“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming...” My dear warrior,
There are times in our lives when it feels like no one is rooting for us to win, and everyone is looking for us to fail. It seems like no one is for you and everyone is against you. Sometimes you wonder if anyone out there has thought about cheering you on, or if anyone is on your side. You feel alone, completely abandoned, like there is not one sympathetic soul out there rooting for you. I have learned that oftentimes, while those who are against us are the loudest, there are silent spectators watching us, waiting for us to step into our identity. These are the ones who are for us, who are quietly rooting for us, praying for us, and cheering for us. They are sitting by, waiting to see what we will do, staying out of our way because they want to see us succeed. They are watching from the sidelines because they know the decisions we have to make must be our own. They know the victory has to be ours.
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“God does what is impossible only when the possibilities of man are exhausted. The brilliant thing is, we can stand in our impossible situations and smile because we know now that I’ve reached the end of what is possible for me, I can step into the place of what is possible for Him.” My dear warrior,
In the previous posts, I talked about how we create our own ‘theology of suffering’ in order to be able to make sense of our circumstances. There is no way I could possibly write about every single situation that could possibly exist, but I do think there is a limited amount of scenarios, and that every person’s story is just a permutation of one of these ‘basic story structures’ (for lack of a better term). Today I want to share a different scenario with you: that of tests and territory. Often times, God puts us into certain territory because He wants us to conquer that territory. He wants us to take it for ourselves, to take the blessings that He has already put into it. It is ours …for the taking. It is ours, but it is up to us to conquer that territory. “What you need in life will be brought to you, but what you desire, you’ll have to go get. Much of what you cry for will not be brought to you.” My dear warrior,
Welcome to Part 2. Yesterday, I left you with a question to think about. I ask you again: Is God so cruel that He would dangle your hearts desire in front of your face and taunt you with it, only to deprive you of it? Ask that out loud. Just like I wrote in There is Always a Solution, I want you to laugh at how ridiculous that thought is. Go ahead: laugh! Why would God dangle the answer to your prayers—your heart’s desire—right in front of your face? When the Bible says that God is good, it means that He is good. He is not some cruel, sadistic God with a penchant for schadenfreude—that is, deriving pleasure from your pain and suffering, or gaining joy from taunting you with what you desire. It is not in His nature to taunt us. It is not like Him to take the very things from us that we’ve desired all along for the sake of seeing us suffer. “What you need in life will be brought to you, but what you desire, you’ll have to go get. Much of what you cry for will not be brought to you.” My dear warrior,
Sometimes we get ourselves into such a mess that there seems to be no way out, no way to right the wrongs, no answer to our cries for help. No matter what we do, we cannot make it better. And sometimes we’re not sure if we messed it up, if it was already broken, or whose fault it was anymore—or if it’s anyone’s fault. In the midst of the chaos, sometimes we create our own theology of suffering to try to make sense of all that is going on. We develop our own strange ideas that result in a distorted view of God, spirituality and of our own lives in order to try to cope with difficult circumstances, rather than consulting the God who knows all. Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. My dear warrior,
As I wrote yesterday, any area of your life for which you have no hope is under the influence of a lie. There is always hope. Not only is there always hope, there is always a solution! Recently I was listening to Steve Backlund talking about just that. He said if the brain doesn’t think there is a solution, it won’t look for one. But once the brain actually believes there is a solution, it begins to function like a heavenly search engine, searching until it finds a solution.  Your name is Life, Your name is Hope inside me, Hope inside me. My dear warrior,
Just like the lyrics above say, His name is Hope, His name is Life inside of us! He is our hope. Beloved, if there is any place in your life for which you have no hope, it is under the influence of a lie. I will say that again. Any circumstance or situation for which you have no hope is under the influence of a lie. So if you have found yourself having thoughts that are hopeless, thoughts that leave you without hope, or thinking about things for which you have no hope, have another thought! Have a better thought. “Any area of our lives for which we have no hope is under the influence of a lie.”  My dear warrior,
The Christmas season is a time of hope because we take time to remember Christ our Savior’s birth. But with all the stress that comes with the holidays (the shopping, cooking, cleaning, travelling, etc.), we often find ourselves in the middle of very difficult circumstances, things don’t seem to go as planned, and we can have bad days that sometimes just feel hopeless. Just this past week I found myself crying out to God and telling Him that I would much prefer to feel the weight of His glory than the weight of sadness. There are times when we may have particularly bad days, or struggles that just don’t seem to end. In those times of heartache or of losing hope or of fear and anxiety we may find ourselves wanting to throw in the towel, wanting to give up, and telling God that we don’t want to do this anymore. If you are feeling anguished this holiday season, let me encourage you, my dear wounded warrior.  “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.” – Romans 5:3-5 My dear warriors,
On Sunday I had the joy of getting to listen to a brilliant man of God speak about suffering. It is something that has been on my heart for some time now, and I knew I would write about it today. As warriors, as Christians – and as humans – we are frequently faced with the reality of suffering. In these past few months, I have been dealt more than one heavy blow in my own life; I have met a woman who was thrown from a building and had nearly every bone in her body broken; I have met a man grieving the loss of his father; I have met a young woman without a place to call home. Tragically, suffering is part of the Christian life. According to scripture, it is a critical part of our formation, it is a critical piece of us becoming the men and women of God we are meant to be. |
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Mere Humanity: Becoming a Mature Christian in an Immature World 
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