Joy in Trials?

One wonder of salvation is that God loves us. John 3:16 says it concisely and states the proof of it besides. However, as today’s reading says, many of God’s children miss the extent of that love and fall prey to the testimony of their own doubting hearts. How could God care for me? Or how could God forgive me? Or why am I not sure of being loved?

A doubting heart is the result of listening to circumstances as well as defining love in human terms. For many, love is about feeling good. It is also based on the performance of others. When they do what is pleasing, love is easy, but if their actions are not comfortable, love does not come as easily — and the reverse is assumed.

Relationships enter the mix too. I might more easily love my children, warts and all, than I would love a neighbor who is nice one day and nasty the next. When God seems like He isn’t interested in my comfort, then I wonder if He loves me — that is, it I base my interpretations on human thinking. Note, this kind of thinking is subjective and based on my ‘I wants’ — meaning it is essentially selfish and sinful.

The love of God is not about making me comfortable, but it took awhile to learn that. My parent’s love was about meeting my needs, but also doing what made me happy. God wants me to be joyful, but His version is from the Holy Spirit and does not depend on comfortable circumstances.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2–4)

How is this even possible? Learning this takes years and some never learn it. Grumpy Christians? Yes, because growing in love is about faith, and faith is about hearing the Word of God, and if I stop hearing (not the same as merely listening), then I stop growing in faith and growing in love, the kind of love that Jesus has.

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. (2 Thessalonians 1:3)

So, what happens to change from being uncertain that God loves me to being so sure of it that I can be joyful in trials and love even my enemies? The answer is a bit of a surprise. A seminary professor told the class that if we could get Christians to speak what they know, that truth would become a greater part of their way of life. The NT puts it this way:

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

Verbal testimony of known truth, including an attitude of love in speaking it, is God’s way of locking that truth and that attitude into hearts and lives. Being silent does not build faith, nor does acting in unloving ways build love — including the awareness that God loves me. Faith is solidified by saying what I believe.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 10:10–11)

To put this in broader terms, sin will spoil faith and increase doubt, even doubt that God loves me. Not that He has stopped, but I have stopped thinking that He loves me. This begins a downward spiral into sorrow.

PRAY: Jesus, this is so helpful. The verses from James speak to me also about my attitude in this ‘trial of a various kind’ — the trial of moving and a million boxes. My brother moved when younger than I am now and said never to move when you are eighty. We laughed and are doing it anyway. But realizing that Your joy is possible no matter what, even if this is a lot harder to experience in total exhaustion. Remembering that You love us and are with us means a great deal. We see the evidence in many ways, including how You give us joy in this or any circumstance.

Ages for acorns to become oaks

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. (Ephesians 2:19–21)

Rereading these verses from Ephesians speaks to me today. I have been looking back over my life and wondering if God has used me for anything important. I’ve also been impatient with myself for being so slow to grow in spiritual maturity. However, these verses refer to a building, a vast structure that is not built overnight.

The author of today’s devotional points out that the book of Acts did not occur in a short time. Watching television tends to make us assume all the great problems can be solved in 30-60 minutes, and that we can have instant success. Yet Paul’s first missionary journey took place about seventeen years after Pentecost. These first believers were gradually equipped, not sent out soon after their salvation. It takes time to become what God wants us to become.

This was true of Moses. He was forty years old when he left Egypt, and then spent forty years in the wilderness before God appeared to him in the burning bush and sent him to deliver His people from bondage. As Stephen preached in Acts, Moses was in training, “in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.”

He also pointed out to his hearers that, “Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’” (Acts 7:35–40)

This is reference to the human tendency to not listen to godly leaders, Moses then and Jesus later. Those who were guilty of neglect did not grow in their knowledge of God and did not become like Christ.

However, some did listen. The believers at Colosse were commended for doing so. Paul told them, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant.”

Because of their obedience, Paul was burdened to pray that they increase. He told them, “We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God . . . .” (Colossians 1:3–14)

Paul had the same thing in mind for the Christians at Thessalonica: “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.” (2 Thessalonians 1:3)

The point of this is that Christian growth is important, but not speedy, nor does it happen automatically. I’m happy that I’m getting great teaching from our current church and the theology courses I’m taking, but sad because I’d not been offered in the past forty years what I’ve learned in the last two. Yet I do understand that the Christian life starts with kindergarten, not post-graduate school.

If I can pass anything on to the next generation it is this: Listen to godly leaders and seek wisdom and understanding. Seek Christ in everything and grow in the grace and knowledge of Him, but don’t be impatient — because the subject matter is vast and limitless, learning all there is to know will not happen in a lifetime, even in an eternity!