And Sent Them on Ahead 1973

There are quite a few among us who once had a burning vision of the kingdom of God, a zeal to do his will, and were met by joy every morning when we got up. But somewhere between that moment when we first saw the glory of God in the face of his son and now a shadow spread across our lives which seems to have drained us of all those good things. And it's the shadow of suffering.

Now for most of us it's not been acute suffering like violent persecution. It's the nagging kind, that dull pain that gets hold of our life and just hangs on and won't let go and drains us, saps us of all our strength. For instance, here's a woman in an unhappy marriage situation and after the first glow of faith has worn away she sinks back into her self-pity and boredom and discontent and she says, if only I had a little bit of satisfaction in my home then maybe I could serve God with joy, but how can I serve God in this prison? Well, here's a man who has a miserable job and at this point seems to see no way of switching into something else.

Every morning when he goes to work he's sick in the stomach and when the day's over he's just so emotionally drained he can't begin to serve God in his home. Or here's somebody who's unemployed, wants to find work and just can't. Or here's a woman who prepared herself to spend her life in a certain work and she's good and yet the door of opportunity always seems to open at the wrong time or in the wrong place.

Or somebody who feels that he has certain gifts and every time he maneuvers himself into the situation where he believes he can exercise those gifts, he's rejected. And again and again his high hopes are met with slam doors until the root of bitterness in his heart becomes a mammoth tree. All of us have some sense of what this life is like.

It's, you know, going on and on through life as if you're trying to sleep in a bed that's too short and every time you stretch you bump your head against the headboard or you're trying to pull a cover over you that's too short and every time you pull it around your shoulders, your ankles freeze. And we point to this unhappy situation and say, if this were gone then I could serve God. Whereas the truth is, if we'd only face it, that this unhappy situation, this thing that we're pointing to and blaming for our fruitless life is itself God sent and is in fact a doorway to reality.

And the doorway keeps following us around, beckoning us to come through, enter me into life. And we instead keep running away, blaming it for all our woes. When we cry, Allah, Father, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

And if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified also with him. For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us. Suffering.

Why does there always have to be suffering? Why does Jesus tell us that in this world we will have tribulation? And why does he add to every promise of blessing, this side of glory, the promise that there will also be a cross? And why does Paul tell us that through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God? And why do the apostles tell us the glory in our trials and to rejoice in the fiery ordeal which comes to test us? See, if we could only begin to see the suffering, that dull path, that weary pain, that affliction that has come to afflict us for what it really is, the doorway to life itself. We've often referred to Oswald Chambers' teaching in his book, So Send I You, and there are some copies of it left in the book room, I believe, in which he talks about these three things. He says, he calls it vision, valley, verity.

And the idea of it is that God takes us up on the mountain first and gives us a brilliant vision of what we are to be. Then he takes us down into the valley and begins to bend us and mold us and beat us into shape. He sticks us in the fire and lets us get hot.

Then when we're still malleable, he pulls us out and hammers on us for a while. Then he puts us back in the flame and softens us up and brings us out and hammers on us some more. And this goes on and on until finally the vision that we saw up on the mountain through all the hammering and banging has become reality, verity.

And we are now formed in the image of Jesus Christ. God did not cause us to be born in this world just so that we could have a few fleeting days of shallow happiness. He's not our uncle in the furniture business who only is here to give us bargains galore.

God is forming each of us, if we are willing, into an eternal son, male or female. And we are going to be clothed in such splendor that were we to get a glimpse of that right now, we die on the spot. He's going to form us into this kind of glory, provided we allow him to scrape and sand and mold and bend and beat and hammer on us until the job is done.

See, and God will go on with this process until we are either formed in the image of his son or until it's clear that we will never allow him to do this. And then he simply permits us to slide off on a tangent of our own, into our own self-chosen, self-made hell. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory which is to be revealed in us.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. And before those sons of God can be revealed, before they can be seen, they have to be formed, they have to be made. And this is never done without pain.

If there's any lesson we all need to learn at this point, it's to take the suffering, dull and undramatic as it is for most of us, and turn it into what God intends it to be for us. Let it be indeed the doorway to life. And instead of running away from it and complaining about it, you know, and moaning and groaning and kicking against it, to turn right around and walk right through it into reality.

Now, if you don't like the situation that you're in, the first logical thing to do, of course, is to pray about it. Tell God you don't like it. Ask him to remove it.

Tell him you can't stand this anymore. But if you get the answer that Paul got, my grace is sufficient for you, then do what Paul did. Submit to it and glory in it.

And every time the thought comes back to your mind, why must I suffer? Consider these facts. First of all, there are certain lessons which we only learn the hard way. In other words, not all suffering that comes to us is a cross.

But a good percentage of the suffering that we go through is simple chastening of body or circumstances which comes to us simply because we refuse to listen to what God has tried to tell us a thousand times. For instance, you abuse your body. You never get enough sleep.

You chain smoke. You're careless in your eating habits. And God, in a thousand ways, tries to tell you about this and you don't listen.

Then one day you're sick. And the first thing that you ask is, why does God let this happen to me? Or your favorite hobby is to play games with other people's lives. And now you've discovered a way to do it in the name of the Lord.

And the Spirit has been counseling you. Stop messing around with that other person's inmost soul. That's the ark.

Don't touch it. You're going to get burned. But you don't listen.

You go merrily on your way, maneuvering people around and manipulating their hearts, until suddenly it happens for the 50th time that these people that you try to push around rebel and reject you. Don't call that persecution. Learn your lesson or it will happen again and again and again.

Or perhaps you've made an idol out of your ministry. You know, your work for the Lord has now become far more important to you than the Lord himself. And the Lord begins to call you to repentance.

And he warns you about this. And he says, look, put your heart in the kingdom. My kingdom, not your kingdom.

And then there are individuals and churches and kingdom halls all over the place that have confused this. You know, we think that our kingdom is God's kingdom. And very often there's no connection at all.

You know, and then we don't learn until finally our little kingdom, religious as it may seem, blows right up in our face. But praise God, not all the suffering that comes our way is simply to teach us a lesson. We'll only learn the hard way.

But there is certain kind of suffering which comes for a much more blessed reason. And Scripture calls it suffering with Christ. If children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you as if something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's suffering. Now the spirit of God starts taking us down the road that our Lord himself walked for our redemption.

He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with freedom. Now we're given the privilege of tasting the pain he went through for us. And as we taste this pain, three absolutely wonderful things begin to happen to us.

First, we begin to share and have a fellowship with Jesus on a level we never knew before. See, now we're walking through this valley and we discover that we're not alone, that we have a companion who not only understands what we're going through, but in fact holds on to our burden. And as we go on with him, another marvelous thing happens.

We begin to discover that not only is he carrying our burden, but in a mystery is permitting us now to carry and share in his burden. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his father, the church.

Now we know Jesus, not only in the power of his resurrection, but in the fellowship of his suffering. And we begin to get like him in his death. The second thing that happens as we taste the power of the cross in our life, our bodies, our circumstances, is that we are then transformed by the power of his death, working in us into agents of life.

The death of Christ works in our mortal flesh, and as it does, the life of Christ flows out of us to others. The thing that causes the aroma of life to spread out from us as we travel through this world. The one thing which enables us to actually reach out and touch people with healing and to bind up the brokenhearted and to set the captives free is the fact that the suffering of Jesus Christ himself is now at work in our mortal flesh.

And there has never been a man or woman of God who has actually conveyed authentic healing to other people in the name of God, who has not had his or her life imprinted with the marks of the suffering and death of Jesus. And the third thing that happens as we taste the pain of our Lord's cross and suffering in our own lives and circumstances is that we are perfected by them. Just as surely as Jesus' suffering atoned for our sin, the fellowship of Jesus' suffering now gets into us and begins to cleanse our actual minds and bodies and spirits and hearts from their bent to sin.

If our Lord was made perfect, as it says in Hebrews, through the things which he suffered, then those whom he is bringing to glory, those sons that he is bringing to glory, are also made perfect through the things which we suffer. And if he learned obedience through suffering as he did, again Hebrews, it's also true you can be sure that as we walk with him through this valley, he's teaching us obedience. And praise God that the valley has an end.

The minute we are completed and formed in the image of the Son of God, the heat is withdrawn and the hammering stops and we find ourselves standing before the throne of a living God surrounded by countless others who have also come this what we thought was lonely valley. And we know for a fact now that not one pain, not one hurt was sent our way needlessly, without reason. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

And even now as we walk through the valley, we are blessed. Even as we now suffer and we share in the sufferings of our Lord, the spirit of his glory anoints us. May God help us.

May God help us even now, you know, to get our minds off everything else and see that we are the glory in the sufferings and the weaknesses and the trials and the tribulations that have been sent our way. In order that the power of his Son may continue to rest upon us. How important this is because all over the place right now there is a gospel going out that avoids all this and they tell you that all you have to do is give your life to Jesus and everything's going to be lovely, you know, and praise your way to happiness and joy and don't ever worry.

You're never going to have to feel pain and that's a lie. God show us the difference and God give us the courage to follow Jesus exactly down that road that leads to Jerusalem and to the cross and beyond that to glory. We pray that even this day, Lord God, the shadow of pain or tribulation or boredom or dullness or whatever it is that has been cast over any of our lives, Father, may be turned into a source of life instead of a source of death and that as we allow, Lord God, this pain to work in us, we may begin as never before, Heavenly Father, to be agents of life and healing and encouragement and joy and strength and help to those who share this planet with us.

Deliver us, O God, from this shallow Christianity which is a curse and has been a curse on this earth for 20 centuries and bring us into true union with your Son and his cross. We ask it in his name. Amen.