Let the Waves Crash and Do Their Damage

I was driving this morning listening to Christian radio and was struck by how many songs are written with the tenor of, "You used to be happy, now you're broken and struggling with faith, but God will restore you to what you once were."  How true is it that we need encouragement regularly?  Life is hard, we are sinners in both choice and nature, and we constantly need truth to build us up and strengthen us.  That is why we have the Scriptures given to us -- our encouragement (Romans 15:4), so that through the Scriptures God will restore and strengthen us when we've suffered (1 Peter 5:10).

But my fear is that the broader Christian culture is perpetuating two dangerous ideas which should both be confronted:
First, that you, Christian, are a victim.  You're not.  While it is true that Satan has led the world astray and blinded many to Jesus' truth, you are given grace and lavished with love from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-10, 2 Timothy 1:9).  You are not a victim, but are beloved.  The multitudes are hardened in heart to the Creator whose truth they suppress every day, while you have faith.  Not all have this faith.  And you have faith because God has revealed Himself and His Son to "little children" and not to the proud (Luke 10:21-22).  Not that you don't magnet to pride!  But you're a child of the most high God, and He has loved you into adoption so that you couldn't even imagine life without Christ.  You're not a victim.
Jesus was a victim at the cross.  He was truly innocent, but He was murdered as though He was a criminal.  And through the wicked actions of evil men, God gave salvation to the lost world.  This message of redemption goes out to the world, and you're among the few (yet an unknown multitude) that He has raised up to new life in His Son (2 Cor. 5:16-21).  You're not a victim.

Second, that brokenness is an unwelcome intruder, and that you should be allowed to "go back" to when things were "better" or "simpler".  Brokenness is so common to God's people in the Scripture that it would take me a thousand blog posts to unpack the examples.  But it stains the pages of Scripture so that the observant reader who wants to understand the inexhaustible ways of the Lord can only cry out with the Psalmist, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your Word ... It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes" (Psalm 119:67, 71).  The one who feeds on God's Word knows that affliction is a faithful friend from the Lord, whom He sends to drive His people toward Him so that He will drive His Word into their hearts further.  "I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life" (Psalm 119:93).

"But what about my pain and my struggle?  I remember days when things were easier and simpler -- since I've come to know the Lord, it's like a cross to bear every day.  Doesn't God want me to be happy?"  Yes, but happiness is deceptive and deadly if it isn't found in terms of the Lordship of the risen Christ.  The world is full of people who have convinced themselves that they're happy, but they're killing themselves.  Some people, like OneRepublic, realize it -- "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive" -- but the multitudes largely don't.  They'll see it one day.  John Piper once likened deceptive happiness to fondling an expensive brooch that hangs around your neck, and then the lights turn on, and you look down and realize it's a cockroach.  One day the lights will turn on and the cockroach under your chin will be seen for what it is.
The call of the Gospel is that God does want your happiness, but He has to have your heart too.  And it takes a cross on which to die for those two to meet.  That is why it feels like you're bearing a cross daily.  And Jesus said you would (Luke 9:23), adding that one must despise their life in order to gain life (John 12:25).  "Despise" here is not passive but active -- you don't always feel despise for your life, but you actively despise by setting in on the altar, to be given life by He who alone has it.   And when it is time for the trial to lift and the suffering to end, it will, and you'll be restored, strengthened, more mature, and a little wiser in the Lord.  Further, you'll be able to better carry out what is the ethical command of the Scripture, to love your neighbor, in being able to comfort those who inevitably go through the same struggle, having yourself been brought through it faithfully by the Lord.

"Do not say, 'Why were the former days better than these?'  For it is not from wisdom that you ask this" (Ecclesiastes 7:10).  Notice Solomon doesn't say you aren't allowed to feel this or even think this -- it is often a thought that just rises up outside of your control.  But you apparently mustn't say it, because, I think, saying it is entertaining it.  Jesus didn't call you into a discipleship where you stay the same as you were when you started.  He called you to suffer the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.  The church will look like the New Testament church when the disciples in the church treasure Christ as the disciples of the New Testament did.  And this treasuring will happen when Christ is the only life the disciples have.  Whatever it takes for the Lord to bring us there, I hope you'll echo my prayer: Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, and your will be done.