Growing in Christ
suffering
A Life Towards Pastoral Ministry, Part 2
32 months ago
This is Part 2 in a series of three posts I’m doing consisting of a paper I was recently assigned to write on the prompt: “Write a letter giving counsel to young men on how to prepare for pastoral ministry and steward their sense of call.” I used Psalm 23 as a motif of how to think through a life aimed at pursuing a call to pastoral ministry. You can read Part 1 here, and Part 3 here. The full paper will be available for download as a PDF on Friday.
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Now let’s look at verse 4:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
The Christian life is at its core a brutal thing. There is a mean streak in authentic Christianity[1] that looks sin square in the face, and wishes death upon it. But the source of that death is not the knife, or execution block, but the cross of Christ. It is the death of Christ that puts the sting of evil to death. I have found this reality to occur in two ways in my life:
First, In the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Though David is likely speaking about physical and spiritual peril in general, there is a legitimate application of this metaphor to the experience of sin in the soul, certainly a manifestation of death’s shadow. I have increasingly grown to know my own heart’s corruptions, and the inky shadow of sin therein most intensely around the question of calling. I used to think that fear of man was something that other people struggled with. How foolish! The more I think about the nature of pastoral ministry and think through the question of pastoral calling, increasingly I see how my heart uses it as a pretext to comparisons, presumptions, judgmental indictments, panderings for approval and acceptance. This is where my heart goes: I do not long for the Lord to bring about his perfect timing and plan for pastoral ministry, I must take charge, and when I take charge that which rules my heart rules my understanding. I long for the approval and respect due to a pastor. So I use words and deeds to manipulate people into giving me what my idols demand. In effect, I’ve stopped treating them like the Lord is their shepherd. Rather, my sinful heart proclaims: Jacob is their shepherd, and they shall serve me in perpetual want to see me satisfied! Thereby, in my sin I treat them not like people, but idolatry pawns. Oh the fiery sanctifying work of seeing this dark reality in my soul.
You will face this too. Your sin patterns may not be the same as mine, but you will see those deep-seated, dark areas that the Lord Jesus died to cleanse. So here remember this great reality: Fear not, for the power of sin is defeated in Christ, and even though he leads you to see the shadow of death in your heart, do not fear it, for the love of Christ conquers it by the power of the Spirit[2]. Slay those sinful roots by repenting at the foot of the cross of your Savior. Behold him and adore him. A mere repentance by staring sin in the face won’t do anything. Behold the face of your Savior dying for your sin, and meditate upon his glories. Think on his love for you to take you place under the wrath of the father. Think upon his generous, gregarious grace that welcomes you with constant mercy and love. In meditating upon him, the Spirit gives grace for more strength and obedience[3].
Second, In the sweet and bitter providence of suffering. It is not for nothing that Christians have throughout the ages attested to the lessons they learn in suffering that no book can fully teach. If you live long enough, you will suffer. And the Lord will still be good. It is in these moments that you will need the grace of Christ to turn to God and pray, Your rod and your staff comfort me – For you are with me. However, consider that not only is your life as a Christian a call to suffering, but so too is the call to pastoral ministry[4]. You are called to suffer[5], like our Savior, the pain of sin and death so that the life, grace, and love of Christ might be manifested in the lives of his people. Are you willing to be the man who marches into the valley of the shadow of death, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to minister to Christ’s people? Sin and suffering are messy. Ask yourself if you’re willing to be used by God in the mess. If you are, to prepare for the messiness of ministry, learn to listen and be with those in suffering. Do not be quick to tell people what to do with their suffering[6]. In your youth, listen. Pay attention to where God is working in their souls through those times, have eyes looking for Christ’s footprints, and seek to speak to them the comforts of a suffering king who walks with them through pain and sorrow[7]. As you see the grace of God in your life learn to lean on Jesus Christ. Lean heavily on the God of all comforts[8] so that you will know how to comfort others. If you learn these lessons, you will learn how to pastorally apply Paul’s simple command: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep[9].
[1] Ed Welch, Additions: A Banquet in the Grave: “There is a mean streak to authentic self-control… Self-control is not for the timid. When we want to grow in it, not only do we nurture an exuberance for Jesus Christ, we also demand of ourselves a hatred for sin.. The only possible attitude toward out-of-control desire is a declaration of all-out war… There is something about war that sharpens the senses… You hear a twig snap or the rustling of leaves and you are in attack mode. Someone coughs and you are ready to pull the trigger. Even after days of little of no sleep, war keeps us vigilant.” (p. 225) – quoted in How to Kill Sin, Part 2 by John Piper, preached February 17, 2002.
[2] If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)
[3] And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
[4] But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:7-12 ESV)
[5] Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 2:3)
[6] Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; (James 1:19)
[7] He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. (Isaiah 53:3)
[8] Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
Suffering with Jesus
06 months ago
It was over two years ago now. I’d gotten a concerned call from Michelle and headed home from work. When I got there, there was even more reason to be upset and confused. The next day we found out we’d miscarried our first pregnancy, but for that evening, we were lost in confusion, pain, and a hint of what was happening.
In those moments, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew we needed to hear from God. In these situations, people typically run to the Psalms. They’re full of perspective and the reality of life in a suffering, fallen world. But I think in my mind that night, I wanted something that was long (because I honestly didn’t want the silence to crush us), and something that put us in God’s story.
After dinner, I turned to John, and we read chapters 13-17, Jesus final discourse with his disciples. Maybe this seems odd as a passage to read for comfort in suffering and pain. At the time it made perfect sense, and it still does.
The section opens with these profound lines about the mind of Jesus going into the crucifixion. John tells us that, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, [and] having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” He goes on: “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper.” Jesus knew the pain and confusion of the world – he knew one of his closest friends was going to betray him to death in a matter of hours (under his own permission in fact), but he didn’t flinch, and he didn’t muscle through. Jesus knew that his Father was sovereign and in control of everything, even his own death, and he continued to love. He loved his father, and he loved his own. He loved them to the end.
In this vein, there are three sections that particularly spoke comfort in those dark hours: The Vine, The Victory, and The Prayer.
The Vine
In John 15, Jesus speaks of his union with his believers in such intimate terms that they are his branches, feeding off of his nourishment. In terms of suffering, like a plant, when one part suffers, the others feel it. We typically understand this in terms of other people sympathizing and feeling with us, which is right. But we need to take this back to Christ. When we suffer, Christ does. Being united to Christ means that all that we weather in him is weathered in his love. The paths of love are constantly, ever flowing from Christ to his people in all situations. John Flavel remarks: “Christ and the saints smile and sigh together.”
The Victory
Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 17:33). There’s nothing quite like the death of a long anticipated pregnancy to make you feel that the world is full of trial and tribulation. Here, Christ calls us back to seeing his own sufficiency for our need. The sorrow does not win, because Christ who took on the full weight of sorrow and suffering, did not stay dead. This doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real, or lasting, or a wound that won’t go away, but it does mean that there’s hope and peace and comfort in Jesus. Along these lines Paul later comments “[we do] not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thes. 4:13). We grieve, but with hope. I wrote about this after we miscarried here.
The Prayer
The High Priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17 is maybe one of the holiest sections of Scripture. If you want to know the Savior’s heart for you in this world, and in your trials, follow his prayer here. What this prayer did (and does) for me was give perspective. Jesus knows my trial, Jesus loves me and walks with me in my trial, and Jesus wants me to have the best thing at the end of my trial: seeing him face to face in his full, radiant glory. Suffering and sorrow will be swallowed up one day, and this Jesus who “loved me to the end” will see me, and I him, and will heal this heart wounded by the tribulations of this world. One day. One day soon. In the meantime, he has prayed for me to know him and his love, and the best medicine for sorrow and pain is to learn the hope and love that he is for me.
Afflictions eclipsed by glory
11 year ago
As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I want to draw your attention to a song and it’s story that has been very helpful to my soul lately. John Mark McMillan’s recent album The Medicine has deeply ministered to me, but especially with this song. It draws me to humbly embrace God’s love for because my “afflictions [are] eclipsed by [His] glory.” God is glorious to behold, and even in the darkness of pain and sorrow, he leads us in his love.
Hope you enjoy it. Any comments I’d have on it would be better time spent in you just watching the videos.
I’ve really enjoyed this album, and highly recommend it. You can pick it up at iTunes here. And Relevant Magazine has an interesting interview with him here.
Given, but not given to us to raise
41 year ago
As unbeknownst to some, and yet newly informed to others, we are expecting. There’s one in the oven, as you might say. (Or as I tell my wife, there’s an alien growing in her dome. She laughs, seriously.) Happiness abides in the Young home, and expectant joy with every karate match I witness of our son in the womb. It’s tough having a ninja for a father, but he’ll grow into it.
And yet, as some may know, this is not our first child. We had the joy of conceiving a child last fall after waiting on the Lord’s “opening of the womb”. And shortly after, we had the sorrow of the Lord taking our little one away.
The sorrow was deep and abiding those first several months. There were moments where I would choke up at work with no one else around, for no other reason than an arrow of hopes dashed sailing from my memories and hitting the mark. There were other times when I’d try to relay current events and feelings in our home, and thankfulness to God for his faithfulness, and unintentionally crack in the middle of it.
It’s ok. Men cry; a lot.
So, it’s taken me a bit by surprise as the waves of sorrow and grief have been reoccurring in our new season of pre-birth-anticipatory-felicity. It seems out of order, even selfish and self-absorbed (if I were honest), to continue to have grief over a lost child in the midst of the happiness of a new child.
I brought this up to a friend. They’d had a similar experience.
“What categories do you put this into? How did you guys process this?”
“We wanted to validate the gift of our fist child, a real gift from, while also celebrating the blessing of our second child. We worked through the category of seeing that God had given us our first (whom they gave a name to). He wasn’t an accident, nor a joke from God. He was given, but not given to us to raise. However, God did give us our second, whom he did decide that we would raise.”
That was helpful. Very helpful.
Here, I think the weighty truths of “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21), and “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28) come together and kiss. On the one hand you have the sovereign reality of God’s giving and taking, and on the other hand, you have the motivation holding us before God: our good in him. We bless the Lord when we see his purposes and the events of our lives (joyful and sorrowful) not as antagonistic flicks from the divine hand, but as his loving, Fatherly hand “working all things for [our] good”. God treats his children with love – even in the painful things of life.
The Lord gave us a child, and took that child away. Yet in no way did he diminish the value of that child’s life or our delight in receiving that child. And yet, in the mystery of his love, in the mystery of how “all things work together for [our] good”, he decided to not give that child to us to raise.
My friend’s counsel has been helpful because it gives me grounding to think about the miscarriage of our first without making the experience into a wallow in the dust. Sorrow is dark. The loss of that child was a wound that will not heal until I die and see Jesus. Then he’ll cure the wound entirely. The darkness of the wound will be healed by the light of his presence.
The difficulty of the miscarriage is: Am I diminishing the gift of our first child in the joy over our second child? Seeing the lost child as given but not for us to raise strikes a helpful path for me. It’s not well-intentioned, but unhelpful counsel (i.e. “But you’re baby’s with Jesus now.”), and it’s not angering advice either (i.e. “It’s not like you actually lost a child…”).
The pain of miscarriage is different all together, and yet under the gracious hand of our Father. Ge gives, and takes away as he chooses, not because he’s trying to make a point, not because he’s vindictive, not because he’s indifferent, but because he is the Almighty Wise One, who sees what he is doing as The Shepherd who love his sheep, and gives them exactly what they need.
I do not expect to understand why these things have happened. The Bible never promises full clarity on God’s providence. But I do know that He is Good. He is Love. He is my Shepherd. He gives and takes and gives and gives and takes and gives and gives.
But most importantly, he gives Himself.
The Christian life a strange one. A life simultaneously mourning the effects of sin in meaningful, deep ways while also celebrating gifts without fear and real joy (Romans 12:15 and 1 Corinthians 7:30). It feels much like an open-handed life. A life of gratitude in all things (1 Thes. 5:16). A life grateful for knowing God as our Shepherd, who leads us through the green fields and dark valley’s (Psalm 23).
So with an open hand I received the child the Lord gave us last fall, and with an open hand I watched him take him away. The sorrow is real, and experienced open-handedly by clinging to a God, grateful for his kindness not to leave me. God did no wrong to me in taking our child. He was ultimately never mine to begin with. And yet, with an open hand I now receive this new little boy he’s given us with thankfulness and joy.
The only thing guaranteed in life is the presence of God. With an open hand He gives and takes away – the open hand of Christ in mercy and love for us. So, with an open hand we receive, and reach up to cling to him, not the gifts.
He gives and takes away, blessed is the name of the Lord.
Miscarriage of Suffering
02 years ago
Part 1
When I hoped for good,
I tasted evil;
When I reached for wine,
It had soured;
When I looked to Heaven,
It turned to steel;
When I longed for death,
I remained an hour.
When I turned from you,
He looked at me;
When I hated Him,
He prayed with blood;
When I cursed His face,
He washed my feet;
When I turned Him in,
“Thy will be done.”
Part 2
With cries of anguish he birthed me new,
The Spirit’s bloody baby who
Knew the curse as no curse at all,
Reversal of Great Adam’s Fall.
Using now these painful arts,
To write His name upon my heart,
Devil’s schemes He new contorts,
Temple in me, His tender work.
Light Christianity
03 years ago
But, verily, I see Christianity is conceived to be more easy and lighter than it is; so that I sometimes think I never knew anything but the letters of that name; for our nature contenteth itself with little in godliness. Our “Lord Lord” seemeth to us ten “Lord-Lords.” Little holiness in our balance is much, because it is our own holiness; and we love to lay small burdens upon our soft natures, and to make a fair court-way to heaven. And I know it were necessary to take more pains than we do, and not to make heaven a city more easily taken than God hath made it. I persuade myself that many runners shall come short, and get a disappointment. Oh! how easy is it to deceive ourselves, and to sleep, and wish that heaven may fall down in our laps! Yet for all my Lord’s glooms, I find Him sweet, gracious, loving, kind; and I want both pen and words to set forth the fairness, beauty, and sweetness of Christ’s love, and the honour of this cross of Christ, which is glorious to me, though the world thinketh shame thereof. I verily think that the cross of Christ would blush and think shame of these thin-skinned worldings, who are so married to their credit that they are ashamed of the sufferings of Christ. O the honour to be scourged and stoned with Christ, and to go through a furious faced death to life eternal! But men would have [security] against Christ’s cross.
Samuel Rutherford, Letters (Carlisle, Banner of Truth Trust), p. 145. (Italics mine.)
Benifiting From A Cross
03 years ago
As I mentioned before, I’ve been reading the Letters of Samuel Rutherford. What an amazingly wise man, who knew God, and profoundly understood the Savior. Below is a quote from a letter he wrote to a woman friend of his who had just lost yet another child. You can read the full letter here, #35. I pray you benefit from this as much as I have:
I verily believe when, I write this, your Lord hath taught your Ladyship to lay your hand on your mouth. But I shall be far from desiring your Ladyship, or any others, to cast by a cross, like an old useless bill that is only for the fire; but rather would wish each cross were looked in the face seven times, and were read over and over again. It is the messenger of the Lord, and speaks something; and the man of understanding will hear the rod, and Him that hath appointed it. Try what is the taste of the Lord’s cup, and drink with God’s blessing, that ye may grow thereby. I trust in God, whatever speech it utter to your soul, this is one word in it, – “Behold blessed is the man whom God correcteth” (Job 5:17); and that it saith to you, “Ye are from home while here; ye are not of this world, as your Redeemer, Christ, was not of this world.” There is something keeping for you, which is worth the having. All that is here is condemned to die, to pass away like a snowball before a summer sun; and since death took first possession of something of yours, it hath been and daily is creeping nearer and nearer to yourself, howbeit with no noise of feet. Your Husbandman and Lord hath lopped off some branches already; the tree itself is to be transplanted to the high garden. In a good time be it. Our Lord ripen your Ladyship. All these crosses (and indeed, when I remember them, they are heavy and many,-peace, peace be the end of them I) are to make you white and ripe for the Lord’s harvest-hook. I have seen the Lord weaning you from the breasts of this world. It was never His mind it should be your patrimony; and God be thanked for that. Ye look the liker one of the heirs. Let the movables go; why not? They are not yours. Fasten your grips upon the heritage j and our Lord Jesus make the charters sure, and give your Ladyship to grow as a palm-tree on God’s mount Zion; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast. This is all I can do, to recommend your case to your Lord, who hath you written upon the palms of His hand. ~ Letters of Samuel Rutherford, p. 98-99
