming to this easily” is of course a huge understatement. Nevertheless she could in the end, find her way through it all to make the statement, and mean it. Her point was and is that in partnership with Him, her tragedy allowed her to find a relationship with Him that is so significant, that it more than compensated for her pain and struggles. The relationship that faith and trust in God brings can do that for each one of us. Paul suffered more than you and I are ever likely to suffer (see 2 Corinthians 11:23-29). He tells us that through patient endurance the “Love of God is shed abroad in our Hearts” (Romans 5:5). He also talks about the “fellowship of His sufferings”, that special closeness that comes when we fully invite Him into our pain. In the same passage (Philippians 3), Paul tells us that he gave up everything he held dear to be thus “found in Him”.

No matter how difficult our trial, Jesus was there before us. And He does not ask of us anything He Himself was not willing to do and more. He suffered for us, and He will suffer with us if we will let Him (surrendering all). Its hard to explain how it helps, it is in fact something of a mystery, but it does help, it really does.

Let's look a little more closely at these things. Firstly then He suffered for us. In Romans 5:7,8 Paul says “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Or as Peter puts it “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). So it was for us that He suffered and bled and died while we were still in rebellion, and consequently at enmity with God (Romans 5:10). Mel Gibson's movie “The passion of the Christ” depicts the physical suffering of the beatings and the cross, but its not just the physical pain. In the garden He is in such emotional turmoil that his capillaries actually fracture and he literally sweats blood (Luke 22:44). And then there is the spiritual pain of separation from His Father for the first time ever, as He (again literally) becomes sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), and God the Father turns His face away.

And Christ suffers with us. We may have caught a gimps of what what it means to suffer with someone when we came along side someone who was suffering, even weeping with them in their pain. This is what the Lord wants to do with us. It is easy to say to someone “I know what you are going through”. It is unlikely all the same, and such phrases should be used sparingly, for though we may think we know, we may not have a clue. On the other hand Jesus really does know what we are going through, He has been there, He really has. Indeed “we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15). There is no one who loves us more, and there is no one who suffered more, and He did it for us. Why? Well as we said above, He did it “to bring us to God”. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”(Acts 4:12). It should break our hearts!

It is a remarkable thing this fellowship of His sufferings, our welcoming Him into the midst of our pain. Suffering is not something any one of us would likely choose, but for those of us who embrace Him in these times, we find something the World neither knows nor understands. Indeed, when we choose to rejoice in the midst of it all, put away our anxiety and turn to Him with prayer and petitions with thanksgiving, He brings us the “peace that passes all understanding” (Phil 4:4-7), the peace that the World cannot know (John 14:27). The one who suffered for us then, is the same one who suffers with us bringing us His peace and grace and comfort.

Prayer: Lord bring me this peace that will guard my heart and mind in You. (Phil 4:7)

To suffer or not to suffer, that is not the question!

If you expect to get through life without suffering, good luck. The Apostle Peter puts it this way “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you” (1 Peter 4:12). We suffer because of what we have done, we suffer because of what others have done, and sometimes our suffering comes from out of the blue without apparent rhyme or reason. But whatever sooner or later, we all seem to find ourselves suffering. Indeed the “rain falls on the just and the unjust”.

What is certain (at least in my mind) is that if there is no heaven and hell then God is not just. Some will say that “well heaven and hell are here on earth”, and while I know what they mean, this cannot be right (again if God is just and He is). I say this because the wicked seem to get away with murder, sometimes quite literally. And this in fact is part of our suffering, knowing that the wicked do seem to get away with it (at least in the here and now)! The question then is not if we will suffer, but how we will deal with it.

The quotation from 1st Peter above implies that we should even expect to suffer. The same reference confirms the truth of the saying “these things are sent to try us”. My response to this is “They do, they do try us!” And this brings me back to my perhaps becoming over worn phrase “these things are crossroads”. Will we allow ourselves to become offended with God and/or the perpetrators of our pain, or will we deal with suffering the way that Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, dealt with them? He is, after all, our example.

Over the weekend I watched the awesome movie “Courageous”. The main character looses his daughter to an accident involving a drunk driver. The pastor asks him what will he choose. Will he choose to be angry that he is denied the good times he would have had with his daughter, or be thankful for the memories of the good times he did have? What would you choose? You would have to wrestle with that (at least I would), but in the end if we understood how things work, we would see that we were being offered the choice of life or death. Bitterness is like root that springs up and chokes off life, and defiles us and those we love (Hebrews 12:15). We need His help (I do) to choose His ways.

The question again then, is not if we will suffer, for this is certain. The question is how we will respond to the suffering, to the injustices that befall us, and to the consequences of our own choices.

Prayer: Father help me to respond to the things that so easily offend, by choosing life. Help me to understand that You suffered for us and with us (next day's post).

Rejoice evermore? Get real!

The Bible tells to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4), but how realistic is this? In a recent meeting we were discussing this and I suggested that I would find it hard to believe, if anyone said that they did it all the time. But it has to be possible (in Him) to live a life (substantially) filled with joy, or He would not command us to do it. At our meeting I played a You Tube clip of Nick Vujicic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxjiEi2Eywk&feature=fvsr. Nick is an outstanding example of someone with incredible joy, who in the natural, has a lot less reason than most of us to be that way. He is, however an inspiration of what we can be in Him.

Part of the problem I think (but just a part), is that we tend to confuse joy with happiness. “I just want to be happy” we hear people say, but happiness is directly related to happen – ness. The old time musical “Oklahoma” opens with the song “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, oh what a wonderful feeling, everything's going my way”. But is the day still beautiful if things are not going my way? Happiness is so totally dependent on circumstances, but joy when we have learned to tap into it, can be the very thing that brings us through the circumstances.

The command in James 1:2 quoted last day is not a command to be happy when you find yourself caught up into the midst of various trials, it is to command to cooperate with God so He can use joy to bring you above the circumstances. Romans 8:28, also found in last days' post says “We know that God is a work in all things for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose”. I asked the group if this verse is true (just trying to weed out the heretics :-) ). We all knew the expected answer, but the real question is if we believe it, not just in our heads, but in our hearts. In other words I was asking if it is a reality in our lives.

After seeing the movie “The game” years ago, I wrote in my journal “If we knew that life was a game and that everything that happened either good or bad would, in the end, work out for our good, then we could relax and enjoy the ride” I then wrote “But we do know this” (yes I was thinking about Romans 8:28). I believe that God wants us to live in the reality of His truths, His Word is meant to change us. But how can we enter into them? It starts of course by getting them into our heads (memorize them), and then we need to meditate on them, pray over them, speak them to ourselves (and others) until we believe them, then speak them some more because we believe them.

In terms of the Romans 8:28 verse, if you have been a Christian for any length of time it is likely that God has used some difficulty in your life to bring comfort to others. And this brought you joy. There is in the end nothing that is more fulfilling than being used of God. In an interview Bethany Hamilton, the girl who lost her arm in a shark attack (the person behind the movie 'soul surfer'), tells that she would not choose to have her arm back if she could choose to reverse things. Behind this remarkable statement lies the reality of how her circumstances drew her close to God and how He used them and her, to minister to others.

I said in a previous post that the Christian has resources that the non-Christian cannot know. Most of us do not have the recourse in and of ourselves to be the sort of overcomer that we see in Nick and Bethany. But the good news is that “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So then when we are weak, when we do not have these resources within us, then we qualify for His enabling Grace. If we had these resources within ourselves, and using them managed to overcome, then we would get the glory. However when we do not have the resources, and we tap into His resources and then overcome, He gets the Glory and we get to be part of ushering in His Kingdom. There is, as I say, nothing that brings more fulfillment.

On top of this, when we learn to tap into this joy, then this very joy enables us to get through the difficulties of life. In other words, the joy of the Lord becomes our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). It makes no sense in the natural, but all things are possible in Him. This joy is for you and for me, it is your birthright and it is mine. We do need to set our hearts to be determined to settle for nothing less than all He has for us. If someone left you a million dollars how hard would you fight to get it? How far are you willing to go to tap into the benefits of His passion? We need to surrender all we are and have to Him, then drink of the joy and the hope and the love and the grace that He gives to those who choose to love Him (yes we are still in Romans 8:28).

Rejoice evermore? Yes. Get real? Yes, Amen! To move into this is to move into what is truly real (if unseen) where we are encompassed by His joy and love and grace. Saving grace is free, but to enter into His enabling grace will cost us everything we are and have. I particular we need to stop fighting God over the people and circumstances He allows in our lives to refine us. To paraphrase Paul “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the reality of the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). Let us encourage on another to live in the certainty that this life is not all that there is, and that when we cooperate with Him, He will use the difficult things to make us more like Him, bringing us through pain into His Love and joy, and in the process bringing others into His kingdom (Romans 8:29).

I invite you to pray: Father bring me to the place I need to be in order to receive your grace and joy, no matter what the cost. Deal with everything in me that hinders this. In Jesus name

But God gives more grace. Enabling grace III

The need to forgive (see “Don't get mad, get even and poison yourself than those you love” January 2011) is perhaps exceeded only betimes, by the difficulty in doing it. The writer to the Hebrews connects the failure to forgive with our failing to obtain God's grace (enabling) to do it (Hebrews 12:15). In a relatively trivial incident just this morning, the Lord reminded me of the availability of His grace to deal with disappointment, frustration and the like.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 5, that together with God's salvation, we are given “access into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (verse 2). We can think of this aspect of God's grace as the wherewithal to do what He commands us to do, and in particular to do the things we cannot do without Him. So then the times we need His enabling grace the most, are our times of difficulty. It is His intention that we rise above the circumstances of life, above its trials and temptations and devastating disappointments. James tells us that we are to count it all joy when we encounter trials and temptations of various kinds (James 1:2). The intention here is not simply to grit ones teeth in the face of all that happens, but to actually “Push through the pain into joy” (see last day's post). Doing this requires of us a radical trust in God. Coming to this place in the Christian life is a process, and one which Paul describes in the Romans 5 passage. He says “we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (verse 3-5).

There is a lot in this passage, but the end of it all is that we get to experience the “poured out love” in our hearts, that is as long as we do not fail to tap into this “grace in which we stand”. The Hebrews passage mentioned above admonishes us to be diligent to ensure that this does not happen. But how do we do this? Perhaps the place to start is to ask what is the opposite reaction to 'rejoicing in our trials'.

In the past I have been guilty of letting many things offend me. This manifested itself by my allowing the negative thoughts to go round and round and round in my mind. To do this is, in effect, to nurse the hurt or the resentment or the anger, and these things easily grow to consume you. When these things go on for long enough, and become full blown, it is more than a little difficult to stop them. The Christian does have the authority to “bring every thought captive unto the obedience of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 10:5), but again learning to exercise that authority is a process. It is easier if we stop things at the beginning, but in any case, it starts with crying out to God for his help.

As part of this, we need to learn to stop fighting the people and circumstances that God allows in our lives, to refine us. He tells us in Romans 8:28 that He is at work in all things (not just some things, but all things) for good, for those of us who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We need to receive this by faith. In particular if it is by faith, we cannot demand that He show us how this trial can possible work out for our good. There will be times when our whole being will scream out that this cannot be so, as when we loose a child, or if we are seeing loved ones suffer, or if we have been abused. Please note, the verse is not saying that these things are good, what the verse is saying is that God is at actively at work even in and through the evil, for our good. It is easy to trust in the good times, but to trust in the evil day is well pleasing to Him.

Sometimes God shows us explicitly how He is working things out for our good. When we allow Him to heal us with His “love poured out”, for example He uses our tragedies to minister to others who are hurting in the same way that we were hurt. A widow who has learned to receive God's comfort, can comfort the more recently bereaved (2 Corinthians 1:4). When we are willing to admit that we have sinned or made mistakes, He can use our confession to help others (particularly those we love) to avoid the traps into which we fell. But if we can see nothing else, we can (as the verse which follows Roman's 8:28 promises), believe that our submission and trust are making us more like Jesus, and that this will always produce fruit for the Kingdom. This is the essence of the verse that immediately follows Romans 8:28 i.e verse 29!

From time to time we see outstanding examples of this fruit through pain. I am thinking people like Joni Eareckson Tada, or Anne Marie Hagan or Nick Vujicic (Google these names). But while we may not all achieve their level of freedom, we can all start the process. As it says in Romans 5 quoted above, when we stop fighting these things and choose with His help (His grace) to start to rejoice, then this produces endurance (the ability to stand up under trial) and this in turn refines our character, and the experience of this together with His out poured love in our hearts produces the hope which reinforces it all. And all this redounds to the “glory of God” (verse 2 again). With Paul we will know that His grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). We may betimes feel overwhelmed, but when we do “God gives more grace” (James 4:6).

Prayer: Father help me to trust you in the difficult times, and give me what I need (Your Grace) to cooperate with You. Take away the blocks I have in place that prevent me from experience Your “Love poured out”, in Jesus Name.