Anyone who has engaged in spiritual warfare knows the familiar routine: the day begins innocently enough, then it all starts to happen. One thing after another goes wrong, all apparently unrelated. A unexpected bill comes in, a child gets hurt, an unpleasant phone call takes place, a family argument erupts. Or things can be even more serious. A family member is injured, a marriage is threatened, a church begins to split, a job is lost. And so we begin to ask the question, “Is it worth it?”
Lately it seems that almost every day I’m getting asked the same question and giving the same answer.
Here’s the question: How do we bring what we experience today as church into line with what God has laid out in the Bible?
The unexpressed assumption behind the question is that something important is missing.
The book of Psalms opens with a daring statement: “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.” The reason it is daring is because the following words declare who will be blessed and who will not. It is a declaration of God’s right to determine right and wrong, and to judge on that basis.
Are you in trouble? The most important thing to know is that God has a plan. Our trials are not random events outside of his control. Where the enemy has attacked us and caused us harm and pain, we need to know how to work with God in it.
What is he teaching us? Why has he allowed us to go through this? How is he refining us? How is he drawing us closer to himself? Is he dealing with wrong dependencies on people or things other than himself? Are there areas of disobedience in which we have opened ourselves to attack?
Maybe, as with Joseph, there is a greater plan involving more than just our individual lives, in which our testing is a positive part of something wider God is preparing.
Let’s get one thing straight, though. God is not the source of suffering. Our rebellion, which allowed sin and death into the world, is leveraged by Satan for his purposes, and that is the culprit. However, God uses even the plans of the enemy for good.
Suffering becomes the occasion of God’s fatherly and constructive discipline, and thus an opportunity for a deeper understanding and receiving of his love. God’s discipline is not punishment. It is a loving drawing of us toward him through his teaching us and holding us in adversity. Though painful, it is always for our good (Heb. 12:5-11). It yields the “peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). It brings peace with God, maturity and fruitfulness in God’s service.
Often we put up walls and hide behind them, because we are afraid of a greater demand of God on our lives or families. God graciously uses suffering to tear down those walls. His goal is to make us more fearful of disobeying him than of any possible personal challenges.
Other times we are just scared of going through things because we don’t really have the assurance that God will show up for us. God will use trials to enable us to discover that he does keep us in the midst of them. Overcoming fear through suffering is often the beginning of our usefulness for God.
It can be hard, especially when things are difficult, to discern what God is doing. But with a right heart, solid friends around us and lots of prayer, and sometimes after the dust has settled a little, we can usually begin to see his hand at work. How many times have we looked back and said something like this, “I wouldn’t want to go through that again, but I am glad somehow that it happened. I’m stronger, not weaker, because of it.”
Even if we can’t see his plan, he still has one and he’s working it out. If times are tough, hang on, get help and trust in his goodness. He will not fail you.
Like many young men in his twenties, Papias was a man in a hurry. But his reason was unique.
It was around the year 80. Papias lived in the city of Hierapolis, which was strategically located in the middle of a road system that linked the major cities of Asia Minor with each other, and ultimately linked Jerusalem with Rome. Christian teachers would regularly visit the church there.
Papias knew that the earliest generation of disciples — those who had personally known Jesus and heard him preach — were quickly dying out. At least two he knew personally, including possibly John the apostle. Papias decided to record as many eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ ministry as he could. He wrote them in a book which unfortunately has been lost, other than places where it is quoted by others.
But by the grace of God, around the same time Papias was at work, several others who were actual eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry recorded their own accounts, which we still have.
There is nothing like the value of eyewitness testimony. It’s the gold standard as far as evidence is concerned in a court of law.
None of us today has eyewitness testimony of Jesus in the way that the first disciples did. But we still have eyewitness testimony in a different sense. We are people who have met Jesus through his Spirit, and he has changed our lives.
Maybe we’ve forgotten what the phrase to “give your testimony” means. It’s drawn from the language of the law courts. To give our testimony to Jesus is to give our eyewitness account of what he has done for us.
You may not be the most eloquent person. You may not be a public speaker. You may not have had multiple miraculous experiences. But you have something even more powerful. You have eyewitness testimony.
Never underestimate the power of sharing what the Lord has done personally for you. It’s fine to talk about a miracle that happened to someone else, but it’s the account of your own experience that will make a difference with your work colleague, your college roommate or your next-door neighbour.
People may filter what you say any number of ways, but it will still make a difference. A young man I shared a house with at university lived a completely godless life. I shared my story with him, but despaired of it having any impact. Shortly before we graduated, he came to me privately and told me after watching me for three years, he wanted what I had. His problem was, as he put it, he didn’t want to pay the price. One thing I know, though — he will still remember my testimony today.
Peter told his readers he didn’t make up stories about Jesus. He was right there when it happened. That’s part of the power of the New Testament. It wasn’t made up a hundred years later, as liberal theology once alleged. It was hot off the press, as better scholarship today has verified. Was it true? The eyewitnesses were ready to back up their testimony with their lives, and many of them did.
Are you ready to take a much smaller risk than they did? Share your story of what Jesus has done for you. Even if your friends don’t accept it, they’ll never forget it. You may be the only eyewitness they ever need.
