Christian Community amid Suffering
I have a great team of leaders who lead community groups and disciple disciple-making disciples in our 20s ministry. The past two weeks I’ve loved watching our Christian community at work as suffering hit.
My friends/fellow leaders Ryan and Lailah got news that Ryan’s sister Jamie was in a car accident in Kazakhstan, leaving her in a coma and the other two passengers dead. Immediately Ryan and Lailah got on a plane and flew east. As Ryan and Lailah walked through this suffering and asked for prayer and help, I watched two other members of our team, a married couple who have suffered greatly the past 4 months, pass on care and counsel from the Word of God. Here is one of the emails that this couple sent to Ryan and Lailah and our whole team:
These are the verses we have been hanging onto through our season of trial:
Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, and by him we cry “Abba”, “Father”.
Romans 5: 2b – 5 “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts”
John 16:33 “in this world you WILL have trouble (tribulation – severe suffering). But take heart! I have overcome the world!”
Psalm 86: 5 – 7 “You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you. Hear my prayer, O Lord; Listen to my cry for mercy. In the day of my trouble I will call to you, for you will answer me.”
Lamentations 3: 21 – 23 “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Becasue of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every mornings; great is your faithfulness” (this is a GREAT chapter in general)
Psalm 34: 17 – 18 ” The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. the Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”
Romans 8:28 ” And we know that in ALL THINGS God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son…”
1 Peter 1: 6b – 7 ” For a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Keep going! Keep trusting in God’s GOODNESS, His SOVEREIGNTY and His WISDOM… know that God is able to use ALL THINGS for our good and for His glory! Remember that we only have small brains, capable of only understanding what God allows us to understand. We do not have His perspective and so we cannot grasp His infinite wisdom… but also, remember that “Jesus wept” – even though God’s ways and thoughts are SO much beyond ours, He STILL CRIES WITH US!!!
We are weeping with you and praying for you through this trial…
Heaps of love…
It’s a New Day
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Great Man is One Sentence
In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, on of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. ‘A great man,’ she told him, ‘is one sentence.’ Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: ‘He preserved the union and freed the slaves.’ Franklin Roosevelt’s was: ‘He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.’ Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph.
…One way to orient your life toward greater purpose is to think about your sentence.
-Daniel Pink, Drive, pp. 154-155
Power on Earth
Oswald Chambers in a letter to his sister, Dec 17, 1906:
You see, I believe that Jesus Christ our Lord has all power in heaven and on earth; do you? I find most people believe that He has all power in heaven, but are not sure about earth. I am finding out day by day more wonderful things about Jesus our Lord and what He can do.
Philippines Preaching Conference
On Saturday I travel to the Philippines for a week, along with fellow pastors/close friends Mark Mitchell and Rob Hall. There we will put on a preaching conference for 100+ Filipino pastors. My component of the conference includes lecturing on Gospel-Centered Preaching and Preaching the Parables. On the way there we will spend a day in Guam visiting with friends at Pacific Islands University and Seminary.
This is going to be a great trip. I can’t wait. I love serving at a church that cares about preaching, training pastors to preach, foreign missions, and sending its pastors on adventures such as this. I love that our church here in the Bay Area is full of Filipinos who love the gospel and want to see it advance in their home country.
I’d like to ask all of you to pray for this trip.
- Pray that God would use our teaching to equip and inspire the pastors we will be training, most of whom have never received any preaching instruction before.
- Pray that God would teach us much through the friendships we form with the Filipino pastors and our stay in their culture.
- Pray for the Philippines, that the gospel would advance and local churches would thrive in this country of 7,107 islands and 92 million people (the world’s 12 most populous country).
- Pray for our wives and kids while we’re away.
- Pray for our safety, sleep, and stomachs.
- Pray that we’d have a lot of fun.
Thank you for your prayer.
I’ve decided to fully unplug during this trip: no computer, phone, email, etc. So, unless I pre-write some posts to appear while I’m away, I will not be blogging next week.
Tim Keller on The Shack
Tim Keller offers his opinions on The Shack:
At the heart of the book is a noble effort — to help modern people understand why God allows suffering, using a narrative form. The argument Young makes at various parts of the book is this. First, this world’s evil and suffering is the result of our abuse of free will. Second, God has not prevented evil in order to accomplish some glorious, greater good that humans cannot now understand. Third, when we stay bitter at God for a particular tragedy we put ourselves in the seat of the ‘Judge of the world and God’, and we are unqualified for such a job. Fourth, we must get an ‘eternal perspective’ and see all God’s people in joy in his presence forever.
…However, sprinkled throughout the book, Young’s story undermines a number of traditional Christian doctrines. Many have gotten involved in debates about Young’s theological beliefs, and I have my own strong concerns. But here is my main problem with the book. Anyone who is strongly influenced by the imaginative world of The Shack will be totally unprepared for the far more multi-dimensional and complex God that you actually meet when you read the Bible.
Read the whole thing.
What Stands in the Way of Us Experiencing Joy?
One of my favorite reads in 2008 was Mike Mason’s book on joy, Champagne for the Soul (I refer to it here). In agreement with Mark, I’d nuance some things differently, but Mason is very helpful on joy. In an interview from earlier this year (it’s worth reading the whole thing), Mason answers an important question with great insight:
What stands in the way of us experiencing joy?
One thing: forgetting the gospel. The gospel is the most wonderful thing in the world. If you know it, and believe it, you will be joyful. You can’t help it. So if you’re not joyful, you’re not believing the gospel. You’ve lost touch with its amazing power. You’ve forgotten why you came to Jesus in the first place—because He, and He alone, has the words of life that set you free. He alone loves you not for anything you do…Everyone who gives their life to Jesus does so with great joy, because this news is so electrifying. The gospel is simple, but you’ll never encounter anything else like it. Over and over in my experiment I discovered great joy in a simple return to the gospel. It gave me the permission to keep stripping away from my life everything that doesn’t really work, everything that doesn’t truly bring deep, satisfying joy. My thought life, the way I prayed, my relationships, my work—everything was overhauled for the pure sake of joy and love. Only the gospel gives a person such radical freedom.
If R.C. Sproul Could Do Anything Over Again, What Would It Be?
In this 4 minute clip, Mark Driscoll asks R.C. Sproul about his greatest regret from 45 years of ministry. I post this because I think R.C.’s answer should deeply encourage pastors: he wishes he had left the academic world sooner to begin preaching to and pastoring a local church.
Joy Killers
My friend Mark Lauterbach has written a series of helpful posts on joy (beginning here), springing from his own lack of joy and his reading of Mike Mason’s excellent book on joy. Mark’s also written some helpful posts on the joy-killing nature of introspection (beginning here). Here’s an excerpt from my favorite of Mark’s posts: 90 Days of Joy and the Serious Life:
There is appropriate seriousness but there is also seriousness that is a mark of pride. Our society cultivates people who are serious about themselves — and the church does too. One mark of this: people who are so serious about life have very little sense of humor. They are busy doing important things. How can they smile? The world is coming apart. Global warming is going to ruin us all. There is injustice in the world. We must do something. There is little place for humor.
Christians too can be too serious…We can be serious about our lives, our families, gender roles, leadership, the honor of God, and the preservation of the Gospel. The mark of the overly serious Christian — no joy. Another mark — hand wringing and pontificating about how terrible things are in the church.
I have been reading the story of King David lately. There is no way one can read that story and walk away taking our selves too seriously. God is at work — through bronze age warriors, stumbling leadership, and limited people. The ark of the covenant is taken and we find that God is quite capable of upholding his honor. I would not want any of these people for friends — but God does.
The lesson of OT history is that God will accomplish his purposes in the midst of the mess of our lives. He uses us, but we are rusty tools. We are not that important.
I find I am tempted to be self serious — to lose all humor and joy. My inner thought is that there is too much to do, too many problems to solve, too many errors to correct, too much suffering in the world. I need to be concerned, serious, intentional.
Woody Allen poked fun at us years ago when he began his commencement address with words along this line: “We stand at the crossroads of human history. One road takes us into nuclear annihilation. The other leads into environmental catastrophe. We must make a wise choice.” I think there is some perspective here for Christians — we are always creating catastrophes and disasters and then rising up in our self-righteousness to take them on. We are doomsday specialists.
But I am not necessary. A few years ago I faced cancer, with surgery and treatments. It came at a time of significant need in the church I served. But I was knocked out of commission. At first I panicked. How would the church survive without my leadership? The answer: it did just fine, even prospered, as God did not have cancer and the Holy Spirit was not on medical leave.
Here is where I applied Lewis — I am not to allow the problems of the world or church or family blackmail God and joy. I can see many problems in the world. But the makers of misery must not win and the joy of Christ must prevail.
