My story is not over yet but soon enough I will be going to meet with my dear Lord and before I end this book I wanted to have a last word. People may question why I've written so much about my struggles and wonder if or why God would bring His children such hardship. What about the blessings? Could it be that I suffered because I made bad choices and therefore was not in the will of God? As a Father, God wants to shower us with good gifts, right?
I do believe that God wants to bless us and prosper us but in many cases God brings His children intense trials which often last many years. The problem is that we may have been taught a doctrine of prosperity when the bible really has a lot more to say about suffering.
Actually, there is a message of prosperity in the bible but generally that time comes when we leave this earth.
Here on earth is the place where God purifies us and He chooses those of us who are weak and needy to walk our lives out with Him. The gruelling and harsh paths of the Lord are not for the faint-hearted and yet it is precisely those whom He calls. There were times when I considered ending my life because I couldn't take anymore but I understood that were I to go ahead with that, I would be fulfilling the desires of Satan rather than my Lord and I was too afraid of the consequences to go through with it. But certainly, there were innumerable times when the road seemed far too long and hard for one so weak as myself and I felt that I could not continue on. Seldom, if ever, did I experience God comforting me and at times during the most torturous moments, He chose not only not to comfort me, but instead chose to convict me by revealing that like Peter, I had had my eyes on the wind and the waves rather than on our Saviour because I was not abiding in Him. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, that is the time to lift up our drooping hands and praise his name.
I have noticed that being overwhelmed by circumstances is a common problem and I know that I have not been alone in this. If you are discouraged for any reason, then most likely you are not abiding in God and keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus. Jesus told us to give him our burdens and to abide in him. Paul tells us to take every thought captive to obey Christ. Clearly it is not God's will that we walk around discouraged. Are you worshiping God morning and evening, abiding in Him, giving Him your burdens and surrendering yourselves to His will, no matter what the cost? Don't just read this, check your hearts now. If you are abiding in Him then you are now experiencing His peace and you will continue to experience His peace and joy, even in the midst of a tornado. But if right now, you do not have His peace, then either you are not abiding in Him--meaning that you haven't spent time worshiping Him and communing with Him or just haven't pushed through until coming into His presence or maybe you haven't given Him your burdens or perhaps you are fighting God by refusing to accept your circumstances as His will for your life. If we strive against God then we certainly will not experience His peace!
Is your heart overflowing with the joy of the Lord? That is God's intention for us, no matter what our circumstances. God wants to bless us as we go through our trials but this is dependent on how much time we are spending with Him, as well as submitting our wills to Him. As we learn to praise and worship God and give Him our requests and burdens, He will fill us with His love, joy and peace so that He becomes our strength in the midst of our trials. For many years I never spent much time worshiping God so I seldom experienced His presence and peace. But I have been most fortunate that God later extended His great grace and mercy towards me by disciplining me and training me to come and minister to Him and commune with Him and as I have learnt to do that, His joy and His presence have become a natural part of my life, far more real to me than any difficulties.
We are now living in the end times, just before Jesus comes back. The time of the great tribulation is slowly but surely edging closer. We need to learn to abide in God and give Him our burdens. If we cannot stand the pressure at this moment and are now discouraged through our circumstances then we will not able to stand in the midst of the storm that is coming upon this earth. I urge you to learn this lesson now while there is still time. It will be too late to learn it when that time comes and it is no good waiting for a church or congregational service to come into God's presence to worship Him.
But to get back to the question, why does God bring us trials and tribulations? I have learnt that this is the only way that God can purify us. I have come to see that God arranges our lives so that we will come face to face with our ugly, fleshly nature and when I look at some of the characters in the Old Testament, I can see how God planned the paths of all of His chosen ones especially in this way. How else can He mold us and perfect us in the image of Christ except by giving us the challenge of overcoming our carnal self by forcing us to face up to our grand sins and weaknesses. God does not expect depraved, weak and imperfect people to suddenly lead perfect lives when they are born again but He rather seeks those who will humbly lay their lives down before Him so that He can lead them on to perfection. Some people choose to wriggle their way out from under their cross and I suppose I could have too. I could have chosen to run away from my parents home and flee the severe emotional trauma when I was a teenager or in my twenties, or seek divorce due to a horrific and hopeless marriage. Would I not have been justified? Both situations caused me to despair of life. I could also have moved out of a dead-end village to the big city where I'm convinced that I would have thrived, or gone to a doctor as soon as I discovered a lump in my breast. Now I'm not implying that one should not go to the doctor or should do exactly as I did in all of those examples. As it is written, all who are led by God are sons of God and we must walk according to our conscience and God's leading. But my point is that God often seeks to imprison us in difficult circumstances and we ought to seek His will and deliverance from our trials, rather than seek to deliver self from the death of the cross.
It may have seemed far more sensible and relieved me of so much distress had I taken things in my own hands and done things differently. That is the natural thing to do in all circumstances--to seek a more comfortable life and many followers of Christ do in fact choose the easier path. But two things have always stopped me. The first was that by choosing to get off the thorny path, I sensed that I would have been laying down my cross and walking away from God's will. Whether my difficulties were because of mistakes I had made or simply 'just happened' through circumstances, I understood that nothing was an accident and that God wanted me to go through whatever pain I was experiencing together with Him, to learn from it and to grow from it. In the bible, our faith and our hearts are compared to gold and just like gold is purified by intense heat, God wants to purify us from everything that defiles us but we need to submit ourselves to this process. The choice is ultimately ours and God knows exactly how serious we are about following Jesus to the cross.
The other thing that stopped me from walking away from my trials is that I simply didn't have the courage and inner strength to turn around and walk in another direction. In that respect, my weakness was actually to my great advantage as too many times have I witnessed people who have had the strength to change their circumstances and straight out of the will of God they run! And people may think that now that their lives are more comfortable, God is blessing them and prospering them. The laying down of our cross will certainly bring us relief and make life easier and more pleasant but changes for the better don't necessarily mean that we are walking in God's will. If we cry hard enough, God may give us what we want, just like He gave Israel quail in the wilderness (Num. 11), but let's not assume that His blessing means that He is pleased with us because the opposite could be true! Consider also that Jesus told the Pharisees that God allowed them to write a certificate of divorce because of their hardness of heart.(see Matt 19: 8 and Mark 10: 5) This was obviously not God's highest and best will. Clearly if we are not intent on following God or only doing so half heartedly, He will let us have our own way. The question then is, do we want God's highest and perfect will, no matter what the cost, or will we rather settle for second best and not have His full approval?
In all circumstances, I have made it my goal to lay down my life and instead of running away from my cross I have always looked to God to deliver me from my trials. He delivered Israel when they were slaves in Egypt and He delivered me suddenly and miraculously from my traumatic circumstances when I was a teenager. Actually, I have been just as powerless as ancient Israel to deliver myself from every trial so the most natural and logical thing for me to do has always been to turn to God and trust in Him to set me free and in one way or another He has always done so, sometimes suddenly and dramatically and at other times very slowly and gradually. But walking along that path does demand complete trust that He hears our cry for He does not answer in what we would think is the best time and never in a way that we would expect. Now I can look back on a hard life and be totally satisfied without any regrets knowing that God has been with me throughout every trial, worked it out for my good and set me free in His perfect time. Whereas my faith may have once been shaky, it is now strong because I learnt from experience to walk by faith and not by sight and God has proven Himself to me to be more than trustworthy.
I have also come to see that God plans our paths and composes our trials, sometimes purposely putting us in situations where we will make mistakes or even fall into sin. If you consider that God wants to mold us into the perfect image of Christ and if making mistakes or commmitting sins will cause us to repent and purify us, thereby making us more beautiful and perfect then I don't think that that thought is far out, although I imagine that some people may find this thought hard to accept. No-one can walk perfectly in this life without making mistakes or committing sins and I don't believe that God expects that of us, only that we will learn from those lessons and grow up to walk in the full stature of Christ. I am convinced that God set me up so that I would sin in various ways and I see this in the Old Testament saints too, but it is always for the purpose of revealing sin, often through suffering the consequences so that we will surrender ourselves to our Lord and overcome it. It may sound harsh but God wants to perfect us and He cannot do that without exposing our defects. He will not shield us from our sin nature but wants to expose it and then raise us up to overcome it. He ultimately wants the best for us, not just what is good. As the quote goes, good is the enemy of best and God's best can only come about in this way so that we will reap great treasures in heaven, our real home, and glorify His great and glorious name. May His wonderful will be done!
For this reason, I believe that I had to go through exceptionally difficult relationship trials and this cycle actually began as a child when I was teased and attacked by my brother. When he faded out of the picture, it continued on with my mother and later on with my husband, each trial having the same degree of intensity which was as close to violent as possible without getting violent, aside from the first trial with my brother where there was some fighting. But possessing a nature that hates to rock the boat, I have never invited these kinds of relationships into my life. Certainly growing up at home I could not choose those relationships and throughout my life all other relationships and friendships have always been good so I'm convinced that these trials were specifically brought to me by God. I had done no evil to cause these problems. God simply wanted me to learn to overcome my carnal reactions when attacked and learn to love and bless my enemies. I was not mature enough to learn this growing up at home, nor was I walking with the Lord then which is why God brought it my way again in my marriage and seeing that these problems only took place in the home, I was always trapped and unable to run away. God kept me imprisoned to ensure that I learn this lesson and I'm exceptionally grateful that with God's help I have come out of the warzone victorious. All is forgiven and all relationships are intact and blessed till today. As followers of Christ, we can all expect that God will bring us these trials in one way or another because by fully surrendering our lives to Christ we will suffer persecution and He will continue to bring us the trials that He has chosen for us until we learn our lessons. That is why some people experience the same problems over and over again. As long as they don't learn their lessons, God will continue to bring them those same trials because He wants to raise us up to be overcomers.
Is it possible that God set up Adam and Eve to fall? Why did God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden? Why did He rather not put it in a corner with a fence around it? What about Abraham? In chapter two in the commentary, I gave the example of how God dealt with him regarding a son. God knew that he would fall into sin and didn't shield him from falling but chose to allow the sin to come to the surface and in that way deal with it. God told him that his own child would be heir but he had to wait many years, approximately fifteen years, to get a son. Why did he have to wait so long? Was God not testing his faith or setting him up, knowing that he would fall? It is no wonder that he went in to Hagar. Whether you agree or not, let us not judge our brothers and sisters when they fall or are not walking in perfection but let us rather pray for them to learn what God wants to teach them--to overcome their sins and weaknesses!
The problem is that many believers think of God as being like Father Christmas who wants to bless us right now with all kinds of good things. After all, He is our loving Father and we are His precious children. But my understanding is that God wants to first crush us and kill us so that there will be nothing left of self and the only beautiful thing about us that remains is Himself. God wants us to abandon ourselves fully to Him and die to self. That can only happen if we allow Him to crush us by leading us through heavy trials and tribulations. It pleased God to crush Jesus and we are called to follow in his footsteps.
(NAS)
I prefer this translation of the above verse from the New American Standard bible which is a perfectly good translation. Many bible versions use the word bruise but I think that the word crush gives a better picture of how Jesus suffered. Other meanings of the Hebrew word crush (daka) are crumble or beat to pieces. Jesus was in agony, almost sweating drops of blood at the thought of what awaited him. He was brutally murdered and in his worst hour rejected by his father who had to turn his face away from him as His son took our foul sin upon himself and became a curse in our place.Yet, as it states in Isa. 53: 10, it pleased God to crush him and often enough it pleases God to crush us too, albeit for different reasons--to raise us up to be overcomers, perfectly molded into the beautiful image of Yeshua. God hates to see us suffer but He looks beyond our suffering and sees the glorious beauty and perfection that will come forth from our afflictions and He will not let us suffer one moment more than is absolutely necessary. Yet God may choose to have us follow Jesus to the cross by literally, physically dying. I found it interesting what Jim Elliot wrote from the book Shadow of the Almighty by Elizabeth Elliot:
'We are the sheep of his pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.'(Psalm 100) And what are the sheep doing going into the gate? What is their purpose inside those courts? To bleat melodies and enjoy the company of the flock? No. Those sheep were destined for the altar. Their pasture feeding had been for one purpose, to test them and fatten them for bloody sacrifice.
God longs to reward us with great riches. If we use our suffering to overcome sin and self then we are sowing great treasures to be reaped in our heavenly home. But the question is, are we willing to follow Yeshua and be that lamb who was silent when led to the slaughter or are we going to choose to lay down our cross and run where the grass looks green? Do we want our little rewards here on earth or are we willing to wait and hang in there, walking in the Spirit of Christ when the going gets tough so that we will gather in abundance glorious treasures in heaven? It really is our choice. God will not force us to take up our cross but He does need our co-operation if He is to put us to death. Personally, I have chosen to endure the hardships, knowing that God has a grand future awaiting me. I have always understood that it would spoil His wonderful plan for my future if I got what I wanted in the present so I've never dared to try to wriggle out from under my cross, though of course I was at times tempted but I chose instead to follow my Lord till He put me to death. I was willing to lose my life in order that I may find it, and sometimes, as in my case, it is literally losing a life. Does that sound logical?
God's ways are not logical to the mind of the flesh. If we make a list of all of the things that Jesus said to people, there is no logic in it at all, at least not to the carnal man. In fact, it seems to me that at times Jesus was even offensive in his comments to people, especially the seekers. How many evangelists would suggest that we use his comments as an example on how to evangelize effectively? Most likely, none at all! Jesus was not always friendly, loving and kind! He chose instead to challenge people in their weak spots and if we are serious about following him then he will challenge us too. And if he doesn't, we need to ask him for the wonderful gift of conviction of sins that will lead to repentence. We need to recognise that God is a God of tough love and His ways with us are often severe and hard. He wants to challenge us because He is seeking a bride of overcomers to rule and reign with Christ. That is God's ultimate blessing for Christ and for us!
So I urge you not to seek to wriggle out from under your cross but instead seek the Lord with all of your heart so that He will raise you up to overcome the great and heavy challenge of being bound to pleasing self. He wants to teach us to love the unlovable and pray for those who curse us and the list goes on and on. All the things that He wants to teach us are contrary to our human nature and the only way we can learn these lessons is by suffering through them. Let us seek His will, submit to Him and please Him by not giving in to self!! I recall the words of Derek Prince from his wonderful book The Grace of Yielding:
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My understanding is that God blesses us before and after we have been broken and we can see this in the story of Job. He was righteous and rich to start out with, then came the tremendous trials and after that God blessed him with twice as much as he had before. The words of Peter are also an encouragement that our heavy trials do come to an end:
Why is it that some people go through such difficulties and others not? There may be more than one reason. Firstly, God times our difficulties so that they won't destroy us and He most likely will not bring heavy trials on a new believer but waits until we have grown up to a degree of maturity. But another issue is how far we are willing to go in following the Lord. The Lord will not take us where we don't want to go. If we are not totally dedicated to Him and prefer to be pampered, He may just do that and give us what is not best, like giving Israel quail in the wilderness. As I previously wrote, God will not, indeed He cannot force us to deny self and take up our cross. He needs our co-operation if He is to put us to death. It is we who determine whether or not we receive God's best which often means a sacrifice of earthly rewards for heavenly rewards. The decision is ultimately ours. Has anyone ever prayed that God would break them? Kees and I have prayed that prayer at times over the years and we have meant it with all of our hearts. I have also asked the Lord that when He breaks me that He won't listen to my crying and protesting because I want Him to continue to do what is best for me and I mean it. That is why God has crushed us and why He is bringing forth good fruit from our lives. It is a fearful thing to pray that prayer and we have prayed it with fear and trembling, but what is better than telling God that you want to go all the way with Him, even it means a horrible hell on earth. But if we really are assured of God's love for us then we can entrust ourselves into His loving hands knowing that He will bring us painful things that are for our good, but not more than what is absolutely necessary. Of that we can be assured!
Although I suffer, I have come to see life as a precious gift and I have chosen to make the most of my time here on earth by learning the lessons that God wants to teach me. After walking through intense hardhships I have now come to a place where I see the greatness of God and the smallness of my problems. I live in a sick body and suffer varying degrees of constant pain but I've given my life to Almighty God and in the midst of the storm I have absolute peace and joy. How can that be? Because He is so much bigger than all of my problems and I know that He could deliver me in an instant if He so chooses. He who is in me is greater than any of the troubles that I experience in this world and although I believe that God wants to take me to Himself, I know that it is His will to first raise me up to be an overcomer, totally conformed and perfected into the image of Christ. If my suffering accomplishes His goal of perfecting me, and I believe that it will, then I am all for it and I trust that God will enable me to endure till the end. I know that as long as I am alive, I need to be purified and I continue to ask God to purify me, even though it hurts, so that when He takes me to Himself, I may be fully perfected in the image of Christ. May His wonderful will be done!
Our life on earth is the place where God forms our character and where we have the opportunity to reap rewards for our future. We don't deserve this and personally I feel humbled and honoured that this is God's goal for me. We must always remember that this earth is not our real home and never will be. Let us not grumble and complain when things don't go our way. Let us instead appreciate our gift of life, taking every opportunity to humble ourselves before God and understand that He is bringing us hardship in order to purify us and mold us into the beautiful image of Yeshua. May we make it our aim to please Him by appreciating His good will for us, even if it hurts and especially when it hurts! Let us trust in Him that He is working all things together for our good and give thanks to Him in all circumstances. Only in this world are we called to carry our cross and share in the sufferings of Christ. Let us make the most of it and use our sufferings well.
I look forward to my future, knowing that all that I have gone through here and even the painful death that awaits me is an investment in my heavenly home. I hope that you will come to see this truth too and value your life by humbly submitting yourself to God's heavy hand, knowing that He will raise you up in His good time. May God forbid that we get to heaven and regret that we did not use our sorrows as well as we should have.
Here we have a battle between the flesh and spirit, and hardships and challenges will come our way but we must learn to overcome our flesh by not pleasing self or getting carried away by self pity and other negative emotions. Let us learn to live for our future with our eyes firmly fixed on our heavenly home. Let us remember Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who had to walk a torturous and lonely path but who fixed his eyes upon a heavenly vision of the future and set his face as a flint while enduring the agony.
Let us patiently endure, knowing that God will release us from our trials when His good work in us is completed. As it is written, we inherit our promises through faith and patience.
Remember the Israelites who were coming into the Promised Land. Twelve were sent in to spy out the land and they all gave a good report about the land except for one problem-the giants! Ten believed that because of the giants it was impossible to go in and conquer. Only two had the faith and desire to enter in, knowing and believing that God would lead them to conquer the giants. Let us have the same faith as those two!
Here on earth we are running a race. Let us seek to conquer the giants so that we can enter into our heavenly home, and enter in as overcomers. Paul Billheimer wrote in his book Destined for the Throne:
Let us pray that God will not remove the obstacles from our lives! Pray instead that He will enable us to get over the hurdles! If we look through the book of Revelations we can see that there are many wonderful promises for those who overcome and no doubt God wants us to receive those promises so let us set our faces as a flint, running the race with our Lord leading us onwards, keeping our faces turned towards Jesus and looking ahead to our future and we can be sure that He will lead us on to victory. What a glorious future awaits us and what an honour to walk the same path as our Lord and to glorify Him!! In this my heart rejoices and because of His wonderful ways I can shout and sing His praises.
May this book be an encouragement to those who are asking questions and to those who are going through hardship.
Abundant blessings and love to all who have come this far in reading this book. I look forward to meeting you one day!
Miri