“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”
James 1:2-3, ESV
“There is no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose.”
“All joy,” (verse 2) is a fantastic thought. It stresses a joy that becomes militant, something powerful and significant. “All joy,” surpasses “some joy” or even “occasional joy.” Instead it’s a joy that remains joy even when tired and weak. It will only shine brighter in the darkness.
Jewels, diamonds, and pearls are typically displayed on a black background.
This reveals their brilliance and value. In the same way darkness should only encourage us to be deliberately brighter than our surroundings. We must understand that we shine only because He makes us shine. There is a divine incandescence that awaits every believer who feels the need or desire for more of God.
God’s special nearness is available to each believer, especially those in the heat of the furnace. He is close to those who want Him, and there is nothing will stand in His way. The Lord cherishes and treasures the seeking heart. There is nothing that can detour the believer’s yearning after their Father. Your faith must be purified, and this is never optional.
Name your trial, then turn it to God in prayer.
Leave it alone and refuse to carry it no further. It’s now the Lord’s concern. Simply watch for the deliverance to come. When God sees your heart, He will lavish Himself out on you. He delights to see your faith becoming solid and real.
Trust Him.
“God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”
“The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
Luke 7:34
God in some profound way, accommodates Himself to your ‘sickness.’ He will turn away from you.
We find that He has this beautiful quality about Him–He becomes quite tender and gentle around any spiritual disease. He gravitates to the broken ones. His love for sinners is a well-established fact we must consider frequently.
In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman’s face:
“I stand by the bed where the young woman lies. . . her face, postoperative . . . her mouth twisted in palsy . . . clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, one of the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be that way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut this little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to be in a world all their own in the evening lamplight . . . isolated from me . . private.”
“Who are they? I ask myself . . .
“He and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously. The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “it’s kind of cute.” All at once, I know who he is.”
“I understand, and I lower my gaze.”
“One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers. . . to show her that their kiss still works.”
This is who Jesus has always been to you!
And if you think you are getting to be a great kisser or are looking desirable, I feel sorry for you. For it’s He who wraps himself around our hurts, our brokenness, and our ugly, our ever-present sin.
Those of you who want to draw big, dark lines between my humanity and my sin, go right ahead, but I’m not joining you. And I don’t really understand.
I need Jesus so much to love me like I really am: brokenness, memories, wounds, sins, addictions, lies, death, fear….all of it. (Take all it, Lord Jesus.) If I don’t present this broken, messed-up person to Jesus, my faith is dishonest, and my understanding of it will become a way of continuing the ruse and pretense of being “good.”
God truly loves the unlovely.
He is wildly passionate about those who have been disfigured by sin. Those who turn with pretense find a sort of ‘spiritual Botox’ that can only hide their blemishes. But by coming to him with all we can muster we’ll find healing and acceptance.
You see, you’re the young woman in this story. The kisses of your Savior are yours. Unconditionally. And forever.
For some reason, He delights in kissing crooked lips.
Young David stood and looked at Goliath face-to-face. We can read of this encounter in 1 Samuel 17:38-52.
Physically there was hardly a comparison. Goliath was almost 10 feet tall, a warrior since birth–we read of his armor–he was like a human tank.
But David was just a pesky boy, nothing more. Goliath preened and strutted into the field of battle, and simple David was stepping up for his first try at hand-to-hand combat.
And then Goliath begins to blaspheme.
He boasts and mocks. In his mind he believes is superior, his arrogance knows no bounds. The center of the universe is the Philistine army, and he is their champion. He is contemptuous of everything else–physical or spiritual.
Goliath essentially is a ‘human’ wood chipper.
Everyone who has faced him has been destroyed. There have been no survivors to speak of. But I find David to be powerfully exceptional. His reaction to the ‘human mountain’ of Goliath was to run directly at him. This is an astonishing faith.
“As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground”.
1 Sam. 17:48
Many of us face a giant called guilt, pride, doubt, or despair.
Satan (our enemy) has marched out on the field of battle, confident of his ultimate triumph over us. We’ve been rightly tutored that there are enemies that can destroy us. I suppose that should terrify us. And we’ve also been indoctrinated to accept their control, and the inevitable slavery, with a spirit of timidity.
The ‘monster’ of despair is real and brutal. Our destruction is inevitable in his mind. Satan does expect to win over your soul, but Jesus stands as our advocate shielding us. We are saved because He wants us saved.
Yet so many believers cowed and intimidated, surrendering to the boastings of the giant Despair. Hope and faith are drained out of our being, and we become an empty spiritual shell. The “warfare” dimension gets nullified, and soon irrelevant. Despair reaches us and has the full intention of taking total control. It’s never satisfied with just a little bit.
He passed through the dark intimidation and influence to approach Goliath. There was no passiveness or doubt to cloud his mind. David took a spiritually aggressive position, he took on the fear, and then ran directly at the giant Goliath. His spirit was untouchable.
As believers, we might struggle and pout. We can turn our hearts over to despair. We become available to the enemy’s workings. And the confidence we might have through faith is dissipated into doubt and confusion. But the victory we have in Christ allows us liberty, through the Blood of Him who defeats our own Goliath of despair.
In 1987 I was working full-time with S.O.S. Ministries in San Francisco, California.
I was living in a community with other team members in the Mission District on Sycamore St. Everything was rather gritty. (Some would say it was ‘loathsome or gross,’ but that seems unkind.)
Wine bottles were mixed with the decor of fresh graffiti and were then blended with the acrid smell of urine, puke, and feces. When it got hot, it got really bad. It could make your eyes water.
“Amelia’s”, the biggest lesbian “rock-n-roll” bar west of the Mississippi was just a few doors down.
A gay thrift store was next to it. Living next to us were heroin addicts; when they overdosed they would start retching in the common “light-well” that we shared with them. The “puking” could get pretty violent, and you had to turn up the radio just to block it out. And we prayed for them.
I had the misfortune (?) of having the front room on the first floor overlooking the street. Nights would bring out all the crazies, the junkies, the girls fighting and throwing bottles at each other. I heard everything. Cursing and yelling and screaming.
God had given me a front-row seat to all the nastiness and pain.
The house we lived in was smack in the middle of what the San Francisco Chronicle called “San Francisco’s Meanest Street.” I think there were some close runners-up to us though. But living on Sycamore had its share of memorable moments.
I was driving the ministry truck back from outreach at Powell and Market (the “cable car turn around.”) We had had a great outreach, almost four hours. It’s a perfect locale, with the subway and the tourists and the street performers. The truck was loaded with sound equipment, and I was taking it back to the S.O.S. house, where we stored it (under lock and key, of course.)
There was that alley directly behind our house. Our garage was located there.
Clarion Alley was the classic inner-city alley. It was very rough and nasty, and if you did venture out you needed to be “prayed up.” It is also the city’s largest bathroom. It seemed the urine smell tried very hard to cancel out the stench of the feces. It was very ripe. (I had also gotten stabbed with a used heroin needle while I was cleaning– but that is another story.)
I was driving along, very happy to be headed home.
It had been a very long day, and I was tired. I turned from Mission St. into Clarion Alley. It was cold and dark. I was thinking about a cup of hot tea. Now Clarion is only a block long. The street was filled with garbage, and as I tooled along there was a big roll of carpeting laying pretty much crossways on the pavement.
I was tired. My first thought was just to drive over it.
I think I might even accelerated the truck. All of a sudden I had the strong urge to stop. I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the cab. Cautiously, I knelt down for a closer look. Rolled up inside was a wino trying to sleep. I’m sure in his mind, the carpeting was a cozy “godsend,” a safe place that was a warm and dry place hidden from “bad people.”
And I came just inches from killing him.
God intervenes to protect our lives probably much more than we realize. Each person has been created in His image. He loves everyone– as if we were the only one.
“We put our hope in the Lord. He is our help and our shield.”
Psalm 33:20, NLT
SOS Ministries has reorganized but still is true to the vision it had when I served with them. Website: SOS Ministries. It is the premier place to develop a gift of evangelism and worship.
SOS Ministries is an inter-denominational, evangelical, street ministry in San Francisco. Its special mission is to reach the people of the San Francisco Bay Area and to train Christians and churches in evangelism helping them reach their own communities for Jesus. Come help share the love of Jesus Christ with the people of San Francisco.
SOS organizes three “Church on the Street” outreaches each month in San Francisco or Berkeley on Saturday afternoon. Local churches bring their worship group and conduct a church service in a downtown park. They also witness three times a month in San Francisco on Friday night.
Outreaches are subject to change. Call (510) 282-5629 to confirm outreaches or for more information. E-Mail: mail@sosmin.com.
Mailing Address: SOS Ministries P.O. Box 27358 Oakland, CA, 94602
Broken Believers 