Search Results

Why God? You are commencing my second webpage in a series devoted to supporting Christians reeling under the shock and pain of evil blows that God never promised to stop before Judgment Day, but has promised to turn around so astonishingly that they become things to rejoice in. If you have not yet read the First Page , I urge you to do so now, since the following assumes you have already received the comfort, encouragement and perspective it provides. The famous Christian thinker, C. S. Lewis, said that each era has its own blind spots and that to see things clearly, for every modern book we read, we should read several books from other eras. One of the things we will see in this webpage is that a blind spot peculiar to many of today’s Christians is the mistaken belief that being a victorious, Spirit-filled Christian insulates oneself from almost every distressing thing that the rest of humanity suffer. Contrary to what is all too commonly presumed today, God’s Word is emphatic that, like our Savior himself – and, indeed, like everyone else on this fallen planet – it is inevitable that strong, devoted Christians in whom God delights, will suffer hard times. This side of heavenly retirement, every Christian, no matter how divinely blessed, will sooner or later be hit by this spiritual reality. In fact, rather than Christians being spared suffering, the New Testament goes so far as to say, ‘For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone,’ (1 Corinthians 15:19, NET – most other versions are very similar). And, while on the subject of blessings, let’s not forget that Jesus said it’s the meek, the poor, the persecuted, the reviled etc. who are blessed, and it’s the rich, the popular, the self-seeking etc. who are in grave spiritual danger. I will begin this new webpage with the reassurance found a quote from another of my webpages. If you are already familiar with the quote, feel free to slide down to the next section. Life’s Mysteries Life will remain primarily a mystery and a frustration until you understand the heart and goals of the God who is ultimately in control of everything that touches your life. God loves you because he loves you. He loves you, not for what you can do for him, but for what he can do for you. The mind-boggling intensity of God’s love is as close and as crucial as the oxygen you breathe. Despite this, we tend to drift into regarding the infinite love of God as if it had the practical relevance of the countless grains of sand in a desert we have never seen. Let’s bring our thinking down from the clouds to hard reality. The fact of divine love makes the happiness of Almighty God forever dependent upon your happiness. If you hurt, God hurts. You are of infinite worth to the One who gave his all that you might spend eternity with him. When pondering God’s plans for us, we tend to zero in on our role in God’s labor force. But although the Almighty has every right to treat you as his worker, the God of love chooses to be not your Boss, but your loving Father. And as the best imaginable Parent, the Lord is devoted to your welfare. Foremost to him is your fulfillment and development. The Lord has ministry plans for you, but they are for your sake, not for his gain (God, after all, is totally self-sufficient). And any tasks he lovingly allocates are just a fraction of his overall dreams for you. Anything God asks you to do is because it is in your very best interest. God’s blueprint for your life focuses on your endless happiness and fulfillment. This is not to be confused with short term ease and bliss that ultimately wears thin and crumbles. Like little children who think happiness means having no rules and an endless supply of candy, we still have a lot of growing up to do before we understand what is truly in our best interest. Much of what we presently clamor for we will eventually discover is not what we really want after all. In contrast, the infinite knowledge and intelligence of God focuses on things we will be eternally thrilled about. That often puts our priorities at odds with God’s priorities, even though both he and us seek our happiness. When looking down from heaven, everything on earth is viewed upside down. But heaven’s perspective is the right one. Luke 16:15 He said to them, “ . . . that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” We find Jesus’ teaching perplexing because he was forever turning things right side up. He taught, for instance, that among the worst things that could happen to you on earth is that you are rewarded (Matthew 6:1-5,16) or that people speak well of you (Luke 6:26). He said you’re blessed when you mourn, or are poor, or are persecuted. The first shall be last, the greatest shall be the least and it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Another example of us seeing things the wrong way is when someone finally discovers that the busier we are, the longer – not the less – we need to be in prayer. When you are in heaven looking back over your past life, what will you regard as the most exciting aspects of earthly life? All earth’s pleasures will be totally eclipsed by heaven’s pleasures, so the pleasures of your past will no longer impress you. Relationships and fellowship enjoyed on earth will also be completely outdone by heaven’s perfect communication and ecstatically thrilling love. With the wisdom of hindsight we will all agree that the most wonderful thing about our stay on earth was the trials. That sounds ridiculous, even though we know Scripture affirms that so much good results from hard times that it urges us to rejoice whenever trials hit us Let’s explore this mystery. There were two passions driving the great apostle Paul, which it would do us good to have within us. One of his longings – to know Christ (Philippians 3:10) – will, for all of us, reach thrilling pinnacles in heaven. The other – to share in Christ’s sufferings (Romans 8:17; Philippians 3:10; Colossians 1:24; 1 Peter 4:13) – we will be deprived of in heaven. We will only be able to wistfully look back to past opportunities. In glory, when at last our eyes are opened to just how much our Lord has done for us and how wonderful he really is, it will at last get through our thick heads why the disciples rejoiced over the privilege of being flogged and humiliated for Jesus (Acts 5:40-41). What we will lament in Paradise is that the opportunity to express the depth of our love by suffering for Christ has 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. The Word of God insists we must have the same mindset as Christ, who sacrificed everything to embrace humiliation and suffering (Philippians 2:5-8) for the sake of the lost and the glory of the God who loves them. Or, in the brutal, oft-repeated words of the one who did exactly as he preached: Matthew 10:38 He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me, isn’t worthy of me. Matthew 16:24  . . . If anyone desires to come after me, let him [several Bible versions say ‘he must’] deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (Mark 8:34 and Luke 9:23 are almost identical.) Luke 14:27 Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross, and come after me, can’t be my disciple. Paul and Barnabas devoted themselves to ‘strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith.’ How? By declaring that, ‘We must go through many hardships [(alternative renderings in other versions include ‘afflictions,’ ‘tribulations,’ ‘troubles’ and ‘suffer a lot’ ] to enter the kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22, NIV). This is the inspired summary of their entire message. Not Just Persecution Most of us realize that Scripture is emphatic that just as our Lord, our ultimate Role Model, was savagely killed, trials hitting Christians can include harrowing persecution. Without having the slightest clue as to how far we have strayed from God’s Word, however, far too many of us, though passionate and devoted, have let others cherry pick Scriptures for us until we drift into the fantasy that besides horrific physical attacks from people opposed to Christ (which we never expect will happen anyhow), everything will go swimmingly for mature, theologically sound, good-living, Spirit-filled, faith-filled, ceaselessly praising, victorious Christians who are steeped in the Word of God and flowing in his favor. For a much-needed dose of spiritual reality we need look no further than the great Apostle Paul, for whom, aside from persecution so severe that it repeatedly sent pain soaring to incomprehensible extremes, things went so swimmingly that several times he literally ended up swimming. When this faith hero outlined his mind-boggling array of sufferings endured through obeying God, our eyes can glaze over all the beatings, whippings, stonings, imprisonments etc., but what staggers me is that included in the list are three shipwrecks, including a night and a day in the open sea – and we know that he later suffered at least one more shipwreck, when he ended up swimming for his life, followed immediately by being bitten by a venomous snake, all while under arrest (Acts 27:42-28:3). Yes, he survived – although it is uncertain if he eventually ended up being put to death – but he still got wet and was bitten, after days and nights of being continually tossed by mountainous waves. Just like him surviving beatings, there is a world of difference between miraculously surviving and having a pain-free or easy life. Have you stopped to consider the implications of Paul’s shipwrecks? Persecution is one thing, but natural disasters are another. To adapt what I have written elsewhere: In the light of Jesus calming the sea (Luke 8:24), plus the biblical affirmation that the Almighty ‘has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm’ (Nahum 1:3 – note also Psalm 107:23-29) and that the Almighty used a storm to prevent Jonah from sailing away from God’s calling, it would be so easy for a less theologically astute person to fall into despair by mistakenly interpreting shipwrecks (perhaps all, but certainly one of which was the result of a storm) as signs of divine disapproval, or at least indifference. But this mighty man of God drudged on, convinced that despite it all, the good, all-powerful Lord loved him and was with him. Great faith does not mean an end to dark times when everything and everyone in hell, heaven and earth seems to be against you. Great faith means slogging on regardless; stubbornly holding on to the conviction that nothing – not “oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword . . . nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing” (Romans 8:35-39) – can mean that God has stopped loving you or has given up on you. To cite snippets from another of my webpages: Speaking from the most profound personal experience, the Apostle Paul insisted that no matter what hits you, be it pain, poverty, demonic attack – you name it – nothing means that God’s love for you has waned. No matter how many children the best human parent has, each child is special and irreplaceable to him/her. Not only do we differ in our God-given gifts and our role in the body of Christ, we can differ markedly in the severity of our trials and spiritual attacks. But that says nothing about how loved of God we are. Many of us have strayed far from biblical truth into imagining that divine approval means having a soft life. One of the downsides of this mistake is that we would conclude that God must be displeased with us if we faced even a fraction of what the great Apostle Paul endured. 1 Corinthians 4:11 To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. (NKJV) The Bible insists that even God’s discipline is proof of how precious we are to him (Job 5:17; Proverbs 3:12; 1 Corinthians 11:32; Hebrews 12:5-11; Revelation 3:19). Coaches reserve the most grueling training for those they believe have the greatest potential. I might be envious of Joseph’s position of power in Pharaoh’s court and of David ruling God’s people from a royal throne, but I’m not so envious about the route they had to take to get there. Note that their stories are not about before and after finding God or discovering some life-changing spiritual truth. It is impossible to argue that God loved Joseph more or approved of him more in Pharaoh’s court than when he was languishing in prison, falsely accused of being a rapist. Nor can it be said that the Lord thought more highly of David after he ascended the throne than when he was the nation’s most wanted fugitive. On and on I could go about people I might think God has favored them more than me. I might be jealous, for example, of the visions and spiritual revelation the Apostle Paul received, but I’m not so jealous of his beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, imprisonments and so on. Likewise, anyone can envy the ministry of the Old Testament prophets and the way they kept hearing from God but who wants the ridicule and rejection dished out to them? Most were as welcome as flies at a picnic. Not just Job (Job 3:1-23; 6:8-9; 14:13) but Jeremiah wished he had never been born (Jeremiah 20:14-18) , and Jonah, Elijah, and Moses actually asked God – some even pleaded with him – to kill them (Jonah 4:3,8,9; 1 Kings 19:4; Numbers 11:15). We are God’s children, and the longing of the Father’s heart is that we grow up to be like him. And in the crucified Lord we see the heart of God. Stirred by compassion so intense that only the Almighty can contain it, our tender-hearted Savior is infuriated by evil and all the suffering that selfishness inflicts on others. The Perfect One had every right to end all suffering by destroying everyone contributing to this world’s evil. Tragically, that’s every single one of us. Instead, God in the flesh exposed himself to all the suffering inflicted by this world’s evil. And he is eternally honored and exalted for it. So it is for all who heed his call to follow his path to glory. A Peculiar Source of Comfort We are repeatedly tempted to deny biblical truths outlined above and to think that if we can apply the right formula or ‘spiritual law’ we can somehow find a lazy alternative to having to tough it out. In a webpage likely to be read by people who are reeling under the shock and pain of horrific trials, I consider it inappropriate to spend long explaining why we so easily fall into the heresy of thinking that devotion to Christ renders us immune to distressing times. I should at least touch on it, however, because you need the comfort of knowing that God is faithful and that if self-proclaimed know-alls add to your torment by attacking you because your painful reality shatters their mistaken theories about Christianity, it is not because you deserve to be treated that way. God is on your side. Paul warned that ‘the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear’ (2 Timothy 4:3, NIV). Sadly, we live in such an era. Seeking to serve nothing but ourselves is more a feature of current western society than probably any pagan society in any era. Perhaps you have been able to see through this deadly delusion, but doing so is rare and exceedingly hard because we have been immersed in this way of thinking from birth and subjected to its brainwashing wherever we turn, and it is continually reinforced by our fallen nature inherited from Adam. A Christ ian who is not Christlike is a grotesque contradiction in terms but this is exactly what so many of us strive to be. Who wants to be like Christ? He sacrificed everything; we want to sacrifice nothing. He sweat blood over doing God’s will; we want God’s will to be a walk in the park, or we’re not interested. Put bluntly, we find ourselves wanting to serve ourselves, not God. We like to think of ourselves as godly and yet our human nature has no interest in submitting to God, nor to anyone other than ourselves. This part of us wants the ego trip of self-righteous pretenders but doesn’t want God as our God. We want to be our own God. We want to be master of our lives; worshipping our wisdom; doing whatever we declare to be good. This draws us to preachers who, craving the acclaim it brings, become skilled at pandering to our egos and at cherry-picking Scripture until the appallingly unbiblical seems biblical. To be frank, you might expect me to be critical of such preachers but I can muster little more than compassion. In fact, my heart goes out to them. I came close to being one of them. They might be peddling spiritual snake oil but I believe many sincerely believe their concoction works and have convinced themselves that it is biblical. This is so easy to do because there are Bible truths that almost say what we ache to hear. As someone wisely observed, the Scriptures we most need are those we have not underlined in our Bibles. And he was addressing those with sufficient devotion to thoroughly study God’s Word. Once we suppose we have found not just part of the truth but the entire truth, we become sitting ducks for small-mindedness or even arrogance. This blinds us to further revelation; causing us to unthinkingly gloss over or reinterpret Scriptures that contract our oversimplification. It leaves us barely aware that we are acting like children cutting pieces of a jigsaw to try to make them fit. For instance, to conclude that Christ suffered so that we never have to suffer is overstating biblical revelation. It has some scriptural support but not full scriptural support. This is because the conclusion/presumption is true spiritually and ultimately, but not physically and this side of the grave. The less appealing side of the truth is highlighted in Scriptures stating that by suffering Jesus was providing us an example of how we should suffer. Without having a clue that we have fallen so far, by recoiling from the cost of Christlikeness and gathering around us people who seem to imply we have biblical authority in doing so, we can end up convincing ourselves that we can not only be our own God, we can even be God’s God. We think we can not only get away with refusing to serve/obey God but we can make him serve us. I say it with tears: this renders us more arrogant and deluded that all those honest enough to admit they have rejected God and want nothing to do with him. Biblical revelation on answered prayer and miracles is another area where it is so easy to build a doctrine by focusing on many Scriptures while dodging many others. I could write entire webpages on this – in fact, I have – but a particularly relevant example is James 4:2-3, because, like 2 Timothy 4:3 about ‘itching ears’, it says that it is our lusts/desires that lead us into error. Taken in isolation, ‘You don’t have, because you don’t ask’ suggests God is giving us a blank check to spend on our own selfish desires, but the context emphasizes the exact opposite: James 4:2-3 You lust , and don’t have. You murder [not physically but in their heart] and covet , and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures. (Emphasis mine) The one thing that will save us from such delusion is too often omitted in our favorite sermons but the Bible speaks of it frequently; using such expressions as repentance, denying oneself, dying to self, crucifying the flesh, and so on. Such Scriptures are typically so strenuously avoided in our era that they even sound old fashioned. In other words, though central to New Testament revelation, such Scriptures have been relegated to a bygone era when people were more willing to embrace what God really says in his Word, rather than what we wish he had said. As explained in Why We Can’t Be Forgiven While Refusing to Let Go of Sin , through Christ, salvation is freely available to all who want to be saved from their sin. Appallingly, however, many who today consider themselves Christians, do not want Jesus to save them. They want God’s blessing if that boosts their ego and prosperity but not if it means losing either. They want to hypocritically claim that Jesus is their Savior while having no intention of letting him rescue them from their pet sins. And the most basic sin is refusing to serve God but instead serving ourselves. No matter how many Scriptures a person might quote, anyone with such an attitude is in the same appalling spiritual condition as the most godless person on this planet. When ‘Promises’ Aren’t Promises We commenced this series of webpages by noting the Bible’s insistence that we should not think it peculiar when we suffer ‘fiery trials’ (1 Peter 4:12). But if God answers our every prayer in the way claimed by those who quote Scripture selectively, such trials are peculiar to the extreme. Do we really think that Christians suffering awful trials never thought of praying for the trials to go away? Is it conceivable that the inspired writer, who himself was miraculously delivered from prison as direct result of prayer (Acts 12:6-10), was having an off-day when he wrote this Scripture and happened to forget about the power of prayer? Did it slip the apostle’s mind to try to inspire faith in miraculous deliverances? Clearly, answered prayer and suffering hard times are inseparably linked. When writing about trials, divine promises about answered prayer becomes a matter we cannot sidestep. I emphatically believe that God powerfully and miraculously honors faith and answers prayer today. The New Testament is not an ancient history book about how God used to do things but our guidebook as to what we can expect today. What does it really say we can expect, however? Let me begin with some probing questions. Does God expect us to live to give or to get; to bring glory to the God who means everything to us or to boost to our ease and our egos? Do you come to the Bible with a heart bursting to please the most Wonderful Person in the universe and delight in him; to know him better and become like him? Is your heart’s cry to serve God and delight him or, hidden where you dare not look at it, is your longing to serve yourself and exploit God for your selfish gain? We should lovingly, reverently and honorably study Scripture; eager to learn exactly what our Master means. Instead, we have a strong tendency to greedily, carelessly and disrespectfully mash God’s words. When we do so, ‘claiming promises’ often means claiming that God has made promises he never made. To do so is not just to misrepresent God but to slander him. To rip words out of context, ignoring other scriptures and presenting conditional promises as unconditional is to set God up so that everyone will end up thinking he is a liar when he fails to keep ‘promises’ he never made. Every scripture’s context, by the way, is not just a couple of verses either side but all of Scripture. No passage should be interpreted without considering God’s entire biblical revelation. Anything sensible people say will be consistent with their character and with everything else they say. If, for example, I said I had a drink, no-one who knows me would think I could mean an alcoholic drink. No one expects us to spell everything out every time we speak. To be brutally frank, most of us already consider the Bible too long and repetitive, without it repeatedly excluding every possible misinterpretation, when other parts of Scripture already do so, or when a misinterpretation would be inconsistent with the revealed character of God. Another critical aspect of the context is noting who was being addressed. If, in an emergency, you gave your trustworthy adult daughter your credit card details, telling her, “Use this however you feel appropriate,” there would be all sorts of unspoken conditions attached but there would be no need for you to detail them – indeed, to do so would be to insult her intelligence and character. How would you feel, however, if her irresponsible, much younger brother, overheard and used it as he felt appropriate, claiming that your words to his trustworthy sister gave him the authority to use your hard earned money irresponsibly? To illustrate how we can get things horribly wrong, I explain below that the invitation Jesus gave his devoted follows to ask anything in Jesus’ name is actually highly restrictive because it means to ask for Jesus’ sake, not our own, and to ask as his representative. To act foolishly or greedily in someone’s name would be to blacken that person’s name and incur his hot displeasure. As mentioned previously, I have written two webpages about prayer that are highly relevant to this discussion. For your convenience I have placed them below. To counter modern misconceptions, you are likely to need the detail they provide. I suggest you at least glance at them but don’t forget the link at the end of this webpage taking you to next page in this series: The Spiritual Value of Suffering Trials: Why Hard Times Bless Christians. When Faith & Prayer Do Not Work A thoroughly biblical exploration of prayer will surprise many Bible believers. Many of us are floundering because our understanding of how to get prayers answered has seemed Bible-based and yet has become somewhat distorted. Will you join me in seeking God for a deeper, more accurate insight into the mysteries of prayer? The divine goal of prayer is that “your joy may be full” (KJV). In the words of the NIV: John 16:24 Until now, you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full. How exciting is that! It is important never to lose sight of this astounding truth. We will explore other facets of prayer that might initially seem more sobering but our perception of divine reality will be distorted unless we keep in focus this thrilling goal God has for our prayers. Like the world’s most doting grandparent, God absolutely loves “spoiling” his loved ones, in the sense of showering them with blessings infinitely beyond what they could ever earn or deserve. It makes God’s day! On the other hand, he loves you far too much and is too wise a parent to spoil you in the sense of giving you something you clamor for and initially enthralls you but eventually ends up hurting you. The joy that God wants for you is joy that lasts forever, not something you end up regretting or turns out to be second rate. The gulf between what the immature want and what is in their best interest is a significant source of friction between little children and good parents – and between immature Christians and the good Lord. No matter how much “faith” we try to muster and how much we nag God and whine and sulk, we will not corrupt our holy, loving Lord into someone who, just to shut us up, gives us things that end up robbing us of his best. More often than we realize, if God were so weak or spiteful as to give us what we clamor for, we would end up resenting him when it all turns sour. The Almighty is always working toward your everlasting joy; never a high that eventually fizzles and comes hurtling back to earth with such a devastating crash that you would be better off if it had never happened. So one prerequisite for answered prayer is that we have asked for something that will genuinely complete our joy. We are beginning to see that precisely because God is good, wise, and loving, there is more to answered prayer than faith and persistence. Jesus told the paralyzed man to take his mat and walk, the blind man to wash his eyes in the pool, the ten lepers to show themselves to the priest (and we could add so many other examples from throughout Scripture) and they received only as they did what they were told to do. And so it is with us. “But be doers of the word, and not only hearers,” warns James 1:22, “ deluding your own selves .” [emphasis mine] Too often we seem to act as if there were two different ways of obtaining God’s promises: we can either do as Scripture says or we can largely ignore Scripture’s directives and simply pray for it to happen. Consider these scenarios: The Bible tells us to flee immorality. 1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 2 Timothy 2:22 Flee from youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Proverbs 6:23-29, 32-34 For the commandment is a lamp . . . to keep you from the immoral woman, from the flattery of the wayward wife’s tongue. Don’t lust after her beauty in your heart, neither let her captivate you with her eyelids. For a prostitute reduces you to a piece of bread. The adulteress hunts for your precious life. Can a man scoop fire into his lap, and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife. Whoever touches her will not be unpunished. . . . He who commits adultery with a woman is void of understanding. He who does it destroys his own soul. He will get wounds and dishonor. His reproach will not be wiped away. For jealousy arouses the fury of the husband. He won’t spare in the day of vengeance. Romans 6:13 Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 1 Corinthians 6:16 Or don’t you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, “The two”, he says, “will become one flesh.” 1 Corinthians 10:8 Let us not commit sexual immorality, as some of them committed, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell. Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers. In fact, it says that the immoral or adulterous cannot enter the kingdom of God and that to look lustfully at a woman is to commit adultery. Matthew 5:28 but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists, will inherit God’s Kingdom. Galatians 5:19,21 Now the deeds of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, . . . orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom. Ephesians 5:5 Know this for sure, that no sexually immoral person, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God. Revelation 21:8 But for the cowardly, unbelieving, sinners, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. So when someone who lusts after women asks God to bless his marriage and family relationship will God answer that prayer? God’s Word tells us to keep reading the Bible and putting it into practice and that doing this will make us wise. Deuteronomy 4:5-6 Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do so in the middle of the land where you go in to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples . . . Psalm 19:7  . . . The Lord’s testimony is sure, making wise the simple. Psalm 119:24 Indeed your statutes are my delight, and my counselors. Psalm 119:98-100 Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for your commandments are always with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have kept your precepts. Psalm 119:104-105 Through your precepts, I get understanding . . . Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path. Psalm 119:130 The entrance of your words gives light. It gives understanding to the simple. Proverbs 1:1-5 The proverbs of Solomon . . . to know wisdom and instruction; to discern the words of understanding . . . to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young man: that the wise man may hear, and increase in learning . . . Proverbs 2:1-5 My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you; So as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; Yes, if you call out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding; If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures: then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. Jeremiah 8:9 The wise men are disappointed. They are dismayed and trapped. Behold, they have rejected the Lord’s word. What kind of wisdom is in them? Matthew 7:24 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. Romans 15:4 For whatever things were written before were written for our learning . . . 2 Timothy 3:15-17 From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. 1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come. But is there some divine loophole that those too lazy to read the Bible can exploit? Can they ignore the Bible and get wisdom simply by praying for it? The Bible tells us to work hard. The following is an extract from Forgotten Christian Secrets of Prosperity . Wherever it occurs in the following Scriptures, the emphasis is mine. We’ll start with a Scripture that unveils what for some Christians has become a forgotten factor in Christian prosperity and financial provision. It seems mundane and yet the Bible emphasizes it because the all-knowing Lord sees it as significant: Psalm 128:2 For you will eat the labor of your hands. You will be happy, and it will be well with you. Did you catch it or did it sneak past you? “You will eat the fruit of your labor  . . .” Even with divine blessing, you still have to work. Sadly, many of us are so out of touch with biblical thinking that even the thought of having to physically work for God’s blessing seems unspiritual! To confirm that this verse is not some biblical aberration, examine the following: Proverbs 24:33-34 a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; so your poverty will come as a robber, and your want as an armed man. Proverbs 13:4 The soul of the sluggard [the lazy person] desires, and has nothing, but the desire of the diligent [the person who works hard and consistently] shall be fully satisfied. Proverbs 12:24 The hands of the diligent ones shall rule, but laziness ends in slave labor. Proverbs 20:4 The sluggard will not plow by reason of the winter; therefore he shall beg in harvest, and have nothing. Proverbs 23:21 for the drunkard and the glutton shall become poor; and drowsiness clothes them in rags. Consider this Scripture on divine provision: Psalm 104:25-28 There is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals. There the ships go, and leviathan, whom you formed to play there. These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season. You give to them; they gather . You open your hand; they are satisfied with good. God provides but it still takes effort. The principle applies even to the miraculous provision of manna: Exodus 16:14-18,22,26 When the dew that lay had gone, behold, on the surface of the wilderness was a small round thing, small as the frost on the ground. When the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they didn’t know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.” This is the thing which the Lord has commanded: “ Gather of it everyone according to his eating ; an omer a head, according to the number of your persons, you shall take it, every man for those who are in his tent.” The children of Israel did so, and gathered some more, some less. When they measured it with an omer, he who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man according to his eating. . . . On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread . .  Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day is the Sabbath. In it there shall be none. And don’t for a moment imagine that New Testament faith negates this spiritual principle of divine provision requiring work on behalf of the recipients. Read this carefully: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12 Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks in rebellion, and not after the tradition which they received from us. For you know how you ought to imitate us. For we didn’t behave ourselves rebelliously among you, neither did we eat bread from anyone’s hand without paying for it, but in labor and travail worked night and day , that we might not burden any of you; not because we don’t have the right, but to make ourselves an example to you, that you should imitate us. For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: “If anyone will not work, don’t let him eat.” For we hear of some who walk among you in rebellion, who don’t work at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are that way, we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ , that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. 1 Corinthians 3:8  . . . each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. Colossians 3:22-23 Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, work heartily , as for the Lord, and not for men. As we will soon see, these Scriptures are but a tiny fraction of the New Testament emphasis on physical work. Faith is not a way of avoiding hard work. What makes God’s blessing different is not how hard we must work but that without God’s blessing our hard work ultimately ends up wasted: Deuteronomy 28:15,38-40 But it shall come to pass, if you will not listen to the Lord your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments . . . all these curses will come on you, and overtake you. . . . You will carry much seed out into the field, and will gather little in; for the locust will consume it. You will plant vineyards and dress them, but you will neither drink of the wine, nor harvest, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout all your borders, but you won’t anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives will drop off. Psalm 109:2,11  . . . wicked and the mouth of deceit . . . Let strangers plunder the fruit of his labor. Jeremiah 3:24,25 But the shameful thing has devoured the labor of our fathers from our youth . . . we have sinned against the Lord our God . . . Jeremiah 51:58 The Lord of Armies says: The wide walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the peoples shall labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they shall be weary. Habakkuk 2:13 Behold, isn’t it of the Lord of Armies that the peoples labor for the fire, and the nations weary themselves for vanity? Haggai 1:6-7,9,11 “ . . . he who earns wages earns wages to put them into a bag with holes in it.” This is what the Lord of Armies says: “Consider your ways.  . . . when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says the Lord of Armies, “Because of my house that lies waste, while each of you is busy with his own house. . . . I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains . . . and on all the labor of the hands.” A soft, lazy life is associated not with God’s blessing but with his displeasure: Matthew 25:26  . . . You wicked and slothful servant. . . . Titus 1:12  . . . Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and idle gluttons. Hard work is an important aspect of godliness: Ephesians 4:28 Let him who stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, producing with his hands something that is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. Acts 20:34 You yourselves know that these hands served my necessities, and those who were with me. 1 Corinthians 4:12 We toil, working with our own hands. . . . 1 Thessalonians 2:9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God. 1 Thessalonians 4:11 and that you make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, even as we instructed you Titus 3:14 Let our people also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they may not be unfruitful. The Bible’s ideal housewife works so hard that you might need to rest up after merely reading of all she crams into her long day: Proverbs 31:10-27 Who can find a worthy woman? For her price is far above rubies. . . .She seeks wool and flax, and works eagerly with her hands .She is like the merchant ships. She brings her bread from afar. She rises also while it is yet night , gives food to her household . . .She considers a field, and buys it. With the fruit of her hands , she plants a vineyard. She arms her waist with strength, and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp doesn’t go out by night .She lays her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.She opens her arms to the poor; yes, she extends her hands to the needy. . . .She makes for herself carpets of tapestry. . . .She makes linen garments and sells them, and delivers sashes to the merchant.Strength and dignity are her clothing. . . .She looks well to the ways of her household, and doesn’t eat the bread of idleness . Here’s a Scripture addressed to people in houses that not only had no washing machines, but no piped water; an era in which families were large and there was not only no cheap ready-made clothing but not even access to sewing or weaving machines: 1 Timothy 5:13-14 Besides, they also learn to be idle, going about from house to house. Not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not. I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, rule the household, and give no occasion to the adversary for insulting. In contrast to hardworking wives, Paul writes: 1 Timothy 5:6 But she who gives herself to pleasure is dead while she lives. Get rich quick dreams and schemes lead not to wealth but to poverty; not to contentment but to an endless craving. They are a curse that promises blessings but ends in regret: Proverbs 20:21 An inheritance quickly gained at the beginning, won’t be blessed in the end. Proverbs 28:8 He who increases his wealth by excessive interest gathers it for one who has pity on the poor. Proverbs 28:19-20,22 One who works his land will have an abundance of food; but one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty . A faithful man is rich with blessings; but one who is eager to be rich will not go unpunished . A stingy man hurries after riches, and doesn’t know that poverty waits for him. Proverbs 13:11 Wealth gained dishonestly dwindles away, but he who gathers by hand makes it grow. So if we refuse to work as hard as we can, should we expect God to answer prayers for finances? God tells us in his Word not to complain and to continually praise and thank God. 1 Corinthians 10:10-12 Don’t grumble, as some of them also grumbled, and perished by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall. Philippians 2:14 Do all things without murmurings and disputes. Psalm 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name. Psalm 103:22 Praise the Lord, in all places of his dominion. . . . Psalm 150:6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. . . . 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 4:6 In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Colossians 3:17 Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him. 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. Hebrews 13:15 Through him, then, let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which proclaim allegiance to his name. If we disregard this, can we expect God to answer prayers for joy? And of course there are hundreds of other examples we could cite. To receive everything we ever request would make us as terrifyingly powerful as the Omnipotent Lord. Who would you dare let have such unlimited power? Would it be generous or irresponsible for the good Lord to use prayer to entrust Godlike power to anyone whose motives are not Godlike? Do we suppose the way to get our selfish way is by prayer to the God who demands we die to self? Has anyone the audacity to think we can trash all that the Bible says about the necessity of studying God’s Word and storing it in our hearts because prayer for wisdom and revelation will work as an alternative? Imagining that prayer can somehow allow us to bypass the need to follow Scripture’s instructions is not only ludicrous but offensive to God. Dare we, for example, defile the holy Word of God by coming to the very Bible that devotes so much space and passion to denouncing the love of money and seizing a verse about prayer as an open-invitation to use faith-filled prayer to feed our addiction to money and perpetuate our adulterous love affair with material things? That would be as perverse as praying for guidance, wisdom and protection in robbing a bank, or praying for God to provide victims for a hideous sex crime. Do we really think we could dupe the Holy God into giving us anything that by his exacting standards is unholy, or that he would invite us to pray for such things? If it were possible for prayer to nullify the Word of God, we would not be praying to the God of the Bible. The unspiritual side of us, however, keeps hoping to avoid God’s way and find some cozy alternative. Alarmingly, the Deceiver has gleefully prepared many such options for those who prefer the easy road that leads to destruction. And he is delighted to let them remain smugly convinced they have got away with it. For example, we are sometimes so dominated by greed and self-centeredness as to twist God’s Word by ripping fragments of Scripture out of context about prayer without even realizing what we are doing. Consider this favorite Scripture: Psalm 37:4  . . . delight yourself in the Lord , and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Emphasis mine) It is time to check your medication if you imagine this verse is telling you how to manipulate God or get your own way. Nevertheless, this is exactly how some greedy soul (whether greedy for power, fame, luxury, ease, sex, chemical highs, or whatever) could misinterpret it. Put simply: the Almighty is perfect; we are not. Perfection can never be improved upon. God never changes. This is not because he is inflexible or stubborn or self-centered but because any change could only be a move away from perfect wisdom, perfect goodness, perfect love, and so on. The Perfect One can never improve. For us, however, it is a very different story. Infinite love means that God is utterly unselfish. As dramatically affirmed by the cross of Christ, our Lord is always seeking the well-being of others and never his own comfort. This makes God forever focused on inspiring us to change our hearts for the better; not on getting us to change/corrupt his heart. This Scripture is not saying that if you desire something, the way to get it is to delight in God. Delighting in God will profoundly affect your very desires, and the longer you delight in him, the more your desires will change, just as the more you delight in wildlife and pristine wilderness areas, the less you will want to do things that harm the environment. To delight in God is to take your eyes off yourself and lose yourself in the majesty and purity of God. Anyone delighting in God loves him so much that he/she would never knowingly ask for anything that grieves or disappoints God. You would be so passionate about God that pleasing him means more to you than life or pain-avoidance or anything else you could ever crave. We see this exemplified in Jesus: despite being so horrified by the consequences that sweat dripped from him like blood, our Role Model prayed, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” “Teach us to pray” the disciples had pleaded, and yet they slept through the greatest example of all. In The Treasury of David , C. H. Spurgeon comments on the verse in Psalms we have been examining: Men who delight in God, desire and ask for nothing but what will please God; hence it is safe to giv e them carte blanche [divine authorization to get whatever they want] . Their will is subdued to God’s will and now they may have what they will. He immediately adds: Our innermost desires are here meant; not our casual desires; there are many things which nature might desire which grace may never permit us to ask for; these deep, prayerful asking desires are those to whom the promise is made. It is safe to say, “Love God and do what you want,” precisely because no one who truly loves God would ever want to grieve his Lord by knowingly doing anything that clashes with God’s holiness or his plans. To love God is to obey him John 14:15 If you love me, keep my commandments. John 14:21 One who has my commandments, and keeps them, that person is one who loves me. . . . John 14:23-24 Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word. . . . He who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words. . . . John 15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love . . . 1 John 2:5-6 But whoever keeps his word, God’s love has most certainly been perfected in him. This is how we know that we are in him: he who says he remains in him ought himself also to walk just like he walked. 1 John 5:2-3 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous. 2 John 1:6 This is love, that we should walk according to his commandments. . . . Taken in isolation, the portion of divine revelation we have so far examined might seem a letdown. God is not the genie in the bottle some of us have been hoping for. Disappointment vanishes, however, when we realize that riding high in the full truth is that God is staggeringly bighearted – a God “who gives to all liberally and without reproach” (James 1:5) and whose goal is always that “your joy may be made full.” I will not repeat everything said in the above section, this time using only New Testament Scriptures. It could easily be done, however. For example: Matthew 6:33 But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well. Despite greedy eyes lightening up when zooming in on just part of one verse, this is actually the very opposite of telling the greedy how to get their fill. The words “and his righteousness” should be enough to nail any such misconception. Many Scriptures confirm that lust, greed, selfishness, covetousness, slavery to pleasure, laziness, and so on are sin and therefore incompatible with righteousness. Moreover, we shall see that linking righteousness to answered prayer is a regular biblical theme. Two examples should suffice for the moment: Psalms 66:18 If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened. Isaiah 59:2  . . . your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. To make it still clearer that this is not an invitation to the greedy, Jesus introduced this promise by saying it is pagan to give priority to seeking first even the most elementary of human needs. Despite a superficial familiarity with this passage, please pause for at least one careful reading of the context: Matthew 6:24-33  . . . You can’t serve both God and Mammon [money]. . . . don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they? . . . Why are you anxious about clothing? . . . Therefore don’t be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness . . . The briefest glance at the context affirms that Jesus was not referring to a television, hot and cold running water, or even clothes that are fashionable. He zeroed in on the most basic necessities of life that even birds need, declaring that above even those things, we must seek the kingdom of God, and the other essentials are for God to worry about. In the words of Paul: 1 Timothy 6:8-11 But having food and clothing, we will be content with that. But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. Unlike some preachers who have lost sight of Jesus’ priorities, our Lord never stooped to exploiting people’s greed as a way of enticing them into the kingdom. In fact, such an attempt is doomed because the greedy cannot enter the kingdom: Matthew 23:25 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness. Mark 7:21-23 For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. Luke 8:14 That which fell among the thorns, these are those who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures  . . . Luke 12:15  . . . Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness . .  .(Emphasis mine) Jesus never said or implied, “I am your cash cow.” On the contrary, his passion was to get the greedy to reverse their thinking so that if the change in their attitude to feeding their selfish desires is sufficiently radical they might be able to enter God’s kingdom, (the realm where God – not one’s personal cravings – is king). Mark 10:17-25 As he was going out into the way, one ran to him, knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” . . . Jesus looking at him loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack. Go, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me, taking up the cross.” But his face fell at that saying, and he went away sorrowful, for he was one who had great possessions. Jesus looked around, and said to his disciples, “How difficult it is for those who have riches to enter into God’s Kingdom! . . . It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into God’s Kingdom.” Immediately after feeding the five thousand, we read: John 6:15 Jesus therefore, perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force, to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself. Jesus withdrew from anyone who thought he would meet their political or economic aspirations. Instead, he sought those who were desperate for godliness: Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. And what will they be filled with? What really counts: righteousness (selflessness). Of course, the rest of the New Testament says such things as: Romans 8:5 For 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. Colossians 3:2, 5 Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. . . . Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness , which is idolatry 1 John 2:16-17 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s. The world is passing away with its lusts, but he who does God’s will remains forever. (Emphasis mine) To be righteous, however, is to be like God. And God is the most dynamic and exciting and beautiful person in the universe. You were born for greatness and born again to be forever hailed a hero by following the path to never-ending glory; the trail blazed by our all-conquering King. Let go of the inferior that glitters and entices and fizzles and fails. Let go of the inferior that glitters and entices and fizzles and fails. Take God’s hand and soar to fulfillment and achievement beyond what you have dared dream. Life is not about getting our own way but about letting God have his glorious way in our lives. Stop resigning yourself to the inferior. Raise your aspirations to divine heights so that you will forever rejoice in the choices you have made. Prayer turns God’s stomach if it degenerates into an excuse for disobedience or spiritual laziness. If you baulk at that statement, read what God says: Proverbs 28:9 He who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Isaiah 1:15-16 When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. . . . James 4:3 You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures. Imagining that prayer can somehow allow us to bypass the need to follow Scripture’s instructions is not only mistaken but offensive to God. As already demonstrated, the Bible spells out the prerequisites for answered prayer a number of times. If, however, Scripture were to list all the conditions and exceptions every time any subject were raised, we would need a wheelbarrow to carry the Bible around and we would all be complaining about how tedious and boring it is to read. The Bible’s teaching on prayer is founded on the presumption that those praying have died to self (and hence to spiritual laziness) and are committed to doing things God’s way. Since the Bible’s promises about prayer were usually addressed specifically to people who were already devoted to God, there was no point in continually adding at the end of every verse,“Of course, this only applies if you are living this Book, i.e. have died to self, been spiritually transformed by spiritual union with Christ and are in total submission to God, in everything thinking and acting like him.” That would be as ridiculous as an instruction manual for a high performance vehicle stopping at the end of each statement to explain that what it says only applies to that particular vehicle. Even so, many of Jesus’ declarations about prayer specifically added provisos, the ramifications of which we often gloss over. Consider, for example, the implications of offering prayer in Jesus’ name. John 14:14 If you will ask anything in my name , I will do it. John 15:16  . . . I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name , he may give it to you. John 16:23-24 In that day you will ask me no questions. Most certainly I tell you, whatever you may ask of the Father in my name , he will give it to you. Until now, you have asked nothing in my name . Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full. John 16:26-27 In that day you will ask in my name ; and I don’t say to you, that I will pray to the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you . . . (Emphasis mine) Average Christians in our era rarely grasp the grave significance of this expression. I was taught as a child to tack on to the end of my prayers, “For Jesus’ sake, Amen.” Whoever initiated this tradition truly understood prayer but, like so many other children, I never bothered to consider what the words meant. For me, it was simply the way to let God know the prayer was ended. I might as well have said, “Roger, over and out!” or “Goodbye, God – Nice to talk to you!” I never for a moment stopped to wonder whether what I had been asking was for actually Jesus’ sake or merely for my own sake. So let’s investigate what it means to pray in Jesus’ name. If I were to do something in your name, I would be acting as your representative. That’s a huge responsibility. If, in your name, I were to do anything stupid or unethical I could ruin your reputation. If ever there is a time to ask oneself, “What would Jesus do?” it is when doing anything in Jesus’ name. You are putting his reputation on the line. If ever you were exposing yourself to divine judgment, this is it. At first glance, it seems that in some of Jesus’ promises about prayer he is handing us a blank check. Only a fool, however, would give a blank check to anyone who is not highly responsible. So if the eternal Son of God were handing out blank checks, as it were, you can be sure he is giving them only to people he could trust never to abuse the responsibility. And, of course, that is what God does, as shown throughout both Testaments. But first: a note about the proportion of Old Testament quotes in the Scriptures I will cite. We have already quoted from the New Testament: James 4:3 You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures. Expressed another way: 1 John 3:22 and whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight . 1 John 5:14 This is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will , he listens to us. John 15:7 If you remain in me, and my words remain in you , you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you. James 5:16  . . . The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. (Emphasis mine) And there are still more New Testament quotes to follow. Since the Old Testament is significantly larger and is the foundation for the New, however, it follows that there should be a higher proportion of Old Testament quotes on this topic. A further reason is that the New Testament was addressed primarily to new converts – first generation Christians – who had a corresponding fervor for God. Much of the Old Testament, however, was addressed to people born into their religion and were therefore more likely to be lulled into merely going through the motions and not realize that there is more to serving God than that. Whereas for the original readers of the New Testament it was obvious, those who had never had a personal relationship with God, or had lapsed into little more than lip service, needed the conditions for answered prayer to be spelled out. Sadly, that describes many of us today. So let’s see some of these Scriptures: Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice made by the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight. Proverbs 21:13 Whoever stops his ears at the cry of the poor, he will also cry out, but shall not be heard. Micah 3:4 Then they will cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them. Yes, he will hide his face from them at that time, because they made their deeds evil. The teachings of the New and Old Testaments on prayer dovetail. Consider this, for example: Malachi 2:13-14 This again you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with sighing, because he doesn’t regard the offering any more, neither receives it with good will at your hand. Yet you say, ‘Why?’ Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion, and the wife of your covenant. Note how similar this is to the following: 1 Peter 3:7 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered . The passage in Malachi not only mentions treating one’s wife as being critical in how God responds to our attempts to reach out to him (and Peter links this to prayer) but it says that offerings are useless if we mistreat people. Note how this dovetails with what Jesus said: Matthew 5:23-24 If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. It also fits snugly with Jesus’ warning: Matthew 15:7-9 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.’ Isaiah also proclaimed the following that fits this theme perfectly: Isaiah 58:4-9  . . . You don’t fast today so as to make your voice to be heard on high Is this the fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to humble his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under himself? Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? “Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Isn’t it to distribute your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you not hide yourself from your own flesh? . . . Then you will call, and the Lord will answer . . . (Emphasis mine) God is all about love: 1 John 4:7-8  . . . love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:16  . . . God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. Matthew 22:36-40 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” So prayer to the God of love must be all about love – verbalizing our love for God and wanting to know him better, to be more like him and to please him, glorify him and see his purposes furthered. Since love focuses on the beloved, prayer should be God-centered, not self-centered. And trying to make it God-centered just because you think that approach will better aid your quest to manipulate God into giving you what you crave is no improvement on any other self-obsessed attempt to exploit God’s goodness. God’s piercing eyes expose all such schemes. Prayer should be about companionship and intimacy and yieldedness. If it is all about me or about continually getting rather than giving, it is not real prayer; it’s a perversion. To claim for ourselves Bible promises divinely given to people who were more devoted to Christ than we are willing to be, is as fraudulent as tampering with someone’s last will and testament, by trying to erase someone else’s name and replace it with our own. It is not only taking Bible promises out of context, it is ripping them out of Christianity and putting them into a false religion. Hoping to exploit God for our selfish ends might bear similarities to voodoo or witchcraft – I know too little about these religions to be sure – but it most certainly is nothing like genuine Christianity. Consider these Scriptures: Joshua 24:15 If it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose today whom you will serve . . . 1 Kings 18:21  . . . How long will you waver between the two sides? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. . . . Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters . . . 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. In the light of these Scriptures I must conclude that as much as it breaks God’s heart, he would prefer us to abandon Christianity altogether than remain in hypocrisy and self-delusion by pretending to be Christian when we are actually serving not God but ourselves. Faith? Finally, let’s consider the role of faith in all of this. The faith the Bible speaks of should not be confused with screwing up one’s face and raising one’s blood-pressure trying to generate some magical force. It is focused not merely on getting an answer to prayer but on the whole character of God and submitting to him and to his ways. Biblical faith is simply resting in the thrilling fact that not only is the God of the Bible good, kind, caring, forgiving, generous, dependable, wise, powerful and honest, he is utterly superior to us in all these areas and more. Because of his infinite intelligence, wisdom and goodness, the Almighty is always right, and, because of his infinite love and selflessness, he loves us more than we could ever love ourselves and always has our best interest at heart. Anyone truly believing these truths about God would always want God to have his perfect way and never exalt his/her own longings above what the God of infinite love and wisdom deems to be best. Final thoughts The last thing I want is for any of us to miss God’s best by failing to ask for it. “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God,” said William Carey, the famous missionary known today as the “father of modern missions”. There is nothing stingy about God. As powerfully expressed by Paul: Romans 8:32 He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things? The problem, however, is highlighted in the same chapter: Romans 8:26  . . . we don’t know how to pray as we ought . . . (Emphasis mine). The rest of the verse explains that the Holy Spirit mercifully compensates for our deficiencies in wisdom. We should not grieve or quench the Spirit, however, by seeking things that offend his holiness or by supposing that we are smarter than him or insulting his love by imagining we have our best interest at heart more than he does. On the other hand, we should not freeze with fear over what we pray for. The Spirit of our gracious Lord is always eager to forgive. Nevertheless, he is also eager that we stop blindly repeating our mistakes, and especially that we not hurt ourselves by pulling back from God through being so foolish as to get mad at him for mercifully not giving us things that to us seem wonderful but are actually inferior – sometimes dangerously so – to God’s plans for us. Often we are like King Midas, having no idea of the consequences of what we request. In the fable, Midas was granted his greedy wish (that everything he touched would turn to gold) before he realized the devastating implications for every morsel of food and every loved one he touched. God would be too kind to answer such a prayer. How tragic it would be, however, if any of us were to turn our backs on God simply because it is beyond our comprehension how superior the divine alternative plan is to the one we have concocted. I saw a shop advertising free range eggs. “Look! Free eggs!” I joked to someone with me who enjoys a bargain. To my surprise, she immediately became excited about getting range eggs (whatever they are) for free, not realizing that “free range” refers to uncaged chickens. Many of us are like that with God’s promises; gleefully latching on to a few words without bothering to consider the intended meaning. If you would like to see them in a single glance, I have listed eighteen Scriptures commonly used to imply we can have anything we ask for in prayer, showing that in each case the immediate context states that the promise is conditional. (Reminder: To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray as his representative and therefore to pray only for things that Jesus would pray for.) Psalm 37:4 Also delight yourself in the Lord , and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 145:18-19 The Lord is near to all those who call on him, to all who call on him in truth . He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him . He also will hear their cry, and will save them. Jeremiah 29:13 You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart . Matthew 6:33 But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness ; and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 18:19-20 Again, assuredly I tell you, that if two of you will agree on earth concerning anything that they will ask, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name , there I am in the middle of them. Mark 11:24-25 Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. 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. Mark 16:17 These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons . . . Luke 10:17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name !” Luke 18:1 He also spoke a parable to them that they must always pray, and not give up John 14:13 Whatever you will ask in my name , that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son . John 14:14 If you will ask anything in my name , I will do it. John 15:7 If you remain in me, and my words remain in you , you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you. John 15:16  . . . I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit , and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name , he may give it to you. John 16:23-24 In that day you will ask me no questions. Most certainly I tell you, whatever you may ask of the Father in my name , he will give it to you. Until now, you have asked nothing in in my name . Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full. John 16:26-27 In that day you will ask in my name ; and I don’t say to you, that I will pray to the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you . . . James 5:16 Confess your offenses to one another , and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. 1 John 3:22  . . . whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight . 1 John 5:14-15 This is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will , he listens to us. And if we know that he listens to us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him. (Emphasis mine) Or here is twenty-seven Scriptures emphasizing that sin renders prayer useless: Job 27:8-9  For what is the hope of the godless . . . Will God hear his cry when trouble comes on him? Job 35:12-13  There they cry, but no one gives answer, because of the pride of evil men. Surely God will not hear an empty cry, neither will the Almighty regard it. Psalms 66:18  If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened. Proverbs 1:25-30  but you have ignored all my counsel, and wanted none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you . . . Then  will they call on me, but I will not answer . . . . because they hated knowledge, and didn’t choose the fear of the Lord . . . Note how this matches Jesus’ teachin g: Matthew 25:11-12   Afterward the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us.’  [This is virtually a prayer]   . . . But he answered, ‘Most certainly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ More Scriptures: Deuteronomy 1:45  You returned and wept before the Lord; but the Lord didn’t listen to your voice, nor turn his ear to you. 2 Samuel 22:42  They looked, but there was no one to save; even to the Lord, but he didn’t answer them. Proverbs 15:8  The sacrifice made by the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight. Proverbs 15:29  The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous. Proverbs 21:13  Whoever stops his ears at the cry of the poor, he will also cry out, but shall not be heard. Proverbs 28:9  He who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Isaiah 1:15-16  When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. . . . Isaiah 58:4-9   . . .  You don’t fast today so as to make your voice to be heard on high . Is this the fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to humble his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under himself? Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? “Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Isn’t it to distribute your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you not hide yourself from your own flesh? . . .  Then  you will call, and the Lord will answer . . . Isaiah 59:2   . . . your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. Jeremiah 11:10-11  They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear my words . . . Therefore the Lord says, Behold, I will bring evil on them, which they shall not be able to escape; and they shall cry to me, but I will not listen to them. Jeremiah 14:10,12  The Lord says to this people, Even so have they loved to wander; they have not refrained their feet . . . When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and meal offering, I will not accept them . . . Lamentations 3:8  Yes, when I cry, and call for help, he shuts out my prayer. Lamentations 3:44  You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through. Ezekiel 8:17-18   . . . for they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger: and behold, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in wrath; my eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them. Hosea 5:6  They will go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord; but they won’t find him. He has withdrawn himself from them. Jonah 2:8  Those who regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Zechariah 7:13  It has come to pass that, as he called, and they refused to listen, so they will call, and I will not listen,” said the Lord of Armies Micah 3:4  Then they will cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them. Yes, he will hide his face from them at that time, because they made their deeds evil. Matthew 5:23-24  If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. John 9:31  We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him. James 4:3  You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures. 1 Peter 3:7  You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life;  that your prayers may not be hindered . (Emphasis mine)   My goal has not been to cover every prerequisite for answered prayer. For example, except for praying for spiritual salvation, there is no guarantee of answered prayer without first being born again (redeemed). (For more about this, see You can Find Love . ) Even this, however, fits into the general category of needing to be submitted to God and follow Scripture’s directives if our prayers are to be answered. These restrictions are not because God is a kill-joy. On the contrary, he wants to give us his best and our tendency to focus on quick gratification or simplistic solutions means the “good” things we crave often kill joy more than we can comprehend. We see the divine dilemma exposed when Jesus fed the multitude. This was no treat to titillate the taste buds. The situation was so serious that some were in danger of fainting on the long walk home (Mark 8:3). Moved by compassion, he who denied himself bread in the wilderness miraculously provided for these people but – as God’s longing to meet our physical needs often does – it backfired. John 6:26-27, 34-35, 49-51, 66 Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. Don’t work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. . . .”            They said therefore to him, “Lord, always give us this bread.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not be hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.  . . . Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that anyone may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. . . .”            At this, many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. In contrast to some preachers, Jesus withdrew, rather than let people seek God for the wrong reasons and he ended up making it so hard for them that those with materialistic motives left him. We, too, are in danger of degrading God by worshipping him as a Cash Cow instead of honoring him as the Holy One whose passion is righteousness and selflessness. Too many of us break God’s heart by putting him in a no-win situation: if God lovingly refuses to indulge our greed we resent him; if he gives us what we clamor for, we destroy ourselves by becoming infatuated with the temporal rather than the eternal. 1 John 5:14 This is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will , he listens to us. (Emphasis mine) And God’s will is filled with love and wisdom far beyond ours. The Joy of Unanswered Prayer Consider this example of unanswered prayer, uttered in intense passion by the most righteous, powerful, faith-filled person ever to walk this planet: Hebrews 5:7 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 having been heard for his godly fear. How thoughtfully did you read that? The Holy, Eternal Son of God passionately prayed ‘to the one who could save him from death’ and yet, despite being ‘heard,’ he died an agonizing death in humiliation and apparent defeat. If by answered prayer we mean being given what we want when we want it, it is a biblical fact that not every prayer will be answered, no matter how Spirit-filled and faith-filled we are. Moses, Elijah and Job were men of superior integrity, devotion and faith. Jonah was a prophet of God. They not only wished they were dead, they asked God – some even pleaded with him – to kill them (1 Kings 19:4; Numbers 11:15; Job 6:8-9; 7:15; Jonah 4:3,8,9). None of these prayers was answered. In fact, the Bible keeps giving so many examples of people’s prayers not being answered, that I’m reluctant to cite many for fear of boring you. For more, see Biblical Examples of Unanswered Prayers.   Consider this Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 By reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that I should not be exalted excessively, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, that I should not be exalted excessively. Concerning this thing, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me. He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you . . .” Paul was adamant that this ‘thorn’ was anti-God; ‘a messenger of Satan’ that tormented him. Despite the mighty apostle’s immense faith and spiritual authority, however, God cared too much for Paul’s spiritual well-being to answer his repeated prayers for the attack to end. God’s ‘grace’ – the spiritual empowering to endure, divinely seeded within Paul – was enough. The Lord revealed that the quick delivery most modern-day Christians expect, could have spiritually ruined Paul because of the greater danger lurking in the shadows – pride. Over and over Scripture tells us to rejoice in trials. This is not so that we can act macho but because trials really are something to rejoice about. Trials do us good, developing character and spiritual benefits that will last forever. They equip us for ministry. They equip us for eternity. Like Paul, however, when we’re in the midst of them we want out . There are times when God loves us too much to answer those escapist prayers. God has our long-term good at heart, not some short term high that fizzles. Try reading this Scripture in a new light: 1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. This is nothing remotely like a promise that God would make strong temptation melt away for his beloved. Instead, it is a promise that we would be able to ‘endure it.’ The King James Version uses the expression ‘able to bear it.’ The point is that if the divinely-provided ‘way of escape,’ was for the temptation to go away, there would be nothing to ‘endure’ or ‘bear.’ Too many Christians wrongly suppose that if temptation continues to rage after prayer, there must be something wrong. The divine game-plan has never been to prevent us from being hit repeatedly by fierce temptation but to empower us to endure it. The promise is not that God will mollycoddle us, treating us as embarrassing weaklings who would shame him the moment things get tough, but that God will secrete within us everything that we need to heroically survive the onslaught – and by so doing be acclaimed forever as spiritual champions. Even in the Old Testament, God’s people were called to fight the enemy, keep themselves holy and in no way compromise and yet, for at least two divinely brilliant reasons, God chose not to give them quick deliverances but to keep them battling their enemies year after year: Exodus 23:29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the animals of the field multiply against you. Judges 3:1-2 Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan; only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at least those who knew nothing of it before Consider the spiritual heroes portrayed in the faith gallery in Hebrew 11. Many of us lock on to the first half of the gallery – those who by faith received miracles – and overlook the second half, who through faith received the power to endure torment and martyrdom when God saw a better way than to grant miraculous avoidance. Hebrews 11:35-38  . . . [By faith] Others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Others were tried by mocking and scourging, yes, moreover by bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn apart. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts, mountains, caves, and the holes of the earth. Even of the first half of the faith gallery, Scripture says none received in their lifetime what had been promised: Hebrews 11:39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. (NIV) And consider Abraham: for year after year, decade after decade, his prayer for a child went unanswered. He had no idea what was going on, but it turned out that each year his prayers went unanswered Abraham was achieving eternal glory as a man of faith, the spiritual father of all who have faith. Likewise, Job ministers so powerfully through the centuries right down to today because both his prayer for healing and his prayer for death met icy silence. There are times when unanswered prayer is the only path to such glory. Faith, says Scripture, is more precious than gold, and yet faith can only grow by prayers going unanswered for what seems an eternity. Yes, the answer finally comes, but faith grows by stretching. It’s usually in those dreary days of unanswered prayer that faith grows best. God knows how to give good things to his children. Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened. That sounds as if we will get anything we ask for, but let’s read what comes next: Matthew 7:9-11 Or who is there among you, who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! That still sounds like we will get anything we ask for, but consider the implications of Jesus’ teaching that God is the perfect Father. If a child asks for bread, he won’t be given a stone. Nevertheless, a child will sometimes be given vegetables that to him seem as tasteless and as useless as a stone. The child might complain as bitterly as if he were actually given a stone. Nevertheless, his cries for candy and ice-cream will sometimes go unheeded because wise parents know how to give good things to their children. Likewise, if a child asks for a fish, he will not be given a snake. If, however, a little child foolishly asks for a cobra or scorpion to play with, he will not be given one. Again the child will feel unfairly treated but no matter how much he pleads, the child will not be given anything harmful. Likewise, in order to remain the perfect Father that he is, God must refuse our request when in our ignorance we ask for things that to us seem good, but ultimately are not in our best interest. Little children focus on their immediate pleasure, whereas wise, loving parents look out for their children’s longer term good. This is the source of many a complaint from children who mistakenly think their parents are being harsh and stingy. As we grow up we come to realize the benefits of focusing on our longer term good, and we become grateful that our parents did not let us have all the things that we now recognize as being unwise or even dangerous. Yet even as mature adults, we often focus on a ridiculously short time-frame, relative to eternity. Like the perfect Parent he is, God gives the very best to his children, even at the expense of incurring their wrath if they foolishly misjudge what is best for them. ‘You don’t have, because you don’t ask,’ sounds like an exciting invitation to receive whatever we desire, but this is the very trap James was seeking to expose: James 4:2  . . . You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures. So they did, in fact, ask but their prayers went unanswered because they asked for the wrong things and with the wrong motives. The Holy Lord wants to nurture righteousness and selflessness in his children; not use his power to foolishly feed an addiction to lust, greed and materialism. Near the beginning of his epistle, James said we cannot expect answered prayer if we waver in faith (James 1:5-8). He was referring, however, to asking for something highly spiritual – godly wisdom (James 1:5; 3:13,17). Trying to entice God to answer prayers to foster our selfishness, however, is such a lost cause that rather than suggest more faith, James denounces the practice. He continues his tirade against praying for wrong things or with wrong motives: James 4:4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. The next verse initially seems strange: James 4:5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”? This is reminiscent of what Paul says: Romans 1:28-29 Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness , malice; full of envy , murder, strife, deceit, evil habits, secret slanderers. (Emphasis mine) James is saying that we are all subject to an intense urge to envy. How true that is! Our natural tendency is to slide into the pit of regretting what we don’t have, rather than rejoicing in what we have. Give Joe Average a hundred million dollars and he’d be over the moon with excitement about how rich and blessed he is. Then give ten billion dollars to hundreds of people around him and it will not be long before, regardless of his millions, he is feeling deprived. (There is an alternative interpretation of James 4:5 ( By this I mean choosing to cite or believe certain Scriptures that support one’s theory while ignoring other Scriptures that shoot holes in one’s theory) but it leads to the same understanding of what ‘resist the devil’ refers to.) Despite our natural predisposition to be driven by envy, however, James immediately continues to explain that through Christ we can live in victory over this insidious temptation: James 4:6-7 But he gives more grace. . . . Be subject therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Had you realized that the famous Scripture, ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,’ though applicable to other situations, was actually referring primarily to resisting the temptation to envy (verse 5) and overcoming the temptation to pray “because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures” (verse 3)? Few of us pause long enough to realize that this famous quote is referring to resisting the devil’s enticement to use prayer to try to manipulate God into giving us things that end up not being in our best interests spiritually. The attraction of devilish practices such as witchcraft is that they seem to offer supernatural help in feeding selfish desires. The devil does not display our Heavenly Father’s reluctance to grant us things that end up hurting and enslaving us. Christians are typically well aware that lack of faith often hinders Jesus’ longing to miraculously meet our physical needs: Matthew 13:58 He didn’t do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. The equally serious, but seldom recognized, hindrance to God pampering us with material possessions, however, is the human tendency to push aside the true God and instead worship money, pleasure and/or ease, and ruin our lives by making them our god. Deuteronomy 6:10-12 It shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 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, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Next Page

Healing that Exceeds Your Fondest Dreams This webpage applies not only to men and women who have lost their ability to enjoy sex through past trauma, but also to any who have lost it through thinking of sex as dirty or unspiritual. I must tell you about a sexual abuse survivor who, through a close walk with God, discovered powerful healing secrets that can propel survivors into fulfillment beyond their dreams. Of course, one survivor can only have one gender, but these healing secrets apply with equal force to both genders. The insights shared below are equally my own, and I’m the opposite gender. I will also share the experiences of a male abuse survivor. A friend I greatly admire – I’ll call her Christine – was just a little child when her God-given potential to delight in marital relations was savagely stolen from her. She wants revenge. And this woman is smart. She understands that wanting her abuser to suffer would not be revenge but letting him win. It would be letting this evil man succeed in so corrupting her that she becomes nasty like him. Bitterness blinds, deluding us into thinking ourselves better than those we despise, but reality can be amazingly different to what we suppose. Quite likely, Christine’s abuser was himself sexually abused as a child and, instead of forgiving, he felt justified in using his abuse as an excuse for wanting her to suffer. Should she now act like him by using her abuse as an excuse for wanting him to suffer? To become embittered like him and want to see someone else suffer (her preferred target being her abuser) would not only justify his actions – doing her bit to declare that no one can suffer abuse without ending up wanting others to suffer – but by her very desire to see someone suffer, she would be imitating him. Not only is such bitterness not revenge, it is wisely said that “imitation is the highest form of flattery.” Christine is remarkably perceptive. She understands that the ultimate revenge has nothing to do with polluting herself with hate. The ultimate revenge involves refusing to let herself be robbed of anything – neither her self-esteem, nor her purity, nor her ability to enjoy full sexual pleasure. True revenge is to let Jesus completely turn the tables so that she enjoys greater purity than even the most innocent non-Christian virgin (only faith in Christ makes people truly sinless and pure in God’s eyes) and enjoying heights of marital pleasure that few people attain, even if they have never been abused. That is truly a triumph to relish; a sweetness to celebrate for all eternity. Throughout his earthly ministry we find Jesus waiting for people to ask for healing, and even then he at times double-checked to ensure that they truly wanted healing. Ensuring They Really Want Healing Mark 10:51 Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “Rabboni, that I may see again.” John 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been sick for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus is the complete opposite of an abuser. He overflows with such tenderness and deep respect for you that even though he knows you would like the final result, he refuses to force himself or his healing powers upon you against your will. As much as it hurts him, he restrains himself until you give him full permission to heal you. “Ask that you may receive,” pleaded Jesus over and over, using many different expressions and parables to stress the centrality of this spiritual principle. In fact, even if you give him permission, he is reluctant to heal unless you passionately want it. True love is saddened by reluctant compliance. It pines for something far deeper. The Bible is emphatic: intensity of desire is a critical factor in receiving from God. Intensity of Desire: A Critical Factor in Receiving from God Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you shall seek the Lord your God, and you shall find him, when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul . Jeremiah 29:13 You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart . 2 Chronicles 15:4 But when in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, he was found by them. Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is supreme. Get wisdom. Yes, though it costs all your possessions , get understanding. Proverbs 8:10 Receive my instruction rather than silver ; knowledge rather than choice gold Joel 2:12 “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “turn to me with all your heart , and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.” Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Luke 11:13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him ?” James 4:2  . . . You don’t have, because you don’t ask. 1 Corinthians 12:31 But earnestly desire the best gifts. . . . Emphasis mine. The heart-wrenching tragedy is that few abuse survivors passionately want full healing. Of course they want their pain to go but it is hard for them to want the full healing of their sexuality because most survivors had their capacity for sexual happiness wrenched off them before they had a chance to realize the real value of their loss. Their dreams were shattered and their expectations corrupted before knowing even a glimmer of the unique ecstasy of marital intimacy bathed in endless oceans of warm tenderness and selfless love, as our Creator intended. As someone blinded before being able to see would have little comprehension of all the visual beauty he is missing out on, so is someone sexually plundered before experiencing the heights of marital love. Such survivors can’t understand why people keep raving on about sex as if it were something desirable. In reality, even many people who think sex is wonderful know only hollow, fleeting moments of lust and have no conception of the indescribable depths of fulfillment of marital relations. Christine read widely from the Bible, but the book of Proverbs held a particular attraction. Beginning in her teens, she spent years fellowshipping with God by daily reading Proverbs, asking God to speak to her from it. To her horror, she discovered that in this God-breathed book, her best friend, the divine Source of all wisdom, speaks positively about sex. A Positive View of Sex Proverbs 5:18-19 Let your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. . . . let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be captivated always with her love. Yes, the book warns of serious dangers if sex is misused – that did not surprise her – but that God would speak positively about sex was a serious challenge to her faith. The more she meditated on Proverbs the more divinely convinced she became that even the warnings against misusing sex indicated the value of sex. Parents give little children strict instructions about the care they must take over their best clothes, not old ones of little value. Despite everything within her screaming that sex was bad, God had to be right. She inwardly recoiled, wanting to permanently push this out of her mind, but she also learned from Proverbs that it is important to carefully weigh up both sides of a matter before deciding one’s view (Proverbs 18:13, 17). If you come to a conclusion prematurely, God revealed to her, you are setting a limit on your life. A key aspect of Christine’s healing revolved around transforming her attitude toward her own body. A mutual friend of both Christine and me saw in her mind’s eye an unclothed baby girl lying on her back. Next to her was a beautiful pink rosebud. God tenderly kissed the baby. My friend felt God was saying by this symbolism that Christine’s genitals were as beautiful and perfect as a rosebud. Naturally, my friend was very hesitant to mention such a bizarre experience. Completely unknown to my friend, the Lord had already given Christine an identical vision. So when my friend finally mustered the courage to share the vision with her, it proved to be powerful confirmation. The need for God to speak so dramatically about this matter was especially great for Christine because her abuser’s excuse for hurting her was his claim that her genitals were imperfect and that he needed to “fix” them by molesting her. In contrast to what she had for so long believed, God saw her genitals as exquisitely beautiful and perfect. This revelation was, of course, deeply healing. Most of us will not hear from God so dramatically, but our bodies are equally loved by our Creator, and in the secure exclusiveness of marriage we have every right to feel that we have highly desirable bodies. A friend of mine – I’ll call him Jake – suffered severe sexual and physical abuse from his parents and siblings from babyhood. He is now in his forties. Sometimes Jesus appears to him and physically holds him, just to help him heal. There was in time when Jake used to think that Jesus would never act this way or even speak to anyone today. Even now, he is sometimes so scared that it might be some sort of deception that he asks the Jesus who appears to him to confirm that he is Lord. He does, and this puts Jake’s mind at rest, since he believes no demon would say that. He writes: These experiences with God have shown me that right from when I was a tender young age, any nurture, intimacy, or love always meant sexual abuse or harm. My body would respond to any closeness as if it were sexual, even if no thoughts, feelings or emotions, or anything questionable were going on internally. Then I start hating my body, and wanting to really hurt, or hit it. However, instead of continuing in my old pattern of abusing myself, or self-harm I started talking to Father God about it, and asking him why I responded this way. He said it is because whenever I was touched, nurtured or loved as a child it meant perverseness, and sexual touching. He told me that he is healing me of this. Now, what used to be my body’s automatic response to touch seems to be lessening immensely, as his touch is always wholesome. Now, my response seems to becoming normal, as that auto programmed response is lessening. My fear of tender intimacy is being broken. This is still very new to me and I am embarrassed to write about it. Even as I write I feel like hitting myself, but I refuse to do so. God has told me that touch does not bother him, and that I, too, should be unconcerned about it. So this is what I have been doing. I find I am able to relax in his arms as he holds me, and just soak up his nurturing love. I am like a thirsty sponge that cannot get enough of his tender, nurturing love. Yes, I know that God can do anything, but it is hard for me to believe that he would really bring about this deep healing within me, and be this tender for me. I am crying to think of his kindness. I had always thought love meant harm, intimacy meant hurt, and that touch was always evil. I had not even realized that I had felt this way. Now the Lord is crumbling destructive lies within me that I did not even know had been sabotaging my relationships. Christine shares another factor in transforming her body image: I began to gain a bust long before other girls in my school class. And I hated it. As if growing up were my fault, my mother kept calling me a slut because of my developing figure. And I had so wanted to be a good girl. Over and over my mother kept angrily warning me that breasts make a person the object of unwanted male attention. I so hated my body that rather than dare look at it when undressing, I would close my eyes. When I was in my teens, God meant so much to me that it was usual for me to spend many hours a night in prayer. When I was fifteen, after one such session of several hours with God, I went to the bathroom and a voice within me that seemed to be God, told me to take off my clothes. I rebuked the voice and spent several minutes commanding demons to leave in Jesus’ name. But the presence remained. “Why are you still here?” I angrily demanded. “You rightly tell demons to leave, but I am no demon,” came the reply. “I am your God. Please take off your clothes.” I withdrew to a corner and with not just great reluctance but such fear that I was literally trembling, I slowly removed some of my clothes. “You are beautiful,” God said. It took something like three hours of coaxing and God pronouncing that I was beautiful before I was finally completely unclothed and looking in a mirror. I had been so effective in shunning my body for so many years that I was astonished to discover that I had pubic hair. The next time God asked me to take off my clothes, it was easier. I guess it only took me about two and a half hours that time! The Lord kept it up until now, even though in public I am extremely modest, I feel so uninhibited that I frequently lie unclothed in the privacy of my bedroom. It isn’t sexual to me, nor to God, who assured me years ago that he, the creator of sex, was himself asexual. Being unclothed makes me feel free, which is amazing, given the intense shame I felt in my earlier years. I find it so soothing that when I am stressed I often close my door and remove my clothes just to relax. In fact, I often pray unclothed. I can understand how some people might think that disrespectful to my Lord, but the God before whom all things are naked and exposed (Hebrews 4:13) has assured me that he is quite happy with it and loves me feeling comfortable about my naked body. It is in public that I honor him by dressing modestly. I am not yet married but I know that God has taught me how natural and beautiful it is to share my God-given body with the man he gives me. I will delight in showing him everything. In fact, I look forward to it as my final triumph and my divinely-ordained confirmation that my God-given body is highly desirable. I will have a life-partner who adores my body and prefers it to every female form in the world. How do I know that? Because it is my right. God will give me a godly man committed to mentally and visually, as well as physically, forsake all others and delight exclusively in my body. This is not just a romantic ideal. On this net-burst.com website are pages explaining why Christians should act this way toward their marriage partner, and I refuse to lower myself by becoming one with anyone not committed to that degree of marital faithfulness. The rest of the world might regard my body as ordinary, but both my husband and I will regard removing my clothes as unveiling a masterpiece. The most exquisite clothes would be nothing but rags concealing true beauty. When naked with my husband I will feel more beautiful and adorned than if decked out with the most stunning, jewel-encrusted gown. And I will be equally infatuated with the breath-taking beauty of his masculine body. As frustratingly impossible as you would find trying to explain the joys of color to someone born blind, so it is beyond me to convey to the average victim of sex abuse the mystical beauty of marital relations and to explain why it is not only foolish for anyone unable to appreciate sex to marry, but cruel to one’s partner. The whole point of marital relations is shared delight. You might think you are heroically meeting your partner’s sexual needs, but without your enjoyment, not only are you missing out, it is as hollow to a loving partner as trying to share your heart in a conversation with someone who does not understand your language. There is no need to be disturbed by this, however. If you let it motivate you to seek healing, wondrous things will result. Let your imagination run wild. Your child has been kidnapped. To raise money for the ransom you are forced to pawn your wedding ring. afterward, a benefactor generously gives you enough money to redeem your ring. Now you can regain your beautiful ring or you can leave it at the pawnbroker’s, either because you decide your marriage is not worth it or you feel so riddled with guilt over pawning the ring that you do not even want to face the matter. This is not mere fantasy. If you have suffered sexual abuse, something very close to this has actually happened. You have been brutally robbed of something very precious to your marriage. Quite likely, you have little conception of the value of this marital gift because it was taken from you before you had the chance to enjoy it and appreciate its true worth. Through his painful death, Jesus paid for your salvation, but whether you avail yourself of the benefits is up to you. Among the benefits that Jesus has paid such a mind boggling price for is not only the full restoration of your purity but also for you to enjoy God’s precious gift of marital physical pleasure and fulfillment. God himself proudly and lovingly created your sexuality, and although it was viciously taken from you in a way that broke not just his laws but his heart, Jesus has provided you with all that you need to redeem this unique and priceless gift, just like being given the money to redeem your wedding ring from a pawnbroker. It is up to you whether you choose to honor your Creator and Redeemer by redeeming his gift or whether you spurn the offer. My friend refuses to let her former abuser rob her of the tiniest thing. She is determined to get back everything he stole with interest . She demands not only what she would have had if he had not abused her, but much more besides. And this is her Christ-bought right. We find the divine principle in black and white in the Old Testament. The penalty for stealing was not just that the thief return what he stole, he had to pay back to the victim significantly more than what he stole. Proverbs 6:3, for example, states that when a thief is caught, he must restore what he took, sevenfold . If you have been sexually abused, more than just a human was involved. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood . . .” (Ephesians 6:12). Behind the attack were evil spiritual forces with a specific goal: to ruin you sexually. What if, instead of them succeeding, you ended up seven times more blessed sexually than if they had not attacked you? What a triumph that would be! What a victory to savor! All of heaven would applaud. And what happiness would be yours and your marriage partner’s! This is your Christ-bought destiny. If you want it. You could enjoy it all or you could choose to let evil triumph, lessen your marriage and waste some of the restoration Christ paid such an exorbitant price for you to enjoy. When you were attacked, your power of choice was ruthlessly taken from you. Your loving Lord will not do that. He lets you choose the magnitude of your healing. Because she has fully expressed to God her most intimate and scary secrets and feelings, trusting him with her heart, Christine has experienced such healing that there is little anger left in her. The little that remains, however, she uses very cleverly. Christine refuses to waste her anger by directing it at herself, her innocent husband, or even her abuser. Instead, she directs it at the evil forces that drove her abuser and would likewise like to enslave and pollute her. She refuses to let evil rob her of the pleasure, purity, and sweetness of spirit that are her spiritual birthright. She will not rest until she has extracted sevenfold compensation by enjoying heights of purity, fulfillment and freedom from inhibition that are way above average. She will settle for nothing less than her past pain being utterly drowned in a sea of sheer joy, fulfillment and God-glorifying, Christ-bought pleasure to an extent that would make others envious, if only they knew. It is tragically common for abuse survivors to turn to such things as porn, masturbation, impure fantasies or sex outside of marriage to try to dull their pain. The relief this provides is like a drug that not only enslaves, belittles and corrupts but is frustratingly fleeting and keeps producing a bitter downer. It promises comfort but ends up delivering more pain than ever. It is dangerously addictive, inflamed still more by its victims not connecting the illicit act with the awful feelings that eventually follow, like an alcoholic not thinking of the hang-over and degradation when craving a drink. Moreover, to indulge in sexual feelings that do not focus on loving one’s marriage partner is to further damage and pervert one’s God-given sexuality and so let evil win. Each instance hardens the link in the core of one’s being between sexual feelings and something totally contrary to God’s plan for sex, such as violence, pain, revulsion, selfishness, or someone other than one’s God-given marriage partner. It turns sex into something ugly. Like vandalizing a priceless work of art, it might not be intended as a brutal act of defiance against the Creator of the masterpiece, but it has that effect. I understand abuse survivors doing this. They are almost out of their minds with pain and they suppose that their sexuality has already been ruined. But this is underrating the power of Almighty God to restore. Nevertheless, just as every additional act of defacing a work of art grieves the artist and is yet another setback, making restoration a longer, more painstaking process, so it is with every time one perverts sex. But Christine has seen through the lie. To break any addiction is difficult but it is a huge leap in dignity, liberty and restoration of one’s sexuality (a core aspect of our personhood) and innocence. In Egypt, Joseph could triumphantly declare to his relatives who had treated him cruelly, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). The ultimate foiling of the evil one’s plans is to let Christ achieve in you the exact opposite of what Satan attempted by inspiring your sexual abuse. Instead of it ruining your sexuality or harming your marriage, it can end up motivating you to obtain from God victories and fulfillment that average people never tap into. If all of Christine’s personality were thought of as a country, then, through no fault of her own, huge tracts of it – especially areas of her sexuality – had been overrun by the enemy. The devil and his slimy thugs had the audacity to claim them as their own and to rule in those areas of her life, not by forcing her to sin, but by controlling her sexual response, such as causing her to recoil from something she would otherwise enjoy immensely. She could act defeated and let these filthy invaders get away with this, but to do so would be foolish – since there is no need to suffer such humiliation – and it would be dishonoring to the Love of her life, the Lord Jesus, who on the cross at horrific cost made total victory her rightful spiritual inheritance. There is more to letting the devil win than engaging in blatant sin. Since at the cost of his life the Son of God purchased our freedom, to remain in bondage, letting evil rule over us by limiting our sexuality and dictating our sexual response to certain stimuli, would be to insult the one who paid so dearly for us to be free from satanic control. The Promised Land was divinely given to the Israelites but to possess and retain it took faith, courage and effort. There is a vast difference between what Christ’s victory has made possible for us, and what we allow to become practical reality in our lives. Through Christ’s precious victory, it is our divine right for us to rule, under God, over our sexuality. Nevertheless, we can choose to keep caving in to fear and satanic bluff, and humiliate ourselves and our Savior by surrendering our rightful inheritance to Christ’s enemy. Even before she married, Christine relished the thought of reclaiming her sexuality through marriage. It was as though entire rooms in her personhood had been vandalized. She could leave them that way and lose access to them, being too ashamed even to enter those areas, or at the appropriate time she could invite her God-given husband into them and let him tenderly repair, redecorate and beautify them; lovingly transforming dark, dank, defaced areas of her life into places of light and joy. She could choose to exalt her hateful abuser over her loving husband. For example, she could hide her body, choosing to believe her abuser’s lies when he implied she was ugly, or she could choose to believe her husband when he says she is beautiful. Her automatic response is to believe her abuser because for much of her life she had accepted his lies as gospel truth, but it truly is a choice – an act of will. At first, it takes enormous effort. Like any habit, the habit of letting lies repeat in her head for years had grown so powerful that to change her thinking is like trying to stop a driverless car that is slowly rolling toward her and then push it in the opposite direction. Once the momentum is gained in the right direction, however, it gets increasingly easy. Instead of letting something remain a trigger for a bad memory, Christine wants it superceded by good memories. Her abuser did things to her that were utterly inappropriate outside the sanctity of marriage, let alone to a little girl. Nevertheless, mature couples can find such things enriching and warmly beautiful when done in loving tenderness within the security of a lifelong marital commitment. By his actions, her abuser had the effect of programming her to react with fear, revulsion and pain to anything remotely like what occurred in her abuse. She refuses to let her abuser get away with that and to have it interfere with her enjoyment of intimacy with the loving husband the Lord has given her. She is determined to keep moving slowly but progressively to the point in her marital experience where such actions are strongly associated with warmth, love, security and bliss. By this process she will eventually reprogram her reaction so that what used to be a trigger for unpleasant feelings becomes a trigger for physically and emotionally beautiful feelings. The following is Christine’s prayer for a married friend who is recovering from sexual abuse. Dear Lord, I thank you for your gift that we call sex, and yet the very word can make us shudder. How it must sadden you that the very expression of selfless love that you intended to be pure and uplifting and empowering for both partners is so often perverted into something crude and shameful and degrading. You designed it to be the joyous bond between a man and wife that makes them one. I thank you that the pleasure you lovingly planned for them has not only emotional benefits but even health benefits. And I praise you for anointing a spiritual side of sex to be used by each partner to minister to the deepest parts of the other. I ask for your healing touch upon my dear friend who has been robbed of the joy and fulfillment that you long for her to have. No perverted act can compare with the real and beautiful sex life you have ordained for her. My friend needs your healing, and her husband needs the ministry that no one in the entire universe can give him, but her. She is called to be the only one and he is called to be her only one. You desire to delight this couple. Together in you they can have a union that truly blesses you. Give my friend a hunger to know your desires concerning marital pleasure, because as you teach her the beauty of your ways, she will heal. Give her a longing to use this sacred gift to minister to her husband so that he, too, may find your healing. Draw her and her husband together with a stronger bond and greater fulfillment than either has ever dreamed of. Among the tragedies that sexual abuse typically brings is that something innocent and beautiful becomes so associated with past trauma that anything remotely like that innocent thing triggers terror, revulsion or some other unpleasant reaction. The instant you received Christ’s salvation, your pristine innocence was established spiritually. Now Jesus longs to take you on a healing journey by progressively restoring your innocence psychologically, so that in your mind and instinctive reactions you are like someone who had never been hurt. Jesus is no abuser. Despite his omnipotence he will not abuse his power by forcing this healing upon you. He humbly seeks your permission. If you have suffered past sexual abuse it is not enough to focus on improving present and future sexual experiences. To become sexually normal now, healing from past trauma is essential. Most of us want to ignore the past and “get on with life,” but that is like building higher while ignoring structural damage in the foundation. If you were abused as a young child, you need to read Powerful Answers for People Traumatized as Children and prayerfully assess whether it applies to you. Many people with this specific problem refuse to admit it to themselves but until the matter it is fully addressed, their present-day sexuality will remain crippled. Other essential healing issues are covered in Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors .

“I had always thought it was my fault!” Dr Loretta Haroian ( Child Sexual Development by Loretta Haroian, Ph.D Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 3, Feb. 1, 2000) Haroian is cited solely because of factual information, not as an endorsement of her article nor of her views.) details the characteristics of sexual development in normal children. Here are some examples: At age one, “Girls laugh when urinating and both genders . . . enjoy a bath with older siblings, and they resist being dressed. They like to undress themselves and run naked, especially out of doors, and if left alone, divest themselves of all clothing except their T-shirt, which is beyond their capability. They play alone on waking, and genital play is common . . .” Two year olds “ . . . love to be in the bathroom with other family members. They still like to be naked; they love to romp, flee and pursue, . . . to taste, touch and rub.” “In the later half of the third year, the child begins to feel great tension and expresses it through many compulsive patterns, such as . . . thumb sucking, nose picking, masturbation,  . . . “Three-and-a-half shifts rapidly between extreme shyness and exhibitionism, all in the quest of positive attention.  . . . The intense need for attention, preoccupation with bodily functions, interest and curiosity about reproduction and increased ability to communicate verbally with adults can culminate in a pseudo-mature seductive posture, especially in female threes . . . It is quite common at a party of adults to see the 3-year-old daughter of the host comfortably curled up in the lap or laps of a succession of male guests capturing their attention with her interpersonal magnetism. “She may even request that her ‘new friend’ put her to bed and may hold thoughts of him and make reference to him for days or weeks after the party. This behavioral pattern is not exclusive to girls, but is somewhat more pronounced, is better tolerated in terms of gender role stereotypes and receives positive reinforcement from the involved adults. . . . “The potential for sexual stimulation in this situation is obvious, and available data confirms the incidence of pedophilic genital fondling at this age.  . . . The sex histories of many adult men and women contain such experiences that were not traumatic or that caused little concern until the sexual activity escalated beyond looking and fondling or until the situation was discovered and responded to negatively by other adults.” Of children at the age of ten, she writes, “Girls at this age are often in love with a considerably older boy or adult male. . . . Most children feel that same-sex experimentation is normal and age appropriate, but that heterosexual coupling should be reserved for adulthood and reproduction.” The above makes it obvious that children act and react in ways that if adults did it, normal adult observers might find it seductive. Abnormal adults who are sexually drawn to children and lack self-control, however, will find the behavior of normal children seductive. Children are oblivious to this unless it is later drawn to their attention, in which case they can be make to feel very guilty about their normal, age-appropriate behavior. As they grow older, they can forget what young children are like and apply adult standards to judging their past behavior. Not realizing that they had been simply acting and responding like normal children, they can wrongly condemn their former age-appropriate actions and feelings as being despicable or perverted. As a result they are likely to mistakenly blame themselves for child molesters criminally taking advantage of their innocence. The Dilemma of Feeling Pleasure When Abused So powerful is sex that it is almost inevitable that any sexual encounter – no matter how despised and unwanted – will contain elements of pleasure and deep bonding. In an unwanted encounter, these are highly obnoxious consequences of sex but they are such an integral part of sex that they are almost impossible to completely remove from forced sex. This fact is so rarely understood that sex crime victims usually end up loathing themselves or at least being confused and deeply disturbed over what is just a normal reaction to unwanted sex. Vast numbers of abuse survivors know from bitter experience that pleasure inflicted by a sexual predator can be more damaging than severe physical pain. Some survivors, however, have experiences so different that they find this incomprehensible or even offensive. Experiences differ for the simple reason that abusers differ in their techniques. If predators are sufficiently skilled, the pleasure they inflict will be sexual. Otherwise – in the case of pedophiles – the pleasure their victims feel will be the gifts they bribe children with or the attention they give love-starved children. Rapists can even force unwilling adult victims to experience sexual pleasure. This very pleasure inflicts horrific, but quite unnecessary, pangs of guilt. A degree of pleasure or bonding in no way justifies the offender, nor in any way hints that the victim might be perverted or immoral. The memory of pleasure suffered (yes, “suffered” is the right word) during abuse might currently be suppressed but it could surface at any time. So it is good to prepare oneself by learning about this rarely understood consequence of unwanted sex. For a far more powerful way to establish one’s innocence, see A Life Transformed. (This is part of a larger webpage called “ Cure for Self-Hate” but deserves a much wider audience than that title suggests.) More about how pleasure need not affect innocence. When Being an Incest Victim Does Not Feel Real or Bad

Healing the Pain of the False Guilt Of Suffering Pleasant Sensations While Being Sexually Abused SERIOUS WARNING: You could feel so relieved after reading some of this webpage that you stop before discovering the end part that is infinitely more powerful, significant and life-changing. If you read nothing else, please read the last section, titled “Infinitely Better Proof of Innocence.” Suppose someone who hates being tickled is pinned down and mercilessly tickled over and over against her will. No matter how much she detested the ordeal, she would involuntarily laugh. It would be gross ignorance about the normal human reaction to tickling to presume that her uncontrollable laughter indicates that deep down she wanted it. Likewise, when one’s body involuntarily sends pleasure signals to the brain in response to sexual molestation, it says nothing about one’s morality or attitude toward the offense. Everyone knows that a molester might be a violent, terrifying beast of a man. What is difficult for most of us to grasp, however, is that those who sexually interfere with little children range from this extreme through to trusted care-givers and – as we will discover below – sometimes even loving mothers. A molester might be such a crazed monster as to leave every victim highly traumatized. There are others, however, who are so gentle, gradual, comforting and trusted that any normal infant could not help but regard the sexual interference as being as natural and as nice as breast-feeding. A child’s reaction depends on the molester’s method, not the victim’s morality. And pleasurable feelings are  not limited to children . You will find below a link to the tragic story of an adult traumatized by the fact that she could not help but experience orgasm while being gang raped. Despite having been married for years, this was her first orgasm ever. If one were forcibly injected with heroin and the result were nothing but pain, terror and repulsive feelings, it would be a horrific experience but it would end up far less torturous than if the result were pleasurable. Ironically, a “bad” trip is much more preferable than a “good” one, because “good” trips lead to the horror of addiction. Pleasure drives victims to perpetuate the torment and to reel in the agony of being at war with themselves, with one part of them irresistibly drawn to the drug and every other part of them repulsed by it. Just as no one can control whether drugs produce a “good” trip or a “bad” trip, so sexual assault victims have no control over how much pleasure is inflicted upon them. But as with heroin, the more pleasure the assault produces, the greater the long term torment for the hapless victim. This is an agonizingly difficult subject. How can I mention pleasure without readers wrongly supposing I am referring to something desirable? How can I explain that the presence of pleasure only magnifies the offense? A rapist or child molester is so perverted that almost everything that person does turns upside down normal human reactions. My longing is to condemn the actions of predators while ensuring that the victims feel nothing but comfort. If I don’t achieve this, please let me know. I regularly find abuse survivors who, in response to their suffering, end up addicted to masturbation or promiscuity or to hating certain people (especially their abuser). Their pain touches me, even if their actions are sometimes less than commendable. My heart breaks when they find themselves trapped in destructive behavior that they hate. I long to assist and support all such people in whatever way I possibly can. Tragically, yet another undesirable response to sex abuse is for some former victims to end up sexually interfering with others, and they can end up as addicted to it as others become addicted to masturbation or to hating their abuser, or to being in love with someone who will end up harming them. It would be hypocritical of me to claim that my heart breaks for every person who has suffered sex abuse if that did not include those who in response to their own criminal violation have ended up violating others. I strongly object to victims responding to their own pain by abusing others – and they should certainly be brought to justice – and yet I cannot help but feel compassion over the fact that they have not yet been healed from their own suffering. So even with offenders, it is their actions that I condemn, not the entire person. Because predators differ in their methods, their victims’ experiences differ. So in an attempt to help all readers, only parts of this webpage will apply to any one person. Please disregard those parts that do not gel with your experience. Victims of sexual crime often suffer horrific, but quite unnecessary pangs of guilt over being forced to experience pleasure. Having a nice feeling in the midst of rape or molestation is usually no more than a bodily reaction like bleeding. It in no way suggests the person is immoral or subconsciously wants to be abused. And any skilled seducer of children will have much about him or her that normal children are drawn to. Suppose someone buys me an ice cream and while I am eating it, he picks my pocket and steals my credit card. By the time I realize what has happened I find myself in a desperate predicament, with my bank account stripped. When I report this crime to the police, I would have every right to feel grossly insulted if asked if the ice cream tasted nice, as if that had anything to do with the magnitude of my loss! No matter how distorted sex becomes, and no matter how horrific the overall effect, it is not easy to remove every pleasurable sensation from it. After all, sex is divinely designed to be exceedingly pleasurable, and hence highly addictive. It is intended to be so addictive that it binds a husband and wife together for life. We readily acknowledge how rare it is for anyone to succeed in blocking all pain from one’s consciousness so that a person feels no pain when physically assaulted. And we realize that whether or not someone achieves this feat has nothing to do with morality. So why should we apply different expectations when it comes to blocking pleasure signals being sent to the brain? Both pleasure and pain signals are morally neutral nerve impulses. Morality is about choice; not about uncontrollable bodily sensations. If drugs brought no pleasure, the horror of drug addiction would not exist. The pleasure of a drug-induced high that drug pushers give their victims does not justify their actions; it is what makes their actions despicable. Likewise, any pleasure rapists and child molesters give their victims in no way justifies their actions. It merely increases the harm they inflict and is further proof of their depravity. Neither does the existence of pleasure hint that the victim might be perverted or immoral. Few people who have not suffered it, can understand the dynamics of non-traumatic sexual molestation. Some of those blissfully ignorant of this horror, however, can understand how someone can innocently discover self-stimulation and eventually become strongly addicted, even after developing pangs of conscience over the habit. To these people I say, imagine the consequences for someone whose introduction to sexual pleasure comes not through self-stimulation but through someone else stimulating him/her. A girl about thirteen years old in a class for the intellectually handicapped revealed the dilemma many face. She told her teacher, “My mother said it is not nice to let someone touch you down there, but she doesn’t know how nice it is!” The myth most people would like to believe is that babies enter the world with no more sexual feeling than a china doll and remain that way until puberty. Many parents hope against hope that ignorance keeps children innocent. In reality, ignorance only makes children more vulnerable to predators who deliberately create – and then exploit – false guilt over their victims having normal feelings. Seldom do victims realize that the only ones who should feel abnormal or perverted are the predators. Everyone needs to realize that from a very young age, normal children have genitals that send pleasure signals to the brain when stimulated in certain ways. Babies just a few months old are capable of orgasms. We must not confuse biology with morality. Literally millions of people have suffered incalculable damage because of the common failure to understand the dynamics of sexual abuse. It was not so long ago when, in their ignorance, most parents used to presume they were adequately protecting their children against sexual predators by warning them only against contact with strangers. The average person had no idea that most sexual abuse of children comes from trusted family members or family friends or other children. Tragically, countless thousands of children have innocently concluded, “This is clearly not one of the terrifying strangers I was warned against, so what this person is doing to me must be acceptable.” An equally dangerous misconception that is even more prevalent is that people have ignorantly assumed that child molestation always inflicts pain or suffering. As a consequence of this grave mistake, children have not been adequately warned and protected. Moreover, this common presumption has left most of the vast numbers of boys who have been indecently assaulted with not even the awareness that what they have suffered is sexual abuse. Even when they grow into adults the confusion usually remains. They were subjected to little discomfort until they were well and truly trapped into thinking it was all their fault. The gross sexual abuse they suffered does not conform to the average person’s uninformed presumptions about sexual abuse. This tragic situation is like what would happen if everyone assumed that to be robbed involves being bashed on the head. This misconception would mean that, no matter how much was stolen, if you are not bashed on the head no one believes you have suffered loss. And you yourself would barely be aware that what you have suffered is criminal. You would think you have no option but to blame yourself for being robbed and suffer in silence. For purely physiological reasons it takes less skill to seduce boys. For example, a mother confided that despite wanting it never to happen, when she bathed and dried her three little boys, each of them would occasionally show signs of sexual arousal. Despite her utmost efforts, she found it impossible to consistently avoid this unwanted consequence of her motherly duties. Alarmed at her inability to consistently avoid this unwanted consequence of normal mothering, this woman heaved a sigh of relief whenever one of them became old enough to bathe himself. So taboo is this subject, that I have no idea how common this mother’s experience is. As she herself said, “There is no way I would have brought that topic up with another mother.” Whether she was a little over-zealous with cleanliness, I don’t know. She certainly felt she was doing the minimum required of her. Regardless of these issues, for it to happen completely unintentionally with three different boys illustrates how easily it would happen if done deliberately by anyone who has wormed his way into a little boy’s trust. I know a female school teacher who once worked in a third world setting in which it was school policy to shower little children before lessons began. Her experience seems to have been much the same as this mother’s but at the time she was too naïve to realize what was happening. Forgive me for raising distasteful matters, but ignorance causes untold suffering. A few years back, I was horrified to discover an example of how mothers seem able to get away with almost anything in the area of sexual molestation of their boys. A respected women’s magazine, not given to emphasizing sex, printed a letter from a woman explaining how it had seemed her little boy would need circumcision for medical reasons. She claimed to have avoided this by regularly masturbating the boy until he was old enough “to do it himself.” This was published without comment, thus implying approval of her molesting this little boy. There are cultures where it is considered good parenting to masturbate one’s little children and especially for women to masturbate their infant sons. Until recently, even experts had no idea that almost as many boys are sexually abused as girls. (In fact, I wonder if it will eventually be uncovered that when one includes all sources of molestation, more boys than girls are sexually abused.) The grave failure to even detect the problem arose because survey questions were determined on the dangerously false assumption that children feel uncomfortable about sexual seduction. Writes a convicted pedophile who admits to having over seventy victims: In general, I found that more children were triggered by sexual curiosity than by the need for affection. Few were sexually experienced prior to their first contact with me. . . Adults weave romantic notions about children’s innocence, conveniently forgetting their own curiosity and sexual excitement in childhood. It suits parents’ own needs to imagine that children are deaf, blind and totally insensitive to the highly sexual environments in which they live. Adult society refuses to recognize the fact that children do not necessarily view genital touching as bad, unpleasant or unsafe . . . and so children enjoy it. Until that simple fact is recognized and incorporated into child protection programs, children will remain vulnerable to people like me. (Source: Dr. Freda Briggs (Editor): From Victim to Offender: How child sexual abuse victims become offenders Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, Australia, 1995, page 128-129) Other pedophiles, drawing upon their horrifyingly vast experience, have said similar things. I must, however, clarify his comment on innocence. Little children are innocent in the sense that they have no idea that certain types of touching are wrong. Innocence, however, has nothing to do with an abnormal inability to feel sexual pleasure. Since pedophiles usually specialize in entrapment, they are forced to bait their trap with things most children find pleasurable. So it is normal for child molesters to give their victims pleasure. The pleasure often includes gifts they bribe children with or the attention they give love-starved children. If pedophiles are sufficiently skilled at seduction, there will also be a degree of sexual pleasure their victims suffer (yes, I believe “suffer” is a most appropriate word in this context). Rapists can even force adult victims to experience pleasure and this very pleasure inflicts enormous suffering and emotional damage. We can hate the context in which pleasure occurs and we can hate the consequences, but it is humanly impossible not to like pleasure. And yet victims feel they should have done the impossible and somehow hated the pleasure that was inflicted on them or suppose that by some superhuman miracle they should have broken into abnormality and stopped themselves from feeling pleasure. When Starving, Even Rotten Apples Are Irresistible Children – in fact, all of us – have a deep need to be loved and to feel special in someone’s eyes. So intense is this craving that if we are cruelly starved of it we could become so desperate as to end up emotionally entangled with whoever seems to offer the best substitute we can scrounge, even if we recognize the substitute as despicable. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for that inadequate substitute to be a sexual predator. Consequently, emotional bondage to an abuser – often a devastating mix of love and hate for the abuser – is not uncommon. A woman, who as a child was molested by her father, loathed her sexual abuse so much that she was sometimes overwhelmed by raging hate for him. Although her father repeatedly molested her, he did not actually penetrate her, whereas he penetrated her sister. Anyone ignorant of the powerful, conflicting emotions that incest triggers would be staggered to learn that not being penetrated had a strongly negative effect on her, causing her to feel rejected by the man she hated. This feeling of rejection drove her to despise herself even more. Her deprivation of parental love sent her need for genuine love exploding until she ended up like a starving person almost insanely desperate for anything with the remotest possibility of satisfying her gnawing craving. This, however, was just the wounded, love-starved part of her screaming in agony. The rest of her would have simply found penetration reason to hate him even more. So what a conflict this dear person suffered! She found herself desperately craving something she loathed, from a man she hated. Struggling to survive with this full-scale war within her personality would be devastatingly difficult but it was much worse than so far described. There was yet another part of her at war with not just one but both of the other parts. We all have a moral side and that part of her was certain that both incest and venomously hating anyone was shamefully wrong. The highly moral part of her hated herself, both for wishing she had been penetrated and for hating her father. Tragically, among abuse survivors, there is nothing unusual about this woman’s almost intolerable turmoil. Crippling emotional conflict is the inevitable consequence of a father perverting the most powerful forces within humans by doing what no father should ever do. Another Devastating Source of Emotional Conflict We earlier noted that it is the very nature of sex to be so pleasurable as to be highly addictive. The tragic implication is that when one’s introduction to sex is less than wholesome, there is a strong possibility of becoming addicted to some form of sex that is destructive. This can manifest itself in many ways. For example, it is quite common for abuse survivors to become not just addicted to masturbation but to masturbation combined with fantasies about being raped or molested. They end up perpetuating their own abuse by deliberately combining sexual pleasure with fantasies of being abused. These destructive fantasies persist despite them loathing the sexual abuse they suffered. Others become addicted to promiscuity and/or seek out people who end up sexually abusing them. Still others end up driven by a compulsion to sexually abuse other people. Then there are those who become so addicted to hate that they cannot stop hating their abuser, even though that person might have died years ago. In sexual abuse, the victim’s suffering is often much more severe than the abuser actually wants the victim to suffer. It is sobering to realize that victims can fill with self-righteousness and yet be so driven by hate for their abusers that they end up with a greater desire to see someone (their abuser) suffer than their abuser ever wanted them to suffer. Most who feel this way, however, have a part of them that does not want to hate. Many hate themselves for being addicted to hating their abuser. No matter what the addiction, almost every addict is in a frustrating state of conflict. Part of the addict passionately loves what he is addicted to and part of him detests it. The only way to resolve the conflict of a love-hate affair with over-eating, tobacco, or a sexually-related addiction is to break that addiction. That, of course, is a most painful and difficult thing but it is the only road to peace and freedom. Suppose a little child with no concept of the danger or morality of drugs is introduced to hard drugs and given a regular supply. By the time the child learns that hard drugs are both unwise and morally wrong, he or she is in the viselike grip of addiction. Given the circumstances, the child is not responsible for becoming an addict. Nevertheless, addicts eventually reach the age of accountability and then assume the responsibility for whether they remain addicts. But what a devastating battle they must face to break free! My heart goes out to all who have suffered so greatly that they are now addicted to hating someone or to unwholesome sex. Nevertheless, as Jesus hung naked on the cross, the Innocent suffered the ultimate violation of his person to ensure each of us can break free. The Story So Far There is just one reason why normal, healthy little children will not enjoy sexual interference so much that they want more. The sole reason is that their molester was not good at seduction. If the sexual predator is the same gender, it in no way implies the child is gay; it simply means he or she has a body that responds normally to sexual stimulation, just like a normal child cannot help liking the taste of chocolate, even if it were laced with tasteless poison. Even by itself, sex is so addictive that it needs to be treated like nitroglycerine. Any ignorance typical of children, or any loss of choice (such as implied threats or use of force), or the slightest craving for love or attention adds still more danger. The tragedy is that sexual crime victims of all ages and both genders often misunderstand their normal, bodily reaction or emotional needs and wrongly conclude that they are perverted. Their completely normal response to a highly abnormal predicament leads them to mistakenly conclude that they are wicked and beyond hope of ever being sexually normal. As would be expected of anyone who feels so doomed, they slide into destructive behavior until they discover the liberating truth. In reality, the only abnormal thing was the offender’s action, not the victim’s reaction. High morality does not cause sin to lose its pleasure; it just causes a person to refuse the pleasure if such a choice is possible (there is no choice in rape) and if that person has gained the understanding that certain behavior is wrong.   I have endeavored to show that for you to think of yourself as evil or perverse is almost certainly no more than a tragic misunderstanding of what you suffered and an underestimation of how cunning the real offender was. Should you still be unconvinced, however, you still have all the hope in the world. Ultimately, it would not be the end of the road if survivors of regrettable sexual encounters were perverse. No one who wants it is beyond the transforming power of God. The fact is that no matter what, through God you can be restored to holy purity and achieve enormous good. To discover how this is possible, see The Perfect Partner. Infinitely Better Proof of Innocence I have provided what I suppose to be the most powerful possible presentation of the truth that the presence of pleasure need not detract from a person’s innocence. For me to leave your sense of innocence dependent upon this flimsy approach to such a vital issue, however, would be grossly negligent of me. To cling to the fact you were just a child or were forced, or whatever, is like shivering in the pouring rain, huddling under an old, leaky umbrella that threatens to rip to shreds in the next gust of wind, when you could immediately trade that umbrella for the warmth and luxury of a magnificent palace. That’s the magnitude of what is available to you. “No one is perfect,” we glibly say. It is equally true that no one on this planet is innocent – outside of God. But the staggering truth is that no one has to remain outside of God. When God’s Son became the only truly innocent human and swapped places with us on the cross, taking upon himself the full punishment for every sin any human has ever committed, something of stupendous significance occurred. Through Jesus we can connect with the infinitely Holy God and instantly gain the innocence and moral perfection of God himself. Then we can truly look ourselves in the mirror and know that we are not merely no worse than most other respectable sinners, but we are totally innocent, crystal pure, outshining any virgin who is outside of Christ. I beg you to explore this in depth because it is the most liberating, healing and life-transforming truth in the universe. To discover this empowering truth of eternal significance, please read A Life Transformed . (Part of a larger webpage called “ Cure for Self-Hate ” but deserves a much wider audience than that title suggests.)

The Problem of Pain and Evil Christian Insights into Martyrdom and Persecution Why do the innocent suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people?Accidents, tragedies, environmental disasters, crime, war, sickness, famine . . . Part 2: Best understood after reading  Part 1 This takes the form of a conversation with Jesus In everything desirable, Lord Jesus, no one comes anywhere near you. No coach has ever gloried in his athlete’s success, no father has longed to lavish his children with gifts, no lover has delighted in his beloved’s pleasure, like you long to thrill and fulfill your loved ones with endless joys. I want to participate in your miracles, reveling in your supernatural power. Since delighting in the gift, honors the giver – and no one deserves thanks and honor like you – I want to thrill with inexpressible joy over your every gift. Surely this is a vital part of loving you and letting you have your beautiful way with me. And yet is that all there is to life? It sometimes feels as if there is a missing element. For years I’ve had the occasional precious moment of intimacy with you in which I’ve felt a peculiar warmth about the possibility of suffering for you. This feeling bewilders me. I’m frustratingly ordinary. I can only stare wide-eyed at those who talk of visions and hearing regularly from you. I long to know you and love you like you deserve, instead of the vague way that I currently do. Relative to what I crave, it’s as if I see you through the darkest welding goggles, feel you through a paper bag, and hear you through insulation bats in a disco. I’ve grown used to you dropping thoughts into my mind that rocket my understanding heavenwards with thrilling new insights. But this time, by giving me this peculiarly positive feeling toward suffering, you seem to have rather sneakily bypassed my tiny brain by giving me wondrous feelings that have left me mystified. (How delightfully unpredictable you are! Your beautiful character is so reassuringly constant, but your methods are too wonderful for me; bubbling with such superior intelligence that often they take me by surprise.) Facts, not feelings, usually move me. But as my Lord you have every right to burst my emotional straitjacket and intellectual pride. This is just what seems to happen on these occasions. I bless you for feelings apparently from you that outpace my thinking. These positive feelings toward hardship are delightful but they seem so otherworldly and so out of touch with my normal human reaction to hardship that I feel the need to dissect and analyze the feelings to try to come to grips with them rationally. Among many Christians I admire, using one’s mind gets bad press. I would be labeled ‘unspiritual’ the moment they hear the word ‘analyze’. Is this your view? Certainly, it would be foolishly wrong to reject anything just because I can’t make sense of it. Yet you made us intelligent beings with an inherent need to process events mentally. Good things can get horribly twisted, but everything about the way you originally made us is good. So I ask you to both illuminate me and to bring my thinking into submission to you. I rejoice in your right to utterly baffle me by acting in your unfathomable genius. I adore you for having none of my limitations. Your intellectual superiority warms my heart, making me wonderfully secure and guaranteeing that I could never be bored with you. And I love the way it settles arguments between us. Life became so much simpler when I discovered that you are always right! When all is revealed I’ll have plenty of regrets about my own decisions, but I’ll celebrate forever the perfection of your decisions. So I joyfully yield to your right to mystify me, and I welcome the opportunity it affords me to grow in faith. Rather than merely be mystified, however, I would love to grasp enough understanding of your wisdom to be able to marvel at it. I know that one day I will see clearly the brilliance of your decisions and then I’ll be in awe. Nevertheless, I crave the joy of admiring as much of your wisdom as I can down here. You yourself said the most important commandment is to love you with every part of our being, and you specifically nominated loving you with our mind as well as our heart (Matthew 22:37). So, Lord, here goes . . . The first thing that sets my mind reeling about viewing suffering favorably is that I have no reason to suppose I’m even as brave as Peter, the Christ-denying disciple whose confidence in his devotion proved unfounded. You know I’m a born coward. Rather than nod in agreement, however, you seem to dismiss my concerns with the retort, ‘You’ve been born  again .’ What a tangle of conflicting emotions that reply sets off within me! Among the hundreds of millions of your adoring children, you must have literally millions who have done more than me to prove their love for you. Yes, I continually embrace emotional pain for your sake. For nearly all my adult life I have steadfastly refused to even pray for any legitimate way to reduce the pain, if doing so would reduce your glory. Nevertheless, I’m suddenly ashamed of the pettiness of my ordeal when I consider the excruciating torment of your agony on the cross. My trial is more an unpleasant ache than registering high on the torture scale. Self-pity might keep me feeling like a martyr but I have no right to claim familiarity with severe suffering. With my love for you largely unproved, I am just a bag of wind; an armchair hero. Yet still, spasmodically, positive feelings about suffering come upon me  . . . I worry that I could get things out of balance and disappoint you by missing earthly pleasures you have lovingly planned for me. Similarly, I fear that seeing suffering in a favorable light might get out of hand by weakening me in my fight against evil. What if I go to the extreme of passively submitting to spiritual attacks from the Evil One, instead of rising up in your blood-bought authority and fighting off the attacks? I would be devastated if I fell into the foolishness of not only suffering needless deprivation or attack, but of spoiling your longing to bless me. Yet, despite these concerns, the positive feelings continue to come  . . . My initial, bumbling attempt to analyze what I feel during those holy moments is that I seem to become a little like a rescue worker so desperate to save lives that while the emergency exists, his own safety and comfort mean almost nothing to him. It’s more wonderful than that, however. What comes upon me is more like the feeling of a thrill-seeking adventurer who delights in danger and hardship, because he knows this is what creates both the excitement and the opportunity to be hailed a hero. During labor, a woman might be adamant that never again will she expose herself to the pain of childbirth, and yet later she could find herself longing to have another baby. It’s as if when I am caught up in your presence I undergo a similar, though perhaps less dramatic, shift in perspective toward pain and hardship. In my more somber moments I sometimes wonder why you do not always intervene to prevent Christians from suffering, but when I sense your presence is this special way, I see things differently. I recall a cartoon in which a man of the cloth playing golf hit a hole in one. A little annoyed, he prayed, ‘Lord, please let me do it by myself!’ Except perhaps for games, I want to do everything in partnership with you, never entirely alone. Nevertheless, in almost everything there comes a point where too much divine intervention would spoil things for us. The chance for glory would fizzle if you removed every difficulty. In your loving wisdom, you give your children the perfect mix of challenge and removal of problems. And does the relative ease in my life show me in a bad light? I feel uncomfortable reading what the Bible expects of normal Christians. I don’t fit. By New Testament standards I’m abnormal. Over and over your Word says such things as: 2 Timothy 3:12  In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 1 Peter 4:12  Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. (13) But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 1 Peter 2:20  . . . if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. Matthew 24:9  Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. Luke 6:26  Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets. Romans 8:35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? (36) As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” (37) No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Philippians 1:29  For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him 2 Corinthians 12:10  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Matthew 13:21  But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. 2 Timothy 1:8  . . . join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God And that’s just a fraction of such Scriptures. I see New Testament Christians rejoicing that they were counted worthy to be flogged for you and I wonder if my soft life implies I am unworthy. Are you babying me; treating me like a spiritual weakling who cannot be trusted in the real world – the world that is hostile to you? And that raises another concern. Why do non-Christians in the Western World seem to tolerate us? You said, ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also’ (John 15:20). Does their indifference imply we have misrepresented you? Have we toned down your message until it becomes something your enemies can tolerate? During those times when I feel particularly close to you, I seem so captivated by your magnificence that I’m caught up into hero worship. I find myself longing to be like you. And in the back of my mind is the consciousness that perhaps the most distinctive of all the special things about you is that you turned suffering into a unique opportunity to achieve immense good. You not only preached ‘turn the other cheek,’ you  did  it, and through that affliction you achieved things of incomprehensible worth. I’m embarrassed to even mention my strange, intermittent attraction to imitating you in the way you embraced suffering. A little child pretending to be a brain surgeon would seem to have a better chance. What you accomplished through suffering is both unique and as high above me as the stars. Yet, no matter ridiculous it is, I sometimes can’t stop myself warming to the thought of emulating, in some tiny way, what you achieved through suffering. The rational side of me almost despised my emotions for being so stupid until I recalled that you yourself spoke of taking up one’s cross and following you. Surely that’s talking about suffering that in some way mimics your own suffering. This concept can’t be as offbeat as I had thought. I’ve no idea what Paul was referring to when he wrote, ‘I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions . . .’ (Colossians 1:24). If that were not part of your perfect Word I’d have thought it almost blasphemy to imply that in any sense there is anything less than complete about your suffering for us. How could anything I suffer contribute to the immensity of what you achieve through suffering? Surely I could do no better than a two-year-old delighting in helping his hero – a muscly he-man – lift weights. Nevertheless, during these precious, intimate times you give me, I can’t help thinking how wonderful it would be if you could somehow give me a slice of the action. Since it so greatly affects my thinking on this matter, it’s time I faced up to one of my weaknesses. I have almost concluded that you suffered down here so that we can avoid suffering down here. At first glance, the logic behind this theory is compelling. Moreover, it seems backed by the thrilling reality that you often intervene to deliver your children from sickness, hardship and disaster. I praise you for everyone you have raised up to inspire your people to receive astounding answers to prayer. I delight in the innumerable times you miraculously intervene in people’s lives with physical blessings and I long to see you glorified in this way in a far greater measure than ever before. I have discovered an unsettling thing about truth, however: it is usually complex, and humans often fall into confusion by our tendency to oversimplify. Without even realizing what we are doing, we tend to constrict our expectations of you by building an entire theory around what turns out to be a portion of your truth, rather than your full revelation. What confuses us is that even a mere sliver of your truth is usually exciting, whereas the full truth can initially seem bewildering. We fail to realize that the full truth, when accurately understood, is more wonderful still, because it displays even more of your perfect ways. Tragically, we fall so in love with our theories that we barely notice we have manipulated some of your Word to try to squeeze your revelation into the straightjacket of our presumptions. I shudder at my vulnerability to this tendency. I desperately need to think more like you, Lord, or I’ll keep getting it wrong. You tell us not to be afraid; we are worth more than many sparrows and even the hairs on our head are numbered. And in the same breath you mention that we could be flogged and killed for your sake! (Matthew 10:17-39) I wonder how much I misread in your Word simply because your holy, eternal perspective is so different to mine. Again I make my oft-repeated plea: please alert me to my own blind spots. We are so inspired by the exploits listed in the first half of the  Faith Chapter  – faith-powered deliverances from impossible situations – that our blinkers are firmly in place by the time we reach the second half – faith-powered endurance of horrific situations: Hebrews 11:35  . . . Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. (36) Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. (37) They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – (38) the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (39) These were all commended for their faith . . . Just when it seems obvious where the chapter is heading, it slams into reverse. The apparent contradiction sends me reeling. Clearly, there are two types of faith miracles – miraculous escape and miraculous endurance – and either type can get one into Heaven’s Hall of Fame. The full, biblical truth on any subject seems like a dozen tennis balls, all of which I must hold if I am to really do things your way. I can keep a few of them in my arms but as I try to grasp still more, the ones I had been holding begin to spill out. To hold on to the lot seems impossible. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that holding the lot takes more effort than I have been prepared to make. I am thrilled about the restoration of the truth that you are a miracle-working God who powerfully intervenes in our lives. As we begin to grasp this, however, we lose our grip on the truth that you also miraculously empower us to endure intolerable conditions. Before long, we who pride ourselves on the restoration of certain aspects of truth have let other parts of your truth so completely slip from our grasp that we end up with a different mix, but with no higher portion of the full truth than previous generations. We look down on Christians who do not hold the truths we have picked up, but in reality we have just as desperate a need of the truths we have let slip as they are in need of the truths we hold. The last thing I want is to influence Christians to drop aspects of truth they have already grasped. I simply yearn for each of us to pick up still more of your truth. I wonder what astounding exploits a person could achieve if he or she could hold on to all of your truth at the one time. Oh, how I long to be such a person! I cringe to finally admit to myself that I find it tempting to reduce you to a formula. In my early teens I used to wrestle with the question as to what type of faith you wanted. Was it enough just to believe that you  could  do whatever I was praying for, or did I need to believe you  would  do it? Eventually, Mark 11:24 settled the matter for me: Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. That’s not merely believing that you have the power to do something, it’s believing you will do that specific thing. Ever since discovering this, I have seen tacking ‘if it be your will’ on to the end of my prayers as usually being a cop out. Uncertainty as to whether it is your will to grant a particular petition saps my prayer of the type of faith you tell us to have. It acknowledges your sovereignty but it excuses my unbelief. ‘If it be your will’ creates a loophole and most of faith drains through the hole. It can reduce faith to mere intellectual assent to a creed, rather than the type of faith that you commended in people you met in your earthly ministry. For the most ignoble reason I find myself wanting to build an oversimplified view of your will. If your will is complex, then for genuine, believing prayer I will have to seek your face to determine your mind on each matter. I am so uncomfortable about seeking your will that I want to avoid it whenever I possibly can. Trying to hear from you frustrates me and makes me feel alone because so often you seem silent, or I fill with doubt as to whether it is really you. I want you to be so close, and my difficulty in hearing from you seems to highlight the distance between us. So I am strongly pressured to convince myself that your Word teaches that, except for his only Son, it is never God’s will that his loved ones suffer temporary hardship or pain. Then I often could instantly assume I know what your will is on any given matter. I could convince myself that I am praying correctly, while avoiding the frustration – I could almost say trauma – of seeking your will. I desperately need a breakthrough in this area, but right now I can at least admit to myself my bias when it comes to interpreting your Word. Many Scriptures imply or specifically state that one aspect of your crucifixion is that by suffering you were providing us with an example to follow. In fact, one of these Scriptures, speaks of Christians being  called  to suffer (1 Peter 2:21; 1 Thessalonians 3:3; 1 Peter 4:19). 1 Peter 2:20  . . . 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; . . . 1 Thessalonians 1:6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord ; having received the word in much affliction , with joy of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 10:38 He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me, isn’t worthy of me. Luke 9:23 He said to all, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Hebrews 2:10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many children to glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. John 15:20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. 1 John 3:16  . . . because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. John 15:12-13 This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. Matthew 20:26-28 It shall not be so among you, but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. 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. 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 2:5-9 Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who . . . emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . . becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name; . . . Hebrews 12:2 looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. ( Emphasis mine ) When weighing up your full revelation, I am forced to conclude that you embraced suffering, not so that we could wimp out, but so that we might be inspired to likewise embrace suffering. Of course, you suffered so that we might not suffer in the next life, but with regard to our life down here, you blazed a trail for us to follow. Just as suffering preceded your exaltation, so, through your triumph, our suffering must precede our exaltation. In the words of the great sufferer, Paul, ‘we are heirs . . . of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory,’ (Romans 8:17) and, ‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22). This is fundamental Bible teaching that so easily slips from one’s grasp as we try to hold on to other, equally significant, Bible truths. One of my countless reasons for loving you is locked in that  Romans  quote: ‘share in his sufferings.’ To suffer for you would be an immense honor, but the truth is even more amazing. We do not just suffer  for  you, but  with  you. When you suffered for our sins, Father God was forced to withdraw from you, since that is sin’s most terrifying consequence. You had to bear the wrath of God so that we could enjoy the loving tenderness of God. When  we  suffer, however, not only do you not abandon us like you had to be abandoned, but you bind yourself to us and suffer with us. I’m even more staggered when I consider that, whereas you deserve endless bliss, any torment I could suffer would be less than the eternity in hell I deserve from the moment of my first sin, and yet you count my suffering for righteousness, not as what I deserve, but as reason for you showering me with honor. I laugh as I recall my reaction years ago to you urging us in your Word to rejoice when trials come our way. I used to think you said this merely because you want us to honor you, and because rejoicing gives us a spiritual high that helps us through our problems. How could I have so completely missed the obvious? We should rejoice when trials come, simply because trials are something to rejoice about! If there were an equally beneficial, less painful alternative, then to suffer a trial would be to suffer unnecessary hardship. That would make a trial a tragedy – something to regret, not rejoice in. You urge us to rejoice when trials come, because difficult times are the best thing that could happen to us! And I presume that in your Word you were referring primarily to persecution more severe than most of us in the modern western world have ever known. I likewise used to puzzle over why you let people struggle with besetting sin, even though you have proved over and over that you can instantly deliver anyone from the most powerful addiction, without a person even having to try. Then I discovered the startling truth that even temptation from the Evil One does us good! Taking from me all desire for sin might cause my actions to seem holy, but my heart would be as selfish as ever. I would still be doing whatever I felt like doing, as much as if I were enslaved by sin – it would simply be that I no longer felt like doing what had previously attracted me. I would know nothing about self-denial, even though this teaching was a central theme in your earthly ministry. Resisting sin’s deceitful allure builds a deeper Christlikeness within us than could ever happen if we never found sin tempting. Sin never has a positive side, of course, but fighting sin and discovering the secrets of defeating it, makes us strong, even though at the time it is most unpleasant. So hard, painful times are actually a surprise package of blessings, achieving wondrous things in our lives that nothing else could match. Thank you for making this so obvious in my life that eventually even I could see it. Only then did I re-examine the biblical context and discovered that the spiritual benefits of hard times were always the reason you gave for rejoicing in trials. And again in your Word, you give us the most practical of reasons for leaping for joy when we suffer for our faith. You tell us that if we are persecuted, the enormity of our reward should be our reason for rejoicing.  Luke 6:22-26  Blessed are you when men shall hate you, and when they shall exclude and mock you, and throw out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did the same thing to the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich! For you have received your consolation. Woe to you, you who are full now, for you will be hungry. 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. 1 Peter 4:13  But because you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory you also may rejoice with exceeding joy. It’s like throwing a party because I’ve just been granted mining rights to the world’s richest gold deposit. Yes, for a while I’ll have to toil in a dark hole extracting the ore, but who cares? Riches are guaranteed! This reminds me of your parable of the lucky man who found buried treasure. If he could raise the cash to buy the land, the treasure would be legally his. Parting with everything he owned would normally make him as miserable as a duck forced to put its feathers up for sale, but under these circumstances he could hardly contain his excitement. The most painful part was trying to keep a straight face so as not to raise suspicion before the deal was finalized. In the age to come I’ll be barely able to restrain my joy for all eternity over any temporary earthly suffering I had previously embraced for righteousness’ sake. So I have every right to celebrate ahead of time. Miracle-working faith is wonderful, but the faith to keep enduring hardship long before I hold the reward is just as great a spiritual achievement. I crave the faith that knows that you are the Master of the happy ending; the Creative Genius whose greatest delight is to flood his loved ones with inconceivable pleasures; the infinite Lord whose stupendous rewards are surpassed only by the matchless wonder of an eternity of knowing you deeper and deeper and deeper. I bless you for every hardship you have ever allowed me to suffer. I long to thank you for my trials more than any Olympic medallist has ever thanked his coach for his rigorous training, and more than any academic achiever has thanked his teachers for challenging assignments. Your training schedules are perfect, and your goals for my life are breathtaking. Your Word reveals that in your Hall of Fame are two types of heroes: those who through faith attained miraculous deliverances from tragedy, and those who through faith endured great suffering (Hebrews 11:32-38). Millions would queue up to share your inexhaustible joys but I sense there is more to a fulfilling life than this. There seems to be what I earlier called a missing element. It seems the height of intimacy and the heart of true love to seek the privilege of sharing your sorrows. I love the way the Apostle Paul expressed this longing. Everything that had previously been precious to him, he said, he now regarded as trash, in order that he might ‘know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings . . .’ (Philippians 3:10). Sharing your joys is delightful, but what sweet fellowship there must be when you so open your heart that you let me share your pain. Feeling a touch of romance about sharing your pain is what I’d expect of some self-destructive nutcase, not me. And yet the feeling keeps sneaking up on me, and whenever it does it seems good and pure and right. Moreover, the apostles seemed to regard suffering for you as an immense honor granted only to the privileged (Acts 5:41). Immediately after being flogged we find them ‘rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace’ for you. If their attitude were mentioned only in church history books, I’d have dismissed it as the delirium of crackpots, but it’s there in your very Word. I gain the impression, in fact, that their attitude created such a cherished moment for you that, as it were, you took a snap shot and preserved it in your family album – the Bible – for all subsequent generations of your children to gaze at in reverent wonder. I’ve detected just one more element to these occasional, sacred feelings that stir me. I know how much your own suffering has warmed my heart by confirming your love for me. I find myself becoming like a passionate lover desperate for the thrill of touching your heart and proving my love for you by enduring hardship for you. Your perfections leave me like a woman so in love with her man that she cannot stop herself longing to bear his children, even though she knows childbirth is painful, and childrearing necessitates sacrifice and irksome toil. Others can have the fame, thrones and gold in heaven. How sad that there are people who know nothing greater! I care not whether your exquisite rewards be sensual delights, heavenly ecstasies or inconceivable blessings, everything is hollow, relative to the joy of touching your heart. Sacrifice is the ecstasy of giving the best to the one you love the most.  Years ago I read those words somewhere, and my spirit still leaps whenever I recall them. Boundless, adoring love is the only appropriate response to the perfection of  your  love, and to everything about you. I don’t want to give the Evil One the slightest cause to slander you and me by accusing you of having to resort to threats or bribes to secure my devotion. Were you to continually pamper me, shielding me from the unpleasant consequences of people’s godlessness, how could either I or our enemies ever know if my love for you is genuine or whether I serve you merely out of a mercenary desire for the benefits? My love should be untainted by lesser motives because that alone is what you deserve. I long for my love for you to be as fervent and selfless as your love for me. I am called to be a witness and what more powerful witness could there be than how I handle hardship? Surely any sensible person should recoil from the thought of suffering – and I certainly do in my sober moments. These feelings are so contrary to the normal me that they must truly come from you. You know they puzzle me intellectually, but what most disturbs me about positive feelings toward suffering is that these feelings are as yet untested by the fires of severe affliction. Anyone can be brave ahead of time. Right now, what frightens me is not pain but turning into a Simon Peter and dishonoring you at the critical moment. Your ghastly experience in Gethsemane highlights love’s limits as a painkiller. If the sweet warmth of a spiritual high deserted you when you must have most longed for it, I can’t see this source of comfort remaining with me, either. But are you using the memory of those feelings as pointers to a spiritual reality that exists even when the feelings evaporate? Are you seeking to build within me an attitude to suffering that at critical times I’ll need grim willpower to cling to, but an attitude that will nonetheless help me persist during the bleakest part of the night? With these feelings coming and going, I seem like someone standing on a clouded mountaintop. Everything looks dismal. I seem lost and alone. Occasionally you allow a break in the clouds that lets me see that on every side of me I am surrounded by the comfort and security of civilization. When the clouds return, bleak aloneness seems to return. The friendly warmth of civilization seems a million miles away, but in reality it has not moved. It might be out of sight, but I’m still close to help and companionship and all that I need. I’m as safe as ever. Help me live not according to past deceptive feelings of abandonment and aloneness, nor by what I feel whenever the clouds return and the things that cheer me fade from sight. Instead, may I live according to my knowledge of what lies beyond the clouds. Intellectually, I have a slight conception of how lovable you really are, but usually this remains a cold fact, rather than something that fires my heart. Emotionally, it is as if often you were nearly a stranger. I suppose this is largely because I don’t often enough put in the effort to push through all the distractions to gaze on your beauty. The other factor is that faith, operating the opposite way to sight, mushrooms in the dark and wilts in the light. Faith is so critical to our spiritual development that you must ensure we have enough darkness to grow our faith. On the precious moments I have been talking about, it is as if the shutter on the iron case around my heart cracks open. A ray of your light hits my dark heart, allowing it to respond to you with a glimmer of the exuberant passion my emotions would always feel if they truly knew you. In your light, my heart can suddenly pierce the murk to catch a tiny glimpse of reality for itself. For that brief moment, my heart is no longer forced to blindly resort to what I tell it is real. Instead of me having to continue my usual chore of dragging my emotions up toward the level of my intellectual understanding of spiritual reality, they at last are released to frolic in the wonder of what they see, and even to outpace my mental grasp of what exists beyond the clouds. In the warm light of your love, things like pain and hardship, turn out to be very different to what I had feared. It is like flicking a light switch to discover that what I had felt certain was an intruder about to harm me, is actually a friend come to help. Suffering might be more like a surgeon than a lover, but when yielded to you, suffering ends up so beneficial that when all is revealed I’ll spend eternity thanking you for what you achieved in my life through it. One ‘thank you’ down here, however, is worth a million later, so I pray I’ll do my best to shower you with thanks before the blessings become so obvious that thanking you becomes little better than a spontaneous reaction to the uncontrollable joy you give me. I want to thank you while my thanks can still touch your heart as a demonstration of trust, rather than a mere response to the obvious. All too soon, the shutter around my heart snaps shut again. Once more I am forced to muster faith and try to coax forward the confused, frightened children that my emotions have reverted to. There is much suffering that I certainly don’t want – every trace of hardship that I could avoid if I were more devoted to you. I’d be a fool to endure any hardship when its avoidance would bring you greater honor. There is no glory in me suffering the consequences of my own sin. If, however, I were so foolish as to sin, I would prefer any suffering that results, if the experience makes me more resistant to further foolishness. I recall the psalmist praising you for his anguish. ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray,’ he sang, ‘but now I obey your word’ (Psalm 119:67). Affliction is better than going astray. Better still, of course, is to be so faithful that I have no need to be so dramatically jolted out of my complacency. Neither do I want any suffering I could have missed had I not been too lazy or doubting or confused by wrong theology to press through in believing prayer or spiritual warfare. That, too, would be foolish. I recall the webpage I wrote years ago, ‘The Role of Sickness in Your Life,’ in which I explored many surprising benefits associated with sickness. Nevertheless, despite the many good things that can result from sickness, I concluded that we should still seek you for healing. Whatever was Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh,’ it was certainly unpleasant. The apostle identified this suffering as being from Satan and yet it proved an enormous blessing by protecting him from the grave spiritual danger of pride. Like Paul, I would long to be spared such suffering, but even for the great apostle the spiritual danger was so great that there was no safe alternative. I’d prefer not to have a spiritual weakness that needs suffering to keep it in check, but avoiding spiritual hazards is far more important than avoiding temporary unpleasantness. Years of emotional pain have given me such a sensitivity to other people’s needs and has in so many ways empowered me to minister to hurting people that I’m most grateful for what I have suffered. You are such a genius at turning even my weaknesses and mistakes into something magnificent that it becomes hard to imagine a better way. Nevertheless, I’ve wondered whether I could have enjoyed these benefits with less suffering had I voluntarily done more to foster tenderness and compassion within me. Spare me needless pain, Lord, but do not spare me pain that furthers your cause. Many things I could suffer, however, are not related to my inadequacies or lack of faith. Could it be that through the occasional feelings you give, you are seeking to assure me that, when yielded to you with Christlike dedication, these forms of suffering can be beautiful – even when the pain is so intense that it obliterates every gooey feeling and every awareness of your presence? Like a little, girl-hating boy growing into a young man ready for love, may I shed my former, childish view of suffering, and like a butterfly set free from the limitations of a grub, may I soar with you to unexpected joys. Oh, how I love you! My indebtedness to you is beyond calculation. Seeing my chronic predicament, you gave your life so that I could have the heart transplant essential for my eternal survival. Now you have not only given me your heart, you have called me to the honor of following in the steps of your nail-pierced feet – calling me to plunge through all the shame and pain hurled upon you and upon me by enemies of God, and emerging to rule with you in endless majesty. Radiant King of kings, not only have you triumphantly burst through pain and death to regain your rightful throne and win new honors as well, you have returned to this grief-stricken planet. Abandoning the carefree ease that is your right, you elect to endure still more anguish – my anguish – by living in me, to bring me to glory – the endless glory of  your  hard-won victory. Thank you that because you have won, I’ll win. Because the God you trusted has taken your pain and shame and turned it into the power to comfort and transform lives, you’ll take anything I suffer and turn it into a blessing for others and eternal honor for myself. Truly, you are my hero. You lead me into victory. In you I am complete.   The webpage preceding this one:  Part 1 Related Pages God’s execution of justice on behalf of those who have suffered Why Bad Things Keep Happening to Some People Jesus, Our Brother, Our Example Life’s Mysteries Explained Why Christ’s Suffering can Change your Life From Mystery to Ministry: The Role of Sickness in Your Life Why Would a God of Love Allow Suffering? Discovering God’s Love For You How Much Does God Love Me? How to Get Your Own Revelation of God’s Love

Learned Helplessness Psychological Insights into such mysteries as: Why some people seem trapped in an endless cycle of bad luck.Why past abuse makes one vulnerable to more abuse.Why defeatism cripples some people.   To restrain a baby elephant, circus trainers must chain it to a huge stake driven into the ground. When the baby grows into an adult, however, it is many times smarter and stronger. What trainers must then drive into the ground is just a tiny tent peg. The baby had tried everything to break free. It had strained with all its might, pulling in every conceivable way, hour after hour, day after day. The huge stake refused to budge. So, rather than mindlessly keep trying to do the impossible, it did what at the time was the intelligent thing: it gave up trying. The baby grew into a powerful beast. Convinced by bitter experience that whenever it is tethered there is no point trying to resist, it never bothered to determine whether anything had changed. So it suffers indignities, even though, if only it could grasp the fact, it could easily rip up the peg and trample those who sought to dominate it. As an adult, it finds itself bound not by a stake but by a powerful psychological force. This powerful force has been given several names, one of which is ‘Learned Helplessness.’ It has been the subject of much research by psychologists because, in one form or another, it binds millions of people. It is a factor – sometimes the full reason – in the peculiar tendency of many of us to be plagued by what seems to be bad luck, year after year. Consider, for example, the heart-wrenching fact that even after growing into adults, survivors of child sex abuse often find themselves staggering from one abusive relationship to another. Like the baby elephant, abuse survivors once found themselves in a situation in which escape was impossible. No matter how hard they tried, nothing they could do could free them from humiliation at the hands of those who sought to dominate them. Now they are older and have more options, but the devastating effect of their past ordeal is so crippling that if ever they find themselves in a slightly similar situation, it is exceedingly difficult for them to believe they could break free. No one convinced that resistance is useless has much chance of resisting with all his or her might. Learned helplessness is so horrific that experiments have usually been restricted to animals, and even then scientists felt the need to explain that they did it only in a quest to find a way of curing learned helplessness in humans. In one such study, scientists designed a dog enclosure, divided by a low barrier, one side of which was uncomfortable. Dogs quickly learned to cross the barrier to the more pleasant side. With new dogs, however, both sides of the barrier felt uncomfortable, so crossing the barrier achieved nothing. Conditions were then changed so that these dogs, like the first ones, could avoid discomfort by crossing the barrier. Yet the dogs never learned to do so. Having been subjected to a no-win situation had rendered this second group of dogs incapable of discovering the simple way to avoid the discomfort. Even in their home cages they seemed lethargic and dejected. Like the elephant, the dogs had had driven out of them their natural tendency to try to escape. So when placed in a situation where they could easily escape, they never make the discovery that escape is now possible. We often find ourselves in similar predicaments. First, we suffer a number of failures in very difficult or impossible circumstances. afterward, when something changes to make success quite possible, we are in grave danger of remaining in defeat simply because we do not recognize that the situation is different to the one that defeated us. So extensive is this phenomenon that there is a vast array of examples. Here are a few: Sexual Abuse Consider an adult survivor of child sex abuse. When faced with a new situation involving a sexually aggressive male, she cannot help seeing a similarity to her past situation in which escape was impossible. At the very thought, she is likely to be overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, just like she felt years before. Although in this new situation she is able to successfully resist, all power to do so will seem to drain as she recalls the futility of her past attempts to avoid abuse. Addiction Suppose an addict is utterly dominated by his addiction. Each of his many attempts to break free simply proved to him the impossibly of the situation. Then he is born again. Suddenly, resident within him is all the power he needs to quit his habit. But he fails to grasp just how radically things have changed. Convinced by his past failures that he cannot break free, he never bothers to use to the full his new, God-given power to break the habit. The result, of course, is that he remains a slave to the habit that he could be free from. Finding Love A woman has never in her life experienced true, selfless love. Her every attempt to find such love has only resulted in pain and exploitation and deceit. Then she meets God. Suddenly it’s a whole new ball game. God is like no one she has ever met before. He is perfect. He is utterly selfless. He loves not for what he can get but for what he can give. He loves not because a person is lovable but because he is loving; not because of how desirable a person is, but because, being omnipotent, he can transform that person into someone wonderful. But that woman can be so overwhelmed by all her past failures to find love that she fails to realize how different God is, and so she could waste her whole life starved of the love she desperately needs. Defeatism and Rubik’s Cubes I find myself hampered by defeatism in many areas of my life. Here’s one example. With many types of puzzles, for example, experience has taught me that no matter how hard I try, I will still fail to solve them. “I’ll fail anyhow, so why bother wasting lots of effort?” I tell myself. Weighed down by this attitude, I give up before giving it my best, most determined and most persistent effort. Surprise, surprise, with only a half-hearted attempt I don’t succeed, thus reinforcing my conviction that I’ll never succeed. It would seem that giving children puzzles that at their age they are unlikely to succeed in, might turn them into defeatists with such games. More worrying still, is that defeatism in this area might possibly carry over into other areas of life and might last throughout one’s life. Certain new experiences can trigger paralyzing memories of past helplessness. It is important to remind ourselves that despite certain similarities between the past and present situation, there are key differences that mean we are no longer helpless. Such knowledge is vital but the strong illusion of helplessness will remain. It is like convincing someone with a spider phobia that a particular spider is harmless. Knowing that it is harmless is an important first step, but the person can still be frozen with fear. It takes not just knowledge but great courage to break free. Past defeats do not lock us into lifelong defeat. With Almighty God, we can always break through. Like elephants that grow to have superhuman strength, Christians are born again with superhuman strength. Resident within them is not only divine power, but God himself. But as we saw with the ‘trained’ elephant, great power will not help us unless we exert our most determined effort to resist whatever seeks to dominate us. If we don’t bother to try our hardest because we believe that within us is little more than human frailty, we’ll remain humiliated, languishing under the misconception that we are still as powerless as we were in our pre-Christian days. More: Why Abuse Survivors Attract The Wrong Sort of People: Predators Hunt the Wounded There’s Hope! A  Sane  Guide to Finding Hope When There is No Hope Fear, Phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Christian Help & Cure Support in breaking blockages that hinder healing “I had always thought it was my fault!” It is common for people to wrongly be convinced that they were to blame for being molested as a child. The more certain you are that it was your fault, the more you need to read Why children mistakenly believe they have “seduced” sex offenders. The Dilemma of Feeling Pleasure When Abused So powerful is sex that it is almost inevitable that any sexual encounter – no matter how despised and unwanted – will contain elements of pleasure and deep bonding. In an unwanted encounter, these are highly obnoxious consequences of sex but they are such an integral part of sex that they are almost impossible to completely remove from forced sex. This fact is so rarely understood that sex crime victims usually end up loathing themselves or at least being confused and deeply disturbed over what is just a normal reaction to unwanted sex. Vast numbers of abuse survivors know from bitter experience that pleasure inflicted by a sexual predator can be more damaging than severe physical pain. Some survivors, however, have experiences so different that they find this incomprehensible or even offensive. Experiences differ for the simple reason that abusers differ in their techniques. If predators are sufficiently skilled, the pleasure they inflict will be sexual. Otherwise – in the case of pedophiles – the pleasure their victims feel will be the gifts they bribe children with or the attention they give love-starved children. Rapists can even force unwilling adult victims to experience sexual pleasure. This very pleasure inflicts horrific, but quite unnecessary, pangs of guilt. A degree of pleasure or bonding in no way justifies the offender, nor in any way hints that the victim might be perverted or immoral. The memory of pleasure suffered (yes, “suffered” is the right word) during abuse might currently be suppressed but it could surface at any time. So it is good to prepare oneself by learning about this rarely understood consequence of unwanted sex. More about this vital, frequently misunderstood subject Vent your Anger What the person who hurt you deserves. The execution of justice on your behalf. Turning hate into healing. A moving, enlightening and therapeutic experience that could forever change your life. Sweet revenge! Discovering that you don’t hate God after all In your pain it was natural for you to lash out at the hideous, unfeeling monster you supposed was God. The God you thought you hated is just a figment of your tormented imagination. It’s time you met the real God – your Healer. Just as there are things about its loving mother that a tiny child cannot comprehend, mysteries remain when we try to understand the infinitely superior mind of God. Nevertheless, the following webpages will help. If Anyone has Reason to Hate God, it’s Sue A rape victim grapples with God Where was God when you suffered unspeakable horrors? Why I Hate The Myth of a Cruel Christian God God’s plans for you are comforting, not fearful Life’s Mysteries Explained Discovering God’s love for you Tragically, so many people bungle through life living shallow, wasted lives. Through Jesus we can leave behind a meaningless life of selfishness headed for endless regret. We can choose a life in which every second counts for all eternity, achieving the highest good in union with the God who made you and loves you more than life itself. Life can be crammed with so many urgent things that we forget the really important ones. Don’t let this wonderful opportunity slip from your grasp. Make life’s most important issue top priority. You Can Find Love: What your fantasies reveal A most significant webpage The key to supernatural healing Why Christ’s suffering can change your life. God as Mother Feminine aspects of God. Healing for those whose father let them down. You are loved When you can’t feel God’s love Release from blaming yourself Handling guilt is the first of many helpful and encouraging webpages about overcoming guilt feelings. Follow the links. Overcoming feelings of worthlessness To God, you are special Power to escape the trap of bitterness Should you forgive your abuser? This most serious, often misunderstood, issue is carefully examined in two special webpages listed below. It is vital for your healing that you read them. So much hinges on this delicate matter. I am convinced that just as martyrs are especially honored in heaven, so are those who have suffered greatly and yet have forgiven. Forgiving others is tough. It is so critical to our own emotional and spiritual well being that our spiritual enemy strongly attacks us on this issue. Nevertheless, divine help is available. People suffering great difficulty in forgiving others usually have as the basis of their agony the (sometimes subconscious) pain of having great difficulty forgiving themselves. The two sides of forgiveness – forgiving yourself and forgiving others – rise or fall together. Many people raging against someone else’s guilt are pressured by a subconscious urge to keep suppressed the tortured screams of their own conscience. Peace soothes our troubled mind when we dwell on the extent of the forgiveness and purity that we have in Christ. When we realize how much God has forgiven us, it becomes easier to act more Godlike and have that same forgiving attitude toward ourselves and others. For this reason, I recommend beginning with the webpages about handling guilt . Breaking the stranglehold of bitterness: Unforgivable! Lord make him regret what he did to me! Recovery from sexual abuse The Path to Healing A brief and most helpful overview of the steps to full healing from the devastation of abuse. Supernatural Solutions Covers many aspects of healing from abuse. Overcoming destructive thinking Whether it be the desire to hurt yourself, or to hate yourself, or to hate others, it is a temptation. Becoming a Winner! begins a series of webpages about overcoming temptation. Follow the links.

Cure for Self-Hate   Help If You Hate Yourself Healing and Compassionate Understanding This webpage is of immense significance to the very many of us who sometimes hate ourselves, despise ourselves or suffer from low self-esteem. So revolutionary are the answers to self-hate, that no matter how they are presented they can initially seem off-the-planet or not personally applicable to your situation until you have fully absorbed the entire webpage. So despite any initial qualms, I urge you to keep reading. It can change your life. Self-loathing and/or self-injury is an exceedingly complex issue because it is an expression of the depths of one’s humanity. It is a manifestation of a need that totally eclipses animals or machines – the need to comprehend complex concepts and emotions and to communicate them with an equally intelligent being. It reveals that you, like all humans, are a breathtakingly intricate, sophisticated and noble being with lofty ideals and a deep yearning to understand and be understood. As beyond belief as it initially seems, we will discover that our dilemma is not that we are alone and not understood but simply that we have not grasped how totally known, valued and accepted we really are. In some cases, self-hate originates not from deliberate childhood abuse but from significant people in one’s life inadvertently giving the dangerously wrong impression that you are not quite good enough to be loved. Children’s need for parental love and approval almost rivals their need for oxygen, but even quite good parents can be rather miserly in giving it. It might simply be that the parent – especially common in fathers – is emotionally reserved and has no idea how much he or she is leaving the child with a gnawing ache for parental affection and/or approval. The result is what can feel like an unfillable hole in the child that refuses to diminish even after the child has matured into a capable adult. People suffering this way usually downgrade the significance of having felt love-deprived as a child. They see it as minor relative to obvious child abuse but just as malnutrition in childhood can have serious, long-term implications, so can feeling love-starved. An unmet craving for parental approval can not only last a lifetime, it can transmute into a gut-wrenching feeling of inadequacy that produces an endless striving to be “good enough,” or even result in self-loathing. Even highly successful people can stagger through life little moved by world acclaim, but desperately pining for their parents’ approval, and never feeling they can get it. Sometimes an eating disorder, or some other unusual behavior is a manifestation of this desperate attempt to be “good enough.” The critical factor is not how loved, desirable, successful or capable we really are, but how we  suppose  we measure up. This, in turn, is usually strongly influenced by the self-image we gained during our most impressionable years – our childhood. In cases of blatant abuse, even more devastating than the inflicted physical pain is the long-lasting psychological wounding. Abusers typically try to ease their own conscience for their shameful acts of cruelty by either forcefully declaring or implying that their victims are useless, or worse. The torment they inflict is so emotionally shattering that it leaves an indelible impression on their victims. Putdowns can have serious implications, however, regardless of whether they come in the form of violent abuse, solely verbal, or only be the rationing of parental love, and regardless of whether the child is correct or mistaken in interpreting it as a putdown. What makes suffering perceived putdowns during one’s childhood particularly devastating is that not only did they occur during one’s impressionable years, those treating the child this way were usually older (and therefore smarter), and hence perceived by the child as reliable, authoritative sources of information. Moreover, abusers often keep their bad behavior behind closed doors and are respected by the community or thought by other family members incapable of doing wrong. Tragically, though not surprisingly, these factors combine to leave survivors with the mistaken but powerful impression that they must have deserved the verbal or physical abuse or the withholding of love that they received. It might have been so much part of your life that you have accepted it as normal but if you engage in self-hate you have almost certainly been repeatedly and horrifically slandered – probably beginning in your most impressionable years. You might have been told by someone whose opinion you respect that you are hopeless, a loser, evil, stupid, or slut or some other putdown. The inevitable consequence is that, like being subjected to years of the cruelest brainwashing, you have come to accept those lies as truth. It has so distorted your perception of yourself that you have most likely deepened the insidious brainwashing still further by repeating the lies to yourself for years. Like becoming an addict through being forcibly given drugs as a child, repeatedly putting yourself down and telling yourself negative things has become an addiction. Just as knowing that heroin is destroying you does not make it easy to stop, so it is with this habit. Anyone, no matter how smart, who has suffered as you have, would end up this way. A genius finds it just as hard to break an addiction as someone less intelligent. The delusion now feels more real to you than the truth. Having been subjected to this brainwashing process, makes it a long and difficult process to break out of that highly convincing deception and to begin consistently seeing things as they really are. You can do it but it will take determined effort over a long time. Fear of Hope Dashed hopes – especially when repeated a few times – can be so agonizing that it is not unusual to consciously or unconsciously decide that rather than risk another bitter episode it is better to crush all hope. Usually, the easiest way to do this is by continually thinking lowly of ourselves. Sometimes we can intensify this to loathing or despising ourselves. I might, for example, think it better to think I’ll never achieve anything than risk expecting to achieve and then suffer the pain of dashed hope. Some people do such things as overeat, dress drably or neglect personal hygiene to kill hope. By having good reason to expect to be rejected, they are not caught off guard or bitterly disappointed when rejection comes. Others engage in the same behavior to repel people because they fear attracting an abuser or fear commitment. Like someone who chooses to live alone in a cave rather than risk being hit by lightning, such behavior is often an attempt to protect oneself from what are essentially the minor risks of life. To those “protecting” themselves this way, however, the risks seem very likely and terrifying dangers. Considering how unlikely it is for such things to devastate people, their view is statistically distorted, but it is usually statistically significant in terms of how often such things occurred in these people’s own experience. To enjoy life in all its richness, these people need to learn to trust again. We will look at how this can happen. Why Are We so Hard on Ourselves? To help explain why many of us have low self-esteem and are hard on ourselves, I will quote a portion of another webpage of mine:  Free Therapy . If you have already read it, feel free to  skip to the next section: The dangers of low self-esteem are more extensive than most of us realize. So many precious lives have been ruined or tragically shortened by unfounded or hideously distorted feelings of guilt and worthlessness. Young men and women of high morals can become so brainwashed into wrongly thinking themselves to be ‘trash’ that they end up needlessly cheapening themselves. It is common for people who are hurting to have been relentlessly brainwashed in their most impressionable years that they are ‘hopeless’ or ‘bad’ or ‘can’t do a thing right’ or are ‘not as capable as their brother or sister.’ These lies eventually come to be accepted as truth by the victims of these putdowns. Once our self-image hardens, we filter all new information to conform to our self-image. So when people say positive things about us, we disbelieve them or it hardly registers with us that the words were ever spoken, whereas we latch on to every negative comment as confirmation of our mistaken beliefs about ourselves. It is not uncommon to unconsciously surround ourselves with people who reinforce our poor self-image and to feel uncomfortable around more positive and/or well-respected or esteemed people. It is astounding, for example, how many daughters of alcoholics end up marrying alcoholics, despite promising themselves they would never do so. Even though we can only reform ourselves, never someone else, often these people marry alcoholics because they feel a strong compulsion to prove they can reform an alcoholic, since they see their father’s continued alcoholism as proof that they had failed. Of course, by entering such a marriage, they are setting themselves up for more pain and more things that they will mistakenly interpret as confirmation that they are ‘failures.’ Perhaps it was because he was not the first father she had known, a friend of mine regarded her step-father’s alcoholism as her mother’s responsibility and so felt no pressure to marry an alcoholic. However, her father’s actions caused her to feel unloved. This led her to marry the first man who would have her, since she presumed that no one else ever would. Her thirty-eight years of marriage were unhappy, largely because she had chosen to marry someone who was not good at communicating his love and she kept interpreting his every word and action to line up with her conviction that she was unlovable. I know someone whose mother has the psychological disorder of narcissism and is impossible to please. It seems more than coincidence that, until my friend grew in self-esteem, she kept ending up in jobs in which the boss was a female who was as impossible to please as her mother. In one job, her boss made enemies of everyone. In another, the boss surrounded herself with women whose spirit was broken because they came from abuse backgrounds and kept putting them down. My friend was only vaguely aware that her motivation in her job choices was to prove herself capable of winning the approval of someone like her mother, since she had failed to do this as a child. She picked jobs with bosses so much like her mother, however, that no one could ever win their approval. So my friend kept being put down, with the result that all her life experiences seemed to confirm her false self-image. The ways we can perpetuate a false self-image are almost endless, and men are just as susceptible as women. For example, I always assumed I was too undesirable for any woman to ever date me and I was never proved wrong because I was so sure that every woman would reject me that I never dared ask anyone for a date. For someone with low self-esteem, blaming oneself can feel so right that the person might not even bother to rationally examine the matter. Rebuilding one’s self-image can be as challenging as rebuilding a bombed house, and to break the habit of continually thinking negatively about ourselves can be as difficult as it is for a heavy smoker to quit smoking. What if it Really is Your Fault? Even if you truly have acted despicably and are highly blameworthy, you will still need to get past this and move on. Tormenting yourself helps no one. We will now briefly address those who needlessly blame themselves but further on in this webpage you will discover that your hope is boundless, regardless of how disgusting the offense and how much it is your fault. If you really are guilty of appalling atrocities, recovering from your past offenses in a morally and psychologically effective way is as important and as possible for you, as it is for the most blameless of people. Let’s for the moment, however, look at some common reasons for people being mistakenly convinced that something is their fault.   *  Hindsight is Unrealistic An obvious factor in self-blame is that hindsight empowers us to see with far greater clarity than was possible at the time. What is obvious afterwards, is seldom so obvious before events unfold. What at the time seemed a remote possibility looks certain after it happens. It is common when grieving the loss of a loved one, for example, to blame ourselves for things that were at the time largely beyond our control and/or ability to predict. What is obvious later is seldom obvious before events unfold. In real life, a person is often caught off guard and when things escalate he or she is paralyzed by shock. If you had suffered previous traumas that had certain similarities to a later predicament, instead of those experiences making you wiser, they could actually deaden your ability to avoid the situation, due to the crippling psychological force known as learned helplessness. Having once been subjected to a situation in which resistance was useless or achieved nothing (a child being overpowered or outwitted by an adult, for example) programs us to expect that in a similar situation, resistance will again be useless.   *  An Attempt to Feel in Control If the real offender were not you but someone emotionally important to you or someone you are dependent upon – a lover or family member, for example – the thought of concluding that that person is wrong or depraved can be so devastating that you find it easier to blame yourself than blame the offender. Wives who are economically and/or emotionally dependent upon an abusive husband, might rather believe it is their fault than try to cope with feeling trapped. To give another example, children desperately need the security of knowing that their parents are good, trustworthy people who will protect, comfort and nurture them. This need can be so intense that they will choose to believe they were at fault rather than face the terrifying reality that they are exposed to continual danger that is utterly beyond their control.   *  The High Status of the Offender If an abuser is someone highly respected, such as a community leader, the pressure can be immense to doubt one’s own judgment, rather than doubt the abuser’s integrity. If the person is esteemed as a spiritual authority, it might seem so unthinkable that he could be wrong that his opinions are regarded as being more trustworthy than one’s own conscience or biblical interpretation. Spiritual abuse then becomes a distinct possibility.   *  If Your Distress Originated During Childhood . . . If you were a child when the offense occurred, additional forces come into play, although they still influence us even as adults. Children have a powerful inbuilt drive to respect and believe adults or much older children. Their rapid development – often their very survival – hinges on it. In what only adults can recognize as a life-or-death situation, it is essential for children to obey immediately. Little children can learn and mature at the required rate only by unquestioning acceptance of what adults teach them. So when adults (or older children) do wrong, children not only lack the maturity and intellectual ability to realize it is wrong, they have a strong, natural urge to trust and obey. Adults can cruelly manipulate the emotions of their victims until tender consciences are shattered by an overwhelming burden of false guilt. If an abuser insists upon secrecy, it not only inflames the conviction that something shamefully wrong is occurring, it forces victims to keep their emotions dangerously bottled up.   *  Scrupulosity Few, if any, of us have a perfect conscience. Not even St Paul was sure about his conscience  (1 Corinthians 4:4) . Some mental conditions and/or spiritual attacks, however, render a person’s conscience extremely unreliable, causing them to feel excessively condemned over minor lapses, or things they have no control over. For instance, some forms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder give people uncontrollable bad thoughts. Not realizing that the thoughts are beyond human control, they end up blaming themselves for not being able to control the uncontrollable. Another example is a mental illness that causes people to worry that they have done something horrible that they never did. Regardless of how justified our guilt feelings are, however, once self-blame starts, we soon find ourselves imprisoned by a guilt-ridden cycle of self-loathing that simply gets harder and harder to break out of as the years grind on. The most saintly person on the planet has regrets, but once we view ourselves as unforgivable, motivation to keep doing the right thing usually vanishes in a swamp of hopelessness. It is only natural to act out our self-image, no matter how contrary to reality that self-image is. Many of us are tempted to magnify our own guilt and underrate the guilt of ‘respectable’ people. The reality, however, is that – except for Jesus – the best of earth’s inhabitants has at some time or another done inexcusable things. Trying to pretend we have never done the inexcusable is like trying to ignore cancer. We can’t simply ignore reasons for blaming ourselves. We must somehow find a highly legitimate way to forgive ourselves. Anchor Keep reading, and you will find the answers you need. A Life Transformed The truth that will heal you is so mind-boggling that I must reveal it carefully and gradually lest you think I am out of my mind. Let me start by proving that no matter how ridiculous they initially seem, these healing principles really work. I’ll do this by sharing with you Christine’s story. Past sexual abuse featured strongly in her torment. The source of your distress might be very different, but the secret of Christine’s transformation applies to us all. A key factor in Christine being freed from self-hate was the realization that she was innocent. The first thing she grasped through reading my webpages was that feeling pleasure when being sexually abused is a normal bodily reaction, not a moral issue. Just as feeling pain is an unavoidable response to being severely beaten, so is feeling pleasure an unavoidable response to being forcibly, but sensually, molested. That’s a helpful insight that almost any counselor could have provided, but then she discovered something far more powerful. Let’s read her story: I expect I’ll remember till my dying day exactly where I was standing when the truth exploded within me and set me free. I was on my cell phone talking to Grantley (writer of this webpage), thanking him for his webpages that explain that the sexual pleasure inflicted on me by my childhood abuser was not my fault. I was thrilled to finally realize that my sexual feelings were an involuntary reaction to the abuse and in no way suggest immorality on my part. I could sense that Grantley was hesitant; wanting to agree with me, but sounding as if I had missed something vital. “What if you hadn’t been so innocent?” he asked. “Would you then be doomed to live with crippling guilt for the rest of your life?” Grantley had studied to be a psychologist but after graduating with honors he abandoned the field because he had found a way of healing that has far more power than psychology offers. He began to remind me of an ancient spiritual truth that has transformed the lives of countless millions. Suddenly I realized the ultimate in liberating truths: I don’t have to try to justify myself because God has justified me! The Judge of all humanity sees me as not merely no worse than average people; he sees me as spotlessly pure and perfect, just like his holy Son. This might at first seem uncomfortably religious but hold on while I explain how it transformed my life. On the cross, the Innocent One swapped places with me; suffering my humiliation so that I could gain his endless honor and, to use the astounding expression the Bible uses, he has made  me  “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). I had been aware of the truth before but now it hit me like a divine revelation. Suddenly Christ’s sacrifice became the most beautiful act ever made. I am fully accepted by the Judge of all humanity, the greatest intellect and highest moral authority in the universe, and since it was all finalized and sealed two thousand years ago, there is nothing I can do to mess it up. All I need do is cling to Jesus and bask in the wonder of what he has done for me and enjoy all the benefits. I am not just as good as most people but, in heaven’s eyes, I’m as pure and holy as God, because of Jesus – and I’m sharing this because it can be just as powerfully your experience as mine. It’s so mind-blowing that I’ve had to keep repeating the Scripture over and over to myself: 2 Corinthians 5:21  God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of G od. Until making this discovery, whenever anyone criticized me I would go into a tailspin; not only inwardly agreeing with the putdown but telling myself that I’m incurably wicked and deserve to be treated as dirt and ruthlessly punished. Quickly, the oppressive feeling would balloon until it was so overwhelming that I felt compelled to hurt myself. After that, I’d feel so miserable that I’d fall into a vain attempt to comfort myself. Now, everything has changed! Is Christine Out of Her Mind? I interrupt Christine to admit that what she has been saying initially seems not merely ridiculous but downright impossible. To help you grasp a difficult concept would you mind letting your imagination run wild for a few moments before returning to cold reality? Suppose you had amnesia. After forgetting all of your past, snippets of memories are slowly returning. Eventually some of the jigsaw pieces slot together and to your horror you realize that in your past you had committed a hideous crime. For weeks you are petrified day and night that someone will find out and you’ll be jailed for life. Finally, you can bear the mental torment no longer. You turn yourself in to the police and confess. They confirm that you have correctly remembered part of your past. They inform you, however, that there are still parts you have forgotten. Years ago, you had been arrested and tried for that crime. You were given a surprisingly light sentence and you have already served the time. Imagine how relieved you would feel! Now let’s plunge back into icy reality. What has happened to you is similar, but even more amazing. You are horrified by snippets of your past that you recall. It is nightmare material. You have been hating yourself because you suppose you should continue to suffer, but what has been wiped from your consciousness is that there is a mysterious but very real sense in which you have already suffered for the past far, far more than you realize – so immensely, in fact, that every bit of punishment you deserve has been paid in full and you are now completely free. Now here comes the part that seems utterly ridiculous: you have already paid the full penalty because Jesus was tortured to death for your past, totally absorbing within himself all your shame, pain and blame until not a shred remained. “You’re mad!” you object, “Perhaps it somehow transformed Christine but no matter how kind Jesus might have been, and no matter what he did, he’s not me. What he did is largely irrelevant.” I have to admit that you are right – if Jesus were an ordinary person. What he achieved makes no sense until we realize that Jesus is not just a spectacularly special man, nor even the world’s greatest ever miracle worker; he is divine. With him, nothing is impossible. He is supernatural and he longs to give you the most profound supernatural experience imaginable – a supernatural union in which you and he merge with each other, melding into one so that, as the Bible declares, he is in you  and  you are in him. Since Jesus is no abuser, he seeks your full consent before proceeding, but he is so devoted to your lifelong well-being and eternal happiness that he wants to bond with you so that you and he are inseparable. When this happens, both of you have the same spiritual bank account, the same status, the same spiritual genes, the same past (that’s why he suffered) and the same future (that’s why your future is unbelievably bright).  Even though we Christians tend to understate it, this staggering miracle makes you a totally new being, complete with supernatural powers and immortality. Marriage makes a man and woman one flesh, with pooled assets and a shared destiny. Eventually their very genes permanently unite to form offspring. As this marvel commences with a few spoken words in a marriage ceremony, so a few words in a heart-felt prayer can usher in the spiritual transformation in which you and the spotlessly pure, eternal Son of God become one, with the same past and the same future. (For more about how you can experience this, see  You Can Find Love. ) Many of us feel that our stupidity or wickedness is so gross that it needs to be punished in some way – perhaps, for example, by continuing to feel shame or be miserable or think lowly of ourselves. But every trace of what we feel we should punish ourselves for has already been fully punished – with inhuman severity – when Jesus took upon himself all our imbecile goof-ups and depravity and was tortured to death for them. All the punishment was exhausted on him. There is nothing left. When you are in spiritual union with the holy Son of God, you both have the same past. What happened to Jesus happened to you, and what happened to you happened to Jesus. Do you think you should beat yourself up? He was literally beaten up. His skin was flayed to shreds. Think you should suffer? His agony was indescribable. Think you should die? It’s impossible to be deader than his corpse. And because it happened to him, it has already happened to you. When you and he are one, for you to get angry with yourself or fill with shame or despise yourself, is utterly needless. The person who did things worthy of such distress is not only dead and buried, he died almost two thousand years ago. Let me plunder a piece of fiction I wrote years ago: In my mind’s eye I saw myself charging into a burning building to rescue someone I loved more than life itself. Every movement began to slow down. Shielding her body, I suffer horrific burns to carry her to safety, where I collapse, writhing in agony. But it is worth every throb of pain because the love of my life is completely untouched by the fire. All that matters is that she’s unharmed. Seeing my wounds she says, “I don’t deserve such love!” I look on in horror as, overwhelmed by a feeling of unworthiness, she then runs back into the fire and kills herself; breaking my heart by her death and rendering all my suffering an utter waste. I had been on the brink of treating my heroic Savior like that. How dare I let Jesus’ agony be wasted! If I beat myself, Jesus was beaten for nothing. If I get angry with myself, Jesus bore God’s wrath for nothing. If I let shame overwhelm me, Jesus was humiliated for nothing. If I think of myself as morally defiled, the Innocent One was treated as a criminal for nothing. If I think I’m inferior, the King of kings was treated as dirt for nothing. The Lord of all suffered horrifically to give me the right of access to all God’s riches. For his sake, I must refuse to throw aside such a costly sacrifice. For some reason – sheer love I guess – he considered me worth it. I won’t let him down. No matter what false feelings flood over me, I’ll refuse to believe them. I’ll enjoy life for his sake. “FOR HIS SAKE!” I yelled. At last I found peace. “Yes, for Jesus’ sake!” I shouted in joyous relief, “For the sake of the One who died for me!” By thinking of myself as unworthy, I was seeing myself as I truly would be had Jesus never hung upon the cross for me. But he  was  crucified. He was tortured to death to swap my sin for his sinlessness. He took my guilt and gave me his innocence. And here I was on the brink of pushing it aside and, by caving into feelings of inferiority, reducing to a senseless waste his agonizing death for me. Some children are scolded under the guise of the putdown helping to make them good. Some carry that thought into adulthood. But for us to be putdown or ridiculed doesn’t make us good. What makes us good is our innocent Lord being so fully subjected to God’s righteous anger on our account that there is no condemnation left. And in exchange for him taking our humiliation, idiotic mistakes and evil upon himself, he gives us his moral perfection and dignity. Christ’s nature and achievements are so much ours that Scripture states such things as: John 17:22  I have given them the glory that you gave me . . . 1 Corinthians 1:30   . . . you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 1 Corinthians 2:16   . . . we have the mind of Christ. 2 Peter 1:4   . . . he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature . . . He became human so that divinity could flow through you. The Eternal died so that you could be more alive than ever before; took on your mortality to give you immortality. He wore your limitations so you could enjoy his infinity. The Almighty crumbled with your weakness to give you supernatural strength. The Pride of the universe agonized with your loneliness so that you would never be alone again; suffered your isolation so that you and he could be inseparable. The King of kings bore your shame and darkness so that you could be radiant with his honor; was humiliated with your depravity to infuse you with his holy majesty; lowered himself to the dust of death so that you could be enthroned with him in highest heaven. God’s noble Son shamed himself with your foolishness to give you his intellect; exchanging your dirty, cloudy thinking for his crystal purity; suffering for your idiotic blunders so that you could be dignified as a superior being, graced with divine wisdom. He let your sorrow crush him to let you beam with his joy; was impoverished by your debts so that you could revel in his riches. He absorbed within himself all your inadequacies so that you could overflow with his abundance. Through your union with the holy King of kings, every trace of filth has been flushed out by a torrent of divine purity; all your guilt replaced by pristine innocence; all your shame by royal dignity; all your ugliness transformed into dazzling beauty. You are exalted to the very heavens as someone worthy of eternal honor. Who could think lowly of such a person? What makes it hardest for us to believe that we can enjoy this holy union that frees us from the pain, blame and shame of our past is that we know we don’t deserve it. “Why would God suffer such agony to lavish his goodness upon  me ?” we ask in utter bewilderment. The answer is that it is God’s very nature to do such things. He is a giver, not a taker. There is more that is mind boggling about him than the incomprehensible immensity of his physical power and intellect. God doesn’t just love us sometimes, he  is  love – overwhelmingly powerful, pure, selfless love that refuses to give up or count the cost. I am reluctant to use the “L” word when talking about God. Too few people understand that genuine love has nothing to do with lust. Even those not using the word to con and exploit and hurt people, tend to use it as an excuse to seek their own happiness and pamper their egos. With so many people misusing the word, the true meaning drains away and it mutates into something hideous. True love is so exquisitely beautiful and rare that you might not have witnessed even a shadow of it in humanity. Divine love is selfless giving taken to extreme levels. It is pure, nonsexual, humble, self-sacrificing and wants nothing but the other person’s greatest good. This rare beauty overwhelms God’s heart and flows freely to us all. He gives and gives and gives, not because of anything in us, but because of his goodness. He is so filled, driven and intoxicated by unlimited kindness, generosity, gentleness and purity that it is impossible for him to stop wanting to give you the best in his uniquely glorious, selfless, holy way. This is hard for us to believe because it is so contrary to our experience with humans. But God is utterly different to frail humanity. He knows no human inadequacies, selfishness or lust. He is kind, warm and gentle, yet all-powerful and flawless. His motives are pure. Now let’s return to Christine: Grantley taught me how to gain maximum benefit from my new understanding of how loved and accepted I am by God. I can now stop myself from spiraling out of control. I can pull myself out of a nose dive the instant it begins. Here’s how it works: the moment I sense myself beginning to feel negative about myself I inwardly shout, “No, that’s not true!” and begin thanking God that because of Jesus, God accepts me and believes in me. The Perfect One thinks I’m important, declares me to be good and pure and righteous, and has wonderful plans for my life. On and on I go, reminding myself of how loved by God I am; thanking and praising Jesus for being punished and despised so that I need never despise myself. As I continue, savoring the implications of the cleansing that is mine through Christ, and of me being royalty – a child of the King of kings – I force myself to rejoice in all of God’s goodness to me. As I keep this up, my spirit soars to the point where the urge to put myself down fades and I feel no need to seek empty comfort by degrading myself by former habits. Just as bad habits are hard to break, good habits are hard to build. It’s been hard to keep remembering each time I begin to enter a downward spiral to pull myself up, tell myself, “No, that’s not true!” and begin thanking God for the way he sees me through rose-colored glasses – through the precious blood of Jesus drained for me. And it’s been hard dredging up a multitude of positive things about God’s view of me to keep thanking God for, and to keep praise flowing for long enough for my depressing thoughts to fade. But as I keep persisting, it is getting easier and easier, and I’m discovering that, once established, good habits grow strong and serve us well. I’ve also learnt to, as it were, put money in the bank for a rainy day. Even when things are going well I regularly rehearse uplifting Scriptures and savor God’s love. Then when oppressive thoughts cloud in, I have in my mind a ready store of positive material to recall that will enrich my thinking. Gradually, to think well of myself – seeing myself through God’s eyes – is becoming second nature to me. As a result, self-hate is becoming a thing of the past. Moreover, life is becoming more exciting than ever before. Christ’s sacrifice is my anchor. No matter how violently stormy seas bounce me around, I’m safe because the anchor of my soul is embedded in the immovable, two-thousand-year-old bedrock of the holy Son of God swapping places with me. Christ has made me acceptable and lovable. It was settled two thousand years ago and nothing can change it. The Almost Unbelievable Your self-esteem has been so crushed that it will take you enormous effort for even a small fraction of these truths to sink in, but since, as the proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, it is important to begin by making every effort to try to absorb the following and doing your utmost to resist the temptation to imagine that you – or anyone else – could somehow nullify the infinity of God’s love. Why I Admire People Tempted to Hate Themselves People who feel so tormented that they feel like hating themselves unquestionably deserve deep compassion. More than this, however, they fill me with admiration. Here is one reason: Almost everyone engaged in self-hate sees himself as a loser but in my eyes every such person is not just a winner but a hero. I know how right your negative view of yourself  feels  to you but, nevertheless, I am certain that my view is the most realistic one. To explain, I’ll quote something I’ve written elsewhere: An athlete, in the midst of a record-breaking run, has never in his life been so fit and strong. Yet his pain-racked body may have never felt so weak. Likewise, in the midst of a spiritual trial, it is not uncommon to be stronger and yet feel weaker than ever before. And to fellow Christians you might seem hopeless. An ultra-marathon champion staggering up the final hill looks pathetic. A child could do better. Anyone not understanding what this man has gone through would shrink from him in disgust. Only someone with all the facts would be awed by his stamina as he stumbles on. Consider Scott and his team, who 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 heroic 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. Anyone feeling drawn to self-hate is suffering immense inner agony and yet instead of going the cowardly way of suicide he staggers on. That is heroic. Here’s yet another reason for people who hate themselves capturing my admiration: If you analyze it you will discover that what drives most people to self-hate is distress over their continual failure to reach the standards they believe they should achieve. They are so hard on themselves, however, that they forget that a lesser person would reduce his inner pain by lowering his standards – something self-haters won’t let themselves do. They continue to maintain their ideals even though it brings them deep torment. How admirable is that! Sadly, self-loathing could have so wounded you that not only this, but much of the following, will initially stagger belief or bounce off as if it did not apply to you. Imagine someone languishing in poverty despite receiving a check for ten million dollars. With the gift seeming too good to be true, he presumed it must be a hoax and never bothered to cash the check. I beg you not to be like that person. Please don’t miss out simply because what the good Lord has done seems too good to be true. Even though God’s standards are terrifyingly higher than ours, anyone thinking himself not good enough is seeing things through human eyes, not divine eyes. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, reaches the Holy Lord’s humanly unattainable standards of absolute perfection. Again, this will seem unbelievable or irrelevant mumbo jumbo without serious grappling with truth and seeking divine revelation. You Are a Sophisticated Being I claw at words trying to describe you. Words like noble, regal, intelligent, important and valuable all fall short. “Priceless” and “irreplaceable” are applicable but still fail to embrace the full magnificence of who you are. You are God-like – and you are not some shabby imitation of God but the Almighty God of Perfection  made  you with God-like qualities. Genesis 1:27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. This is solid proof that when the Bible speaks of “man” or “men” in general, it applies with equal force to females as to males. It is so important to God that we grasp this gender issue that he lays it out in the very beginning of the Bible. Moreover, Scripture also implies that God’s nature is most fully reflected not by males alone but by a combination of what is distinctively masculine and what is distinctively feminine. So, under the inspiration of God himself, Genesis 1:27, is declaring that, without exception, every human is in the image of the divine. Tragically, many children have been so grossly mistreated that they grow up to feel less than human. The devastating feeling of being less than human can be so strong that that degrading feeling can seem to be the truth. No matter how loudly they scream, however, mere feelings cannot change what God pronounces to be true. The truth is that you are fully human, which means you reflect the very nature of God – so much so that Jesus said, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’?” (John 10:34). Jesus was referring to this Scripture: Psalms 82:6-7  “I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’ But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler.” In this Word from God, our mortality – a consequence of our fallen nature – is brutally recognized and yet still the Godlike aspects of our nature remain undeniable. Finally, here are two more Scriptures affirming how exalted all humans are: Psalm 139:14  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 8:3-4  When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet. You Are Not Alone Let’s briefly explore several aspects to the comforting, liberating truth that no matter how alone you feel, you are not alone. There is something devastatingly lonely and isolating about pain. No one but God could slip inside your head and feel your pain. And how you feel just cannot be put into words. Yet we yearn to break the torment of solitary confinement and be understood. We yearn to express the inexpressible. A friend who has despised herself for what she has suffered is discovering something amazing flowing from the unique way that her suffering connects her with other hurting people: it empowers her to bring them hope and comfort like no one who has had an easier life can possibly achieve. Her suffering broke God’s heart and was the tragic consequence of living in a world that refuses to imitate God but acts in rebellion against his kind, gentle, loving ways. Nevertheless, that suffering has lifted her to a place of special honor in God’s eyes because it puts her in a unique position to help other suffering people – all of whom are so dear to his heart. To her astonishment, she has discovered that her past anguish, rather than being the useless waste it had once seemed, has immense meaning and value. You Are Totally Known and Understood Earlier we stated the obvious: No one but God could slip inside your head and feel your pain. But guess what! That is exactly what God does! “Laugh, and the world laughs with you, cry, and you cry alone,” can only be true if you leave God out of the equation. And the stupendous news is that we don’t have to leave God out. You are of such astounding importance and value to the Lord of the universe that every minute aspect of your life captivates his attention. He knew you and yearned for your companionship long before you had ever heard of him – before you even gained consciousness, in fact. He cares for you so much that ever since the moment of your conception, God has been with you, observing the multiplication of your every cell as you slowly formed within the womb. Invest time trying to contemplate the overwhelming vastness of the number of grains of sand in a single bucket. Then multiply that by the total amount of sand on every beach on the entire planet and add the grains of sand in every desert. That incomprehensible number is equivalent to the number of thoughts God has had about you. Whether you are asleep or awake, no detail of your life, no matter how hidden and secret or insignificant or embarrassing, past or future will ever escape his intimate awareness. He has known your every thought and he knew every word you would speak before you even uttered it. And this mind-bogglingly intense level of concern for you will keep hurtling on like an unstoppable freight train fueled by limitless love for all eternity. Add infinite intelligence to this unlimited knowledge and you are totally understood – not just more than any other human can possibly understand you but exceedingly more than you could even hope to understand yourself. In the most intensely intimate, infinitely detailed sense of the word, God  knows  what you are going through. Keep reading and you will see that your pain matters – so astoundingly so that, rather than luxuriate in ease, the most important Person in the entire cosmos would willingly suffer every trace of your pain for you. The stupendous Lord of the Galaxies, the Source of all beauty, feels for you so immensely that it would actually relieve his distress for him to fully bear your torment himself. You are not alone: even though you are rarely even conscious of it, from the moment of your conception and for the rest of eternity you have the ultimate companion who is infinitely concerned about the tiniest aspects of your life. God Has Taken Your Pain Upon Himself God is highly personal. He is no machine storing incomprehensibly vast quantities of information. God is love. Infinite love not only cares enough to want to know everything about you; love  feels . Your pain and distress sends him reeling in pain. Even imperfect humans can love with such intensity that they would rather suffer themselves than see their loved one suffer. And this is what God has done. Study this: Isaiah 53:4  Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows . . . he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. . . . the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . for the transgression of my people he was stricken.  . . . the LORD makes his life a guilt offering . . . he will bear their iniquities. . . . For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. It is almost as if the magnitude of the agony God feels in identifying with your distress drove him to self-harm – except that it was so much more than just an emotional reaction; it was the meticulously planned solution for your needs. By identifying with you so utterly that he was tortured to death on your behalf, the eternal Son of God opened the way for your healing and other wonders of immense significance in your life. Now all that it takes is for you to accept it. Just as marriage requires not just love and commitment from one partner, but the other must also agree to the union, so it is with you and God. No matter how much love yearns to help, love refuses to force itself upon another. At whatever personal cost it takes, love restrains itself until the loved one is willing to receive. You Are Valued Beyond Measure To explain, let me quote from something I’ve written elsewhere: A diamond is just a bit of rock. It can’t love, talk, think. Its worth is based not on what it can do but on what people are willing to pay for it. Diamonds are considered of great value simply because people will pay much to have one. You are far more precious to God than tons of diamonds and he paid a far higher price than all the wealth of a million earths to have you as his best friend. You have an irreplaceable place in God’s own heart. He loves you dearly and tenderly and devotedly. He paid the highest possible price – the willing sacrificial death of his holy Son – to have you as his best friend. Is God Impressed When I Beat Myself Up? It was the showdown: Elijah versus 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah (1 Kings 18:19, NIV). Whose God was more powerful? The Baal devotees prayed. No response. They prayed some more – and more and more. Still no response. Things were getting desperate. They used their ultimate weapon in getting their god to respond: 1 Kings 18:28-29  So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention. We can be strongly tempted to act like them; thinking that God or loved ones might take pity on us if we treat ourselves harshly enough or make ourselves sufficiently miserable. But God’s heart is already breaking over your distress. The last thing the loving, tender Lord wants is for you to further increase your suffering. In the Bible, those who treated themselves harshly were pagans who did not understand the heart of God. The emphatic teaching of Jesus is that faith is the key to answered prayer and to moving the hand of God. That makes praising God explosively powerful because praise is faith so purified and concentrated as to reduce problems to dust. Praising and thanking God are not reserved for when things go well. They form a lethal spiritual weapon against everything that seeks to distress, depress or destroy us. Ephesians 5:20  always giving thanks to God the Father for everything . . . Philippians 4:6  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition,  with thanksgiving , present your requests to God. Colossians 3:17  And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,  giving thanks  to God the Father through him. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18  Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Hebrews 13:15  Through Jesus, therefore, let us  continually  offer to God a sacrifice of praise . . .  (Emphasis mine) This is what Christine was working on. Her automatic, unthinking response to distress had been to despise herself and treat herself badly. Now she is establishing a new way of responding. This new habit, instead of acting like a drug that brings temporary relief but actually worsens the situation, is healing her inner pain, and dissipating her distress. Instead of  begging  God to intervene, she puts running shoes on her faith by thanking and praising God for loving and purifying and beautifying and exalting her. When feeling down, thanking and praising God is as hard as dragging yourself out of a cozy bed on an icy morning, but despite the effort it takes, you soon discover that praising God transports you from frigid depression to the cheery warmth of victory over defeatism. Louise, who often suffers deep depression, wrote a beautiful poem about a shoot pushing through a seed until finally emerging into the sunshine, only to be hit by the stench of fertilizer. That fertilizer, however, causes it to grow. Gradually the stench disappears and the plant blooms, producing a beautiful fragrance. “Beauty comes at a price,” says  her poem, which I suggest you read. In a personal e-mail to me, Louise made a comment about the poem that I’m reluctant to share because of the language but it will be very meaningful to many readers: I keep saying, I am a piece of ----, but I am not. I am, however, covered with it from time to time in order to grow, to push up through it and be strengthened by it. Practical Help Anyone wrestling with self-hate is in a uniquely stressful dilemma. In any act of hate and/or verbal putdowns, to be the victim is traumatic. It is even traumatic to be the attacker, since the attacker must act contrary to good conscience. But in self-hate, you are both the victim and the offender. How traumatic is that! How can you flee from your enemy when you are your own enemy? How can you get any joy out of the defeat of your enemy when you are that enemy? Forgiving oneself is a critical ingredient of feeling good about oneself and ending self-hate. Over the years, very many hurting people have shared their secrets with me. Their experiences have rammed home to me that forgiving oneself, feeling forgiven by God, and forgiving other people, travel together. They might separate a little, but progress with one type of forgiveness moves the others forward; holding back with one, holds back the others. So here’s a practical tip of great importance in ending self-hate: when, despite your best efforts, you seem to have reached a stalemate with one type of forgiveness, try working on one or both of the other types. Each type of forgiveness can be exceedingly stubborn but as you keep working on all three, while looking to God for supernatural help, one of the three will eventually move a little and this will make progress on the others a little easier. Since they are travel mates, each type of forgiveness is critical to feeling good about yourself and hence reducing the pressure to despise yourself. We dare not neglect any of the three types of forgiveness, so let’s list them one final time: *  feeling/believing you are forgiven by God *  forgiving yourself *  forgiving other people Becoming Whole We can kid ourselves that burying or hiding past difficulties proves us to be the “strong silent type” but the truth is very different. It prevents us from emotionally connecting and coming to terms with what is really troubling us. It can keep us perpetually distressed; one possible manifestation of which can be self-hate. Acting this way can not only cause enormous problems, it is inconsistent with the Healing Lord’s ways. The God of truth says such things as: Proverbs 28:13  He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. James 5:16  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. . . . 1 Chronicles 28:9   . . . the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. . . . Psalms 44:21   . . . he knows the secrets of the heart. 1 Corinthians 4:5   . . . He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. Hebrews 4:13  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. This is not scary because, as stated in Proverbs 28 (quoted above), even when sin is involved, it is only the person who conceals it who has cause for alarm. Like air into a vacuum, divine mercy and forgiveness rush in to fill whoever admits to sin and genuinely wants to be free from it. The beautiful thing is that we never have to revisit the dark places alone. We can take with us a warm Friend who dispels darkness. He is the Light of the world. We don’t have to fear our emotions because we have a God who deeply understands and empathizes. Jesus himself prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). Elsewhere it says about Jesus: Hebrews 4:15-18  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. We don’t have to fear our emotions getting out of control, because he will carefully monitor them. He will not allow us to suffer what we cannot bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). And if we have anger, bitterness or hate, he does not condemn but freely forgives and cleanses, and empowers us to resolve destructive attitudes so that we can heal. Breakthrough I have a down-to-earth prayer that could change your life. I’m not asking you to pray it. Simply read it. If you find it expresses your heart, you could then turn it into a prayer by reading it to God. Dear God, Could it really be that you are gentle and loving towards me? It seems too good to be true. I’ve loathed myself more times than I can count and I’ve assumed you felt like I do about myself. Could it really be that you see me so differently and are eager to warmly embrace me with your forgiveness and approving smile? You are an infinite God, so I concede that you have infinite love. That has to mean that your love far exceeds my own. But you are terrifyingly holy. How could you be less judgmental towards my failings than I am? Could Jesus dying for my sins have made  that  much difference? Could it really be that at last the pressure is off and I can bask in the sunshine of Almighty God knowing all about me and yet fully accepting me as his precious child? Could I be like Saint Paul, who saw himself as the worst of sinners and yet be special to God? Like that man of God, could I say, “ . . . but what I hate I do.  . . . nothing good lives in me . . . the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. What a wretched man I am! . . .” and then immediately follow that pathetic lamentation with, “Thanks be to God . . . Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 7:15,18,19,24,25; 8:1)? I need more than fire insurance against hell. To live with myself I need somehow to be able to see myself as being of immense value and morally good. Is this possible for  me? You have given your word that if I confess my sins, you will cleanse me from  all  unrighteousness, and in that same promise you vow you will do this not because I reach some arbitrary standard (we’ve all fallen short, anyhow – Romans 3:23) but simply because  you  are faithful and just (1 John 1:9). It would be so wonderful to be cleansed. According to the Scripture just mentioned, you and I, Lord, both have a role to play in bringing this about. You have to be faithful and just; I have to confess my failings. I don’t have to ask you to do your part. Since you are perfect and good, you’ll never be anything but faithful and just. So I’ll do my part and confess to all the things that make me feel so awful– what I’ve done and even what has been done to me that devastates me. I’d prefer to bury the past and live in denial, but the truth is that the past still eats at me, no matter how much I try to suppress it. My sins and the acts of those who have sinned against me seem too disgusting for you to want to hear about them, and yet you are so interested in everything that hurts me that you ask me to confess them – to tell you about them. I don’t find this easy, but I’ve already prolonged my torment for far too long. I need to get this over and done with, so here goes . . . [I suggest you now share your heart with God, pouring out to him details of all the things that tend to make you feel guilty, ashamed or uncomfortable. You might find it helpful to write it out as a letter to God. Any moral means of expressing your heart to God touches him deeply.] Jesus was tortured to death to secure my forgiveness and yet here I am still torturing myself and at times wishing I were dead, as if I were unforgivable, when Jesus sealed my forgiveness two thousand years ago. Forgiveness certainly isn’t my strong point. I remember when Saul, who later become the great apostle Paul, was still hating and scheming to hurt Christians, the risen Lord suddenly appeared and said, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14). I’m told the picture is of an ox angrily kicking against a spike. Every time the ox kicks, he hurts only himself. Have I been like that? Am I hurting myself every time I inwardly lash out in anger or unforgiveness against you or against those who have hurt me? I recall the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Could it be that my difficulty in believing that my sins have been divinely forgiven – supernaturally wiped out – is connected to my reluctance to forgive those who have sinned against me? I wish Jesus hadn’t kept linking me receiving the forgiveness I crave with me forgiving others. How can I forgive anyone else when I find it so hard to forgive myself? And yet somehow these different types of forgiveness are inseparably bound, like different facets on the same diamond. I desperately need to forgive myself and to enjoy your forgiveness, so by an act of will, whether I feel like it not, I activate the remaining aspect of forgiveness. I choose to forgive all who have hurt me. I don’t excuse what they did, nor pretend that what they did was even slightly defensible, but nevertheless, I forgive, just as I want you to forgive me. “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst,” said Saint Paul (1 Timothy 1:15). He did some atrocious things, including torturing innocent Christians in the hope of forcing them to blaspheme the One who died for their salvation and turn their back on their Savior. Even if I were a thousand times worse than I’ve ever imagined, however, it cannot change the fact that Jesus died for the full forgiveness of the very worst of sinners – whoever that might be. So forgiveness is mine through Jesus swapping places with me on the cross and letting himself be shamed and violated so that I could be honored. I gladly remove my filthy, sin-stained clothes that fill me with shame. Here they are, Lord: I hand you my guilt and condemnation, placing it upon the bleeding body of my Savior and trade my shame for your forgiveness and the divine purity and honor that it brings. In exchange for my dirty rags, I put on Jesus’ robe of righteousness. Your forgiveness clothes me from head to toe. I accept you as Lord, and now, through the supernatural transformation you promise, I am born of you. As your Word boldly declares, I am your righteousness because of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). Now we belong to each other. We are one. No matter how atrocious my failings and how much they haunt me, the truth is that in God’s eyes all of us have messed up so badly that Jesus had to suffer a torturous death for us all. The degree of sin isn’t the issue. Without Christ, we are all in the same hopeless predicament, doomed to hell, but no matter how alone and hopeless I often feel, the truth is that I am  not  without Christ. As Jesus took upon himself my gross inadequacies and shame, I take upon myself his sinlessness and glory. Your righteousness is now my righteousness and your honor is my honor. From now on I will live for you and honor you just as you devote yourself to me and shower me with your honor. I don’t need to despise myself for anything because on the cross Jesus has already been despised for it. That’s so mind-boggling that I need to repeat it: the Person who will judge all humanity volunteered to be shamed so that I would have no need to be shamed – neither punished by God nor by me. Help me grasp the full implications so that this becomes not mere doctrine but life-changing reality. You pronounce me to be a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:21) – an excitingly new divine masterpiece, a work of art crafted by the Master himself. No matter what I see in the mirror, you, the Almighty Lord, declare me to be a totally new person, sparkling with the glory of God; nothing like what I used to be or how I used to see myself. I admit that I don’t feel like a new creature – in fact, I feel as bad as ever – but you don’t lie. I look at myself and see nothing new. I still don’t like what I see. But you say that those whom you declare to be good – your royal children – walk by faith not sight. So I need to believe you, and so believe I am different, no matter what I feel. I am one with Jesus, the holy Son of God, so all the pressure to be good enough, all the humiliation of my past, and all the fear of divine rejection is over. I want to honor you by breaking out of my former pattern of thinking. Like breaking any habit, it will be hard work but I will do my utmost to act like Christine, so that every time I catch myself beginning to think poorly of myself I will say, “No, that’s not true!” and start thanking you for who I am in your loving eyes. Thank you that although you require my full cooperation, me thinking this way is important to you because you are selflessly devoted to wanting the best for me. The above can initiate a powerful transformation within you, but it is like a spark that will blaze into a huge fire, or be quickly extinguished, depending on whether it is protected and fed. In order to ensure that it changes your life, you need to explore all the links below. Each webpage leads to many others, but if you are battling self-hate they are most important for your welfare. I suggest you bookmark or record the web address of this page so that you don’t lose this list, and before even commencing the list, read  Serious, Do-It Yourself Healing From Emotional Pain . It is crammed with helpful insights into our strong tendency when things go badly wrong to want to blame ourselves, God or others. It explains why this is so destructive and how Jesus’ death formed the perfect and totally satisfying cure.   Keys to Feeling Good About Yourself You Can Find Love How to be one with Jesus Forgiving Yourself Being Convinced About God’s Love for You Being Convinced that God has Forgiven You Forgiving Those who have Hurt You How to Change Your Self-Image & Boost Self-Esteem Courage to Heal Survivors share secrets to healing from sex abuse Healing From Sexual Abuse A vast resource of comfort and support Where Was God When You Suffered Unspeakable Horrors? Feel Ugly? Could You Have a Distorted Body Image? Revenge! “I hate myself!” Christian help when you hate yourself A page that provides many more valuable links

Should I hate God?   Be angry at God if he is the cause of suffering Suffering - Why does God Allow it?   The problem of pain       The problem of evil   You might have every reason to hate the person you think God to be, but is that ‘God’ real?  Your anger feels justified, even though we can understand infinite wisdom no more than a babe understands its mother. What if your resentment towards God is like that of a desperately sick child who bites his doctor, imagining the caring doctor to be the cause of his torment, rather than his only hope of recovery? What a tragedy if we let the simple fact that we don’t have infinite IQ rob us of our greatest source of comfort.   I encourage you to  reject God  if he wants people to suffer or if you could be a better God than him. I urge you to lay it on the line with such a beast, telling him:   God of the Bible, I don’t even know if you exist or whether I am talking to myself, but even if you do exist, if you are a God who is unfair or delights in people suffering, I want nothing to do with you. I’d rather be tortured forever in hell than serve you if you are cold and heartless or selfish or arrogant.   ~ ~ ~   God Weeps?   What if no one in a lifetime has been so spurned, so misunderstood, so much hated without cause as God is every moment of every day by millions of people, each of whom he loves more than we could conceive? No one would be as aware of the full extent of suffering humanity as God is. What if no one loves with the intensity that God loves? No one would be touched as deeply by humanity’s anguish as its Creator. And your own pain would intensify his pain.   What if, even when the cause seems beyond human influence, all heartache can be traced not to God’s will, but to rebellion against God’s will.  Many things are murky or unknown to us – the view from eternity, the non-physical realm, the intricate chain reaction set off from person to person and generation to generation whenever anything happens. Relative to the all-knowing Lord, we are as short-sighted as King Midas, who discovered too late that having everything he touches turn to gold was not the great idea he thought it was. We might be exceedingly smarter than Midas, but we still lack the capacity to know the full consequences of our wishes coming true.   We vainly pit our puny intellect against the Infinite Mind, using brain cells he gave us to try to out-think him. If God’s ways don’t always make sense to us it merely confirms that our combined brain power couldn’t light a single galaxy. And too often we confuse a good life with a soft life. Too often virtue slips in our priorities. Of necessity, God’s love must be like that of a wise parent, focusing on long-term good, even at the price of tearing his own heart by infuriating the tiny minds of people he loves. His goal is the highest good for all humanity, not some short-term gain that fizzles or ends up robbing others.   The rantings of arm-chair philosophers differ markedly from the findings of people with the deepest experience of both God and suffering.  The apostle Paul, one of the most qualified persons ever to broach this subject, discovered that no tragedy could ‘separate us from the love of God’ (Romans 8:35-39). For nearly 2,000 years this hard-won insight has been put to the test by the torment of thousands of Christian martyrs who have agonized in triumph, rejoicing in the goodness of God.   He really knew God.  This one-time violent opponent of Christianity was bright, but as every agnostic knows, when it comes to contacting the Almighty, intelligence helps no more than one’s bank balance (Luke 10:21; Mark 10:15; 1 Corinthians 1:19-29). The apostle Paul’s interaction with God makes the spiritual experience of this world’s geniuses shrivel to insignificance (Acts 9:1-24; 13:7-12; 14:8-11; 28:3-6; Romans 15:18-19; 1 Corinthians 2:4-5; 11:1; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Galatians 1:10-20; 2:1-2,6-7; Philippians 1:21; 2 Timothy 1:3).   Few people have endured such torment.  He was slandered, betrayed, flogged, stoned, imprisoned and shipwrecked with devastating frequency (1 Corinthians 4:11-13; 2 Corinthians 11:23-29).   Paul’s grasp of the purest love  completes his credentials as an authority on the relationship between God’s love and suffering (1 Corinthians 13). He was unmoved by soppy emotionalism or other sham forms of love.   Though you spurn every Christian on the planet, you cannot dismiss this saint of a man. And he discovered that the reality of suffering cannot diminish the infinitude of God’s powerful love.   This enlightenment did not come cheaply to Paul,  and he realized it could not be passed on by words alone (Ephesians 3:17-19). Intense experience, prayer, and intimacy with God is a common price.   Include all types of affliction, and it is no exaggeration to say that multiplied millions of people have suffered without it diminishing their devotion to Jesus.  On the contrary, they insist it was God’s comfort, love and inspiration that empowered them to endure.   It was once claimed that by the laws of aerodynamics bumble-bees cannot fly. But people who know bumble-bees could not be hoodwinked. A scientific explanation might elude them, but they know bumble-bees fly. Similarly, people who really know God, even those who have suffered as much as is humanly possible, know what they know: God’s love is as mind-boggling as his power. Gaining insight in this matter might not be scientifically satisfying, but it is truth proven by cold reality.   ‘When you know God,’ breathed a Nazi concentration camp inmate, ‘you don’t need to know why.’ The hearts of thousands leap in agreement.   Although we can gain a little insight into God’s wisdom, were all our attempts to fail utterly, we have the security of knowing that our sorrow plunges a knife into the heart of the all-powerful Lord. That’s the ultimate proof that secreted within the stupendous intellect of Almighty God is an ingenious, love-filled reason for allowing it.   ‘No loving God would let a bystander be maimed by a drunk driver’   What alternative can you suggest? If God enslaved the human will, squelching wrongdoing by forcibly preventing us from indulging in our favorite sins, we’d be the first to shake our fists at him.   A God of love wants the whole world to operate in love, but could you force someone to love you?  An involuntary act can have no moral value. It’s slavery. Where would the virtue be in any action if it were impossible not to be virtuous? All of life would become meaningless.   It would be the height of hypocrisy to dare criticize God for not always interfering when tragedy looms. Time after time we have each proved by our actions that we don’t want his love and wisdom cramping our style.   We say there is no hell and set new records in suicide rates. We call God’s morality old-fashioned and suddenly it’s old-fashioned not to know the latest AIDS statistics. We fill our hospitals with bodies ravaged by promiscuity and substance abuse. Try calculating even the dollar cost of divorce, fraud, laziness, irresponsible driving, theft, vandalism, prisons, judicial system, and police. One wonders how our economy has survived this long. Incalculable misery is inevitable whenever God’s laws are regarded as oppressive restrictions rather than loving expressions of divine wisdom.   We spurn God’s laws, hurt each other, and then have the audacity to blame God for the resulting disaster.  All suffering can be tracked back to human wrong-doing – not necessarily the action of anyone presently alive, but to someone’s deliberate disregard of God and his ways. (There is even a human link to  natural disasters .) And why didn’t God strike that person dead before others could be hurt? Because to be fair he should do the same to you and me.   No clever argument, however, and no spiritual experience can hide one unavoidable fact: a holy God would yearn to wipe out every cause of pain. And if he eradicated everyone who has ever caused pain by selfishness, cheating, lying, gossiping or hurtful remarks, who would be left? Only a maniac or an ego-maniac would dare demand justice from God. Though we are too blinded by our own mud to have a hope of seeing ourselves as we really are, if we could peer through our own muck a little, we would realize we have each added to humanity’s pain. Many of us would go to any lengths – even to accusing our Judge of injustice – in an unconscious attempt to push the spotlight away from the recesses of a dirty conscience. If only we could smear God, narrowing the gap between his perfection and our shabby behavior, we’d feel better. ‘Suffering is God’s fault!’ we sneer, conveniently forgetting times our anger, greed and lies hurt others.  Naturally, there is a degree of hurt we deem excusable, and for some suspicious reason the hurt we have inflicted happens to fall within the standard we arbitrarily set. It is like failing an exam and then moving the pass mark to make our score look good. A holy God could not be partner to such hypocrisy. To wipe out some people who cause suffering and spare you and me would make God guilty of gross injustice. We have each chosen to reject God’s loving ways and have contributed to humanity’s pain. If there is a God of love, the people he loves and longs to place in a pain-free world are the very ones who cause humanity’s suffering. ‘If there really were a God of love, the innocent wouldn’t suffer’ Brilliant minds have reached this conclusion. It’s a time-bomb set to explode in Christians’ faces the moment they encounter personal tragedy. When we stop to carefully examine reality, however, we are forced to the conclusion that only one innocent ever suffered!  Few of us can face this reality, until Jesus cleanses our deeply suppressed but dirty conscience. Only after that spiritual miracle dare we relax our frantic attempts to conceal and excuse and push from our minds the extent of our depravity. It is a devastating experience to have one’s supposed goodness exposed by God’s blinding purity. With every shred of pride within them shrieking in protest, Christians feel driven to a crushing conclusion: the moral gap between them and a serial killer is invisible, compared to the gulf separating even their best efforts from the terrifying holiness of God. We must move on, but we can’t question why the innocent suffer without facing the issue of innocence. Astoundingly, we are so far from being innocent that even babies owe their very existence to sin. If, for example, we traced our family tree far enough, we would probably each find an ancestor born as a result of sin – rape, unlawful incest, a despised pregnancy, and the like. The divine dilemma is that had God already done what he longs to do – remove all evil from this planet – we would not even have been born. Nevertheless, having consigned everyone to the sin bin, Christians back flip, seizing the pretentious assertions of a man renowned for humility. Christ claimed an existence independent of human ancestry (John 8:56-59; 17:5). If true, and if he subsequently lived a perfect life, he alone could be innocent in every conceivable sense. And we know this man suffered. He appeared as the uniquely perfect human who preached impossibly high standards, claimed they were God’s requirements and actually lived them. Turning the cheek, loving his enemies, just as he had preached, he yielded to abuse and torture, somehow absorbing within his mangled body the horrific consequences of all humanity’s sin. Humanity can boast one perfect Person.. We killed him. Yet our only Innocent gladly suffered the injustice to free the guilty from suffering eternal justice. In this cataclysmic exchange, the Innocent and the guilty traded places, making it spiritually legal for his suffering to end your suffering. As incredible as it seems, this has ushered us to the brink of a new world where the longing deep within us will be met – deceit, abuse, and hurtful actions will be swallowed by goodness; misery will dissolve in endless joy. Nevertheless, temporary earthly pain continues for a wonderful reason.  A paradise of harmony, trust, openness and love would quickly spoil if just one of its citizens acted remotely like we presently behave. To enter a perfect world without shattering its perfection, would require a personality transformation more radical than ever seen on earth. Through Jesus’ intervention, God can perform this miracle and make us fit for such a world, but he won’t abuse us by forcing a personality change upon us against our will. We must be willing to let God take our pet sins from us and let him, in his unlimited wisdom and love, rule every part of our lives. But there must be a Day of reckoning.  All evil must be removed. Even the self-righteous have been demanding it for millennia, though they have no idea what they are asking. Our response before that terrifying moment will determine whether we’ll be around to enjoy an evil-free environment. The suffering of humanity’s only innocent (Jesus) blazed the way for the total removal of all suffering and when he re-visits this planet he will complete his mission.  But how, without unprincipled favoritism, could he eradicate all evil without destroying you and me? Only by us letting him wrench our darling sins from us, and trusting him to have taken their horrific consequences upon himself. Then we will be spared and no one can accuse God of injustice or favoritism. He has borne the penalty himself. Humanity quivers on the brink of extinction, mesmerized by sin like serpent’s prey. Each moment that God suppresses his explosive urge to extinguish evil, is a moment in which billions of us have yet another chance to come to our senses and let Jesus deliver us from our infatuation with sin. But the end of this period of grace is hurtling toward us. Soon all suffering will cease. All wrongdoing will be destroyed, along with everyone still caught in its deadly embrace. Try this daring experiment: I believe I am right to have very serious doubts about you, God, but here I am talking about my belief when I am well aware that beliefs can be wrong. If you do exist, then because you are infinite, you are difficult to know. And if there are also evil, though lesser, spiritual beings, I guess it is theoretically possible that I have somehow got my wires crossed in trying to figure you out. If I have been blaming you for things that break your own heart; if you are actually utterly unselfish and good and fair and wise and truly have my best interest at heart, then perhaps it would be worth my while to know. It seems beyond belief, but if you are a God of tender compassion who feels my pain and longs to use your stupendous power and wisdom to bless me; if serving you is the greatest thing that could ever happen to me, causing me to rise to my highest potential and filling me with eternal fulfillment; and if my whole eternity hinges on me making this magnificent discovery, then not only do I need to know, I  want  to know. Since I can’t see into the spiritual realm, I’m dependent upon you revealing yourself. If you are God, you are so superior to me that I cannot put demands on you. Anything you choose to show me must be on your terms – your time and your method. If I dig my heels in, refusing to believe unless you move Mount Everest or some such thing, you’ll see right through me and know I’m not sincere. And why should you bother showing yourself to anyone who would continue to ignore you even after you revealed yourself? So let’s do a deal. If the truth is that you are not worthy of my love, I will reject you for all eternity, no matter how much that costs me. For as long as it takes, however, I will remain open to you showing me the truth about yourself. I know I can’t fool you. I can’t expect a defiant ‘prove yourself to me or else’ to move you, but if you are good, a sincere desire for truth on my part will touch you. If you somehow get through to me that you are a God whose love and wisdom is utterly trustworthy; that you are the God who made me and wants the best for me, I will give you your rightful place as God of my life. And if you show me that I need to trust Jesus alone for the purification necessary to relate to a holy God of perfection, then I will do this. You have commenced an exciting adventure if you really mean that prayer and stay open to God revealing to you his true nature. Don’t expect much, however, if it’s a shallow prayer that you hardly mean or quickly forget. ‘God is Egotistical’ If God were so mind-bogglingly loving that it were really true to say ‘God is love' – as the Bible asserts – then anything God asks you to do would be because it is in your very best interest. God’s blueprint for your life would focus on your endless happiness and fulfillment. This is not to be confused with  short term  ease and bliss that ultimately wears thin and crumbles. Like little children who think happiness means having no rules and an endless supply of candy, we still have a lot of growing up to do before we understand what is truly in our best interest. Much of what we presently clamor for we will eventually discover is not what we really want after all. In contrast, the infinite knowledge and intelligence of God focuses on things we will be eternally thrilled about. That often puts our priorities at odds with God’s priorities, even though both he and us seek our happiness. Some people who haven’t thought it through imagine God is egocentric because he asks us to praise and worship him. What we hold highest in life sets the ceiling for personal growth, achievement and honor. And being preoccupied with oneself makes one’s personality shrivel. That’s why our loving Lord wants you to be God-centered. The Lord’s only wish is that we act as wisely and unselfishly as him. Like the Perfect Leader that he is, he asks nothing of us that he would not do himself. It is the very nature of love – and hence the nature of God – to focus on the beloved. Just as he wants you to be God-centered, his plans focus on you as if  you  were the center of the universe. Your love means infinitely more to God than all the diamonds in myriads of galaxies. And praise is a natural expression of love. Lovers find praises effortlessly flowing from their lips as they praise their beloved’s looks, abilities, and so on. If God wanted slaves he could in an instant create too many to cram on to every planet in the universe. The All-powerful, Self-Sufficient Lord of the Universe craves your praise only because he is love and is rapt in you. To discover how to get to know God and undergo the spiritual transformation we need to enjoy an evil-free eternity with him, see  You Can Find Love: What your Fantasies Reveal. ~ ~ ~

Christian Revenge and the Wrath of God Turn the other cheek? Teach him a lesson he will never forget! Love your enemy? Avenge yourself and get even with those who hate you? Divine justice. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” says the Lord (Romans 12:19, NKJV) God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you (2 Thessalonians 1:6) If you imagine God to be the slightest impersonal or disinterested, you have yet to have life’s most thrilling experience – a genuine encounter with the Living God. As we are a higher life form and more personal than plants, so God is higher and more personal than us. With passion, powers of attention, and concern for every detail that makes a nuclear explosion seem like a popgun, the Almighty is so intensely personal that alongside him we are colorless and superficial. And this magnificent God of perfection is in love with you. As a consequence, Almighty God is furious with those who have hurt you. So extreme is God’s passion to execute justice on your behalf that no human could generate such intense yearning. And yet the God who longs for us to be like him, urges us not to take vengeance into our own hands. The Bible insists that even in this life, justice is important, and yet it speaks of turning the other cheek. We will explore these mysteries, plunging deep into the heart of God and gaining new insight into the breathtaking perfection of God’s ways, and in the process discover the path to inner peace. Because it is from God, Bible truth on virtually any subject is so vast that to our puny human minds it seems almost contradictory. In a desperate attempt to cope with the mind-boggling complexity, we are constantly tempted to push from our consciousness those parts of divine revelation that don’t fit our simplistic understanding. To do so, however, not only gives us a twisted view of the breathtakingly beautiful, perfect and lovable Lord, but it robs us of comfort and help God longs for us to enjoy. So a goal of this webpage is to embrace as much of the full truth as we can, while keeping it easy to understand. Before discussing God’s vengeance on those who mistreat you, let’s examine the significant reasons why he pleads with us not to avenge ourselves. If someone attacks us and we attack him back, we have just become as bad as that person. “But he started it!” we retort like children. Yes, and by that we admit that we have exalted that person to being our leader and moral teacher. We have taken the very person we acknowledge as behaving badly and made him the one who teaches us how to behave. How dumb is that! If someone hates us so much that we end up hating him, not only have we, by our hate, become like that person, we have highly esteemed his actions. “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.” Yes, he started it, but rather than that justifying us acting like him, our longing for revenge justifies his actions. We have declared him so right that we have made him our role models, inspiring us to acts of unkindness. And, even more terrifying, by letting someone get under our skin, we usually become so blinded with self-righteous anger that we have no idea that we have become like the person we despise. We fool ourselves into thinking we are better than that person, and yet even if he didn’t specifically want us to suffer and it was more a side effect of his actions, we, with premeditated deliberation, want him to suffer. If someone hurts us, we want to “teach him a lesson,” but if we tried to retaliate, not only would we fail to teach him how to be godly, we would end up letting that person teach us how to be ungodly. If being hit does not teach us not to hit but only inflames our desire to hit back, why do we suppose that us hitting him would do anything other than intensify his desire to hit back? Instead of teaching him not to lash out, we have merely increased his passion for it and taught him that even those who think themselves morally superior end up concluding that unkind behavior is the best way to act. If our only reason for not hitting back is because we are not strong enough to fight the person or because we fear the consequences, we have still let our heart become as black as that person’s and in addition we have greater fear or weakness than the person we despise. Spiritually, that person has succeeded in making us his clone. Not only has evil not been reduced, it has been multiplied – and multiplied in the worst possible way – by us becoming like the person we despise. If, however, it is with godly motives that we restrain ourselves, wondrous possibilities emerge. So how do you teach an evil person a lesson? Certainly not by becoming a role model in showing him how to be ungodly. He’s already mastered that art. You teach him a lesson by letting him know first hand how good it is to be on the receiving end of loving kindness. You stop evil in its tracks by refusing to duplicate their behavior or attitude in your own life. Then you use loving kindness to cause evil to retreat in the lives of those who are in its grip. “Overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21) is one of the most profound statements ever uttered. Not surprisingly with something so profound, it distills into a few words a fundamental aspect of Jesus’ teaching. Like so much of Jesus’ teaching, something deep within us finds it peculiarly attractive and yet we are constantly tempted to dismiss it as too otherworldly to actually work. This foundational truth is also taught in more of the rest of Scripture than we sometimes recall. For example, “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat,” seems like the honey that repeatedly dripped from Jesus’ lips, and yet it is actually not from Jesus but from Proverbs 25:21. Again we read, “ Do not say, ‘I’ll do to him as he has done to me; I’ll pay that man back for what he did.’” (Proverbs 24:29). Even the Old Testament Law says such things as, “If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him,” (Exodus 23:4) and, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). This intimate connection between Jesus’ words, and the Old Testament is to be expected. If Jesus’ teaching had no precedence in the written word of God revealed prior to Christ’s coming, we would have reason to question whether Jesus truly is the Word of God made flesh. And, of course, this eternal truth is reaffirmed by later revelation. For instance, Paul says such things as, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. . . . Do not take revenge . .  (Romans 12:14,19) and Peter said, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). Like Jesus, the first Christian martyr prayed God’s forgiveness upon his murderers. He achieved this, not by finally yielding after years of reluctant wrestling with the issue, but while being pounded by the stones that killed him (Acts 7:59-60). That we should return good for evil is clearly divine revelation, not just because it appears in so many diverse Scriptures, but because it is so contrary to human thinking. “Love your enemies,” sounds off the planet. It is! It’s from another world. It’s from heaven itself – a world so holy and superior that it is the opposite of the way this world thinks and acts. “Overcome evil with good,” sounds impractical but in reality there is simply no alternative. The only way to kill evil is to smother it with love. To fight bitterness with bitterness or in any other way return evil for evil is to fight a wildfire with gasoline. Any way other that love not only fails to overcome evil, it causes evil to spread and therefore to triumph. More frightening still is where it causes the evil to spread – into one’s own heart. The loving Lord passionately longs to save you from the terrifying fact that we end up like the person we hate. We either imitate Christ who died to forgive his haters or we imitate those who touch us with their evil. You don’t fight corruption by becoming corrupt; you don’t end anger by getting angry. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger (Proverbs 15:1). Only light can eliminate darkness. To suppose you can fight darkness with more darkness is stupidity. Spiritual darkness retreats, not by us copying the works of darkness, but only by letting our light so shine that people see our good works. To counteract bitterness you need much sweetness. Lose your sweetness and you lose your usefulness. Become bitter and you become part of the problem. Nothing increases evil like trying to fight evil with evil. To use unrighteous methods in the hope of stopping unrighteousness is like thinking you can eliminate rape by becoming a rapist. It is hypocrisy at its worst. Just suppose your pipe dream came true and you succeeded in using unchristlike methods to stop someone from spreading evil. How could you claim the slightest victory in fighting evil when by choosing ungodly methods you have let evil win in your very own life? To get even with an evildoer who mistreats us is to be brought to the level of an evildoer. To forgive is to be raised to the level of the godly. But how can anyone become so Christlike as to turn the other cheek and do good to those who seek our harm? Only by inviting Christ himself into our very life and – by letting him take over – release him to love others through us with the superhuman love that is God’s alone. Lift Up Your Head In a wide range of Scriptures, God pleads with us to fix our minds on Christ. John 6:40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son . . . 2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory . . . (KJV) Colossians 3:2 Set your minds on things above . . . Philippians 4:8  . . . whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure . . . think about such things. Philippians 3:13  . . . Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead (14) I press on toward the goal . . . Hebrews 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith . . . Nothing other than fixing our attention on Christ will elevate us. Of everything God wants from us, the objects of his love, Jesus said that the most critical is that we love God with all our heart, soul and mind. In practice, “mind” could almost be omitted from the supreme commandment. If we just loved the Lord with all our hearts, it would be reflected in how often our minds drifted to him. It is wisely said that our real God is whatever our minds habitually drift to when we have nothing in particular to think about. And whatever regularly captivates our thoughts determines the person we are destined to become. We know how critical it is when driving to fix our eyes on where we want to go. If we keep looking at objects on the side, we will find ourselves veering dangerously in whatever direction we gaze. Likewise, if we travel through life with our hearts filled with disgust or resentment toward someone, then, like a moth drawn to deadly flames, our minds will keep drifting toward that person. Our gaze will keep slipping from whatever is true, noble, right, pure and worthy of praise – which in the ultimate is Christ himself – and, instead of Christ, our lives will resolve around the person we despise. If our minds keep drifting to that person, rather than Christ, it shows we have become more passionate about the one who hates us than we are about the One who loves us. That person will fill our minds as much as if we were hopelessly in love with him/her. In effect, our fixation upon the behavior of the person we despise causes that person, not Christ, to become our role model, and even – in a disturbingly real sense- our god. We will actually become increasingly like the person we hate. This is no idle theory. What moved me begin this webpage is my distress over continually seeing this truth displayed as tragic reality in the lives of many people who e-mail me, sharing their traumatic past and their current problems. And this is confirmed by research around the world into the backgrounds and attitudes of people. Unless we forgive, we will be so tied to that person that we will end up wherever he/she ends up – or worse. The Surprise Twist to this Tale Whenever our finite minds think we have the infinite Lord figured out, we are heading for a shock. Just when we expect Scripture to emphasize love as being the reason for being kind to one’s enemies, it stuns us by speaking of this being the door to vengeance and releasing God’s wrath upon the enemies. To explore this mystery, see Love your Enemy and Heap Burning Coals on his Head For a moving webpage about importance of love, see Turn the Other Cheek Another significant page: Why God’s Anger is Comforting

Why Hard Times Bless Christians Maturity, whether physical, mental or spiritual, comes neither from a book nor from an instant answer to prayer. Consider this biblical reference to spiritual maturity: Hebrews 5:11-14  We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for  the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil . (Emphasis mine.)   Note those last words. The emphasis is on intense experience in repeatedly choosing what is right, rather than sliding into what is convenient or comfortable. I have highlighted that it says maturity comes to those who have “trained themselves.” Like the physical training an athlete endures, God and various people can instruct and inspire but without the trainee personally exerting himself, nothing will be achieved. The critical importance of intense personal involvement makes painful trials an integral part of gaining spiritual maturity: James 1:2-3  Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be  mature  and complete, not lacking anything. (Emphasis mine.) This truth is of such importance that an entirely different writer says virtually the identical thing. Both James and Paul insisted that painfully oppressive trials end up achieving so much spiritual good in our lives that their presence is something to rejoice about: Romans 5:3-4   . . . we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. By calling it suffering,  Romans  emphasizes how painfully unpleasant the trials are that empower us to grow up spiritually.  Hebrews  calls these spiritually beneficial experiences the discipline that children must respond to positively if they are to grow into responsible adults. It does not sidestep the fact that this is unpleasant: Hebrews 12:7-11  Endure  hardship  as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? . . . we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! . . . God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful . Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Emphasis mine.) Seize the fact that this says that having hardship thrust upon us does not mean God dislikes us; it is actually proof that he believes in us and cares for us with true wisdom and boundless love. The “discipline” is often not punishment but intense training like a coach would put his star athletes through to bring them to an even higher level. If possible, I would like you to continue with this fascinating, potentially life-changing, biblical exploration of the spiritual benefits of suffering.  Discussing trials that Christians can face, however, raises two concerns, either of which might alarm some readers so much that they stop reading or even give up on God before finding the sections later in this webpage where these matters are fully addressed. The issues are: 1.  Reading about trials might give you a seriously wrong view about God. You might, for example, have had cold, harsh parents who, despite their claims, acted unlike God, and this experience has warped your ability to grasp the true meaning of the Bible’s analogy of discipline. It is vital that we understand that, like the suffering of his precious Son, our temporary distress pains him and appals him, regardless of how much good comes from it and how extravagantly we will be eternally compensated. At this moment, we live in a world that refuses to act in accordance with God’s kind and gentle ways, and there are complex, loving reasons why God has not currently wiped all evil from this planet. I will shortly endeavor to put your mind at rest about God’s tender compassion. If you can read a little more before moving to that section, please do. Otherwise, go straight to  Why Suffering Breaks God’s Heart & Yet Temporarily Continues . 2.  Is it worth being a Christian? If, at any stage, reading about trials makes you seriously wonder about this, scroll down or jump to  Is Following Christ Worth the Cost? We have been mining the Bible for precious information about the surprising value of suffering, and especially how it enables us to mature spiritually. We are beginning to see that, in his astounding love and mind-boggling ability to “overcome evil with good,” the Lord intervenes in our lives so that evil attacks against us that should have weakened and deformed us end up spiritually beautifying and empowering us. We have seen that for those who entrust their lives to God, hardship ceases to be meaningless oppression and instead acts like the loving discipline that takes a child unable to be trusted with responsibility and slowly transforms him or her into a highly capable and praiseworthy adult. And rather than being a useless nuisance, unwanted affliction is cunningly refashioned until it becomes like a coach’s invaluable training that builds a weakling into a champion; a loser into a winner. Peter employed yet another analogy to convey the same truth about trials as found in  Romans, James  and  Hebrews . He taught that as ore needs heat to purify it and make it more useful and increase its value, so Christians need “fiery” trials (1 Peter 4:12 – literal translation): 1 Peter 2:19,21  For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of  unjust suffering  because he is conscious of God. . . .  To this you were called , because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 1 Peter 4:12-13  Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (Emphasis mine.) We should not be surprised, says Peter, when we suffer painful trials. In fact, we are  called  to suffer unjustly, just as Christ was. Throughout his letter, Peter keeps returning to this theme, explaining how normal and beneficial it is for Christians to suffer. He even wrote: 1 Peter 4:1-2  Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. Consider how Paul and Barnabas went about “strengthening” and “encouraging” the early Christians: Acts 14:22  strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. The book of Revelation is sometimes misrepresented as saying, “Come to Christ so you can avoid hard times.” In reality, what Paul and Barnabas said about hardships and the kingdom of God is virtually a summary of much of the book: Revelation 2:9-10  I know your afflictions and your poverty . . . Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life. Revelation 12:17  Then  the dragon  was enraged at the woman and  went off to make war against  the rest of her offspring –  those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus . Revelation 13:7  He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. . . . Revelation 13:10  If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed.  This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints . Revelation 20:4   . . . I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. . . . (Emphasis mine.) Revelation 1:9  I John, your brother and partner with you in oppression, Kingdom, and perseverance in Christ Jesus . . . Revelation 6:9  When he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been killed for the Word of God, and for the testimony of the Lamb which they had. Revelation 11:7  When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them. 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. Revelation 14:12  Here is the patience of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. Revelation 16:6  For they poured out the blood of the saints and the prophets . . . Revelation 17:6  I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. . . .   Suffering is so normal for a Christian that Paul wrote: 2 Timothy 3:10-12  You, however, know all about my . . . persecutions, sufferings . . . In fact,  everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (Emphasis mine.) So that they knew what he had in mind, Paul referred to his own persecutions and sufferings, and we know from all the times he was physically tortured, this meant intense suffering. Here’s some of the milder stuff: 1 Corinthians 4:11  To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 2 Corinthians 1:8-9  We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But  this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God , who raises the dead. (Emphasis mine.) Notice, incidentally, how Paul refused to view the almost unbearable opposition they suffered as a useless, meaningless frustration. Despite its original source and evil intent, he saw it as being lovingly refashioned by the omnipotent Lord into something spiritually beneficial; motivating them to rely on God. By focusing his astounding powers on senseless, anti-God violence, the Almighty transformed his enemies’ frenzy into the very opposite of what they intended. What they hoped would annihilate God’s loved ones, ended up fostering the spiritual development of those they planned to destroy. How frightening and futile it is to rage against a God so powerful that he turns his enemies’ every hate-filled attack into a blessing that furthers his own loving commitment to keep spiritually strengthening those who love him! The God of infinite love and power habitually performs staggering miracles of this magnitude in the lives of his beloved. Consider Paul’s “thorn”; the “messenger of Satan” that tormented him so much that the apostle repeatedly prayed for it to stop. It is appropriate to quote here what I wrote many years ago about the distressing attack that sent Paul reeling: Christ deflected the Devil’s dart with such precision that it punctured only that part of Paul that was in danger of bloating with pride. Though hurled in Satanic wrath, it passed through the scarred hands of Jesus and entered Paul as a manifestation of divine love and wisdom. I think it also helpful to include here a slightly modified version of something else I wrote years ago: Being the all-powerful One in whom we all – even anti-Christians – “live and move and have our being,” God can cause anyone to further his own loving plans. Our magnificent Lord is so intellectually superior – so able to outwit every other intelligence in the universe – that he repeatedly uses as his own instruments, humans and spiritual beings who passionately hate him and are doing everything they can to ruin God’s purposes. Consider Joseph’s brothers, whose evil plans God used as instruments of his love. “You intended to harm me,” declared Joseph, “but God intended it for good . . .” (Genesis 50:20). The Almighty’s power to use his enemies is stunningly displayed at the opposite end of the Bible, where it speaks of the ten “horns” who serve the beast that emerges from the abyss. They are so violently anti-God that they “make war against” the Son of God. Scripture reveals that the Almighty will put into the very hearts of these evil, God-hating beings the desire to do something that serves God’s purposes (Revelation 17:12-17). Such is the genius of the Almighty Lord that, in the blind fury of their venomous hatred for Jesus, God’s enemies end up furthering God’s plans. This is why even evil attacks that by their very nature are totally contrary to God’s loving ways, end up spiritually blessing those who are committed to spiritual growth. This does not in the slightest mean that God approves of suffering but if, for reasons explained below, it must be temporarily tolerated for the greater good, our loving Lord will never allow our suffering to be in vain. On the contrary, he will transform it into something that brings about so much good within us that we will rejoice about for all of eternity. See in the following Scripture the centrality of suffering “persecutions and trials” in being “counted worthy of the kingdom of God”: 2 Thessalonians 1:4-5   . . . we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. Likewise, Jesus affirmed that we are blessed and have reason to rejoice when we are impoverished, weep, suffer persecution, and so on (Luke 6:21-23). We are often tempted to imagine that being spared hard times indicates God’s blessing but, consistent with the  Hebrews  quote about discipline and many other Scriptures, Jesus insisted that the exact opposite is true. In Jesus’ day, to take up one’s cross meant more than just the humiliation of being treated like criminal lowlife in a manner that even the most degraded Roman citizen was spared. It was a one-way journey not merely to the gallows but to being mercilessly tortured to death. Nothing on earth could be more terrifying, and yet this is the expression our Lord chose to describe the basic requirement of all who wanted to follow him. Despite the value and necessity of Christians suffering being such a strong and recurrent theme throughout the New Testament, many of today’s preachers in western countries have grown amazingly adept at ducking and weaving their way through the Bible so as to avoid the obvious. In fact, their avoidance is so persistently enforced as to end up making this foundational teaching seem like deep teaching or even a foreign concept. Why Suffering Breaks God’s Heart & Yet Temporarily Continues Mentioning the spiritual benefits of hard times obligates me to pen this next section. If you are absolutely convinced about God’s tender love and goodness, you are still likely to be blessed by it but you can skip it if you are in a hurry. “Come near to God and he will come near to you,” says James 4:8. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to stay motivated to keep moving closer to someone we think might be displeased with us. Here’s one of my quotes that I find myself frequently sharing with people: One of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents runs off and falls, what’s the first thing he does? He looks to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, should run into Daddy’s arms for the comfort you need. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively recoil from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arm’s length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort. To nurture your awareness of God’s love for you, read the link  Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You  at the end of this webpage and all the links that link leads to. For help in overcoming the fear that God is displeased with you, there is a vast number of resources listed in the  Feeling Condemned?  link at the end of this webpage. The other factor that will hinder us from drawing close to God is the fear that he might be some cold-hearted ogre. Conversely, the more warmly we feel toward God, the easier it will be to draw near to him. We have seen that suffering hard times is a key to gaining spiritual maturity. In fact, suffering was necessary even to perfect our Lord for ministry: Hebrews 2:10  In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. If, however, we begin supposing that our suffering might mean that God is callous or even cruel, we would not only be mistaken, our misunderstanding would sabotage our motivation to draw near enough to God to hear his whispers. Love and admiration for God will not only prove the strongest motivations, they are by far the most acceptable motivations. Intellectual curiosity or a lust for power or anything else that might motivate us to seek God is hardly desirable. As much as we might talk about God’s omnipotence and sovereignty and Christ’s stupendous victory of the cross, earth was not transformed as soon as Jesus rose from the dead. Our glorious Lord won the right to do so but only when he returns to this planet to execute the Final Judgment will everything change physically. Until then, insists 1 John 5:19, “the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” At present, Satan remains “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4), “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient,” (Ephesians 2:2). The forces of evil currently have so much power over what Christians suffer that, as mindboggling as it initially seems, Scripture declares that the devil somehow compelled the Son of God to physically move from place to place during his forty days of temptation and his holy mind was invaded by a satanic vision.   To quote from another footnote to this webpage: Matthew 4:5  Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple. Who, according to this Scripture, took the holy Son of God to the top of the temple? It wasn’t Jesus’ doing, nor was it God’s. And consider this: 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. Everyone knows there is no mountain in the world from which one’s natural eyes can see “all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.” The devil not only somehow managed to get Jesus’ body where he wanted it to be, he thrust a vision into Christ’s very mind. This is akin to spiritual rape.   Later, Paul told the Thessalonians he had wanted to visit them “again and again – but Satan stopped us,” (1 Thessalonians 2:18), and in Revelation 2:10 Jesus told the church in Smyrna, “ the devil  will put some of you in prison to test you . . .” (emphasis mine). The Lord’s Prayer remains the model for prayers we must utter precisely because right now God’s will is  not  done throughout earth “as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Even in this, the age of the Spirit, “our struggle is . . . against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,” (Ephesians 6:12). To accept this biblical truth means accepting that much that currently happens on this planet flows not from God’s heart but from his enemies whose ways are totally opposed to God’s. I have devoted other webpages to explaining how the existence of suffering in a fallen world does not in any way lessen the intensity of God’s longing to remove all suffering and in no way diminishes the integrity and intensity of his love and goodness. Nevertheless, I should touch on it here. With a passion and intensity that defies description, God hates evil and all the pain and suffering it inevitably causes. It breaks his heart, ruins his creation and hurts his loved ones. It is so contrary to his selfless love, wisdom, goodness and everything else dear to him that it infuriates him to extremes beyond our comprehension. In fact, the Almighty’s yearning to destroy all evil is so stupendous that his temporary tolerance of evil is the greatest display of love, kindness, patience and self-control the universe has ever seen. In the words of Scripture: 2 Peter 3:7,9-10   . . . the present heavens and earth are . . . being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. . . . The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. . . . Romans 2:4  Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? In other words, the Almighty delaying judgment – and removing everyone who causes suffering – is emphatically not because he is weak or approves of evil but solely an act of extreme kindness in the hope that sinners will repent before it is too late. Now that we are saved, God’s temporary tolerance of evil costs us – though it costs our Lord far more. Right up until the moment we sought cleansing through Jesus, however, his merciful tolerance of evil was the only thing that allowed us the opportunity to be saved. Otherwise, we would either have never existed – if all evil (which would have included our ancestors) had been destroyed prior to our birth – or we would have been banished to hell – if every cause of evil had been destroyed in the period between our birth and when we finally accepted Jesus’ salvation. To quote another part of my website: A holy God would yearn to wipe out every cause of pain. But if he eradicated everyone who has ever caused pain by selfishness, cheating, lying, gossiping or hurtful remarks, who would be left? “Suffering is God’s fault!” some of us sneer, conveniently forgetting times our anger, greed and lies have hurt others. Naturally, there is a degree of hurt we deem excusable, and for some suspicious reason the hurt we have inflicted happens to fall within the standard we arbitrarily set. It is like failing an exam and then moving the pass mark to make our score look good. A holy God could not be partner to such hypocrisy. To wipe out some people who cause suffering and spare you and me would make God guilty of gross injustice. We have each added to humanity’s shame. The dilemma is that God is driven by love, tenderness and justice, and the people he loves and longs to place in a pain-free world are the very ones who cause humanity’s suffering. We are so far from being innocent that we owe our very existence to sin. If, for example, we traced our family tree back far enough, we would probably each find an ancestor born as a result of sin – rape, unlawful incest, a despised pregnancy, and the like. Christ claimed an existence independent of human ancestry (John 8:56-59; 17:5). If true, and if he subsequently lived a perfect life, he alone could be innocent in every conceivable sense. And we know this man suffered. He appeared as the uniquely perfect human who preached impossibly high standards, claimed they were God’s requirements and actually lived them. Turning the cheek, loving his enemies, just as he had preached, he yielded to abuse and torture, somehow absorbing within his mangled body the horrific consequences of all humanity’s sin. Humanity can boast one perfect Person. We killed him. Yet our only Innocent gladly suffered the injustice to free the guilty from suffering eternal justice. In this cataclysmic exchange, the Innocent and the guilty traded places, making it spiritually legal for his suffering to end your suffering. As incredible as it seems, this has ushered us to the brink of a new world where the longing deep within us will be met – deceit, abuse, and hurtful actions will be swallowed by goodness; misery will dissolve in endless joy. But temporary earthly pain continues for a wonderful reason.  A paradise of harmony, trust, openness and love would quickly spoil if just one of its citizens acted remotely like we presently behave. To enter a perfect world without shattering its perfection, would require a personality transformation more radical than ever seen on earth. Through Jesus’ intervention, God can perform this miracle and make us fit for such a world, but he won’t abuse us by forcing a personality change upon us against our will. We must be willing to let God take our pet sins from us and, in his unlimited wisdom and love, rule every part of our lives. Humanity quivers on the brink of extinction, mesmerized by sin like serpent’s prey. Each moment that God suppresses his explosive urge to extinguish evil, is a moment in which billions of us have yet another chance to come to our senses and let Jesus deliver us from our infatuation with sin. But the end of this period of grace is hurtling toward us. Soon all suffering will cease. All wrongdoing will be destroyed, along with everyone still caught in its deadly embrace. Suffering can never be traced back to the heart of God, but always to beings (human or supernatural) acting contrary to God’s heart; preferring selfish disregard for the well-being of others rather than treating others with the love, peace, gentleness, patience, kindness, goodness self-control, and so on that God wants both for the giver and the receiver. The precise cause of one’s suffering might not be because of one’s own selfish refusal to do what is right, but track back far enough – perhaps even for generations – and we will find that the ultimate cause is someone acting in a manner that breaks God’s heart and inevitably ends up hurting people. Being so filled with loving compassion that one loves both the victim and the offender creates enormous dilemmas, even if one has infinite power. In one webpage I wrote: You cannot fervently love someone without aching for that person to love you – especially if you know that person desperately needs you in his/her life. To deeply love someone means you could have everything else in the universe, and yet without that person’s love you would still be heartbroken. To love is to make oneself so vulnerable that even having unlimited power could not help. Omnipotence could easily force someone to obey you. Or it could produce something like a ‘love’ potion, causing a person to be under the illusion of loving you. But genuine love can never be compelled. If it involves force or chemicals or deceit or bribery, it is a sham, and can never satisfy your yearning for that person’s love. There are things that not even omnipotence can achieve. It cannot, for example, produce a square circle. It can easily turn a circle into a square, but the instant it has straight sides it is not a circle. Likewise, when someone is forced to act in love, it is not genuine love. Even with unlimited power, there is little anyone could do to induce genuine love in a person, other than be loving and wait for a response. We would be appalled if a man kidnapped a woman and raped and enslaved her because he claims he loves her, wants her as his wife and is convinced he can make her happy. It would be an immoral abuse of power, regardless of whether he used physical force or threats – in which case she would be conscious of the violation of her rights – or if he used drugs or hypnotism so that she is unaware that what is happening is against her will. Real love respects the desires of the beloved, no matter how much it clashes with the lover’s personal longings, and no matter how certain he is that the person would benefit from lifelong intimacy with him. Since we have never had God’s mind-boggling powers, nor an eternity in which to view the consequences of each action, it is disturbingly easy for us to misunderstand him. One of the reasons making it vitally important to keep deepening our understanding of God’s heart is that it will help us avoid defaming God by jumping to blasphemous presumptions about him. When the Almighty’s intellectual superiority and our failure to see the big picture prevent us from grasping his reasons, the more we know his heart, the more certain we will be that his motives are always pure and good and right. The greater our understanding, the greater will be our awe at the perfection of God’s ways. The more we discover, the more we will exclaim with the psalmist: Psalm 89:14  Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you. Psalm 145:8-10,17  The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. All you have made will praise you . . . The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made. God is so good that he is in a class of his own: Mark 10:18   . . . No one is good – except God alone. . . . Until our knowledge is perfect, however, faith must cement the gaps in our understanding. An area of confusion we must be careful to avoid is to imagine that the Almighty foiling anti-God plots by bringing good out of them – rather than by preventing the evil acts themselves – somehow implies he initiated the godless acts or approved of them. The Holy One always despises evil. It is always contrary to his nature. When all the eternal ramifications on everyone – both sinners and saints – directly or indirectly affected are carefully considered, if there were a better or kinder or smarter course of action the good Lord could have taken, he would have already done it. If you are surprised that Jesus’ suffering has continued long after the cross, it is because you had not thought through the implications of what our Lord told Paul while he was “still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples,” (Acts 9:1). Here’s the critical exchange: Acts 9:4-5   . . . “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute  me ?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. (Emphasis mine.) We must never forget that God so loves us and identifies with us that when we hurt, he hurts. We are Christ’s body. An attack on any one of us is an attack on him. Just as he did not prevent his suffering on the cross because it ended up achieving astounding good, so he does not prevent his current suffering, but only because of the immense good it will end up achieving. Let’s honor the Innocent One who for our sakes handed himself over to be tortured to death. Let’s not insult him by remaining sceptical until it is too late and all is revealed. That’s when: Isaiah 45:24  They will say of me, ‘In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.’ All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame. Rather than leave it too late, let’s honor him right now by praising him in faith for his flawless integrity and loving kindness. As Peter grieved his Lord by not understanding the necessity of the cross (Matthew 16:21-23), many of his disciples today grieve him by not understanding the necessity of their own cross. It is wondrously true that the holy Son of God suffered in our place and by so doing has spared us an eternity of suffering. This does not negate the fact, however, that yet another purpose of his suffering was to provide the ultimate example for us to follow, so that like him we, too, might be inspired to suffer for the greater good: 1 Peter 2:20-21   . . . if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because  Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps . 1 Peter 4:1  Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude . . . Emphasis mine.) Similar Scriptures: Matthew 10:38  He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me, isn’t worthy of me. 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 . . . he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Hebrews 12:3  For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. 1 John 3:16  By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. It is common to so focus on the last hours of Jesus’ time on earth as to lose sight of how much his entire earthly life was characterized by alienation, deprivation and suffering. His agony on the cross was not some aberration; a few hours of torment at the end of a life of bliss or carefree ease. Being tortured to death was merely the culmination and logical conclusion of a life of suffering and hardships. For insight, see the brief webpage:  Jesus: A Life of Suffering & Hardship . Jesus did not say or imply that we, his followers would have it easier than him. On the contrary he promised: Matthew 10:21-28  “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. . . . A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub,  how much more  the members of his household! So do not be afraid of them. . . . Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. . . .” (Emphasis mine.) Christ’s suffering has indeed spared us an eternity of suffering but, this side of eternity and when entrusted to Christ, our own suffering can achieve things of mind-boggling value. Paul spoke of his personal suffering as making up what was lacking in Christ’s suffering: Colossians 1:24  Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. Ponder the implications of this: Hebrews 12:2-4  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who  for the joy set before him 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. (Emphasis mine.) Yes, this passage implies we could have hard times and it urges us to look to Jesus as our role model. However, it emphasizes that we should be inspired by his example, not merely by what he suffered, but by his exaltation that his suffering produced. Suffering like Jesus has a profound purpose. It achieves much to be exceedingly joyful about and results in being exalted to the throne of God. Our Leader scorned the shame of the cross because, no matter how atrocious and devastating, his suffering was totally eclipsed by all the good it achieved and by the astounding rewards. Jesus is not just our example in what he suffered but in his exaltation. In the light of what we are discovering, there is more to the following passage than I previously realized: Philippians 2:5-11  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. I used to think this Scripture is merely exhorting us to humble ourselves as Jesus did, and then it leaves behind reference to us to tell us more about Jesus. What it is actually saying, however, is that if we humble ourselves  and suffer  like Jesus, we shall also be highly exalted like Jesus. There is even a parallel with Jesus commencing his journey to exaltation from the point of being equal with God. (“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing . . .”) From the moment we commence our spiritual union with God through faith in Jesus, we are, in a sense, equal with God. Without Christ, we all deserve to suffer because of our sin, but through him swapping places with us on the cross, we are so totally pardoned that we no longer deserve to suffer. Like Jesus, we will always submit to God and, of course, we are not equal with God in the absolute sense that the eternal Son of God is, but through Christ we are granted Godlike status. There are now mindboggling similarities between us and God and they will continue to increase: Romans 8:29  For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 1 Corinthians 15:49  And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. Ephesians 4:24   . . . put on the new self, created to be like God . . . 1 John 3:2  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. John 10:33-35  “We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came – and the Scripture cannot be broken . . .” Exodus 4:16  He [Aaron] will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. Exodus 7:1  Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh . . .” Similarly, the exaltation of those who suffer will not be as extreme as Christ’s but there will be astounding similarities: 2 Timothy 2:12  if we endure, we will also reign with him. . . . Matthew 19:28-30  You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Romans 8:17  Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. 1 Corinthians 6:3  Do you not know that we will judge angels? . . . Revelation 2:26  To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations. Revelation 3:21  To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. Revelation 5:10  You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. Revelation 20:4   . . . I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. Revelation 22:5   . . . And they will reign for ever and ever. So, like the perfect Son of God, we suffer not because we deserve it but because we live in a world that keeps hurting people since so many of its inhabitants hate God and reject his kind and selfless ways. God’s Word tells us to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). This is the very tactic that our Lord himself uses throughout this period prior to Judgment Day: Matthew 5:44-45   . . . Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. We are called to act in partnership with Christ and complete his work on earth. Our suffering is part of this holy task.   Is Following Christ Worth the Cost? All we have said about suffering for Christ begs the question:  If this is what it takes to be an authentic Christian, who would choose to be one?  The answer is simple: anyone whose love for God and humanity is at least a poor reflection of Christ’s love. Even among non-Christians, the world is filled with people who have found something they love more than they love themselves, despite the fact that whatever has claimed their love is infinitely less desirable than our Lord and will not last. People who believe in a cause bigger than themselves find themselves willing to embrace all manner of hardship and suffering for that cause. Secular history is filled with countless millions of examples, but it seems many who claim allegiance to Christ are yet to find a God who is bigger than themselves. We need a radical change of mindset until we think like a boxer relishing the chance to fight the world title holder. He knows he will be punched over and over but he sees being exposed to the inevitable pain as a great honor and opportunity, and the culmination of years of arduous training. Consider all the hardship and horrors and maiming and death, mindboggling numbers of soldiers down through the ages have voluntarily endured so they can kill people. Would we endure as much in order to bring life? Some people have done amazing things for the sake of what we wrongly call saving a life. I say “wrongly” because, without Christ, at best we could only delay someone’s death by a few years. Through Christ, however, we can truly save lives so that people live forever. What price is that worth? For most of human history, the number of births per woman was far higher than today and not only were there no modern pain medications, the likelihood of a mother dying in childbirth was appalling, as was that of her newborn dying or not reaching age five. Despite all these negatives, literally billions of women willingly suffered immensely – and vast numbers gave their lives – just in the hope of bringing a live baby into a temporary, imperfect world. If we do not consider it insane, nor even unusually heroic for women to do this, how much more should average Christians willingly suffer to have spiritual children, when that means people are saved from the horror of a Christless eternity and, instead, are destined for the incomparable joy of eternal perfection in a sparkling, pristine world of total love and fulfilment. The eternal Son of God has always been worthy of endless praise but it is precisely because he was stripped naked and dehumanized and publicly humiliated in every way that he is adored and will be forever praised by millions of us. Jesus endured the cross that we might be like him. The thrilling news is that this involves not only enduring suffering but ending up loved and adored and forever hailed as a hero. He blazed the trail for us to follow all the way to endless glory. Note how the following is worded: 1 Peter 1:6-7   . . . you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials . . . so that your faith . . . may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. This does not state that the “praise, glory and honor” will be Jesus’ alone. Many Scriptures declare that those who are victorious over trials will themselves bask in “praise, glory and honor”. Yes, ultimately every good thing is because of Jesus, but our Lord longs to shower his loved ones with “praise, glory and honor”. Those who suffer like him will be honored like him. Some of us might be born cowards but we have been born again. As God’s child, you now have, as it were, God’s very genes. Your potential and destiny is entirely different to what you used to think it was. We might sometimes mess up like Peter and the other disciples (at least Peter, the denier, had the courage to follow at a distance) but, like them, we can pick ourselves up and become heroes. In the ancient Olympic Games, champions won a crude headdress made from leaves. Even next day it would begin to decay. Despite nations trying to honor their war heroes, their efforts are almost equally pathetic, relative to how Almighty God eternally honors those who endure earthly suffering for him. Perhaps included in the special revelation Paul received was a glimpse of the indescribable rewards God has for his spiritual heroes – rewards so astounding that Scripture declares, “ no mind has conceived  what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 – emphasis mine). The apostle was so certain that the mindboggling rewards so totally eclipse anything they could ever cost us that it made his own earthly suffering, as appalling as it was, seem a ridiculously tiny price (Romans 8:18; 2 Corinthians 4:17). We need to set our minds “on things above,” (Colossians 3:2), not on things that cannot last. In the words of Jim Elliot, the young missionary who died for the sake of the Gospel and whose widow thereafter devoted herself to serving those who had killed him, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Like those whose god is sensual pleasure and whose “glory is in their shame”(Philippians 3:19), many of us are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4) who think a good life is about avoiding hardship and scrounging as much ease and physical pleasure as possible. Like alcoholics who stubbornly refuse to admit to themselves that they are enslaved by drink, most of us are spiritually in far worse shape than we realize. How far today’s western Christians have slipped from biblical Christianity is shown by the bewilderment many of us feel when the apostles left after their flogging “rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace” for their Lord (Acts 5:41). To grasp the apostles’ mentality, think of a soldier wearing with honor a Purple Heart medal awarded to him for being wounded in battle, or an elite soldier, apprehensive but thrilled to be counted worthy to be chosen for a particularly dangerous and critical mission. Consider Job. His friends looked down on him, thinking he must have sinned, and he himself was bewildered and wished he had never been born (Job 3:1-17). Unable to see the bigger picture, he did not realize he had become Satan’s target only because God strongly believed in him and was proud of him ( Scriptures ). He had no idea he would be forever lauded as a spiritual hero merely for holding on as the trial raged. Neither did he know how many he would inspire and that without his afflictions we would never have heard of him. The apostles rejoiced, while Job complained. The difference was not because the apostles’ faith empowered them to avoid pain but because, through Jesus, their faith enabled them to see the bigger picture before it materialized. I am intrigued by Jesus telling Peter, “Satan has asked to sift you . . .” (Luke 22:31). Satan seeking divine permission to test God’s servant is exactly what is described in the first two chapters of Job’s story. Job’s endurance proved to Satan and the forces of evil that, besides Jesus, there has been at least one person on this planet who does what is right without God having to bribe or mollycoddle him. Peter proved to the Evil One and the hordes under his sway that at least one human who, after succumbing to cowardice, will bounce back again and become stronger than ever. I flood with shame, however, to think of the millions that Satan can point to who have gone to extremes not to do what is right, but in the pursuit of godless selfishness. I ponder all the soldiers, sports stars, thrill seekers, entrepreneurs, adventurers, and so on, who have taken risks, worked so hard and endured so much in the hope of fame or fleeting riches or to delay their own death, or some other inferior or selfish cause. Then I cringe to think of the shame it brings our Lord to contrast this with how little today’s average western Christian is willing to endure for the infinitely superior, lofty and eternal cause of the One who gave his all for us. Will you help swing the balance in God’s favor? Now that you have the Spirit of Christ, will you prove yourself more willing to sacrifice for love and goodness than others are willing to sacrifice for hate and greed? Think of all the shame, distress and degradation risked and suffered by swindlers, gamblers, smokers, prostitutes, adulterers, drug addicts, alcoholics, criminals, and so on, for the sake of sin. If so many suffer so much for shameful things, what will we willingly endure for the sake of what is good, wholesome and right? What sacrifices will we make for achievements that we will forever be proud of? Our calling is to be spiritual adventurers, achievers and daring rescuers. We should be so in love with God that we are driven to endure all manner of hardship and suffering not merely to avoid endless regret and shame but to see our Lord smile with delight as he proudly says, “Well done!” We are called to be glory-seekers – not for a short-lived rush or fifteen minutes of fame or for small-minded self-centeredness, but for the endless thrill of glorifying the God of perfection, the Love of our lives, the most wonderful person in the universe. Types of Beneficial Trials There are two types of beneficial trials or tests, but for many years I only recognized one of them. The type I wrongly thought God valued exclusively was the pain or hardship voluntarily entered into for Christ’s sake and could usually be stopped by turning one’s back on him or through spiritual compromise. What I had failed to adequately appreciate, however, is that suffering that would occur regardless of our devotion to Christ can become something noble and win us eternal glory if we endure it in a Christlike way. Even when I was young, the expression was rarely used except by much older people, but I used to get annoyed when they referred to such things as arthritis as the cross they have to bear. When Jesus told would-be followers to ‘take up your cross,’ he was clearly referring to something they did for Christ’s sake and could choose not to ‘take up’. Arthritis suffered through being imprisoned in appalling conditions for one’s faith would indeed fit what Jesus was referring to, as would bouts of malaria suffered through obeying a missionary call, but not something a person would have suffered even if he or she had not followed Jesus. Biblical examples of the ‘take up your cross’ category of trial include Abraham taking his son Isaac to the mountains of Moriah to be sacrificed. For three days Abraham suffered the horror of believing he would kill his beloved son. At any moment he could have ended his agony by deciding to disobey God (which for God’s children usually involves trying to convince ourselves we have misheard God). In my case, though death literally seemed exceedingly preferable to another agonizing moment of being single, I felt divinely challenged never to ask God for a wife but instead to pray solely for whatever marital status would most glorify him. I expected this to mean decades of ceaseless agony until finally being granted the relief that death offers a Christian. This came close to what eventuated. Among people who refuse immoral substitutes, most ache for a happy marriage. My craving, however, was so over the top as to be virtually irrational. For me, marriage meant digging my self-esteem at least partly out of the gaping abyss into which it had crashed. It meant not only the ending of my horrendous loneliness and calming the curse of a torturously intense sex drive, but ending the crippling shame and feeling of rejection that never ceased to haunt me. I believed if I asked God for a wife, he would give me one with his blessing but it would mean I had put the ending of my agony higher than choosing what most glorifies God. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, the anguish was so hellacious it seemed it would have to result in either physical or mental illness. Compromise was just a prayer away but not once did I give in and breathe that prayer. Only after thirty torturous years had staggered by and I was in my mid-fifties did God end this torment. I praise God for his grace that enabled me to keep enduring the pain and I am so grateful for all the positive things this trial built into my life. Job’s suffering fits the other category of trial or test in that he had no way of avoiding its commencement nor of hastening its end. There are other biblical examples. Much that Joseph suffered before entering the courts of Pharaoh fits this category, except that he could have sidestepped prison had he compromised sexually (Genesis 39:7-20). Abraham, too, had a mix of both types of test. In his case, the first type lasted only for three harrowing days but the second type dragged on decade after decade after wearying decade: his wife, Sarah, was barren. I was wrong to downgrade the spiritual value of afflictions that even the godless suffer because in these, too, we have a choice. We might have no input as to whether we face such a trial, nor how long it lasts, but it is our choice whether we honor God throughout the trial or react to the pressure as the godless would. We choose, for example, not to resort to alcohol or drug abuse to dull the pain, nor to opt for suicide or to resent God. Sarah’s barrenness belonged to the second category of tests because there was nothing godless that Abraham could have done to avoid it. Nevertheless, he still had the choice of responding in an ungodly way by hating God, committing adultery, divorcing Sarah to marry a woman capable of giving him a child, or taking his frustration out on Sarah with emotional or physical abuse. In the shorter test of taking Isaac to be sacrificed, Abraham attained a perfect score but in this other test, by resorting to using Sarah’s maid, he missed those dizzy heights. He did well enough, however, to be acclaimed forever as a prime example of faith. Faith, by the way, is one of the many spiritual qualities that can be developed only through continual exercise. Usually it is trials that provide the needed exercise regime. The Bible’s entire  Faith Chapter  is all about God’s people facing gruelling situations. Do not for a moment imagine it is about avoiding such times: Hebrews 11:35-39   . . . Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. As every student knows, to graduate to the next level, we must not only be tested but do well enough in each test to pass. With spiritual training, this involves responding to each test in a Christlike way. To react to devastating times by lashing out at God would prove we have much to learn. The mature response is confident gratefulness to God that, regardless of how opposed to God’s way it starts off, each oppressive situation is part of the “all things” that God lovingly uses for the good of those who love him. The good that God yearns for us is to turn trials into tools that fashion our Christlikeness. Romans 8:28-29  And we know that in  all things  God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined  to be conformed to the likeness of his Son  . .  . (Emphasis mine.) To react to hard times by lashing out at people who are oppressing us would again be far from Christlikeness and we would need to grow significantly more in selfless love. This is well expressed in a powerful Scripture that deserves careful reading: Philippians 1:9-11  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God. Note how the above passage, “that you may be able to discern what is best . . . filled with the fruit of righteousness . . .” dovetails nicely with  Hebrews  defining maturity as those “who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil”. A key to this, reveals  Philippians . is for our love to abound. To let bitter times make us bitter would be to miss the whole point of the test and fail miserably. God would not give up on us but it would keep us too immature to progress until the lesson is thoroughly learned. We might treat ministry as a career and advance dramatically but there can be an appalling difference between genuine spiritual growth and such futility. What makes it still more difficult for us to understand hard times is that it is typical for fellow believers to misconstrue what we are going through and to add to our torment, rather than bring the comfort and encouragement we crave. Like so many of us, Job’s friends thought his immense loss and affliction must have happened because he had somehow failed God. Thankfully, the introductory chapters of this saga take us into the hidden, spiritual realm that few humans ever see. As you know, they reveal that Job’s afflictions occurred precisely because he had done exceptionally well and was particularly righteous. Similarly, had we not known how Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice his son unfolded, how many of us would have turned on Abraham, believing he had misheard God and was acting like a pagan by planning a human sacrifice? Not surprisingly, I suffered hurtful attacks from Christians lovingly trying to tell me I was needlessly denying myself marriage and had misheard God. I could hardly blame them: I was repeatedly tempted to think the same way myself. I continually receive heart-rending e-mails from Christians suffering appalling trials (mental illness, horrific battles with addictions, atrocious marriages, coping with the aftermath of child sex abuse, and so on) who are completely misunderstood by fellow Christians. Their friends’ and pastors’ attempts to support and comfort them are as unhelpful as Job’s friends. Usually this is simply because what these people are suffering is outside the experience of average Christians. As has happened since Old Testament times, in the midst of a trial some of the most hurtful attacks are likely to come from well-intentioned believers. We must keep reminding ourselves that this says nothing about how God sees things but simply reflects the lack of understanding prevalent in most Christians. I am genuinely grateful for all I have suffered. For decades, my trials often seemed to edge close to unbearable but I now have living proof of how valuable they have been in my spiritual development. And what seemed like interminable years of inner pain now seem as nothing. I find myself unable to be so dismissive of my wife’s distress, however, even in the face of the immense good I see flowing from it. Not only have her experiences been particularly harrowing, it can sometimes seem more tolerable to suffer oneself than to see a loved one suffer. (I think God feels that way, too, and he certainly chose that path via the cross.) I yearn for the rest of my wife’s life to be so much easier than her past but she keeps seeing herself as a spiritual warrior. I wince because I know the terrors and horrors soldiers endure for the sake of their cause. I understand the advantage of such a mentality, however, as it remains undeniable that everyone on this planet – the most spiritual as well as the most cowardly and the greatest slave to pleasure – lives in a spiritual war zone and is subject to attack. I know many survivors of severe child abuse who are staggering forward on a long healing journey. Eventually they will end up empowered by their experiences to help other hurting people. So I often encourage them to think of themselves as trailblazers cutting a path through a hostile environment for others to follow. Evangelists might see themselves as daring rescuers. Others might see themselves as spiritual parents who would willingly sacrifice everything – even their lives – to help their children thrive. Some might think of themselves as spiritual treasure hunters risking everything to find indescribable riches. We can nurture such passionate love for God that there is nothing we would not do just to give him the slightest pleasure. Regardless of how Christians see themselves, it should not be as lazy slobs who have found nothing that makes the costliest sacrifice worthwhile. We cannot truly live until we have found something we would die for. I’m uncomfortable with the fact that, in this age, people are often exalted or get it easy simply through an accident of birth. They get ahead either by being born into a relatively influential or well-to-do family or through being born with certain abilities that others miss out on. Then there are those who, through no effort on their part, get the lucky breaks. Even among Christians there is much unfairness as to who is honored. Still more disconcerting are those who prosper through such disgusting behavior as bullying, stealing, lying, cheating, or other assorted forms of cold-hearted disregard for people. After Judgment Day, however, when God finally reasserts his right to have full sway, things will be very different. Then, like now, some will be exalted and rewarded more than others, but it will be on a basis that thrills me. We will be rewarded, not according to how spoilt we were on earth, but solely on how faithful we were with whatever we had been given. Someone who had only five cents and gave it all to the Lord will be rewarded far beyond a billionaire who gave a few million dollars. A mentally disabled person who had done his utmost to love, will not only be healed but will be forever exalted above a lazy or self-centered genius. In the era when all is revealed, we will reap what we have sown. Everyone will see and agree that God’s judgment is right. We will marvel at people like the apostle Paul, not for their natural or spiritual gifts, but because they chose to suffer horrifically for their Lord. We, like the angels, will forever honor those who have suffered immensely for Christ. People like me who have suffered far less will count it a privilege to serve those who heroically endured so much and we will forever praise God for rightly exalting them above us. We must not take to extremes the truths we have discovered about hardship and suffering, lest we end up tolerating oppression when God longs for us to rise up in faith and find deliverance. Paul did not automatically resign himself to accepting his “thorn”. Instead, he prayed three times for deliverance until God clearly spoke to him about changing the direction of his prayers. We should follow his lead because on another, superficially similar occasion, deliverance might well have been the best option, in which case tolerating it would not have been heroic but a lazy, defeatist response that disappoints God. No matter what the situation, praising God is always the perfect response. Not only is God always worthy of praise, it lifts us and changes our outlook until we are utterly transformed. Praise touches God. That renders praise not just powerful but supernatural. Many of us merely dip a toe into praise and worship and are left clueless as to its powers. Those who truly plunge in, however, enter into a whole new world. Nothing seems to happen for quite a while but as we persist with praise, our spirits slowly rise. Praising God lifts our eyes off the mud of the momentary until we are captivated by the beauty of the eternal; off the tension of the present on to the triumph that momentary distress is leading to. If we keep persisting, our spirits will slowly soar heavenward until, when we look down, we see earthly things from heaven’s perspective. The result is not only exhilarating but liberating. I explain a little more about praise in the link listed below:  The Surprising Joy of Trials . In addition to praising God, we should always pray that we learn from the trial as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Like Paul, praying and believing for a quick end to the trial should be our instinctive response. Whether instant deliverance, however, is really God’s best is not nearly as obvious as praise and praying for understanding. In each situation we need to keep looking to our Lord for his guidance as to the wisest, most God-glorifying way to pray and act. Life is far too complex for us to trust our guesses. For example, in  From Mystery to Ministry: The Role of Sickness in Your Life  (a link at the end of this webpage) I list many scriptural ways in which sickness can end up greatly blessing us. Nevertheless, the Bible remains crammed with records of miraculous healings. Even in some of the cases where sickness and/or disability bring unexpected blessings, there might possibly be other ways to receive the same blessing. Sometimes, ascertaining the best way to pray can be a little like Paul finding it hard to know whether to choose more suffering, which he knew would end up beneficial for other people, or to choose to end his suffering, which meant leaving this world. “I am torn between the two,” he wrote, but he opted for more suffering (Philippians 1:22-25). “You get what you settle for,” is a saying that haunts me. May I settle for nothing less than God’s best! I think of Jacob wrestling the angel of God and refusing to give up until he was blessed (Genesis 32:24-30). I think of ordinary, desperate people who became the Bible’s faith heroes simply by persisting; people like the haemorrhaging woman squeezing her way through the crush of people to the edge of Jesus’ garment, blind Bartimaeus crying out to Jesus even louder when the crowd tried to shame him into silence, the Canaanite woman persisting despite Jesus seeming to give her the brush off, and the man who refused to give up but went direct to Jesus after Jesus’ disciples failed to help his son, (Mark 5:25-34; 10:46-52; Matthew 15:22-28; Matthew 17:15-19). There is no glory in needless suffering or missing out through spiritual laziness. I want all the blessings, healings, deliverances, miracles, victories and any other good thing I can get. The sole exception is if God has an alternative plan that ends up producing even greater good. I remain committed to God’s best regardless of whether I find it utterly bewildering as to how any greater good could be achieved. In fact, the more impossible it seems to me that God can wring good from an apparent disaster, the more I can honor our Lord and win for myself eternal acclaim by displaying greater faith. I refuse to be conned by the glitter of short term happiness that robs me of my chance to maximize eternal achievement. I yearn to avoid the fate of those who suffer the eternal shame of seeing all their earthly efforts going up in smoke and even if they are saved, it is “only as one escaping through the flames,” (1 Corinthians 3:15). None of us was born for such shame. Through Christ we can sacrifice all this world offers to gain all that this world can never offer. As mentioned, the Lord kindly gave me a choice, in that both marrying and denying myself would have had his blessing but, like Paul, (though there is no comparison between my suffering with his) suffering would end up doing more good. In some cases, however, it is ending suffering that brings God more glory. An example of this is the blind man described in  John 9 . When the disciples questioned Jesus as to why he had been born blind Jesus answered. “ . . . so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Then Jesus healed him. Additionally, timing is critical. If, when we seek deliverance, our Lord responds with “Not yet,” this must not be confused with “Never.” Trials often  feel  endless, but they never are. In the words of the psalmist, “weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning,” (Psalm 30:5). Moreover, since we know where it is leading, we can rejoice ahead of time.   Related Webpages The Surprising Joy of Trials The Joy of Unanswered Prayer Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You Feeling Condemned? God Isn’t Fair? From Mystery to Ministry: The Role of Sickness in Your Life Jesus: A Life of Suffering & Hardship

Deprivation and hardship were such a normal part of Jesus’ life that we read: Matthew 8:19-20 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Even before he was born, the most precious and only truly innocent human was treated as such an unwanted inconvenience that, after many rejections, he had to be born in grossly unhygienic conditions surrounded by the stench of manure in an animal hovel not fit for human habitation. His parents were forced to flee even from that and become refugees in a foreign country. It was not that his parents were in any danger but because, even as baby, people wanted Jesus killed. The stir Jesus caused when he was twelve (Luke 2:42-50) was not a one-off, but typical of how misunderstood he was, even by his own family and his closest friends for the rest of his time on earth: Luke 9:57-58 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” John 7:5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him. Even John the Baptist sent him a message saying, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:2-3). Whether they were drawn to him or despised him, to everyone around him, Jesus was an oddball. Even among his closest friends, he never fitted in. Much of the time he might as well have been an alien from another world. Even without his deliberately obscure parables (Matthew 13:10-15), his dearest friends found him as unintelligible as a foreigner who knows only a few words of their language. The times when Jesus’ trusted disciples misunderstood him are too numerous to list exhaustively, but as I provide a few reminders, try to imagine the accumulative emotional cost this must have had on Jesus. He’s warning them about the Pharisees, and they think he’s telling them off for forgetting food. He’s saying Lazarus is dead and they think he’s indicating Lazarus’s health is improving. He’s telling them that serving God is more fulfilling than eating and they think he must have found food. He insists people must eat his flesh and drink his blood and most of his followers leave him in disgust and the few who remain are left reeling in bewilderment. He’s wanting to welcome mothers and babies and they think he finds them annoying. They are protesting their loyalty while he’s telling them they will all desert him. Jesus Misunderstood Mark 8:14-18 They forgot to take bread; and they didn’t have more than one loaf in the boat with them. He warned them, saying, “Take heed: beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” They reasoned with one another, saying, “It’s because we have no bread.” Jesus, perceiving it, said to them, “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?  . . .” John 11:11  . . . “Our friend, Lazarus, has fallen asleep, but I am going so that I may awake him out of sleep.” John 4:31-34 In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” The disciples therefore said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.  . . .” John 6:54, 60-61,66 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life . . . Therefore 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? . . .” At this, many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Luke 18:15-16 They were also bringing their babies to him, that he might touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. Jesus summoned them, saying, “Allow the little children to come to me, and don’t hinder them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these. . . .” Matthew 26:31,35  . . . “All of you will be made to stumble because of me . . .” Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.” All of the disciples also said likewise. Without even considering all those who rejected and despised him, Jesus must often have felt disconnected from everyone around him. It must have been like a knife twisting in his stomach, causing him to feel painfully alone even in a crowd. Not just in his early childhood and toward the end of his life on earth, but from almost the very inception of his ministry, people wanted to kill him (John 8:37,40,59). This applied not only to strangers in Jerusalem but even to the most devout people in his home town. Before he had a chance to become still more unpopular, those he had grown up with not only drove him out of town but tried to push him off a cliff so they could send him hurtling to his death (Luke 4:16-29). Not only was Jesus continually criticized by strangers, enemies, and those closest to him, he was accused of breaking God’s holy law (the Sabbath, for instance) and even repeatedly (Matthew 9:34; 10:25; 12:24; Mark 3:21-22,30; Luke 11:15; John 7:20; 8:48,52; John 10:20) accused of being demon-possessed. He did not just suffer racial discrimination – such as when an entire Samaritan village kicked him out of their village merely because he was on his way to Jerusalem (Luke 9:52-56) – but he was treated as inferior even by his fellow countrymen because he grew up in a low class area (John 1:46; 7:41,52). He was tormented by the worst temptations. We are acquainted with what he endured at the point of starvation and later when his sweat was like blood in the Garden of Gethsemane and he told his disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38). These, however, were just examples: Luke 4:13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him [not forever but] until an opportune time . Hebrews 2:17-18 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way . . . he himself suffered when he was tempted . . . Hebrews 4:15  . . . we have one who has been tempted in every way , just as we are . . . (Emphasis mine.) Have you noticed the first few words in the following? Matthew 4:5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. Who, according to this Scripture, took the holy Son of God to the top of the temple? It wasn’t Jesus’ doing, nor was it God’s. And consider this: Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. Everyone knows there is no mountain in the world from which one’s natural eyes can see “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” The devil not only somehow managed to get Jesus’ body where he wanted it to be, he thrust a vision into Christ’s very mind. This is akin to spiritual rape. Long before his crucifixion, the holy Son of God suffered highly invasive attacks from the Evil One. He was victorious in the sense that he remained sinless and did not cave in to the attack but not in the sense that he was never attacked. In fact, during this time, and probably others Scripture did not bother to spell out, he suffered spiritual violation. Hebrews 5:2 He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. We know of several instances when Jesus cried but, like everything else in the brief summaries that form the Gospels, countless other instances must have been left unmentioned. For example, the following is not spelled out in the Gospels: Hebrews 5:7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears  . . . (Emphasis mine.) NOTE: Hebrews 5:7 might refer to one or more incidents not mentioned in the Gospels but even if it refers to Jesus in Gethsemane, the Gospels omitted mention of “loud cries and tears” in their accounts of the event.

When Powerful, Spirit-filled Christians Keep Suffering Demonic Attacks Defeated? Surprise Victory When Demons Seem to have Won “I am petrified,” a needlessly distraught Christian told me. Demonic manifestations in Clare’s (name has been changed for privacy) house had even been captured on a phone camera. “I am so afraid that I have lost my salvation. Will God receive my praise and prayers with demons in me and my house?” Common explanations of Christians’ authority over demons are sincerely founded on enough Bible truths to seem biblical but not enough to actually be biblical. Like so many of us, the gap between full biblical revelation and my understanding was small enough to boost my confidence and produce some victories. The ever-present danger, however, is that when reality proves more complex and harsher than our theories lead us to expect, we are left reeling in bewilderment and discouragement, which make us vulnerable to spiritual attack. When our theories do not bring instant deliverance, our temptation is to blame the believer who is still under attack, thus foolishly betraying and abandoning him or her, rather than finally discovering the significance of all the Scriptures we had overlooked. As we proceed through this webpage, will you join me in looking to God to fill in some dangerous gaps in our understanding of spiritual warfare? Clare’s turmoil was not because she lacked spiritual power. She spoke of demons “in” her and feared that God had deserted her, merely because she had not realized how being repeatedly attacked is totally different to being defeated and ruled by an enemy one has surrendered to. “I have been saved for 20 years, so to be going through this has to be disappointing to God,” she cried. I explained that there is no shame in coming under heavy attack. In fact, in such circumstances, holding out can be heroic and highly glorifying to God. Rarely, if ever, is an easy victory a glorious victory. Likewise, quick victories are seldom particularly praiseworthy. Horrendous, unrelenting spiritual attacks can be a perfect backdrop for an eventual victory of mind-boggling proportions.   Divine Selflessness    The time will come when all evil will be destroyed. Divine selflessness, however, means that we will not immediately see this.   As much as we might want to focus on demons/evil spirits in this discussion, we should commence with a brief glimpse of the bigger picture: God is far more concerned about good and about humans than about evil and demons. If we think that God is the slightest egotistical, we have not even begun to understand the enormity of his selfless love. Our spiritual development is infinitely more important to God than his reputation as a demon-crusher   As darkness is the opposite of light, and ugliness is the opposite of beauty, so domination and manipulation are the opposite of love. And God is love. So if we imagine that God is into domination and manipulation, we are confusing good and evil, and mistaking Christianity for witchcraft. Tragically, however, this is the very deception that many who think themselves Christian fall into. Although there are those who keep clinging to what they mistakenly suppose is Christianity, I am not surprised that many witches started off as Christians. When God turns out not to be the manipulator they hope for, they go direct to the source of evil. I find myself incapable of despising or fearing such people. Often they do not even realize they are connecting with evil; they are simply following the logical implications of confusing good and evil by defining “good” as getting one’s own way. Of course, they never wanted to be  victims  of supernatural manipulation but this is the inevitable result craving supernatural power to manipulate others and exalt themselves. Here’s why my heart breaks for them: often such people have suffered appalling abuse and are driven by fear into wanting to be control freaks, in the hope that it will prevent a repeat of such abuse. The good Lord is a disappointment to them because, despite having infinite power, he is not an abuser of his power who manipulates and dominates. And we wants us to be like him.   A man wrote to me, upset with God because his wife, who had taught Sunday School and belonged to an anti-drug organization, had ended up addicted to drugs and left him, taking the children as well. I replied:   You could have kidnapped your wife and imprisoned her, thereby forcibly preventing her from taking drugs and from leaving you. You chose not to do so because you are too decent a man for that. Do you really expect God to have lower morals than you and forcibly prevent your wife from breaking God’s heart and yours?   You cannot fervently love someone without aching for that person to love you – especially if you know that person desperately needs you in his/her life. To deeply love someone means you could have everything else in the universe, and yet without that person’s love you would still be heartbroken. To love is to make oneself so vulnerable that even having unlimited power could not help. Omnipotence could easily force someone to obey you. Or it could produce something like a ‘love’ potion, causing a person to be under the illusion of loving you. But genuine love can never be compelled. If it involves force or chemicals or deceit or bribery it is a sham, and can never satisfy your yearning for that person’s love.   There are things that not even omnipotence can achieve. It cannot, for example, produce a square circle. It can easily turn a circle into a square, but the instant it has straight sides it is not a circle. Likewise, when someone is forced to act in love, it is not genuine love. Even with unlimited power, there is little anyone could do to induce genuine love in a person, other than be loving and wait for a response.   No one yearns for justice with the intensity that God does, and yet everyone who gets to heaven will spend all eternity thanking God for delaying justice. Had God not mercifully restrained his passion for justice until we finally came to our senses and sought forgiveness through Jesus, we would all be in hell.   To be power hungry is to be like the devil. To be Christlike is to have supreme power and yet surrender it all and let oneself be humiliated to the extreme of death in order to save one’s enemies (Philippians 2:5-8).   As so eloquently expressed in the Bible’s love chapter, love is patient and kind. It does not envy. It is not self-seeking. It keeps no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Pure love refuses to abuse power but exercises stupendous self-restraint. Love sacrifices everything for the beloved and endures to extremes. This is foundational to Christianity but many refuse to go that route, even while duping themselves into thinking they are followers of the one who declared that we must love our enemies and insisted that to follow him we must deny ourselves and take up our cross (Matthew 10:38; 16:24; Luke 14:27).   We can rejoice in the many Scriptures that speak of Christ’s emphatic victory on the cross. No matter how many such Scripture we cite, however, the fact remains that Satan and his cohorts have not yet been totally stripped of power:   1 Corinthians 15:24-25  Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign  until  [i.e. there is delay between Christ reigning and all his enemies being put under his feet] he has put all his enemies under his feet.   Hebrews 10:12-13   . . . when he [Christ, the ultimate High Priest] had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God; from that time  waiting  until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. (Emphasis mine.)   Just because the Almighty has the ability to crush his enemies this instant, does not mean that this instant is the best time for it to happen. Our Lord could have destroyed all demons thousands of years ago but divine wisdom and goodness has moved him to restrain his stupendous urge to do so until the perfect time. Similarly, the omnipotent Lord could have destroyed all the Israelites’ enemies the moment they entered the Promised Land, but wisdom dictated that it was better to keep some of their enemies alive for generation after generation to test the Israelites’ devotion and teach them warfare (Judges 2:21-3:4). Even the enemies who were eliminated were best removed slowly (Deuteronomy 7:22).   The Almighty, of course, has always had the raw power to annihilate his enemies, whilst mercifully sparing those who have ceased their rebellion and willingly surrendered to him. There is so much more to our beautiful Lord, however, than raw power. Through the cross, the Just and Holy One added to his raw power the legal right to do what he longs to do, both to those who persist in evil and to those who choose to let his love and righteousness reign in their lives. All that now remains is the perfect time for him to fully enforce both Christ’s total victory over evil and the legal means he won whereby those who turn to him in faith can be spared. The perfect time is the “harvest time” in Jesus’ parable, when the product of the enemy’s seed can safely be destroyed without harming any of the product of the good seed (Matthew 13:24-30).   That time has not yet arrived but it is fast approaching:   2 Peter 3:9-10  The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief . . .   Revelation 12:12   . . . Woe to the earth and to the sea, because the devil has gone down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has but a short time.   So just because God has unlimited power does not mean he will abuse that power to get his way – or even our way. If greater good can be achieved by temporary restraint, the selfless Lord will take that course, no matter how much it costs him.   Faith Means Waiting   Many of our spiritual problems stem from failing to understand God’s timeframe. Despite it being contrary to Scripture, most of us somehow fall into the delusion that great faith brings nearly instant results. In reality, the opposite is true: great faith empowers us to wait and wait and wait until God’s perfect time.   The Old Testament Scriptures were divinely provided to lay a firm foundation for understanding God. Among its vast array of precious revelations is that waiting for God is virtually synonymous with having faith in God:   Psalm 27:14  Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.   Psalm 37:7  Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Don’t fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who makes wicked plots happen.   Proverbs 20:22   . . . Wait for the Lord, and he will save you.   Isaiah 8:17  I will wait for the Lord, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.   Hosea 12:6   . . . Keep kindness and justice, and wait continually for your God.   Of course, this concept continues throughout the New Testament:   Hebrews 6:12   . . . imitators of those who through faith  and patience  inherited the promises.   Luke 2:25  Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout,  looking  for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him.   Luke 12:35-37  Let your waist be dressed and your lamps burning. Be like men  watching  for their lord . . .   Romans 8:23-25   . . . ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,  waiting  for adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees? But if we hope for that which we don’t see,  we wait for it with patience .   1 Corinthians 4:5  Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time;  wait  till the Lord comes. . . .  (NIV)   James 5:7  Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer  waits  for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and late rain.   If the signs of a victorious Christian life are speedy answers to prayer and instant deliverances from oppression and hardship, then our Lord and all the divinely inspired authors of the New Testament were deluded when they repeatedly emphasized the need for patience, perseverance and endurance:   Matthew 10:22   . . . but he who  endures to the end  will be saved. [Repeated in Matthew 24:13]   Luke 8:15  But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by  persevering  produce a crop. (NIV)   Romans 5:3-4  Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces  perseverance ; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope   Romans 12:12  rejoicing in hope;  enduring  in troubles; continuing steadfastly in prayer   Romans 15:4  For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through  patience  and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.   2 Corinthians 1:6  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.   2 Corinthians 6:4, 6  but in everything commending ourselves, as servants of God, in great  endurance , in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses . . . in pureness, in knowledge, in  patience , in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in sincere love   Galatians 6:9  Let us not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season,  if we don’t give up .   Colossians 1:11  strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all  endurance  and  perseverance  . . .   Hebrews 6:12   . . . imitators of those who through faith and  patience  inherited the promises.   James 1:3-4  knowing that the testing of your faith produces  endurance . Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.   James 5:8-11  You also be  patient . Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. . . . Take, brothers, for an example of suffering and of  patience , the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we call them blessed who  endured . You have heard of the  patience  of Job, and have seen the Lord in the outcome, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy. (Emphasis mine.)   God’s ways are not our ways, says a well-known, much-loved Scripture (Isaiah 55:8). What is less well known and less loved, is that one of the biggest ways in which the Eternal Lord differs from us is in his attitude to time. In short: God’s timing is not our timing.   Little children are almost hopeless at waiting. A few hours – sometimes even a few minutes – seem an eternity to them. The more we mature, the better we get at waiting, but we find it a torturously hard skill to master and, relative to God, the best of us are still like little children and desperately need to develop our ability to wait many years or decades for the perfect moment to arrive.   My guess is that people were more laid back and better adapted to waiting in an era when they had to wait until winter for an ice cold drink, when “fast” meant not eating for forty days and travel time was measured by the cracks in wine skins and how much mold had grown on their bread (Joshua 9:11-13). Nevertheless, even they could get infuriated by how slowly God moves:   Psalm 6:3  My soul is also in great anguish. But you, Lord — how long?   Psalm 13:1-2   . . . How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me?   Psalm 74:10  How long, God, shall the adversary reproach? Shall the enemy blaspheme your name forever?   Psalm 89:46  How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Will your wrath burn like fire?   Psalm 94:3  Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph?   Habakkuk 1:2  Lord, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save?   History is littered with disasters resulting from people getting so impatient with God’s timing that they took things into their own hands. Here are some examples, divinely recorded so that we might not make the same mistakes: Abraham gave up waiting for his miracle child and tried to force the pace. He conceived Ishmael, and even to this day the dangerous conflict continues between Ishmael’s descendants (Arabs) and the miracle child’s descendants (Jews). The Lord told the Israelites they would have to wait forty years before entering the Promised Land. That seemed far too long. So they tried immediately. They were defeated (Deuteronomy 1:34-44). When the Israelites finally entered the Promised Land, the plunder from the first city belonged to God; the rest was theirs. Achan opted not to wait for the next city and sampled Jericho’s plunder. He died, his family died and thirty-six others died (Joshua 6:17-19; 7:1-25). King Saul panicked when Samuel failed to arrive as quickly as he had expected. Instead of waiting for Samuel to perform his divinely assigned task, the impatient king did it himself. As a direct result, Saul’s dynasty lost the kingdom and it was given to David, “a man after his own heart” i.e. a man willing to submit to God’s timing, no matter how challenging that was (1 Samuel 13:7-14). (I need to move on to other points but it would be a gross distortion of truth to imply that the waiting game is one-sided. The Bible is crammed with instances of God asking people how long  he  must wait until people finally do the right thing.   Understanding Satanic Strategy   A battle strategy that has sometimes proved devastatingly effective is to attack hard at one point; tricking the opponent into focusing all their attention there, when the critical attack will actually come from a direction they least expect.   Let’s first see how this works in the realm of temptation. From there it is just a small step to understanding the strategic goal of many demonic manifestations.   To be repeatedly and horrifically tempted to do atrocious things in no way suggests we are less than holy. (If you have the slightest doubt about this, see  Temptation .) On the contrary, all of heaven might want to sing our praises for the way we endure such an onslaught. Nevertheless, it would weaken us spiritually if we mistakenly supposed that being sorely tempted is a sign of spiritual inadequacy and we imagined that God frowned on us just because the deceiver and his filthy underlings make certain sins seem enticing.   This misconception would undermine our relationship with God, not because of God’s attitude, but because we naturally shrink from anyone we imagine disapproves of us. Any tendency to even slightly distance ourselves from God, our only source of divine strength, will weaken us and make us spiritually vulnerable.   Demonic manifestations are often a similar ruse. Like temptation, it is no sin to suffer demonic manifestations, and all of heaven might be proud of how we endure them, but if we let the deceiver trick us into thinking that suffering such attacks is a sign of spiritual weakness, it will discourage us and entice us to wrongly imagine that God is a little displeased with us. This, in turn, will hound us into distancing ourselves from him a little, which is just what the evil strategist was working toward. Half Measures are Doomed to Fail   It is possible for one’s longing to be rid of demons to be like someone who wants to eliminate hangovers from his life but is not willing to stop getting drunk, or someone who wants both to please his wife and to continue having an affair. People can yearn to avoid the negative side of demonic oppression but, through fear, ignorance or addiction to what seem desirable things demons offer, are unwilling to stop cooperating with demons. People will find themselves powerless to order demons around if they do not really want to be rid of demons but merely want to tame them and, as it were, keep them as pets. We must keep asking God to reveal to us any way in which we could be acting like that.   This webpage, however, is for those who have fully resolved such matters but still suffer demonic attacks.   Tried Everything but Demons Will Not Leave   The divinely inspired writer of Holy Scripture, the great Apostle Paul, included himself when he wrote:   Ephesians 6:12  For  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.   We tend to be so familiar with this Scripture that we do not consider the implications: you don’t wrestle vanquished foes; they just cower in defeat before you. Neither do you wrestle anyone who instantly flees from you.   Despite such a powerful apostle including himself in this on-going battle, some of us mistakenly presume that we will never suffer a demonic attack unless we do something wrong (such as involvement with the occult). Still more of us wrongly presume that if we are attacked and stand against it, we will always experience almost instant deliverance. When our theory fails, our mistake worsens: rather than see the flaw in our logic, we imagine that either we have failed God or that he has failed us. We have already begun to discover that this is not how God’s Word sees it, there is much more to come.   One of the greatest dangers for us Bible lovers is not blatant error but oversimplification. Certain glorious truths shine so brightly that we let them blind us to other, equally vital, biblical truths. Like chocolate-coated poison, oversimplification is a particularly sinister form of error. We come to trust oversimplification because in easy situations it works but just when we are most vulnerable, it lets us down. Even worse, we are then tempted to imagine it is God or his Word that has failed us, when the real cause is letting a shallow reading of the Bible entice us to leap to false conclusions. Just as a concealed booby trap is more dangerous than an obvious trap, half-truths are more dangerous than blatant lies. Unfortunately, half-truths are as exciting and addictive and deceptive and dangerous as the early stages of heroin addiction.   Nevertheless, when our theories get smashed by reality, it is our opportunity to grow closer to God, whose ways are higher, wiser and more glorious than ours.   What some of us rather proudly think of as our theology or doctrine would better be called a set of presumptions. I’m just as fallible as the rest of us. So I don’t want you taking my word for these vital matters. Instead, my yearning is for you to seek God and his Word for the truth that will empower you to face head-on reality in all its complexity, and triumph.   Like Clare, the dear woman introduced at the beginning of this webpage, few of us grasp that the Bible teaches that Spirit-filled Christians can be subjected to horrific demonic attacks and that victory does not always mean the end of the attack; victory means triumphantly clinging to God in faith, despite the ongoing severity of the oppression. To crystalize this important truth I will draw upon some of my other writings but the goal is to focus your attention not on my insight but on God’s heart and his Word.   Let’s start with the matchlessly holy Son of God, through whom and for whom all things exist. None of us have the slightest hope of exceeding him in power or righteousness or wisdom or any other good and desirable quality.   Have you noticed the first few words in the following?   Matthew 4:5  Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple.   Who, according to this Scripture, took the holy Son of God to the top of the temple? It wasn’t Jesus’ doing, nor was it God’s.   And consider this:   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.   Everyone knows there is no mountain in the world from which one’s natural eyes can see “all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.” The devil not only somehow managed to get Jesus’ body where he wanted it to be, he thrust a vision into Christ’s very mind. This is the spiritual equivalent of rape.   Our exquisitely perfect Role Model suffered highly invasive attacks from the Evil One. He was victorious in the sense that he remained sinless and did not cave in to the attack, but not in the sense that he was never attacked. In fact, not only during this time, but probably in other instances that the Bible did not bother to detail, our Lord suffered spiritual violation.   As I have written elsewhere:   When the all-powerful Son of God was gloriously victorious over a temptation in the wilderness, Satan did not slink away in defeat. Undeterred, the Evil One moved straight on to trying to seduce the Holy One with a completely different temptation. And when Jesus again delivered a crushing defeat on the enemy, he pounded the Son of God with yet another insidious temptation. Finally, after being beaten yet again, Satan left – but only, as the King James Version puts it, “for a season” or in the words of the NIV, “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13).   Demons leave only with great reluctance. Like naughty children, they will test us to the limit to see if we really believe we have authority over them or whether they can bluff their way into staying by pretending to be stronger than us. Don’t be surprised or think it indicates you are weak when demons put up a fight.   When we read, “resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7), let’s not get so carried away with the final result (him fleeing) that we forget that the key word is “resist”. If we have to resist, it must be because he and his minions will put up a fight.   You can expect quite a battle of wills. But even when they finally leave, that is not the end of the story. Jesus spoke of a demon who left a man and then returned. The man happened to have his defenses down and so the demon not only re-entered the man but invited seven other demons to join him (Matthew 12:43-45). The point I must emphasize is that it is typical of demons to keep coming back, checking one’s defenses to see if they can re-enter.   As I so often find myself reminding Christians: Satan and his evil hordes are sore losers. Once they find something that shakes you up they will keep trying it over and over relentlessly until they are absolutely convinced that their tactics will never again work with you. When, finally, they seem to leave, it is only to bide their time for a surprise attack. Their persistence is exceedingly unpleasant. The positive side, however, is that it will make you stronger and stronger as you keep resisting their lies.   The enemy of our souls is the master deceiver because that is all he can do. The devil cannot change reality. He cannot change the fact that God loves you with  all  of his unlimited love and that Christ died for the sins of the entire world, which has to include every sin you have ever committed. So all he can do is mess with your feelings, hoping that you will start to believe them rather than believe in the power of Christ and the love of God.   Anyone thinking himself more Spirit-filled or power-packed than the Apostle Paul is almost certainly deluded. Let’s look at him:   1 Thessalonians 2:18  For we wanted to come to you – certainly I, Paul, did, again and again – but Satan stopped us.  (NIV)   Zero in on those last words: “ . . . again and again – but Satan stopped us.” The great apostle and his Spirit-filled companions on a mission from God tried over and over but were stopped, not by the will of God, but by Satan. Paul must have had strong reasons for yearning to minister to the Thessalonians and yet, despite several attempts, the anointed apostle was repeatedly prevented by Satan from doing so. This was the man of God renowned for casting out demons and performing extraordinary acts of supernatural power (see  Paul’s Extraordinary Spiritual Power ); the divinely chosen spiritual leader who, under the inspiration of God declared, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Paul’s Extraordinary Spiritual Power Romans 15:19  in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of God’s Spirit . . . from Jerusalem, and around as far as to Illyricum, I have fully preached the Good News of Christ. 2 Corinthians 12:12  Truly the signs of an apostle were worked among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty works. Acts 13:9-12  But Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fastened his eyes on him, and said, “Full of all deceit and all cunning, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness . . . Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is on you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a season!” Immediately a mist and darkness fell on him. He went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul, when he saw what was done, believed . . . Acts 14:8-11  At Lystra a certain man sat, impotent in his feet, a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked. He was listening to Paul speaking, who, fastening eyes on him, and seeing that he had faith to be made whole, said with a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet!” He leaped up and walked. When the multitude saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voice, saying in the language of Lycaonia, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” Acts 14:19-20   . . . they stoned Paul, and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But as the disciples stood around him, he rose up, and entered into the city. On the next day he went out with Barnabas to Derbe. Acts 15:12  All the multitude kept silence, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul reporting what signs and wonders God had done among the nations through them. Acts 16:16-19  As we were going to prayer, a certain girl having a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by fortune telling. Following Paul and us, she cried out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us a way of salvation!” She was doing this for many days. But Paul, becoming greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” It came out that very hour. But when her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone . . . Acts 16:25-26  But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were loosened. Acts 19:11-12  God worked special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and the evil spirits went out. Acts 20:9-12   . . . Eutychus . . . fell down from the third floor, and was taken up dead. Paul went down, and fell upon him, and embracing him said, “Don’t be troubled, for his life is in him.” . . . They brought the boy in alive, and were greatly comforted. Acts 28:3-6  But when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat, and fastened on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he has escaped from the sea, yet Justice has not allowed to live.” However he shook off the creature into the fire, and wasn’t harmed. But they expected that he would have swollen or fallen down dead suddenly, but when they watched for a long time and saw nothing bad happen to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.    Perhaps this startles you or you presume this series of events must be exceptional but this key apostle in the New Testament church considered it so normal that this is his divinely-inspired comment about it:   1 Thessalonians 3:2-4  and sent Timothy . . . to comfort you concerning your faith; that no one be moved by these afflictions [i.e. by the satanically-driven events causing Paul to flee].  For you know that we are appointed to this task . For most certainly, when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we are to suffer affliction, even as it happened, and you know. (Emphasis mine.)   And then there is this famous Scripture:   2 Corinthians 12:7-9  To keep me from becoming conceited  because of these surpassingly great revelations , there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you . . .”  (NIV)   Despite all his efforts, nothing the apostle did could remove this “thorn” in his flesh; this “messenger of Satan” that was tormenting him.   This, and scriptures like it, might seem to undermine faith. We must ensure our faith is based on the entire Word of God, however, not on our presumptions and half-truths. Correctly understood, every part of Scripture strengthens faith and makes it genuine. By this we are not only able to cope with easy situations but are empowered to triumph over the harshest of realities. God never makes a promise he does not keep. Sadly, the same cannot be said for every preacher and Bible teacher. Even those of us who read every word of the Bible have a tendency to gloss over parts that do not fit our preconceptions.   Being confident that demons will flee the instant we take a stand might give the illusion of great faith but it is only baby faith over-inflated by hot air; ready to pop the moment the going gets tough. Quick, easy victories take little faith. God wants us to grow in him until we can endure when the battle is far more intense and goes on and on and on and on. There is indeed great need for endurance:   Matthew 24:13  But he who endures to the end, the same will be saved.   Galatians 6:9   . . . we will reap in due season,  if we don’t give up .   Hebrews 3:14  For we have become partakers of Christ,  if we hold fast  the beginning of our confidence firm to the end.   Revelation 13:10  If anyone is to go into captivity, he will go into captivity. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, he must be killed.  Here is the endurance  and the faith of the saints. (Emphasis mine.)   Look deeper into the following Scripture:   Romans 16:20  The God of peace will  soon  crush Satan under your feet . . . (Emphasis mine.)   “Soon” means it has not already happened. It indicates there will be a delay, and with the God for whom “a thousand years are like a day,” (2 Peter 3:8, NIV) and who, two thousand years ago declared four times, “I am coming soon” (Revelation 3:11; 22:7,12,20, NIV), it could take a while. There was even a frustrating delay between Paul penning those words and them reaching the Roman Christians he was addressing. (E-mail and Facebook were not as reliable back then. Even planes, trucks and motorized ships were rare.)   As already mentioned, a delay before the full victory is even true of our exalted Lord. Despite Ephesians 1:22 (NIV) triumphantly declaring the truth that “God placed all things under his [Christ’s] feet,” drill deeper and you will discover that this is a prophecy – a certainty that has yet to fully materialize :   Acts 2:34-35  For David didn’t ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit by my right hand,  until  I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” ’   1 Corinthians 15:24-25  Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign  until  [i.e. there is delay between Christ reigning and all his enemies being put under his feet] he has put all his enemies under his feet.   Hebrews 10:12-13   . . .when he [Christ, the ultimate High Priest] had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God; from that time  waiting  until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. (Emphasis mine.)   What I am saying is no heresy:   Hebrews 2:6-8   . . . “What is man, that you think of him? Or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” [A quote from Psalm 8] For in that he subjected all things to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him.  But now we don’t see all things subjected to him, yet . (Emphasis mine.)   The Omnipotent Lord has always had the raw power to annihilate our spiritual enemies and at the moment of his resurrection our Lord won the  right  to do so without being morally obligated to destroy us at the same time. (Until he died for our sins and we put our faith in him we, like all his enemies, were guilty of rebellion against God.) Nevertheless, our Lord has mercifully delayed this cataclysmic event to give more of us the chance to repent and so enjoy eternity with him:   2 Peter 3:9-10  The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.   This delay is painful for us and for the God who loves us, but it is beneficial for all who are not yet Christians – people whom God also loves dearly, and Christlikeness makes us willing to suffer so that they might be saved, even as our Lord suffered for us so that we might be saved.   Quick deliverances can impress and our Lord often employs them. Nevertheless, as we are beginning see demonstrated in many Scriptures, although God longs to spare us as passionately as he longed to spare his glorious Son, there are times when even more can be achieved by delayed deliverances.   Job’s friends looked down on him, thinking he must have sinned, and he himself was bewildered and wished he had never been born (Job 3:1-17). Unable to see the bigger picture, he did not realize he had become Satan’s target only because he was particularly righteous, God strongly believed in him and was proud of him. He had no idea he would be forever lauded as a spiritual hero merely for holding on as the trial raged. Neither did he know how many generations of people he would inspire and that without his afflictions we would never have heard of him.   I am intrigued by Jesus telling Peter, “Satan asked to have you . . .” (Luke 22:31). Satan seeking divine permission to test God’s servant is exactly what is described in the first two chapters of Job’s story. Job’s endurance proved to Satan and the forces of evil that, besides Jesus, there has been at least one person on this planet who does what is right without God having to bribe or mollycoddle him. Peter proved to the Evil One and the hordes under his sway that at least one human who, after succumbing to cowardice, will bounce back again and become stronger than ever. I flood with shame, however, to think of the millions that Satan can point to who have gone to extremes, not to do what is right, but in the pursuit of godless selfishness. I ponder all the soldiers, sports stars, thrill seekers, entrepreneurs, adventurers, and so on, who have taken great risks, worked so hard and endured so much in the hope of fame or fleeting riches or to delay their own death, or some other inferior or selfish cause. Then I cringe to think of the shame it brings our Lord to contrast this with how little today’s average western Christian is willing to endure for the infinitely superior, lofty and eternal cause of the One who gave his all for us.   Note that although God allowed Satan to test Job, the Almighty placed precise limits as to how far Satan could go:   Job 1:8-12  The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is no one like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil.” Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven’t you made a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will renounce you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power.  Only on himself don’t stretch out your hand .” . . .   Job 2:1-6  Again, on the day when the God’s sons came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, and said, “From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause.” Satan answered the Lord, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand.  Only spare his life .” (Emphasis mine.)   Likewise, although Paul was satanically prevented from visiting the Thessalonians in person, the Almighty put strict limits on how far Satan could go. God’s plans were not thwarted. Timothy provided the spiritual support the Thessalonians needed (1 Thessalonians 3:1-2). Not only did he minister to them as Paul’s representative, Timothy reported back to Paul, bringing him the comforting news about them that he had craved (1 Thessalonians 3:6-9).   Furthermore, not only did Timothy successfully help them, Paul was able to minister to them in writing. This latter point is highly significant because it demonstrates the truth of Romans 8:28 that, for those committed to him, God brings good out of every satanic onslaught. Had Paul visited them in person he would have had no need to write to them, and all subsequent generations of Christians would have had a thinner Bible and been spiritually robbed of the treasures stored in  1 Thessalonians . (We would also have been robbed of the book of Job, had Satan not attacked Job.)   Knowing how God loves piling on the good when Satan seems to get the upper hand, I think it likely that still more benefits flowed from Paul being temporarily prevented from visiting the Thessalonians. For example, Timothy’s added responsibility in going alone probably developed him as a minister of God. Moreover, through this series of events, Paul was forced to flee to Athens (1 Thessalonians 3:1; Acts 17:10-15). The result was conversions and one of my favorite parts of Scripture: Paul’s speech in the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34).   With the Almighty on our side, what seem like disasters and satanic victories are merely opportunities for God to achieve even greater good.    When Apparent Defeat is Part of the Divine Plan Divinely ordained spiritual battles can be so prolonged and intense that for a long while they look like defeat. To provide three biblical examples, I will quote from another webpage of mine. If you have already read it, feel free to jump to the next section:  Real Victory .   It was a duel between spiritual super-powers: the false gods of Egypt versus the one true God. At Moses’ command, Aaron throws down a rod. The stick becomes a writhing snake. What a victory – the raw power of God spectacularly displayed in the very court of Pharaoh. Face it, Pharaoh, you’ve backed a loser! Heathen sorcerers step forward. They drop their rods and each squirms to life. Before Pharaoh’s eyes is Moses’ solitary snake, hopelessly outnumbered by the magicians’ slithering brood (Exodus 7:9-12).     A homeward-bound Levite needed to lodge for the night. Though a pagan place was more convenient, he chose the security of an Israelite town. Here he’d sleep peacefully, surrounded by God’s people. But to his horror, he discovered these people, despite having known God’s blessing and his laws, were more depraved than the heathen. Given half a chance, they would have raped him. They abused his concubine all night. She was dead by morning. An Israelite town had slumped to the putrid decadence of Sodom and Gomorrah.   Outraged, the Levite summoned the whole of Israel. God’s law was explicit: those murderous perverts must die. But their tribe refused to hand them over. The entire tribe was so committed to wickedness that the Benjamites resolved to fight, if necessary to death, against the united armies of the whole nation, rather than allow the execution of God’s law.   Greatly disturbed, the faithful sought God. It would have been tempting to by-pass this step. They were obviously in the right and the odds were heavily in their favor. Though the Benjamites had a few skilled fighters, they were their brethren, not some super-race, and Israel outnumbered them, 400,000 to less than 27,000. But they did the right thing. They consulted God, and he so approved that he gave them his strategy. On their side were natural superiority, righteousness, divine approval, and the wisdom and infinite might of the Lord of hosts. In obedience to their Lord, they marshaled their forces, high in faith and in the power of God.   And they were slaughtered. In one day 22,000 of them were slain.   They wept. They prayed. They sought the Lord again. Empowered by a fresh word from God, they mobilized for the second day. And 18,000 more of them were massacred (Judges chapters 19-20).    The mighty Son of God came to earth. This was the climax of a divine plan conceived before the earth was formed, and for millennia intricately woven into the fabric of human history. It was the showdown: creature versus Creator, dust versus divinity, filth versus purity, mortality versus immortality.   And Jesus died.    In Pharaoh’s court, occult powers miraculously produce many times more vipers than God. In the time of the judges, God’s forces are routed by an army of inferior strength. At Calvary, God’s Son is dead.   How I thank God for the Bible! Few other Christian books tell it as it really is: you can be flowing in the power of God, following his instructions to the letter in absolute purity and be routed by Satan’s puny forces.   But only for a season.   Moses’ rod swallowed up the sorcerers’ rods. On the third day, Israel crushed the Benjamites. Jesus, on the third day, swallowed up death, having crushed the devil.   (For yet another example of apparent defeat being part of the divine strategy, see Joshua 8:15-22.)     Real Victory   From the moment of his arrest until he died, Jesus become the devil’s plaything. Jesus did not teach that because he suffered on the cross, we would be spared such a fate. On the contrary, he insisted that since evil did this to our perfect Leader and Role Model, we can expect the same:   Matthew 10:24-25, 28  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! . . . Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna [hell]. . . .”(Emphasis mine.)   Until I recently delved deeper into this matter, my oversimplified view was that Jesus suffered so that we would not suffer. This holds true from an eternal perspective, and Jesus’ sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection has set everything in place for this to happen. We even see glimpses of it today. Nevertheless, so often does it not apply in the short term, that Christ’s followers suffering under evil, as Christ did, is a critical part of the Gospel message. It is emphasized throughout the New Testament, such as:   1 Peter 2:19,21  For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly . . .  For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps.   1 Peter 4:12-13  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. But because you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory you also may rejoice with exceeding joy.   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 . . .   Philippians 2:5, 8  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus . . . he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! (NIV)   Hebrews 12:2-4  looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. You have  resisted to blood, striving against sin not yet  resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Emphasis mine.)   James tells us to resist the devil but the last part of the Scripture just quoted implies resistance can go to the extreme of not just claiming the blood of Jesus, but shedding our own blood. This is why Jesus proclaimed:   Mark 8:35  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Good News will save it.   He was even more specific:   Matthew 10:38  He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me, isn’t worthy of me.   Let’s explore that last quote. Except for play actors, no one takes up his own cross unless he is heading for his own crucifixion, where, though both he and God will remain faithful, evil will triumph over him even to the extreme of death. This is truly following Christ because it is just what Jesus did in order to save lives. It is the ultimate way to win, even though the victory is only fully manifested after death. Anyone unwilling to follow our crucified Lord to this extreme, declared Jesus, is unworthy of him.   We so easily get things hideously twisted; priding ourselves in what should fill us with shame, and considering ourselves defeated when we are having our greatest victory.   Too often we become arrogant when our supposedly victorious life is simply because God does not believe in us enough to trust us with a prolonged battle. Instead of flooding with shame, we bloat with pride over being so pathetic that God is compelled to baby us by giving us quick, easy victories.   When, on the other hand, God demonstrates his faith in us by treating us as those who are worthy, too often we think God has let us down and foolishly consider ourselves failures when all of heaven is giving us a standing ovation for us refusing to turn on God. Continuing to grimly hold on makes us spiritual heroes, even though conditions are so oppressive that they make us feel as weak as a slug.   In every situation we face, we need to avoid presumptions and seek God for his definition of victory. Often it will be very different to what we expect.   Job’s victory over Satan was infinitely more convincing than him uttering a couple of words in an authoritative tone and God responding by driving Satan away. That would have been God’s victory, not Job’s. It would have done nothing to remove the question mark dangling over Job’s head as to whether his apparent righteousness and devotion to God were only because God physically prospered and/or protected him. Only by God trusting Job enough to put the pampering on hold and letting Satan temporarily have his way, could Job be exalted by proving to the entire spirit world the absurdity of Satan’s allegation that Job was a self-serving coward.   You, too, might be honored with the opportunity for a victory of this magnitude. Events like Job’s have continued beyond the supernatural Pentecostal birth of the New Testament church. We see, for instance, the Spirit-filled apostles powerfully declaring the Gospel message to the very leaders who had sentenced the Messiah to death and yet they were not miraculously protected. They had such spiritual perception, however, that even before their blood had dried we see them rejoicing that they had been considered worthy of a humiliating beating (Acts 5:40-41).  Supernatural Powers Were Behind the Apostles’ Flogging Despite supernatural evil powers not being specifically mentioned in the account of the apostles’ flogging, the principle expounded in Ephesians 6:12 applies: “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood . . .”   Humans seem to have been participants in the events summarized by Paul as “ . . . Satan stopped us,” (details below) just as they were in the satanically-initiated raids that plundered Job’s property and killed his children (Job 1:13-16,17-19). Likewise, the fulfillment of “ . . the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested . . .” (Revelation 2:10) presumably involved humans as well as supernatural powers, and a similar mix of humans and spiritual powers was involved in Jesus’ death (Luke 22:3-4; John 13:2).   Events Surrounding “ . . . Satan stopped us”   Acts 17:1-2,4,6,9-10,13-14   . . . they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. . . . Paul, as was his custom, went in to them, and for three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures . . . Some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas, of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and not a few of the chief women. But the unpersuaded Jews took along some wicked men from the marketplace, and gathering a crowd, set the city in an uproar. Assaulting the house of Jason, they sought to bring them out to the people. When they didn’t find them, they dragged Jason and certain brothers before the rulers of the city . . . When they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Beroea. . . . But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Beroea also, they came there likewise, agitating the multitudes. Then the brothers immediately sent out Paul to go as far as to the sea . . .   Like so many Spirit-filled heroes, these apostles overcame not only by the blood of the Lamb but by the victorious way they endured the spilling of their own blood (Revelation 12:11; 17:6). Later, we see the triumphant, risen Lord prophesying to people he was proud of (Revelation 2:9) that “ . . the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested . . . Be faithful to death . . .” (Revelation 2:10). And we see the Almighty declaring, “It was given to him to make war with the saints  and to overcome them ” (Revelation 13:7 – emphasis mine).     On the cross, the Lord of glory was utterly overpowered by evil. The defeat was temporary but it was total – except that, through it all, our Leader remained faithful to God and it ended up the greatest victory the universe has ever seen. Likewise, if we remain faithful to our victorious Lord, any apparent victory of evil over us will only be temporary – even in the unlikely event of it lasting a lifetime – and, through our heroic Savior, every instance will turn into a spectacular victory that will be celebrated for all eternity.     Related Pages The Spiritual Value of Suffering Trials The Secret to Casting Out Demons, Defeating the Devil, and Overcoming Temptation