It’s January and my turn to blog. I knew this date was coming, but with all the busyness of Christmas vacation, I decided to wait to work on it until my kids were back in school. Little did I know they would end up with influenza just before my deadline, and I would be up at newborn hours caring for two very sick kids. Add to that fact my husband was out of state for a work obligation, and I was flying solo. Every day that has passed, I’ve felt the deadline of this blog looming over me, but the fires around me were so hot I didn’t see how I could sit to write, and I had little idea what to say. Then I remembered what my dear friend tells me frequently, “Write what you know; share what God is showing you in your life right now.” So here I sit in the dimly lit room where both of my kids are sleeping to share with you what I’ve been thinking about this week.
Looking Back
Yesterday as I was doing dishes a thought came to me that quickly turned into a prayer, “Thank you, God, that you have moved me beyond the place of looking at my circumstances to determine your character.” I was tired but thankful for the time to clean my kitchen—time I didn’t have for the days prior when the fever reducers and anti-nausea meds weren’t working well. The night before I had been up nearly every hour with one or the other of the kids, and fatigue had settled into mental fog. As I stood there actually feeling thankful for the opportunity to clean my kitchen (not a daily focus of gratitude I admit) I began to reminisce about the days when circumstances like these would have made me feel invisible to God.
God’s Truth Reflected in the Body of Christ
How did God begin to change my thinking?
First of all, Scripture began to change me, but no less significantly my attitude began to shift through engaging with the body of Christ in the middle of my suffering, when I simply wanted to stay home and hide. It was in fellowship where I saw the words of Scripture evidenced in the lives of those around me and proclaimed on the lips of fellow sufferers.
When I think about the moments in my life when I’ve asked the big questions about who God is and how He functions, it has most often been in times of suffering. This fact brings into focus the reality that it’s during times of suffering, when we’re most tempted to isolate, that we most need the body of Christ. It’s in our weakest moments when we most need the truth of Scripture from the mouths and hearts of brothers and sisters in Christ who can pursue us in love and with truth and who will pray with us.
Over the years I’ve been given piles of human perspectives through the feeble attempts of others to explain why God does what He does, but like Job, I never felt satisfied by answers that were based on human logic. It was those friends who showed me what God says about Himself in Scripture and who shared what they knew about God through their own suffering who helped me know God and who shared in my suffering.
I’ve shared many times that I had a long period of time, after becoming a new believer, when I suffered with depression and when I faced some scary health challenges. During that time I was also working through some post-childhood-trauma ideas about love and acceptance and battled with old tapes in my head about God. Many of those questions felt unanswered to me in my suffering—I often accused Him of abandoning me in my need and confusion. Yet with time I learned that He had not left me alone— as alone as I may have felt at times—but He was loving me and teaching me through His body as I engaged in the relationships He gave me and attended the studies and times of prayer and fellowship offered to me in my local church.
The Witness of Faithful Pilgrims
During those years I had the honor of being under the shepherding of a pastor who was not only fighting cancer, but who shortly after had a daughter diagnosed with terminal cancer. As I watched him and his wife love and serve God through that level of suffering, revealing His character through Scripture and proclaiming His loyal love, I was humbled and wanted to know God the way they did. It created a desire in me to press into Scripture and trust it in spite of my circumstances.
Also during this time my spiritual mother and mentor faithfully called me and encouraged me and taught me with Scripture. She pursued me with the truth of God’s word, and she kept me getting up each day and doing the work God gave me to do. She warned me against isolating and helped me see that getting up and doing the next right thing was not “works”, it was faithfulness. She also spent countless hours with me in prayer—not only for me, but significantly for those we both loved and served in ministry. She helped me take my thoughts away from my own life and to go to God with prayers for the suffering and needs of others.
At that time I had another friend who was navigating relational dynamics that stepped on her own internal fears and anxieties, and I watched her trusting these situations to God over and over and committing herself to loving these people for His sake, serving them and praying for them. I listened as she rejoiced in what God was teaching her through her submission to Him and His word.
Another friend of mine, at that time, was in therapy dealing with a level of childhood trauma that is simply unspeakable. As she walked with the Lord into healing, she was made to face and relive situations that would leave most people completely cut off from reality. Yet she stood, hand in hand with the Lord, and persisted in living in truth and trusting Him with the darkness and the brokenness that relentlessly surrounded her. We both marveled as she shared with me the ways God was providing for her and healing her.
Also during that time I had several friends who were caring for aging and dying parents. When we would come together at the end of the week for Bible study and prayer, they would share their heartache over the week and the ways that they struggled, but in the middle of that they also always shared praises of how God was working in the hearts of their parents. They rejoiced in small opportunities to share God’s word with them and in sweet moments of shared affection between them and their parents who at previous points in their lives had left deep wounds in their young hearts. They rejoiced in how God was using their trials to redeem their losses and to offer them opportunities to bring the gospel to their parents. I’ve stood with several of those friends as they buried their parents at the end of long hospices and have rejoiced with them in the comfort offered by God’s word, as well as in the moments when God reassured their hearts that they had been good and faithful stewards of His love.
At this same time I had friends who were weeping over and praying for unsaved children. I watched as their hearts lay so bare before me that I could almost feel the pain they carried which tempted to keep their thoughts far away and trapped in fear. Even so, they persisted in prayer, and they trusted God with their children, and I witnessed the life-sustaining power of the gospel in the brokenhearted. Their faithfulness and absolute hope in the faithfulness of God reached the faithless parts of me with deep conviction.
Other friends passed into the presence of the Lord during that time, and as I sat with those who knew them and listened to them rejoice over the freedom and perfect love in which these friends now lived, I was overcome by the hope of the gospel and the love of God. Some of these friends were taken young, others by long, drawn-out diseases. Yet each of them had proclaimed the hope of the gospel even in their last days, and they looked forward to seeing Jesus face to face. That kind of hope gave me courage and stirred the eternal parts of my heart that were often so subdued in the light of my hyper-focus on the things of the earth.
As one day melted into the next, and days into weeks, weeks into months and years, every experience I had walking with the Body of Christ and listening to them trust God while praying with them, helped me see who the God I love so deeply is. I saw first hand that He loves us through our trials, that He reveals Himself to us in them, and that He uses the body of Christ and His word to love us through all things. I learned how to glorify Him in my own weaknesses and how to look for opportunities to thank Him until it became the normal cry of my heart: “Thank you, God, even for this!”
The Fellowship of the Suffering
Suffering looks different to me after all these years. It looks like opportunity to trust, like the beginning of God’s work in my own heart, and like a chance to proclaim His faithfulness to others. It’s a time when I often feel Him nearer, not because He is more present, but because my heart is drawn to my Father in greater dependence—dependence in which I pray I will one day learn to live fully during every moment of my life.
My daughter asked me this week, as she lay suffering with a relentless fever and headache, “Who gave this to me?! I want to be mad at someone!”
Her anger reflected the natural state of mind with which we often face suffering. I told her that the point is not who gave her this disease—whoever gave it to her had also been suffering. I told her this is simply a result of sin in the world and an opportunity to trust God and learn from Him in it.
Her response made my heart rejoice, “I hate sin!” While I know her reaction was strongly focused on the result of the flu, her words gave us opportunity to talk about eternal things. I have prayed, as have many other faithful saints in my local church, that my daughter would learn to love what is from God and to hate sin. Her words about this flu were a perfect chance to talk about the life of the believer and the opportunities of suffering. I then played a song for her that turned her thoughts to a place of gratitude.
Go Find Home
I’d like to leave you with that song, and I’d like to encourage you again, if you’ve not yet found a church, to go and find a place of fellowship where the Bible is opened and clearly taught line by line, in context. When you can find a place where Scripture is supremely valued and faithfully taught, where it’s more than a launchpad for an inspirational speech, then you will find home, and you will find the fellowship of the suffering.
It’s there where you will find the people who will show you a faithful God in the midst of pain. You will find people who understand that their work is to do the will of the Father and who strive to live by the Word of God. You will find a people who will not simply bring you food when you’re sick, but who will bring you the word of God to consume when you most need it.
Go find your family who feasts on the Word of God, and I promise you, when you do, you will not be left to suffer alone, and you will not be without fellow soldiers to point you back to the Way when you find yourself stumbling on an unfamiliar path. You will come to know the Lord by His word and through the faithful proclamation of His people in a way that I believe we simply cannot know by doing life on our own. You will also be given the opportunity to glorify God in your own suffering, aiding in the spiritual growth and encouragement of those around you who love the Lord like you do.
Song: As Long as You are Glorified
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