1. The promises of God are unaffected by human trial and suffering I have found it to be the opposite. It seems as though the promises of God are often fufilled in the experience of suffering.
2. God's grace is sufficient I have discovered that God uses trials to cause us to live in utter dependence and trust in his sovereign and sufficient grace.
- God gives us timely grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. " - God gives whatever grace that we might need in order to accomplish His purposes and glorify His name. Trials are the perfect place for help and grace to be given, depended upon and lived on. I have been amazed at how God has manifested His grace in the tasks that He has called me to perform in totla pain and weakness.
1 Peter 4:10-11, "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies- in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." Spurgeon said, "We give God much glory, when we receive from Him much grace." - God may not give us the grace that we want, but He will always give the grace that we need. The apostle Paul write in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, "To keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. " I call this a "Grace disguised" because God has not given me the grace that I asked for (healing of my back) but has not left me without grace. Instead He has given me strength in my weakness with His sufficient grace!
3. Trials have helped me to discover the true source of everlasting happiness I read of the 17th century Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford who was imprisoned by the Anglicans for non-conformnity. In prison he made a great discovery that he expresses in these words. (I have read them over and over and have memorized them becasue they mean so much to me).
If God had told me some time ago that He was about to make me as happy as I can be in this world, and then He told me that He should begin by crippling me in all my limbs, and removing me from all of my usual sources of enjoyment. I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet, how is His wisdom manifest even in this! For if you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowong out all of his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven."
As my back injury has prolonged, I have had to completely change the way I do things. I discovered that I had a lifestyle and routine that in its own way made me happy. When I began suffering the loss of it, I found myself praying for God to give me back my life. When God began to blow out my lamps, I began asking God to give me my lamps back. When He didn't, I found myself angry, depressed, and sorrowful about the wind that had blown out my lamps. But then, reading Rutherford, I began to see what God was doing, blowing out my lamps in order to throw open the shutters and let in the light of heaven!
4. I am beginning to learn in a deeper way that great joy does not and cannot come from hope in hope, hope in health, hope in healing, but as Jonathan Edwards writes "in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel." He writes, "When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to carry me above the thoughts of my own estate." Edwards is saying that his happiness wasn't taken away because he lost the things that would make him happy, i.e. his own estate. So often our lives are defined on the basis of the condition of our own estate. That is our physical health, our financial prosperity, our work success, our circumstances, and so we respond accordingly. When Edwards was fired by his church, the biographer George Marsden said that Edward's cheerful countenance was unchanged and unaffected because his happiness was out of reach of his enemies.
5. Trials help me to gain a deeper satisfaction in God than when I find satisfaction both in Him and something else Psalm 73:25-26 says,
"Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Oh how glibly we can recite that Psalm until the things on earth we just declared that we don't desire are taken away, stolen, disappear, or elude us. That's when we get honest and say, "God I like You, but i like you more when the things I said that I didn't desire are easy to come by, available for me, and part of my life. What a lie to believe that our capacity to enjoy God is enhanced on the improvement or the maintenance of "own good estate".
Edward's said that "When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to carry me above my thoughts of my own estate." I have found that the enjoyment of God at times in my "light affliction" (2 Corinthians 4:8) causes me to leave the thoughts of my own estate far behind. All my fears about loss and the future are trumped by the joy and sweetness and pleasure that I find in God's presence (Psalm 16:11).
6. The power to live unaffected by trials, pain, and suffering comes not from denying the desire for ease, comfort, painless living, and happiness but in finding the fulfilment of all such desires in the glory and the beauty and the fellowship of God's presence.
Hebrews 10:32-34, But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property...(Here is the key to this lesson) since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one." Better and abiding, better and abiding! that is what I see and that is the knowledge that i pray would go deep in my soul. I don't just want relief, I want God!
7. I don't have to live my life in denial of my pain, suffering, sorrow, and discouragement but neither do I have to be enslaved by it. I can live supernaturally with the paradox like Paul of being "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing"(2 Corinthians 6:10)
I can live with the perspective of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:16 -18, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
Longing to live my life in such a way that the only unbearable loss that I can conceive of is the loss of seeing and savoring the glory of God,
Pastor Bill
1 comment:
Excellent blog Bill. One of the things that pain and trials in my life has caused me to do is to remember others who are suffering and especially those who are enduring much more than I.
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