The Joy of Glory

Discovering endless joy in the boundless glory of God…

Tag: suffering

March 6, 2015

Lent Devotional: Psalm 94

Psalm 94 (click here)
O LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult? They pour out their arrogant words; all the evildoers boast. They crush your people, O LORD, and afflict your heritage. They kill the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless; and they say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.”

Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?

But the LORD has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge. He will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness; the LORD our God will wipe them out. (Psalm 94:3-9 and 22-23)

Reflection
Do we have a faith that can sustain us through the “How long”?

The simplistic, Western view of God will not sustain a faith the gets slammed with the question “how long?” When our world is rocked and we suffer… when tragedy strikes… when there are global catastrophes… when we begin to lose our lives for faith in Christ like so many of our brothers and sisters around this world are already experiencing… when all this happens, will our vision of God sustain us?

Most in Western Christianity view the Lord as simply serving the purpose of their-own happiness. God exists to help life go the way I want and increase my private luxuries and pleasures. When these expectations are shattered…so is our view of God.

I’ve watched this happen over and over again. Idols always crumble under the erosive pressure of reality. Faith will always crumble when it is placed in a crumbling idol.

We need a view of our God who is the rock that will not crumble! Our God who is the everlasting… he is the only one that can make us last through the pain, suffering, and hurt of this world!

When the Psalmist is confronted with the violent atrocities of his world in Psalm 94, he recalls to mind a vision of God foreign to so many of us. He remembers that God is the sovereign creator over all. He formed all ears and all eyes…and is himself all hearing and all seeing.

In the face of extreme suffering, the Psalmist claims that God is not missing a single sound or sight of it! This is the very thing that makes God his stronghold, his rock, his refuge! For God’s sovereignty acts as a guarantee that none of this iniquity wins! God wins!

We are actually promised by God that we will experience persecution, suffering, hurt, pain… and we are told he is sovereign over it all, and he is good, and he can be trusted! Irony of or ironies…it is THROUGH these very things that God is working our greatest good and his greatest glory!

God really is working for the purpose of our greatest happiness, but that greatest happiness is found in him and in him alone! He is increasing our pleasure in him! He gives us more and more of himself through our suffering! There is so much of him and who he is that we cannot come to know in any other way than through suffering!

And when we suffer… we not only come to know him more, but we make him known to the world! We show the world that we are willing to suffer the loss of all things IN ORDER that we might gain more of Christ because there is nothing more valuable than Christ!

God works for our good and for his glory! He does this through all things! Even the darkest things! None of them win! He uses those very things to accomplish his purposes! This is why the Psalmist speaks to people he considers the “dullest” of all! They cannot see that the very things they believe are defeating the purposes of God are actually being used by God to accomplish his purposes! Ha!

This is seen nowhere more clearly than the cross! If ever there was a place that looked like evil triumphed it was the cross… yet, at the cross God took the most evil act, the murder of his own son, and sovereignly scripted it as the most glorious act!

In trying to defeat God’s purposes, evil was made to serve God’s purposes. No matter how long we have to wait to see it… we will one day know that this has been the case with every single evil thing we have ever experienced. None of it has won. God has made us more than conquerors over all of it by making it all serve the purposes of his glory and our good.

That is a vision of God that doesn’t crumble, but becomes a rock of refuge as we wait, as we cry, as we hope and ask “how long…”

*The complete SVCC Lenten reading guide is available here.

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April 17, 2014

Lent Devotional: Job 40

Job 40 (click here)
Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his? (Job 40:8-9 ESV)

Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly. He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron. He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword! (Job 40:15-19)

Reflection
Job has been so frustrated with his “friends” as they have judged him by only looking at his external circumstances… unable to see the purity of his heart. Yet, has Job not done the same thing with God? He (and we) judges God based on what he can see, not recognizing that there may be much hidden from his view. Ultimately, Job thinks he could do a better Job running the world than God.

So… God asks Job many questions designed to show Job just how powerless he is to “run the world.” He directs his attention to the creature Behemoth… an extremely powerful animal that Job dare not attempt to attack. Yet, God says that he made this creature just as surely as he made Job and, as creator, he has all power over it… he can “bring near his sword.”

The point is fairly simple… the most powerful creatures Job has seen are nothing before the all-powerful God. Perhaps Job cannot see exactly how God is working his power amidst his suffering, but that doesn’t mean he is not!

God works his power for his people, even amidst suffering. There is nothing in this world, not even Behemoth, more powerful than God! So, we can rest in the truth that he is in control and trustworthy. Just like Job’s friends could not see the purity of his heart, we often cannot see the goodness of God due to external circumstances, but that doesn’t mean his goodness is gone… just hidden from view.

*The complete SVCC Lenten reading guide is available here.

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March 29, 2014

Lent Devotional: Job 15

Job 15 (click here)
Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: 2 “Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? 3 Should he argue in unprofitable talk, or in words with which he can do no good? (Job 15:1-3)

Reflection
Eliphaz begins round two of this debate over Job’s condition by throwing caution to the wind and outright questioning Job’s character. It’s almost as if he has not even been listening to Job. As soon as Job claimed to be innocent of any wrongdoing, Eliphaz’s ears closed and his mind kicked into gear formulating a response. This type of “listening” is not rooted in a desire to offer comfort, but in a cockiness that desires to prove its own correctness!

Job’s words are “windy knowledge” and “unprofitable talk” to Eliphaz! And this assessment is not based on actually thinking Job’s words through, but on the simple fact that they are at odd’s with Eliphaz’s own words.

How often do we “listen” to people this way. We come into their situation knowing all the answers to what they should do, how they should react, or the way in which they should go forward…and as a result, we do not listen to anything they have to say unless they are agreeing with what we have already decided is right. Such an approach cannot ultimately bring comfort.

Job needs friends that will listen to him, sit with him, cry with him, and wrestle through difficult questions with him. Many things they have to say are true, but misapplied. Many things they have to say are true, but inappropriate to speak to the bereaved man as he sits in ashes scraping his boils. Job is not in need of solutions right now (which is what they are offering)… he is in need of a safe place to speak and be heard.

*The complete SVCC Lenten reading guide is available here.

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