Joy in Trials

"You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith —more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire —may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." ‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭1‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭CSB‬‬

Click here to listen to me read this piece.

In these brief verses, the Holy Spirit through the apostle Peter shows us several characteristics of the Christian's trials.

First, they are brief: "now for a short time."

Second, when they happen, they are necessary: "if necessary."

Third, they are painful: "you suffer grief."

Fourth, they are varied: "various trials."

Next, they are purposeful: "so that the proven character of your faith…."

Finally, they are worthwhile and accomplish what will be rewarded: "…may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Knowing that my painful and varied trials are brief, necessary, purposeful, and worthwhile enables me to rejoice in the midst of them. This is not spiritual bypassing. It is spiritual paradox. Grief, trials, and joy can coexist with none of them cancelling out the others. Sorrow and joy can dance together. Trials can increase rather than extinguish our hope.

If you are enduring sorrowful trials today, beloved child of God, I pray that the Lord would give you living hope that looks back to the real, bodily, historical resurrection of Jesus Christ and forward to our own real, bodily, future resurrection and forever life with Him.

Your pain is not useless or endless. You are not alone in it; the Lord Jesus is with you and lives in you through His Spirit. Hold fast to Him who holds you fast.

Courage, dear hearts. ❤️‍🩹

God of Waifs and Strays (A Prayer)

But first, some photos of a black and white warbler we met at Lake Tawakoni State Park last month:

Listen to me pray these words over you

For those feeling a bit left behind, lost, or rejected

O God,

Friend of the waifs and strays and ragamuffins,

Meet us today in the pain of rejection,

In the shame of neediness,

In the wounding words,

Especially those in the mouths of those called to comfort,

And those committed to heal.

Some of us bring you such a pauperly offering, but the best and only one we have:

Hearts bruised and battered

Yet still beating,

Still taking a beating,

Turned away, turned against, turned aside.

Thank You, my Rock and my Redeemer.

You never reject those who come to You in faith.

You welcome and do not shame our neediness.

When You speak wounding words,

They are the wounds of a surgeon's scalpel,

Precisely aimed at mending and restoring.

You are able to heal broken hearts.

You deal tenderly with crushed spirits and bruised souls.

You never turn away, turn against, turn aside from

Those You rescued through the blood of Your Son.

You call the worthless worthy,

The helpless, graced,

The cast off, cherished.

O God of the waifs and strays and ragamuffins,

Make the felt consolation of Your intimate companionship

As strong and sweet as a cuppa comfort.

Bring to our hearts and minds songs and verses

Best suited to the moment of need.

Open the ears of our hearts to hear your love song

Over us, the waifs and strays and ragamuffins

(But your waifs and strays and ragamuffins).

I ask this in the name of Jesus the Savior,

Who came gladly into our shabby poverty,

That He might make us princes and princesses

In the kingdom of His Father.

Amen. 

Lonely Lord’s Day

Honeybee on open sunflower

If this Lord's Day has found you at home, alone, again—

Exiled from corporate worship through circumstances outside your control, whether health, geography, caregiving, travel, disaster, or something else—

I understand. I live there too. 

More importantly, the Lord Jesus understands.

If you belong to Him, you may be lonely, but you are never alone, never abandoned, never alienated or separated from Him. The Triune God dwells in you. Nothing in heaven or on earth can separate you from Him or His love. "No power of hell, no schemes of man can ever pluck" you "from His hand."

May He fill you with the consolation of His love today. May He make the theological reality of communion with Him your lived reality. May He cleanse your grief and lament of all bitterness or resentment towards any people whose decisions have brought about your present sorrow. May He make your solitude His sanctuary, your wilderness His castle, your home a hermitage of intimacy with Him. May He fill your prison with the sunshine of His face. If He is all you have, may you find He is enough and more. No matter how alone you seem or feel, if you have Christ, you have everything. ❤️‍🩹

Double Portion

Gray hairstreak butterfly on unidentified white flower

 "As I think of you I think of words written by one who warred and suffered about six hundred years ago, Raymond Lull. 'Say, O Lover,' asked the Beloved, 'if I double thy trials, wilt thou still be patient?' 'Yea,' answered the Lover, 'so that Thou double also my love.' I am quite sure that the Beloved will double the love of His Lover, if at any time He doubles the trials....

"I give you Hebrews 10:35, 36 for the worst days that will ever come. 'Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.' I commit you to Him who bequeathed His peace to us just before He faced His cross. I commit you to Him who is your best beloved. He will never leave thee nor forsake thee; the work of righteousness (which is obedience) shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever."

~Amy Carmichael, Candles in the Dark, 102

For All the Lonely People

"…he himself has said, 'I will never leave you or abandon you.' Therefore, we may boldly say, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?"
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭13‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭CSB‬‬, quoting Deuteronomy 31:6 and Psalm 118:6

Flame-hued sunset after a stormy afternoon

Are you lonely, friend?

If news headlines and my circle of acquaintances are representative, there's a good chance you are, and I am so sorry. Loneliness causes such heartache in the best of times, and during the holidays it tends to cause even more pain. My heart goes out to you, truly. If you aren't lonely as you read this, it is likely you have been recently or we'll be soon. As Elisabeth Elliot says, we are lonely because we are human. Loneliness entered human life in the garden of Eden, when spiritual death resulting from sin separated Adam and Eve from their first and truest friend, the Lord God who created them.

Chronic illness (and really, any kind of suffering) tend to isolate sufferers and their families.  Holidays may intensify any preexisting loneliness, whether we can't be with our loved ones or feel lonely because of differences or tensions alienating us from the people around us to some degree. We all want someone who truly sees us, knows us, and loves us anyway. Any diminishment or lack of that soothing security can feel lonely, whether we are literally alone or surrounded by people. No human can satisfy that longing fully; hence, loneliness is part of the human experience of walking around with a God-shaped vacuum inside us, an emptiness that can never completely be filled in this life.

How is the Christian to respond to loneliness when it assails us? With heartfelt prayers for your encouragement, I offer four suggestions:

• Lament the losses.
• Let go of my rights, expectations, and any sin in my response.  
• Love the communion of the saints.
• Lean into the fellowship of the Triune God.

First, we may lament the losses that have brought us to this place of isolation and loneliness. Whether loss of health, friends, church, spouse, or job, whether empty nest or prodigal loved ones, whether estrangement and misunderstanding or some combination of all these fuels our loneliness, we can and should lament them.  We grieve because we love. We grieve because it mattered. We grieve our own sins and the sins committed against us that have fractured relationships. Lament is an act of faith that turns toward God in our grief; pours out our complaint honestly to Him who knows it all; asks Him to intervene and heal the brokenness causing us pain; and trusts Him to hear and answer, even if His answer isn't what we want. He loves us and wants us to come to Him in our need. He is not repelled by sorrow and tears and even anger, but catches our tears in His bottle like treasure.

Second, we may let go. We may let go of our right to retaliate at anyone whose sin has contributed to our loneliness. We may need to let go by forgiving others. We may need to let go of our rights and expectations regarding relationships, holidays, and others' treatment of us.  And we may need to let go of our own sinful responses to our loneliness: self-pity, resentment, bitterness, for example. We may need to let go of those things that will only infect our soul's wound and prevent it from healing well and fully.

Third, we may find solace in loving the communion of the saints mentioned in the ancient creed. Have you ever given much thought to that doctrine, beyond your local church fellowship? Prolonged periods of isolation have deepened my understanding of it. God, through the apostle Paul, says, "There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6, ESV). Again, in a different letter, God through Paul says, "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13, ESV). The one body of Christ, then, comprises all  who belong to the Lord through faith, all in whom the Spirit dwells, all who can rightly call God Father. This is not constrained to one location at one point in time. All the children of God through faith in Christ, throughout all the world, throughout all of time, are united in one body, as we will fully realize in the coming eternal kingdom and must take by faith now. The same spiritual blood and breath unite us, and in that regard we are always in spiritual communion with our brother and sister saints, however alone we may be in body.

Tested by the Word

He [God] had sent a man ahead of them-- 

Joseph, who was sold as a slave. 

They hurt his feet with shackles; 

His neck was put in an iron collar, 

Until the time his prediction came true. 

The word of the LORD tested him. 

Psalm 105:17-19, CSB 

 

If you are unfamiliar with Joseph’s story, it appears in Genesis 37 and 39-50. He receives more pages of Genesis than any other patriarch, and his life story is beautiful and instructive. 

 

I know the end of the story, the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams and the way God used the sins of others against him to rescue his family and preserve the line of Messiah. For Joseph, though, in the middle of the pit, in the dungeon, on the auction block, running away from the seduction of a predatory older woman, being abused and falsely accused and forgotten—in the middle of that, his feet and neck truly hurt. He genuinely suffered. 

 

How many days did he have nothing to hope for but the promise in his dreams and perhaps the family stories, like the tale of God’s covenant promise to great-grandpa Abraham and the mysterious angelic ladder vision and God-wrestling of his father Jacob? 

 

With no encouragement but God’s promises and the indications that “the LORD was with him,” helping him endure and making even his servitude in bondage prosper, Joseph endured. He didn’t have three faithful friends as Daniel did at the beginning of his exile. He didn’t even have written Scripture. Yet day by day, this young man faithfully executed the tasks set for him, in which he had no say. His one glimmer of freedom hope appeared to be disappointed when he was forgotten by one he helped. 

 

The word of the LORD tested him, and in Scripture we see that he passed the test. God did deliver him, and the long years of waiting and confinement with God made him generous in forgiveness and grace toward his brothers. The years of searching for the starlight of God’s activity in the dark dungeon gave him spiritual night vision, so that when his family came begging for food, he didn’t gloat and say, “I told you so.”  

 

He acknowledged that they had intended evil against him—they hurt his feet with shackles—and also, at the same time, God sent him to Egypt, to the enslavement that led to him being in the right place at the right time with the right God-given gifts to save the lives of a multitude of people during a prolonged famine. God sent him, by means of his brothers’ evil deeds, to save those same brothers and his beloved father and younger brother. God sent him to preserve the line through which Jesus the Messiah would come. In Genesis 45:4-9 when Joseph makes himself known to his brothers, he repeats the words three times: “God sent me.” 

 

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Please, come near me,” and they came near. “I am Joseph, your brother,” he said, “the one you sold into Egypt. And now don’t be grieved or angry with yourselves for selling me here, because God sent me ahead of you to preserve life.  For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there will be five more years without plowing or harvesting. God sent me ahead of you to establish you as a remnant within the land and to keep you alive by a great deliverance. Therefore it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household, and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 

“Return quickly to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: “God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me without delay.”’” 

Genesis 45:4-9, CSB 

 

The suffering was real. 

 

The sin was real. 

 

God’s mercy was more real and enduring. 

 

Years later, when Jacob dies, the brothers say to themselves, “Now we’re in for it. Joseph’s going to make us pay for what we did.” Joseph, though, holds fast to the same spiritual insight: “You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result — the survival of many people.” (Genesis 50:20, CSB). 

 

To quote Joni Eareckson Tada, in Joseph’s story and in ours, “God permits what He hates to accomplish what He loves.” To quote the apostle Paul, “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, CSB). That good is conformity to the image of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Word of God testing us is sometimes the chisel accomplishing that end. 

Courage, dear hearts. 

 

A Prayer: 

Lord, You know where I am being tested by Your promises today. You know where I’m hurting and which of those pain points are caused by the sin of others. The seen material realities look hopeless with trial upon trial. Hopes of the end of the sorrows have so often proven to be only mirages. Lord God, God of miraculous transformations in circumstances, give me spiritual night vision to see Your invisible realities shining in the darkness. Give me eyes to see a hint of what You’re doing in the dark. Send encouragement in my endurance, grace to trust You in the dungeon, when things seem to be going in the opposite direction from Your promises. Don’t let the soul’s dark night be wasted, but use it to grow my trust in You. Set me free from every trace of resentment and bitterness toward any people who have contributed to my suffering. Fill me with Your forgiving love. When You lead me out and work mightily in and for me, make me an encourager to others in their endurance. Write me a testimony of treasures in darkness that will encourage others to persevere in theirs. 

 

I trust You, Lord; keep me trusting You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.