glenna marshall

Not Why, But Who

“You don’t get to know why. You just need to trust me.”

I cannot count how many times this phrase has left my mouth over the last few weeks. I have a three-year-old, and nearly every question out of his mouth these days is “why?”

I only answer my son’s why questions about half the time, to be honest. Sometimes I don’t want to answer him because the why is a reflex more than a sincere question Sometimes I don’t know the answer. Sometimes there’s no time for it. He doesn’t need to know why I expect obedience when there’s imminent danger. There’s no time to explain broken bones, head injuries, and death when I’m calling for him to come away from the street. He doesn’t get to know why all the time, but he does need to trust me and obey.

We Think We Need a Why

Three Octobers ago, I was entangled in a legal battle for this very child when his adoption fell apart in a way we never saw coming. During that same October, I was finally given a name for the mysterious disease that crippled me with pain. I was sick, and I was petrified of losing a child I’d quickly loved but held with both a clenched fist and a loose grip. That was a hard fall.

Two Octobers ago, I spent many days next to my mom’s side while she recovered from brain surgery. I remember one October Sunday when she was feeling well enough to sit on her back porch where we watched the squirrels empty her bird feeder. We drank spiced tea, and I quietly worried if the mother I’d had up until that point would come back to me completely. She did, eventually. But that that was also a hard fall.

Last October, I holed up in cabin in the woods during one weekend and wrote much of the book that comes out next year. I picked apart the ways God was with me in the middle of the previous two Octobers, and all the ones prior when I yearned for babies and battled a silent disease. In all those Octobers, I couldn’t pin down a reason for any of the shadows of fall or why I had to walk through the valleys that came with the turning leaves.

I didn’t know what God was doing in any of my suffering or in the quiet days of waiting with longings piercing my heart. I thought He was just being slow to answer my prayers. Or maybe He was ignoring me. Sometimes you just don’t get to know why the waiting is long and the prayers seem unanswered.

When I untangle my desire to understand why we go through hard things, what’s beneath it is a desire for a guaranteed positive outcome. But does knowing all will end well this side of heaven really require me to trust God? Looking back at the Octobers of my past, I can now see some of the ways He was working for my good and teaching me to trust Him. But not knowing why at the time wrought a deeper kind of trust than would have grown if I’d known exactly what the future held. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Is it really trusting God to be sovereign and good if you demand to know every strand of His reasoning? We might think solace is found in having a concrete answer to our why, but real solace comes in knowing God can be trusted.

We might think solace is found in having a concrete answer to our why, but real solace comes in knowing God can be trusted. Share on X

Not Why, But Who

In all those old Octobers, I thought of Job a lot. He wasn’t privy to the discussion between God and Satan. He didn’t know he was being sifted or that God was certain of his perseverance. When he voiced his why to God, God’s answer wasn’t a why but who. The study of God’s character we’re given in the story of Job is perhaps the real gift of the book. Job wanted to know–Was it his sin? Was God set against him? Was it something Job forgot to do? Why all this suffering and loss? God didn’t give Job the answer Job might have thought would satisfy him. But God gave Job the answer he needed. The answer was God himself. Not why, but who.

Job questioned God in a way we can surely relate to. “I will say to God: ‘Do not declare me guilty! Let me know why You prosecute me,’” (Job 10:2). But God answered with descriptions of how He created everything and sovereignly holds it all together without any help from Job or his friends. “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? Let him who argues with God give an answer…Would you really challenge My justice? Would you declare Me guilty to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God’s? Can you thunder with a voice like His?” (Job 40:2, 8-9) Rather than tell Job why he was suffering, God showed Job the scope of His power in creating the world and sustaining it.

It’s odd to answer why with who, but God showed Job He could be trusted, blindly trusted. We want to know why God does what He does or why He seems silent when we demand an answer. We think knowing every nuanced train of His thought will bring us comfort for the valleys of shadow we walk through. But more than knowing why, we can find comfort in who He is and what He has done to sustain us.

Those who belong to Christ are safe in His hands (see John 10). Though we may walk through pain, heartache, physical suffering—even death—our souls are eternally safe in Christ. He suffered God’s wrath in our place so that we can be reconciled to God and have eternity with Him. When Jesus was resurrected, He guaranteed our resurrection. If God allows suffering, we can trust that the sovereign, good God who did not spare His own Son for us will sustain us when we can’t see how He’ll do it.

“He did not even spare His own Son but offered Him up for us all; how will He not also with Him grant us everything?” (Rom. 8:32)

 

Know The Who

You may not know what’s going on in your hard days right now–why God does what He does or doesn’t do what you want Him to do. You may not know until next October or ten Octobers from now. Or maybe you won’t know until your feet are standing in the new creation where time isn’t measured by Octobers.

You don’t have to know why God works the way He does or doesn’t. You just have to know Him. Look to the Word and all the ways He is revealed as sovereign, good, just, and wise. I mean that literally—take a pen and a notebook and write down every statement or intimation about God. Start with Job, or Isaiah, or Psalms, or John, or Colossians. Whatever Scripture says about God’s character, write it down and meditate on it until you believe it. Setting your heart on His faithfulness will settle our anxiousness, gazing on His goodness will calm your fears, studying His presence will comfort your loneliness.

Eventually, you’ll see that even when you don’t know why you’re enduring suffering or uncertainty, you can trust God with your life. Knowing Him is enough to endure.

 

Photo by Ken Treloar on Unsplash

When You Feel Too Unworthy to Serve

I remember the first time I stood up in front of a group of women to teach the Bible. My shirt was damp with sweat, and my voice wobbled into the microphone. My knees might actually have knocked together in fear. But it wasn’t fear of failure or of public speaking. It was fear that the women in that room would see through the layers of clothes, skin, vessels, and bones and examine the heart beneath. I was afraid that if they knew what really pulsed beneath the veneer of rhetoric and biblical knowledge, they’d ask me to leave immediately.

Though I believed what I was teaching with all my heart, the darkness of my sin seemed like a disqualifier. If the hearers knew that sometimes I struggle to get out of bed in the morning, that sometimes I close my Bible and yell at my kids, that sometimes I have questions I am afraid to ask—they’d see me for the impostor I really am. If I escaped without being called a hypocrite, then surely I had pulled the wool over their eyes well and good.

No one threw any stones that first time, nor any time since then. But nearly every time I presume to teach a Bible study, teach my kid’s class at church, or even talk to my own children about Christ, I feel like I’m failing in every possible way. Surely there’s someone better suited to this than me! Surely there’s someone who isn’t bent toward anger, tied down with selfishness, locked arms with laziness.

I hear the voice of condemnation nearly every time I seek to serve the body of Christ. With a hiss and a squeeze he pelts me with my very own doubts. Who are you to be teaching anyone anything?

Essentially, the liar says this: “Your sins are too great. God can’t use you.”

What he means is this: “Quit.”

Distinguish Between the Voices

Sometimes our sins do preclude us from serving. If we’re in open, rebellious, unrepentant sin, our church should do us the favor of removing us from service. Unrepentant sin disqualifies us from service and the benefits of church membership, and loving discipline should be exercised in hopes of restoration. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about that temptation to abandon your post for the gospel because you feel unworthy to fulfill it. When it comes to our identity in Christ, there are two voices we can listen to. One is condemning, and one is not.

When it comes to our identity in Christ, there are two voices we can listen to. One is condemning, and one is not. Share on X

Paul tells us that in Christ, there is no more condemnation for us (Rom. 8:1). The voice of the Lord in His Word will correct and rebuke our sin, but it will not be tinged with accusation and shame. Like the woman at the feet of Jesus after her potential stone-throwers had scattered, we can look around and ask, “Where is my accuser?” When we have repented from sin and believed in Christ for our atonement, there is no more condemnation left for us because it was all poured out on Jesus at the cross. So the voice in your head that tells you that your sins are too great, your gifts too small, your work too fraught with selfishness to matter—that’s not the Lord. That’s our adversary, the devil. If you are in Christ, Satan cannot steal your soul, but if he can prevent you from holding your post for the kingdom, then his mission is mostly accomplished.

It appears like humility to step back from service when you feel unworthy, but it’s not humility. It’s disbelief in the gospel. When you believe the enemy’s lie that your struggle with lust or gossip or laziness or anger cancels out any service to the Lord, you are essentially believing that Jesus’ blood was not enough to cover your sin. You are adding to the gospel by doing penance.

In her book, Humble Roots, Hannah Anderson writes: “One reason that we’re tempted to assume unnecessary guilt is because it can make us look humble without actually having to be humbled. We can maintain our place of centrality while still convincing ourselves that we’re lowly. But when we navel-gaze or become preoccupied with our weaknesses, we’re simply turning our attention back on ourselves; and by judging ourselves, we put ourselves in God’s place. We’re saying, in effect, that the Holy Spirit is not competent enough to do His work of convicting ‘the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.’ And if He is not capable, we must do it for Him.”1

When you’re tempted to abandon your post because you feel unworthy of service, learn to discern whether that inner monologue is from God or not by familiarizing yourself with His voice. Simply put, you know His voice by knowing His Word. When His words become imprinted in your heart and mind, you’ll know how to combat the enemy’s temptation to let your weakness displace Christ’s work at the cross.

Not Sinless but Not Slaves

We are not sinless people, not this side of heaven. But neither are we slaves to sin either. God has rescued us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of His Son (Col. 1:13).  John makes is clear that a life characterized by habitual, unrepentant sin reveals unbelief, but when Christ is our Advocate, we have forgiveness for our sins (1 Jn. 1:9, 2:1-2, 3:4-6). The distinction here is pursuit of sin versus fleeing from it. If you are fleeing your sins and building your life around the pursuit of godliness, then being a saint who still sins doesn’t exclude you from all gospel service.

If you’re unsure whether sin in your life disqualifies you, ask yourself this question: Am I fighting my sin? If the answer is no, then talk with your pastor or elders about how to fight it. Put up parameters for accountability. Step out of service for a season. Make killing your pet sin your highest priority.

However, if it’s not habitual sin but rather a general feeling of unworthiness, do not abandon your post.

If the regular struggle with sin were the universal ministry disqualifier, the globe would be empty of preachers, teachers, elders, missionaries, nursery workers, deacons, worship leaders, Sunday school teachers, and many more useful and needed kingdom workers. Withdrawing from your post because you are not sinless doesn’t just affect you. It hurts the Church. It hurts your church.

Withdrawing from your post because you are not sinless doesn’t just affect you. It hurts the Church. It hurts your church. Share on X

I’ve watched Christians who are gifted in all sorts of service shy away from serving because they feel they don’t have the spiritual status to do so. Feelings are not truth tellers. Scripture is. “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20). So, when I hear someone say that they feel like a hypocrite and shouldn’t be serving, my encouragement is always direct: Don’t quit. Don’t squander the gifts the Lord has given you and that your church has affirmed in you. We need you to persevere, even when you feel unworthy. In yourself, you are unworthy, but Christ has made you worthy. Remember who you are in Christ and obey His commands.

Confident in Christ

That first time I took the role of teacher and stood in front of a group with my Bible was not the last time I felt completely wrong for the job. Years later, I still feel terribly unworthy. In myself, I am unworthy. But I don’t have to prove that I am sinless. Everyone knows I’m not. Everyone knows you’re not. What matters is that God has accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin and has judged us righteous because of Jesus. We get to wear the righteousness of Christ, and we should serve out of confidence in His victory at the cross. Navel-gazing will not help us be obedient to Jesus’ commands to make disciples.

God doesn’t need us, but He has chosen to use us for the advancement of His kingdom. If He has saved you, He will sanctify you, and He will expect you to obey His commands. We can serve—not because we are perfect—but because He who has promised is faithful, because He will finish the work He has started, because He is the anchor for our souls. We can serve with confidence in Christ because our identity has been secured with His own blood.

 

1Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots: How Humility Ground and Nourishes Your Soul (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2016), 108.

Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash

 

Can I Trust God with My Child’s Suffering?

He was eating a waffle. Just sitting across the café table from me, all gangly arms and legs, eating a waffle that he’d covered in maple syrup. He’s just turned ten, and I’m increasingly aware of the mere three inches between our heights. I picked at my salad, trying to decide if a cup of coffee might soothe the pounding in my temples. The caffeine wouldn’t keep me up at night any more than the swirl of medical information I’d just absorbed. I listened to my son’s animated chatter about summer break and basketball, and then he stopped short and looked me in the eye and said, “Mom, I don’t want to do this.” I blinked hard and fast, not wanting him to see my tears. I didn’t want him to have to do it either.

It could be much worse. I’ve watched friends parent their children through cancer and chronic illnesses. My son is healthy in the ways that matter the most. But the future holds at least a decade of incredibly restrictive treatments that will further isolate an already timid child. He’s not in pain now, but he might be in the future.

My son’s words hung in the air for a moment too long. We’d been with doctors and specialists for hours. You’re the mom, I reminded myself. Jesus, help me be strong for my son. I offered some calming words while trying not to picture what the next ten years might look like. He’ll be twenty by then. I swallowed hard. He asked for a storytelling podcast on the two-hour trip home, and with the children’s hospital in our rear view mirror, we distracted ourselves with someone else’s imagination.

Hours later I allowed myself to buckle beneath the pressure of a brave face and a long uphill climb. I hid in the bathroom and cried. As much as I wanted to stay home, I knew I needed to drag myself to our mid-week church meeting that evening. I wept and shared the day’s news because I needed someone else to lift a corner of this burden so it’s not so heavy. It is one thing trust the Lord with your own suffering. I get that. I’ve been there more than once. I have a t-shirt. But it is an excruciating exercise of faith to trust the Lord with your child’s suffering.

It is one thing to trust the Lord with your own suffering. But it is an excruciating exercise of faith to trust Him with your child’s suffering. Share on X

I don’t want hard things for my kids. I want them to be happy and well-adjusted. I want them to know the sweetness of God’s goodness and the faithfulness of His presence. I want to protect them from evil and suffering and sadness. Basically, I want them to trust God like their life depends on it without their life actually depending on it. But I know in looking back on my own years of physical and emotional suffering that that’s not really an expectation I can logically hold on to. It is the hard stuff that teaches us about God’s faithfulness. It’s down in the valley of the shadow when we know that He is with us. We forget we need Him in the green pastures by the still waters. We are more inclined to call for Him when we’re scared and it’s dark and the road is uphill all the way.

“…we know that affliction produces endurance…” (Rom. 5:3)

The church prayed for us at the end of that long day of doctors and waffles and concern. They prayed for discernment, for more options, for wise parenting that comforts our son. I thought of Moses when his arms got tired. This is why you share your joys and your sorrows with the body of Christ: so your arms don’t get tired. When I tucked my son into bed that night, he whispered his fear into the dark. “Mom, I just want my old life back.”

His words knifed an actual pain in my chest. I felt it throb right next to my aorta. I curled up next to him and cupped my hand around his cheek so he’d look me in the eye. “This is hard stuff. No doubt about it, God is having you walk a hard road.” I paused. It would be a hard road for an adult, let alone a ten-year-old.

“Did you know that when your dad and I got married, we had a really hard road to walk, too? A doctor told me something was wrong with my body. She told me it was called infertility. It meant I couldn’t be a mom. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to have it. I just wanted my old life back. I was sad for a long time. But then one day, years later, your dad and I adopted you. And we love you so much. If I had gotten my old life back, I wouldn’t have you. In my really sad days, God was being good to me. He was teaching me to trust Him. So maybe, what we do is look for the ways God is being good to you with all this hard stuff. He’s really good at using our sadness for good because He loves us. Nobody can do that like God can.”

A small smile. “Okay, Mom.” He turned over to go to sleep.

“…endurance produces proven character…” (Rom 5:4)

I slipped from his room and closed the door quietly. I would trade places with him in an instant. I feel one-hundred percent out of control. Though I’ve spent the days since researching treatment options and second opinions, there is little I can do to stifle the blow of suffering my son will feel.

“..and proven character produces hope.” (Rom. 5:4)

And this is where I find myself staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night wondering if God is God enough to love my son through his suffering.

I know that He is.

How do I know? Well, to quote the most repeated song of my childhood, the Bible tells me so. If I’ve learned anything about suffering in Scripture over the past few years, it’s that God can use it to draw us close to Him. In James 1, Jesus’ brother tells us that maturity in Christ comes through the perseverance born of trials. You can’t really learn perseverance when life is easy and you don’t need to persevere. No, perseverance is learned in the refining fire of suffering, and as Peter says in his first epistle, the perseverance we learn in hardship brings praise, honor, and glory to Christ (1:7). Hope must be anchored in the grace of Christ, of His work for us at the cross—not in trouble-free lives marked by comfort or ease. Hope that is anchored in Christ doesn’t disappoint because it cannot be plucked from our hands the way that health, possessions, normalcy, and relationships can. Hope in Christ is eternally secure.

“This hope will not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom. 5:5)

Hope that is anchored in Christ doesn’t disappoint because it cannot be plucked from our hands the way that health, possessions, normalcy, and relationships can. Share on X

My son is a new believer in Jesus. We’ve taught him the gospel from infancy, but the blooming of general belief into real, fruit-bearing faith has been beautiful to behold. While he is learning to follow Jesus, we are still learning to follow Jesus when we wish we could have our old life back.

In the same way that we have walked through suffering of our own, we are trying to look for the ways God is being good to us. It’s difficult to look into the eyes of a child and explain why certain things happen when we don’t know the answers ourselves. But I believe that looking for the ways God is being good to us in suffering will ultimately point us to the cross where He was good to us in ways we cannot fully comprehend. At the bottom of all of this is the truth that God loves my son more than I do. He is the One who hung the stars in place and planned to send Jesus to carry our sins and our sorrows before He even put those stars in place. He has promised us that “affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Sprit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5).

He is trustworthy when it comes to your own suffering. And He’s trustworthy when it comes to your child’s suffering. It might be hard to see His goodness when your child hurts, but your child will learn to trust Jesus by watching you learn to trust Jesus. While He may not give us the physical healing we desire for our kids, His hope does not disappoint. Ever. And really, that’s the hope we want for our children, right?

 

 

 

 

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Look at Jesus Until You See Him

We were sitting in a circle on a Wednesday night in the part of the church building called the parlor. If you grew up in a Southern Baptist church there’s a good chance you know which room it is. It’s got mauve wallpaper and darker mauve carpet and chairs made to appear Victorian but that actually look like they were bought in the 60’s, which they absolutely were. This is the room where you have wedding showers and…well, I’m not sure what else. We use it for book studies and prayer meetings, those kinds of church events that are typically less attended by churchgoers across the country. You know what I mean.

It was not so long ago when we circled up in the mauve parlor around a book and a dialogue, and to be honest, these are some of my favorite parts of church life. Sitting on outdated furniture in a small room where the air conditioning sometimes works with the salt-of-the-earth folks that had the compulsion to show up on a Wednesday night in the summer, this is where some of the deeper work of fellowship and building up together happens. That night, the chapter in the book our little church is reading covered the topic of fighting sin, and I’ve been plagued by the author’s absence of actionable steps ever since. There wasn’t a plan for overcoming the things that rear their big, ugly heads in our ugly, little hearts. There was simply the encouragement to behold the glory of God.

We often want a three-step formula for fighting our sin. Do this + don’t do that = victory over sin. That seems reasonable. Tell me what to do to be better, Jesus. It makes my pharisaical little heart bloom with pride when I can fix something, when I can fix it. (Never mind that I broke it in the first place.) But, the absence of steps in the book reminded me of the absence of steps in Scripture. Certainly, there are Scriptural calls to be alert and to be faithful in prayer and in exposure to the Word. Making war on our sin is an absolute must. But unlike the things in life I can progressively conquer with bulleted steps like weightloss or increasing my savings account, I’m struggling to come up with an exact formula for killing my sin. The “doer” in me really wants a bulleted list.

But you know, these three-step plans aren’t what we need because they speak to our pride-bent nature for trying to work our way into God’s good graces. Like that’s ever worked for anyone. It’s what Paul said with an obvious note of incredulousness in his voice in Galatians 3, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh?” Essentially, it’s this: “Look here, dummy. You didn’t save yourself. You can’t sanctify yourself either. Stop trying!” (Maybe Paul wouldn’t call us dummies, but he was kind of salty like that sometimes.) We are as desperate for the Spirit’s work in our sanctification as we were for His work in our salvation. So, accumulating a pile of steps for conquering sin doesn’t really fit into the framework of the gospel. But filling up with the glory of Christ until there’s room for nothing else—that fits.

Accumulating a pile of steps for conquering sin doesn’t really fit into the framework of the gospel. But filling up with the glory of Christ until there’s room for nothing else—that fits. Share on X

For the sake of better arguments, I’m combining quotes from John Piper, Ray Ortlund, and Jared Wilson, but the point they all make (and the point we discussed at length that mauve night in the parlor) is that if you want to fight your sin, you don’t do it by trying really hard not to sin. You do it by looking hard at Jesus. Until you see Him. Beholding Him until He edges out the darkness and it hurts your eyes in a really good way because you can’t stop looking at Him.

Maybe that seems abstract, but it’s not when you break it down. It’s looking at the bigness of God when the siren’s voice of habitual sin calls your name. Rather than listen to her, lift up your eyes instead. Maybe even literally. To fight the sin of lust, John Piper says to go outside and look at the sky, and as weird as that sounds, there is something good and right about filling up your eyes with what cannot be tamed by your wicked heart.

If you want to fight your sin, you don’t do it by trying really hard not to sin. You do it by looking hard at Jesus. Share on X

I began reading the Bible for myself when I was a teenager, and I remember I used to get stuck in the more positive chapters of Job and Isaiah that expound upon God’s, well, His largeness, for lack of a better word. I learned that the size of the galaxy and the sheer vastness of the undiscovered areas of the universe are tiny dots in God’s big hands. That fascinated me. We lived way out in the country in West Tennessee in those days, and when it got dark, it got really dark. The stars were brighter than they are where I live now next to street lights and lots of neighborhood porches. At fifteen, I would go out into the backyard and lie on my back with my hands folded under my head. I’d stare at the sky until everything else in my life seemed inconsequential, until I could believe with my whole heart that God was bigger than me, until nothing mattered more than the One who spoke all that vastness into being like it was nothing.

These days I’m too busy scrolling on screens and typing on screens and being entertained by screens to step outside on a summer night and behold the bigness and glory of God through the things that He has made for His glory. What would change internally if I changed my habits externally, I wonder.

But more than looking at the sky, beholding God’s glory–looking at Him until we really see Him–means the age-old practice of beholding Him through His own words. This morning before the sun came up, I sat on my couch with bedhead and a half-drunk cup of coffee and read a good portion of Hebrews with tears in my eyes praying, “Lord, please kill this sin in me. This same old sin. Kill it dead.” It feels really helpless, but I know it’s the right thing to do. If I could reduce this sin-killing stuff down to one step, it’s this very act of looking at Jesus until I see Him, until I’m happier in Him than I am in my sin. It’s looking at Him when I feel like all I can see is the darkness of my own heart, when I fear I’ll never get past my anger, when the everydayness of my transgressions feels bigger than the One who paid for them at the cross. I just have to keep looking at Him until His bigness is bigger than my sin. He’s already bigger. I just need to practice seeing that He is. Part of sanctification is the everyday practice of looking at God. The other part is trusting Him to do the rest.

We kill our sin by sweeping the house clean and then filling it up with the goodness of Christ until it’s so jam packed with His glory there’s no room for the dark to creep back in so easily. It’s less of a formula and more of a dependency on the Lord to aid us in beholding Him. If you are despairing over the sin that calls your name with faithful regularity, turn your face away from the dark and stare at Jesus until He’s all there is. Look at Him until you really see Him, until your heart is happier in Him than it could ever be in your sin.

“…work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose.” Philippians 2:12b-13

Part of sanctification is the everyday practice of looking at God. The other part is trusting Him to do the rest. Share on X
Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

More than Many Sparrows

“Is the Lord enough for you?” he asked me.

It was late, nearing midnight, and rather than sleeping, my husband and I were sitting in the living room discussing some current challenges in our life. And by “discussing,” I mean that I was loudly airing my frustrations and expressing the awful truth that I did not see God’s goodness to us in some of these things.

So my husband’s question to me both chastised and angered me, especially considering that it is the theme of the book I am turning into my publisher in a month. Spending eight months writing about a topic doesn’t make you an expert, apparently. It only highlights what will always be a struggle. With angry tears on my face, I skirted the question by responding with my doubt. “I don’t see how a continued struggle with no solution is God’s way of being good to us.”

But my husband’s question was the right question, and I’ve been mulling it over since then. If the things I’ve begged for in daily prayer never, ever change, is the Lord enough for me?

It’s a question the Lord has put to me throughout all of my adult life. If there are no children in your future, am I enough for you? If your life never looks successful, am I enough for you? If you always struggle to pay your bills, am I enough for you? If you lose your child, am I enough for you? If you are never healed from physical pain, am I enough for you? 

When He puts the question to you, it might look different, but the crux is the same. If you don’t get the job, am I enough for you? If your kids are rebellious, am I enough for you? If your spouse leaves you, am I enough for you? If you never get well again, am I enough for you? If you lose your possessions, am I enough for you? If you are never married, am I enough for you? If you are betrayed by a loved one, am I enough for you? If you are fired, am I enough for you? If your child is sick, am I enough for you? If you don’t know how to make ends meet, am I enough for you? If you fail in your work or ministry, am I enough for you?

When I think about the way I’ve answered the question in the past, most of the time I’ve lived as though He isn’t enough for me. But my poor reactionary behavior doesn’t declare what is true about God. Though I have expressed my lack of belief in His sufficiency, it doesn’t negate the truth that He still really is enough for me. In fact, He is enough for me in spite of my doubt.

The question of His sufficiency forces us to pin down what we treasure the most: the answer to our prayers or the One to whom we pray. Can we be content if all we have is Christ? Theoretically, I want to always respond immediately with a resounding YES! I’m sure you do, too. But, when the bills are stacked so high you can’t bear to open them, can you really declare the Lords’ sufficiency? When you’re so bent over with chronic pain that you can barely function, will you confidently say that God is enough for you? When you’re so lonely you can’t stand another night alone, will you in that moment speak the words of God’s faithfulness?

Practically, it’s hard to apply what we want to believe to our present circumstances. Our troubles are frighteningly real, tangible, and sometimes armed with a ticking clock. We scramble for a solution and fill our sleepless nights with frenetic worry. Striving is the best word I can think of to describe the incessant, fruitless spinning we do when confronted with circumstances we hate but are powerless to change. Like a hamster running as hard as it can in its stationary wheel, striving produces absolutely nothing helpful. What’s interesting about the biblical commands that address our striving, worrying hearts is the absence of physical actionable steps. When Jesus talks about worry in the Sermon on the Mount, He doesn’t give you three steps for “breaking up with worry.” He doesn’t lay out a financial plan for making ends meet, nor does He tell you how to plan your future to avoid similar circumstances. His answer to worry and anxiety is found in addressing where our treasure lies. It’s found in trusting the faithfulness of God. In true, Jesus-like fashion, our Savior doesn’t address the circumstances. He addresses the heart.

“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky; They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?” (Mt. 6:25-26)

The question of God's sufficiency is one I must re-answer every morning when my feet hit the floor. Though my head may assent to the truth that He is enough, I have to re-arm my heart with certainty because it struggles so much to keep up. I don't know what any day holds, but I know Who holds my days. He even holds the days of a bird so tiny and insignificant that most of us only think about them when we read Matthew 6. Isn't He enough for us? As Jesus put it,

He doesn’t say, seek out a better financial plan, or search for as many possible solutions to your health problems as you can, or manipulate your conversations so as to win back the approval you’ve lost. He doesn’t say try harder, do more, do better. He simply says, “Don’t worry.” And the reason is found a few verses down after He demonstrates the Father’s good care of something as insignificant as grass and flowers which are here today and gone tomorrow. “Won’t He do much more for you–you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will be we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father in heaven knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Mt. 6:30b-33).

Oh, Jesus with the zinger! To eagerly seek the provision for our needs rather than the Provider of them is nothing short of idolatry. He’s asking you: What’s your treasure? The gift or the Giver? When you do not yet have the things you pray for, am I enough for you? His encouragement to you is to stop running in the hamster wheel and decide in your heart that He is enough for you. He knows your needs, and you can trust Him with your past, present, and future. When God doesn’t swoop in to answer our prayers immediately, it is not because He is searching for His sufficiency. If He waits, it is because He is working something good from our waiting. If He prolongs our trial, it isn’t because He delights in our suffering but because He delights in cultivating our trust in Him. He will always be enough for us, but sometimes it might take scraping the bottom of the bucket for us to truly see that He is.

When God doesn't swoop in to answer our prayers immediately, it is not because He is searching for His sufficiency. If He waits, it is because He is working something good from our waiting. Share on X

I think back to the night on the couch where my worries got the best of me, and I couldn’t get off the hamster wheel (or to be honest, I didn’t want to jump off of it because there is something sinfully satisfying in spinning my wheels). My husband’s pointed question was exactly the one I needed to consider. The circumstances, though, frustrating, are not the point. The point is where my contentment, security, and identity lie. If my circumstances never change–if yours never do–is the Lord enough for us? Scripture resonates with His faithful sufficiency, and we must fight the lie that He has left us to flounder in our troubles. We fight it by pressing ourselves up against the truth of Scripture every morning to remember that the One who has been faithful in the past will be faithful today and tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow.

The question of God’s sufficiency is one I must re-answer every morning when my feet hit the floor. Though my head may assent to the truth that He is enough, I have to re-arm my heart with certainty because it struggles so much to keep up. It is grace to go back to the core of the gospel and to remember that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was sufficient to cover all my sin, even these moments of angry doubt about His current provision. He was enough at the cross, so He will always be enough.

I don’t know what any day holds, but I know Who holds my days. He even holds the days of a bird so tiny and insignificant that most of us only think about them when we read Matthew 6. Isn’t He enough for us? As Jesus put it, “Aren’t you worth more than many sparrows?”

If He prolongs our trial, it isn't because He delights in our suffering but because He delights in cultivating our trust in Him. Share on X

Photo by SK Yeong on Unsplash

There Will Be Joy

Every morning at 6 a.m. you can find me sitting cross legged and bleary eyed on the tan couch in my living room. Outside, the sun rises with reliable regularity, its pink morning glow filtered between the tulip trees in our backyard. I’ve been looking at the same view for more than ten years of mornings there on that couch. What’s more predictable than the rising sun is the way the Lord keeps His promises to be with me. He’s a present God. He’s demonstrated it throughout all of Scripture. He will love His people by being with them.  And what’s more, not just with but in His people.

As a believer in Christ, the trembling heart of this thirty-six year old woman is a place where God is pleased to dwell. So, I know that when I rub the sleep from my eyes and adjust my glasses so I can see the print better in my study Bible, God is with me in the wee hours of the morning. True, He’s always with me, but I believe the primary way I can enjoy His presence is by listening to His voice in Scripture. And listening to His voice has strengthened my faith in His faithful presence in my life.

“I rise before dawn and cry out for help; I put my hope in Your Word.” Psalm 119:147

There were a lot of years when I didn’t view it that way. I stumbled to the couch forty minutes later than planned, flipped through the Bible aimlessly, skimmed some verses, and left wondering why I bothered. I believed the gospel but struggled to connect the Scriptures to my circumstances. I went to the Word looking for a prescription and was disappointed when I couldn’t read the doctor’s handwriting. The problem, however, wasn’t the difficulty of the words, the depths of theological truths, or my cerebral limitations. No, God didn’t give us His Word only to dangle it in front of us so we could wish we were a little smarter. The Bible is for everyone.

One of my discipleship partners told a story recently of a patient she used to see in the clinic where she worked as a nurse. The patient was near forty years old and mentally disabled to the degree that he was unable to live alone. But each time that he saw my friend at the clinic, he delighted in telling her what he had read in his Bible that morning. He would overflow with the goodness of the truths he’d read and held close to his heart. My friend was always convicted by his love for and devotion to the Word. “So,” she said to our discipleship group one afternoon at the local coffee shop, “there’s John Piper on one end of the spectrum and this patient on the other, and both of them love the Word and can understand it enough to share it.” There just aren’t a lot of excuses for our resistance to studying the Bible, are there? My reluctance to really giving myself to study of the Word in years past was based largely upon laziness.

“Happy are those who keep His decrees and seek Him with all their heart.” (Ps. 119:2)

Through several years of physical suffering and emotional stress, the Lord plied the practice of Bible study out of my undisciplined heart. He brought me to the point of desperation to see my deep need for His instruction. In the vise of pain, the question that sent me to the Scriptures each morning sounded like Peter’s: “Where else can I go? You have the words of life.” After practicing it diligently for more than a decade (which is just a breath compared to the many saints who have loved Jesus longer and harder than I have), here are three things I’ve learned about giving yourself to regular, intentional Bible study: You will never not need the Word, no time in it is wasted, and there will be joy in studying it.

You will never not need the Word, no time in it is wasted, and there will be joy in studying it. Share on X

You Will Never Not Need the Word

Sanctification, the process of becoming like Christ, is ongoing. Growing in godliness and faith should be a pattern in every believer’s life. While there will be discouraging stalls and surprising spurts, the one who has been made a new creation in Christ will be known by his or her good fruit. While Scripture assures us that our sanctification process will end in glorification, for now we must wake up each morning to renew our minds and fight our sin until we see Him face to face. Or, if we won’t do those things, we’ll deceive ourselves and then wonder at the lack of fruit in our lives. It always gives me pause when I hear of Christians who do not value regular Bible intake. I do not understand how we are supposed to grow in our knowledge of and love for God if we do not expose ourselves to His chosen means of revelation. There will never be a time, Christian, when you do not need the Word of God. Not until you are gathered around the throne of God with every believer is it safe for you to stop giving yourself to study of the Word.

“Never take the word of truth from my mouth, for I hope in Your judgments.” (Ps. 119:43)

In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul said this, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:14-17).

In terms of salvation, obedience to God, knowledge of His character, living as a disciple of Christ, and being equipped for good works, we cannot function apart from the Word. The Bible is not like other books. In studying, in memorizing, in articulating it to others, the Word of God is being imprinted on our hearts. We’ve been given the mind of Christ. When I trace the crooked path toward holiness through my adulthood as a believer, I can see that the Bible is changing the way I think.

Apart from knowledge unto salvation and apart from being equipped to know God, serve the Church, and speak the gospel to the lost, the Bible is a gift during suffering. I am telling you from experience, the Bible both prepares you for suffering and perseveres you through it. I don’t know how I would have lived through my years of chronic pain without the Psalms. I don’t know how I could have pressed on through years of discouraging ministry without Paul’s instructions and exhortations for the Church. I don’t know how I could have rightly mourned my infertility without the truth of God’s goodness jumping off every page of my Bible. And now, when life is full and still and blossoming with hope like every spring should, I am hiding away the encouragement from 1 Peter in the closets of my heart so that when I find myself down in a valley of  the shadow, I will know for certain Who is with me.

“Trouble and distress have overtaken me, but Your commands are my delight.” (Ps. 119:143)

There will never be a morning when my flesh does not cry out to be served, when my impatience doesn’t lord over my children, when my snarky attitude wants to be quieted, when my pride doesn’t fight for glory. I will be deep in my need and putting my sin to death until I see Jesus. Thus, there will never be a  time when I will not need the truths of Scripture and the presence of the Spirit to aid me in the process of killing my sin, renewing my mind, and making me holy.

No Time in the Word is Wasted

Though desperate times in my life resulted in the desperate measures of disciplined Bible study, there have definitely been dry spells and seasons of what seemed like little growth. Even during the years when I did nothing more than read aimlessly without a map, none of my time spent in the Word was wasted. The Father, the Spirit, and the Son will always testify to one another (Jn. 12:44-50, 16:5-13). Believers can trust that the Spirit who lives in them will use their exposure to the Word for good.

“Open my eyes so that I may contemplate wonderful things from Your instruction.” (Ps. 119:18)

I remember long, dry seasons when I simply could not get my heart to engage with the Word and when affection for the Lord felt non-existent. But feelings are not truth-tellers, and the Spirit was doing the good work of helping me “hide” the Word in my heart. Admittedly, there have been seasons in my life when prolonged study has not been feasible. Certain stretches of motherhood have left me with little in my tank, and it was a success to simply read the Word on a semi-regular basis. This was to my benefit! Through simply reading passages or carrying around a few verses on a note card to memorize, I was absorbing the Scriptures, and that can never be bad for our spiritual health. I can look back at dry spells and seasons of exhaustion and see the Lord’s persevering work in my heart with every moment spent in His Word. He was teaching me to press on even when I didn’t feel like it, and that is when perseverance is best learned.

There Will be Joy in Studying the Word

One morning last week, I was sitting in my usual spot watching the sun rise and scribbling down notes from 1 Peter. It was in the middle of a thought about holy living with an eye on our “temporary residence” on earth (1 Pt. 1:15-17) when I realized that I was smiling. At 6:30 in the morning, I was only partially caffeinated, sporting impressive bed-head, and yet–smiling. There was literally no place I’d rather have been than that faded, tan couch near the windows where the sun rose between the branches of the tulip trees.

It’s not always such a happy practice, sure. Happiness and joy aren’t always made of the same substance. There are mornings when I can’t focus because I’ve slept poorly or when my heart is clouded with anxiety or concern over life circumstances.  Sometimes my two-year-old wakes up far too early and I’ve to pull apart my passage in the morning with an episode of “Paw Patrol” in the background. Some mornings I sow my sorrows in tears over my Bible knowing that if joy doesn’t come in my lifetime, it will certainly come in eternity. Overall, when I look at my mornings spent studying the Word from a cumulative standpoint, joy is the primary word that comes to mind. Gritty, overflowing, hard-won, gift-from-God joy. It’s followed closely by the word transforming. You see, I’m not the same person I was ten years ago when I first began to study the Bible with something beyond a prepackaged study or a quick daily skim of a few verses. The Lord has used His Word to convict, correct, teach, train, encourage, heal, stretch, challenge, change, sanctify me. Though study is work, it has grown to be joyous work that draws me near to the God I have so long claimed to love. He is always near, and I am learning that it is a joy to listen to His voice.

“Those who fear You will see me and rejoice, for I put my hope in Your word.” (Ps. 119:74)

If you’re plodding through the Bible right now, take heart. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found in listening to His Word. If you’re living through suffering currently, take heart. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found in listening to His Word. If you’re not sure where to start, take heart and begin reading today. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found listening to His Word. We have been given an unmatched, incomparable gift in the Scriptures. God has given us Himself! Take and read, Christian. There will be joy.

“I have your decrees as a heritage forever; indeed, they are the joy of my heart. I am resolved to obey Your statutes to the very end.” (Ps. 119: 111-112)

Sometimes we are motivated but don’t know where to start! If you’re looking for some actionable steps to incorporate into your Bible reading time, click here for a free PDF guide and a video demonstration of my exegetical method. The steps are easy to implement and adopt and will help you to ask four main questions of each passage after considering historical context and genre.

Photo by Perminder Klair on Unsplash

He Will Be Strong in Your Weakness

When I took the stage, I was one hundred percent confident in my message. My new boots pinched a bit as I climbed the steps to the piano, but I was certain of the words I would speak, sure that the melodies wrapped around the truth of God’s goodness to us in suffering were the right ones to speak, to sing, to hand out liberally to the women in the pews who had gathered on a chilly, rainy Saturday morning. I was one hundred percent confident in what they needed to hear. But I was also one hundred percent confident in my inability to convey the message rightly. In short, I felt like a walking disaster.

Your weakness is a gift.

Much of what I have learned about God’s kindness to us in trials comes from my own experience with physical pain. It’s not just a story I share because I can’t think of anything else to explain the truth of God’s ability to redeem the broken things in our lives for good. No, it has been one of the main catalysts for my understanding that what I need most in times of suffering is not relief from it but confidence in God’s nearness in the midst of it. When I lived with an undiagnosed disease that was robbing me of health and sanity, it was God’s presence that propelled me through the pain and uncovered my heart’s true longing for Him. It is what drove me to the Scriptures with single-minded desperation. It is what God used to train me to love His Word.

Being in remission for the better part of the last two years has meant that pain is a memory that is faded at the edges. I’ve basked in nearly two years of normalcy and sleep and health. And then, like an uninvited guest, my pain shows up unwelcome and unannounced, no longer a sepia toned reminiscence. Usually it means I’m not handling stress well, but regardless of its impetus, physical pain will hold me captive to my broken body for as long as I live. There is no cure for my disease(s); I will not die from them but with them. The effects of my disease pop up when I need them not to. Unfortunately, any kind of stress–even mere anticipation of something good–can trigger physical pain, anxiety, and insomnia. In other words, when I need to be at my best, my body tends to be at its worst. 

So, a few weeks back when I was prepared and ready to take a stage for an hour and a half, I found myself the night before lying awake in bed with heart palpitations, nausea, and pain shooting up my spine. I wasn’t nervous about the event; I had looked forward to it all week. I tossed and turned, prayed and fretted. Eventually, I walked the floors of the basement suite that were graciously given to me by some members of the host church. I recited every Scripture I could call to memory, staying specifically in Psalm 23.  “This is when I know that You are with me, down here in the valley of physical suffering, Lord.” Why does my body rebel when I need to rely on it the most?

It’s incredibly frustrating to think you’re a dependable, self-sufficient person but to feel trapped in a body that is only reliably unreliable. It’s also exactly how the Lord likes to use us.

After sleeping less than two hours, my alarm buzzed at 6 am, and I dragged myself out of bed to get some coffee. Once procured, I sat with my Bible intending to read Psalm 107, which is one of my favorite spots to land when I’m feeling frazzled. How could I face a room full of women when I felt so physically unable to perform? Who am I to even take a stage? What can I bring to the table that hasn’t been said a thousand times before? “I’m weak, Lord,” I told Him. But I realized in that moment that weak is how He wants me. Weak is a good place to be. Our weakness is where we get to see His strength. I read through Psalm 107, but I got distracted by the words of the next psalm, written by David.

“My heart is confident, God; I will sing; I will sing praises with the whole of my being. Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn. I will praise You, Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to You among the nations. For Your faithful love is higher than the heavens, and Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds…God has spoken in His sanctuary: ‘I will triumph!'” (Ps. 108:1-4, 7b).

It struck me that the confidence David had was not in himself but in his God, whose declaration of triumph connotes a sure, certain victory. David’s response to the Lord’s ability is praise, all praise.

Paul’s thorn.

My phone dinged with a text not long after that. My mom had known I was feeling rough and sent the words of the apostle Paul to encourage me to do the good work set before me, no matter how my body protested. Paul was no stranger to suffering; his life was marked by persecution for the sake of the gospel of Christ. Even so, it must have been tempting at times to boast in the wideness of his ministry, the soundness of his doctrinally-heavy elocution, the far-reaching grasp of his reputation as a messenger of the gospel. If you are in Christian ministry, you understand the temptation there. If we’re not working for wealth or possessions, we’re tempted by notoriety or by how well we use our gifts.

I don’t think Paul was immune here. He was given a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him from boasting in his own strength, and though we cannot know what it was that tormented him, we do know he prayed to be released from it at least three times. His words (and the ones my mother sent to me that rainy, frazzled morning) communicate what we all need to lean into when we can’t understand our weaknesses in light of the work God has set before us:

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness'” (2 Cor.12:9a).

I prayed through the words, pleaded with the Lord to let my confidence find its home in Him alone. There was no other source of confidence that day. My body was rebelling and my brain was cluttered with the fog that accompanies my pain. I dressed, drove to the event, and found myself sharing my physical weaknesses with the event coordinators so they could pray for me. I didn’t want to admit it; I wanted to appear confident and sure of myself. I didn’t want them to regret asking me to take the stage. But, I knew that I needed their intercession more than I needed an appearance of self-sufficiency. The words prayed over me in that small room off the sanctuary were a balm to my quivering soul. The same words of Paul filled the air, and I knew that this was my reminder that God’s grace was sufficient for me. Not my ability. Not my gifts. Not my intelligence. Only His grace. If anything good came from the stage, it would only be because He was with me, perfecting His power in my very present weaknesses. And I when I took the stage and found my seat at the piano, when I opened my notes and dove into an explanation of God’s presence in our suffering as displayed through the life of Joseph, when I sang the words about God’s faithfulness in my own present physical pain–I knew I was experiencing God’s strength in my weakness firsthand.

After the event, my spine was on fire. I stood for more than an hour and spoke with women from all walks of life, and we shared with one another how God was faithful even in the ugliest stories. A older woman with a lovely Scottish lilt to her voice gripped my hands and prayed that God would be powerful in my weakness. Gripped by pain and mental exhaustion, I stood there with tears in my eyes. The irony wasn’t lost on me. It’s always after an event when God uses the hearers to bless the messenger. Perhaps they want to say thank you, but really they are saying what I need to hear, “You are weak, and He is strong.” Afterwards, I sat in my car in the parking lot before the long trip home and wept with the relief that comes from being spent on exactly the right thing in exactly the weakest way.

If there were reason to boast in myself, then I would get the praise, and what a short-sighted, vainglory it would be. But, the Lord has seen fit to remind me of my frailty, to keep me up at night with a dependency on His strength. And though I hate the pain, the foggy head, the sick stomach, the inability to simply go to sleep, I am deeply grateful that the Lord has made it abundantly clear that my weakness is where He delights to work. For in this, He gets the glory. He does. And on my best/worst days, that’s my desire.

“Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9b-10).

He will be strong in your weakness.

Maybe your weakness isn’t a physical thorn. Maybe it’s mental. Or maybe it’s your backstory, your pre-conversion tale. Maybe it’s the sin that once held you in a suffocating vise. Maybe you speak of it as often as possible so it loses its power every time you back it up against the power of the gospel. Or maybe, like me, your thorn crops up when you need it the least and you wonder how in the world you will accomplish the good work God has set before you. This is the place, friend. This is where He delights in displaying His power–right in the middle of your weakest weakness. He will not share His glory with another, but He will gladly display it in you.

This is where He delights in displaying His power--right in the middle of your weakest weakness. He will not share His glory with another, but He will gladly display it in you. Share on X

Being a messenger with a limp is not a curse; it’s a gift. Broken vessels don’t usually display the strength of their makers, but in the upside-down realm of the kingdom of God, they absolutely can. When tasked with the work of spreading the gospel message, and I’d argue that we all are, you can be confident in His certain triumph. You can be certain that He will be strong in your weakness. You may flop, you may lose your train of thought, you might stutter over your words, you might forget a point, you may not see a return for your work, but You can be sure that His words will not return void. Your thorn may pierce you deeply, but it is only a thorn and it is only momentary. The certain triumph of the Lord our God means that He will accomplish His work. One of the resulting graces of His work is your eternal thorn-free life in His presence forever. And perhaps the kingdom of heaven will be a bit more populous than you expected because the Lord was pleased to be strong in your weakness.

Press on, Christian. He will be strong in your weakness.

 

 

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Is it Sinful to Live in the Past?

I was juggling housework and a very energetic two-year-old yesterday morning when the phone rang. My friend on the other end, also dealing with a little one, had called with a very specific question about suffering and sin. As I’ve mulled it over, I decided to address her question publicly (with her permission).

She asked me, “Is it sinful to live in the past, even when the past wasn’t a result of poor choices but difficult circumstances not of our choosing?”

It’s a loaded question, really, and I told my friend that. When you dig into the root issues, you’re talking about God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil which are not easily explained in one blog post. And yet, there are some passages of Scripture that came to mind immediately when I considered whether or not it was sinful to dwell on a past marked by suffering. Specifically, I thought of Job and the apostle Paul.

If you’ve read my writing for very long, you know that I frequently address the topic of suffering. In one calendar year, we experienced a nearly failed adoption, the death of my grandmother, my persistent struggle with chronic illnesses, and my mother’s brain tumor and subsequent brain surgery. Because I’m a writer, I wrote about these difficulties as a way to both process and find hope. I shared them with you to help you connect the sufferings of your own life to what is true about God as revealed in Scripture. It’s the primary reason I write: to remind you to let Scripture inform your suffering, not the other way around. So often we work backwards, letting our circumstances dictate what is true about the character of God, which aids only in making God in our own image. What I hope to accomplish with my writing, speaking, and music is to point you to the Word of God first so that you can rightly view your hardships through a biblical lens that explains how God can be good, even in our suffering. Essentially, let’s let God tell us who He is. That said, I believe there are two thoughts to bear in mind when we consider our past sufferings.

The Past Can Serve Us 

My years of living with chronic pain and infertility are the vehicles I use to tell the story about God’s kindness and sovereignty, but they are just that: vehicles. The main story I tell is the one about God that comes from His Word, and the truth of the gospel must pierce every part of my testimony or else I’m just a resounding gong bemoaning the hard things that have happened to me. I’m not that unique; hard things happen to everyone. So, here is where I believe that my past experiences can serve as a place of ministry. When I stand at a podium and talk about how difficult it was to rock a baby to sleep every night for months without knowing if I could keep him, I share the ways my heart felt like broken shards of glass so that I can highlight how the faithfulness of God put all those pieces back together. When I write about the years that I cried out to the Lord for healing because of the disastrous effects of physical pain, I do so to explain how the Lord’s presence and the ministry of His Word persevered me through even the darkest nights of body and soul. The past experiences are merely the touch points for liberally handing out the greatest comfort, which is the truth of God’s unchanging, purposeful nature as seen in Scripture.

“…for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being content–whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

I want to be able to say with Paul that I’ve learned contentment in every circumstance. I’m not there yet by a long shot, but with each round of small sufferings I’ve learned that when contentment is found in Christ, then the treasure is not so much the end of specific sufferings but rather His constancy in the midst of them. He is the treasure. In this way, our sufferings serve us as ways to recount God’s past faithfulness to us. You see this pattern in Scripture frequently. The psalmists often structured their songs about suffering by beginning with despair and ending in praise. How did they make this shift? The key is that they nearly always called to mind the past faithfulness of God in order to believe in His future faithfulness. The Psalms are rich with a beautifully relatable pattern of panicking about circumstances, lamenting what has happened, remembering God’s past faithfulness, and resolving to trust Him because of that past faithfulness. I don’t believe the psalmists are “living in the past,” but rather, are allowing the constancy of God’s goodness in the past help them to persevere through present and future sufferings.

The act of remembering God’s past faithfulness is one of the recurring themes of Scripture I’ve noticed in my Bible reading over the past few years, and I believe the practice is meant to remind us who God is as we are bent toward disbelief. Or, in the case of suffering or hardships, we’re bent to let those things tell us what is true about God. Remembering God’s past faithfulness must be done by knowing Him as He’s revealed Himself to us in Scripture and looking for the ways He’s kept His Word in our past difficulties. In this way, I believe we can safely allow our past hurts to highlight God’s goodness to us and give us a place of ministry to those who are currently suffering. It’s incredibly important to keep God as the hero of His story and yours to prevent what I believe can be the sinful aspect of “living in the past.”

The Past Can Enslave Us

There is nothing more annoying than listening to someone recount all the ways they’re victimized by their circumstances. Our culture feeds this self-entitled worldview by liberally spooning out the lies that we are basically good and therefore undeserving of anything bad that happens to us, even the consequences of poor or sinful choices. Here again, we must let Scripture inform the way we think about even the most basic of truths about humanity: the heart is desperately wicked and there is no one who is good or who seeks God (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-12).

Sometimes we suffer at the hands of our own sinfulness or at the hands of others. Sometimes we suffer because of our commitment to Christ. And sometimes we suffer and never know why. It is this last one that my friend was addressing in her question. Suffering that seems arbitrary is hard to swallow. I think of Job, who never knew what was behind the catastrophes that shattered his life. And yet, I am thankful for the account of Job’s suffering in Scripture because we are taught how to process suffering that we cannot understand or categorize.

The Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?’ Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-3, 6)

What was most comforting to Job in the end was not the cessation of his suffering but the strong, bold statements about the character of God–His wisdom, His authority, His universal sovereignty, even and especially in Job’s suffering. I wouldn’t say that Job “lived in his past,” but he let his experiences serve as a vehicle to grapple with what was true about God.

“Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by Go’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way.” (Philippians 3:12-15a)

Paul suffered a lot for his relentless preaching of the gospel, but I don’t see him as a victim of his past. Rather, I see a man who recounts them as a way to talk about the prize of pursuing Christ wholeheartedly. He presses forward for the treasure of Jesus, for maturity in the faith, for a citizenship anchored in heaven. The difference between living as a victim of your circumstances and rejoicing in them is again viewing God as the hero of the story. When we prop up ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, we count our sufferings as undeserved and unjust which puts us at odds with both God’s position of authority and sovereignty. Rather, I believe we should recognize that whatever God allows into our lives has first been filtered through fingers that are threading together a tapestry of redemption that we cannot fathom. Our sufferings may seem arbitrary at times, but what we don’t see is the way God may use them to display the power of the gospel to a watching a world. Avoiding self-victimization begins with trusting a good, sovereign God with our suffering. Maturity grows from the recognition that we’ve been taken hold of by Christ, not our sufferings.

Remembering God’s Faithfulness or Recounting My Miseries?

As people of the cross, the challenge lies in recounting God’s faithfulness in our past, rather than dwelling on how we felt about our suffering. Like most of our struggles as sojourners longing for our better country, we must challenge our feelings with the truth of Scripture. We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes.

We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes. Share on X

So is it sinful to live in the past? It can be if we allow ourselves to be enslaved to a victim mentality. In so doing, we miss the way our past sufferings can serve as a rich palette for painting a picture of the Scriptural truths about God’s unending, faithful goodness to us. But we must first endeavor to see Him as both the treasure and the hero of our past, present, and future.

 

Photo by Moritz Schumacher on Unsplash

Recommended reading: Future Grace: the Purifying Power of the Promises of God by John Piper

All Things New

I remember her determination. That’s what I remember the most. It was the first week of the new year, and my friend was, as my grandmother used to say, “bound and determined.” This year would be different. This year would be the year everything lined up straight, nothing stepping out of line. All her goals and plans would stand in resolute submission to her sheer determination to make everything right this year. This year she would make it work. This year she would be happy. 

Later, I watched her scramble when things didn’t pan out quite right. Still, she worked at it with an admirable resolution. She crowded her days with new projects and plans that would surely quiet the empty feeling she was desperate to squelch. I’d seen the uncertainty in her eyes, the way her shoulders slumped when she couldn’t mend her ache. I could tell she was troubled by the ways her resolutions had failed her. There was more spending, more giving, more fixing, more talking, more organizing.

It was hard to watch.

No matter how much she poured into her life, no matter how determined she was to patch up what was broken, everything kept slipping out the cracks. Like a cup irreparably cracked, everything leaked out eventually. No matter how quickly she kept refilling her life with new things, every kind of remedy failed her. It all seeped out along with the dregs of hope she had staked her year upon.

She wasn’t the only empty cup I encountered last January. She was one of many people in my life who were medicating a deep ache with all the remedies the world promises will make us happy. Possessions, family, vacations, work, a well-ordered and well-maintained life.

We keep filling up our lives with things — good things even — but still find ourselves chest-deep in a yearning we can’t explain.

 

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Changing Diapers to the Glory of God

It was an exceptionally trying day. 
The motives of my motherhood must be anchored in the glory of God, not the glory of me.

My energetic and precocious two-year old had gotten away from me more than once during our quick errands to the library and post office. Employees at both venues laughed and nodded and offered commiserating quips about the “terrible twos.” I forced laughter while wrestling my squirrelly toddler to the ground before he tried to scale the bookshelves or dismantle the carousel of postcards and mailers. What I really wanted to do was shout help me to any individual in the room that might be physically stronger than me. By the time I got back to the vehicle and harnessed my son into his seat, I was thoroughly drenched in sweat though it was barely 50 degrees outside. Nothing makes me feel more ridiculous than running through a quiet library trying to catch a shrieking two-year-old who thinks it’s all a game.

I sat in the library parking lot with my head on the steering wheel for a few minutes.

This is hard. 

It’s been seven years since I have parented a two-year-old; I must have repressed some of those memories. I do not remember being this tired, this frustrated, this weak, or this aware of my shortcomings. Let me tell you, parenting is an absolute joy like none other in my life. Sometimes I look at my kids and I think my heart will explode because it can’t hold any more joy.  But, parenting is also the hardest job I’ve ever had. It’s not just correcting, teaching, feeding, and protecting. Parenting isn’t just structuring and setting boundaries (though it’s not less than that). We’ve also got the tremendous responsibility to shape our kids hearts and exemplify grace and the gospel that changes us. No pressure, right? Oh, sometimes it feels like so much pressure.

Later in that day of post office and library stand-offs, I found myself at the sink washing dishes for the third time while running interference between my kids who seemed to have made an agreement with one another to spend the evening bickering. My husband was tied up at a meeting, and the living room I’d straightened up minutes before was now a junkyard of toys, pillows, blankets, and blocks. I stood at the sink, hands in the dish water, and counted the minutes until bedtime, my bedtime. Then I remembered the loads of clean laundry piled on our bed, waiting to be folded and put away. The noise from the living room escalated. I sent one child up to get ready for bed and settled the other one in front of a movie. Returning to the stacks of dirty dishes, I tried not to cry. This is never-ending, Lord. I’ll be here tomorrow night doing the exact same thing and no one will ever know that my day was spent cleaning up messes that re-materialize moments later, fixing meals that end up smeared on the floor, washing clothes that will need to be washed again and again. I stopped scrubbing for a moment and put a soapy hand to my pounding head.

I see you.

It wasn’t audible, it wasn’t even a whisper. His voice is hard to explain. It was more like a sudden knowing, a memory I’d forgotten, a sliver of truth that surfaced and stretched out in my chest.  I see you, He said. Attached to the remembered words was the story of the mother in the wilderness, the pregnant, conjugal maid who was sent away to die in the desert. He saw her, too. He made sure that she, and we, and all of us would know that He is the God who sees (Gen. 16).

He sees every way that we serve our families–when we are glad to and when we drag our feet. He sees the motives of our hearts, for better or worse. He knows the significance of a hard-won battle between mother and toddler, and He’s present when the mother fights tears of defeat. He sees when her anger is out of proportion with the offense, and He sees the moments of victory when she offers grace instead of a harsh rebuke. In her strengths and especially in her weaknesses, He is using motherhood to show her who she is before Him: she is a child who needs to be parented with grace and kindness and boundaries and Jesus. 

 You’re doing this for Me.

It was the second thing He reminded me of when I scrubbed the remains of an uneaten dinner off a plate. It’s true. I know it’s true. Unfortunately for me, it’s also forgettable. I keep expecting a shower of gratitude or an applause of some sort when I finally get to the bottom of the laundry pile. I want a thank-you note for all the meals I’ve prepped, cooked, and cleaned up. But that’s not what parenting or serving is about. Certainly I did none of those things for my own mother, though I am now having deep regrets about my lack of gratitude. My mother did all the things I’m doing now because she loved us and she loved God more.

The motive behind serving my family, cleaning up the same messes every day, negotiating a crisis situation with a two-year-old, or teaching a child about loving his enemies at school–the motives of my motherhood must be anchored in the glory of God, not the glory of me. 

It’s a difficult thing to shift my thinking like this. The only thing I do consistently is fail at parenting, but there are tiny glimpses of eternity that aid in this mothering paradigm shift.

Changing a blow-out diaper when I’m trying to rush out the door to church is never convenient. Cleaning a couch cushion soaked in milk isn’t what I want to put on my agenda for the day. Explaining for the tenth time in ten minutes that children must stay in their beds during naps isn’t the way I want to spend my afternoons when I have so much work to do. Weaving gospel threads into a bedtime conversation when my bones ache with exhaustion isn’t the priority I want to have.  But, this is motherhood. This is the gift that’s been given to me, the gift I yearned for for years. This is one of the ways I will serve the Lord who loves me in my weaknesses. I will change diapers for His glory, clean up perpetual messes for His glory, teach my children about Jesus for His glory, place boundaries and teach obedience for His glory.

I am here on this planet to know Him and to make Him known. In a strange and wonderful way, I get to know Him and make Him known in the exhausting, beautiful ministry of motherhood. It’s not my only job, that’s true. Motherhood is not my identity, either. My identity is tethered to the One who is scraping away the ugliness of my selfishness, revealing my own layers of ingratitude, and molding my heart into something that looks a little more like His every single day.

Right now he’s using motherhood to do this, to break me down so He can build me into the image of His Son bit by bit. Day by day. Mess by mess. Response by response.

The bonus gift is that His glory is graciously tied to our good. He chose to do it that way. Persevering in the trenches of whatever path of sanctification He’s set you on is ultimately for your absolute good. Washing dishes in anonymity, teaching children the same lessons daily, wiping noses and bottoms without thanks, and folding a never-ending pile of laundry can all be done as an expression of belief that God is being kind to us in our work because He is enough for us in our work. We persevere because He is enough for us and He is enough for our children.

So, mothers, fathers, workers, caretakers, teachers, pastors, salesman, nurses, ministers, servants–take heart. Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God which is also for your good. Lean on the truths that He speaks to us from His Word: He sees you. He sees your work.

His approval is the one we need, and in Christ it is the one we have. 

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