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Beginning of Series Why did the twelve apostles in Jerusalem rejoice that they had been “counted worthy” to be flogged for Jesus’ sake (Acts 5:40-41)? When writing about Bible Heroes in Biblical Examples of Unanswered Prayer & the Implications for Us (listed in the links at the end of this page) I have expounded on other Scriptures confirming what a privilege it is to suffer for our Lord. That portion of the webpage is so relevant to our current discussion that I am sorely tempted to repeat it here. The entire webpage has so much other useful and inspiring information, however, that rather than add to the reading of those keen enough to read both pages, I suggest reading it (if you haven’t already) after completing this page. What if you can’t find the answers you crave? If you are perplexed by God’s actions or inaction, you are in excellent company. What I wrote decades ago rushes to mind: God’s saints accomplish great things while staggering around in dazed bewilderment. “By faith,” says Scripture, “Abraham . . . went out, went out, not knowing where he went.” “I go bound by the Spirit to Jerusalem, said Paul, “not knowing what will happen to me there.” The disciples were frequently stunned or mystified by Christ’s words and behavior. The psalmists were forever asking, “Why?” Psalm 10:1 Why do you stand far off, Lord? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Psalm 22:1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? Psalm 42:9 I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” Psalm 43:2 . . . Why have you rejected me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Psalm 44:23 Wake up! Why do you sleep, Lord? . . . Psalm 74:1 God, why have you rejected us forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? Psalm 88:14 Lord, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? And in the midst of his suffering, Job didn’t have a clue what was going on. It’s exciting to gaze ahead, but faith grows best in the dark. Life in the sunshine is so exhilarating that we seldom notice our faith beginning to droop. It’s when things are dim, that spiritual life mushrooms. Don’t for a moment think I have anything close to all the answers I yearn for. Most of my Christian life has been tormented by questions. Answers might have come after interminable years (often decades) but only to be replaced by equally vexatious ones. It happened even while writing this webpage. Despite writing being fundamental to my calling, it has always been a frustratingly time-consuming, mentally taxing process for me. Remember me earlier saying how I used to want to be God’s mindless typing machine, but God valued my contribution? Well, the human effort it takes is one consequence. It is living proof, among what must be literally millions of examples, debunking the myth that if something is of God it should be easy and painless. (George Müller, for instance, though famous for a life filled with daily financial miracles, kept finding that lifestyle a burden– see note below. How would you like to amass so much wealth that you could educate 122,683 children; buy 282,000 Bibles and one and a half million New Testaments; give away 112 million books, pamphlets and tracts; support hundreds of missionaries; and feed, clothe and house 10,000 children from the time they were orphaned until becoming independent? George Müller did. And he achieved this not by sweat and business acumen, not by garage sales and mailing lists, not by borrowing or asking for help, but solely by faith and prayer. He refused to let his needs be known to anyone but God. Fifty times in just one two-year period there were insufficient funds to see them through the day, yet what was needed always came in time. Though Müller enjoyed God’s miraculous provision daily for more than sixty years, the life of faith never grew easy for him. Even in his later years when he gained international fame, he still had to pray in every penny, often having to economize and wait virtually to the death knock before it arrived. The Lord so believed in Müller and so cared for his continued spiritual development that he kept the tests coming for sixty years until finally granting him a financially easier life when Müller entered his late eighties. For months, I had sacrificed much ministry to allow time to write this webpage. That devastated me as much as seeing people all around me in anguish and not lifting a finger to help them. The Lord kept giving me thoughts for this webpage, however, and I dare not squander his precious gift by not making time to faithfully recording them. Other than my distress over how much ministry this was preventing me from doing, I was amazed at how well I was coping and very grateful. Then I began to suffer some sort of mental exhaustion. It was like trying to think straight while severely sleep deprived. Sometimes I was so incapacitated that I would do things like go to a teller machine and leave behind the cash I had just withdrawn. I often wondered if it were safe for me to drive. Yes, the Almighty could have changed all of this but you will not find me going on strike; demanding God make it easier before I serve him. This mental fog stripped me of even more ministry time, and instead of being able to catch up on sleep, I found myself wasting countless hours; too tired to do anything and yet, for some mysterious reason, adequate sleep kept eluding me. I don’t think torturous thoughts over wasted time were the culprit, but they certainly kept me entertained while lying awake for hours on end trying to sleep. Adding to my distress was that for years, readership of my webpages had been significantly declining and I was unable to find the strength to do anything about it. I was strongly tempted to wonder if God had virtually given up on me and no longer wanted to use me. With the benefit of hindsight (and the return of the ability to think a little clearer) I know that, as always, the Lord has taught me much through all these struggles, I would not in a million years trade an easier life for what I have learned. One of the benefits was the reminder that all of us are important to God, not because he needs us, but because he loves us. If we are sidelined, God is not handicapped. It is critical that we be faithful to whatever task he assigns us. If, however, the Almighty refuses to perform the miracle necessary for us to meet a particular need, we can rest in the assurance that he has a better plan that does not require our services. A long time ago, I read an anecdote about a famous missionary pioneer who had achieved astonishingly much for the kingdom of God. Although the precise details have faded from my memory, I was so shocked that the impact has remained. Friends were lamenting what a loss his death would be. He replied it would simply mean one less person to mess up God’s plans. I had always thought his remarks were extreme. Through what I have now learned, however, I am sobered by how true it is, not only of me but of even the greatest of us. Like letting a three-year-old help bake a cake, us serving God is a beautiful act of love on behalf of both parties. Nevertheless, in practical terms, our contribution hinders the Flawless One, rather than helps him. My primary point, however, is that in the midst of all that was overwhelming me, I was completely mystified as to why God would allow any of it. Although it remained frustrating, what empowered me to cope was rebuilding my trust in God. A little later, I will provide some tips on how to receive more answers. Among the many things that all my years of questions have taught me, however, one of the most important is this: the trust that lets us snuggle into God and rest in him is a priceless jewel, alongside which even the most satisfying answers are mere trinkets. Remember that quote from the victim of Nazi atrocities: “When you know God, you don’t need to know why.” Knowing that God is trustworthy comes not from knowing a thousand facts about God but from knowing him. It comes from countless hours of heart to heart communing with him. If, to you, trusting God suggests warm, peaceful feelings, think again. Snuggling into God can sometimes be like a terrified or bewildered child rushing to his mother, flinging his arms around her, and burying his head in her bosom, while continuing to feel distraught. Resting in God can at times mean mustering every speck of willpower to force yourself to be still when everything within you yearns to run away in panic-stricken fear or disgust. Mark 11:24  . . . whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them . . . James 1:5-6 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God . . . But let him ask in faith, without any doubting . . . A divine principle hides in those Scriptures: faith comes first and is preeminent. As God expects us to trust him without having yet received any answer to prayer, so he expects us to trust him without having received any answers to the questions screaming in our head. Answers might eventually come but faith comes first. We expect answers before we will trust, but God expects us to trust before he gives answers. Yes, some answers we would have to accept by faith anyhow because even if we heard them they would not ring true to our tiny mind. And some answers we could not hear or accept until after trust has done its work in quieting our spirit. Even with answers we could understand or hear, however, the Lord usually keeps quiet until we have resolved to hold on to him by raw faith without the answers we clamor for. We think it only right that answers come first, but the God who is always right insists that trust comes first. We can dig our heels in and grow exceedingly stubborn over this, but the one who is right even when we think he is wrong, is even more stubborn than us. If we refuse to give in, the impasse can last a lifetime. For as long as it takes for us to surrender, however, we will be needlessly hurting ourselves and robbing ourselves of peace. Just as it would be ridiculously insulting to our intelligence, let alone to God, to think we might be more powerful than the Almighty or know more than him, so it would be equally ridiculous to think we might be more compassionate than the God who died for us, or more moral than the terrifyingly holy and flawlessly good Lord. Faith is taking God at his word – the God whose word keeps our every atom and the entire universe from disintegrating (Hebrews 1:3). It is stubbornly choosing to believe what he says and refusing to be swayed by every indication to the contrary. Earlier, I spoke of me being tormented by questions, but that was more illusion than reality. It is actually doubts, not questions, that torment. Doubts come not from lack of answers but from lack of faith. Faith: Our Responsibility Matthew 8:10 When Jesus heard it, he marveled, and said to those who followed, “Most certainly I tell you, I haven’t found so great a faith, not even in Israel.” Matthew 9:22 But Jesus, turning around and seeing her, said, “Daughter, cheer up! Your faith has made you well.” . . . Matthew 13:58 He didn’t do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Matthew 14:31 Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand, took hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Matthew 15:28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you even as you desire.” . . . Matthew 16:8 Jesus, perceiving it, said, “Why do you reason among yourselves, you of little faith, ‘because you have brought no bread?’ Matthew 21:32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn’t believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn’t even repent afterward, that you might believe him. Mark 5:36  . . . “Don’t be afraid, only believe.” Luke 8:25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” . . . Luke 12:28 But if this is how God clothes the grass in the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith? John 1:50 Jesus answered him, “Because I told you, ‘I saw you underneath the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these!” John 3:12 If I told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? John 6:36 But I told you that you have seen me, and yet you don’t believe. John 8:45-6  . . . If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? John 10:38  . . . though you don’t believe me, believe the works; that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. John 14:10-11 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works’ sake. John 16:9 about sin, because they don’t believe in me John 16:31 Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? John 20:27 Then he said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.” Like obedience, faith (taking God at his word) is our responsibility, not God’s. This is shown, for example, by Jesus repeatedly singling out individuals to praise them for their faith and rebuking others for their lack of faith. It is not a matter of waiting for God to magically drop faith in our lap; it is a matter of digging deep to muster the faith that, despite not seeming to be there, God has already buried within us. In the midst of my turmoil and unanswered questions I resolved to increase my faith that God is trustworthy; deciding that regardless of how things seemed and how I felt, I can rest in the certainty that God is greater than me – greater in power, greater in love, greater in goodness and greater in every other desirable thing – and that he has every concern in hand, even when I cannot see how. By choosing this act of faith, I slammed the door in the tormenter’s face. The questions remained but they ceased to torment. Peace came, not as some uncontrollable act of God but as the logical consequence of my refusal to doubt him, no matter how defiantly doubts might rise. Since it is common for feelings not to respond to logic, I kept on believing, regardless of whether feelings of peace or feelings or feelings of anxiety flooded my heart. To let feelings hold my faith hostage and determine whether or not I believe, would be ridiculous. We have a tendency to regard faith and peace almost as if they were beyond our control when actually, like obedience, they are activated more by willpower than by waiting for some type of spiritual ‘magic’ to happen. The Lord recently told my wife she should flush doubts, fears and hurts down the toilet whenever they came. That sounds rather gross but the image was deliberate. He explained that although she often drops offensive things such as doubt and resentment, she tends to pick them up again later. It seems the Lord chose the toilet analogy for two reasons. First, to flush anything down a toilet is to make a one-off decision to make its retrieval almost impossible. That’s important. Unfortunately, however, we humans have a tendency to renege on our decisions. That introduces the second reason: if, once flushed, there remains the slight chance of retrieval, the thought of what one would have to do to try to get it back would be enough to significantly reduce the temptation to even consider it. The Lord was saying (and I believe it applies to us all) that what my wife does with her fears, doubts and hurts is up to her, not him. Nevertheless, the wise and spiritual response is to flush them away the moment they come, and just as she would not want to put her hand in a sewer, so she should recoil from picking up these disgusting things again. Faith heroes, no matter how great, can be riddled with doubts, fears and hurts. They just keep on clinging to faith and obedience regardless. That’s what makes them heroes. So being plagued with such things as doubts is of no spiritual consequence. Refusing to trust God, however, is entirely different. That is alarmingly serious. To refuse to trust until we receive answers that satisfy us would be to refuse to let God be our God. It would be to reject him as our God and install ourselves in the place that all logic and conscience screams belongs to him alone. It would be arrogantly and rebelliously usurping God and making ourselves our highest moral authority, or honoring ourselves as the greatest source of wisdom, or as the most dependable power in our lives – the one most lovingly committed and supernaturally endowed to looking after our best interests. Praising God, thanking him and deliberately stirring ourselves to rejoice in him are powerful ways of building trust and receptivity to hearing from God. So is obedience. (How can we discover how brilliantly his plans work unless we try them?) Humility is also important if we are to receive much in the way of revelation. And we need to seek divine answers both through prayer and through Bible study. For more help in finding answers, see the link at the end of this webpage: Receive More Spiritual Revelation: The Help You Need to Find Deep Spiritual Secrets. For now, however, let me focus on how to build trust in God and know him better. Having had the privilege of supporting many trauma victims, I understand how trauma powerfully etches into one’s mind a long-passed horror, keeping the memory as vivid as if it has just happened and frustratingly stronger than memories of all the good, subsequent years. Alongside the trauma, the good things feel as if they barely ever happened. This afflicts these dear people with a distorted perception of current reality that perpetuates their distress and anxiety. I am not touting it as a quick or complete cure, but I believe that lessening the distortion and increasing these people’s feeling of security can be helped by deliberately and regularly recalling all the good things they have experienced, and everything that means they are now safe. It takes time, but I think that dwelling on such positives can help restore some balance in their perception of current reality that trauma stole from them. The tendency for things to slip out of a healthy, realistic balance can apply not just to what we might call trauma but to other forms of unpleasantness. As disturbing as it to suffer a distorted view of everyday reality, however, what is even worse is that it can distort our view of spiritual reality; preventing us from seeing God as being as good and trustworthy as he really is. Let’s approach this from another angle: if we usually spend a total of one hour a day thinking about God, this seems quite an achievement and yet it means our mind usually spends 23 times more a day dwelling on things other than God. Should, then, we be surprised if other things seem several times more real to us than God? I am not suggesting anything extreme. I have tried and tried, and failed and failed to do much to redress this imbalance in my own life. I think becoming obsessive about it, exhausting ourselves and/or condemning ourselves for not doing more, could prove counterproductive by making it a burden and turning our perception of God into a harsh taskmaster. Might it prove beneficial, however, for a tiny move toward thinking a little more often about God each day? There is certainly no shortage of biblical incentives to give it a go. Here’s just a small sample: Colossians 3:2 Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus toward you. Acts 16:24-25  . . . threw them into the inner prison, and secured their feet in the stocks. But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God . . . Psalm 34:1  . . . I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise will always be in my mouth. Psalm 63:6 when I remember you on my bed, and think about you in the night watches. Psalm 119:62 At midnight I will rise to give thanks to you, because of your righteous ordinances. Psalm 119:148 My eyes stay open through the night watches, that I might meditate on your word. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house, and on your gates. Romans 8:5 . . . those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 4:18 . . . we don’t look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Ephesians 5:19-20 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; singing, and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always concerning all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I will say, “Rejoice!” Joshua 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night . . . Psalm 1:1-2 Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked . . . but his delight is in the Lord’s law. On his law he meditates day and night Psalm 73:25 Whom do I have in heaven? There is no one on earth whom I desire besides you. Psalm 88:1 . . . I have cried day and night before you. Psalm 119:97 How I love your law! It is my meditation all day. Psalm 119:164 Seven times a day, I praise you, because of your righteous ordinances. Psalm 145:1-2 . . . I will praise your name forever and ever. Every day I will praise you. I will extol your name forever and ever. In the Psalm 119:62 reference to midnight above, it helps to realize that in an era before electricity, late night shopping, and so on, midnight was ludicrously late. The Story So Far It seems likely to me that the more our mind keeps dwelling on the negative, the larger it will loom in our perception of reality. As I wrote years ago: praise magnifies God; the alternative magnifies the problem. The last thing we need is to see God as tiny and the problem magnified. I believe praising God, thanking him and deliberately rejoicing, plays a critical role in healing this distortion. Praising, and especially rejoicing, takes considerable effort. I believe the very effort, however, helps intensify the positive in our consciousness, thus making these spiritual activities particularly powerful in correcting any imbalance in our mind caused by unpleasant experiences. Continued:Part 20 Links Referred to Above (Best Left Until After Reading This Entire Series) Biblical Examples of Unanswered Prayer & the Implications for Us Receive More Spiritual Revelation: The Help You Need to Find Deep Spiritual Secrets

Beginning of Series What did Paul mean by filling up what “is lacking of the afflictions of Christ” (Colossians 1:24)? “And now I am happy about my sufferings for you, for by means of my physical sufferings I am helping to complete what still remains of Christ’s sufferings on behalf of his body, the church,” is how the Good News Translation words Colossians 1:24. I like the clarity of this rendition but most versions are similar. I’ll omit aspects of this matter that I have dealt with in Biblical Examples of Unanswered Prayer & the Implications for Us (a link to it is at the end of this webpage). Nevertheless, I have some additional insights to share here. For most of my life I have put this, and similar Scriptures, in the too-hard basket and moved on. In fact, to be brutally honest with myself, I virtually rejected it as poor theology because it seemed to clash with my ‘correct’ understanding of the cross and the uniqueness of Christ. How could there be anything lacking in Christ’s magnificent sacrifice? Who could possibly add to it? That sounds like heresy! Imagine having the arrogance to think I revered God’s Word and yet inwardly supposing I understood these things better than certain New Testament Scriptures seemed to! The dilemma I faced was similar to one I wrestled with in my early days of Christian writing. I presumed I was being admirably spiritual by wanting my writing to be all of God and none of me. Surely the greatest thing anyone could ever do would be to share with the world something that is one hundred percent of God, such as a work that has been dictated word for word, comma for comma, by God. Other than mindless typing, any written contribution of mine would inevitably detract from God’s glory by spoiling the perfection of his work. With all my heart, I wanted God to receive maximum glory and have total control of my life. So, longing not to disappoint the Love of my life, I ached for the supreme honor of having no role in writing other than being God’s typist. To my bewilderment and frustration, however, God was not responding to this intense yearning. My plea to be my Master’s mindless typing machine kept falling in deaf ears. This precipitated months of agonizing soul-searching and seeking God; sometimes annoyed that God didn’t speak louder, sometimes beating myself up for not being better at hearing him, but never doubting that by asking to be little more than an automaton I was asking for the right thing. I kept complaining to God about his failure to deliver until finally making the shocking discovery that, as flawed as it is, the Holy One values my personality and, just as a proud father treasures his child’s best efforts even if they are pathetic by adult standards, my heavenly Father cherishes as a precious love-gift to him, the effort I exert when groping for words to express divine truths. Given our imperfection, it had seemed to me an insult to God to think the Flawless One could love our personalities or input. The inescapable truth, however, is that God loves each of us stupendously and, no matter how flawed and quirky, our personalities and less-than-perfect abilities are a huge part of who we are. I knew that as a proud attempt to earn salvation, human effort is spiritually abhorrent. Likewise, service as an expression of a slave-mentality grieves God. It slowly dawned, however, that as a genuine expression of love and submission to God, sweat is beautiful. For the Spirit-filled Christian in divine submission, human exertion and divine enabling are not opponents but allies. I no longer see inspiration and effort as an incompatible mix of oil and water but as bricks and mortar. They merge to build a monument of love for the glory of God – glory that his father-heart longs to share with us. And if that is true of sweat, it is true even if, like our Lord, sweat is tinged with blood and tears. It takes my breath away that God loves us so much that he craves our input, and that the Almighty can see more flaws in my effort than I dare imagine, and yet beams with pride at my full-blooded attempt – and yours. Is the Almighty so limited as to need my contribution? Absolutely not! Does he prize me so highly that he refuses to move without my contribution? Astonishingly, yes. And he feels the same way about you. That’s why he lets us share in even his most precious love-gift to humanity: Christ’s suffering. The parable-speaking Lord who hid divine mysteries in earthly stories (Matthew 13:34-35), hides glorious treasure in earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7). Even more surprising, the Bible emphasizes that those vessels (our bodies) are decaying so much as to make us groan. Romans 8:23 . . . even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body. 2 Corinthians 5:2, 4 For most certainly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven . . . For indeed we who are in this tent do groan, being burdened . . . 2 Corinthians 4:11 For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh. My Lord’s staggering love drives him to want my writing to be, as it were, our baby – a product of his and my love for each other, and bearing both his likeness and mine. So it is with bringing spiritual children (converts) into the kingdom of God and nurturing them to maturity. Our mindboggling Lord wants us to be more than midwives. A midwife does not suffer labor pains, nor contribute to the baby’s genes. Paul, however, spoke of suffering birth pangs for the Galatian Christians (Galatians 4:19). He (e.g. 1 Corinthians 4:14; 1 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4; Philemon 1:10), like others (e.g. 3 John 1:4; Isaiah 54:1), spoke of those he had led to Christ as not only being God’s children but his own children. In fact, by saying, “For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News” (1 Corinthians 4:15) he implied there is a relationship between us and someone we lead to Christ that is so unique that no one else can duplicate it. And he said not merely “Follow Christ,” but “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Our involvement in bringing spiritual babies into the kingdom and doing all we can to mother them and bring them to spiritual maturity, is far more intimate (and spiritually costly) than most of us dare imagine. Now let’s return to my theological dilemma. The words “finished work of Christ” rings so loudly in my head as to almost drown out other parts of the Bible when I read them. Yes, just before Jesus died, he cried, “It is finished!” but what did he mean? Obviously, Christ’s physical suffering has ended. I have never been able to believe, however, that a God of love has ceased feeling emotional pain for all those on earth who have continued, for one reason or another, to suffer. Christ shed tears on earth for people who were hurting. Has his compassion dried up? Not a chance! In this sense, at least, Christ’s suffering continues. Does “It is finished!” mean Christ has no more to do? Scripture says otherwise. The decisive battle has been won, but many are still in active rebellion against God’s loving ways. 1 Corinthians 15:25, for example, says Christ “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (emphasis mine – note also Hebrews 2:8; 9:28). In other words, there is still work to be done. We have already noted that when, before his conversion, Paul was physically hurting Christians, Jesus took it highly personally – so much so that he challenged Paul with the question, “Why do you persecute me ?” The risen Lord followed this up by saying, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4-5 – this is so important that it is repeated in Acts 22:7-8; 26:14-15, emphasis mine). Over and over, the New Testament emphasizes that Christians form Christ’s body. Romans 12:5 . . . we, who are many, are one body in Christ . . . 1 Corinthians 10:17 . . . we, who are many, are one body . . . 1 Corinthians 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ . . . Ephesians 1:22-23 He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the assembly [church], which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 4:12, 15-16 for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ . . . [that] we may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, Christ; from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in love. Ephesians 5:23, 29-30 For the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ also is the head of the assembly [church], being himself the savior of the body. . . . For no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord also does the assembly; because we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. Colossians 1:18 He is the head of the body, the assembly . . . Colossians 2:19 The Head [Christ], from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and ligaments, grows with God’s growth. Scripture also notes that if one part of the body suffers, the entire person suffers (1 Corinthians 12:26). This is true of any suffering, not just persecution. No matter how much your suffering might be in silence or isolation, Christ is intensely aware of it (compare Psalm 139:1-12, 16-17). So Christ’s suffering continues to this day. Evangelism and discipling new believers are critical to Christ’s mission and dear to his heart and yet he has chosen not to do this alone but in partnership with us (Matthew 28:19-20). 2 Timothy 1:8 . . . join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God (NIV – most versions say join or share ). Note what Paul cites as proof that someone is a servant of Christ: 2 Corinthians 11:23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again . (NIV) It’s time to fulfill my promise to expound on how love, obedience and suffering are interrelated. Receiving things we like enormously but cost the giver nothing in terms of thought, effort, time or money, (Note: What moves us by someone spending money on us is that money usually takes effort, and sometimes even discomfort, to earn. Additionally, money spent on a gift could usually have been spent on something that benefitted the giver and so it involves sacrificing portion of his own pleasure for the sake of the other person) move us to love the gifts rather than the giver. As superficially happy as this might make us, loving things rather than loving a person turns out disappointingly shallow and unfulfilling. God giving us exquisite things that cost him nothing might be appreciated but his greatest gift to us is his anguish on the cross. In fact, it is incomparably greater than anything else. It is not merely that the Son of God’s suffering achieved so much. Even if his torment had failed to achieve anything, the horrific cost to himself renders it – both for him and for us – the deepest, most moving, most meaningful expression of his love. It fills us with awe. It binds him and us together in a uniquely powerful way. The exalted Lord of perfection giving himself over to unthinkable agony for us is priceless treasure, alongside which every other happiness is as empty as a drug-induced haze. This moves me to include an excerpt from another webpage of mine. Admittedly, it is somewhat speculative because I’m not in heaven yet: With the divinely inspired Word of God urging us to imitate the great apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 4:16; 11:1; Philippians 3:17; 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2 Thessalonians 3:9), we should seek to have raging within us the same passions that drove this man of God: Philippians 3:8-10 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings , becoming like him in his death. (English Standard Version, emphasis mine.) For brevity, let’s focus on the two yearnings I’ve emphasized. Having trashed his previous fervent attempts to please God, Paul replaced them all with a burning desire to know Christ and his power and to share in Christ’s suffering. If lovers find knowing a finite human a never-ending adventure, the wonders and depths in knowing the infinite Son of God must keep on growing this side of eternity (Ephesians 1:17; Colossians 1:10; 2 Peter 3:18). As important as it is to keep knowing our divine Lover better and better throughout our earthly lives, this thrilling quest will reach its most wondrous pinnacles in the hereafter. When contrasting our earthly knowledge of Christ with what is to come, Paul put it this way: “For now we see . . . dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully . . .” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Paul’s other passion, however – sharing in Christ’s suffering – is different. Our awareness of how much Jesus suffered and how much his death achieved might reach new heights in the next life but if there is no suffering in heaven, our ability to share (or participate, as the NIV puts it) in his suffering (Romans 8:17; Philippians 3:10; Colossians 1:24; 1 Peter 4:13) is limited to this life. In glory, we will only be able to wistfully look back to past opportunities. When our eyes are fully opened to just how much our Lord has done for us and how wonderful he really is, we will finally grasp why the disciples rejoiced over the privilege of being flogged and humiliated for Jesus (Acts 5:40-41). What we will lament in Paradise, however, is that the opportunity to express the depth of our love by suffering for Christ will have passed us by. And we will nostalgically miss the trials. Here’s why: Although we will have many thrilling things to do in heaven, we’ll be rather like former football champions who have retired and gone into sports administration. Life will be easier. There will be no more injuries, no more tedious, grueling training sessions, no more agonizing over mistakes made on the field, but the opportunity to gain more glory and become a greater hero will have forever passed. So life is exciting. And the greatest thrills it offers are the pain and dangers and challenges. Forget about a soft life. Leave that to your heavenly retirement. Now’s your time for glory. You’re a champion in the making; someone increasingly bearing the likeness of God himself; someone the Almighty will forever smile upon with Fatherly pride. We know our crucified Lord wasn’t divinely protected, and we know that we are not greater than him, but I keep falling for the notion that since he suffered for us, we should now be divinely protected from suffering. Christ died to make us, in the eyes of the Judge, as if we had never sinned. But Jesus literally never sinned, and he suffered. It is undeniable that Jesus’ suffering achieved infinitely more than anyone else could ever achieve. Nevertheless, how can I say that Christ suffered on earth so that I won’t suffer on earth, when Scripture says, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12, KJV) Most versions say endure , rather than suffer but endure implies going through something unpleasant. The Weymouth New Testament even words it, “If we patiently endure pain . . .” There are times when writing is painfully difficult for me. This gives me three options: 1. I can refuse to write 2. I can keep going but resent how agonizing it is 3. If after prayer the pain remains it seems God wants me to proceed, I can rejoice in the difficulty as a precious opportunity to express to God my love for him by doing something that costs me. I am reminded of King David needing to sacrifice to the Lord and being offered land for free on which to do it. Refusing the offer, David insisted on paying the full price, saying he would not offer to the Lord something that cost him nothing (1 Chronicles 21:24). Continued: Part 19 Link Referred to Above (Best Left Until After Reading This Entire Series) Biblical Examples of Unanswered Prayer & the Implications for Us

Beginning of Series Why does Ecclesiastes 7:2 say it is better to attend a funeral than a feast? Funerals are a cold splash of reality, awakening us to our uncertainty as to when we ourselves will face our divine Judge. Funerals alert us to the crucial importance of daily living for God, not for self. Many of Jesus’ parables (Examples below) likewise stress that life as we know it can end at any moment without the slightest warning, and we suddenly find ourselves facing the eternal consequences of every opportunity we previously squandered. Whether it be death or the second coming, every chance to prove ourselves faithful can in a flash be gone forever and we find ourselves having to account for every idle thing ( Matthew 12:36 ) we have ever done. Parables About Judgment Coming Unexpectedly These contain no repetition Matthew 24:42-44 Watch therefore, for you don’t know in what hour your Lord comes. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore also be ready, for in an hour that you don’t expect, the Son of Man will come. Matthew 24:50-51 The lord of that servant will come in a day when he doesn’t expect it, and in an hour when he doesn’t know it, and will cut him in pieces, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There is where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be. Matthew 25:5-6, 10-13 Now while the bridegroom delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold! The bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet him!’ . . . While they went away to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Most certainly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Watch therefore, for you don’t know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. Matthew 25:19 Now after a long time the lord of those servants came, and reconciled accounts with them. Mark 13:33-36 Watch, keep alert, and pray; for you don’t know when the time is. “It is like a man, traveling to another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, and to each one his work, and also commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch. Watch therefore, for you don’t know when the lord of the house is coming, whether at evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning; lest coming suddenly he might find you sleeping. Luke 12:38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. (NIV) Luke 12:39 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched, and not allowed his house to be broken into. Luke 12:20 But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared – whose will they be. (Emphasis mine) Even sudden disability can mean the end of certain things we could have done for God. The Story So Far Our own mortality and that of our loved ones can not only keep ourselves spiritually motivated but can be a powerful witness to those around us of the brevity and fragility of our stay on this planet. Research indicates that being impacted by someone’s mortality is high on the list of factors influencing people to come to Christ. Us not being divinely protected from life’s tragedies achieves more for both us and others than we might have thought. Did God’s suffering end with the cross (Colossians 1:24)? We have noted that the suffering God the Son started from when he was in Mary’s womb. What about before and after he came to earth? The Almighty might not suffer physical pain but as we are more personal than a plant, he is more personal than us. Unless you had some psychological abnormality rendering you incapable of empathy, if someone you loved with your entire being was in pain and you had the ability to know every moment of every day the precise extent of that person’s pain, wouldn’t your suffering be almost as intense as that person’s – so much so that you would consider swapping places? If that can be true for someone with imperfect love, what would it be like for the God of infinite love? Imagine you care so passionately for someone that you have invested your entire life into enabling him to reach his full potential. Suppose he then wreaks havoc by a calculated decision to rebel against everything he knows to be right. If his senseless, malicious behavior ruins his life and devastates the lives of people who are infinitely precious to you, and he shows not the slightest remorse but continues to perpetuate his evil, it is hardly appropriate for you to be indifferent about it, much less blissful. It is right to be intensely distressed and displeased. This is righteous anger. And this is what sin does to God. You do not need me to inform you that sin is still occurring, and it is still stupendously impacting the God who is anything but indifferent. Consider all the atrocities done in Christ’s name by ‘godly’ pedophiles, greedy con-artists calling themselves televangelists, ‘anointed prophets’ who stoop to cold-reading for profit, and so on. Do you suppose the Lord of heaven is not grieved, angered and pained by such things? God’s wrath is not over. Scripture speaks of “the wrath to come” (Luke 3:7; 1 Thessalonians 1:10) and says such things as “because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5, NIV and Romans 12:19). And if God’s wrath is not over, neither is his intense anguish over humanity’s sin. Some of us are so callously self-obsessed and unaware of God that we have not even shed tears over God’s pain that humanity continually inflicts upon him. For example, there are no lengths he will not go to when it comes to love, and yet billions of people spurn him every day. The Bible refers to God’s people as his wife and to them not just being unfaithful but acting like harlots and God suffering divorce (Scriptures). His People Acting like Harlots Jeremiah 2:20 For long ago I broke off your yoke, and burst your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve;’ for on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed yourself, playing the prostitute. Ezekiel 23:11-14 Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet was she more corrupt in her doting than she, and in her prostitution which were more than the prostitution of her sister. She doted on the Assyrians, governors and rulers, her neighbors, clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. I saw that she was defiled; they both took one way. She increased her prostitution; for she saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion Ezekiel 23:17-21 The Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their prostitution, and she was polluted with them, and her soul was alienated from them. So she uncovered her prostitution, and uncovered her nakedness: then my soul was alienated from her, like as my soul was alienated from her sister. Yet she multiplied her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth, in which she had played the prostitute in the land of Egypt. She doted on their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of donkeys, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. Thus you called to memory the lewdness of your youth, in the handling of your bosom by the Egyptians for the breasts of your youth. Suffering Divorce Jeremiah 3:1 They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 3:8 I saw when, for this very cause, that backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorce, yet treacherous Judah, her sister, had no fear; but she also went and played the prostitute. Hosea 2:2 Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts Hosea 4:15 Though you, Israel, play the prostitute, yet don’t let Judah offend; and don’t come to Gilgal, neither go up to Beth Aven, nor swear, ‘As the Lord lives.’ Feel God’s pain, for instance, as he says: Isaiah 1:21 How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice; righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Ezekiel 16:15-17 But you trusted in your beauty, and played the prostitute because of your renown, and poured out your prostitution on everyone who passed by . . . You took of your garments, and made for yourselves high places decked with various colors, and played the prostitute on them. . . . You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and played the prostitute with them There are occasions when it hurts to love a fallible, vulnerable person, and infinite love hurts infinitely. If the pain the loving parents of a heroin addict never lets up for as long as their loved one, in his drug-addled state, continues to do wicked, stupid, self-destructive things, the cross of Christ was neither the beginning nor the end of divine agony. Here’s a tiny sampling: 2 Samuel 24:16 When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the LORD was grieved because of the calamity . . . Psalm 78:40-41  . . . often they rebelled against him in the wilderness, and grieved him in the desert! They turned again and tempted God, and provoked the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 43:24  . . . you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses. Mark 3:5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts . . . Luke 19:41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God . . . The Lord is deeply moved by his people’s behavior 1 Samuel 15:10-11 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” . . . Deuteronomy 5:29 Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever! Hosea 11:8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I suggest we each seek God’s heart and a softening of own hearts until Scriptures like the following moisten our eyes: Genesis 6:5-6 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. Psalm 14:2-3 The Lord looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who understood, who sought after God. They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one. Isaiah 1:13-14 Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me . . . I can’t bear with evil assemblies. My soul hates your . . . [divinely] appointed feasts. They are a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. Isaiah 63:3,5 I have trodden the wine press alone; and of the peoples, no one was with me . . . I looked, and there was no one to help; and I wondered that there was no one to uphold: therefore my own arm brought salvation to me . . . Isaiah 63:8-10 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bore them, and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled, and grieved his holy Spirit. . . . Jeremiah 2:5,7  . . . What unrighteousness have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and have walked after worthless vanity, and have become worthless? . . . I brought you into a plentiful land, to eat its fruit and its goodness; but when you entered, you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination. Luke 13:34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, like a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, and you refused! Romans 2:1-11 Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. We know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. Do you think this, O man who judges those who practice such things, and do the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God; who “will pay back to everyone according to their works:” to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life; but to those who are self-seeking, and don’t obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will be wrath and indignation, oppression and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil . . . But glory, honor, and peace go to every man who does good . . . For there is no partiality with God. Revelation 3:15-16 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Psalm 51:4-6 Against you, and you only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight; that you may be proved right when you speak, and justified when you judge. Behold, I was born in iniquity. In sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. . . . Isaiah 59:16 He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore his own arm brought salvation to him; and his righteousness sustained him. Isaiah 64:6 For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. . . . Lamentations 3:33 For though he cause grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. Ezekiel 6:9 . . . I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols . . . John 3:19 This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. Romans 1:21 Because, knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. Real love longs to share not only in a person’s joy and success but in that person’s sorrow and suffering. This applies equally to our love for God and his love for us. “In all their affliction he was afflicted,” says Isaiah 63:9 about our God. Again, Judges 10:16 says, “his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel”. Christ died to remove the toxic sin-barrier between us and the Holy Lord. He died so that we could be one spirit with God (1 Corinthians 6:17); so he could be in us and we could be in him. Through that union, we enter into all that is his – his holiness, his victory, his joy, his spiritual riches and his heartache . The Lord of the universe has burdens infinitely beyond what we can comprehend, let alone bear, but we should long to share his heart to our limited capacity. Continued:Part 18

Beginning of Series How much does it all depend on us? What’s our role in the very things we feel like blaming God for? We are utterly dependent upon the One in whom “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We did not as much as choose to be born. When speaking about himself, even the incarnate Son of God said, “I can of myself do nothing,” (John 5:30). How much more must this apply to us! Does this mean, however, that we have no accountability; that it is all up to the sovereign Lord? Does it mean we could not disobey even if we chose? Are we hapless pawns in a battle between two spiritual superpowers? Or is the Almighty so powerful that Satan barely rates a mention and we are solely God’s pawn? There is no question that if it came down to sheer power or ability or importance, we are no match even for Satan, let alone the Almighty. God could at any moment crush our every effort so that not even a stain remains. Before shriveling into total defeatism, however, let’s not be so blinded by the obvious that we miss something equally obvious: an omnipotent God is able to assign power or ability or importance to anyone of his choosing. Instead of keeping us helpless pawns in some supernatural power-play, the sovereign Lord has chosen to dignify us with freedom of choice. Christ has won the victory and is eager to shower on us all the glory and the spoils of war but he leaves it to us whether, by submitting to God and resisting the devil (James 4:7), we win, or whether we chose defeat by letting the deceiver devour us (1 Peter 5:8). The Almighty has placed us at the tipping point so that who we choose to lean toward – God or Satan – determines whether any event ultimately ends up turning good or evil. The Lord has set things up so that it all hinges on us. As the psalmist marveled: Psalm 8:4-6 what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him? For you have made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor. You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet And by honoring people this way, our astonishing God of love has granted every human the power to crush his tender heart, ruin his plans and vandalize his artistry. The entire Bible screams human responsibility. Scripture speaks of little children not being able to tell good from evil, and so not being morally accountable (Deuteronomy 1:39; Isaiah 7:15; Romans 9:11). Infants aside – and, presumably, some with serious mental deficiencies – the God who knows precisely how much good and how much evil we are capable of, clearly holds the rest of us highly accountable for our every action and attitude. Ecclesiastes 12:14 For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it is good, or whether it is evil. Matthew 12:36 I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. Romans 14:12 So then each one of us will give account of himself to God. 1 Corinthians 4:4-5 For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each man will get his praise from God. Hebrews 4:13 There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. We earlier touched on the following Scripture but let’s look a little deeper: 1 Corinthians 3:7, 10-15 So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. . . . According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble; each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is. If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire. God has made it so that everyone can be rewarded, but even among those who scrape into heaven, some will live with the endless regret of missing the rewards that could have been theirs. What makes the difference is not what God does, but what we do. God’s guidance, instructions, commands, warnings, wrath, judgments and so on, would all be a meaningless farce unless we have been divinely granted the power to make critically important choices. Jesus spoke of him being the vine and us the branches. Except for the vine, a branch would not only produce no fruit, it would shrivel up and die. In Jesus’ words, “. . . apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Far from this absolving us from accountability, however, our utter dependence gives us a huge responsibility – to do all it takes to remain in submissive union with our Lord. In that very discourse, in fact, Jesus said we must obey his commands (John 15:10). In Jesus’ parable of the talents, it was the master’s money. He had set everything up to make success possible. There were risks and challenges but it all came down to each servant. When the wicked servant was caught out, instead of finally taking responsibility for his own decisions, he proved his unworthiness by trying to blame his laziness on the master – accusing him of being a “hard man” (Matthew 25:24). That slimy attempt at blame-shifting merely added to his offense. If we could, many of us would choose to run our lives and keep God around only as an obligation-free sugar daddy and someone to blame when we inevitably mess up. Any such attempt would be fooling no one but ourselves. Had you been born into a universe where sin had never existed, you would never have known any pain or suffering. Everything would be a sheer delight, sparkling with the exquisite perfection of God’s heart and ways. There would only be one issue: being born into a world that has never known sin would involve having a different ancestry and DNA to ours. The Almighty could easily create such beings. They could be perfect and exquisitely happy, but anyone with different genes could no more be you than an angel is you or than any of the billions of people already in existence who have different parents to you. As shocking as it is, our very existence depends on sinful rejection of God’s loving ways. We each have a family tree riddled with people who have broken God’s heart over and over and over. For us to be born, our holy Lord had to force himself to tolerate atrocious sin for at least as long as it took for each of our ancestors to procreate. Trace back far enough, in fact, and we are each sure to find a direct ancestor who was conceived by rape, incest, adultery, prostitution, or by some other act God hates, such as a male ancestor murdering the former partner of a female ancestor. Were it not for sin, none of would ever have been born. It is literally part of our DNA; a fundamental part of who we are. Furthermore, sin is never victimless. Sin breaks not only God’s laws but his heart. And it hurts and corrupts the sinner. And the sins we delight in calling ‘little’ – cheating, greed, lying, slander, being a poor role model, and so on – all end up hurting other people. In short, each of us has personally contributed to this world’s pain and suffering. Disturbingly, if we were placed in a sin-free world where there is no unpleasantness our very presence would corrupt that world, preventing it from remaining pristine. And consider this; if God were to spare some other sinner but not us – sparing him either arbitrarily or by assessing his sin as more excusable or less serious – imagine the stink we would make, accusing God of being unfair, and so on. But if it were reversed and we were spared but not others, wouldn’t it be equally unfair? We all want to draw the line as to what is excusable and for some suspicious reason, our self-drawn line almost always seems to put us on the right side of it. A righteous judge can have no part is such hypocrisy. The Almighty could easily use brute force to obliterate Satan. Indeed, hell’s eternal fire was created as his destination (Matthew 25:41). Through our sinful rebellion against God, however, we have each joined forces with Satan and have earned the same fate as him. So God sparing us from what we deserve could not be merely a matter of force, nor of mercy, without the Holy One denying who he is – a God of justice and integrity, who acts not by whim but only by what is right. It cost the good Lord horrifically for we who deserve nothing but hell to be granted access to heaven and even to make it so we could enter without defiling its perfection and turning it into a sewer as corrupt as the world we currently live in. Christ had to become us, suffer the devastating consequences of our sin, defeat Satan on our behalf, and bestow on us his moral perfection. Through unparalleled generosity, heroism and power, the Son of God has seized the humanly impossible and placed it in our hands. This is not because we are great but because of what our great God has done out of his unfathomable love. Whether we accept this, however, is still up to us. The Story So Far Disturbingly often, Bible believers construct in our own imagination a God who is so ‘sovereign,’ aloof and untouched by human sin and suffering as to have almost no resemblance to the God of the Bible. It too often happens that people think God has a heart of stone, when the real hardness of heart is their callous indifference to the anguish that people inflict on the God who loves them. God’s wrath is but a manifestation of the inconceivable extremes to which people push divine anguish. We humans are continually grieving God, bringing him shame and foiling his plans to bless us. He deserves so much better than us. With appalling frequency, we betray and abuse his trust and soil his name and then have the audacity to try to blame him for letting us devastate him. Let’s not be so blind as to think today’s Christians are any less despicable than the most hypocritical, sin-hardened Jews in Bible times. Judges 10:16 . . . his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel. 1 Samuel 15:11 It grieves me that I have set up Saul to be king; for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments . . . Psalm 81:11-14 But my people didn’t listen to my voice. Israel desired none of me. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels. Oh that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their adversaries. 2 Kings 17:13-15 Yet the Lord testified to Israel, and to Judah, by every prophet, and every seer . . . Notwithstanding, they would not listen, but hardened their neck, like the neck of their fathers, who didn’t believe in the Lord their God. They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. Ezekiel 18:31-32 Cast away from you all your transgressions, in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will you die, house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies, says the Lord God: therefore turn yourselves, and live. Hosea 2:8 For she did not know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. Matthew 21:33-39 Hear another parable. There was a man who was a master of a household, who planted a vineyard, set a hedge about it, dug a wine press in it, built a tower, leased it out to farmers, and went into another country. When the season for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the farmers, to receive his fruit. The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they treated them the same way. But afterward he sent to them his son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But the farmers, when they saw the son, said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and seize his inheritance.’ So they took him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Luke 17:17 Weren’t the ten cleansed? But where are the nine? 2 Timothy 3:2-5 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power. James 2:3-4, 9-11 . . . you pay special attention to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, “Sit here in a good place”; and you tell the poor man, “Stand there,” or “Sit by my footstool”; haven’t you shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? . . . But if you show partiality, you commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” . . . Revelation 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I am coming to you swiftly, and will move your lamp stand out of its place, unless you repent. Continued .... Part 16

Beginning of Series Why does God sometimes let Satan have his way? I find myself in a quandary. Having written elsewhere thousands of words highly relevant to the question in hand, I long to instantly meld into your mind all the information they contain without you having to take the time to read them. Since this is impossible, however, I feel driven to resort to begging you to read all of it. You will find the relevant information in links at the end of this webpage. My dilemma is that I fear some readers will tire before absorbing it all, and end up with a grotesquely distorted view of the God whose love and goodness is so far beyond ours as to defy description. Without stealing from what I have better said elsewhere, my goal right now is to try some approaches that, whilst not providing every insight I am aware of, might help you realize as quickly as possible that God is the most lovable and trustworthy person you could ever conceive of. Our Lord is never in any way in league with the devil. As Habakkuk told the Lord, “your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13, NIV) Our God is totally opposed to all evil. The Almighty is not some ogre. In fact, what alarms some people who don’t understand his ways is that he might be too patient and not nearly as despotic and aggressive as they would prefer (although they want him to act that way only toward other people’s sins; not their own). As you know, the giving God (James 1:5, literal translation), whose love drives him to sacrifice his all for those who deserve nothing, is the extreme opposite of the one who “only comes to steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10-11). God’s “work is perfect, for all his ways are just. A God of faithfulness who does no wrong” (Deuteronomy 32:4). He “is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit” (Psalm 34:18). “He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). Both intellectually and morally, God’s ways are as higher than ours than the stars are unreachably beyond us (compare Isaiah 55:9). “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!” (Romans 11:33). “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him?” (1 Corinthians 2:16). The appalling truth is that even the exceptionally humble among us have a perversely inflated view of ourselves. We are too blinded by the log in our own eyes to even recognize the perfection of infinite wisdom and goodness. Driven by a subconscious, self-serving ‘need’ to divert the spotlight off our failings, we have the audacity to judge our Judge. Anyone thinking he/she is smarter or more tender-hearted that God is like a speck of water vapor thinking itself greater than an ocean. The combined efforts of a thousand Einsteins working around the clock for ten thousand years could not as much as discover all the intricacies and complexities that a loving God must consider when making what we, in our ignorance, think is a simple decision. It is like stumbling upon an expert sweating over diffusing the most sophisticated bomb ever constructed, and us wanting to intervene by casually cutting the first wire we see. The Almighty detests evil. It infuriates him terrifyingly beyond anything humans are ever capable of feeling. It is safer to torment a grizzly bear’s cub in the presence of its ferocious mother than to even slightly offend one of God’s loved ones – and that’s any human on this planet. The only thing restraining the Almighty is that his love is so overwhelmingly vast that it even embraces the offender. As the psalmist says of our God, “You are good, and do good” (Psalm 119:68). “The Lord is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works. . . . The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works” (Psalm 145:9,17). In fact, Jesus put us all in our place by affirming that only God is good (Mark 10:18, compare Romans 3:12; Job 15:14). There might be moments – just one of which was Jesus seeming utterly defeated on the cross – when it looks as if God has allowed the devil to have the upper hand – but it is actually a manifestation of God’s genius as the master strategist. The Almighty might, as it were, give the Evil One enough rope to hang himself, but the goal is always the devil’s defeat, and our crucified Lord has given everything to seal the devil’s fate. This was the most critical aspect of Christ’s entire earthly mission: 1 John 3:8  . . . To this end the Son of God was revealed: that he might destroy the works of the devil. Hebrews 2:14 Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil Colossians 2:13-15 having forgiven us all our trespasses, . . . he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. And we know the final outworking of this: Revelation 20:10 The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Although Christians differ as to their understanding of the present-day implication of it, we also have this Scripture Revelation 12:9-10 . . . he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “. . . the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. Here’s solid proof, even in Old Testament times, that God sometimes denies Satan’s requests: Zechariah 3:1-4 He showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Lord’s angel, and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary. The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! . . .” It goes on to say that Joshua had been wearing dirty clothes and the Lord said, “Take the filthy garments off of him . . . Behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with rich clothing.” The Lord always opposes Satan; sometimes by proving him wrong and sometimes by not even allowing the test. Surely, God refusing to allow a test must happen often – probably more often than not. This is why Scripture confidently says God “will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able” (1 Corinthians 10:13). It is why Job suffered for only a tiny part of his long life, and why so many of us stay healthy most of the time or are healed, or are spared persecution, and so on. Not only does God prevent tests, he urges us to cooperate with him in this regard. Let me explain. It was while these matters relating to God, Satan and temptation were thrashing around in my mind that I chilled with horror. I suddenly realized my recklessness in not taking seriously Jesus telling us to pray, “Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). I had always held on to a childhood memory verse (1 Corinthians 10:13), that our faithful Lord will not let us be tempted beyond our ability to endure, and on that basis, I arrogantly presumed I could handle whatever was thrown at me without any need for preemptive prayer. Maybe I could, because of God, but to what unpleasantness could my prayerlessness be needlessly exposing me? Suddenly I was in awe of God’s mercy in sparing me until now despite my carelessly ignoring his instructions to take preemptive action through prayer. The very verse I might have misused as an excuse for being too blasé is preceded by “let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). I’m beginning to wonder how appalled I should be by how cunningly pride and ignorance disguise themselves as faith. I am by no means saying we can avoid all trials. I have entire pages about the limits God’s Word puts on prayer but, for now, simply remember how Paul’s earnest prayers failed to remove his “thorn” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Often, however, prayer empowers us to take preemptive measures. Let’s also note that God puts precise limits on any attack. Consider, for example, what he said to Satan about Job: “. . . but on the man himself do not lay a finger” (Job 1:12, NIV). On a different occasion, God moved the boundary but still kept one limit firmly in place: “. . . but save his life” (Job 2:6, NIV). And God intervenes: “but I prayed for you,” Jesus told Peter in reference to Satan’s request to sift him (Luke 22:32). What I presume is one reason for our Lord allowing Satan certain leeway is that if God refused, Satan’s accusations would sow doubts in the minds of other people and spiritual beings and, ultimately, it is better for the accusations to be proved wrong than for God to forcibly suppress the Evil One and let the doubts fester in other minds. What we must comprehend is that God choosing a path can be mind-reelingly different from him being pleased about it. Most beings, if granted divine powers, might selfishly choose for themselves a life of uninterrupted bliss, but there is nothing remotely selfish about our Lord. What a stupendously compassionate, selfless God must reluctantly do in a world of sin-drunk rebels enslaved by evil with no desire to be free, is entirely different from what he would delight in doing in a world where everyone is eagerly and continually yielding to the perfection of his wisdom and is whole-heartedly devoted to doing what is good and right. Distilling complex truth into a few words might be impossible, but I think it is most quickly seen in the torment of the eternal Son of God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Grasp the fact that this was God himself suffering horrifically over doing his own will. “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death,” says Mark 14:34 (KJV). “My heart is oppressed with anguish (or overwhelmed/crushed/consumed with sorrow) to the very point of death” are other scholarly attempts to render these words. “Being in agony he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground,” says Luke 22:44. Volumes have been written about the depth contained in these brief descriptions of Jesus’ torment. It is suggested that it could involve the rare, but medically attested phenomenon, known as hematidrosis (hematohidrosis is an alternative spelling). Severe mental stress (sometimes preceded by an intense headache and abdominal pain) can cause hemorrhaging of the vessels supplying the sweat glands, resulting in blood mixing with one’s sweat (Source: Wikipedia ) , 9th November, 2018). Note also that Jesus’ anguish was so intense that he sweated profusely despite it being a cold night (John 18:18). Reading, even in gut-wrenching detail about someone’s pain, however, is vastly different from personally experiencing it. Stupendously compounding this is that God suffers God-sized pain, which I believe is infinitely more intense than any human can endure. Although, as I have said, Jesus’ humanity gives us some conception of his suffering, our finiteness severely limits our ability to comprehend the extremes of divine anguish. Consider two people who are being tortured. One is so weak that he dies after a few seconds. The other is so strong that he suffers it minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Or consider two people who know that someone else will suffer the moment they cease enduring the pain. One gives up after a few seconds. The other loves so immensely that he keeps on suffering for centuries. Or think of the difference not in terms of time but intensity. Or look at it this way: if seeing someone dear to us in pain can distress so deeply that we would rather suffer than them, how would we feel if we had the intellectual capacity to be simultaneously aware of every detail of a million people’s anguish and feel equally deeply for each of them. Our Lord keeps on loving sin-ravished people and it keeps on hurting him. Moreover, Christians on earth suffer, and through his love our Lord is as intimately connected to their suffering as we are connected to our own body, rendering him acutely sensitive to any part that is in agony. Remember, for example, how personally the risen Lord took Saul’s mistreatment of believers: Acts 9:4 . . . “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He is so deeply connected with us that: Zechariah 2:8 . . . he who touches you touches the apple of his eye. Matthew 25:40 . . . because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. Ephesians 5:30 . . . we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones . The Story So Far I remind you that I have not exhausted my limited understanding of a subject that exceeds finite minds to grasp. My goal has simply been to provide a few quick insights and leave it to you to pursue more in links at the end of this webpage. Continued: Part 15 Link Referred to Above (Best Left Until After Reading This Entire Series) The Surprising Joy of Trials Christian Insights into Martyrdom and Persecution God isn’t fair? God’s Execution of Justice on Behalf of Those who have Suffered More About God & Suffering Repentance: Why We Can’t be Forgiven While Refusing to Let Go of Sin Biblical Examples of Unanswered Prayer & the Implications for Us Receive More Spiritual Revelation: The Help You Need to Find Deep Spiritual Secrets

Beginning of Series Why have the critical duties of evangelism and being Jesus’ witnesses been divinely entrusted to ordinary people rather than angels? This is the first question that came to me as I pondered issues that led to creating this webpage. I knew that if I could find the answer to why God chose us, not angels, to be his witnesses, I would be well on the way toward knowing why good Christians suffer. You might need some background to see the connection. I have long realized that Christians suffer on earth because they are not yet in heaven. You must be staggered by my intellectual powers in having figured that out. Nevertheless, it’s significant. Had we been whisked off to heaven, our suffering would be over. Why hasn’t that happened? Clearly, regardless of how things seem to our short-sighted perspective, the all-knowing Lord is convinced we are needed down here. Why? Primarily it must be for the sake of those who, if they died this instant, would find themselves in serious trouble in the next life. One reason why I say primarily rather than entirely is that, although many more of us should be in the frontline than currently are, a successful army is heavily dependent upon its support staff. By being on the spiritual war zone we call earth, we are exposed to opposition from human and spiritual enemies of God and to the consequences of living in a world that does not act according to God’s ways of love, selflessness, kindness, patience, goodness, self-control, wisdom and so on, but choose the ugly things that end up directly or indirectly hurting people, the environment and our gene pool. This begs the question, however: why are Christians who are currently fulfilling an earthly mission not divinely placed in some sort of protective bubble, so that they are spared earthly suffering? The reason must be connected with why God has chosen us, rather than heavenly angels for critical roles in touching the lives of people down here. We all greatly benefit from role models. The more someone differs from us, the harder it is for us to be inspired by their example to believe we can achieve similar things. One of the biggest obstacles to people becoming Christians is that they wrongly but genuinely blame God for the suffering that evil (behavior that breaks God’s heart) brings to this planet, and they resent God for it. They need role models – people who obviously adore God despite their suffering. I’m not suggesting either angels or humans forever in a bubble of divine protection (one might even say former humans) would completely fail; only that they would be less effective. Never forget the extremes our Savior went to in becoming fully human and agonizing on the cross to save people like you and me – people he loves more than life itself and yet who deserve nothing other than hell. That same Savior wants nothing less than the best in the way of agents helping people accept the message of the cross. Like Moses before the burning bush, we might think others can do a better job (Exodus 3:11, Exodus 4:10-13) but God makes no mistakes in his choices. Moreover, if Christians were divinely protected from suffering, non-Christians could, with some justification, accuse the Holy One of manipulating them by using suffering to force people to come to him and bribes to entice them. Why was Jesus unimpressed when people wanted to make him king because he fed the crowd (John 6:12-15, 26)? How impressed would you be by someone who didn’t care about you but wanted to marry you for your money, or for the ease or status that marrying you might offer? If you want someone to marry you for love, not lesser things, can you conceive of how important this is for the God who said that us loving him and loving other people are the two most important things to him (Matthew 22:35-40)? We might want to be loved merely for selfish reasons but our Lord wants us because without love we will be morally depraved and never reach our God-given potential for greatness. These people wanted Jesus, not because they wanted to be godly but for the physical things he offered, including protection and freedom from oppression (they wanted to make him king). If Christians received physical benefits on earth, most people would want to be Christians for these things, not for spiritual reasons. Most people who become ‘Christians’ in order to enjoy the ease and prosperity and safety of a protective bubble would not be Christians at all. They would still be “lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, . . . unthankful, unholy, . . . unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce,  . . . headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power . . .” (2 Timothy 3:2-4). They might seem model Christians but they would be wolves in sheep’s clothing; Bible-carrying thieves, sex fiends, pleasure junkies, back-stabbers and/or spongers. If you whine that God isn’t fair by sometimes letting us suffer as if we had not been divinely rescued from the consequences of our sin, remember how dramatically the cross proves our loving Lord asks nothing of us he would not do – indeed has done – for us. Even more sobering is that he alone was truly innocent. He alone is worthy of heaven’s bliss. We, on the other hand, contributed to this world’s sin and deserve never-ending suffering; banished forever from sin-free heaven. If, instead of recognizing this, we look down on sinners, we are in grave spiritual danger. Most people who are angry at God think it is because God isn’t loving enough; unaware that the real reason is that, by their standards, God is too loving. They have no idea that if our Lord were to act like they want him to, he would have to be an unjust God who plays favorites by being kinder to them than to those they disapprove of. Most of us want a God who comes down hard on sin, except our own sin. Like the Bible-loving ‘righteous’ who crucified their Messiah, we are terrifyingly off-track if we imagine our sins are more minor or excusable than those of people we despise and that we deserve more mercy from God than them. Nevertheless, we are geniuses at dreaming up outlandish reasons why this should be so and why God should not tolerate a moment longer other people’s sins that directly or indirectly impact us. To begin to grasp the gravity of one ‘minor’ sin, see One Sin . The Jesus who was so tender toward those who were crushed with sorrow over their own sin is the same Jesus who tore strips off the self-righteous who looked down on others. Jesus: Soft on Those Sensitive to Their Sin Matthew 9:11-13 When the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Matthew 11:25 . . . I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants. Mark 2:16-17 The scribes and the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why is it that he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:20 Seeing their faith, he said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” Luke 7:37-47 Behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that he was reclining in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of ointment. Standing behind at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “This man, if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of woman this is who touches him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” He said, “Teacher, say on.” “A certain lender had two debtors. The one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they couldn’t pay, he forgave them both. Which of them therefore will love him most?” Simon answered, “He, I suppose, to whom he forgave the most.” He said to him, “You have judged correctly.” Turning to the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered into your house, and you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave me no kiss, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You didn’t anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.” Luke 18:10-14 Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: ‘God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortionists, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. John 8:7,9-11 . . . “He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.” . . . They, when they heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning from the oldest, even to the last. Jesus was left alone with the woman where she was, in the middle. Jesus, standing up, saw her and said, “Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more.” Jesus: Hard on Those Hardened to Their Sin John 9:41 . . . If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains. Matthew 12:2, 7 But the Pharisees, when they saw it, said to him, “Behold, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” . . . [Jesus replied] But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. Matthew 15:6-9 . . . You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine rules made by men.’ Matthew 21:31-32 Most certainly I tell you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into God’s Kingdom before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn’t believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn’t even repent afterward, that you might believe him. Matthew 23:13-17, 23-39 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and as a pretense you make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men; for you don’t enter in yourselves, neither do you allow those who are entering in to enter. . . . For you travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much of a son of Gehenna as yourselves. . . . you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone. You blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel! . . . Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Therefore you testify to yourselves that you are children of those who killed the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna ? Therefore behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city; that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar. Most certainly I tell you, all these things will come upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me from now on, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Mark 3:4-5 He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?” But they were silent. When he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their hearts . . . Luke 13:14-15 The ruler of the synagogue, being indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the multitude, “There are six days in which men ought to work. Therefore come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day!” Therefore the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each one of you free his ox or his donkey from the stall on the Sabbath, and lead him away to water? Luke 6:25-26 . . . Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe, when men speak well of you, for their fathers did the same thing to the false prophets. Luke 11:39-40, 43-48, 52 . . . “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. You foolish ones, didn’t he who made the outside make the inside also? . . . Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogues, and the greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like hidden graves, and the men who walk over them don’t know it.” One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, in saying this you insult us also.” He said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens that are difficult to carry, and you yourselves won’t even lift one finger to help carry those burdens. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. So you testify and consent to the works of your fathers. For they killed them, and you build their tombs. . . . Woe to you lawyers! For you took away the key of knowledge. You didn’t enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in, you hindered.” Luke 18:10-14 Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: ‘God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortionists, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. We are best able to see God’s heart when it is portrayed in human flesh. “Look up at the stars. Are they shaken from their place if you sin?” asked one of Job’s friends. “Your sin or good living affects you, not God.” That’s my loose paraphrase of Job 35:5-8. Prior to Jesus, we might have philosophically speculated along those lines, but not after God was born. By becoming fully human, Jesus achieved so very much in revealing God to us. We have no idea, for example, of the extent to which angels are capable of feeling pain or human emotions. Through Jesus’ agony on the cross, however, we know that God is in no sense aloof but very personally and profoundly affected by human sin and human suffering. Likewise, by us remaining fully human and subject to the frailties and suffering of sinful humanity, we can portray God more powerfully than any angel or human in a protective bubble. The more you familiarize yourself with the Old Testament prophets, the more you will see that, soaring above their miracles or the accuracy of their prophecies, it is their very humanity and vulnerability that moves us. There is Jeremiah who wept over and over and over because of his nation’s sin. There is Elijah, who slumped into such depression that he wanted to die. For three years Isaiah went stripped and barefoot as a “sign” (Isaiah 20:3). Hosea married an adulterous woman (Hosea 1:2; 3:1) to demonstrate what God suffered. In order to emphasize the seriousness of his warnings, when Ezekiel’s precious wife, described as “the desire of your eyes” suddenly died, the Lord forbade him to as much as shed a tear or show any sign of mourning (Ezekiel 24:16-17). Similarly, Jeremiah was required to suffer the shame and loss of being childless and unmarried (Jeremiah 16:2). These things tug at our hearts. Our shared humanity recognizes the depth of their suffering and the seriousness of their plight, thus amplifying their message; touching us in ways that blissfully aloof beings could not. If, for our sake, our innocent Lord became fully human and subject to suffering that sinful people are exposed to – in fact, suffered more than most – is he asking too much for us to remain fully human on this sin-ravished planet a little longer in the hope of us helping people who need salvation as desperately as we once did? Ponder the implications of this revealing story: Matthew 18:23-35  . . . the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king, who wanted to reconcile accounts with his servants. When he had begun to reconcile, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But because he couldn’t pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, have patience with me, and I will repay you all!’ The lord of that servant, being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. “But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, who owed him one hundred denarii, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ “So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will repay you!’ He would not, but went and cast him into prison, until he should pay back that which was due. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were exceedingly sorry, and came and told to their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him in, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?’ His lord was angry, and delivered him to the tormentors, until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don’t each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds.” This parable is sympathetic and realistic, in that the amount the servant was owed – his loss; how much his act of kindness had cost him – was substantial. There is no glossing over it. The original hearers would have gasped. It would take a normal workingman years of hard, sacrificial saving to accumulate this pile of money. In Jesus’ time (compare Matthew 20:2) the going rate for 12 hours’ labor was one denarius (the singular of denarii). If you worked 40 hours a week and all your leave (recreation, sick leave and public holidays) totaled only two weeks a year, and you managed to squirrel away ten percent of everything you grossed, it would take a full six years to save up one hundred denarii. The servant genuinely had something to complain about. The shattering thing, however, is that the amount representing how much his sin had cost his Lord and how indebted he was to God was more than half a million times more . In the parable in Matthew 18:21-35, there were probably 6,000 denarii to each of the 10,000 talents the servant owed. That's 600,000 times more than the 100 denarii his fellow servant owed. R. T. France (The Gospel According to Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1985) points out that a talent was the highest unit of currency and 10,000 was the highest Greek number. Jesus chose the largest easily-describable sum of money to portray an almost unimaginably large debt. Telling the story today, we would probably say one billion dollars. For anyone so in debt to be so ungrateful and act so contrary to his Lord’s generous heart is a crime against humanity and a slap in the face to God. Sinners are so precious to God that, as the parable emphasizes, to fail to respect and help them with a fraction of the enormity of love that God has shown us, will not go unpunished. Elsewhere, too, Jesus stressed that if we cannot be compassionate and forgiving toward those who hurt us, we disqualify ourselves from the divine mercy on which our salvation hinges. Matthew 6:12 Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Mark 11:25 Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. Luke 6:37 Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Set free, and you will be set free. Luke 17:3-4 Be careful. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in the day, and seven times returns, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him. The Story So Far There are more answers to come. We will see how suffering can benefit the sufferer as well as observers. The impact on observers, however, is of immeasurable significance. To save lives is something good people are willing to risk and endure much to attempt. Physically saving someone’s life, however, is merely delaying his death. Christians alone can be used of God to truly save lives. Continued .... Part 11 Continued: Part 11

Beginning of Series Why does Scripture talk about suffering “refining” Christians? Isaiah 48:10 Behold, I have refined you , but not as silver. I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction . (Emphasis mine.) The expression furnace of affliction sounds horrific. It is meant to. It refers to extreme suffering. Nevertheless, the Bible uses the expression not only as a picture of pain but because in Bible times – and even today, though we seldom stop to think of it – furnaces were immensely beneficial. It is only through furnaces that civilization was able to move beyond the Stone Age. The ancients discovered that the application of intense heat was the best thing that could happen to the metals they needed. Astonishingly, the Bible is saying by such references that suffering, though undeniably unpleasant, ends up being of such value to people of God that nothing can equal it. Many Scriptures refer to hard times refining us, but here’s my favorite and I’d like to link it with another verse from the same letter: 1 Peter 1:6-7  . . . now for a little while, if need be, you have been put to grief in various trials, that the proof of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes even though it is tested by fire , may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ 1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, don’t be astonished at the fiery trial which has come upon you, to test you, as though a strange thing happened to you. (Emphasis mine.) More Examples of Scriptures Indicating the Refining Value of Suffering Deuteronomy 4:20 But the Lord has taken you, and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as it is today. Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I shall come out like gold. Psalm 66:10 For you, God, have tested us. You have refined us, as silver is refined. Proverbs 17:3 The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the hearts. Isaiah 1:25 I will turn my hand on you, thoroughly purge away your dross, and will take away all your tin [inferior metal]. Jeremiah 9:7 Therefore the Lord of Armies says, Behold, I will melt them, and try them . . . Zechariah 13:9 I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, ‘It is my people;’ and they will say, ‘the Lord is my God.’ Malachi 3:3 . . . he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver; and they shall offer to the Lord offerings in righteousness. The reference to a fiery trial suggests a connection between the two verses and this link is, in fact, reflected in the original Greek. ( The Greek word translated fiery trial in 1 Peter 4:12 means treated with fire (TDNT-6:950) and is used in the ancient Greek (LXX) translation of Proverbs 27:21 for the refining of gold. Its only other occurrence in the New Testament is in Revelation 18:9, 18, where it is used for the destruction of Babylon by fire.) Peter reminds us that gold is made still more precious by being “tested,” or refined, by fire. Oppressive heat is necessary to remove what is inferior. It purifies, thus increasing the metal’s value and usefulness. This is what Peter says suffering the pain and grief of “various trials” does to something within us that is more precious than even gold – genuine faith. What makes faith so precious is that it is critically important to our entire walk with God. Not only are we saved by grace (our Lord mercifully showering us with blessing we in no way deserve) through faith (Romans 4:16; 5:2; Ephesians 2:8-9) but we can never ‘mature’ beyond an ongoing dependence on appropriating God’s grace through faith. Every aspect of our walk with God hinges on us continually repeating this process. To imagine that we can receive spiritual gifts or holiness or spiritual growth or answers to prayer or victory over demons or anything else of spiritual value by such means as the effort we put into prayer, fasting, self-denial, Bible study, tithing, charitable acts, or whatever, is to dangerously lose our way spiritually (Galatians 3:1-5). Faith is critical, and Peter says suffering plays a vital role in developing our faith. Like the application of a refiner’s fire to what might have seemed to be pure gold, hard times expose flaws in our faith, thus allowing us to remove previously undetected deficiencies. Even if the process is initially unpleasant, it ends up making our faith more useful and valuable than ever. Note the reference to various temptations/trials in the above quote (1 Peter 1:6-7). Some translations use the word manifold and the NET Bible chooses the expression “all sorts of trials.” As highlighted later by Peter, some trials are indeed “fiery” and include severe persecution and mind-numbing pain. Perhaps those on the extreme end of the scale achieve the most. Milder forms of suffering, however, are also able to produce good in our lives. Until tested by hard times, we typically have an inflated opinion of our faith. What we think is solid faith often turns out to be shamefully weak faith artificially puffed up by circumstances (quick answers to prayer, an easy life, and so on) and feelings. Regardless of how secure we might feel, for as long as we remain dependent upon emotions as signs of divine acceptance – such as feeling happy or secure or at ease or feeling loved by God and aware of his presence – we are in a spiritually precarious predicament. What makes us alarmingly vulnerable is that the enemy of our souls is the deceiver. He is unable to change spiritual reality – such as the enormity of God’s love and faithfulness and all that Christ has done for us through his death and resurrection. He can, however, mess with our feelings and, at times, our circumstances. God’s dependability is rock-solid; our feelings are fickle. Even hormones and many other types of imbalances in our body chemistry (sometimes as simple as a vitamin or mineral deficiency) can wreak havoc with our feelings; causing depression (an inability to feel almost anything positive) or anxiety (which feels like a nagging guilty conscience, no matter how cleansed we are by the blood of our Lord, and can fill us with doubts, no matter how great our faith). Trials typically have the effect of kicking from under our faith the artificial props of feelings or circumstances. When this happens most of us suddenly discover our faith is devastatingly weaker than we had supposed, and we flounder. Nevertheless, by exposing the weaknesses in our faith, trials enable us to purify our faith. Imagine taking the crutches from someone crippled by a broken leg. This has every appearance of a sadistic act; reducing his ability to walk and increasing his pain. There comes a time in the healing process, however, when what seems like a cruel setback is essential for the person to grow stronger and fully mobile. He might have grown content to depend on crutches but being exposed to the temporary pain and inconvenience of having to hobble without artificial props, empowers him to reach his full potential; enabling him to achieve so much more. A satanic attack might have been maliciously intended to smash our faith. Our astonishing Lord outwits the enemy, however, masterfully transforming the attack into a priceless opportunity for us to develop real faith that is founded on Christ, who will never let us down, rather than supported by flimsy feelings or circumstances that will inevitably crumble. Both Jesus and Paul saw our spiritual development as like constructing a building ( Scriptures ). An unsound structure may look impressive but, eventually, events will reveal the quality of the build. The sooner we become aware of defects, the more likely we can avoid disaster. Applying his different analogy to the same truth, Peter might put it this way: fiery trials might initially shock and discourage us by revealing that some of what we thought was genuine faith are actually impurities that reduce the value and usefulness of our faith. Once exposed, however, we can reject the inferior, skimming it away, so that all we rely on is utterly dependable. Jesus Matthew 7:24-27 Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it didn’t fall, for it was founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine, and doesn’t do them will be like a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it fell – and great was its fall. Paul 1 Corinthians 3:9-15 . . . You are . . . God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble; each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is. If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire. I’m personally partial to viewing spiritual growth as akin to physical training, since both spiritual and physical development is typically slow and arduous, and affect our feelings. Like running or lifting weights, the longer a spiritual training session lasts, the more it hurts and the more pathetically weak we feel. Contrary to all appearances, however, it actually makes us stronger. Peter is not the only apostle to understand the immense value of suffering. In fact, I can imagine no apostle not acutely aware of it, given how all the apostles in Jerusalem rejoiced at being counted worthy to suffer being flogged (Acts 5:29, 40-41). Here is the apostle James’ contribution to the subject: James 1:2-3 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. The meaning of the word here translated temptations goes beyond the narrow way we often use the term. Many Bible versions of this passage translate the word as trials , and a couple even refer to troubles . It is such a broad term that Thayer’s New Testament Greek-English Lexicon carves the word into nine shades of meaning. In an earlier draft of this webpage, I wrote that the word has a wider meaning than satanic inducements to sin. I had intended that expression to be a narrow definition of what I think of as temptation. As I pondered my wording, however, I was startled to realize that almost all suffering could be viewed this way – something satanic in origin that keeps prodding us to sin; whether that sin be to compromise or to disobey, doubt, deny or disrespect our Lord. Let’s now consider what James reveals that these trials produce: endurance. We have already seen the importance of endurance confirmed by the biblical emphasis that, ultimately, salvation hinges not merely on an adequate start but on enduring to the end. Just as increased endurance is of enormous value to athletes, so it is to Christians. Sufficient endurance makes people unstoppable no matter what is thrown at them. They cannot be defeated. And James insists that the way to develop this precious quality is through facing hard times. An easy life keeps us weak; adversity builds strength. Of course, too much opposition might be counterproductive. Without God, adversity could reach levels that crush us. But we are not without God. As we keep looking to our faithful Lord, he ensures that, no matter what it feels like to us, oppression never mounts beyond what ends up doing us good. By exposing imperfections, tough times strengthen our all-important faith. If that were all they achieved, tough times would be invaluable. But in addition, the Lord, speaking through James, reveals that such times build another vitally important spiritual quality: endurance. And the benefits don’t even stop there. Paul, in a remarkably similar Scripture, reveals that the benefits stretch still further: Romans 5:3-4  . . . we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope. Not only do endurance and persevere mean the virtually same thing in English, the word here translated perseverance is precisely the same Greek word that in James is translated endurance . (Interestingly, it is also the same word used in James 5:11 for the quality James praises Job for displaying.) So both James and Paul commence by declaring the same truth. Paul, however, goes further by saying that not only does suffering produce perseverance/endurance, but “proven character,” which is so valuable that it, in turn, leads to hope – the certainty of future reward. Astonishingly, the Word of God reveals that still more personal benefits flow from suffering. For example, despite Christ being the beloved Son in whom God was well pleased (Mark 1:11) and the one by whom and for whom, all things were created (Colossians 1:16) and are sustained by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3), he had to grow in wisdom (Luke 2:52). Suffering – such as facing starvation and knowing that he could end it by a means God disapproved of – was an essential part of this learning process. We have already cited the relevant Scripture but it is so astonishing that it is worth repeating: Hebrews 5:8 though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered. This suffering has uniquely empowered Christ to minister to us: Hebrews 2:17-18 Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted. Hebrews 4:15 For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities , but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. (Emphasis mine.) Sidenote: We know that love is fundamental to Christian living (1 John 3:14; 4:7-8,16-17, 20-21). Jesus and other Scriptures affirm that the proof of love is obedience (John 14:15, 23-24; 15:10; 1 John 2:5; 5:3; 2 John 1:6). And we have just noted that even the Son of God learned obedience by what he suffered. When our desires happen to correspond with God’s wishes, to do as God wants is simply doing as we please. It is coincidence rather than obedience. At the heart of love and obedience is doing what someone wants when it clashes with what we want – when it hurts to follow that person’s directives. And it goes the other way too. Parental love, for example, includes requiring children to do good things that they do not want to do – stop fighting other children, eat vegetables, clean their teeth, get to bed on time, go to school, and so on. Likewise, a coach who thinks the world of his athlete and wants nothing but the best for him, will push him to keep breaking the pain barrier. So love, obedience and suffering are interrelated. I’ll explore more of the beauty of this statement later but for now, it is enough to realize that, seen in this light, suffering is very fundamental to the Christian life. We also know from Paul’s experience that suffering can empower us for ministry: 2 Corinthians 1:3-6 Blessed be the God . . . of all comfort; who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our comfort also abounds through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. Yet another thing we learn from Paul’s suffering is that hard times can protect us from spiritually dangerous pride (2 Corinthians 12:7). That hard times end up doing good in God’s people is taught throughout Scripture. Consider this, for example: Deuteronomy 8:2, 16 You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. . . . who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers didn’t know; that he might humble you, and that he might prove you, to do you good at your latter end (Emphasis mine.) It is true that the period stretched for forty years because of their lack of faith – and it is comforting that even then God’s plan was to do them good – but if they had been totally obedient faith-giants they still would have spent some time in the wilderness, being fed by manna, and so on. Similarly, this psalm praises God for the good things flowing to God’s people through suffering: Psalm 66:8-12 Praise our God, you peoples! . . . For you, God, have tested us. You have refined us, as silver is refined. You brought us into prison. You laid a burden on our backs. You allowed men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water, but you brought us to the place of abundance. As Hebrews 12:10 affirms, there’s a chance we might have benefitted from our parent’s discipline but it is certain we will benefit from God’s. Often we want God to keep insulting us by babying us and treating us as hopelessly fragile, when he has immense faith in us and sees us as heroes in the making. Too many of us clash with God because we see ourselves as wimps, when he sees us as overcomers who will win for ourselves eternal acclaim. We want God to work externally, preventing hardship from touching us, when he wants to work internally, building strength and character in us. As is typical of the Bible, the book of Revelation keeps pronouncing blessings and honor upon those who overcome adversity. Overcomers Revelation 2:7 . . . To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of my God. Revelation 2:11 . . . He who overcomes won’t be harmed by the second death. Revelation 2:17 . . . To him who overcomes, to him I will give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows but he who receives it. Revelation 2:26 He who overcomes, and he who keeps my works to the end, to him I will give authority over the nations. Revelation 3:5 He who overcomes will be arrayed in white garments, and I will in no way blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. Revelation 3:12 He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will go out from there no more. I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my own new name. Revelation 3:21 He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne. Revelation 12:11 They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death. Whereas so many of us hanker for a religion that says it is okay to be a coward, this book ends with “But for the cowardly . . . their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8) Most Bible versions correctly translate this word cowardly in Revelation 21:8. The King James Version’s choice of fearful is confusing. It refers not to people who feel afraid who but only to people who cave into fear. Consider : 2 Corinthians 7:5  . . . we were afflicted on every side. Fightings were outside. Fear was inside . (Emphasis mine.) Godly courage is not the absence of fear, but pressing on regardless. Elsewhere I have written much about trials and I will not repeat it here (see a link at the end of this webpage). Let me remind you, however, why top coaches give their best athletes the toughest training. It’s not to punish them, but because their coaches believe in them. Likewise, the training that elite soldiers receive is so grueling that it looks like cruelty but it can end up literally saving their lives. The Story So Far “No pain, no gain” applies spiritually as well as physically. It’s an unavoidable part of becoming a champion. If even the perfect Son of God needed suffering to learn obedience and since, even after Christ’s triumph on the cross, Scripture emphasizes this, I see little chance of us finding another way to spiritually mature. Hebrews 2:17-18 says it was essential that Jesus suffer like the rest of humanity. I can guess some of the reasons for this but most likely there are still more reasons that are beyond my grasp and that the same applies to our suffering. We can be certain, however, that suffering is not the useless waste that it often seems. When entrusted to the God who works all things together for good (Romans 8:28), our affliction achieves for us “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Yes, this glory peaks in the hereafter but even in this life, we can begin enjoying the benefits. Continued:Part 13 Link Referred to Above (Best Left Until After Reading This Entire Series) The Surprising Joy of Trials

Beginning of Series How much can we learn from the spiritual conspiracy to “sift” Peter “as wheat”? I’ve spent days pondering the refining action of suffering. While doing so, I’ve been puzzling over the significance of a Scripture I knew must be closely related: Luke 22:31-32 Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat, but I prayed for you, that your faith wouldn’t fail. You, when once you have turned again, establish your brothers. I had never bothered to explore the details but I realized that sifting must be the agricultural equivalent of refining. Can you see the connection? Jesus was simply using another analogy to describe the process of adding value and making something more useful by removing the inferior. Moreover, as Scripture often does when using the metallurgical analogy of refining, Christ applied this to a spiritually challenging time in someone’s life. (I have since investigated this more; detailed in the brief note below: My familiarity with biblical references to winnowing or threshing (e.g. Luke 3:17; Judges 6:11) led me to presume that sifting must be some part of the process of separating chaff from the wheat. (Chaff, by the way, should not be confused with bran. Whereas chaff is virtually inedible for humans, bran has a valuable dietary function.) I thought myself foolish, however, when I discovered this verse in the NIV: Amos 9:9 . . . I will shake the people of Israel among all the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve, and not a pebble will reach the ground. (Emphasis mine) I then presumed that sifting must be a reference to separating wheat from stones. It turns out that some scholars still think that, in Luke, sifting might be referring to removing the chaff. Moreover, whether pebbles are actually referred to in Amos is disputed and so Bible versions vary in their translation of this verse. Nevertheless, regardless of whether what is sifted out is chaff or rocks, sticks or dirt, it is referring to the important process of removing the inedible, virtually useless, from the edible part of the wheat. As I’ve thought long and hard about and Peter’s ‘sifting’ and subsequent denial, I discovered I needed to re-evaluate all of it. What I found astonished me. First, note how Peter’s denial came about. It was instigated by an attack from Satan but, as evil and anti-God as Satan is, God remains mind-bogglingly powerful. Satan cannot attack God or do a thing without the Almighty allowing him to do so. It’s almost the exact process described in the first two chapters of Job where, as previously mentioned, Satan accused someone dear to God and sought divine permission to attack Job, in the hope of proving that Job was not the faithful man of God he appeared to be. There are other biblical parallels, such as Paul’s “thorn” that protected him from the danger of pride, even though it was “a messenger of Satan” that tormented him. It achieved so much good in Paul’s life that the Lord refused to remove it, despite Paul’s repeated pleas. Paul eventually came to recognize its value and, to use his word, “glory” in it (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). A particularly confusing example is found in David incurring divine wrath by conducting a census. It was a devastating failure on David’s part, even though it ended with divine intervention that limited the damage and with the purchase of land on which the temple was built (1 Chronicles 22:1). There are two divinely authorized accounts of this event. One says Satan was behind it, the other says God was: 1 Chronicles 21:1 Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to take a census of Israel. 2 Samuel 24:1  . . . the Lord’s anger burned against Israel, and he moved David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” Before you start thinking this ‘contradiction’ proves the unreliability of Scripture, think for a moment. We find something similar in the account of Jesus’ temptation. Immediately after the Spirit came upon Jesus during his baptism, the Spirit of God drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, say all three Gospel accounts (Matthew 4:1 Mark 1:12 Luke 4:1-2). Nevertheless, not only was it the devil, not the Holy Spirit, who did the tempting, it was the devil who physically transported Jesus to various places during this time, say both accounts that detail the temptations (Matthew 4:5, 8; Luke 4:5, 9). No one could argue that this is not some accidental slip-up on behalf of the Gospel writers because the ‘contradiction’ was made not only by the same writer but occurs in the same short passage and was repeated by another Gospel writer. Another complication is that James 1:13-14 says “Let no man say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God,’ for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.” One then has to wonder how it is the holy Son of God was tempted. Clearly, spiritual truth is complex and the Bible does not baby us by oversimplifying. Both statements about David’s temptation seem to be different ways of expressing the same thing: if Satan asks God’s permission and God grants it, there is one sense in which Satan is responsible and another in which the buck stops with God. If this sickens you, it’s because I have not yet adequately explained. Why would the good Lord let his arch enemy get away with such things as attacking Job and David and Peter? I will by no means wimp out by settling for pat answers. My longing to comfort you as soon as possible, however, drives me to begin with a quick answer before going into greater depth later. The short answer is that there are far more factors involved than a finite mind can even conceive of, and the relatively few times when God does not totally reject Satan’s pleas occur because God’s approach ends up defeating Satan’s schemes and being in the best interest of the people involved and being the smartest move and achieving the greatest good. In biblical thought, tempting or testing could have the good intent of proving a person’s character or the evil intent of enticing someone to sin. If hard training sessions intended to build an athlete’s strength and stamina become a temptation for a certain trainee, leading him to give up the sport in favor of a softer life, it would be the very opposite of the coach’s hopes and break his heart. With a perfect coach, such a tragedy would not be because of a flaw in his plan but a flaw in the trainee’s character. The coach would still do all he could to reignite the trainees enthusiasm, encouraging him to tough it out and become the champion he could be. The final choice, however, remains with the trainee. For an elite soldier, training is vital but it can only achieve so much. One day, the recruit must go into real combat situation. It is the only way to become truly battle-hardened and achieve things of great value and become a hero. Everyone knows that if he were wounded in battle, it would be the work of the enemy and never his commander’s plan. We must avoid being so foolish as to confuse our loving Lord with the enemy. Such confusion, however, is disturbingly easy to fall into. Getting this even slightly wrong, would cruelly rob us of much comfort and zeal by cooling our love and admiration for the One who is infinitely worthy. An average commander sending soldiers into battle can make horrific mistakes. There is nothing average about our infallible Lord. Some commanders are heartless but there is nothing unfeeling or aloof about the One who for our salvation left paradise to be tortured to death. Some commanders have always had it easy but the One who sends us says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20:21, emphasis mine). Our leader says, “Follow me” (many Scriptures) – follow the path I have cut with my own blood, sweat and tears. And not only has he courageously forged ahead, making it incomparably easier for those who follow, he adds, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). For as long as we remain on a planet where people are in rebellion against God’s loving ways, we are either on dangerous missions behind enemy lines or in training for such missions. Occasional times of rest and recreation aside, life will be tough. Opportunities for glory, however, are immense. We who are forever underestimating the infinite Lord, find it mindboggling that the same event could have two different origins or opposite goals – one from the heart of Satan to do evil and the other from the heart of God to do good. That this actually happens is highlighted in Joseph’s famous statement to the brothers who had sold him into slavery: Genesis 50:20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good . . . (NIV) How this marvel came about is most instructive. The brothers hatched a despicably evil scheme that we might have expected the Almighty to have stopped. Instead, he let it proceed but, as with Job (Job 1:12; 2:6), under his restraints. That way, rather than merely stopping evil, it was reversed so that good resulted for everyone. That’s divine genius! It’s why Almighty God is worthy of all praise and all trust. As is typical of the Eternal Lord, the outworking of the divine plan took what in human years was a long time. What is typical of us, however, is blaming God for things moving at snail pace, when the real reason is him patiently bearing with our slowness. Just as little children dawdle, tire easily, stop to explore irrelevant things, run off in the wrong direction, get stubborn because they are sure their harebrained ideas are better, and take agonizingly long to learn such elementary things as how to tie their shoelaces, God’s children are continually slowing him down, and they rarely even realize it. In fact, embarrassingly many of us are too unaware of the real situation to spare ourselves the shame of foolishly getting impatient with God when things move slow because of his patient consideration for our weaknesses. The brother’s plan was originally to kill Joseph (Genesis 37:20). This was quickly turned – presumably through the Lord’s intervention – into selling their brother into slavery (Genesis 37:24-27). Then followed a peculiar set of sufferings, blessings and setbacks. The blessings were truly of God (Genesis 39:5, 21-23) but the hardships and disappointments were equally real. From being a slave, Joseph gradually gained a position of trust in an important household (Genesis 39:1-6). Then he was thrown in prison on the disgusting trumped up charge of rape and slowly became head prisoner (Genesis 39:20-23). He then successfully interpreted dreams, only to be forgotten and left to rot in prison. Through it all, Joseph proved himself faithful and grew strong. He ended up astonishingly exalted but, as is typical for God’s faithful, it was quite a saga or, as I prefer to see it, a faith adventure that made him a true hero. For another short answer, I’ll use an analogy. We know business owners often make it their employee’s responsibility to leave their premises locked at night. As an extra level of protection, however, they sometimes hire a security company that sends a nightly patrol to visit the place at random times to double-check everything. A security patrol is not hired so that people can be lax about locking up at night or so that the owner can get away with cheap, flimsy locks. A patrol officer helps by regularly and diligently testing the building’s security. If any vulnerability becomes apparent, he will alert the owner, whose responsibility it remains to correct the deficiency. In an emergency, the officer might temporarily cease his other patrols and stand guard at the point that is unsecured but the owner is expected to provide a more permanent solution as soon as possible. Picture a security guard going from building to building on his nightly rounds, checking the locks on every door and window. Now picture a thief doing virtually the same thing. Despite their actions seeming almost identical, their motives are so different that, to those of us in the know, what one does is comforting and valued, whereas the other sends a chill down us. Should a competent security guard spy a thief, he might even stay in the shadows and let a thief try to break it. He would know that if the thief failed, the building is adequately secured. He would be confident, however, that if the thief broke in, he could prevent him from stealing anything, plus remove the threat by having him arrested. This is so obvious that I’m embarrassed to take your time spelling it out. When we move to the spiritual, however, we tend to lose to our way. So let me round off the natural and move on to the spiritual. There is no way the guard and the thief are in league, even though they might act similarly in testing locks and even though a guard might delay intervention in order to catch the thief red-handed. And the owner does not regard any of this as absolving his employees from their responsibility to lock up at night, nor his own responsibility to provide solid doors, protected or reinforced windows and so on. We need to be equally clear-headed in distinguishing God’s role and the devil’s role in our lives and realize that we are like the owner of the business that thieves would love to rob. Just because our Lord is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, does not mean he dissolves into a nebulous blob or disregards everyone and ceases to hold others responsible for their actions. He sees clear lines of demarcation as to who is responsible for what, and we need to see things his way. Like confusing a security officer for a thief, it is needlessly upsetting to suppose our Lord has anything but the most compassionate intent in testing us. We can avoid that distress by steadfastly choosing to believe in God’s loving goodness. There is another distress, however, that cannot be avoided. Locks can be tested painlessly but neither for the flawless Son of God nor for us, is there any painless way of being spiritually tested. As someone’s readiness for the Olympics can only be tested by pushing the athlete to the limit, so it is for testing our spiritual readiness. Why doesn’t the Bible spell this out clearer, rather than allowing such puzzles as the illusion of a contradiction in 1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1 about who was behind David’s test? Because that ‘contradiction’ is itself a test. The Bible is crystal clear in repeatedly and emphatically declaring that God is good. Choose to root our faith deep into the bedrock of this divine revelation and we will stand strong. Should we refuse, however, we will be blown over every time God does the smallest thing that our tiny minds fail to understand. If, for no other reason than God is smarter than us, tests in the form of God doing things that make no sense to us, are inevitable. Perhaps, after such a brief answer, you are still reeling at the thought of God not vetoing Satan’s every move. I long to work through this with you but would you mind waiting until the next question posed in this webpage? There’s another aspect of Peter being ‘sifted’ by Satan that has been nagging me and discussing it right now might settle your mind a little, as well as getting the incident involving Peter done with so that we can then focus on broader issues. In Peter’s case – unlike Job’s – it seems as if the ‘gamble’ backfired: Peter fell. Note, however, that Jesus said right from the beginning that he had prayed Peter’s faith would not fail and told him “once you have turned again, establish your brothers.” If, like me, you tend to think that, besides Judas, Peter was the greatest coward and failure among the disciples, think again. When Jesus was arrested, all the disciples fled. It was just Peter and one other disciple (John 18:15) who had the courage not to totally desert but to follow at a distance. For his Lord, Peter voluntarily exposed himself to considerable danger. Did this end up a victory for Satan? If you think so, let me pose another question: Why is it that, rather than any other disciple, Jesus assigned to Peter the task of strengthening the others? Ultimately, Judas was the only one who failed. By choosing suicide, Judas rendered himself totally useless. No one is inspired by Judas. In contrast, Peter grasped Jesus’ hand of forgiveness and has ever since been a powerful source of inspiration to literally millions of Christians who, at some time or another, have felt such failures that they were in danger of declining God’s forgiveness and falling away completely. Peter’s painful ‘sifting’ removed the chaff of ignorance and pride, empowering him to tenderly minister to people reeling under condemnation. Here’s a sample of the tenderness it produced: 1 Peter 5:1-3 I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder . . . Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, not for dishonest gain, but willingly; neither as lording it over those entrusted to you, but making yourselves examples to the flock. God’s intention is that testings always result in good. Whereas God’s passion is to bring out the best in us, the devil strives to bring out the worst in us. The devil wants our weaknesses exposed so he can mock and discourage and attack us. God wants them exposed so that they can be removed, making us stronger and less vulnerable. It is hardly surprising that the good Lord and the Evil One have opposite agendas. The Almighty, however, dignifies us by entrusting us with the casting vote. Whether trials result in good or evil, hinges on our response to them. Peter’s remorse led him to repentance and empowering; Judas’s choice, however, was tragically different. Whether it be shifting or smelting, good is achieved by exposing hidden impurities that need removing. The process might be less than comfy and no one likes confronting the reality of one’s failures. Nevertheless, it is only by discovering the extent to which we are wrong that we have the chance of becoming right. If spiritual cleansing were impossible, ignorance of our failings would at least provide the temporary bliss of not knowing our unavoidable fate. But since our Savior has provided a rescue plan, it is critical that we are alerted to the need to avail ourselves of it. The Story So Far The process required to reveal what is in our hearts might be as unpleasant as childbirth but, like childbirth, the result can be invaluable – so valuable, in fact, that some godly people have actually sought it. Psalm 26:2 Examine me, Lord, and prove me. Try my heart and my mind. Job 6:24 Teach me, and I will hold my peace. Cause me to understand wherein I have erred. Job 13:23 How many are my iniquities and sins? Make me know my disobedience and my sin. Psalm 17:3 You have proved my heart. You have visited me in the night. You have tried me, and found nothing. I have resolved that my mouth shall not disobey. Psalm 19:12 . . . Forgive me from hidden errors. Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. 1 Chronicles 29:17 I know also, my God, that you try the heart, and have pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of my heart I have willingly offered all these things. . . . Leviticus 4:2-3 . . . ‘If anyone sins unintentionally, in any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and does any one of them . . . then let him offer for his sin . . . 1 Corinthians 4:4 For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord. 2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test? That’s not nearly as reckless as one might suppose. What makes it wise is that it is far better for us to discern our weaknesses and failings this side of Judgment Day than the other side. Continued: Part 14

Beginning of Series What was the goal of Saul and other religious and political leaders in flogging and imprisoning Christians, and what are the implications? Obviously, their goal was to silence Christians – to stop them ‘spreading lies’. But have you thought through the implications? Surely such drastic measures would have worked if these witnesses were lying and there was nothing obvious, such as money or fame, that was making it worth being tortured. I am strongly opposed to authorities ever resorting to torture. We know that the temptation to descend into barbarianism is fired by the likelihood of extracting the truth from people. The early Christians sticking to their story despite being flogged or facing martyrdom, plus there being no fleshly benefits, makes them highly credible witnesses. As much as I recoil from it, the truth is that their suffering has been a significant factor in personally convincing me they were certain they were telling the truth when claiming that Jesus rose from the dead. I confess that it boils down to this: I don’t know that I could have mustered the faith to believe in Jesus’ resurrection (a belief fundament to salvation – 1 Corinthians 15:14, 17) had these early witnesses been divinely protected from torture. Likewise, the suffering of subsequent generations of Christians adds great credibility to their message and to their claim that what Jesus offers is more important than anything the world offers. On the other hand, the fame, material prosperity and apparently easy life of some Christian leaders significantly detract from this. Looking at the Apostle Paul further convinces me that suffering adds credibility and empowers one’s message. Many people squirm when reading his anointed writings. Some have real issues with him. Perhaps I would, too, were it not for me being in awe of him because of the stupendous courage, endurance and love for Christ he displayed by what he suffered. I would count it an honor to spend eternity trimming his toenails. If a spirit/angel appears, how do you know this alien being is not an evil (and hence deceptive) spirit? Supernatural signs would merely prove the spokesperson is supernatural, not that he is trustworthy. Humans, too, can lie, but when they are dying or being tortured they are more likely to be reliable witnesses. Moreover, being human ourselves makes us more confident in detecting human liars. A skeptic might find an angel’s claims more believable if it were possible for an angel to be on his death bed or being tortured to extract truth but, even then, how does one know an alien is not faking pain? It turns out that someone would be more believable if he were not an angel or a former human who is now in a protective bubble, but fully human. What a staggering conclusion to having taken the time to think this through! You might even need to reread this paragraph to check the steps that produced this unexpected result. Why is it so often said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”? This quote, originating way back in 197 AD (compare John 12:24) is often repeated. This is because history has confirmed over and over not only that suffering adds credibility but it produces stronger Christians. I am not for a moment suggesting that our Lord wants it to be this way – it is to our shame – but it’s a sad fact of life that without suffering, few, if any, of us would be sufficiently motivated to reach our full spiritual potential. “Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth,” says Colossians 3:2. This is hard to maintain when our lives are so comfortable that things on earth seem attractive. Almost inevitably, the easier and more desirable our earthly lives are, the harder it is for us to wrench our attention away from temporary things and stay focused on spiritual matters. Suffering makes earthly matters less enticing. When, after a hard life wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites were about to receive increased ease and material prosperity, Moses was compelled to issue this warning: Deuteronomy 6:10-12  . . . when the Lord your God brings you into the land . . . to give you, great and goodly cities, which you didn’t build, and houses full of all good things, which you didn’t fill, and cisterns dug out, which you didn’t dig, vineyards and olive trees, which you didn’t plant, and you shall eat and be full; then beware lest you forget the Lord  . . . (Emphasis mine.) Even of Jesus, we read: Hebrews 5:7-8 He, in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and petitions with strong crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and . . . though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered . (Emphasis mine.) Consider the writer of the Bible’s longest Psalm. The merest glance at his inspired work shouts that he was an exceptionally devout and spiritual person. Here’s an almost random sampling: Psalm 119:10-11,14,18,20,44,97,103 With my whole heart, I have sought you. Don’t let me wander from your commandments.I have hidden your word in my heart,that I might not sin against you. . . .I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies,as much as in all riches. . . .Open my eyes,that I may see wondrous things out of your law. . . .My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times. . . .So I will obey your law continually,forever and ever. . . .How I love your law!It is my meditation all day. . . .How sweet are your promises to my taste,more than honey to my mouth! Nevertheless, this amazing man of God confesses that he now loves God’s Word and lives it, but only because an affliction (some form of suffering) brought him to his senses: Psalm 119:67, 71, 75 Before I was afflicted, I went astray; but now I observe your word. . . . It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. . . . in faithfulness you have afflicted me. This strongly suggests that had he continued in a life of ease he might have ended up spiritually damned. Many of Jesus’ parables spotlight how high the stakes are. Consider, for example, the parable of the talents. The “wicked and slothful servant” (Matthew 25:26) (very many versions of Matthew 25:30 also call him either “worthless” or “useless”) was lazy but clean living. He did not descend into an orgy of self-indulgence. He spent not a cent of the money on himself. In this sense, he was highly faithful, and yet look at the appalling consequences of him taking it easy: Matthew 25:30 Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ So much is at stake that Jesus said: Matthew 5:29-30 If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna.If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna. And the stakes are so high that Paul had to write about a Christian living in sin: 1 Corinthians 5:5  . . . deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus . He also wrote: 1 Corinthians 11:32 But when we are judged, we are punished by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. And: 1 Corinthians 3:12-17 But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble; each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is. If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire. Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, which you are. The Story So Far It is vitally important that we remain highly motivated spiritually, and for those having an easy, protected life such motivation is hard to maintain. Ironically, being physically safe can put us in spiritual danger by tempting us to slacken off. Continued: Part 12

Beginning of Series Can it sometimes not be worth it? We would expect most highly successful people to consider it worth all the sacrifice it took to reach the heights they are now renowned for. But what of all those who paid almost as high a price – maybe even higher – without ever making it to the bigtime? How many of them, I wonder, consider all the hardship nothing but a useless waste? Can the same apply to Christians? Aren’t there some for whom the price was too high and the success too low? The cost is so real that Jesus advised us to weight it up before following him (Luke 14:28-32). Is it ever too high relative to the benefits? Before diving into this vital matter, there is a rather vague but relevant factor I should try to explain. An easy, risk-free, cost-free life ends us more bland and less fulfilling than one might expect. With too much comfort, the thrill and sense of achievement leaches out of life. To help me convey this, ponder with me a couple of scenarios. Imagine yourself overcoming great odds and winning such a victory that upon entering heaven angels fall at your feet and for all eternity everyone praises your heroism. Now, instead, imagine yourself receiving such a reception for merely combing your hair. The prestige might be same but wouldn’t the acclaim leave you feeling hollow? God can (and does) give us astonishing gifts that are totally undeserved. In some ways, however, his greatest gift is giving us the opportunity to face real hardship and become real heroes. Only through Christ as our trail-blazer, commander and ever-present help can we win such victories. Nevertheless, God is so selfless and loves us so much that he is willing to partner with us so as to grant us real glory, not just honor that is actually exclusively his. Deep down, we tend to feel that anything that costs little is worth little. To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., you have nothing worth living for if you have nothing worth dying for. This and a number of related sayings remain in circulation because they ring true. Here’s one: all sunshine makes a desert. Here’s another: too much of a good thing . . . Despite many of us supposing we cannot have too much sweetness, luxury or self-indulgence, these sayings, made popular by people’s personal experiences, shout otherwise. More significantly, so does God’s Word: Proverbs 25:27 It is not good to eat much honey . . . God is no killjoy. A little honey is fine, affirms an earlier verse; it’s just that too much would spoil things by turning our stomach (Proverbs 25:16). Of course, being a proverb, this is highlighting a life-principle that extends far beyond honey. It is divine confirmation that it really is possible to have too much of a good thing – that by being overly pampered with them, even sweet, desirable things can turn surprisingly sour. The good Lord never wants to deprive us. Instead, he longs for us to maximize our long-term well-being and live a regret-free life. We can get the most out of life and spare ourselves needless discomfort by trusting God’s leading, rather than having to learn by bitter experience. We can snuggle into the assurance that our wise, loving Lord truly cares. We will quickly move on, but let’s first briefly consider three other angles: Maybe those with the deepest regrets are those agonizing for the rest of their lives over what they might have achieved had they exerted themselves a little more.   More often than we would expect, what we would think would be ‘living the dream’ ends up living a nightmare. Consider, for example, records of all the winners of instant megabucks whose short-term ecstasy turned to tragedy. We can be so disastrously wrong about what seems an ideal situation that maybe we really would be better off leaving it in God’s hands.   Whilst there is no denying that following Christ costs, we need to consider very carefully how exorbitant is the cost of not following him. A fulfilling life needs challenges. A successful writer of soap operas said happy people are boring people. Let’s plunge deeper into whether for Christians there can be times when it simply isn’t worth all the effort. We know that our Leader’s agony on the cross was of incalculable worth, even though at the time perhaps every spectator thought it a horrible and useless defeat, and even though millions since, despite the benefit of hindsight, have rejected the salvation he suffered so intensely to provide. Not only was his suffering not wasted, it is his greatest glory. In addition to achieving spiritual wonders as nothing else could ever do, the very thought of his sacrifice floods us with love, awe and admiration for him. So it is with all who follow him: no matter how useless our efforts might seem in the short-term, all who suffer for our glorious leader have this divine guarantee: 1 Corinthians 15:58  . . . be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord . (Emphasis mine.) Anything achieved without Christ will fizzle to nothing (John 15:5) but everything done at his command is of infinite value. This does not mean the priceless worth of our efforts will always be obvious this side of eternity. Neither does it mean that in the lives of others, what we do in divine obedience will always achieve great things. Their response is in their hands, not ours, nor even God’s. What it means, however, is that our efforts will achieve things of critical importance and will win for us and for our Lord great honor and will be acclaimed as such for all eternity. We earlier considered Scriptures in which Paul worried that his efforts might have been in vain (e.g. Galatians 2:2; 4:11; 1 Thessalonians 3:5). He meant, however, in vain from the perspective of those he longed to help, not from his perspective, nor from God’s, nor from any discerning Christian’s. Eternity measures Paul’s success not by the efforts of those he ministered to but solely by his own faithfulness in obeying his Lord. And the same applies to each of us. Ezekiel 33:7-9 . . . I have set you a watchman to the house of Israel; therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I tell the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you don’t speak to warn the wicked from his way; that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at your hand. Nevertheless, if you warn the wicked of his way to turn from it, and he doesn’t turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your soul. A watchman’s role is solely to warn. Once Ezekiel obeyed, his hearer’s response hinged not on him, nor on God, but on them. These rebels had no power over him. Ezekiel’s glory had nothing to do with them. No matter how much being rejected by everyone you are seeking to help can expose you to the snarling lie that your efforts are in vain, challenges can pile far higher than that. Think of an athlete hoping for worldwide fame who, instead, finds himself sentenced to undergoing tough, repetitive, seemingly meaningless training sessions in obscurity. Most of us can multiply that by ten because we have no idea what the divine masterplan is, let alone how our efforts could possibly fit into it. Think of Joseph languishing in prison with everyone convinced he is a sex offender. Yes, your loving Lord ensures your efforts are never in vain but it might take everything you have to muster the faith to hang on to that truth. And all this adds to your glory, just like every humiliation your Savior endured added to his. To be in submission to the eternal Lord of glory is to be caught up in missions of divine significance so superhumanly ingenious that the Almighty can confidently tell the greatest human mind: Isaiah 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. And not only are God’s plans magnificent beyond word, they never fail: Isaiah 55:10-11 For as the rain comes down and the snow from the sky, and doesn’t return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do. As God’s rain never falls to the ground without bringing life to a desert, so his Son’s tears, sweat and blood never fell in vain. And so it is with everyone whose sensors are locked into following him. Since the Almighty’s plans are indescribably great and never fail, and he is glued to us by the blood of his only Son and the infinity of his love, not the tiniest speck of anything divinely assigned to us is ever wasted. Here’s another way of saying this: Romans 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. 2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory The never-ending glory is so breathtakingly beyond imagining that it renders light and momentary even Paul’s enormous list of sorrows and agonies. Why does God delay rewarding his faithful ones? Some of us entertain the fantasy that life on earth should be a picnic and that leaving this ‘paradise’ is a tragedy. Nevertheless, there can be no denying among Bible believers that the next life is so very much better for Christians. In fact, not just once but in two very different letters, Paul said he would prefer to be in heaven: 2 Corinthians 5:8 we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (NIV and many other versions.) Philippians 1:23 I am in a dilemma between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. The Story So Far Scripture speaks of mind-boggling rewards, but why can’t we have them now? To be frank, I don’t like making much of the reward because we humans have an appalling tendency to corrupt the most beautiful things and let greed spoil everything. I recall a pastor saying that whenever he left his family to go on a preaching tour he would return with gifts but his children would get so rapt in his presents that they became barely aware of his presence. So that the focus could be on the joy of being together, he decided to delay gift-giving until a day or so later. Compared with you and the Lord enjoying each other, the most extravagant gifts are mere trinkets. Nevertheless, eternal rewards are real and immense because God is the loving Lord who delights in showering us with gifts. Moreover, when we are in continual agony and suffering gross injustice, we need to know it is not forever. The answer to why Christians suffer would be easy if it were because, through ignorance, disobedience, lack of faith, or whatever, they fail to appropriate all the benefits Christ purchased for us on the cross. However, we keep finding more and more biblical affirmation that this is by no means always so. In fact, the question becomes why good Christians suffer. It’s time to look into this. Continued: Part 10

Beginning of Series Did Jesus suffer temptation on earth so that we need never suffer temptation? As already hinted, if Jesus suffered to spare us all suffering, that’s thrilling news for some, but devastating for those who are already suffering, since it implies that even the most devout sufferers are spiritual failures. Dare we risk magnifying their torment and getting the wrong side of God by acting like Job’s self-appointed experts? Now that we know that all forms of suffering bear many spiritual similarities, any insight into one form is likely to help us understand the spiritual implications of other forms of suffering. For this reason, it might prove helpful to glance at temptation for insight into whether Christ’s suffering means we will never suffer. Suffering and temptation are interconnected. I cannot conceive suffering stronger temptation than being tortured in the hope that one would renounce Christ. There is an element of suffering in other forms of temptation, however. Sometimes temptation might be little more annoying than a pesky fly, but consider, for example, what Jesus endured in the wilderness when, after not having eaten for weeks, he was tormented by the possibility of turning rocks into food. Such suffering has empowered Jesus to tenderly but victoriously minister to us (Hebrews 4:15-16) when we suffer the torment of craving things we must resist in order to honor God. By suffering on the cross, Jesus defeated Satan on our behalf, thus ensuring that we need never suffer spiritual defeat. So, in the wilderness, and especially on the cross, Jesus suffered so that we can enjoy victory over temptation. But did he suffer so that those in spiritual union with him would never suffer temptation? The gut-wrenching moral falls of Christian leaders is certainly strong circumstantial evidence that not even spiritual maturity shields us from temptation. Even though, through Jesus’ suffering, we will enjoy freedom from temptation in heaven, it’s different down here. Not even Christ-bought Christians basking in Jesus’ victory, and living it to the full, are spared temptations that are common to every human on earth (1 Corinthians 10:12-13). Our Lord’s suffering has, however, paved the way for us “to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13) victoriously. Does this have implications for other forms of suffering? Does this principle extend beyond temptation to other forms of suffering? A careful reading of the Bible reveals that, instead of teaching that Christ suffered in this world so that we would never suffer down here, the Bible says virtually the opposite: that he suffered to inspire us to suffer as he did. Note in all the following, the emphasis is not on emulating Jesus as a teacher or miracle worker but emulating him in extreme suffering: 1 Peter 2:20-21 But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example , that you should follow his steps 1 Peter 4:1 Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind . . . Hebrews 12:2-4 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus , the author and perfecter of our faith, who . . . endured the cross , scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood . (NIV) Matthew 20:27-28 Whoever desires to be first among you shall be your bondservant, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 8:34 He called the multitude to himself with his disciples, and said to them, “Whoever wants to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me . (Emphasis mine.) Christ’s voluntary sacrifice is the most pivotal event in human history. It was cataclysmic for evil and the greatest of all triumphs for good. It not merely transformed our spiritual and eternal destinies; it reversed them. All of these Scriptures stress, however, that Christ suffered not to shield us from earthly suffering, but almost the opposite: to inspire us to embrace suffering as he did. When I stopped to seriously think about it, extolling Christ’s suffering as the highest example for us to copy is so astonishingly common – and hence such a vitally important theme – that there are as many more Scriptures devoted to this as those cited above. For an additional five Scriptures stating this, see below: Ephesians 5:2 Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance. Philippians 2:5-8 Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, [or, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (NIV)] who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross . Matthew 10:22-25 You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next . . .A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be like his teacher, and the servant like his lord . If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household! John 13:15-16, 34 ; 15:13 For I have given you an example , that you also should do as I have done to you. Most certainly I tell you, a servant is not greater than his lord, neither one who is sent greater than he who sent him. . . . A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. . . . Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 1 John 2:6; 3:16 he who says he remains in him [Christ] ought himself also to walk just like he walked. . . . By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (Emphasis mine.) Finding all of these was so easy and the list grew long so quickly that I haven’t bothered to ensure my list is exhaustive. I challenge you to prayerfully question why our Lord so strongly emphasizes this in his Word. And it carries even more weight when we realize that our Lord’s suffering, whilst most intense from his anguished prayers in the garden until his dying breath (Matthew 26:36), was by no means restricted to the end portion of his earthly life. Not merely by heaven’s standards but by our own, right from Jesus’ conception, our Lord’s time on earth was hardly a divinely pampered one. Rather than being an aberration of his earthly existence, Christ’s crucifixion was the culmination of a lifetime of being rejected, ridiculed, misunderstood (even by his most loyal disciples) and mistreated. If you are convinced about the extent to which Christ suffered, not just in his last few hours but throughout his time on earth, keep reading, but for a deeper insight, please read below: Jesus’ Suffering Prior to Gethsemane Before predicting Peter’s denial, Jesus told his disciples, “. . . you are those who have continued with me in my trials,” (Luke 22:28). Clearly, Jesus’ trials were by no means confined to what he suffered later. What were they? Gospel writer Luke was not big in detailing hardships. We know this from his second book, Acts in which Luke mentions only the tiniest fraction of the all beatings and other atrocities Paul suffered that are listed in 2 Corinthians 11:22-25. Of the appalling list of Paul’s sufferings numbered in 2 Corinthians 11:22-25 (and written long before Acts), staggeringly few found their way into Luke’s account of Paul’s life. In Acts, Luke mentions: * just one of the “in prisons more abundantly” incidents (2 Corinthians 11:23) * none of the five times Paul received a set of 39 lashes * just one of the three times he was beaten with rods * none of the three shipwrecks (Acts records a fourth that occurred after the writing of 2 Corinthians). Most likely, there were still more instances Luke never bothered to mention between the writing of 2 Corinthians and Acts. If Luke was typical of the Gospel writers – and there is nothing about his Gospel that seems especially different – it begs the question as to how many of Jesus’ hardships have been left unrecorded. Jesus’ life on earth began with such a scandal that even Joseph was planning to terminate his betrothal to Mary (Matthew 1:19). We all know how near the end of her pregnancy, Mary was forced to struggle mile after mile after mile, exposed to the elements. When she finally arrived at their destination, she had to place the holy babe in a feeding trough (Luke 2:7). Have you stopped to think, however, how this came about? The Almighty timed Jesus’ miraculous conception to coincide with the census when the roads were heavy with people forced to travel to their family town (Luke 2:1-3). This was but the beginning of an earthly existence no one could call a life of ease. Yes, Jesus was divinely spared from being murdered as an infant (Matthew 2:13), but who of us has been the target of such hatred from babyhood? And he was saved not by a thunderbolt from heaven but by his parents having to flee to a foreign country as political refugees – a long, hazardous trip with an infant to a destination so uninviting that his parents left again as soon as it was safe to do so (Matthew 2:19-22). Everyday Hardship As far as we can tell, Jesus never owned a luxury car. Maybe you are not too surprised by that but let’s not forget that neither did he have a hot shower, a flush toilet or closed-in shoes suitable for walking what were typically muddy or dusty roads fouled with animal muck. Nor did he have what we would call an adequate bed. There were no modern mattresses and there must have been many times on his travels when Jesus had to sleep rough. Some of the details would be quite an eye-opener to most of us. What we would call hardship was part of his everyday life. For Jesus, things were much worse than that, however. Malicious Animosity Right from the very beginning of his ministry, the people in his hometown – those who knew him best – were so incensed by Jesus that they dragged him out of town to the top of a cliff, intending to throw him over the edge (Luke 4:28-29). Pause long enough to consider the brutal physicality of being manhandled by an enraged, out-of-control mob intent on murdering you. Feel the horror of their hot breath and viselike grip. See their twisted faces and the hate in their eyes. Put yourself in Jesus’ sandals, escaping just inches from death at the very onset of your ministry, and not from people who despised your provincial accent (Luke 22:59) but from people you had grown up with and considered friends. The hostility continued. Still early in his ministry but this time in Jerusalem, “the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18). Another time, “. . . they took up stones to throw at him . . .” (John 8:59). The attacks kept coming. Yet another time we read, “Jews took up stones again to stone him,” (John 10:31). Soon they tried yet again to seize him but he slipped from their grasp (John 10:39). Still later, Jesus said: John 15:24-25 If I hadn’t done among them the works which no one else did, they wouldn’t have had sin. But now have they seen and also hated both me and my Father. But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’ Spiritual Rape? We know the holy Son of God was severely tempted but have we adequately explored the implications? The same word used to describe the suffering of Jesus when he was tempted (Hebrews 2:18) is applied to Jesus’ suffering on the cross and to Paul’s horrific suffering. I do not say it lightly: temptation is spiritual rape. Rape victims maintain their innocence by not willingly participating in defiling acts, yet by this disgusting crime they have forced upon them the horror of exposure to evil they would have given their everything to avoid. Their senses are assaulted in appalling ways so that not only are their bodies invaded but their minds and, thereafter, their memories. No matter how contrary to spiritual reality, for years afterwards they can be repeatedly overwhelmed by flashbacks and feelings of guilt, shame and defilement. Particularly confusing and devastating is that if the humiliating violation of their wills occurs in certain ways, they can suffer the involuntary bodily reaction of pleasure. For the morally upright, this is more torturous than the worse pain. It means that through absolutely no fault of theirs, evil is unwillingly tied to feelings of intense pleasure, thus implanting in them desires for things they despise, just as being forcibly injected with heroin would thereafter cause us to be haunted by unwanted cravings. This is on par with what Jesus suffered spiritually and emotionally when he was “in all points tempted like we are” (Hebrews 4:15). Evil – whether it be punching someone in the face, breaking God’s heart, or whatever, was made to feel desirable. See if this Scripture sends a chill through you: Matthew 4:5-6 Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him . .  . Who physically transported the all-powerful Lord, placing him precariously on the temple’s pinnacle? The devil! Moreover, the Evil One so messed with Jesus’ mind that our Lord suffered satanic visions: Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory. He not only took Jesus to a high mountain, there is no place on earth from which anyone can be shown “all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory” and yet the Evil One violated the holy Son of God’s mind with this vision. This record of temptations at the onset of Jesus’ ministry does not end with the devil leaving Jesus forever but merely, as most versions put it, “until another time” or “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). No doubt these other attacks involved further spiritual violations. I think it unlikely that all of them are recorded but we know that one was particularly underhand. Satan used the disciple who was perhaps closest to him to try to entice Jesus to avoid the cross (Matthew 16:21-23). We know from Gethsemane that this was a particularly bitter battle without it coming from someone dear to him whom he had just praised for his spiritual discernment (Matthew 16:17-19). Sickening Slander We all know that Jesus was accused of being demon possessed. When we stop to see just how many different times this accusation is recorded in the Gospel as being hurled at Jesus, it is truly astonishing, and even more so when we consider that this is surely just a represented list and by no means exhaustive: Matthew 9:34 But the Pharisees said, “By the prince of the demons, he casts out demons.” Matthew 10:25  . . . If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul . . . Matthew 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “This man does not cast out demons, except by Beelzebul, the prince of the demons.” John 7:20 The multitude answered, “You have a demon! Who seeks to kill you?” John 8:52 Then the Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets; and you say, ‘If a man keeps my word, he will never taste of death.’” John 10:20-21 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane! Why do you listen to him?” Others said, “These are not the sayings of one possessed by a demon. It isn’t possible for a demon to open the eyes of the blind, is it?” Note how the second half of the last quote seems to indicate that some genuinely believed Jesus was “demon-possessed and is insane”. This next reference is noteworthy. John 8:48 Then the Jews answered him, “Don’t we say well that you are a Samaritan, and have a demon?” Samaritans originally belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel that had refused to be ruled by King David’s descendants, rejected God’s chosen temple and set up their own heretical religion. When all but the poorest of the land were originally exiled because of their continued rebellion against the Lord, they were replaced by pagans who then intermarried with the remaining Israelites, thus further paganizing their religion. As a consequence, Jews despised Samaritans as heretics, apostates and half-breeds. By calling Jesus a “Samaritan” they were trying their hardest to insult him. Moreover, the wording in the Greek suggests that they usually gossiped about him in this way. Family Troubles We know not when Joseph, the beloved breadwinner of Jesus’ family, died but we find no mention of him since his childhood (despite references to Mary and Jesus’ brothers), and the fact that on the cross Jesus asked one of his disciples to take responsibility for Mary’s welfare (John 19:26-27) makes it pretty certain that at some time Jesus had endured that bereavement and family crisis. “For not even his brothers believed in him,” says John 7:5. One would have to have a heart of stone (and that most certainly was not Jesus) for that not to hurt. Mark 3:20-21 The multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. When his friends [or family] heard it, they went out to seize him: for they said, “He is insane.” With the Greek word being imprecise, Bible versions are divided as to whether friends or family are referred to. The context, however, (Mark 3:31-35) suggests it was his family. Either way, it would be upsetting. In our era, education takes so much longer than in Jesus’ day that there is almost no comparison. Even we, however, consider someone in their thirties to be mature. Jesus was the eldest son and had been the most responsible male in the family for who knows how long. Can you imagine the humiliation of having not just many strangers believing he is insane but having his family so convinced that he has literally lost his mind that they had come to take charge of him? Other Forms of Suffering There is no denying the brutality of repeated confrontations with individuals or even mobs boiling with hate and so I commenced by mentioning it. Beyond this, however, lurked other hair-pulling sources of distress. Consider these anguished cries: Mark 9:19 He answered him, “Unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? . . .” Mark 8:11-12 The Pharisees came out and began to question him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, and testing him. He sighed deeply in his spirit , and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Most certainly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Matthew 12:39  . . . A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. [Jesus faced this so often that this pained lament is repeated word for word later in the same Gospel ( Matthew 16:4 ).] Matthew 11:20-24 Then he began to denounce the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they didn’t repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. You, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, you will go down to Hades. For if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in you, it would have remained until today. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom, on the day of judgment, than for you.” John 10:32  . . . “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of those works do you stone me?” Many cries wrenched out of Jesus were not in response to his enemies or the untaught but from his own followers: John 6:60-62, 66 Many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying! Who can listen to it?” But Jesus knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble? Then what if you would see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? . . . At this, many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Moreover, disappointing and frustrating responses came not just from his one-time supporters but from those who understood him better than anyone else: Mark 4:40  . . . “Why are you so afraid? How is it that you have no faith?” Mark 4:13  . . . “Don’t you understand this parable? How will you understand all of the parables? Mark 7:18  . . . “Are you also without understanding? . . . Mark 8:17-18  . . . “Why do you reason that it’s because you have no bread? Don’t you perceive yet, neither understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, don’t you see? Having ears, don’t you hear? Don’t you remember? Matthew 14:31 Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand, took hold of him [Peter], and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Matthew 17:20 He said to them, “Because of your unbelief. For most certainly I tell you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. Luke 24:25  . . . “Foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! . . .” Mark 16:14  . . . he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they didn’t believe those who had seen him after he had risen. Being Christlike is not luxuriating while the rest of humanity hurtles to hell. It is being enmeshed in the horror of the battle, facing hostility and hardship with the love of God. There was nothing wimpish about Jesus. He was courageous, resolute and strong. He not only made himself our living example but through his atonement he has done all it takes spiritually to make us heroes like him. Having achieved all this for us, he now expects us to keep moving toward the goal of being as willing as him to embrace severe hardship. I confess that, although half-aware that it was an oversimplification, I had for years let myself slide into giving more weight than warranted to reducing into the briefest of formulas the mind-boggling breadth of all that Christ achieved on the cross. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that although there is priceless truth in saying that Christ suffered so that we won’t suffer, it is not nearly as precise as I had hoped, but a sloppy oversimplification. The problem with half-truths – no matter how well-intentioned – is that they are half-lies. Lies are as exciting as a mirage to someone dying of thirst. Ultimately, however, whereas truths empower us, lies set us for failure and crushing disappointment. Truth heals; lies wound. Later, we will look at another aspect of the cost of godliness: we were born again to be like God, and to this day he is selflessly compassionate and deeply distressed over humanity. Scripture shows God not as currently sitting on his throne in endless bliss but reeling in emotional pain over the atrocious ways his loved ones (every human on this planet) act. We will leave this until further on, however. The Story So Far The direction we have so far taken seems to be indicating that, just as a significant part of Jesus’ earthly ministry involved suffering, so it plays a role in the earthly ministry of Spirit-filled followers. Will looking at this from another perspective, however, confirm this, or will it suddenly reverse things or take it in an entirely different direction? Let’s see by examining another form of suffering highlighted in the Bible. Continued ... Part 7

Beginning of Series What’s the difference between suffering for Christ and other forms of suffering afflicting the righteous? I am staggered and deeply thankful over all the revelation God has been pouring into me over recent weeks about God’s heart and plans concerning Christians suffering. What, more than anything, has opened for me the floodgates for all this revelation is the unexpected answer to the question just posed. Maybe the answer is obvious to you: suffering is suffering. For me, however, it turns out that for most of my life I have been blinded by my supposed intelligence. The answer was too simple for a mind that goes into overdrive in wanting desperately to believe that if I could somehow muster enough faith and godliness I will be spared all suffering – except maybe persecution. Surely, even the most casual reading of the New Testament prevents one from believing that enough faith could end all suffering associated with persecution. Nevertheless, I could comfort myself with the thought that it seems unlikely I would ever find myself living in a time or place where persecution is rife. Moreover, the Bible’s insights into suffering tend to focus on persecution. It was so prevalent when the New Testament was written (even penned by some who were literally penned) that almost anyone considering becoming a Christian would have had to decide whether it was worth the loss and danger. From his conversion, Paul knew it would lead to horrific pain and suffering (Acts 9:15-16). Peter, too, knew the time would come when someone would force him to go where he did not want to go and he would be martyred (John 21:18-19). Early Christians (and vast numbers since) desperately needed the encouragement to endure any suffering that could be avoided by spiritual compromise, and so it receives much attention. It’s time, however, to examine in the stark light of reality whether, for Christians, persecution differs from other forms of suffering. Once I stared this down, I was shocked to discover that none of all the five reasons I could concoct for believing persecution is different from other sources of suffering Christians face is valid. Let’s see: 1. Were it not for the bigger picture, the Almighty could intervene and stop any form of suffering. Indeed, he sometimes does, either by deliverance from persecution or through such things as healing. In regard to deliverance from persecution, consider Daniel in the lion’s den (Daniel 6:16-22), his friends in the furnace (Daniel 3:19-27), the Jews in Esther’s time who were about to be annihilated (Esther 9:1) and Jesus who was about to be hurled over a cliff and simply walked through the hostile crowd (Luke 4:29-30). Peter underwent a heavenly jailbreak (Acts 12:4-11). Indeed, on a previous occasion, all of the apostles did (Acts 5:18-25). Nevertheless, such interventions seem to have been outnumbered by times when persecution continued. 2. Persecution can become a huge temptation to compromise one’s commitment to Jesus but so can other forms of suffering. Even though it might lead to eternal regret, we can be assaulted by the temptation to imagine that suicide could end our distress. Any suffering can also provoke us into imagining that the affliction is God’s fault. Such delusions can, like persecution, turn suffering into intense temptation. Job, for example, might not have been tempted to sin in order to avoid his torment, but he was sorely tempted to sin because of his torment (Job 1:11, 22; Job 2:5, 9). Suffering raises the stakes enormously. Offering our Lord the slightest praise whilst afflicted is worth many times more than doing so when life is easy. On the other hand, affliction magnifies the pressure to go the other way and resent God, rather than glorify him. 3. There is no suffering in heaven. This means that, for Christians, all earthly suffering is actually suffering for the Lord, who sees us as currently having a mission on this planet. We might sometimes suppose our role down here is too insignificant to be worth the cost, but that does not mean we can see the full picture as accurately as the all-knowing Lord. 4. Unlike, for example, birth defects, persecution might be voluntarily entered into, but everyone has the chance to respond to any type of suffering heroically or shamefully. Some forms of suffering might be involuntary, but responding in a Christ-honoring way is always voluntary. Superficially, suffering persecution might seem more heroic than joyfully enduring other forms of affliction, but that is an illusion. 5. Even without there being a human persecutor, suffering can often be a form of persecution. God’s Word reveals that when Job suffered a painful illness, he was being persecuted for his faith (Job 2:3-7). To realize this, however, one had to glimpse the spirit world, because the persecutor – the one tormenting him because of his faith – was Satan himself. I said that to keep everyone on board I would not cite Job as authoritative. So let’s jump to the New Testament. Those of us who do not like to think that the faith-giant, Paul, could have suffered sickness are particularly keen to presume that persecution was the “thorn” that tormented him. Regardless of its exact nature, however, Paul saw beyond any human agency and discerned it as “a messenger of Satan” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Regardless of the presence or absence of human pawns, “our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). This again renders diverse forms of suffering spiritually identical. Trace it back far enough – perhaps as far back as Adam – and it turns out that, just like persecution, every form of suffering afflicting the righteous has its origin not in God’s perfect will but in someone (human or not) violating God’s perfect will and doing things that break his heart. For Christians, persecution and other forms of suffering are twins. The same principles apply to every form of suffering that the righteous endure. And it is vital for our understanding and comfort that we never lose sight of this. I know, because for most of my life I had missed this, and it was a bigger loss than I ever imagined. In the midst of any form of suffering, it is always heroic to keep rejoicing in God and faithfully serving him to the max (even though, like being in solitary confinement for one’s faith, that might be devastatingly little). It is important to realize that, even if no one on earth sees it, such faithfulness is worthy of eternal acclaim and will one day be acknowledged as such. As I have written elsewhere: Scott and his team, struggled to the South Pole only to discover their honor of being the first to reach the Pole was lost forever. Amundsen had beaten them by about a month. To add to the futility, they endured further blizzards, illness, frostbite and starvation only to perish; the last three dying just a few miles from safety. Yet today their miserable defeat ending with death in frozen isolation, witnessed by not a living soul, is hailed as one of the greatest ever epics of human exploration and endurance. Every fiber of my being is convinced that their glory is just a shadow of what you can achieve. Though you suffer in isolation and apparent futility, with the depths of your trial known to no one on earth, your name could be blazed in heaven’s lights, honored forever by heaven’s throngs for your epic struggle with illness, bereavement, or whatever. The day is coming when what is endured in secret will be shouted from the housetops. Look at Job: bewildered, maligned, misunderstood; battling not some epic foe but essentially common things – a financial reversal, bereavement, illness; – not cheered on by screaming fans, just booed by some one-time friends. If even on this crazy planet Job is honored today, I can’t imagine the acclaim awaiting you when all is revealed. Your battle with life’s miseries can be as daring as David’s encounter with Goliath. Don’t worry that others don’t understand this at present. One day they will. And that day will never end. To suppose something is heroic only if it is acknowledged by fellow humans is to deny the supreme importance of God. If, for you, God alone isn’t enough, you don’t know God. Many of us would do astonishing things for fame or self-satisfaction, but what will we do solely for Christ? That’s the issue that keeps heaven abuzz. The Story So Far Not only are some of us inclined to create an artificial divide between the suffering of a martyr and other forms of suffering, some even feel pressured to edge toward the seemingly inconsistent extreme of acknowledging severe persecution as a mark of honor (since Scripture leaves us little option) while regarding other forms of suffering as indicative of a lack of faith or godliness, and hence a source of shame. If this is muddled thinking, I dare not be too critical because at times I myself have slid in that direction. In fact, as already hinted, it is the final shattering of the hold this lie has had on me that has made the writing of this webpage such a personal blessing. To help us see things clearer, let’s briefly consider the next question. Continued: Part 6