How are we to respond as believers to everything that is happening in our country? Is there an alternative response that is deeper than “you have to stay positive” and more nuanced than “just trust God?” Most South Africans find themselves in a state of either despondency or desperation when it comes to the state of our nation. There seems to be this corporate anxiety that every water-cooler convo is feeding and every “kuier” around the campfire is stoking. I have found a few things more challenging in the last 3 years than navigating my fear for the future in the context of my faith as a South African. And when I am braving traffic at stage 6 load shedding where it seems everyone forgot how a 4-way stop works, while my food rots away at home in my fridge, it’s hard to feel or act like a Christian, much less think like one.
Listen, the irony that I am writing this to you in a month where we are up to stage 6 load shedding (we all know it’s actually stage 8 right?) and our crime stats have just been released is not lost on me. It has meant that what I share with you here is what I have had to wrestle through and wrestle down in my own spirit first, as I struggled with wave after wave of fear, frustration and hopelessness, same as you.
As believers, we live in this tension, between what we know about life and what we know about God. Between what we see and what we believe. Between faith and fear. And we are always either feeding one or the other. Given greater credence to one or the other. Allowing the one to shape/ influence/ guide us (and our conversations) most, or the other. It’s no wonder we are always called to take our thoughts captive (2 Cor 10 v 3 – 5), to focus on what is good (Col 3 v 2), to practice gratitude and persistent prayer (1 Thess 5 v 16 – 18), to trust in God’s reasonings and abilities over our own (Prov 3 v 5 – 6). It’s for this very reason. Because God knows how fragile our faith is, our egos, and our minds. Because the alternative is for our peace to be completely dependent on and for our faith to ultimately be derailed by our circumstances. I have never come closer to this reality as in this season of my life.
But what does this look like practically, in our feelings and responses around where we are at as a country?
We are afraid:
Let’s be honest. For many of us, this fear is based on facts…on first hand experiences. Many of us represent the actual faces of the actual people that make up the actual (and frightening) crime statistics of our country. I do not talk about fear metaphysically anymore. For me is a visceral thing as much as a mental thing. So please don’t think I am going to flippantly throw around “faith over fear” slogans and just tell you to try harder not to be afraid. I know what it means to be truly afraid for my life and the lives of those I love. But that means I have been confronted with this argument that, because I have a legitimate reason to be afraid, I should have that fear govern my next move. My every move.
But the Bible calls us to live carefully, not fearfully. The Bible uses words like prudent, circumspect and wise when it comes to making decisions. Not fear. Never fear. The only worthy form of fear that Scripture acknowledges is fear of the Lord – i.e having God in His rightful place in my life based on an accurate acknowledgement of who He is. And that tracks, because when (fear of) the Lord is in the right place in our lives – we are not likely to be slaves to any other forms of fear and we are more likely to live lives of practical wisdom and insight (Prov 9 v10) We are often much more knowledgeable of the things we should be afraid of – swopping “did you hear what happened to so and so” stories – than we are of the character and nature of God. We often put fear first instead of putting God first. But what if I allowed what I knew and understood about God to govern the way I live, instead of all the things I was afraid of? I refuse for my decisions to be governed by any fear other than a fear of the Lord. I refuse to have my emotional well-being dictated to me by Load shedding and my spiritual stature to be stunted by crime stats. And I refuse for decisions based on fear to misalign me with God’s will for my life.
“The way we make our anxious thoughts smaller is by making our awareness of God’s greatness bigger. “
Louie Giglio
We feel uncertain:
There are just so many “what ifs” right now. What if the grid does collapse? What if our businesses go under because of load shedding or corruption? What if commercial opportunities dry up and our children can’t find jobs? In fact, “We need to give our kids better opportunities” is one of the key (fear) factors that it the motivation behind people leaving. Uncertainty fuels fear. We as believers can deal with uncertainty not because we know the future but because we know the God who holds our future. We know what He is like. We know what He has purposed for us, not a life of prosperity and pleasure, but a life of passion and purpose inside His providence and provision, even in the darkest times. And we know these are not empty promises because God put the weight of His love behind them when he sent his Son. If he has already done the hardest thing, can we not then trust Him with the details of our lives (Rom 8 v 32)?
The promises of God are not a myopic and thoughtless response to reality, a band-aid for the melancholy of the masses. They are declarations of ultimate truth, ultimate reality, that we can direct our thoughts towards every time someone sends us a doomsday newsletter or traps us in a fear-ridden conversation. They are what is most true about us, even in our circumstances.
It is there, in those moments, that I remind myself (and others) that my children are safest in the hands of an all-knowing God (Ps 37 v 25), that I can trust that He will show me which steps to take when I stay surrendered to Him (Psalm 143 v 8).
We are negative:
How long have we wallowed in this perpetual state of mind that believes that everything is bad? It’s all we see and all we hear. From potholes to the failing Rand, from Andre De Ruyter’s truth bombs to the ANC winning another election – Lord help us. We wonder about how the land appropriation or labour laws will affect our children, how the ever growing public wage bill and grant burden will pressurize the dwindling number of taxpayers and whether inflation is going to turn us all into vegetarians (no offence to the vegetarians). The state of our country (and the world) means news channels are never short on clickbait. If being the spokesperson for Eskom is currently the worst job in the country, then being a journalist is probably the best. And easiest. They have a consistent stream of fodder for their fear machine.
And no doubt, things are very very bad. And there is no indication that they will improve. But when we buy into this idea that it’s ALL bad ALL the time, we risk missing what God is doing. God doesn’t not only work on a cosmic canvas. He is also always at work in the micro and the minuscule, where He knows our meaning lies. That is what we read about in Hebrews 11 v 1 – 4! The Bible does not propose gratitude in all things as a self-care strategy, but because gratitude cements our faith. It makes our well-being dependent on something more than just our circumstances and our eyes open to something more than just the tangible and terrible. That is what faith is after all (Heb 11 v 1). Don’t allow the “everything is bad” narrative to steal your zeal and drain away your readiness to see God at work. When I have gotten stuck in one of those “everything is bad” conversations I remind myself of what my friend Lisa Whittle said, that things can be good and hard at the same time. In fact, it’s what Jesus himself said that in this world we WILL have trouble, but that we can’t take heart, He has overcome the world (John 16 v 44). There is a danger in the lie that we are actually supposed to have this trouble-free life. Or worse that it is our right. It makes us think the goal of life is to exert energy to get rid of all and any struggle or risk or discomfort and it makes us ineffective for God’s Kingdom. Beware the unbiblical pursuit of a trouble-free life dear friends.
“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer. Because the smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is in the end the one who suffers most.”
Thomas Merton
We feel frustrated:
Probably because we feel powerless. Frustration is a type of energy that pents up in us when we feel there is nothing we can do. Many of us feel stuck in a state of perpetual, anxious disempowerment. But I think we’ve missed a trick.
Jordan Petersen in his study of human nature rightly encourages us to not forsake the good we can do (as does Gal 6 v 10), and yet, every day, we make thousands of choices that place our good (our comfort, our goals, our lives) above the greater good. And that, in the way we foreswear our responsibility to the highest good, we tear something out of the fabric of being that is of inestimable value.
For us as believers, we should feel this more than most. Because we know we are called and sent. Nothing about our lives, not even where we live and raise our kids, is random. Because we are planted in particular places at particular times to accomplish particular things (Eph 2 v 10). Robin Hood said one man fighting for his home is better than 10 hired soldiers. I believe one (wo)man answering the call of God right where (s)he is, is better than 50 overpaid, unproductive civil servants. I believe if instead of moaning and moving we started investing and improving we could do what God has asked all of us to do, which is to expend effort for things to be better because we were here. And I don’t even mean tons of time, effort or money! I just mean a little more than we are expending now waiting for someone to come and complaining that no one is coming! If we spent half the time we did complaining and half the money it takes to move to greener pastures to fill in a pothole, clean up a park or report a traffic light, our communities would start changing. When the righteous thrive our cities rejoice (Prov 11 v10), when we are blessed cities are built up (v 11) and when we pray for our cities to prosper instead of cursing them, we will prosper too (Jer 29 v 7). What if we intentionally supported small businesses and paid our bills on time? What if we encouraged entrepreneurship and creativity in our kids? What if we prayed for civil servants and government officials? What if we took back that park or that street corner? What if we were generous with the people we employed and diligent with the work we’d been given? What if we saw every conversation about the hopelessness of load shedding and the future here as an opportunity to share about where our hope and peace come from?
Only God’s promises can help us look at our realities differently. Only an ever-deepening understanding of His character and nature can help us trust Him more even in all of this. It doesn’t mean we act like these things don’t affect us. But they don’t have to afflict us. Our present circumstances can call us into a greater state of anxiety and distress or into a greater desire and dependence on God. But let’s not kid one another that we don’t ultimately get to choose one way or another. Uncertainty is always an opportunity for greater surrender to the one Who knows the future. And fear is always an opportunity for a deeper faith in the one who loves us perfectly.
And I am praying for you in these things as much as for myself.
Now let me just confess this upfront. I’m a list maker by nature. I love the idea of ordering my thoughts and hopes and dreams into the most beautiful outline, most creative presentation, as though simply the act of putting pen to paper and making it look instapretty can provide the impetus required to push through on every lofty ideal for the new year. And when the 31st of December rolls around I am just about giddy with the”blank page, second chance, do-over” 1 January presents. But here is the problem with New Years Resolutions:
The truth is that we are all actually plagued by this one question: “How best should I live my life?” In recent years this has changed to “How do I live my best life?”… like it’s some kind of external construction that a vision board and a protein shake with kale will bring us. But deep down we know, our life flows from the inside out (Luke 6 v 45), not the other way around. Whatever we might want to change on the outside (exercise more/ spend less/ eat healthier/ be more patient) must first change on the inside (understand why I don’t exercise/ understand why I overspend/ understand why I comfort eat/ understand why I yell in the traffic), and there is only one way to change on the inside. Transformation doesn’t happen with goals or lists or plans. New Years Resolutions bring with them the allure of “This year I will “do” differently, when what we all really need is to “be” different before we can “do” differently. What we really need is an inner work. And so I have struggled and written many times about how best to approach a new year that doesn’t call us to fall into a more/more/more or a do/do/do trap that has no lasting impact.
The only thing I’ve ever seen cause true change in people’s lives is a deep and overwhelming understanding of the Gospel. And the only thing I have seen cause that change to be lasting and enduring is the work of the Holy Spirit through God’s word in the life of a believer. God’s word is penetrating (Heb 4 v 12) and more effective (2 Tim 3 v 16 – 17) than any insta slogan or vision board or hustle culture book with a relatable catchy title on the front and a lot of self-help covered in Christian-ese sauce on the inside.
And so at the start of every year, I ask God to give me a word for the year. I pray for it, and it starts to take shape during my devotional time, as I read and meditate, where a theme or word just keeps popping up or just deeply resonates and drives me in my reading. This word then serves to inspire me to live a life of faith, serves as a daily reminder of His truth and can become a prophetic marker in making decisions and moving ahead.
As you read and pray over the next few days, here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you identify your word for 2021:
What area in your spiritual development has your conscience, the Holy Spirit been directing you to pay attention to?
What do you most need that only God can give that will help you take the next step in your calling?
What familiar themes are you noticing in your reading of God’s Word that seems to come up repeatedly? Remember His word is the first place He speaks. Whatever else we “hear” in the world must first line up with what we see in the Word.
If you could ask God to accomplish one thing in your heart this year, what would it be?
If you came to the end of 2021 and you looked back, what would you be praising God for accomplishing in you?
Hustle culture and its proponents have, by and large, ignored the fact that the call on the life of a believer is primarily about 2 things: Others and God’s Kingdom. Not self. In fact, to follow in Jesus’s footsteps is not merely less of self but the death of self. Not our vision for our life but His. Not our benefit but the benefit of those around us and the advancement of His Kingdom. If we say we believe the Bible we cannot separate ourselves from these truths.
So, whether you choose a word of whether you are a new years resolution or goals type girl, the best way to stay aligned with God in the way we enter into a new season is to choose goals/ words/ verses or markers that will:
Glorify God and Grow us
Give God space to move and guide us
Grounds us in His love more and more so we can be truly, deeply, internally transformed more and more.
What word would you use to describe your faith in this season? In our online prayer meeting at church a few weeks ago (yes, cause that’s a thing now), a live poll indicated that more than 70% of people felt that their faith had grown during lockdown! Yay for them, but if I am honest I know that I have struggled to stay within that 70%. I wanted to. But it felt like a fight. A fight for faith. A fight I refuse to walk away from because I know what a life apart from Christ is like and to me that is just not an option. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard. Most of the time I felt like I was faltering. To be fierce means to show heartfelt and passionate intensity. I want to be a fierce woman of faith, who intently and intensely displays faith.
But what does the fight for fierce faith look like in this season? I don’t know about you but it feels like there are blows coming at me from all sorts of directions! How can we keep choosing the walk of faith when the journey is this hard? Faith is more than a spiritual position. Sometimes, no often, it’s also a response. And a response is always a choice! Job gave us that example, so did many others in the Bible. So how do we keep choosing fierce faith when we feel like we’re faltering?
We choose fierce faith when we stay fully convinced of God’s intention to perform what He promised:
If anyone needed ferocious faith it was Abraham and Sarah! Am I right? I mean talk about unlikely people in the kind of circumstances that made what they hope for flat out impossible nevermind what your God promised! But even as the years ticked by and the promise remained just a highlighted set of verses in his bible, Abraham remained fully convinced (Rom 4 v 21) that God was able to perform what He had promised. How did he remain convinced? In him and Sarah’s waiting, they continued to “judge God faithful” (Rom 11 v 11) They fixed their eyes not on the impossibility of their situation, not even on the set of highlighted verses of promise, but on the intention of God to do what He said ((Is 14 v 24). They assessed His track record and became fully convinced that yes, He is able, and in His time also ready to perform His word (Jer 1 v 12).
We choose fierce faith when we acknowledge God’s ability in the face of impossible circumstances:
If Abraham was taking our Corona Poll at Rosebank Union Church, he would have been firmly in the 70%, because rather than growing weak, his faith in God grew stronger while he waited. We read in Rom 4 v 20 that Abraham did not allow himself to waver through unbelief – he did not falter – which just blows my mind by the way! And through the act of simply holding on, his faith was strengthened. Wow, right?
Faith is not as some people might think, a denial of impossible circumstances. It’s not tattooing “with God all things are possible” on your arm and not watching the news so you are more able to maintain a “positive attitude”. Yes, I’m using inverted commas. And yes, with all the snark you’ve come to expect from yours truly. That is not faith. Faith is not a denial of the problem, it’s believing God’s word in the face of the problem. Biblical faith does not deny the problem or circumstances but holds fast that God remains greater than the problem or the circumstances. Is that the God you know? Because it’s hard to trust someone you don’t know, as I discovered in my fight for hope through the uncertainty Coronavirus.
We choose fierce faith when we choose to believe God has the final word over our circumstances:
Not our words. Not our feelings. God’s final word is yes! Because faith is taking God at His word, not taking our feelings so seriously that we can’t see past them.
You see a guarantee, the one we’ve received, is not a feeling, it’s a contract. What we have been given in the Holy Spirit is not about good vibes (which obviously don’t last long in bad situations), but a guarantee, a pledge. It’s God’s commitment to complete His work in us (Eph 5 v 5, Rom 8 v 23), thereby confirming the Yes that is Jesus, the complete portion, the fulfillment of every promise God ever made! But how does that help me? By His Holy Spirit, we are enabled to live God’s perfection in imperfect situations. God’s perfection is Jesus, who lives in us, making us more and more able to respond perfectly in the difficult and challenging circumstances of our lives, oh and bonus, offering us grace when we don’t!
We choose fierce faith when we choose what we know over what we feel:
Here is the thing that I am realizing. Pastor Dave one of our pastor’s said on Sunday during online church (cause yeah, that’s a thing now too) that our faith in suffering is really our biggest testimony. We are all, right now, becoming what we declare. How scary is that? Right now, all over the world, believers are wrestling, and it’s because our doctrine, what we truly believe about God and what we believe about the world in relation to God is never more apparent than when we are in crisis.
The fact is that our doctrine is our everyday companion, it is coming out of our mouths and our fingertips, rolling around in our thoughts and manifesting itself in our homes all the time, maybe without us even being conscious of it. What we believe about God and the world is evident in how we work, how we entertain ourselves (jip, in the TV series we pick!), how we speak and eat, and yes, in how we suffer and struggle. One of the reasons I wrote The Mommy Diaries is because of this fact, that our fundamental beliefs are not some random mental state we engage from time to time, but it actually shows itself in every action and situation. And that it’s ultimately our children’s beliefs that drive their behaviors, as is the case with us, whether we like it or not. So addressing the beliefs rather than the behaviors if you’re a parent, is critical.
All of my life is the outworking of my beliefs. If so many of us are experiencing a crisis of faith, what we should be doing is working back from that intense worry, anxiety, need for escape, emotional low to the core belief that drives it and measuring that against the doctrine we profess to subscribe to so it can reveal itself as either true, or a lie. So as we go through whatever we’re going through, I hope what we are asking ourselves more is: what do I believe – i.e what is my doctrine? About God…the world…all of this. And hopefully what we are listening to a bit less is: How do I feel? Faith is not a feeling.
Jesus calls us to do the “work of believing” (John 6 v 29). That work is this: consistently lining up your convictions and your action. And for that work to be aligned, correct, built on truth, not a house that will falter and fall when shaken, Jesus should be the plum-line, the ultimate reference point. That’s what a cornerstone is!
Kona Brown
So how can I have this kind of faith? Paul said he could suffer while remaining full of faith because he knew WHOM he had believed and was persuaded beyond any doubt in His ability (2 Tim 1 v 12). The focus of his faith was more than just what he believed, it was in knowing WHOM he had believed. His faith was about more than merely holding on to a set of promises, it was about holding on to the Person behind the promises, so that even if the promises are not fulfilled, then he would remain convinced that even that would be, MUST be, for his good because of the character of Whom he believed, the one who works ALL for our good (Rom 8 v 28), even something that looks like a broken promise or disappointment. Fierce faith rests IN Him (1 Cor 2 v 5), abides in Him (John 15 v 4, 7) and cannot be separated from the loving personhood of God in the Lord Jesus (Rom 8 v 38, 39)
Choosing faith may not eliminate our present pain or difficulty. It probably won’t even stop the many questions we still have. It will not “explain away” our present circumstances. But it will remind us of Who is really in control and produce in us endurance (James 1 v 2 – 5), and yield in us even greater fruit (Heb 12 v 11). I know I want that, even if it’s hard!
This is all I’ve got. I know how hard it is right now. Remember I am praying for you.
I had high hopes for 2020, didn’t you? You know, #20plenty and all that. How bitterly we can laugh at all that arrogant folly now! I had high hopes for my son’s start at High School. I had hopes for a giant leap forward in my career that included meeting with publishers in the US. Even when the Covid19 Pandemic hit, I had hoped that at least my dayjob would survive it. And in the very midst of it my husband had hoped that, after 2 months of having his business’ doors shut during lockdown he would be able to open them again in May. Our hopes thus far have not amounted to much and it seems like hope, just like patience, sanity and money, is hard to hold on to in times of uncertainty. I know many of you are in the exact same place. Hope is hard right now.
How do you deal with uncertainty? Me, I try to distract myself with jellybeans and coffee, and I try to pacify myself by trying to figure things out, running future scenarios in my head so I can feel better, feel like I am “doing” something. Searching desperately in every source of information I can find for some kind of reassurance that things are going to work out, like trying to shore up a river that’s threatening to break its banks. But all of it is actually just a frantic grasp for comfort and control. For something to put my hope in. Because without hope, the torture of uncertainty will eat you alive.
The problem is that my “strategies” present a fickle hope at best. Small hopeful snippets in today’s news cycle are quickly obliterated in the next, proving my hope false. Some days I wake up feeling like I can handle it, but that feeling soon get’s hit with the reality of our situation with the finesse of a wrecking ball.
Hope is not hope if it’s:
Based on my circumstances or feelings
Hinged on my ability to control outcomes (which I continue to be deluded and overconfident about)
Or dependent on the actions and decisions of others
So I had to ask myself, do I even understand what real hope is, and where to find it?
Hope is a word we use loosely. And even now, in this season, we as believers might be making ourselves guilty of peddling half-truths about “hoping in God” when in truth we have no idea what that means and how to actually get there, with our Christianese platitudes about as useful as a jam sandwich to a drowning rabbit. So here’s is another fun truth bomb for ya:
But how? David, who lived through a lot of uncertainty, seemed to always return to an unshakeable hope. In Psalm 27, which he wrote in the midst of war and persecution, he said that what he had been going through would have made him lose hope, had he not believed that he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (v 13). See, his hope was not a “one day pie in the skie when you die” kinda hope. He had confidence in the goodness of God in the “here and now”. He knew this: that when your everyday life feels like a battle, you need this kind of hope in the worst way.
That’s where biblical hope is different and if I’m honest, this does not come naturally to me. I never expect something good to happen. I kinda live in the “worst-case scenario” space. So how did David find this kind of hope? Because that is the kind of hope I want to have! No, that is the hope I NEED right now? How did he get there? Take out Psalm 27 and let’s take a look:
Confidence in the right place:
David’s confidence was not in his own strength, in his ability to plan and strategies his way out of his present difficulty or just white-knuckle it through. David did not seek out hope in the news reports of the day, in the outcomes he could predict or control. He said of the character of God “in this I will be confident” (v3). David’s hope in God was not a hope the way we sometimes express it, when we hope that something would happen but we are not sure if it will. For example: “I hope my sons can learn to get along/ put the toilet seat down/ not use the floor as a closet”.His hope was based on certainty because it was based on the character of God. The One who doesn’t change (Num 23 v 19). The One who loves us with an everlasting love (Jer 31 v 3) There is a certainty that comes with knowing the character of a person. David’s hope in God is not a crossing of the fingers, not a “hope for the best but expect the worst” attitude which is what I so often have. It was more a “Expect great things from God” as in the words of William Carey.
Devotion over despair:
How did he get to this place of firm confidence in God? It’s hard to have confidence in someone we don’t know. And if we relied on second hand faith on social media or the opinions of a friend with the theology degree or our experiences in the world to form for us a picture of God’s true character, we would be on shaky ground indeed. God instructed his kings to have their own copy of His word and to read it all the days of their lives (Deut 17 v18) so that in times of doubt, in times of war, in times of struggle, in times of uncertainty they would not rely on their own wisdom but on His, not rely on their own abilities, but on His. There is only one place where we can find a true revelation of God’s character and that is through His word. So this is what David did:
“When You said “Seek My Face”, my heart said to you, “Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Psalm 27 v 8)
God directed David towards devotion. Away from his feelings, away from theories and opinions, and straight into the Word. For the purpose of revealing His face, His likeness, His character. Where we often go wrong as believers is that our searching of God’s word is about us, to know more about who we are, how He sees us, what He promises us, what He says about us. But if we want unshakeable confidence, a firm hope, what we need to be looking for first and foremost, is what God says about Himself.
This is the pursuit David devoted himself to even in the midst of “enemies and foes” (v2), and I am so convicted by this when I consider the things I’ve been pursuing just to “feel better” in this time. That is why David can so confidently say “I sought the Lord and He delivered me from all my fears” (Ps 34 v 4), because it’s in the seeking and the finding that our confidence in God is established.
Undeviating instead of uncertain
I find lately I deviate, between being ok with the levels of uncertainty, and then being beset with sheer panic. My grip on hope seems to hover somewhere in the margins, like those tiny spots in your peripheral vision that move every time you turn to look at them. It’s because there was actually so many “false things” I used to set my hope on – my presumptuous certainty about the future (work, plans, strategies) being 1st on the list. I was certain of it…relied on it. But David sets for me a different example; his reliance on God was even deeper and more secure than his reliance on a father or mother (v10)! In the face of uncertainty, David renounces reliance on even such certainties and rather finds certainty in what God is teaching him in his trial. And what he learns puts him on a firmer footing – a smooth, stable undeviating path through the uncertainty (v11).
God does not rescue us from uncertainty by just laying out everything that’s going to happen so we don’t have to be scared. God rescues us from uncertainty by teaching us, and that is a daily process and turning to Him for todays bread, todays light, todays grace, todays wisdom. The word in the bible for “teach” is the word YARAH, which means to point, to shoot, to direct the flow or cast something in a straight line. It is God’s word that guides us through uncertainty, with enough of whatever we need just for today. Every. Single. Day.
Through devotion and discipline a hope was fostered inside of David, not the ‘cross your fingers’ kind, but the kind that is based on a high confidence in God, a God whose love declares the best possible outcome for our circumstances, even if we can’t see it right now. And when he found that hope, he also found courage and strength respond to uncertainty so that he could preach to himself when his soul was downcast and unsettled (like mine is, and I’m sure like yours is too!), “HOPE IN GOD!” (Psalm 42 v 5)
God knows it’s scary to be us right now. He doesn’t take our tears, fears or suffering lightly. That is why He lights a path for us to find a solid hope, hope that has certainty in it. Pray for me. I am praying for you.
With handy journaling prompts to help you dig deeper
I’ve read a lot about what people think this global pandemic means. I am sure you have too. We swerve all over the map, wondering if this is a judgment, grappling with God’s sovereignty, forwarding prophesies and Bible verses and any relevant podcast to friends and family. On the other side, we challenge ourselves and our friends to “make this count”, i.e get a six-pack, run a marathon, learn another language, do a masterclass, and the list goes on. I think maybe we’ve all emotionally positioned ourselves in all of these responses at some point? I know I have. And I believe the reason is this: We are meaning-makers, and whether we know it or not, we want to understand, what does this mean? Why is this happening?
I don’t know. Most of the time I am as confused as a monkey with a maths problem. But I do know 2 things:
God is involved. It never just “is what it is”. There is always more going on than just what you can see. We are holistic beings and our experiences and our walk through this world always have physical, emotional and spiritual components. God is uniquely involved in the lives of his children so nothing that happens to us just “is what it is”. We walk by a different light and it is because of that that we are called to walk circumspectly (Eph 5 v 15 – 21), always looking for and trying to understand the will of God, because the times we live in call for it.
We as believers, right now,in the midsts of this, are being tested. How do I know that? Because I can feel myself stretched. I can feel myself grappling for answers and understanding. I can feel myself failing. I can feel pressure. And isn’t that what being tested feels like? Regardless of what else this is, this is test for us as believers. A test that calls us to look a little deeper at every area and part of our life and our world.
Understanding that this is a time of testing is really helping me right now, because it means I can position myself to gain the benefits that tests and trials are supposed to bring about. If that sounds like something that will help you too, keep reading:
A test is only useful and meaningful if we allow it to do what tests are intended to do. Otherwise, it’s just a stressful season we must “white-knuckle” through. So, what is the purpose of a test?
The purpose of a test is to assess our ability to apply what we’ve learned:
Almost as though our time with God, under good teaching, in studying His word, is like being in the classroom. The knowledge is only useful to us if we are able to apply it outside of the classroom. Once we leave church and go into our week, once we get up from that quiet time, once we put our bible, that resource, that devotional down. That is where the test lies because that is where our ability to apply what we have learned is revealed. Until then, it’s all just theory isn’t it? We are all just sitting around postulating. Looking like Christians but not necessarily living like them. That is why James says we will be matured, because biblestudy might grow us, but a test will mature us.
The purpose of a test is to examine our foundations and reveal cracks:
Do you know how concrete is tested? By something called a compressive strength test – which is a mechanical test measuring the maximum amount of compressive load a material can bear before fracturing. It’s basically a pressure test.
When the lockdown came about, and its impact on me and my family’s life, in the immediate and in the future, became more and more apparent, I came apart at the seams. I won’t lie. The pressure of the situation revealed to me how much trust, how much faith I had placed in:
My financial security
My ability to plan and control the present and the future
Suddenly, neither of these things “worked” anymore. They could not be my source of peace anymore because, in short, they no longer existed. Suddenly they could not save or protect me. The situation I found myself in revealed to me how much I held on to these things as pillars, how foundational they were to my well-being, how much I trusted in them for my future and the future of my family. It revealed how little stability they truly provided, how unable they were to withstand the pressure of the current situation. This crisis had exposed my idols, the things I worshipped and trusted in more than God. And they were crumbling under the pressure.
That is why James says at the end of a test we will be more complete/ more whole, not lacking in anything. Almost always, tests show us where we are lacking, where the gaps exist in our trusting, in our believing and therefore in our thinking and feeling.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord And whose hope is the Lord. For He shall be like a tree planted by the waters Which spreads out it’s roots by the river And will not fear when heat comes But it’s leaf will be green And it will not be ancious in the yea rof drought Nor will cease from yielding fruit”
(Jer 17 v 7 – 8)
The purpose of a test is to refine us:
To refine silver, the refiner would use a delicate process of lead and heat to remove impurities to purify silver. It is a process requiring the refiner’s diligent attention, not a process he sets in motion and then walks away from, only coming back once there is a satisfactory end result. There is so much hope for us in understanding this.
If this feels like a trial by fire for you, this is what I want you to know:
God’s refining fire is not to destroy, it’s to purify. But why does purity matter? God’s desire for our purity is not because his love depends on that or because our salvation does, Jesus already proved that is not the case. His desire is to walk with us, and the purity of our hearts brings us ever closer to Him (Matt 5 v 8). We are being purified to be drawn into greater intimacy with Him, definitely something we can consider “pure joy”.
Secondly, our impurities, the things that are hampering us, distortions in our picture of God, incorrect beliefs, sinful patterns of brokenness or behavior, is being burned away, for the sake of our fruitfulness. Our fruitfulness (not our comfort) is always of huge concern to God because of what it (our fruitfulness) declares about Him to the world. We all have areas of rebellion and unbelief, and nothing will reveal to us those attitudes but a test that feels like fire.
God is paying vigilant attention to you right at this moment and is deeply involved and invested in the outcome of this in your life. He is watching for more of His reflection in you. Take heart!
Maybe it feels like a discipline, shedding light on areas in our life that we wish God would just leave alone. Our debt and spending habits. Issues of communication with our spouse. Places where we dropped the ball in the raising of our kids. Our neglect of our time with Him. This pandemic and it’s results are forcing us to face those things and more in a myriad of ways. But know this: The Lord disciplines those He loves (Heb 12 v 6 & Prov 3 v 12), and even things that might look like the worst thing, can be used by God for our good.
We cannot “get pure” on our own. That is the message of the Gospel. Of the entire Bible in fact. We all have areas of rebellion and unbelief in our lives, but the beauty of a test allowed by God, is that we don’t have to stay stuck at the place of knowing what the impurities are that hold us back. We have a place we can go to with them. The purpose of a trial (the heating up of our lives) is to accomplish a purer and stronger character and faith. It is in the “heating up” of our lives that our weaknesses, sin, and character flaws come to the surface, so that they may be transformed. And the place of that transformation is always the cross. Forgiveness for sin and triumph over it is found right there.
If the bible is anything to go by, there is something beautiful on the other side of every test or obstacle. The red sea, the Jordan, the furnace and the cross. God’s word reveals, in the most intense trials of the saints that went before us, that there lies a revelation of true peace, true joy and true security for believers right there in the times and trials where these things seem to be most absent. My prayer is that, as you surrender to this test in your life, you will discover that too. For help, I’ve developed some journaling prompts and scriptures you might like to use during your quiet times and times of reflection with God. Be sure to subscribe to receive them in your inbox.
The purpose of a test is to assess our ability to apply what we’ve learned: 