Now here we have a very peculiar source of consolation in suffering. The thought that the apostle’s suffering benefited others soothed him in his afflictions, and this is a consolation which is essentially Christian. Consider how the old Stoicism groped in the dark to solve the mystery of grief, telling you it must be, and that it benefits and perfects you. Yes, that is true enough. But Christianity says much more; it says, Your suffering blesses others; it gives them firmness. Here is the law of the Cross: “No man dieth to himself”; for his pain and loss is for others and brings with it to others joy and gain. –F. W. Robertson, M. A.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Look at this young girl’s face. Her countenance speaks volumes. Her face a billboard for one who came hoping to hear one thing, but instead, heard something quite the contrary. Her hope snatched out from under her just as quickly as a magician makes a quarter disappear. She is downcast. Questioning. Searching. Disheartened. Dare I say fearful? I have seen this same expression all too often as of late. Many in the Body of Christ have been wearing this very same face. God has sent me to you, beloved brother, dearest sister, to re-mind you that your loving Father is right by your side. His all-powerful right hand holding yours—lending you His strength in your time of weakness. Take Courage, beloved. El Roi, “the God who sees me” is with you. “We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives!” –2 Corinthians 4:8 MSG.
The enemy of our God—our soul, is keeping busy. We have been lulled, however temporarily, into forgetting that we live in a fallen world. Eden no more…
One in which we both reap what we sow and, are suddenly seized by the inevitable end-result of having lived at all. A world in which God never promised us a trouble-free existence. “I have spoken these things to you so that you shall have peace in me. You shall have suffering in the world, but take heart, I have overcome the world” –John 16:33. A world that is filled with people who will one-day leave their mortal coils in the very dust from which they were created. He, our enemy, wants us to forget about this part. Conning us into believing we’ll live forever. That death is for others, not for us. He does everything possible to shift our focus away from God, from pursuing a life in Christ, a relationship with Him. From beginning to prepare ourselves for those things God has clearly foretold will come to all mankind. The saved and unsaved alike. No race or social class left exempt. As with death, disease and trials, tribulations, and hardships are among the great equalizers of this, our one human race. It is a sure sign of Grace when a man can trust in his God, for the natural man, when afraid, falls back on some human trust, or he thinks that he will be able to laugh at the occasion of fear. He gives himself up to jollity and forgetful-ness, or perhaps he braces himself up with a natural resolution—”To take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.” He goes anywhere but to his God. –Charles Spurgeon.
I’ve received reports of loved ones being suddenly struck ill. One minute healthy and smiling, the next in peril or pain. Cancers being diagnosed, brain tumors and shingles attacking bodies, strokes leaving once strong and virile men at the mercy of bodies they can no longer control. Being washed now, dressed too, and fed by the very woman they once took pride in gallantly protecting—providing for. Minds once sharp and quick now muddled, processing as slowly as molasses pours. Others still whose memories are being wiped clean by Alzheimer’s. So frustrating! Such heartbreak. And yet, it is to these very souls that we must go fellow Christian, and, with a touch as tender as a child’s, hearts bursting with compassion and the love of Christ, uphold these words we find in today’s scripture verse.
For us as Christians, tribulation, trials, and sudden hardships should be expected; a thing we know with certainty will come. Christ made it clear to us that they would. And He cannot lie. The only unknown is the ‘when’ of it. That is for God alone to know. Yet, as I’ve stated, Christ expects us to go to, sends us to, these very souls hip-deep in sorrow, shredded by recent loss, dazed by the 1-2 sucker punch of their child’s, son’s, brother’s diagnosis, and encourage them to fear not. To re-mind them that God sees them, knows what has just happened to them and that He has a plan to bring some-thing, some future good, from this seemingly rotten, pain-full, confusing circumstance—if, they’ll but trust Him. If they’ll but leave the door of hope cracked just enough that He might come into this, their worst nightmare, and flood them with, overtake them with hope. Comforting them, offering His strength to endure, press on and into Him…
But how? How do I go to one so raw, so exposed? What can I possibly say to them to help ease their pain or return to them just a glimmer of the hope they just lost? How do you and I go and comfort, bolster, build-up, offer peace to the one whose world just got turned on its head? We can only do this, offer this because we have first experienced it for ourselves. More, because the Spirit of the Living God lives in us, enabling us. He alone gives us the words, His Words. His peace. We can do this because we have experienced it first-hand. We know it to be real. We simply offer our Truth. His Truth. As tenderly and surely and deeply, yet as confidently and powerfully as Jesus Himself would! Is doing through us. We who have felt Christ come and wrap us in a peace that should not exist amongst the chaos of the moment. Strength to stand and take the next step and the one after that, after leaving the last ounce of the strength we possessed discarded, at the feet of that terminal diagnosis.
Have you been here Brother? Sister? Church mother? Pastor? Friend? Is it you I was sent back to encourage today? You whose hand I might hold and say, “fear not, beloved one, God is nearer to you than you could ever imagine. Closer to you than your skin and breath…”
Is it you that I was sent to share my survival story with? My, suddenly-that-day-when-the-bottom-fell-out-of-my-world-too, testimony? Because I have one, I do. One where I not only survived but thrived and grew and, as a result of my suddenly moment, God stepped into the very center of it and saved so much more than this my mere flesh, this temporary tent I call me. Jesus walked right into the messy middle of my fractured mind and commanded it to reroute. He commanded the clot in my brain to cease from doing any further damage, and He then lavishly, lovingly, poured healing balm over every area of my brain, restoring it. Jesus saved the real me, His child; safe. He saved my immortal soul; healing my mind and emotions, and a brain fractured and failing as the result of a massive stroke. He came calming that fear that that would well up inside of me each time I so wanted to move the left side of a body, a side I could no longer control. In those instants, God came with His peace, His strength, and re-minded me that there was never a moment, not one second of my life as I’d known it, including that very second a blood clot ripped through my brain, that I’d ever been in control of, could stop from happening, what could happen to this earthly tent I call my-self. None of us has that ability. That is His alone. He alone is Sovereign.
But what we can do, are called to do, must do, is come to you and her and him amid your trials, your dis-eases, your crisis, whatever they may be and, right there in the messy middle of them, share the love of this same Jesus who met us, met me, dead center in my crisis. Assuring you, as only one who has experience, has a relationship with God, can. God is for you, beloved. He is right where you are, right now. He sees you and knows your fears and feels your pain. He once felt it all Himself. Remember, He is fully God, but Jesus when He walked this earth was also fully man. “He knows our pain all too well. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” –Hebrews 2:14-18.
Fear not beloved, all things, even those we label as, feel are, the worst possible things; our parents or children or loved ones becoming ill, must pass through the Sovereign hands of our loving, kind, just and mercy-full Father. And, know this: if He permits a thing, even some bitter thing, some circumstance or illness to touch our lives, their life, it is this same God who also holds your life, their life, in His hands. Whatever may come your way, God’s got you. Nothing. No-thing, no sickness, trial nor adversity can ever, nor ever will, separate you from God’s love for you. Ever. He has promised that to each of His children. If you are His today, then this promise is surely yours. You say, “I feel so dead and cold, I have not the spiritual vivacity and warmth and life that I used to possess. I used to come up to the Tabernacle and feel such joy and rejoicing in worshipping on God’s Holy Day, but now I feel flat and dull.” Oh, but do not be tempted to get away from Christ because of this! Who runs away from the fire because he is cold? Who, in summer, runs away from the cooling rook because he is hot? Should not my deadness be the reason why I should come to Jesus Christ?” – Charles Spurgeon.
Friend, if you or a loved one is experiencing a time of fiery affliction and you don’t have a relationship with Jesus, please, do not let today pass you by without asking Him to come into your heart as Lord and Savior. Invite Him into the middle of your pain-filled, messy circumstance, and then watch God do what only He can!
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