The purpose of trials is to produce genuine faith – not just testing. It is refining – to remove everything that looks like faith but isn’t.
I was on the board of Christianity Today for eleven years and have read the board notes from the earliest years. It has always been an unrelenting process of solving problems and overcoming obstacles. Circulation challenges, finances, personnel, board issues. It is a history of constant trials – not relief from them. There is a purpose to trials. God accomplishes through trials what cannot be done through success or easy times.
As you know, I like Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning.” Not because it is sound Christian theology but because it gets to an essential truth that is avoided today. We do not live for our own happiness and satisfaction. That is not what got him through the Nazi death camps. “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”
“Life ultimately means taking responsibility and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
For many people, God has no expectations for their lives. He only has rules with no tasks. They have no message, no word, no assignments to accomplish.
Jesus set high expectations for Peter’s life. Remember what he said? You are the rock. You are to feed my sheep.
Peter did not live according to his own expectations. He did not discover a purpose but was given an assignment.
“A living hope…kept in heaven.” We would prefer a hope we can see or a hope that is immediate. That is not what Scripture means by hope. We have “heaven on earth” in many ways and have lost the ability or interest of hoping in the unseen.
The great temptation of Israel was to make God visible… so they created idols. An idol is what happens when we make visible what is meant to be unseen. We are the same. We do not like the unseen or the far away or the unfulfilled. We want to know what we hope for will happen in our lifetime. We lose the whole meaning of hope when we reduce everything to what is seen and visible to us. The good life ironically becomes the hopeless life because it has nothing invisible or nothing beyond our lifetime. It has no investment in the distant future.
We “want” but we do not “long”. We almost live in dread of losing what we have instead of taking hold of that which we cannot see. We are not as much greedy as we are impatient. We are focused on what God is doing now and in our lives – not in the ultimate purposes of God.
That is what Paul meant in Philippians 3:13 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
This is difficult because we want to see the blessings of God. We want to see His making our life fulfilled or fixing our problem. We want to see the current value of believing. He has a longer horizon. His hope is invisible to us but that is the only living hope that is real.
Too many young people – and not just young – have no sense of God having expectations for their lives. “Just As I Am” has become almost an excuse for staying where we are instead of accepting the responsibility of a task to accomplish. They have been shielded from trials and therefore protected from genuine accomplishment. Without trials, without testing, without hardship there will be very little true faith. We call it “failure to launch” but Peter would have called it a life without obstacles.
It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you. The meaning and purpose of their life is in your life. Their life is connected to your life and yours to lives in the future. Your life cannot make sense by itself.
We pour our life into another and pass on the message God has given us. Jesus said in John 17:20, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.” Their message – not simply quoting Jesus. The message becomes such a part of your life that people come to believe in Jesus.
Spiritual maturity is what allows us to understand the fact we are not serving ourselves but a future generation.
Hebrews 11:13-16 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
11:39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
At what point do we turn loose of finding fulfillment and begin to look toward a distant future that does not benefit us? This is the test and the benefit of aging, I think. Can you live now in obedience but for the benefit of a distant future and not your own? Can you live without receiving the things promised? Can you live with longing for something beyond your lifetime?
We want a legacy or the sense that our lives made a difference…and we want to know that in our lifetime. Remember the picture of Naomi holding Obed at the conclusion of the book of Ruth?
“Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him.” No thought of anything beyond caring for the child. The future she had left up to God. And what was her future that she could not see? David…and eventually Christ. That is a living hope. That is living with not receiving the things promised but trusting God. That is understanding what the author of Hebrews described as God planning something better – something that makes it possible for us to serve the unseen future.
I’ve thought about it as four choices:
One – immediate gratification – and that is the power of politics. Promise me something that is immediate. You will never win an election with distant promises.
Two – delayed gratification – and that is the power of capitalism and the Protestant ethic. The promised benefit will come in time.
Three – self-denial – and that is the power of religion. Take away the expectation and replace it with reduced expectations.
Four – A living hope – We are serving a future generation from a distance.
In so many ways, the living hope is the next generation. We all, like the prophets, search intently to understand life on our own and for ourselves and for our own time but it’s not for us alone – it is for those who come after us.
The book of 1 Peter was written to encourage believers during a time of suffering. It was not meant to focus them on “pie in the sky by and by” but to give meaning to their suffering. What they were experiencing was serving a future generation. It is the same for us today. I listened to some of the speeches at the last Republican convention before the 2012 election and there was one that made me think about this. The speaker was outlining all the failures of the current administration and at every point there was cheering and chanting. And then he said, “Our seniors are not selfish. They are not wanting to keep benefits that will bankrupt a future generation.” There was almost silence – only a handful of applause. They did not want to jeopardize their benefits for the next generation.
Let’s be careful we do not lose sight of our living hope and whether or not we see the promise now we are faithful and obedient to the call of God to serve those who follow.
Oswald Chambers wrote:
Jesus did not say, “He who believes in Me will realize all the blessings of the fullness of God,” but, in essence, “He who believes in Me will have everything he receives escape out of him.” Our Lord’s teaching was always anti-self-realization. His purpose is not the development of a person— His purpose is to make a person exactly like Himself, and the Son of God is characterized by self-expenditure. If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain but what He pours through us that really counts. God’s purpose is not simply to make us beautiful, plump grapes, but to make us grapes so that He may squeeze the sweetness out of us. Our spiritual life cannot be measured by success as the world measures it, but only by what God pours through us— and we cannot measure that at all.
“He who believes in Me . . . out of his heart will flow rivers of living water”— and hundreds of other lives will be continually refreshed. Now is the time for us to break “the flask” of our lives, to stop seeking our own satisfaction, and to pour out our lives before Him. Our Lord is asking who of us will do it for Him?
Think about your task and your message this week from this perspective – and not from how to find satisfaction for yourself alone. What does life, what does God, expect of you?