Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.
1 Peter 4:12 (NIV)
In the 1997 move The Edge about a millionaire and his entourage who themselves lost in the Alaskan wilderness, the main character played by Anthony Hopkins turns to his associate and explains most people who get lost in the wilderness die of shame. At the surprise reaction from his associate he explains they ask “What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?” And so they fail to do the one thing that would save them.
Trials and hardship can be that way for us. There is a basic instinct buried in the human soul that if things are going poorly, it must be our fault. We have done something to deserve this.
But it is not that way for us. There may be many reasons we find ourselves in the wilderness of suffering, but us deserving to be punished is not one of them. We have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and the new kingdom we now live in is devoid of condemnation and judgment. Rather it is full of redemption. Jesus is actively causing all things to work for our good, including whatever wilderness of suffering we may find ourselves in. What matters is not what we have done to get ourselves into it, but rather what God is doing to get us out of it. He has a plan. He always has a plan.
If you find yourself lost in the wilderness of trials and hardship, do not be surprised and ask what you have done to deserve it. Feel free to fix your eyes on what Jesus has done to get you out of it. The one who is with you is the very same one who did not spare his own Son for you. Will he not now give you all things?
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)
We are a very pragmatic and result-oriented generation. Nearly everywhere we turn, we are being told what to do in order to achieve the desired results in life: eat this food and you will lose weight; do this exercise and you will have amazing abs. Adopt this discipline and you will succeed. Practice this meditation technique and you will have peace. Everything we do is to an end. It is easy for us, therefore, to approach the Christian life that way.
But I do not think God is into us doing things to achieve results. He is rather the answer to all the results we seek, and therefore the end to all our efforts to achieve them.
I have spent the past couple of weeks going through the book of Romans with my wife, and the thing that strikes me is how little our personal effort plays in salvation. That it is truly by faith alone, and faith – as defined by the book of Romans – is our recognition the gift of salvation is not by works. We do not achieve salvation by human effort; it is a gift freely given.
And salvation is not just a future eternal state. It includes all that God desires to do in our lives. It is the abundant life Jesus promises, the victorious life over sin and death God always intended for us. It is the successful life. The successful life, then, is not achieved by human effort. We do not do in order to achieve the results we desire. We rest and believe.
This does not me we sit idle, of course. But it does mean our activity in life is confined to doing only what the Spirit of God in us is doing. The word picture here is like a home improvement expert coming into your home to remodel after several failed attempts by you to remodel it yourself. At that point, you no longer are trying to remodel your home. You are learning to get out of the way and let the expert do his best work, assisting when called upon. This is the Christian life. We are not trying to rebuild our own life. We are learning to allow God to rebuild it for us.
And this is why we really can be thankful in all circumstances. We are not trying to be thankful in order to make things happen. We are thankful because God has sent the best Home Improvement Expert in all creation into our lives, and He is already at work. He may be kept from doing all he wishes from time to time If we are getting in his way or preventing him from remodeling some of the rooms, but even here he is at work, teaching us to yield to him, teaching us how to make more space that he might be the one to do it.
Thankfulness stems not from a frantic impulse to make things happen; it stems from the recognition he has come and he has things under control. This is why we can be thankful. And the remodeling work he is doing is beautiful. In every moment, whether there is a lost of dust on the floor or not, he is doing a beautiful work.
In repentance and rest you will be saved, In quietness and trust is your strength. But you were not willing, And you said, “No, for we will flee on horses!” Therefore you shall flee!
Isaiah 30:15-16 (NASB)
Speaking of death being the path to greatness, God will often lead us into situations where the only fruitful way forward is to die to our familiar ways of keeping ourselves safe and to trust in him instead. God will do this on purpose. One day, we will be happily following God’s leading; the next, we fill find ourselves in the midst of danger and difficulty, wondering whether we have really heard God. But (if the Bible is our guide) the presence of danger and difficulty in our lives is not an indication we are not in God’s perfect will (especially if we have “obeyed” our way into it). It is often an indication God is setting us up for the thing he likes to do most: delivering us from our troubles.
No doubt, such a place is a bit uncomfortable. The apostle Paul recounts on one ministry trip being “burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.” But he explains God ordained this so that “we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead,” and declares God is “he on whom we have set our hope.1 This is really the heart of the Christian life: the process of us learning to no longer trust in ourselves but setting our hope entirely on God instead.
This is where the Christian life demands courage. Speaking from personal experience, it is much easier for us to flee from uncomfortable circumstances and trust in our own “horses,” just as the children of Israel did. Horses represent our own strength. The interesting thing is that the children of Israel were fleeing on their horses, not entering into battle with them. This is such a good picture of our human condition: as we trust in our own strength, we often find ourselves fleeing from life, not engaging with it. We find ourselves creating systems of survival around our fears or pain instead of facing these things head on that we may live a full life. This is because we were not created to live life on our own. We were created to live life in partnership with Him.
For this reason, it is so important to have a big opinion about God. Believing God is a God who desires to heal and deliver and extravagantly bless you has little to do with being selfish. It has everything to do with the confidence to remain in a place of rest in the middle of danger and difficulty so that you do not take matters into your own hands, giving God the opportunity to do his best work.
No matter who you are, before you judge the wickedness of others, you had better remember this: you are also without excuse, for you too are guilty of the same kind of things! [and so] you condemn yourself.
Romans 2:1-2 (TPT)
It has been a long time since I realized the gospel is beautiful. It is like a Christmas present from a friend I am sure I have deeply offended. Except that the friend is God Himself, and the offense is not imagined but real. But he has sent me a Christmas gift anyway, the most extravagant gift I could imagine.
There is however a science to all of this, and my lack of understanding of the precision involved in the science of grace is what has prevented me from seeing how beautiful it is.
God is the author of all we see in nature, and one of the things we see in nature is a God whose way of dealing with the world is precise and, if I may use the term, unforgiving. Gravity, for example, does not care if you have good reason to step off a cliff. Neither does a hot stove if you touch it. The consequence of these things are unyielding, and the same is true when we violate the principles of God’s moral law.
The apostle Paul declares in the very passage I have quoted, “We know God’s judgment falls upon those who practice [any form of wickedness].” So we cannot escape the consequence of sin any more than we can escape the consequence of stepping off a cliff or touching a hot stove. It is science. We may not like it and think it is unkind of God to have created the world this way if we wish, but in the end it does not matter. It is how the world is. (And between us and God, God probably gets to decide how his world should be.)
Now because of the Cross, we are no longer under the law. But I mention the precise and unforgiving nature of God’s law because God’s grace is equally precise and, in a way, equally unforgiving. Not unforgiving in the sense God is withholding forgiveness, of course, but in the sense that there are precise rules that govern his grace. For example, God’s grace must be received as a gift. If you attempt to earn it, you will fail to open it. And if you prevent others from opening it, you will prevent yourself from opening it, also. Religious performance and judgment will deny you the grace God has otherwise freely made available to you.
We may think Jesus going to the Cross was God’s way of saying he no longer cares about sin – or anything for that matter. That God is not really a rule-follower after all. But this idea is really a reflection of our modern age, not God. We think nothing really matters and God feels the same way. But the Cross demonstrates the very opposite of this. It is evidence God cares so much about sin that he sent his only Son to die in our place. It was an exchange in conformance with his precise and unforgiving nature – unforgiving in the sense sin had to be punished. As Romans puts it, “There was only one possible way for God to give away his righteousness and still be true to both his justice and his mercy—to offer up his own Son.”
I mention this because if we think the Cross is about God not caring about stuff, we will think he does not really care about religious striving or judgment either. In fact, we will think God really does not care about much of anything that we do, that the main take-away of the Cross is that he loves us and is not too concerned with what we with our lives. And so we spend our days stepping off cliffs of judgment or touching hot stoves of religious striving, wondering why our lives are filled with so much pain, not reflecting the fullness of all he has promised. Of course he still loves us, but by our actions and attitude, we are alienating ourselves from his grace.1
But once we understand the precise nature of God’s grace, we are able to see his gift for the beautiful thing it is. It is, after all, a gift. But more than that, it is an invitation to leave the heaviness and destruction of a life of stepping off cliffs and touching stoves, and instead to step into a life of Christmas presents every day, not only for us but for everyone. It opens up all sorts of possibilities, for we are truly blameless before him. And if he has not spared his own Son, will he not now give us all things?2
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. . . . You do not have because you do not ask God.
Romans 8:28, James 4:2-3
God causes all things to work together for our good. But this does not necessarily mean what we experience in this life is the very best God intended for us, for the simple reason our choices have consequences.
For example, we know from God’s Word that we do not have because we do not ask. What God intends for us is all that we might have, but us choosing not to ask will result in us having far less than he intended. Likewise, God intends for us to bear much fruit and have the fullness of joy by remaining in Jesus by obeying his commands. But if we choose not to remain in Jesus by obeying his commands, we will experience little or no fruit and even less joy. God also intends to experience his peace the transcends all understanding by not being anxious for anything and presenting our request to him instead. But if we choose to present our requests to him and be anxious instead, his peace will not guard our hearts and minds. Our choices have the ability to thwart God’s perfect will for our lives.
In what sense, then, does God cause all things to work together for our good? The answer is that God causes all things in our lives to maximize our opportunity to choose the very best he has for us. He is actively orchestrating every circumstance in life to bring us to the point of choosing the good. In this sense, God is causing all things to work together for our good.
The fact God’s very best is not guaranteed and requires our participation may be sobering, but it is also comforting. For we can know even in our poor choices, he is actively working for our good, seeking to turn our lives around to align with his objectives and design as he conforms us to the image of his own Son. Whatever our situation, he is always for us, wasting nothing.
D. Patrick Collins 