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Dear Family and Friends:
Have you ever faced crushingly disappointing circumstances? You understood Romans 8:28… God’s love and ultimate power over everything that happens for your ultimate good. Yet did it seem that the outworking of that plan lacked consideration for your present peace, comfort and wholeness?
It may be that you can sympathize with Nancy, a Ghanian girl now living in London, who joined me in our weekly Biblical counseling online forum last Thursday feeling hurt and distant towards God. I know I could sympathize with her as she blurted: “Today is my last hope. Even if I try to pray, I just cry.”
Nancy is a new Christian. Last October, she reached the lowest point in her life, when, in her words, “I realised I lived a selfish and sinful life and many problems were crushing down on me… I went to Jesus and poured out my heart and mind to Him…”
As she prayed to receive Christ, she gained hope and a future… but her present troubles didn't just vanish: “Mike, I want to change everything about me. I've done a lot of wrong… but people keep reminding me of what I was, and I'm paying for it.”
In this life, since we don't experience God in terms of literal gestures of physical comfort or even a visual image of His caring face, it’s easy to misinterpret our circumstances. We can get the wrong impression that He coldly seeks our ultimate good at the expense of our current emotional well-being.
We know His best is in store for us… like Martha told Jesus, disappointedly, “I know he (Lazarus, her dead brother), will rise again in the resurrection, at the last day…” but the missing part of the sentence, the thought that trailed off into respectful silence, cried out that she had hoped for God’s intervention in the here-and-now. Have you been there?
Martha and Mary both moaned their grief and disappointment to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Both of their statements were true. The implication that the Lord was indifferent about their present circumstances, however, was not true. It wasn't true for Mary and Martha. It’s not true for Nancy, and it’s not true for you and I.
“But why doesn't he show you that he cares, and why do you just continue to pray,” Nancy asked.
The Bible assures us He does care, and He does show us. He not only died for us… He lived for us. And He lives for us today. With great vulnerability, He put Himself in the middle of Mary and Martha’s anguish and shared it:
“Jesus wept.”
The shortest verse in the Bible is reverent in its lack of adornment.
- His grief wasn’t perfunctory, for their benefit only, as if it didn't touch Him deeply since He knew what He was about to do, we learn from the words of the other mourners, who remarked, "behold, how He loved him!" He didn't need to enter into our suffering on His own account, but He took it on Himself, along with the seed of Abraham, becoming a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
He hungered, He thirsted, He was weary, He had no place to lay His head. He was despised and rejected, accused, slandered, scourged, smitten, spit upon and pierced. This He endured for the sake of the joy that lay before Him… that He might bring many sons unto glory and be the firstborn among many brethren. He can sympathize with our weaknesses, having been tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin. He now forever lives to make intercession for us.
In this role, He identifies with members of the Church, His Body, so completely that He called persecuting them persecuting Him. He suffered at Saul’s hands. (Acts 9, 22, 26) At the final judgment, He will reward those who have performed kind acts to the very least of His brethren as if they had been done unto Him… which, by implication, demonstrates that He is in prison with persecuted believers even today. He is with the martyred and tortured, He endures exposure and deprivation and hostility and trauma with us in His complete identification with us. Whatever you may be going through, His "I am with you always" and "I will never leave you or forsake you," include unimaginable empathy for His troubled children.
Our daily challenge is to communicate that accurately with grace and patience to thousands precious souls like Nancy. Did you know that 2007 saw 1,316,700 indicated decisions for Christ in our ministry—163,382 of them from web-connected cell phones! What a harvest! Yet in the busy harvest fields, we dare not neglect the tender plants! Please pray for Nancy and for us, that we may accurately represent Christ’s compassion as His ambassadors of reconciliation! - P.S. Please see our latest photos!
