Category: trials

God’s Purposes for You (Yes, You!)

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Our present struggles must be seen in God’s own light. As broken believers that is the exclusive method of seeing them, as our own flickering candle isn’t bright enough or strong to illuminate our issues.

“We were created for God’s pleasure. In these closing moments of this age, the Lord will have a people whose purpose for living is to please God with their lives. In them, God finds His own reward for creating man. They are His worshipers. They are on earth only to please God, and when He is pleased, they also are pleased.

The Lord takes them farther and through more pain and conflicts than other men. Outwardly, they often seem “smitten of God, and afflicted,” yet to God, they are His beloved. When they are crushed, like the petals of a flower, they exude a worship, the fragrance of which is so beautiful and rare that angels weep in quiet awe at their surrender. They are the Lord’s purpose for creation.” 

Francis Frangipane

“…struck down, but not destroyed.”

2 Corinthians 4:9

We battle to understand. We seldom find anyone who can help us. We’re the broken believers of Jesus Christ. We are the struggler, the mentally ill, the chronically ill, the overwhelmed. And yet we have been loved and chosen by God.

The chasm between the present and the future is broad and deep. We live with issues that others can seldom comprehend. Many of us have given up trying to explain. Yet by an amazing grace we stand in God’s presence, by faith.

But God has His promises. They are read from a leather-backed book (or an app) and are to be secured by faith. When we hear the Spirit speak through them we make them our own.

“By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

2 Peter 1:4

My “life verse” is the promise found in Philippians. It assures me, that although the process is long and arduous, the Lord will finish His work in me. There is coming a definite day when all will be completed. I take this by faith. I’m sure because He promised.

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 1:6, NASB

We must see the temporary moment pitted up against the eternal forever. What we must deal with now is just a “blip” and heaven is never-ending. Something awaits us that can’t be described. Perhaps the Apostle John had the clearest insight into eternity, writing the Book of Revelation. Paul would describe his own experience in the third heaven as “I heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak” (2 Cor. 12:4.)

“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.”

2 Corinthians 4:17

I’m really looking forward to arriving in Heaven. Just thinking about it now gives me a strong hope (as it should). The trials now are tough. But more and more I long to see Christ, face-to-face.

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The Hidden Blessings of the Long Struggle

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by Jonathan Coe

It’s a familiar story. A person has become a Christian in recent years and is engaged in spiritual practices–prayer, Bible study, meditation, church attendance, fellowship, tithing, and/or the sacraments. They have listened closely to their pastor or priest and have developed some formulas that are supposed to help them overcome the problems, sins, and weaknesses in their lives.

They’ve heard sermons and/or read books that have titles that start with “Three Steps,” “Five Keys,” and “Four Ways,” that are supposed to lead them to the abundant Christian life. They see progress in their lives but are discouraged because they still struggle with certain sins, problems, and/or weaknesses. Some feel like they can’t overcome the very deep negative legacy from the unhealthy family they grew up in.

Church leadership would do many believers a service by teaching them about how God can bring good out of their protracted struggle. No, it’s not God’s will for us to habitually sin , but God, in his tender mercies can work redemptively in this long and frustrating battle against profound sin.

One of the first good things that can come out of a long battle with a character flaw or problem is deliverance from a formulaic Christian faith. “Do these three things and your problem will go away” you learn from a best–seller, but your problem doesn’t go away. The fallen human heart is a complex and formidable thing, and these canned approaches are a little like taking a squirt gun to a forest fire.

When people experience sustained adversity, their lives feel out of control, and they will often grab on to formulas to give them a sense of righting a ship that’s taking on water. Unfortunately, they end up trusting in the formulas more than God himself.

Faith in formulas will always eclipse faith in God.

The Christian life is more about a restful trust in a Person than embracing a set of principles (no matter how spiritual those principles may sound.)

The New Testament is clear on the centrality of faith (not self–effort or formulas) in the overcoming life:

When asked by his disciples what they must do to do the works God requires, Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe on the one he has sent” (John 6:28, 29). When describing the person who overcomes the world, the Apostle John said, “He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (I John 5:4, 5).

The failure of formulas is a good experience because it drives the believer to faith in the living God. In this faith, there is a wonderful exchange: I give Christ my pitiful attempts to live the victorious Christian life and he gives me his transforming power to overcome sin. However, this exchange may not happen overnight; it may be a process that takes years.

For those of you in a long struggle, please be comforted by the mercies of God that endure forever. If he can forgive a murderer and adulterer like David, he can forgive you and me. Please take the advice that Winston Churchill gave the British people during World War II: “Never, never, never, never give up ” or listen to the lyrics from a U2 song called “Miracle Drug” : ”There is no failure here, sweetheart/ Just when you quit.”

Even better is C.S. Lewis from The Business of Heaven:

“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious, provided self–offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home, but the bathrooms are already, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and to give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence.”

I say Amen.

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Jonathan Coe

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Bryan’s note: Jonathan is a very old friend. He deeply loves Jesus. He is wise and he is aware. He is a writer, blogger, and a house-painter. (He is also a Dodgers fan, which I suppose he can find forgiveness for). I am made a rich man by knowing him.

Nothing! Romans 8:38, Revisualized

Just a gentle reminder from one of the greatest truths ever written for the hearts of men. I’m sure you have either read it or heard it many times. Here, in this artwork you can see it. I hope that this approach will help you receive this truth by faith. It helped me!

http://www.facebook.com/TypographicVerses
http://www.facebook.com/TypographicVerses

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There is a Crack in Everything

“Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen,  Anthem

A crack in everything. As someone who has experienced brokenness in my life,  I appreciate the wisdom of these simple words. You see, I am intensely aware of being different then others.

I had a night job working my way through school frying donuts.  I remember clearly an incident were I overheard my boss telling someone that, “Bryan is one of the most eccentric people I have ever met.” Now I honestly was not trying to be odd, or eccentric.

To put this in perspective, I just happened to be taking N.T. Greek at the time and knew that the word for eccentric was a contraction, (of ek, meaning “off, or off to one side, and “centros”, meaning, “center”).  He was saying that I was “off centered”. That really troubled me because I always felt like I was intensely stable, and very much a well-balanced person. (But I was just 22.  I guess that fact alone explains much.)

Cohen’s poem tells us certain things. First, he describes bells that can’t be used, they don’t work anymore. Second, he tells us of our need to get real and to understand that “a perfect offering” is beyond our capability. Maybe 30 years ago, ‘naive idealism’ might have carried the day for us. But now I’m in my mid-50s  and I have tried to figure out a thing or two.   By then we start to see the cracks in everything, nothing has gone by untouched. We live in a fallen and broken world.

But the poet delivers a paradoxical truth, he states, “that’s how the light gets in.”

To learn this deeply, is to turbocharge your recovery. You’re a broken person. But that is actually a good thing. It summons up a discernment of how we grow spiritually.

I find it quite astonishing that the broken, weak, and the burned-out are closer to the Kingdom then the strong, the sure, and the gifted. This is a rich and an incredible truth, we are to see our brokenness and ruination in a whole different perspective.  We must see that that is how the light gets in.

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”

Vance Havner

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