suffering

Joy in the Midst of Sadness

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I celebrated with the rest of the family as my niece turned 2. Finally, I can stop counting in months. I was seriously running out of fingers and toes to count on.

I loved seeing the pure unadulterated joy on her face when she saw her presents and the complete love and trust she has for her mommy and daddy and two big brothers. It did my heart good.

But I also remembered Adrian Peterson’s 2-year old son who was allegedly beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend. My heart hurts and I have questions I can’t answer.

Who does that to a 2-year old? For what possible reason?

I know we live in a broken world filled with broken people. Creation groans for deliverance and for everything to be made right. Too many defenseless and helpless children suffer, too many people go to bed hungry, too many marriages fall apart, and too many die way too young.

Then I remember how this story ends. I cheated and read the last page. It’s about God wiping away every tear from our eyes. It’s about a new Jerusalem, a new heaven and a new earth where lambs lie safely next to lions, where others is no need for sun, moon, or stars because God is there.

I love what the guest pastor said. God didn’t want an only child, so He chose us to be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus and become heirs with Jesus to all the promises of God.

I love this version of Romans 8:29-30: “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.”

That’s what keeps me going in the midst of so much suffering and sadness. That’s why I can find joy in everything. Because ultimately Love does win.

Cruise-liner Christianity?

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I have another confession. I’ve spent way too much of my life seeking out comfort and convenience. I’ve avoided any possibility of suffering and some places because they were “less than safe.”

I know I’m not alone. So many go to their comfortable, air-conditioned churches and then to comfortable, air-conditioned restaurants and then on to comfortable, air-conditioned lives. We want to feel good and look good, but I think God is calling us more to do good and be good.

So many will use rain as an excuse for staying away from worship services. But the same will sit in the rain for hours at a Titans or Vols game.

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I’ve used just about every excuse to not pick up my Bible and actually read it. I’ll tell myself I’m too tired to pray. I will say that I can’t afford to tithe this week, but I’ll start back next week.

Jesus promised us there would be suffering. But He also promised that the reward at the other side would be more than worth it. Like when a mother forgets her delivery pains when she holds her newborn baby in her arms.

The problem with Cruise-line Christianity isn’t so much that it’s disobedience (which it is), but that you miss so many blessings and rewards and joys that only come with taking that narrow path, the road less travelled, the trail marked with suffering.

I don’t mean to intentionally seek out suffering. Just not to seek first and foremost to avoid it. I do mean saying YES to Jesus, whatever Jesus asks of you and wherever He calls you to go, whether it’s next door or across the world or even to the unsafe part of time.

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For me, it might mean getting up earlier in the morning and making time for God. Maybe it means going without Starbucks for a whole week. Egads.

All I know is that I want God more than I want to stay comfortable and safe and vaguely dissatisfied. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and wonder what I could have done for God if I’d only been more trusting and more faithful. I want to find out now.

I’ll keep you posted on how the whole waking up earlier thing goes. But for now, it means waking up at 5:30 instead of 6 am. Yikes.

More Adventures From the Magical Land of McKay’s

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I went back to McKay’s Used Bookstore, or as I like to call it, The Place Where Multimedia Nerds Like Me Go When We Die.

I traded in enough movies to stock a small movie rental store and got enough credit to purchase an iPad 3 with 64 GB and a Hank Williams CD box set. It was a good day.

I still go warm and fuzzy inside when I step inside that amazing place. It’s simply ginormous. It’s huge. And it’s big, too.

I didn’t find everything I looked for, but I did come away with a few gems. And in the process, I got my happy fix for at least a month.

There’s no real spiritual segue way, other than to point out that most of us have been guilty of treating God like a giant department store.

It’s like we pray, “God, I’d like a pint of patience, two helpings of humility, a small dose of suffering (to keep me from getting too worldly), and a couple of giant crates of blessing.

What we fail to realize is that what God offers to us here and now isn’t so much gifts or blessings but Himself.

That is, God offers to transform us into the image of Jesus. We get Jesus’ righteousness, perfection, wisdom, and best of all– that power that raised Him from the dead. We get EVERYTHING we need in Jesus for life and godliness.

Sure, we get a few things thrown in that we’d like to return. But those things help more than anything to conform our character and mind into one just like that of Jesus.

So yes, I highly recommend McKays. And I recommend maybe not asking for stuff from God’s hand as much as the gift of having His heartbeat inside you and seeing with His eyes and being filled with His Spirit.

That’s all I got for now.

Sadness and Joy

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It seems there is so much sadness in the world lately. From the Boston Marathon bombings to the tornadoes that ripped through Shawnee and Moore, Oklahoma, it seems tragedy and loss are everywhere. It seems like on Facebook people are having to say goodbye to loved ones, where they be furry or people.

It can be overwhelming if you let it. The magnitude of pain around the world right now is massive. So many people are hurting, so many are suffering, so many seem like they have nothing to look forward to but more hurt and suffering.

But as callous and unfeeling as this may sound, you can still have joy. Joy is not a denial of what happened in Boston or Oklahoma. Joy doesn’t turn a blind eye toward those who have suffered and lost. Joy sees past the pain to the God who waits on the other side. The beautiful part is that God is on both sides of the pain and walking with you through it.

I love an illustration a pastor gave. Jesus isn’t limited by time and space, so he’s in your present with you. He’s also in your future, so that the promises he gave you are already as good as done. He’s in your past in that moment when you were wounded, ready to heal you so that your past wounds no longer bleed into your present. He’s in all three places at once.

I am convinced that sadness and joy can coexist. It’s only right to grieve what’s lost. But we don’t grieve as those who have no hope. We grieve with hope that one day God will set everything right and will restore a thousand-fold what we’ve lost or given up. We grieve as those who know that our troubles are only a blip on the radar screen compared to the glory that awaits and that what we suffer pales in comparison with the ultimate joy that awaits us.

So my heart aches for all those in pain tonight, but my heart rejoices that while there may be pain in the night, joy comes in the morning.

 

Praying for Boston Tonight

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“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

I, like so many of you, just happened to turn on the television and spent the next several minutes trying to figure out what was happening at the Boston Marathon. The more I watched, the more I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It felt like I was watching a disaster movie.

It was horrific. People being carried away with missing limbs and blood splatters on the streets isn’t what you normally see on the news, especially that early in the day. The same feeling I had on 9/11 came back, only this time it felt scarier even though the terrorist attack was on a much smaller scale. I thought, “This could have happened anywhere at any marathon or half-marathon or 5k. It could have been The Music City Marathon and one of my friends who got caught in the explosions.”

I still have trouble accepting that it really happened. Did some deranged lunatic really blow up a bomb, then set the second one to go off just as the first responders were arriving? Did he really put shrapnel int the bombs to make them more lethal? Did he target that 8-year old boy or did he just have the misfortune to be in the way?

I can’t fathom the logic behind something like this. This level of evil goes beyond anything my mind can comprehend. A part of me wants to see this guy caught and shown no mercy, the way he showed mo mercy to these victims.

Then I remember the story of Joseph. How he suffered atrocities at the hands of his own brothers. How he ended up sold into slavery, the first victim of human trafficking in recorded history.

I especially remember his words in Genesis 50. What people intended for harm and for evil, God turned it into good and to salvation for a whole nation. Not only did survival come out of these atrocities, but salvation came through the person of Jesus, from the lineage of David.

I don’t know how, but I do know God will turn this heinous evil into good– someway, somehow. I don’t mean the act itself was good or that the aftermath is anything worth celebrating, but a reason for all of us to mourn and weep.

Yet I do believe that there will be stories that come out of this that will glorify God. Stories of people who sacrificed their bodies and lives so that others could live. Stories of how people came together as one, running toward the carnage when others were running away, and giving a little glimpse of what the Kingdom of God looks like.

The most shocking part of all is that God offers forgiveness even to the very individual who plotted and carried out one of the worst acts of terrorism ever. No one is too low for God to reach and no one is beyond his love. No one.

So I’m praying for the families of the victims and for those who are suffering with wounds that are more than just physical. I’m praying for God to make this and every other act of evil right.

I’m praying more fervently than ever, “Come, Lord Jesus, come!”

Yet I know that one day someone’s testimony of faith will start out something like “I remember exactly where I was when those bombs went off at the end of the Boston Marathon and when God showed up to me in a very real way.”

PS Interestingly enough, today’s Bible verse of the day on my You Version app was Hebrews 12:1-2: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

The Seven Stations of the Cross

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Tonight, I went to a Prayer Experience at Brentwood Baptist Church. It was about praying through the seven stations of the cross. I know that the Roman Catholic Church has 14, but we’re Baptists, so seven for us is a good start.

I didn’t spend too much time at each station, but just enough to grasp a little more of what the Cross meant for me.

I’ve always known about Jesus dying on the cross to save me, but I guess I never really let myself go there in a really deep and meaningful way. If you do, you find shame and humiliation. You find excruciating pain and suffering. You find the most agony one man has ever endured in the history of mankind.

I became aware that it was my humiliation and shame that Jesus bore. It was my sin that he carried on that cross and it was my death that he died. I should have been up there, nailed to that piece of wood.

I realized for the first time that Jesus doesn’t want my sympathy for what happened to him there. He doesn’t want me to feel sorry for him up there. He wants me. All of me. My heart, my mind, my will, my life, all of it.

Just as Simon of Cyrene picked up Jesus’ cross and carried it for him, I’m called to pick up a cross and carry it. That’s what being a disciple means.

Jesus would have done all of it for me, even if I were the only one in the world who needed it. That thought still astounds me. He loves me that much.

So don’t skim over this part of the story. Allow yourself to go there emotionally and mentally and spiritually. Stand in front of the cross and witness the suffering Savior and grieve with his followers. Watch as he is laid in the tomb. Remember that all of this is for you.

Then you can celebrate Easter Sunday.

Rise: A Night of Worship and What Came Out Of It

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I went to a very special and unique Kairos event. It was billed as another Night of Worship, but started off very different than any service I’d ever been to before.

It started as a mock funeral. Mike Glenn led somber-faced pallbearers carrying a casket into the sanctuary. He then proceeded to preach a funeral service for Jesus just as he might for any member of the congregation who passed away.

It might seem a bit macabre, but it really brought two points home to me.

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First, the sin I so easily dismiss and take for granted has consequences. As Mike said, sin brings death to everybody every time. In this case, Jesus took the death that should have been mine. Whenever I look lightly at my sin, I need to remember that it cost Jesus his life.

Second, I must never forget the price paid for my life. Jesus thought I was worth every drop of his blood. That means that I have value beyond my income potential or job title or social status. I have value both in being created in God’s image and redeemed by his Son Jesus.

You can’t have Easter Sunday without Good Friday. The resurrection doesn’t mean anything without the cross. The triumph loses its impact without the suffering and the agony that proceeded it. I love what I read earlier today that the cross wasn’t a defeat and the resurrection the victory. The cross was the victory and the resurrection was the icing on the cake, the proof of that victory for the world to see. You need both.

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For me, the worship at the end meant more because I saw what my sin cost Jesus and what great lengths he went through for me because he’d rather go through hell for me than go to heaven without me (to borrow from Max Lucado).

May you and I have the courage to face Good Friday and take every bit of it in and not just skip to Easter Sunday and the happy part. May we never take lightly or for granted the sin that cost Jesus his life or treat as cheap the life he paid the ultimate price to redeem.

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Late-Night Thoughts About Joseph

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“Joseph replied, ‘Don’t be afraid. Do I act for God? Don’t you see, you planned evil against me but God used those same plans for my good, as you see all around you right now—life for many people.'” (Gen. 50:20)

As I have confessed before, there’s a whole lot I don’t know. Especially when it comes to why horrible things happen to godly people. I can point to verses that talk about God working in mysterious ways and how he works all things together for good, but at the end of the day, I’m unable to explain why God couldn’t have worked it out for them in a less painful way.

That’s when I yield to faith. I yield to what I know of God and his character. I yield to what I know of his proven track record in my own life. And I have to fall down on my knees and confess that he is good and that I have nowhere else to turn.

Joseph comes to mind. If anyone in the Bible had a right to play the victim card, it was Joseph. Sold into slavery by his own flesh and blood, falsely accused and slandered by the wife of the man that he had done nothing but serve faithfully for years, and forgotten in prison by those who promised they would remember. I would have thrown in the towel long before then.

But Joseph chose forgiveness. He chose to look with eyes of faith to what human eyes couldn’t see– that God was working even in the worst of circumstances to save not just one man, but an entire nation. He, like so many others, looked to the promises of God and counted them as good as done even when they seemed as good as dead.

I love what a pastor says. God can take that worst moment of your life, that most painful and humiliating season, and make it the first line of your testimony. To borrow a quote I’ve heard a lot lately, he can turn your mess into your message, your test into your testimony, your trial into triumph, and the victim into a victor. You will be able to speak to the pain that no one else can touch because you’ve walked through it.

I love this verse in Hebrews 11: “By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel, and made arrangements for his own burial.” In other words, Joseph saw that God was able to redeem every single part of what he went through for a purpose far greater than himself. A purpose that saw the rise of a people of God, and later the Messiah.

May you and I see our circumstances with that kind of faith. May we trust that God is just as able to redeem our pain to make something equally as glorious and beautiful out of our messes.

Takeaways from Kairos Roots and 2 Thessalonians 1

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Tonight at Kairos Roots, Aaron Bryant spoke from 2 Thessalonians 1 about suffering and persecution in the church at Thessalonica. Interestingly, Paul doesn’t advise them to pray for an end to it, but that it would be a platform through which people can see their patient endurance and love for each other and be drawn to the God they serve.

I am not a fan of suffering. I don’t really like pain all that much. Missing my Sunday nap is about as painful as I like to get.

But I also know that Romans 5:3 speaks of suffering building endurance, which leads to character, which in turn leads to hope. And hope does not disappoint. If I want character that makes an impression and hope that doesn’t fade or fail, I will have to suffer and undergo persecution.

I don’t have to run around yelling, “Hey! Here I am! Please persecute me and cause me intense suffering!” They make pills for that sort of thing. And suffering and persecution will happen if I am faithful to what God has called me to be and do. It’s inevitable.

When people berate and belittle your faith and speak words of hate at you, they expect hate in return. What gets their attention is when you respond with the love of Christ. That kind of love doesn’t come from a life of ease and comfort; it is born and grows in hardship and adversity, through trials where it is strengthened and challenged.

As much as I want all my stop lights to be green and everyone to be nice to me and always agree with me on everything, life doesn’t work that way. That’s not how God operates. He doesn’t want me happy nearly as much as He wants me holy.

I think that Americans can expect to see more persecution in the months and years to come. I think that we who are not ashamed of our faith and hold unswervingly to our convictions and values will face ridicule and being ostracized. Maybe even one day in the future, our beliefs will land us in jail or even lead to martyrdom.

All I know is that right now, I am called to be faithful where I am, no matter if the people around me like it or not. I am not called to please everybody, but only one. Only what God thinks of me matters.

 

The Sick Blog

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Yes, I’m sick. I came home today from work and Kairos and took my temperature and it was 101.6. I am one sick puppy.

I feel achy and have chills and overall blah-ness. I feel like death warmed over and served on a stick.

This little bit of sickness has helped me to form a kind of solidarity with those who stuggle through worse illnesses than mine like cancer or other diseases and who live in a state of constant pain.

Compared to what some of you are going through, my little fever is like a walk in the park.

I will get over my litle illness. Some will deal with theirs in some form or another for the rest of their lives. Some will only see in this life the promise of Ultimate Healing in heaven.

Lord, be with all those who suffer tonight. Comfort them with Your everlasting arms around them. Let them rest in You tonight.

You have a special message for such as these. Help them to hear Your sweet words of love to them and bring them comfort, so that they in turn may comfort others who deal with suffering as well.

I know You do all things well. Whether You choose to heal or whether You choose to let the thorn in the flesh remain (as in the Apostle Paul’s case), You are holding them near to Your heart.

Let them hear the rhythm of Your heartbeat and may their hearts come to beat in tempo and tune with Yours.

And Lord, help me not to whine. Even with a fever, I am still so blessed, more than I could ever hope to deserve in this or any lifetime.

Thank you that one day there will be no more pain or sorrow or sickness or death and You will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Lord, we long for that day.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.