Category Archives: Suffering

God’s Goal isn’t your Happiness!

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I recently did a video interview with Dr Allan Meyer (CEO Careforce Life Keys) and I asked him a question about some of the critical issues facing the western church at the present time. In his excellent response, he reflected on the current focus of many Christians and much preaching being the goal of an individuals personal happiness, rather than following Jesus Christ.

As I have reflected on this many times in my own preaching ministry, I think about Jesus’ words in John 10:10 “The devil comes to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life and have it in all of its’ fulness.” Unfortunately, some of us have wrongly mis-interpreted this verse through our western context and concluded that God’s goal for us is our happiness, which surely must mean, health, wealth and prosperity… Ah, NOT!

As I read the Scriptures, I don’t find the emphasis of my personal comfort being consistent with the biblical account of Jesus’ life or the Apostle Paul’s life or any of the other apostle’s life, for that matter, as is recorded in the New Testament. Money, success and well-being are all gifts from God and should be stewarded accordingly but God’s goal for me isn’t the obtaining of these things, alone. Me becoming more and more like him is his goal and this can be accomplished through a variety of circumstances and dare I say it, is often accomplished rather well through suffering.

The joy of the Lord is my strength but God’s joy is available whatever I am facing or going through, not just when things are going my way. As preachers, our goal should be to be faithful to the text and expose what the text is simply declaring in the most compelling way possible, not to proselytize people to a mirage of false hope.  As pastors, our goal should be to lead people into Christ-likeness and a biblically based worldview that equips them to grow in spiritual maturity and gospel grace, not to encourage growth in spiritual immaturity.

Churches that promise happiness and bliss to their congregation alone, if they follow Jesus and perform for him are setting people up for massive disillusionment. Following Jesus in the real world does fill me with joy but sometimes I do face circumstances that are quite the opposite of happy. When a close family member of mine attempted suicide in 2001, I wasn’t happy. When I didn’t get the outcome I was hoping for as a budding athlete, I didn’t feel warm, happy fuzzies. When I get criticized and ostracized by others for my faith in Jesus and commitment to my calling, I don’t necessarily feel happy but my joy in Christ remains intact.

What’s your goal in life? If happiness is your goal, then you will live a misdirected and self-pre-occupied life but if God’s goal of Christ-likeness and knowing him is your goal then you will live life on purpose. Refuse to settle for anything less.

Grace! (Video Interview will be uploaded very soon)

Rethinking Christian Progress!

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The one thing the bible promises us regarding life in this world is that it will be hard and filled with trials, temptations and tribulations. Nowhere does the bible promise that we’ll have our best life now (as popularized by Joel Osteen). in 2 Timothy 3:12 Paul tells Timothy, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

This morning I tweeted an important phrase from pastor Tullian Tchividjian’s book Jesus + Nothing = Everything and it is the idea of an “over-realized eschatology”. I want to use this term to say, too many Christians live with an “over-realized eschatology” expecting  now on earth what God has promised only later for eternity. This causes us to live with unrealistic expectations for what we will and won’t face in this world.

In light of this how do we approach growth and progress in our faith?

The Gospel didn’t just ignite my faith but it’s the fuel that keeps it going and growing me everyday. The Gospel has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:13-14). Progress begins with understanding that in Christ, we’ve already been qualified, delivered, transferred, redeemed and forgiven. Working out your salvation with fear and trembling is focusing on working out what Christ has already given to us and worked into us by his will and for his pleasure.

Our natural instinct as believers is to almost exclusively measure Christian growth around behavioural improvement but the greater issue is what is behind the good or bad fruit of our behaviour? Bad behaviour happens when we fail to believe that everything we need, in Christ, we already have. On the other hand, good behaviour happens when we daily rest in and receive the finished work of Jesus in deeper and deeper ways, destroying any need to secure for ourselves anything beyond what Christ has already secured for us.

The hard work of growth we are called to is to believe again and again the gospel of God’s free justifying grace everyday and resting in what Christ has finished on our behalf. I think real spiritual progress happens when our natural understanding of progress is rooted out and it’s not about first behaving better but believing more fully what Jesus has already accomplished.

Gerhard Forde, in his work, Justification by Faith, once said, “It’s not our movement toward the goal but the movement of the goal on us” that helps us progress in the Christian life. Pastor Tullian (Pg173) says, “Sanctification involves God’s daily attack on our unbelief – our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final.”

When we stop narcissistically focusing on our need to get better, that is what it means to get better. The more we focus on our need to get better, the more neurotic and self-absorbed and worse we actually get. I have to admit that I’ve been too pre-occupied with myself for most of my life and my pre-occupation with my performance over Christ’s performance makes me increasingly self-centered and distant from God and others.

Christian progress is forgetting about yourself! So, aim for progress but remember what it isn’t, your personal improvement and moral progress. Progress is washing your hands of you and resting in Christ’s finished work for you, which will inevitably produce personal improvement and spiritual growth.

Grace! 

Joy of Suffering

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2 Corinthians 1:8-9 “We do not want you to be ignorant brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

One of the key questions I get asked as a pastor is, “Why does a loving God allow suffering?”

Well, the bible teaches us in Genesis 3 that suffering is a result of sin entering into the human heart due to our own rebellion against God. To be alive after Genesis 3 means you and I will suffer in some way. It’s not a question of “IF” but “WHEN”.

Jesus confirmed this when he said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have tribulation but take heart I have overcome the world.” This doesn’t mean that you and I will escape suffering but that we will in fact have Gods grace in the midst of the suffering we endure. Suffering won’t be avoided because you have a lot of faith or neither is it necessarily a punishment for your sin (however, we can suffer for making poor choices in life or willfully living in sin).

It’s important that before we move to a therapy of how to deal with suffering, we develop a biblical theology of suffering.  A theology of suffering precedes and informs the therapy of suffering if we are going to understand and respond appropriately to God’s purposes for us in our suffering.

The key question we need to ask ourselves is whether or not the suffering we endure will be purposeful (something to be accomplished) or purposeless (nothing accomplished)? How we respond to suffering determines whether or not we gain anything from it. Will you suffer in a way that allows God to do something good in you or not? God encourages us to not waste our suffering because suffering can turn out to be for the benefit of God’s work in us and through us, if we respond from a Gospel perspective.

3 Questions to ask yourself when facing suffering:

  1. Will you see your suffering as a God-allowed opportunity to advance the gospel?
  2. Will other believers grow in their faith because of your suffering?
  3. Will unbelievers become believers in Christ because of your suffering?

The biblical response to suffering always comes back to rejoicing in Christ. What the…? Yes, that’s right, REJOICE! The Apostle Paul said, “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” (Phil 1:12-18).

Insight!