The human heart does not like to be stepped on, pressed, confronted with itself. This is true even of the redeemed heart. Almost anything is more preferable than admitting wrongdoing, accepting a needed challenge, or turning from a particular sin – even lying, running, accusing others of sin to cover our own, or blaming others, circumstances, sometimes even God. The family of man rebels against few things more fiercely than self-honesty and the dethronement of its cherished outlook on reality. How pitiable is our existence! Life is challenging enough, yet we insist upon setting up these labyrinths to hide and preserve ourselves.
Consider the oft-stated biblical truth that “the Lord tests the righteous.” These tests are diverse, often individual specific, and never outwardly pleasant. They may take the form of economic hardship, domestic burdens, relational disruptions, or bodily afflictions – or all of them together, for life is more intertwined than we know. And while the Lord promises never to test us beyond our ability to bear the trial (1 Cor. 10:13), the implication is not that the Lord distributes them according to his assessment of our strength but by the power with which he upholds us as he empties us of self and leads us to seek his grace and mercy in times of need. Hence, the righteous are usually tested far more severely than unbelievers, for our lives are hidden with “Christ in God.” Through these tests the Lord would show us his strength to preserve us, the sufficiency of his promises, and our chief good in him, not in the stability of our lives in this world.
Sometimes, though, life seems to come crashing down around you. You have small children, each demanding that you meet his needs. Your older children require training and discipline, more, not less, time. Into the mix comes news of added work responsibility. You did not sleep well last night. Your automobile must be taken to the repair shop. An unexpected bill arrives: or an expected but dreaded one. You feel guilty about a missed opportunity to share the gospel with your next door neighbor. Your roof springs a leak. You feel no one truly understands your burdens. Then, during the Sunday sermon, the preacher really steps on your toes about an important responsibility of the Christian life. As you leave the service, already agitated, someone presses you to attend a church function or help with some ministry. You feel your blood pressure rise. You are fragile, ready to crack. You want to go home and hide.
It will not do to dismiss this cycle of tests as so much suburban silliness. After all, our Lord has called us to live where we are, not where others are. We may honestly confess that our tests are incomparable to those of past generations, to the sufferings of the martyrs, or to the deprivations of the world’s poor, but the Lord establishes the boundaries of our habitation and tests us where we are, not where others have been. There is no insulation from his tests, and they will find his children wherever they happen to live, whatever they external circumstances may be. And they should be taken seriously as coming from his hand. They have a purpose and a goal: to sift us and reveal his glory. They have a standard for test success: to live by his word more steadfastly the more we see life crashing around us.
Sadly, we often respond poorly to the joy that could be ours in times of testing. Rather, for example, than humbly seeking his grace to persevere during tough parenting seasons, we complain, indulge in self-pity, grow angry, and start looking around for a scapegoat. Someone – my extended family, my spouse, my congregation – is failing me. So, we grow frustrated, forgetting that “for everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1). The guilt mounts because certain duties seem to be neglected due to others that refuse to be postponed. We grow angry – at life, at others, at the government, at family members, at the preacher, at our brothers and sisters in Christ. We have insurance for automobile crashes; where is the insurance against life crashes?
These pressures also have a direct and often painful bearing upon our lives in the body of Christ. Ours is an age of migration within our Savior’s church. Studies, as well as experience, indicate that one church’s growth in membership is almost always the result of decline in another. Church growth through true conversions is not the norm in most places in our day. I suggest that at one level, we expect too much of the wrong things from our churches. If the church is nothing but a spiritual supermarket, in which you can find whatever you want, then it has failed in its divinely appointed mission. From one perspective, the body of Christ does not exist to make our lives easier, make our problems go away, or satisfy every unique need we may feel we have. Even though many churches desperately try to function in this way, fearing that they will lose members if they do not satisfy every niche, the church that does so loses its way in the world. Not held firmly in the grip of God’s word, which alone defines the function and mission of the church, by trying to please everyone, it winds up compromising displeasing the Head of the church and disappointing its members. When we impute our failings to the local congregation, we are often laying the blame everywhere but where it is truly rests.
In the midst of the life you think is crashing, remember that God tests the righteousness. Do not run from this marvelous work of his. There is nothing “wrong” if you are being tested, severely sifted, challenged, and laboring under the pressures of life. Equally, there is nothing wrong with your spouse, your job, or your circle of friends. None of these were or should have been the source of your joy; none can cure you or free you from God’s hand when he determines testing for you. Instead, behind life’s pressures, you must see God’s fatherly love, leading you away from yourself and to him. Above the crashing floods, the Lord sits as King: transcendent, sovereign, faithful, inviting us to seek him and cast all our cares upon him, and to wait upon him to show us his power and glory in our weakness. Recognizing God’s hand in your tests, whether they are the regular ones that are simply part of our responsibility to serve him in a fallen world or the extraordinary ones that frighten us, will preserve us from looking for others to blame. It will also keep us from hiding behind our various idols – the desire for control, fear, self-image, pride – so that our Father’s tests may strength our faith, expose our true weakness, and lead us to the throne of grace as our only refuge. God tests us, after all, to change us more into his image, to empty us of self so that we be filled with him.
Thus, we must not grow weary in well-doing (Gal. 6:9). You are blessed if you have learned contentment in doing the will of God – without fanfare, the thirst for change to escape your circumstances, the demand for God to do something now. This is a rare gift, and we must seek it from the Lord, for unless he upholds us, we will grow weary in serving him. We will be blown about, as Paul says, by every wind and wave of doctrine, every new promise of easy money and easier circumstances, and every novelty that promises some relief from the regular pressures of life. Establish your heart’s joy in him, in doing even the mundane things to please him, and you will enjoy stability and peace even in the midst of swirling circumstances, for then you will know in your soul that he is your life, even if your circumstances are difficult or unpleasant. Trusting the Lord, looking to his promises, you will find strength in him to persevere in doing those things that please him. Such faith does not seek its consolation in this life, for here we have no continuing city. It waits upon the Lord to fulfill his holy and wise purposes, and delights in obeying him even if no one seems to care or appreciates your efforts.
The Lord knows that such a life is wholly beyond us, and this is the reason he has provides a glorious array of aids for our faith. His word dwelling in you and your heart dwelling in him through prayer are the two most fundamental means of grace, and without these, nothing else you do will prosper. Any other peace will be elusive, fleeting, false. He has also provided the body of Christ, the communion of the saints, for we are preserved and strengthened not as solitary individuals or families but as part of the church of our Savior. We must love his church, be part of his church, serve in his church, and be challenged by his church. When life crashes, there must be no pulling back from the body of Christ but a more solid entrenchment in the worship, work, and fellowship of the church, for Christ our Lord walks among the candlesticks – present in our worship to share with us his fullness, teaching us as our prophet through her preaching, healing our diseases through the prayers of the saints, and bearing our burdens by the compassion of our weak brothers and sisters. Few believers make full use of the life of the body of Christ. It is not surprising then, that we are so weak. We must remember that our Savior is never said to be the head of the toe, or of the arm, or of the back – but of the body. As each member does his part, the whole body experiences increase through the effectual working of the Holy Spirit in each part of the body (Eph. 4:15-16). Thus, struggling times must be church times for us, as hard as this can sometimes be, as great as is our tendency to pull back, to find solutions to our problems within ourselves, to avoid others that might challenge us to turn from our preoccupation with self. No, Christ Jesus has saved us as a body, and he calls us to live within the body.
Finally, remember our Savior, especially the day of the greatest crash anyone has ever experienced, when the earth itself was shaken to its core. How he bore the weight of our shame, of our curse, of our guilt! Suspended naked between heaven and earth, feeling forsaken yet calling out from the deeps to his Father, seeing his bones stare at him yet never forsaking his sheep, he alone truly knows the depths of human misery and suffering. He endured all these things not so that we would pity him, but so that he could take saving pity upon us. He bore our nature and our injuries so that he might assist us in our afflictions as we pursue his eternal kingdom. Call upon him. See his glory – there he is, seated at God’s right hand, knowing all his sheep by name, ruling heaven and earth by his power, filled with infinite compassion joined with infinite power – all for us so that he might be our merciful and faithful high priest. Do you think that he who loved his own to the end will forsake them now that his day of victory and life has arrived? Do you think that your problems are simply too great for him, his grace insufficient, his heart too narrow in its desire to help you? Think again. Think humbly, with great repentance for so belittling his wondrous heart, brimming as it is with love, kindness, tender regard for us, and desire to bless us if we will but seek him. He has reduced you to your present weakness not so that he can swoop in and change your circumstances, make all your bad feelings go away, or allow you to wallow in self-pity, bitterness, and intensified self-absorption, which is our hideous tendency in difficult times. No, he has brought weakness and pressure so that he might show you his power in your weakness, that he has really been holding you up all the time, only your pride kept you from recognizing this. So, “consider Christ.” Consider him fully. Consider him as your bread and water, life and light, door and way, truth and shepherd. Never take your eyes off him, and when you do, coming to your senses, rejoice that he has never for one moment taken his wondrous eyes off you.