Category: trials

When Life Hurts You Terribly, Some Guidance

How you handle your fragile moments is key to the remainder of your life. It’s ok to feel abandoned or alone. It’s ok to be depressed.

But let God know about where you’re at. I’m convinced He really wants to teach you to walk in the truth. And dear one, nothing will be as challenging as that.

I really hope that these thoughts might help. We face challenges and difficulties. Just maybe this post will strengthen your walk? I chose each thought purposefully and every one contains something helpful (I hope). 

These each speak wisdom as we try to understand what’s happening to us.

Quotes to Guide You Through Your Trial:

A.W. Tozer

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He’s hurt him deeply.” (Roots of Righteousness, Chapter 39)

Calvin Miller

“Hurt is the essential ingredient of ultimate Christ-likeness.” (Quoted in Christianity Today, July 2007, p41)

Larry Crabb

“Brokenness isn’t so much about how bad you’ve been hurt but how you’ve sinned in handling it.” (Christianity Today, A Shrink Gets Stretched, May 1, 2003)

“Shattered dreams are never random. They are always a piece of a piece in a larger story. The Holy Spirit uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for God, to help us begin dreaming the highest dream. They are ordained opportunities for the Spirit to first awaken, then to satisfy our highest dream.” (Shattered Dreams, 2001)

Alan Redpath

“When God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible person and crushes him.” (Quoted by Gary Preston, Character Forged from Conflict: Staying Connected to God During Controversy. The pastor’s soul series, (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1999)

Bruce Wilkinson

“Are you praying for God’s superabundant blessings and pleading that He will make you more like His Son? If so, then you are asking for the shears.” (Secrets of the Vine, 60.)

Charles Swindoll

“Someone put it this way, ‘Whoever desires to walk with God, walks right into the crucible.’ All who choose godliness live in a crucible. The tests will come.” (Moses, Great Lives from God’s Word, 285.)

“Being stripped of all substitutes is the most painful experience on earth.” (David, p70)

Elisabeth Elliot

“The surrender of our heart’s deepest longing is perhaps as close as we come to an understanding of the cross… our own experience of crucifixion, though immeasurably less than our Saviour’s nonetheless furnishes us with a chance to begin to know Him in the fellowship of His suffering. In every form of our own suffering, He calls us into that fellowship.” (Elisabeth Elliot, Quest For Love, (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1996), 182.)

George MacDonald

“No words can express how much our world ‘owes’ to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were conceived in a wilderness. Most of the New Testament was written in a prison. The greatest words of God’s Scriptures have all passed through great trials. The greatest prophets have “learned in suffering what they wrote in their books.” So take comfort afflicted Christian! When our God is about to make use of a person, He allows them to go through a crucible of fire.”

Helen Keller

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” (Quoted in Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 4.)

Oswald Chambers

“No-one enters into the experience of entire sanctification without going through a ‘white funeral’ — the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crisis of death, sanctification is nothing more than a vision… Have you come to your last days really? You have come to them often in sentiment, but have you come to them really?… We skirt around the cemetery and all the time refuse to go to death… Have you had your ‘white funeral’, or are you sacredly playing the fool with your soul? Is there a place in your life marked as the last day, a place to which the memory goes back with a chastened and extraordinary grateful remembrance–’yes, it was then, at that ‘white funeral’ that I made an agreement with God.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 15, (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1963).)

“God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.” (Chambers, O. (1993, c1935). My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year (September 30). Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.)

“Jesus Christ had no tenderness whatsoever toward anything that was ultimately going to ruin a person in his service to God…. If the Spirit of God brings to your mind a word of the Lord that hurts you, you can be sure that there is something in you that He wants to hurt to the point of its death.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, September 27, (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1963.)

Charles Stanley

Does God purposefully allow suffering? “The comfortable, but theologically incorrect, answer is no. You will find many people preaching and teaching that God never sends an ill wind into a person’s life, but that position can’t be justified by Scripture. The Bible teaches that God does send adversity – but within certain parameters and always for a reason that relates to our growth, perfection, and eternal good.” (*Stanley, C. F. 1997, c1996. Advancing through adversity (electronic ed.). Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN.)

Life Can Be Brutal

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,”

1 Peter 1:6, ESV

So much has been written already from the perspective of suffering Christians.  We live in a painful world; there are plenty of cuts and bruises to go around.  Yet each blow we take is disturbing.  I’ve met so many who have been unfairly brutalized and must walk through mental or physical disabilities.

Some things are just plain brutal.

We may not fully understand this, but suffering provides us with incredible advantages and blessings.  The bruises which hurt us, can also bring us wisdom. We learn many things, but only when we hurt. The challenge is not to waste our sorrows.

Suffering offers us great benefits:

  1. Suffering verifies our faith (1 Pet. 1:6-7).
  2. Suffering confirms our sonship (Heb. 12:5-8).
  3. Suffering produces endurance (James 1:2-4; 1 Pet. 5:10).
  4. Suffering teaches us to hate sin (John 11:33).
  5. Suffering promotes self-evaluation.
  6. Suffering clarifies our priorities (Dt. 6:10-13).
  7. Suffering identifies us with Christ (2 Tim. 3:12; 1 Thes. 2:14-15; Gal. 6:17; Phil. 3:10).
  8. Suffering can encourage other believers (1 Thes. 1:6-7; Phil. 1:14).
  9. Suffering can benefit unbelievers (Acts 16:16-34).
  10. Suffering enables us to help others (Heb. 4:15-16).

 -John MacArthur

If you have ever been attacked, it can change you.  Spiritually, our vision clears and we will no longer be short-sighted people.  We are now able to see things much clearer and with more discernment and wisdom.  But the choice today is yours to make.

Will you make suffering work for you?

“IF YOU HAD NEVER KNOWN PHYSICAL PAIN IN YOUR LIFE, HOW COULD YOU APPRECIATE THE NAIL SCARRED HANDS WITH WHICH JESUS CHRIST WILL MEET YOU?”  

Joni Eareckson Tada

The pain is real. No question about it. However, I honestly beg of you to make this transaction with the Holy Spirit.  Exchange your anger and fear and doubt– for peace and confidence and joy. 

God will use your pain to bless others.

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 My newest teaching site is alaskabibleteacher.com.

 

 

Rip Tide Lessons

In the late 1990s, my wife Lynn and I were based in a mission station about 200 miles south of Tijuana, Mexico.  We would be working in Baja in the sleepy little village of San Telmo.  It was hard work, but sometimes we would take day trips to a beach on the Pacific Ocean.  One beach in particular, was a favorite place for surfers.

One day we headed out for some sand, surf and sea.  Little did I know that day, that I would almost drown.  Yes, the waves were bigger then usual, but we set up camp and our two children combed the beach, under our watchful eyes.  After a while, I gathered up my ‘boogie board’ and headed for the water.

I had caught several nice waves, and was having a wonderful time. But all of a sudden things got scary.  I was working the waves on the north side of the beach, when suddenly– I lost control.  The current began to pull me away from the shore.  I doubled my paddling efforts, but still I was being pulled out.

I became really afraid.  The beach was getting very small, and I still was being pulled out.  It was at this point, I began to pray.  I had never experienced a rip tide before.  I really wasn’t sure what was happening.

In retrospect, I was being ‘schooled.’  I learned more in 15 minutes of stark terror, then in many months of classroom teaching.

1) I learned that I’m not in control of my life, there are things completely beyond me. I had zero control over what was happening. But often life is like that.

2)  God can take my life whenever He chooses.  He decides when I leave this earthly existence.  “My times are in His hands,” the psalmist declared.

3)  I needed to admit my profound ignorance of many things that are intensely important to know.  These gaps in my knowledge will often take me where I don’t want to go.

4)  Stay on your board!  Cling to it.  You WILL drown if you get separated from it.  You can also use it to rest on when your arms feel like they are going to fall off.

5) And finally start to swim parallel with the beach, NOT toward it!  The current is very likely 30-40 yards wide.  The rising panic will probably keep you focused on the  beach. You cannot overcome a riptide by trying to paddle harder.

6) If you make it through this, the beach is beautiful.  You will be exhausted.  Your friends will not grasp how close you came to drowning.  They have no idea what has just transpired, and you realize you can’t explain what just happened.  But all of a sudden, you have lost all enthusiasm for the board and the waves.

Often it feels like my depression a massive riptide.  To fight it directly is disastrous, and pulls me away. I look back and realize that my experience has given me valuable things, an understanding that nothing can replace.

All about riptides can be found here.

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Burning Bushes

“Some Christians are called to endure a disproportionate amount of suffering. Such Christians are a spectacle of grace to the church, like flaming bushes unconsumed, and cause us to ask, like Moses: ‘Why is this bush not burned up?’

(Exodus 3:2-3)

“The strength and stability of these believers can be explained only by the miracle of God’s sustaining grace. The God who sustains Christians in unceasing pain is the same God — with the same grace — who sustains me in my smaller sufferings. We marvel at God’s persevering grace and grow in our confidence in Him as He governs our lives.”

— John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace”

All of us know a brother or sister who seems to be a target of an undue amount of suffering. It seems like they’re always in the furnace. All we can do really is to shake our heads and then give them double honor for their faith in God’s grace and providence.

Ministering to these sufferers can be a challenge.

What can we say to those who seem to be always on “God’s anvil?” How can we bless those who are in pain? At times I have no idea.

Perhaps a simple word of calm encouragement is the most effective. In the midst of some awful difficulties, I once had a dear brother who gently and carefully quoted Philippians 1:6 to me over and over whenever we met and whenever we parted:

 “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

Philippians 1:6

It was a precious thing that he did. I didn’t mind it all, as a matter of fact I grew to like it. At first, I’ll admit it was strange, but my faith began to ‘mix’ with the Word and I began to believe it. That was 50 years ago, and it’s now my favorite verse in the Bible.

He had the maturity to see what God was doing and to make himself available to God on my behalf. Perhaps that patience he showed should be for us the method of choice for us today? (I look forward to seeing him someday, and thanking him.)

He refused to preach or try to counsel me. He only prayed. And that was enough.

“We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.”

Romans 5:3

A keyword in this verse is “rejoice.”

It’s a good reminder that the pain we feel is not the end. These trials have a limited duration, (although it seems far away). There is coming a day when we can navigate through these issues and come out on the other side. “We will shine like the stars” (Daniel 12:3).

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:4

Much wisdom is needed in our ministry to disproportionate sufferers. We should have a fear of intruding on the work the Lord is doing. We must be patient and humble in this matter. There is no rushing God, after all, it’s His work. Most importantly we must be very much ‘present’ for our friend.

“But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance.”

Romans 5:3

A “word” spoken out of place can cause even more ‘heartache’ for the sufferer. Let us be careful. At times it’s better not to say anything, and that’s alright. Job’s friends were best sitting in the ash heap, saying no word.

I have another site at alaskabibleteacher.com.