Chapter
13 : Secure in Every Circumstance
“
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
him, who have been called according to his purpose ”
(Rom
8:28 )
In the last chapter we considered the security we have in our
calling (the 2 nd half of the above verse), and now in this chapter
we'll consider being secure in all circumstances (the first half of
the above verse). What happens when things go wrong in life? The Church
is full of people who can testify that life has been tough on them.
Perhaps that's you. So how can we be secure in God's love when these
sorts of things happen to us? Let's focus our thinking on this subject
by some of the things that DO happen to Christians. In the following
examples, all the individuals were Christians:
13.1
A Catalogue of Disasters
- A
& B are a young married couple. B, who had been longing for children,
was pregnant for six months when she miscarried.
- C
is a Christian leader who, travelling home late from a ministry trip
was involved in a multiple pile up on the motorway and was killed
instantly.
- D
is a middle aged Christian counsellor who was being greatly used when
she contracted cancer and died after eighteen months, despite the
treatment given her and the prayer made for her.
- E
& F are a lovely Christian couple whose second child was born
with Downs Syndrome.
- G
is a doctor, a respected Christian, who has just been struck off for
entering into wrong relationships with some of his women patients.
- H
is a young Christian who went on volunteer Christian work to an Asian
country and was severely injured in an earthquake and is now paralysed
from the waist down.
- J
is now thirty five and has longed to get married but the right partner
has just not come along. Tragically when J was twenty one her fiancée
was killed a month before their planned wedding. There's never been
anyone since and the sense of loneliness almost breaks her.
- K
was repeatedly abused by her stepfather throughout her teenage years
and she now holds the guilty secret in fear.
- L,
a well respected Christian, was a successful businessman when his
partner started taking money from the firm. The result was that the
company had to go into liquidation. L was left with nothing.
- M
& N are Christian parents who have done everything in their power
to bring up their children to know and love their Lord. Unfortunately,
of their four children three have turned completely away from Christian
things. One of the three has turned to the drugs culture, another
is on their third marriage, and the third is simply living with an
unemployed drop out.
- O
was raped while on her University campus. They never found the man.
- P
& Q experienced the joy of having a long desired baby, only for
it to die in its cot at two months.
- R
is a Christian leader and much sought after speaker in his early sixties
and has just been diagnosed with a neurological disease where the
rapid onset of senility can be expected.
- S
is a minister of a large church and his wife has recently left him
for another man in the congregation.
- T
was standing waiting for a train when he was set upon by three youths
and had ammonia sprayed in his eyes and his watch stolen, while others
looked on and did nothing.
- U
& V are not particularly well off but have now had their house
broken into three times.
- W
is a great Christian teacher in a primary school. Just recently he
was accused, unfairly and wrongly, of inappropriately touching some
of the children and has been suspended pending an investigation.
- X
is a young child from a Christian family who has been bullied at school
on a regular basis.
- Y
& Z have been longing to have children throughout the fifteen
years of their married life, but it has never happened.
A lot of people in anguish. Why? Where is this God
of love I've talked about in this book? If you identify with one of
these people it's quite likely that your heart is in anguish. Unless
someone has been through what you've been through they can't understand
the anguish you feel. We can talk about, discuss it and intellectualise
it but we still can't feel your pain. The only one who really can is
Jesus.
With
that in mind, why am I writing this chapter? Why if you're in pain and
logical words won't ease the pain, why bother to write? Because it's
just faintly possible you are looking for answers that make sense, even
if they can't dull the ache. So just in case you are such a person,
here are a few thoughts that I hope may bring a ray of understanding.
13.2
The Problem of Sovereignty
In the last chapter we considered the fact of God's sovereignty
calling us to Him and we considered the ‘problem' of when He called
us, when He knew us. But now, in this present context we need to consider
aspects of God's sovereignty in respect of the bad things of this world.
For instance some of us have been taught a rigid sovereignty
of God whereby EVERYTHING that happens to us has been brought upon us
by God. The extreme form says that we had nothing to do with our salvation.
The only problem with this is that when a disaster hits our lives we
end up HAVING to blame God. When a child is born to us with a serious
heart defect, when we are involved in a serious car crash, when our
teenage son turns to drugs and then commits suicide (and these things
DO happen to Christians!), we are left having to attribute it to Almighty
God. We mistakenly take Paul's corrective words in Romans 9:18-21 as
meaning that God, the Potter, makes everything happen.
I would suggest that this viewpoint stems more from our own psychological
outlook brought about by our own upbringing, rather than the revelation
of God. So what is Paul saying in that passage? He's basically saying
the same thing that God said to Job, don't be stupid and try and blame
God or argue against God, He's too big and you're too small. The fact
that God doesn't destroy all of us is purely down to the mercy of God,
it's nothing to do with the sort of person you are.
Many Christians have been greatly damaged and many non-Christians
have been turned away by the teaching that says the God who is love
(1 Jn 4:8,16) is also the God of horror. Yes God does discipline but
that is a far cry from bringing some of the catastrophes that I mentioned
just now.
Ultimately all such disaster or catastrophes are the result of
Sin (in you or in the rest of the world), or from Satan through other
people. That God allows such things does not mean that He is happy about
them. Everything that Jesus did was to combat these things, to bring
healing, reconciliation and restoration to people's lives. He chided
two of his disciples who wanted to bring fire on others (Lk 9:54 ).
We'll consider this more as we go through the chapter.
If you have been wresting with this, wrestle no more. The
bad that may have come into your life has probably come more because
we live in a fallen world than because you deserve it! God is there
to bring goodness and blessing to you in the thing, that's what the
verse at the beginning of the chapter is all about. It's about God being
able to bring good out of your worst circumstances, because of Jesus.
13.3
Facing a Fallen World
When
God made this world as recorded in Genesis 1 it was very good (Gen 1:31
), yet today it is far from perfect. What has happened? We need to be
quite clear about this because it stops us wrongly blaming God. The
Bible shows us that God gave Adam and Eve free will and the ability
to decide what to do. He gave them all the fruit in the garden of Eden
to eat (in the area we call Mesopotamia ), with the exception of that
from one tree (Gen 2:16 ,17). They were free to choose whether to obey
or disobey. He also warned them that there would be serious consequences
if they disobeyed.
Now
we must be quite clear that some mystical cloud called ‘evil' didn't
waft over them. The Bible indicates that in the experience of all Creation
there are living creatures, living organisms and inanimate objects.
We could categorise them as follows:
a)
Living Creatures:
Now the Bible seems to indicate that these last three groups
did not cause harm when God first made the world. There is indication
that the ‘natural' world changed when sin entered the world (see below).
However God's mandate to man was to subdue the earth and rule over all
the creatures of the earth (Gen 1:28) which, one would suppose, being
before the Fall, simply meant bringing order to and enjoying and ensuring
peace on the earth.
What is usually meant by the Fall is the action that is
recorded in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve fell from a place of innocence,
a place of communion with God and a place of blessing (God's continual
decree of goodness for them). When, at Satan's prompting, the woman
and the man disobeyed God, this had distinct consequences. It brought:
a)
Relational Change
•
self awareness and shame (Gen 3:7a)
•
a desire to cover up (Gen 3:7b)
•
fear (Gen 3:10 )
•
a blame culture (Gen 3:12 )
•
enmity with Satan (Gen 3:15 )
•
inequality of relationship with each
other (Gen 3:16 )
•
exclusion from the daily presence of
God (Gen 3:23 )
b)
Physical Change
Perhaps because the blessing of the Presence of God
was separated from man, there were also physical consequences:
•
childbearing pain would increase (Gen
3:16 )
•
the ground would be cursed (Gen 3:17
)
•
work would be hard.(Gen 3;17)
We may assume that the general upheaval of the earth (earthquakes
etc.), are also part of the effect of God's presence withdrawing, and
of Satan's influence increasing.
Rom
8:20-22 20
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice,
but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation
itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into
the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole
creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to
the present time.
These verses from Paul appear to speak very much to this subject.
They remind us (v.21) that the world is subject to death and decay because
it has been put into this condition by God (v.20), and it's been as
if the world has been groaning and waiting for something better to come
(v.22) which has been promised by God. It's important to understand
that the world is like this today because of the effect of Sin in mankind
and the activity of Satan. The only ‘blame' that could be laid against
God is that He allowed this to happen.
So what is Sin, what is Evil? Sin is that tendency within
each one of us to ignore God and live out his or her life in their own
way, contrary to God's decreed ways. Evil may be physical evil, as we
considered in the Romans verses above that causes harm as a result of
the Fall, or moral evil which is wickedness by men. The Bible describes
God as utterly good, perfect, love. If we were able to see the being
and person of God we would not be able to detect a fault in Him in any
way.
If, when we get to heaven, He allows us to view all of
history, we will never be able to find one thing in all of history whereby
we could criticise Him. When He made Adam and Eve, the first two human
beings in His likeness, with a spirit with which to communicate with
Him, they also were good. They had never done wrong. There was no evil
in them. Yet they had the ability to choose, and choosing to reject
God and the way He's made things to be is what we call Sin. So they
chose to reject God and this Sin existed for the first time in the human
race, that failure of relationship, and so it has existed ever since.
Does this take away the sin? It deals with the penalty
of it, and it breaks its power over us so we no longer have
to sin, but the choice is still there in us. More than that the effects
of sin are in our body, we still suffer sickness and illness. So when
things go wrong in your life, illnesses, accidents, mishaps, don't see
these as God punishing you, see them as simply characteristics of the
Fallen world that affect all of us. If you go back to the beginning
of the chapter and apply these things we've considered so far you'll
see the following:
a)
Harm through inanimate objects:
H
-injured in an earthquake
b)
Physical harm because we ‘don't work perfectly' any longer
B
- miscarriage
D
- cancer
E,F
- Downs Syndrome
P,Q
- cot death
R
- early senility
Y,Z
– infertility
c)
Physical harm through mishap
C
- motorway accident
J
- fiancée killed
d)
Relational upsets - people against people
-
all the rest! (11)
Go back to the previous chapter and read my comments about free
will. Seriously, this is not merely academic stuff, this is the stuff
of truth! You either have a horror-God who inflicts us with all these
terrible things (the extreme view of a sovereign God), or you have free
will and people who choose to harm people.
We've said previously that the Bible shows us that God
knew, even before He made the world and made mankind with free will,
what the outcome would be. Couldn't He have stopped it ever happening?
Where do you want Him to stop things. You want Him to stop the child
abuser from wrongly touching that young child? Well why not the mother
simply screaming at her children? You might say that's not quite so
bad. Well why not stop the children being rude, fractious, unkind to
one another and all those other anti-social things we so often find
in children? Where do you want Him to stop?
No, once you start you can't stop and you have to end up
saying He's got to completely take away free will, and that simply leaves
you with subhuman automatons, beings who are unable to love, unable
to be individually creative, expressive and all that ‘being human' entails.
Yet through salvation we find the wonder of wonders,
that these self-centred, sinful, self-ruling, godless beings surrender
willingly to the Lord of the Universe and enter into relationship with
Him as His children, loving Him, adoring Him, obeying Him, and all that
voluntarily. That is the wonder of God's salvation plan.
Stoics believed you had to just grin and bear it without emotion
but that is far from the Christianity of the Bible. God is a God of
feelings. Jesus, the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), got angry,
wept, felt compassion when faced with people's needs. Christianity is
a ‘feeling religion' where there is little room for the stiff upper
lip of emotional death. There is “ a time to weep and a time to
laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance ” as the writer of Ecclesiastes
says.
When Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus, for a variety of reasons,
he wept (Jn 11:35). As Jesus approached Jerusalem at the beginning of
that last week, he wept over it (Lk 19:41) as he saw the awful things
that would happen to it. Again and again we find that Jesus was “filled
with compassion” and was thus moved to minister.
It's all right to feel. It's all right to weep - even if you're
a man. When you've lost a loved one, it's all right to grieve. When
you see injustice, it's all right to feel angry. When the Holy Spirit
moves in great beauty it's all right to weep at His gloriously beautiful
presence. When something funny happens it's all right to laugh - even
when it's in the middle of a “service”!
We're to be a people of truth, and that means being real. If someone
collapses on the floor in a meeting, don't pretend it's not happening.
Stop and look after them. If someone breaks down in tears of anguish,
don't look on in an embarrassed way doing nothing; go and put an arm
round them. Be the human being God has made you to be.
13.4
An Involved God
Although God allowed this world to be like it is
for the sake of love and free will, that doesn't mean He stands aloof
from it. When Israel were slaves in Egypt , God came to Moses and said,
“ I have indeed seen… I have heard…. I am concerned…I have come
down to rescue them ” (Exo 3:7,8) and that was true again and again
in Israel 's history. God didn't stand afar off but came down and intervened
in history. That's what happened two thousand years ago. God came down
and shared in our humanity.
He knows how you feel, He understands, and He's come down
to help you. In this whole area we face a mystery, and it will probably
remain a mystery. Why is it that so often we can see the hand
of God intervening in our affairs, guarding and protecting, keeping
us from harm, and yet on other occasions the harm comes and pain and
anguish follow. The mystery is not that harm comes but that sometimes
God does come and protect us from it.
When we're in this area we must be careful not to use Scripture
abusively. Let me show you what I mean. Throughout this book I have
been using Scripture and I've been quoting verses, yet I hope I haven't
given them a meaning that is not there in the context. But it goes more
than that. We can use odd verses that are fine in context yet they don't
show the whole picture. Let me illustrate this:
Psa
12: 7 O LORD, you
will keep us safe and protect us from such people (those who
speak wrongly)
Now if you snatch this verse out of the Bible you might
unwisely build a doctrine on it that God will keep us from people ever
saying wrong things about us, yet when you read other psalms written
by David you find him being slandered all the time it seems. So what
is he saying? He's saying that although these things DO happen yet they
will not actually harm us if we allow the Lord to keep us.
There are times in the psalms when David speaks out in great
faith that God will keep him and he's sure of that, and the historical
accounts show that in the midst of trials and tribulations that did
come to David, the Lord did preserve him. There are many other times
in the psalms when David cries out in great anguish and is not full
of faith - but he's still loved by God!
Some times and in some situations the Holy Spirit will
take such a verse and apply it into our hearts by way of confirmation
that He will prevent us running into such a crisis. At other times He
speaks to us in the midst of the crisis. The important thing for us
to realise in all of this, is that God has come down. He is there alongside
you, even if He feels a million miles away. In it, His grace is there
for you. You may think you're on your own and there seems to be no resource,
but if you were able to stand above your circumstance (and you may not
be able to do that until you're through it) you might be able to see
the invisible hand of God made visible, there working for you, for that
is the truth of your situation.
13.5
On Display
There
is a verse of Scripture that's sometimes helped me in all of this:
Eph
3:10 His intent was
that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made
known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms
This verse seems to give us a glimmer of an amazing reality,
that heaven looks on and sees what we do and they glorify God because
of us. When they see how we respond to the adversities that come our
way, they marvel that we are what we are because of the wisdom of God
that brought salvation to us through the Cross.
Many Christians put themselves down because they don't see this reality.
Consider this: heaven watches to see what will happen while we act out
the drama of the ages. They see you:
•
Come to Christ and surrender your life
willingly, and they marvel and worship
•
They saw your earliest steps as a new Christian,
they saw your frailty as a new child of God and they marvelled as, in
your new found love, you kept going despite the cynical comments of
friends.
•
They saw you fumbling into the reaching
out for guidance, they saw you respond to the whisper of God, and they
saw increasing glory come, and they marvelled and worshiped.
•
They saw someone berate you verbally and
to the surprise of all, including yourself, they saw you respond with
a gentle reply instead of anger, and they marvelled and worshipped.
•
They saw you afflicted and in pain, and
they wait, expecting grumbling and bitterness, but instead they find
the fruit of patience, endurance and gentle love growing in you, and
they marvel.
•
They see you damaged by the ravages of
personal history, but instead of fleeing in pain and growing ever more
hostile towards God, they see you allowing the Lord to confront you
and bring healing and they marvel yet again.
•
They see the enemy come subtly to lay a
snare of temptation before you, and they see you reject it and remain
pure, and they marvel and worship.
•
They see the enemy rise up in power against
you and they see you dwarfed by his opposition and circumstances, and
they see you bring his fall like lightning as you slay him with a word
of faith, and they marvel and worship.
•
They see the enemy bring members of your
family down, stir friends against you, cut off your support, and to
their amazement they see you praise the Lord and rejoice in your circumstances,
and they marvel and worship.
•
They see you alone on your death bed facing
the greatest unknown. They expect fear and doubt, but instead they find
a serene peace and contentment, and they marvel and worship.
•
They saw your earliest days of rebellion,
selfishness and godlessness, but now they see your entry through the
doors of heaven dressed in splendour in robes of righteousness, and
they worship!
You are on display and all heaven looks on. You may not
understand it all, you may have pain which is very real, you may have
questions, you may wonder why, but as you allow the grace of God to
uphold you and keep you in the midst of the sinful fallen world, all
heaven marvels and worships God - because of you!
What did that verse at the beginning of the chapter promise
us? That in the midst of all the things that happen
to us, God will be working for our good. When we are in pain or anguish,
upset or confusion, doubt or despair, it's very difficult to see the
divine hand, but it is there. Why? Because He's promised it, He loves
you, He's called you, He's got a purpose for you and He's going to bring
it to completion (Phil 1:4).
13.6
And So?
So,
as we come to the end of this chapter, rather than ask questions, how
about some suggestions?
•
Why not take some time out, in peace and
quiet, where you will not be interrupted for half an hour and ask the
Lord to help you bring to the front of your mind all the times when
you've wondered why, the times when it has been hurtful and confusing.
•
Then lay each of them out before Him as
an offering and give them to Him. Thank Him, by faith, that even though
you were not aware of it at the time, He was there working for your
good.
•
Where there is still pain, ask Him who
is the God of all comfort to comfort you. He saw, He heard, He knew
and He's come down. He's there for you.