The God of All Comfort

This life is full of so many ups and downs. It is undoubtedly easier to live in those "up" moments, but it is not always better. God can and does use our "down" moments to draw us near to Him. These "down" moments lead us to pray more pointedly, more fervently, and more desperately. Those are good things. When we are in those "up" moments we can easily get by without prayer (not in reality, but in our own minds), without any fervency or desperation.

My family and I have learned this through all the trials we have experienced with our son, Kaleb. As a kidney transplant patient, he is on medications that suppresses his immune system, so he can get sick easily. Any time he is not feeling good, it is easy to be catapulted into one of those "down" moments. This is just the reality of being a parent who loves your child.

But I have learned personally, that these moments cause me to rely more on God than I was before. I have learned that our God personally comforts those in affliction. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says, "Blessed be the God and Father or our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our afflictions..."

Friends, it does not matter what you are facing today; our God comforts in ALL our afflictions. I am comforted; that does not mean I am always comfortable. But I am comforted. I have peace, even when I am desperate. Thank God for the trials you face; these pains bring you closer to Him and make you more dependent on Him than we often are without the trials. Keep in mind the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Savior knows the agony of pain. He knows what we face. And he is our Mediator and Intercessor. He can sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15) and he promises to give us sufficient grace for our trials (2 Corinthians 12:9). Run to him, friends.

Forgiveness in the Midst of Tragedy

I am speaking about forgiveness today at Fuge Camps to over 1000 students. The subject is important to me because I have had to learn some tough lessons about it. I wrote today on Consuming Grace about my journey of learning to forgive the doctor who removed Kaleb's kidneys by accident. This was a difficult road, but one that was worth all the pain.

My story is not the only remarkable story of forgiveness. I watched a video today of another remarkable story. It is the story of young woman who was raped and had to learn how to forgive the one who did it. Take a look at her story, and the let God work on your heart about those in your life that need forgiveness.

Let God speak to you today on the issue of forgiving those who hurt you. There is freedom in Christ from all the bondage we experience, including the bondage of our past hurts.

The Short Life-Span of Suffering

One day suffering will be swallowed up. It will be engulfed. The things that often torment and haunt us now will eventually be defeated and we will triumph with joy abounding forever. Eternity offers us the hope that our present sufferings are only temporary.

Paul says in Romans 8:18 (ESV) "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

These things we face, and everyone faces them, will eventually be history. God has promised victory. One day those in Christ will experience this victory. Dostoevsky, the 19th century Russian novelists, understood this. In his book The Brothers Karamazov he makes this amazing statement:

"I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man's Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world's finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men."*

Many are going through different trials and tribulations today. Would you pray for them today and ask the Lord to strengthen and encourage them? Would you also pray for the Lord to bring forth the day in which all things will be restored, and the above description comes to pass? Suffering does have a short life-span. We must remember that. It is partly how we are able to carry on in the midst of it.

How can remembering suffering has a short life-span serve to better endure it?

Related posts: A Prayer for the Overwhelmed

If this post was helpful and you believe someone you know could be benefited by reading it, share by clicking on some of the options below to distribute it. 

*Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 235-236

Fighting With Your Spouse in Light of the Gospel

Every married couple will have arguments. It does not matter if you are Christian or not. There are several reasons why we fight with one another: 1. because the other one is always wrong (figured I would get that one out of the way), 2. because both people are sinners, 3. because both people are different from one another, and 4. because both people are sinners (did I mention this one already?).

As a couple, dating or married, you are different from one another. You have different backgrounds, different experiences, different personalities, different likes, different insecurities, different expectations, and the list goes one. The reason you will have arguments with one another is because you married someone different than you. The reason you married someone different from you is because you cannot marry yourself, because of this, you will have arguments.

The other big cause for trouble in our relationships is sin. In addition to marrying someone different than you, you married a sinner. Yep, that's right, they are a sinner. And so are you. Because we marry sinners, and our spouse's marry sinners, there will be clashes in the relationship. We will show a lack of self-control. We will fail at being slow to anger, as the Bible says, and instead, have outbursts of anger. We will lack patience, compassion, and at times, energy. Because we are sinners, we will have moments where we will fight to have our way, to advance our own personal kingdom and agendas. Because we are sinners, we will care more about trying to conform our spouse rather than focusing on transforming ourselves. Being sinners will cause fights within our marriage.

Are we left helpless? Does the gospel inform us on how to navigate this?

I want to list some ways that the gospel can help us as individuals, and as couples, to navigate the times when we are arguing or fighting with one another. I wish I could say I have mastered these and have no problem with them, but I cannot. This list goes out to broken people from a broken person. May we all learn to apply these.

1. Remember that it was God the Father's providence and plan that brought you together with your spouse. This is important to remember when you are thinking, "what the heck have I done in marrying this person?!?" You committed, before God, for the long-haul; that means the "d" word has no place in our vocabulary.

2. Understand that the purposes of marriage are to glorify God and to sanctify one another. What does this mean? It means that you are called to glorify God through your marriage, but it also means that God is sanctifying you (transforming your character) through your marriage. Sometimes sanctification hurts because it requires we die to selfish tendencies. Embrace it.

3. Communicate to your spouse in a way that acknowledges they are a child of God. It is okay to clearly tell how you feel to your spouse when upset, but do it with intent to communicate not instigate, condemn, or tear-down. We do not avoid having conversations about how we feel as Christian couples, but the way we communicate aims at seeing a productive result, not tearing the other down or creating a fight. We have to remember their value in the eyes of God before we sin against God in our communication to them.

4. Commit to only speaking to your spouse in such a way that is glorifying to God. In other words, make sure that the words, tone, and attitude behind your speech would be something glorifying and pleasing to God. The Bibles says in 1 Cor. 10:31 "so whether eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." This includes our communication with our spouse. If you are too angry to do this properly, then you should begin praying for God to help give you strength, self-control, and patience to only speak to them in a way that glorifies Him.

5. Extend grace & forgiveness to one another with the lavishness that God has extended it to you. God has given us (followers of Jesus) grace. This grace has forgiven us of our sins though we deserve the most severe of punishments. If you struggle to give grace and forgiveness to your spouse when they mess up, just ask yourself why you believe you deserve grace and forgiveness from God for your daily mess-ups.

6. Give love to one another unconditionally, even when it is undeserved. Why should we do this? God has loved us through Christ with unconditional love. We did not earn His love, we received it unconditionally. Even when we mess up, God does not take His love away from us. We cannot operate with a conditional love toward one another by only showing our love when the other has done something to merit it.

7. Trust Jesus Christ to be sufficient to meet our needs as we have struggles. We often run to a million other things when we are having problems. Jesus wants us to come to him. We must not see Jesus as someone we only run to when we have religious questions. He desires to be our strength in times of weakness. He desires to be the first one we turn to, not the last.

8. Look to the power of Holy Spirit to help you in the midst of your arguments. In the heat of the moment our flesh desires to be right, to get the last word, to hurt the other's feelings, and so on. We must instead ask prayerfully for the Holy Spirit to be our guide, to be the Great Helper He was promised to be in Scripture. The fruit of the Holy Spirit's work will include: patience, self-control, and selflessness. These things are needed in our marriages.

These are just a handful of ways that the gospel informs how we are navigate arguments with our spouse. In the end, Christians should be modeling a different way of approaching marriage, not mirroring everyone else in the world. The way we do this is looking to Christ and seeing how the Scriptures inform what the gospel requires of us in any situation. This includes how to fight in our marriages.

Leave a comment below: Which of these is the most helpful to you and why? Why do you feel we forget as Christians that the gospel speaks to how we should handle conflict with one another?


If this post was helpful for you, then share it with others by clicking on some of the buttons below

My Struggles & the Gospel's Remedies (Part II)

Yesterday I talked about my struggles with anxiety and how the gospel helps me to get through it. I want to follow-up that post by talking more specifically about my struggles and how I have learned to deal it with it along the way.

One of the things I have learned about when my anxiety begins to intensify is that I am usually tired, stressed, not exercising properly, or dealing with a specific situation that is causing me to worry. I can go months without the least bit of a problem and then find my heart-rate rising in some weird random situation, and I immediately begin to examine my life to see where I am out-of-balance. An example of this is my plane ride home last week from Kansas City. Leading up to the flight home I found myself getting anxious about the flight. One of the things that often triggers my anxiety is the feeling of claustrophobia. The thought of being on a cramped airplane and unable to get off it for at least two hours started my mind and heart to racing. The interesting thing about this is that I had been on three flights in the previous two weeks that did not create this anxiety at all. My family and I flew to Orlando and back home. Then I flew to Kansas City to speak at a Youth Camp for two weeks. None of these flights created anxiety in me. But as I found myself heading to the airport to fly home, I already sensed the anxiety beginning. After two weeks of preaching, I was physically exhausted. I was tired. This was a trigger. As I boarded the plane my heart started pounding through my chest as I realized it was a jam-packed flight. I sat by the window with two other guys on the row with me. It was the definition of being trapped in a tight space.

As I sat in the seat of the airplane and watched person after person continue to board the flight, I had thoughts of getting off. I had thoughts of ordering some wine to knock the edge off. I had thoughts of going into a full board panic-attack. But as I sat in the seat, thinking all these thoughts, to the ignorance of everyone else on the flight, I started to pray. I started by telling God that I did not want to look to any other source of strength than Him. I shared honestly with God my fears, however irrational, and that I needed Him. I began reminding myself that even this struggle was part of my sanctification process. By being in a position where I could not control how I was feeling, I was forced to recognize my deep dependence on God. I was forced to remind myself of my lack of strength. It was a hard lesson to grasp, but I had to learn that God had me right where He wanted me, turning to Him, when I was tempted to turn toward something or someone else.

We need to understand something: our struggles and challenges, whether physical or emotional, can be used by God to teach us dependence and submission to Him. They teach us that we are still in process, we have not arrived. They teach us to look toward the day when these struggles will be no more. But while they still exists, they teach us that God works through them to work on us. I am going to say something that some of you may not agree with, but I am learning first hand to be true: the anxiety that I struggle with is a gift from God. It is a thorn in my flesh that I have prayed be removed and taken from me, but God continues to remind me that His grace is sufficient for me. His power is made perfect in my weakness. So I boast all the more in my weakness, for when I am weak, He shows Himself to be strong. My flight home became a moment of worship and communion with God, as He showed me that He is indeed enough.

Questions: What types of worries, struggles, or situations in your life are you trying to learn to apply the gospel to? Why is it that we often try to fix things ourselves or with methods other than applying the gospel?

If this post has been helpful or you enjoyed it, please share with others by clicking the buttons below

Haiti, The Gospel, and God's Sovereignty

The tragic story of what has and is happening in Haiti is astounding. To think of thousands in a matter of moments being killed by such a unsuspecting event is horrifying. Yet in the midst of this tragedy and sorrow, we must be reminded that God is sovereign. Though we wish we could turn away and it disappear, we must be reminded that our world is broken and awaiting the return of its Savior to bring it to final redemption. And though we don't always understand why or how things like this can happen under God's watch, we are reminded that the people of Haiti need the gospel, and this tragedy will and can usher that in.

Unlike crazy Pat Robertson, who I can't believe I have to call a brother in Christ, I do not believe God was acting out some kind of judgment on Haiti. Instead, I believe it is a good reminder from God's Word (Romans 8) that all creation is moaning as in the pains of childbirth, awaiting the redemption of the sons and daughters of God. Awaiting the return of Christ. Awaiting final restoration.

As a church (The Journey), we are looking at ways that we can help bring relief to Haitian people. We will have updates to come soon on how you can get involved. In the mean time, here are several things we should partner together to pray for:

1. That the relief efforts and aid being sent and delivered would help relieve some of the physical suffering going on.

2. That the gospel of Jesus would come in power and that many would find hope and salvation.

3. That parents who lost children and children who lost parents would be comforted by the great Comforter.

4. That as a global community, God could use a tragedy of this nature, to remind us that the "betterment" of earth is not where our hope should lie. It is in Jesus Christ in whom we put our faith. We believe he is going to return to make right the wrongs that have occurred on earth. There will be final restoration. We look to that day.

Take some time today to pray for the country of Haiti. Pray for the people. Pray for the relief workers and missionaries who are hitting the ground. Pray for a mighty move of the Spirit of God there, that Jesus may be made known.