The Bevans

Prepare The Way For The Lord!

If we are going to become mature disciples of Jesus and if we are going to become God’s holy people, we will not achieve this without experiencing suffering and learning to respond appropriately. For the troubles and struggles that we face constitute a fundamental component of the Lord’s dealings with us. What the Bible refers to as God’s "discipline" is essential to our Spiritual growth. Indeed, probably the most dominant form of suffering that is specific to God’s people, according to the Bible, is the discipline that God Himself metes out. This theme is prominent in both the Old and New Testaments, but perhaps one of the most important Biblical passages on this issue is in the epistle to the Hebrews, where the writer reminds his readers of a portion from the book of Proverbs:

In this remarkable passage, the emphasis is on our growth in righteousness, our "struggle against sin". Because He loves us, because we are His children, the Lord disciplines, rebukes, trains and even punishes us for our benefit through unpleasant and painful hardships, so that we might become holy and righteous like He is and know true peace. We should therefore be encouraged rather than discouraged in times of difficulty — for our troubles are evidence of His great goodness towards us — and gladly submit ourselves to His work in us, however hard it may seem.

All through the Scriptures we read of God inflicting suffering upon His people in order to achieve His redemptive purposes for them. The prophet Amos provides us with one of the clearest descriptions of the Lord’s use of affliction in an attempt to draw Israel back to Himself:

Under the Old Covenant, God promised that all kinds of trouble would come upon His people if they were disobedient to His commands. But His desire in causing them distress was that it would bring them to their knees in repentance, as the well-known words that the Lord spoke to Solomon at the dedication of the temple remind us:

The Scriptures attribute all sorts of suffering to God. Wars, plagues, famine, disease, mental illness, loss of status, barrenness, bereavement, sudden death, and much else besides are ascribed to God’s activity. The Biblical writers seem to see no problem in ascribing apparently bad things to a good God: "When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?", asks Amos. "Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?", asks Jeremiah. "I bring prosperity and create disaster.", says the Lord through Isaiah. In discussing this perspective on suffering that is found in the Old Testament, Burkhard Gärtner has written the following:

Since God is absolutely sovereign, He is ‘behind’ everything that happens; nothing happens that is not in conformity with the purpose of His perfect will. Thus there can be no place in our thinking for any concept of ‘luck’ or ‘fortune’, whether good or bad. As the proverbs say, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.", and "The Lord works out everything for His own ends — even the wicked for a day of disaster."

However, the fact that evil ‘comes from’ God does not mean that we can hold God — who is unfailingly good — morally responsible for evil. Don Carson has helpfully elucidated God’s relationship to good and evil the following manner:

Thus, when "an evil spirit from the Lord" came upon King Saul, the moral responsibility for this lay, not with God, but with Saul himself, for he had turned away from the Lord and refused to carried out His instructions. On the other hand, when the evil spirit would depart and relief come to Saul as a result of David playing his harp, the moral ‘credit’ lay primarily with the Lord who was at work in David’s life, and only secondarily with David for his obedience to God.

We do not live in a dualistic universe in which God and Satan are equal opponents. Not at all. The enemy’s schemes are not outside the extent of God’s sovereign rule, so we can’t ascribe some bits of our lives or circumstances exclusively to God and other bits exclusively to the devil. For the working out of God’s redemptive work in the world involves Him using things which are evil, for which others are held responsible. Thus the apostle Paul described his "thorn in the flesh" simultaneously as "a messenger of Satan", sent to torment him and as something given to him by God to keep him from becoming conceited. And although Paul pleaded with the Lord to take the ‘thorn’ away from him, it served God’s purposes better not to do so. The life of Joseph provides another example of God working out His purposes through human sin and suffering. Joseph’s adolescent arrogance, his brothers’ hatred of him, and Potiphar’s wife’s lust and deception caused Joseph to be sold into slavery and then thrown into jail. But later, when, as vizier of Egypt, he met his brothers again, Joseph told them,

Thus we see that God makes use of evil to achieve His good will. As F. I. Andersen has expressed it, "Only God can destroy creatively. Only God can transmute evil into good. As Creator, responsible for all that happens in His world, He is able to make everything (good and bad) work together into good."

But it is at the very centre of our faith, in the crucifixion of Jesus, that God’s saving use of injustice and pain is seen most directly. According to the prophet Isaiah, "It was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer." Thus the proclamation of Peter to the Jewish crowds was, "Jesus of Nazareth was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge", and, "This is how God fulfilled what He had foretold through all the prophets, saying that His Christ would suffer." And the infant church used the following words in their prayer: "Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed. They did what Your power and will had decided beforehand should happen." Thus, through the evil actions of Judas Iscariot and the Jewish and Roman leaders which brought about the execution of an innocent man, God fulfilled His purposes for the salvation of the whole world.

Whether we like it or not — and perhaps many of us don’t — the picture the Scriptures present to us of the Lord is of a God who can quite reasonably be described not only as permitting suffering but even as inflicting it upon humankind. Why is God like that? Surely it is because through our experience of pain and hardship, He is better able to achieve His good and perfect will for us. If we misunderstand God’s love to mean that He is always going to be ‘nice’ to us, we may at times fail to recognise the wisdom of His ‘severe mercy’ towards us. For, rather than being evidence of God’s absence, suffering may be a sign of His presence. Indeed, the fact that we are suffering may well be a demonstration of our Father’s love for us and a sign that He would go to any lengths in order to achieve the very best for us. The Lord disciplines those He loves.

However, being realistic about suffering in our modern society can be difficult. For in our culture, we don’t even like to be inconvenienced, let alone to experience serious hardship. Nearly all pain of any kind is rejected as a form of evil, and suffering is avoided at almost any cost. The wisdom of the writer of Ecclesiastes was that "sorrow is better than laughter" and mourning better than feasting, but such teaching seems laughable to us now. As Jim Packer has put it,

Such a perspective on the "problem of pain" is a relatively new one, being dependent on living in a society in which many face little in terms of deep hardship and are outraged when faced with calamity (especially if a scapegoat can be found). Outside of the modern Western world, of course, such a view is not so common. After all, hardship and suffering are prevalent and unavoidable for the majority.

But the real problem for those of us who pursue ease and comfort, and seek to avoid suffering is that such a lifestyle is in opposition to the priorities of true Christian discipleship. Sadly, once again, to a great extent, we in the Western church have taken our cue from the world and, as Eugene Peterson has expressed it, "We have somehow ended up with a country full of Christians who consider suffering, whether it comes from a broken body or a broken heart, a violation of our spiritual rights."

Of course, we have no rights before God, and such an attitude is seriously detrimental to growth in Spiritual maturity and holiness. Such a misunderstanding of the place of suffering in God’s purposes for our lives prevents us responding appropriately to His "discipline". Indeed, God’s discipline is much too little thought about by many Christians in the West, where discipline of any sort is frequently in short supply, not least in the church. We have become soft and undisciplined, even though surely an undisciplined disciple must be a contradiction in terms! By doing everything we can to avoid suffering, we fail to achieve our full potential, for, as with the sportsman who trains rigorously for the pursuit of the prize, the best can only be bought at the cost of great pain.

When the apostle Paul was in Caesarea at the end of his third missionary journey, a prophet named Agabus took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, "The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’" Those with Paul pleaded with him not to go to Jerusalem. But Paul answered, "Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." When Paul would not be dissuaded, they gave up and said, "The Lord’s will be done." When faced with suffering, are we more like Paul or more like his friends? When something is hard, difficult, a struggle, do we give up, or are we like the man Paul followed and lived for, a man who had prayed, "Abba, Father, everything is possible for You. If you are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will.", before going to His death?

There is a false assumption in the thinking of many of us that the primary desire of a good God would always be to remove our suffering. Indeed some modern theologies of healing are founded on this particular mistaken premise. The elimination of suffering surely is part of God’s work in the world. Indeed, in the new Jerusalem, there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away. And dramatic healings have always accompanied those who have believed as a sign of the kingdom. Our God is a God who does heal and deliver — and He delights to do so when we ask Him to according to His will. But, in this age, we still await the fullness of God’s kingdom and the "renewal of all things". Meanwhile, as we live in the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, between the kingdom present now and the kingdom yet to come, God’s desires will on occasion be better fulfilled through our perseverance in the midst of trials than through their removal. We need a theology that embraces both God’s healing power and the place that suffering plays in His purposes. In both our thinking and practice the Biblical notions of redemptive suffering and divine healing need somehow to be combined, for the kingdom of God experiences triumph both through sickness dramatically overcome and through transformation brought about as a result of sickness. After all, kingdom growth is about holiness, not health, about our spiritual state rather than our physical state. So God’s main purpose is often not to solve our problems but to bring about a change in our attitude to those problems.

Suffering has a significant place in our development into maturity. The ancient proverbs recognise the benefit of pain in developing moral character:

Indeed, suffering had a crucial place even in Jesus’ development. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us that, "It was fitting that God should make the author of our salvation perfect through suffering." and, "Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered." Although Jesus never disobeyed His Father, He was trained for ever greater depths of obedience through the trials He faced. The temptations and pain Jesus experienced were real and the battle for victory difficult, but He resisted and prevailed. Jesus’ greatest test was at the end of His ministry, in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, but His public ministry began with testing too when the Holy Spirit sent Him into the desert to be tempted by the devil. If it was the Father’s will for Jesus to learn through suffering, how much more should we, who are sinful, expect a similar treatment if we want to grow into Spiritual maturity.

In practice, most of us are probably much more concerned to avoid suffering than to avoid sin. We do our best to insure ourselves against all kinds of eventualities, seeking security where none is to be find, storing up for ourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. We may believe that money can buy us protection from suffering, but the truth is that there is only one real ‘insurance policy’, and it is to be found in laying up treasure in heaven. As Don Carson has written, "We want security; we want it desperately. But it has very little to do with the security of belonging to God, everything else being negotiable." As a result, when we are oppressed, our focus is more likely to be on gaining relief from the situation we’re in than on the Lord and His purposes. As Elihu lamented,

When in pain, we pray for relief — and that is good. But if that’s all we do then we are in danger of missing God’s work in the midst our hardships. When faced with tragedy or danger, we pray for protection and safety — and that’s fine too. But if that’s all we do then we are unlikely to see God’s hand transforming our hearts. Indeed we may find ourselves fighting God Himself, trying to put out the refining fire He has kindled to burn away the dross in our lives! As Cleland Thom has written, "All of us need to keep God’s training programme well in focus as we learn to cope with life’s bitter blows." When we suffer, are we going to set our sights on Spiritual growth or on escaping from the pain and trying to have an easy life?

God is totally good. So when He allows us to pass through trials we know we can trust Him completely. He has everything in His hands. Even the sifting brought by the enemy has to come through His permission. So when our lives are being shaken, we can be sure that He is at work — tearing some things down and building other things up. We need to learn to acknowledge His goodness towards us not only in the easy times but also in the hard. Lindy Croucher expresses it like this:

When we suffer, God is looking to see how we respond. For we all suffer, but we don’t all grow as a result. Crises can drive us away from God or towards Him. We can become bitter people or we can become better people. The choice is ours, for it is not through the suffering itself but through our response to misfortune that we mature and develop. If self-examination under suffering shows us how we can improve, then we should improve. It’s bad enough to go through suffering, but it’s worse to do so and not profit from it. After all, if we fail to learn the lesson the first time we are likely to be tested again on the same point later. So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to let the Lord speak to us in our situation or are we going to struggle and complain? Giving our energy to blaming our circumstances or other people, or rationalising God out of the equation will hamper the production of good fruit the Lord desires for us. Here is some more wisdom from Elihu:

As Don Carson has written, "If our heavenly Father disciplines those He loves, and punishes those He accepts as His children, then to chafe unduly under such punishment is to betray our immaturity — or even, finally, to call into question our desire to grow in conformity to our heavenly Father." When Job was afflicted with terrible sores, his wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" Job replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. Both Job and his wife recognised the seriousness of the choice before Job as to how he reacted to his suffering.

"Be patient in affliction." "Endure hardship like a good soldier of Christ Jesus." So wrote the apostle Paul. Patience is a virtue that is in very short supply these days. We’re even too impatient to learn patience; we want it now! It is even rarer to find those who exhibit patience under trial — "forbearance" or "longsuffering". We don’t like to wait or put up with any kind of inconvenience, let alone suffer for long! The Scriptures, however, place a high value on perseverance when the going is tough:

Like Job, we are called to face our suffering in faith, but not with fatalistic resignation or dispassionate stoicism — that is not what "bearing one’s cross" is about — but with a realistic confidence in God, knowing Him experientially at work in the midst of our pain. The ability to handle suffering depends on where our focus is. Are our eyes fixed on the author and perfecter of our faith at work in us, or on our troublesome situation? As the old song goes, "When the road is rough and steep, fix your eyes upon Jesus." Are we awaiting the end of our suffering, or the completion of the Lord’s goal for it? Here are some words of Andrew Murray, known as his "formula for trial" that provide a good basis for our response in times of difficulty:

1. He brought me here. It’s by His will I am in this straight place. In that fact I will rest.
2. He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child.
3. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends me to learn.
4. In His good time, He will bring me out again — how and when He knows.

We need to make sure we don’t waste the trials we face, but rather seize them as opportunities, offering our affliction back to God who has permitted it to make of it what He wills. As the seventeenth century Quaker, Isaac Penington, put it:

For, as we welcome God’s work and abandon ourselves to His will, we will learn, like the apostle Paul did, true contentment in every situation, whether good or bad:

If we don’t want to remain as we are, but want to become more like we were made to be, then we will need to give God permission to disturb us when necessary, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and teachable in His hands, and to recognise and respond to His work in our pain and suffering.

If by letting us go through periods of suffering, the Lord is able to achieve His purposes in us more effectively, then we should not only expect suffering but also positively value it. Such a statement sounds almost heretical to the ears of modern man, but the teaching and testimony of the Biblical writers is that suffering may often be regarded as a precious gift from God. Thus the psalmists proclaim,

Similarly, the ancient books of wisdom declare that the person who is truly wise will love discipline: "Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty." "The corrections of discipline are the way to life." "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid." As Don Carson has written, "When you stop to think of it, the prospect of discipline must be encouraging to those who genuinely want to please their heavenly Father."

The apostles of the New Covenant were no less convinced that we should have a positive attitude towards the pain we experience and the difficulties we face:

Many of us would prefer to rewrite or reinterpret these verses to say something other than what they actually say — that we should be happy that we suffer. They do not say just that we should remain happy in the midst of suffering but that our trials should be cause for us to rejoice. Our troubles are not evils simply to be endured, but something to be gloried in. As we exult in "the hope of the glory of God", in the same way we should also exult in our afflictions and hardships! This teaching should not surprise us, for Jesus Himself said something similar, though in His case talking specifically about the suffering of persecution:

An unbridled pursuit of happiness and pleasure has replaced, for most of us, the pursuit for holiness that should characterise our lives. And it is this purely hedonistic approach to life that makes us totally undervalue discomfort and pain, and causes us to find unacceptable the idea of being happy about our suffering. But God’s idea of happiness, or ‘blessedness’ is of a different order from ours. He Himself wants to be the source of our aspirations and delight. Our satisfaction depends, not on our fragile circumstances or achievements, but on our relationship and pursuit of God. Thus in the Scriptures blessedness is often linked, not with comfort and ease, but with hardship, obedience and discipline. So the psalmist can sing, "Blessed is the man You discipline, O Lord." For it is discipline — not sheltering and pampering — that we need in order to discover true happiness.

We should note that this has implications not only for ourselves and how we respond as God’s children when we suffer, but also for the way we raise our own children. For do we not often seek to protect them from pains and struggles through which they could grow? And are we not often in danger of cosseting them too much and disciplining them too lightly? Do we not often excuse their sin and rebellion rather than take it as seriously as God did in Christ? Indeed, if we are honest with ourselves, would we not often rather have our children happy rather than holy? And what of our long-term goals for them? Do we not often prize a good secular education more highly than growth in godliness, and worldly success more highly than Spiritual depth? Eleonore van Haaften asks,

If we are truly God’s people then we will want our prayers and aspirations for our children to be aligned with His will — above all that they might know Him and might develop into Spiritual maturity. Don Carson has written the following of his own parenting: "I look at my children, and I wish for them enough opposition to make them strong, enough insults to make them choose, enough hard decisions to make them see that following Jesus brings with it a cost — a cost eminently worth it, but still a cost." Are we willing to let God take our children through suffering we would not choose for them, and to be determined not to interfere in His work? After all, if pain is required for us to grow in faith, so will it be for our children.

Suffering is part and parcel of our calling as Christians and so, contrary to all the expectations of our culture, we would do well to welcome and embrace it rather than resist and fight it. For through pain rightly accepted we can grow to be more like Christ. Let us not limit His work in us to that which we find agreeable. As Jeanne Guyon wrote many years ago,

It has often been said that Jesus promised His followers three things: firstly constant trouble (not escape from tribulation), secondly constant joy (based not on our circumstances but on our relationship with Him), and thirdly His constant presence (in any and every situation). For the Lord does not leave us to suffer alone. He is not a distant impersonal god, but the personal Immanuel, God with us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Although He may afflict us for our own good, He does not abandon us. In the midst of the suffering that comes from Him, there we will find Him with us, to strengthen us and help us and uphold us with His hand. Furthermore, our God is a God who knows what it is like to suffer for in Christ He entered our world and identified with our situation. We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who empathises with us and comforts us. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Moreover, our God is not looking for reasons to send us trouble. Indeed the opposite is true; He is slow to anger. The Lord corrects and chastens us only to the extent that He knows is needed to bring about His good purposes in us. Shortly before Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. as part of the Lord’s disciplining of Israel, He spoke through Jeremiah to say,

A few years later, after Jerusalem had fallen and the inhabitants of Judah were in exile, Jeremiah wrote the following words, poignantly describing his experience of the Lord’s harsh treatment. He acknowledges the rightness and goodness of the Lord’s discipline and our responsibility to offer ourselves humbly and patiently under His affliction. But, above all, Jeremiah calls to mind with hope the Lord’s compassion and reluctance to bring suffering upon His people:

God disciplines His children in the measure that He deems necessary. The trouble He sends our way is strictly limited. We certainly do not get what we deserve — which is to be thrown into hell, not gentle discipline — for the Lord’s wrath is restrained by His mercy and the full extent of His just judgement is held back by His love.

The Lord will never test us beyond what we can endure. His discipline is that of a gentle Father. Even though at times we may feel at breaking point, a bruised reed He will not break, and a smouldering wick He will not snuff out. For God is for us not against us. His aim is not our destruction but our reconstruction in His image. And to this end He will use painful surgery to destroy and break the power of all that is unhealthy and unclean in our lives. If something is taken away, He will replace it with something better. For His desire is not to hurt us, but to set us free from all that is destructive within us. He may tear us to pieces but He will then heal us; He may injure us but He will then bind up our wounds. For His purpose is to restore our souls.

If we keep the goal of our suffering in view, we will have a sure and certain hope. For the future can only be better if our suffering bears the good fruit of God’s work in our lives. But it is not only the immediate future that gives us hope in times of trial. For if we have an eternal perspective, seeing things in the light of the ultimate End, then our present struggles may seem a small price to pay as we are prepared for our supreme Goal:

However distressing our situation, we can be sure that our present sufferings are nothing in comparison to the glory that will be revealed in us. We can afford to suffer now; we have an eternity of respite ahead. Our days on this earth are but a drop in the ocean in comparison to our eternal reign. For we are not people of this world any more than Jesus was. Rather, we are aliens and strangers longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Indeed, our pain and sorrow in this life may be used by God to make us homesick for heaven and help us recognise the temporary nature of all the things of this world we so easily end up attached to. As Thomas à Kempis wrote,

In addition, even though now we may only partially understand the place our suffering plays in the Lord’s good purposes, we know that we can trust the One who always sees human life from an eternal perspective. And one day we too shall know fully, even as we are now fully known by Him. Meanwhile, in this world we will always have trouble. But we can take heart for Jesus has overcome the world.

We know that in all things God is at work for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. In our various experiences of suffering God works in a variety of ways, shaping us, tempering us, moulding us, toughening and softening us, educating, reforming and redeeming us. Through the troubles we face, He is teaching us, rebuking us, correcting us, and training us in righteousness — so that we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Pain is the anvil on which He forges our inner growth, character development and Spiritual formation — things that do not come easily in our culture of immaturity and quick fixes. For we have the opportunity of growing more swiftly when placed under pressure.

The storms we face are not necessarily chastening or correction for the moral failures of yesterday, though they may partly be that. Normally they have more to do with the future than the past, being concerned with making us more like Jesus and preparing us to be more effective vessels for the Lord’s use. For without thorough preparation, we may be more of a liability than an asset to the work of His Kingdom. So what are some of the intended effects of the suffering the Lord allows us to experience?

First of all, God, in His grace, sends us trouble to wake us up. Bodily comfort easily breeds in us complacency and thus ineffectiveness. We can be so busy working, enjoying life, pursuing our careers, even ‘serving the Lord’, that we no longer are really taking proper notice of God at all. So He seeks to get our attention by removing that comfort and disturbing our complacency. Pain often awakens us to ask questions about the purpose and focus of our living. In the words of Richard Baxter, "suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that the Word hath easier entrance." Many have come to faith in Christ through turning to Him in times of heartache, and God continues to make use of crises in our lives to send us back to Him when we let Him drift from the centre of our vision. Our personal tragedy and disaster may well be God’s hammer on our hearts causing us to awaken and face up to spiritual reality.

For God wants more than just that we wake up. His desire is that we take note of and do something about our spiritual state. And suffering has a way of showing us what we’re really like, if we’ll let it. In his farewell address to the Israelites, Moses reminded them of the reasons behind their desert wanderings:

What is in our hearts? God knows, but do we know? And are we going to do anything about it? These are important practical questions, for what is inside us comes out in the way we behave and affects our usefulness to God’s Kingdom purposes. We live and minister out of what we are. For, as Jesus said,

and

In our pride, we would often prefer to stay behind our masks, hiding our character weaknesses and covering up our shortcomings. But God in His loving gentleness may well pull away our inadequate crutches and strip off our ineffective sticking plasters so that we can face up to our true state and properly address our areas of dysfunctionality. This process is undeniably painful and unpleasant, but if we are to grow into Christ’s likeness then the things in us that bother our Father will need dealing with. And if we’re going to resolve these issues then they will have to come to the surface where we can recognise and take responsibility for them. So God places us under pressure, because when we are pushed out of our ‘comfort zone’ we show what we are really made of.

For example, how do we react to others letting us down, to unfair treatment and false accusations? Do we take offence or do we show God’s loving grace and forgiveness? And what is revealed in our reaction when we face disappointment and discouragement, or when our lives are falling apart? Anxiety? Resentment? Insecurity? Frustration? Despair? Lack of self-discipline? Impatience? Pretence? Lack of love? Inconstancy? Selfishness? People-pleasing? Harbouring of grudges? Lack of integrity? Harshness? Self-pity? Or is it the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives that is displayed — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?

Lindy Croucher has spoken insightfully of God’s use of suffering to test what’s in our hearts:

She continues,

So when the heat is on, it may be that the fire is bringing impurities to the surface. When we feel pressed on all sides, when we feel like exploding and don’t understand what’s happening to us, it may be that things we didn’t know existed in our hearts are being brought into the light. This is good and is God’s work. We need to see what’s there and allow the impurities that are revealed — all that is unhealthy and unclean within us — to be removed, along with the pride that kept them hidden, so that we may be set totally free of their hold on us. Will we keep coming to our Father in repentance and brokenness over what He has shown is inside us, until we have received from Him forgiveness, cleansing, healing and complete liberation?

God wants us to be pure, so He lets us pass through His refining fire in order that the dross within may be burned out. This was His purpose in having His Old Covenant people exiled to Babylon: "I will refine and test them, for what else can I do because of the sin of My people?" "I will turn My hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities." The Lord’s "furnace of affliction" is designed to bring forth the gold of godliness in our lives and purify us from everything that contaminates body and spirit. In the Scriptures, this refining process is particularly associated with the approach of the end of the age:

The church is desperately in need of purging and cleansing. We often ask God for success or power, but He is crying out for purity — purity in our thinking, in our motives and in our worship. The Lord wants a people for Himself who are spotless, who live righteous lives, who are not a mixture of the clean and the unclean but reflect His purity to the world. In order to achieve this He will put us through the mill so that the impurities can be tenderly and lovingly cleared out of us. As we cry out to God to create in us a pure heart, He will send us through His fire to bring us to a place of repentance, of grieving over our sinfulness, of recognising our unworthiness to be His children. Then every trace of darkness can be burned up and His light and glory can shine into the hidden places of our being. Then our propensity to do what is evil can be overcome and be replaced with His strength to always do what is right.

We need to be willing for Him to turn up the heat where necessary and to expect to experience great anguish of soul. For grieving is a gift from God and tears are part of the cleansing because they help to soften our hearts. We need to let the pain do its work, and to allow the Lord to go deep into the recesses of our hearts, into areas that were previously off-limits to Him. We can never bring ourselves through to freedom, not least because we’re often much too soft on ourselves.

C. S. Lewis, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of his Narnia chronicles, tells of a boy, Eustace, who was trying to remove the dragon skin in which he had become trapped as a result of his selfishness. He repeatedly scraped away one set of scales only to find another set underneath. Eustace describes what happened next:

A significant measure of the pain and part of our struggle in the refining process comes from our attraction to and identification with those things the Lord wants to remove from us. We aren’t always so keen to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Part of us often prefers to remain in our dysfunctionality. We need to be willing to let the divine Surgeon have His way and cut as deep as necessary, even to pray, "Send the fire today!"

Another possible effect of trials and tribulation is an increased faith in and dependence upon God. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church,

When our lives are falling apart and there seems to be no way forward, we are forced to decide whether we are going to trust God with our lives and the outcome of our circumstances or not. When we experience loss or conflict or sickness or persecution or confusion, God has us in a place where we can learn that He is totally dependable and will always meet our needs in His way if we let Him. Often it seems like the Lord pushes us off a cliff only to catch us just before we hit the bottom simply in order to teach us that we can trust Him completely — God is faithful and loving and will never let us be smashed to pieces. Thus what looks like devastation to us becomes an opportunity for us to deepen our faith and confidence in our heavenly Father whose desire is for our best.

We are called to be a people who rely on the Lord alone, but so often we place our trust elsewhere — in finances or material things or human relationships. In doing so, we let these inadequate securities take the place that only the Lord Himself should have. So, at times, He works in our lives to destroy the props that we look to for safety and comfort. He shakes us so that what we have built and relied upon can be brought down and replaced by an unshakeable trust in God who alone is totally reliable. In these situations, we need to be careful that we don’t try and fix what God is breaking or rebuild what He is destroying, but let Him transfer our security back to Him. For God and His kingdom cannot be shaken.

Unless the Lord takes us into situations in which we can’t cope without Him, we are likely to remain self-confident and unlikely to recognise our profound need to rely on Him in everything. Jim Packer has written of this as follows:

We often prefer to be self-sufficient, and like to think that our needs are being met as a result of our industriousness. But our Father wants us to live in complete daily reliance on Him for all that we require. So at times He will place us in situations in which we have no choice but to wait for Him to act, in which there is no way out without a miracle. When the Old Covenant people were wandering in the desert, they had no option but to rely on the Lord’s daily supply of manna and quails:

But some of the Israelites immediately demonstrated their lack of faith in God’s provision by trying to hoard the manna for the following day. For when we are no longer in control of our situation in the way we like, we are often tempted to believe that we’ve got to do something, even when all the Lord is asking of us is that we trust Him. Oh the folly of moving ahead of God’s guidance! Learning to seek His direction before acting, and to wait for the leading of the Holy Spirit in everything we do — rather than acting on our own initiative independently from God — is a lesson we all need to learn at some time. And God will allow us to go through hard experiences to teach us this.

Another temptation we face when we are in distress is to believe that God owes us some kind of explanation for what happens to us. Our difficulties may be compounded in our minds because they don’t make sense to us and we wonder what on earth is going on. In these situations, it is very likely that God will leave many of our questions unanswered, and in this too we have the opportunity to grow in our ability to trust Him. Satan will do his best to sow seeds of destructive doubt in our minds: "Is God really good?" "Is He really in control?" When tested like this, will we hang on to the Lord’s promises or give in to discouragement? When we are in the dark, will we trust that Almighty God is sovereignly orchestrating events to bring about His unfailingly good purposes for us? When faced with the painful mystery of suffering, will we acknowledge that, for reasons too deep for us to comprehend, the tapestry of His work must contain black threads. Above all, will we remain faithful to Him who sees the big picture and holds us and everything in His hands? Here are some words of testimony from Charles and Carol, a couple whose daughter René lost her life in an accident when she was in her thirties:

Our faith is not true faith if it is based on sight. As the writer to the Hebrews tells us, it is being "certain of what we do not see". And this is the sort of faith we should all aspire to: a certainty that remains rock-solid even when our circumstances seem to suggest the opposite of the truth. God is good beyond measure, and absolutely and completely in control, even when it doesn’t seem like it. But faith is not blind or irrational either; it is not a "leap in the dark". No, it is based on God’s gracious revelation of Himself to us. Our experience of our relationship with Him teaches us that He is totally faithful and wholly trustworthy, and the testimony of the Scriptures is the same. "For I know the plans I have for you", declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." These words, spoken to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, testify of God’s character and His love for His children. Once our eyes are opened to these things, we will be able to leave all distrust, doubt and suspicion behind.

At times, all we can do is hang on to God’s promises and recognise that when we come to the end of our tether He will be there for us, a refuge and rock providing us with the necessary grace to keep going. He repeatedly promises never to forsake us. He is always with us and He holds us by the hand. Even if we walk through the "valley of the shadow of death", He will be there with us.

Sometimes the Lord uses our wilderness experiences or situations of emptiness simply to create in us a deep longing for God Himself so that we will seek Him and come to discover His love for us anew. Coming to the end of ourselves can, by His grace, drive us back to Him and impel us to encounter Him more deeply. For our communion with God is more important than anything else. The prophet Habakkuk experienced something of this when the Lord revealed the coming destruction of Israel to him. His words provide one of the strongest affirmations of faith in all the Scriptures:

As Don Carson comments on this passage, "Habakkuk resolves that, however great the privation he must suffer along with the covenant community, he will delight the more in God. It is almost as if the threatened loss of all material blessings and security drives him to enjoyment of God: there is nothing and no one else to rely on, and therefore nothing to mask the enjoyment of God that ought to be the believer’s focus." Let us, too, allow ourselves to be brought to the place where we recognise that God alone is enough.

In English, the expression to be "on one’s knees" has two meanings: on the one hand, to be in a state of weakness and despair, or on the other hand, to be in humble submissive prayer. Similarly, to be broken-hearted is to be overwhelmed with sorrow or grief, but brokenness also has the meaning of humility or contrition: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.", sang king David when himself broken as a consequence of his sin. But the link is not just linguistic, for an attitude of humility can be the fruit of being brought to our knees and reduced to despair. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, meekness and lowliness are very highly valued by God, and suffering is one way He goes about producing it in His people. We can choose to humble ourselves, or, if we are unwilling, God can bring us low Himself through painful circumstances. As long as we fear humiliation, we are still full of pride that needs subduing, and if we don’t pursue humility voluntarily, in time God will bring us to a place of weakness and failure where we can more easily learn humility.

In our society, those who exhibit strength and success are exalted, but God is more impressed by those who know they are weak and utterly incapable of living His way without His grace. Perhaps few of us are like that. Many of us tend to be strong, like wild horses, and need breaking in and disciplining before we are of any significant use to God. Cleland Thom, in his book on the life of Moses, writes of this taming process as follows:

Thus God works in our lives to make us weak because weakness and failure is often the necessary starting point for us to achieve anything significant for Him. For when we come to the end of our own means and are so weak that we can’t do it, then God can come to us and display His strength in us. All that is of ‘self’ has to die so that God can be revealed in us. In the second of his letters to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul writes of this in two passages:

Are we willing, like Paul, to boast not about ourselves, but about our weaknesses? Paul recognised that God’s purposes are better served and His glory increased by the manifestation of His grace and power through a weak human vessel, because in this way there could never be any confusion as to the source. In our pride we often try to add to what God does, try to do some of His work ourselves, and so end up taking some of the glory for ourselves. But this only obscures and tarnishes what He is doing, as we get in the way of others seeing God at work in us and through us. True humility makes us invisible; only the glory of the Lord is seen. Are we willing to be made nothing for Him — even if the road to emptiness and total surrender is a painful one? O Lord, shake us and break us so that we might become vessels for the display of Your glory!

Jesus once said that a certain man had been born blind "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life", and then He healed him. How much do we want God’s work in our lives? How highly do we value His honour? Are we willing to experience a similar level of brokenness and heart-break so that the Lord’s glory might be revealed in us as a result?

One of the fruits of being broken is an increased empathy and compassion for those who suffer. This was true of Christ, who, because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, is able to help us when we are being tempted, and it is true of us. Those who have known God’s grace in times of trouble are more able to be channels of that grace to others:

Being brought low can make us gentler people, able to understand more deeply the pain of the broken-hearted, and less likely to give glib answers to those who suffer and grieve. We are called to speak sensitively and tenderly to those who are struggling, not stridently and harshly. We should be full of loving-kindness and grace like our Lord who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. But, if we are to grow to resemble Him more truly in this way, then the price may be that we ourselves must first be crushed, bruised and broken — but not destroyed — in order to make our hard hearts softer.

God’s refining work may come to us through many different channels. One of these is when others harm us, usually unintentionally, by their attitudes or actions towards us. In our social interactions, from time to time, we all suffer as the result of others’ failure and sin. We may experience pain at the hands of either believers or unbelievers, and in either case such situations provide us with an opportunity for growth — though in practice, conflict with other believers can be harder to cope with because of the expectations (either reasonable or unrealistic) we may have of Christian behaviour.

We should, of course, expect opposition from some unbelievers if we are serious about following Christ: "You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of Me.", said Jesus. "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.", wrote Paul to Timothy. We follow a Man who knew much suffering and rejection and should expect no less ourselves. In fact, if the practice of our faith doesn’t cause us trouble, we need to ask ourselves if perhaps there isn’t something wrong. In the early centuries of the church, Christians were accused of "hatred of the human race" for their perverse disloyalty to the values of their society. We should be no different. Our loyalty should be to the King of Kings and His Kingdom only. We should be those whose lives show clearly that we dissent from our society’s false values and don’t believe what the system says we should believe. If we were to do so in a principled manner, we would surely encounter opposition more regularly than many of us in fact do.

Often we don’t gain the benefit we could when we are let down or mistreated by others because we tend to focus on our feelings of hurt and on their cause and so respond self-centredly out of our pain. But, if we choose instead to pay more attention to our own attitudes in the midst of conflict, we will have the opportunity of growing as we become aware of some of our own character weaknesses and deal with them.

Perhaps the most common reaction when we are treated badly is anger. But anger can easily take root and grow into a poisonous tree of unforgiveness and bitterness, so when we are angry, we need to decide what we are going to do about it. The apostles James and Paul wrote as follows:

We have a choice: to harbour our anger and bitterness or to release our feelings to God and, in His strength, forgive those who have let us down. Our resentment won’t do either us or those we are angry with any good at all; only the enemy gains from it. The opposite of anger is meekness, an attitude that responds to injury without self-pity or retaliation. We are called to be those who do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us. We need always to forgive those who sin against us as completely as we ourselves have been forgiven. But, in addition, we need to be open to recognise our own share in the responsibility for the negative situation, and to confess and apologise for our sin without making excuses.

When people fail us, or deal with us unreasonably, or criticise us unjustly, true forgiveness implies that we choose to accept the injustice and avoid the route of self-vindication. God wants to bring us to the place where we respond to inequity and pain without complaining, where we can be treated unfairly and will keep quiet about it, because that is what Jesus did. For, when they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. As the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans,

We should be quick to admit to our faults, but when we are in the right we should be slow to justify ourselves. Our aim should be to respond in a way that is the reverse of the normal behaviour of the people of the world, who remain silent when in the wrong and loudly protest innocence when accused falsely.

Our society is becoming increasingly litigious. Those whose mistakes cause others suffering are more and more likely to find themselves involved in bitter and prolonged legal proceedings. This is partly the result of the growing use of the concept of the ‘rights’ of the individual as the basis of moral and judicial decisions. The whole idea of rights is, in some ways, quite seriously wrong-headed since it makes ethics self-centred — "my rights" become the controlling factor. In Christian ethics, the focus is on others, being based on our obligations and responsibilities, both to the Lord God (before whom we have no rights at all) and also to one another. So when injured, our responsibility is for our attitude to those who harm us not for any rights we think we might have, so a self-centred desire for justice or compensation is not an option for us. Indeed, in addressing a situation in which some believers were in dispute with one another, the apostle Paul writes to those involved,

We need to learn how to lay down our rights, rather than fighting for them, and let God vindicate us if He wants. For it is far more preferable to suffer wrong without protesting than to be seeking our own gain.

In responding appropriately to mistreatment from others, especially to unjust criticism, we may also have to face up to the issue of our pride. As Thomas à Kempis wrote six hundred years ago,

Rejection and criticism will come to all of us at times and when it does the question we have to face is whether it matters to us that people think badly of us, or whether we have died to the desire to retain a good reputation? Other people’s estimation of us, even that of our friends and family, should have no control over us except to the extent that it reflects the view of God Himself. For we should be living our lives as if before an audience of One, responding only to what He has to say to us. We should be jealous for the glory of God, not concerned about the level of our popularity or notoriety. Leslie Pitt has recently expressed the benefits of this kind of refining as follows:

Our obligation is to God, to be living in submission to Him, not to be seeking to please men and women, or living in fear of their disapproval and condemnation. We should not be those who are tossed back and forth on the tides of others’ opinions, but those who know and respond to the Lord’s voice. So when our character or actions are attacked we need to discern what, if anything, the Lord is saying through the words of criticism. Where there is truth in the accusations, even if they are delivered with completely the wrong attitude, we need to humbly respond appropriately in repentance; but where there are lies, we should quietly reject them as the work of the enemy and refuse to let them have control over us. When received appropriately, conflict can be a catalyst to drive us back to the Lord with a new desire to hear His voice with greater clarity and persevere along the path He has for us.

Sometimes our suffering is not the result of others’ sin, but of ours. When we are facing hardship and struggles of one sort or another, it is good first to ask whether our own poor decisions are, at least partially, the cause for our situation. Many times, it seems, we are unwilling take responsibility for our condition. We criticise someone else for the state of our relationship with them when we are a significant part of the problem. Or we complain of there not being enough hours in the day when it is our fault that we are trying to do too much. Or we moan that we’re short of money when we need to do something about our profligate spending. Or we lament that we’re overweight when it is the product of our overeating. Our failings have consequences that may be more or less painful for us, but if we permit it, these too can be used by the Lord to lead us into greater Christlikeness.

There are, of course, different kinds of failure, and not all failure is bad. Failing to live up to our own or others’ false agendas for us, or to the worldly expectations of our society may well be God’s will for us. Our society worships success and idolises those who are successful, but God has not commanded us to be successful but to be obedient to Him. We should be very wary of letting the world’s understanding of success and failure control us. In particular, success in work probably matters to many of us a lot more than it should, and the pursuit of financial security and career advancement may well be detrimental to God’s work in our lives. Lots of things don’t really matter in the eternal scheme of things and we may need to learn to fail to our society’s expectations in these areas. After all, God is unlikely to congratulate us on having had a successful career!

The sort of failure that always does matter is when we fail to live as God desires us to. When we are tempted, our integrity is being tested. Will we be loyal and true to God and His ways? Or will we cave in to the temptation and let Him down? And when we do fail, will we learn from our failure or remain unchanged? To fail ‘successfully’ involves recognising the flaws in our character that caused us to fail, and in repentance seeking God’s help to overcome them once and for all. The suffering we experience as the result of our sin is an act of God’s grace as He confronts us with our wrong so that it can be dealt with. This was something that king David recognised:

If we don’t learn from our failures, we can expect to repeat them until we do — and each time it will get harder as we let the pattern of dysfunctionality establish a stronger root in our lives. Many of us waste years of our lives in relative unfruitfulness repeating the same lessons because we don’t let the Lord in to deal with the roots of our habitual sins. If we are serious about being God’s people, we need to wage war in cooperation with Him against everything within us that prevents us living in the liberty of obedience to Him. With God’s assistance, our failure can be turned into kingdom success as He uses our sins and mistakes to further His ends within us. Not only will He instil in us new strength of character and self-discipline, but by responding correctly to our wrong decisions we will also grow in wisdom and the ability to make right decisions.

One of the situations in which the Lord will allow us to face trouble is when we make decisions without properly discerning what His will is. We are so used to doing as we see fit, that nearly all of us, at some time, need to be disciplined in order to learn that we should not do other than what the Lord has told us to. Often we want to have the place that God should have in our lives and so we try to help God work things out, using our own initiative independently of Him. This can be a recipe for disaster, sometimes with long-term repercussions.

Abraham learned this to his detriment when he accepted Sarah’s suggestion to assist the Lord in fulfilling His promise to them, and slept with her maidservant, Hagar. The consequences of Abraham’s actions are still with us today in the continuing hostility between the descendants of Ishmael and those of Isaac. Another Biblical example showing the results of failing to seek the Lord’s direction is the account of how the Gibeonites tricked Joshua into making a peace treaty with them, expressly contrary to God’s direction. The Scriptures say that the men of Israel sampled the Gibeonites’ provisions but did not enquire of the Lord concerning them. The impact of Joshua’s failure were still being felt in famine and bloodshed four hundred years later in the reign of King David.

Our failures may not have such long-lasting effects, but similar conduct by us will similarly have negative ramifications. When we fail to act as the Lord has directed us to, or we make decisions without listening to Him first, we are likely to suffer as a result. And when we choose a human alternative rather than doing what God has pointed out, or we attempt to help Him with our ideas when He doesn’t want our assistance, we are asking for trouble. For, if He is to teach us that His way is always the best, He will continue to let us experience frustration and disaster until we finally give in and agree to do nothing more or less than what He tells us to. If we want to be those whom He can use to achieve His purposes, then He needs to know that He can trust us never to say "No" to what He asks of us, never to behave as if we know better than Him, and never to initiate something without knowing what He thinks about it first.

Another common way in which God deals with us is to set us aside from our normal situation, and especially from things we tend to rely on. Sooner or later, if we mean business with God, He will lead us into the ‘wilderness’ or ‘desert’. As Cleland Thom has put it,

The immediate cause of our being laid aside can be various: sickness, burn-out or mental breakdown; bereavement, divorce or the disintegration of some other relationship; redundancy or retirement; homelessness, bankruptcy or even imprisonment. Our isolation may or may not be the consequence of our own sin, and it may or may not be the result of others’ mistreatment of us. In a sense the cause is irrelevant because wilderness times are essentially God-initiated. He drives us there because we’d be unlikely to go otherwise. The isolation of our desert may be physical, through, for example, imprisonment or extended hospitalisation. Or it may be primarily psychological as we feel let down by friends and family who don’t understood our situation. Here is Cleland Thom’s description of entry into the wilderness:

In God’s purposes, the desert is a place of transition, of ‘in-betweenness’, of apparent inactivity and unproductiveness, of character transformation in preparation for future activity and usefulness. Indeed, God may spend many years preparing us and training us for a particular moment. God’s formation of us takes time, and often involves an extended period of seemingly fruitless waiting in the wilderness. This is clear from the many Biblical examples of such experiences:

Joseph, as a result of his parents’ favouritism, his own boasting, his brothers’ envy, and Potiphar’s wife’s lust and deceit, spent thirteen hidden years, firstly as slave and then in prison before the dreams the Lord had given him as a teenager could begin to come to fruition. Or consider Moses. Already somehow aware of God’s calling on him to bring deliverance to the Israelites, he hot-headedly killed an Egyptian and had to flee two hundred miles away to Midian where he then spent forty years in apparent idleness looking after his father-in-law’s sheep before being ready to fulfil the role the Lord had chosen for him. Later, the Scriptures describe Moses as the meekest man alive. King David also experienced an extended desert time. Soon after being anointed by Samuel as king of Israel, he found himself an outlaw and remained on the run from Saul and his men for fifteen years, apparently achieving nothing, before gaining the throne after Saul’s suicide in battle. The Lord described David as a man after His own heart. The apostle Paul too faced a time of hidden preparation. Following his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, he spent fourteen years on the sidelines, including three in the Arabian desert, before he was ready to begin his missionary work.

When we’re thrust into the desert we discover the true extent of our relationship with God and what’s really in our hearts. We find out what we do when we’ve nothing to do. In our aloneness and loneliness, do we turn and seek God’s face or do we look for satisfaction elsewhere? We may say that the Lord is at the centre of our lives, but what actually happens when our normal coping mechanisms fail us? If we are to become those who always turn totally and completely to God in times of emptiness, we may have to face up to and address the addictive behaviours we substitute for seeking Him. Or we may need to deal with our dependence on things or people rather than Him. If we let it, the desert can lead us into a relationship of greater depth and maturity with our heavenly Father. Times of being set aside and waiting are not times to waste, but to use to increase our understanding of God and our intimacy with Him.

The wilderness enables us to see what unholy attitudes and reactions surface within us when our props are taken away. In particular, any pride in our own ability is likely to take a battering as we are disabused of the idea that we can achieve anything of value on our own. With our plans in tatters, the desert is the place where we finally ‘give in’, take off our masks, and accept our own helplessness before God. We may have secretly been proud of our spiritual state, but the desert uncomfortably exposes the sham. As we find ourselves vulnerable and insecure standing alone before God, we acquire a greater depth of humility as we discover how little we can do for Him and we learn to think little of ourselves and our achievements, and focus much more on how good the Lord is and how great His mercy is towards us.

The desert is also the arena for spiritual warfare. As Jesus was sent into the desert to do battle with the devil, so too the wilderness is for us a place of engagement in the battle that is not against flesh and blood, but against the dark spiritual forces of evil. The heart of this battle, as it was with Jesus, is temptation. The experience 1,700 years ago of Antony of Egypt, who chose to enter the Egyptian desert in order to encounter God, was much the same. Almost immediately, he was assailed with temptations in all his areas of vulnerability. By the grace of God, Antony learned to resist these attacks through faith and prayer and fasting.

There is much talk (and shouting) about spiritual warfare in some parts of the church today, but very little of it seems concerned with resisting temptation. Yet surely this is where we must start, with the war within our own hearts and minds, the war we wage against our sin face down in repentance — not in stomping and dancing, sword-swinging and shofar-blowing. In the desert we come face-to-face with the ‘demons’ within ourselves. When we are on our own, we see more clearly the process of temptation at work as we are dragged away and enticed by our own evil desire, which having conceived, gives birth to sin. And in time we learn to conquer the self, submitting ourselves to God, and resisting the devil and seeing him flee from us.

At some point in our wilderness time we may enter what the sixteenth century Carmelite monk, John of the Cross, called "the dark night of the soul". What is distinctive about this experience is the sense that we have been deserted, not only by other people, but by God Himself. In reality we have not truly been abandoned, but our perception is that we have been because God hides Himself from us to test whether it is the pleasure He gives us or our love for Him that motivates us. (Of course, at times we may experience separation from God through our own fault, but that is not a "dark night".) Here are some words of John of the Cross himself on the dark night of the soul:

In the dark night, we lose all the pleasure that we once experienced in our devotional life. During such times of darkness, Bible reading, sermons, worship, Christian fellowship — all will fail to move or excite. As God removes the ‘consolation’ or feelings we are used to in our relationship with Him, dryness and depression may overwhelm us. This is the Lord’s surgery to strip us of overdependence on the emotional life. Have we pursued God for the benefits it brings us rather than for His sake? How will we respond to the darkness? Although we find our Spiritual exercises wearisome, will we continue in them because they are still the route to the Source of life? Will we love God and live righteously when there is no immediate reward, when our hearts are heavy, and God’s word does not seem to come to pass? The dark night teaches us perseverance and discipline in prayer. For at times like these, there is nothing much we can do except ‘hang in there’, exercising blind faith in God’s goodness, based on our past experience. As Isaiah said, "Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God."

In 1871, D. L. Moody was seated on a platform when he heard the man preaching make this statement: "The world has yet to see what God can do with one man who is utterly committed to Him." Mr. Moody said in his heart, "I propose to be that person." We might think that anybody who would want to be used of God like that would get the applause of the angels — that everything would start going right. Within days his church burned down. His own house burned down. Thus the Lord brought a greater refining to Dwight Moody in preparation for an expansion in his famous evangelistic ministry. Cleland Thom, in his book on the refining process the Lord took Moses through, writes as follows:

Mr. Thom then describes one of his own refining experiences:

We tend prefer the easy, the smooth running along on the level. But when the going gets tough and the way is steep, if we’re facing the right way and moving forward, however painfully, then we’re actually climbing and on the way up, gaining more height and making more progress than we would be on the flat. We need to learn to embrace God’s discipline, to welcome it, even like Cleland Thom to ask for it, however painful it may be, because of the greater fruit it produces in our lives. Seasons of being refined are worth it!

A missionary friend wrote recently from Côte d’Ivoire after her mission’s local director and his wife were killed in a plane crash, leaving behind a teenage daughter who’d already lost her two brothers to malaria. These were our friend’s words:

Let’s trust God to know what’s best for us!

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