Encouragement

Jesus promised us so much joy and victory following him that it can be disorienting to encounter enduring times of pain and suffering. I’ve known many followers of Jesus who wrestle more with the perplexity of how God could have “allowed” them to suffer than the suffering itself would have demanded. It at least adds another layer of pain to whatever we face.

In our quest to live comfortable, happy lives, we forget that plenty of Scriptures also talk about suffering and how God inhabits them to further his work in us and his purpose in the world. Why else would we need a refuge, a deliverer, and a Redeemer? When the Psalmist said that God delivers us from all of our afflictions, doesn’t that mean we had to be in them first? And that deliverance almost always has more in mind than just removing it.

Any follower of Jesus needs a worldview that includes pain and trouble as much as joy and laughter. It doesn’t mean God causes our suffering or even allows it in any volitional sense. They are the result of living in a world out of sync with its Creator. You will no doubt encounter both along your journey, and learning how to rejoice in good times and how to lean into him through difficult ones will be critical to God’s unfolding love in your heart.

As part of ours this summer, Sara and I read Waymaker by Ann Voskamp. We found a lot in this book that touched us and expanded our view of God. This brief section was one of those, talking about the complexity of love and pain in a fallen Creation.

Love lives at peace with pain, and the two will never divorce. Because to love is to be tender enough to know suffering, to be vulnerable enough to know hurt, and the only way to divorce your way from pain is to divorce yourself from any love.”

The destiny we all ultimately dream of is a destination where we are ultimately seen, safe, soothed, and secure! Even nightmares of loss and tragedy and grief can still become an unexpected awakening to tender dreams, if there are ways—even in the dark places—to be seen and known, safe and secure . . . Wherever we are always accepted and never alone, never abandoned, our deepest dreams can come true even in the midst of nightmares.

I had high hopes of waking to a dream different from both of our mothers. No graves. No slammed doors or cold wars, no lightning-bolt diagnosis or stalking depression, no abandonment or estrangement, no cascading job loss or piling bills or empty arms. No trauma from the straight-out-of-nowhere tragedy, the unlikely addictions, the turned distractions, the knife-in-the-back betrayal, the flat-out rejection, or the entirely suffocating personal failure you can’t escape because you can’t escape out of your own skin. Why do we think that our life will be the one that finds a way to easier roads? Why in the world did I? It’s when we expect life to be easy that it becomes hard.

Buy the lie that your life is supposed to be heaven on earth, and suffering can be a torturous hell. But life is suffering, and suffering is but the cross we bear, part of earth’s topography to cross on our way to heaven. I wouldn’t know it for years: Screens sell pipe dreams. Every screen is trying to sell the lie to you-from Hollywood to Netflix to Instagram–the lie that all you have to do is buy this, work out like this, wear this, style it like this, believe this, pursue this, get a career like this, find someone like this, and you, too, can find the way to a perfect life, just like this. But buy any perfectly filtered and marketing-framed illusion, and you end up painfully disillusioned. Regardless of what Instagram or all the glossy ads are shilling, your suffering isn’t some unique anomaly; suffering is the universal experience of all humanity. Suffering doesn’t mean you’re cursed, suffering means you’re human. The question isn’t “Why is there suffering in my life?” but “Why wouldn’t there be suffering?”

Because such is life in a broken world. The question is, “What way will you bear your suffering?” I didn’t know it then, and I am still learning this now: Life is really hard because that is the reality of being alive.

When you can face suffering, knowing it does not prove God loves you any less or is punishing you for some reason, then you are ready to grow through your darker seasons and love others more fully in theirs.

_______________

Other Items that might be of interest:

• Sara joins me on the podcast this Friday since Kyle was out of town. We’ve got news about where we’re going to live next and, more importantly, how Sara’s journey has continued to unfold.
• Sara and I are now making plans to host a trip to Israel in late January and early February 2024. It will be a ten-day trip in Israel, with an option to add on 3 days in Jordan and a visit to Petra. We hope to have the details out in a week or two. If you’re interested in going, please email me, and I’ll send out more information to you as we get things nailed down.
• The next session of the Jake Colsen Book Club will be held Saturday, February 18, at 11:00 am PST. You’ll have to work that out in your own time zone. We will explore Chapter 9: A Box by Any Other Name as we talk about humanity’s relentless attempts to put the living, breathing bride of Jesus into a box we think we can manage for him. We will stream it live on my Facebook Author Page, but if you want to be part of the conversation, you can get a link to the Zoom Room by emailing Wayne and asking for it.
• The next Wrestling with Trauma conversation will be Sunday, February 26, at 10:00 am. PST. Email Wayne if you’d like to join a small group to provide a place for people to explore their trauma or to find ways to help others they love deal with trauma

Sara and I are currently in Arlington, TX, for a couple of days, and then we’ll begin writing the final chapter of our RV trip around the U.S. And what a trip it has been. The team is still together; the joy continues to grow. If you haven’t listened to Wayne’s Happiest Day Ever, you might want to give it a listen. It sums up better than I ever could here what is transpiring on this journey.

We appreciate all those who have been praying for us, following our journey here, spending time with us at various spots, and most of all, for your encouragement and prayers. We have had some magnificent conversations on this journey, including one I recorded with a friend in Oklahoma about A Caring Heart and a Listening Ear, which you’ll be able to listen to this Friday at The God Journey.

The confirmation of Father’s work continues to come from so many places. One lady sent this to me after an evening in her home with a group that gathered for conversation:

In listening to Sara tell her story over a relatively short amount of time, I noticed from the first podcast to the later ones how much you could tell her story started to make sense just by how she was talking. It was as if the pieces coming together caused her sentences to go from slightly disjointed fragments of thoughts to beautifully cohesive sentences.  It was like a timeline of healing represented in gramma.  “Sara the Brave” is my new forever perception of her. Keep healing, Sara!

Mine too! For her to tell her story so openly and honestly has opened a massive door for others to trust us with their stories and unresolved pain. The Creation has so much brokenness—people wounded by abuse or delusions. This is why Jesus came, not to give people a get-out-of-hell card, but to save them from broken-heartedness, to free them from oppression, and to dispel the lies that drove them into the darkness.

This experience has been a Godsend for us this season and reshaped our hearts for whatever is next. We begin the last leg of our trip this Friday as we depart the Dallas/Fort Worth areas for our apartment in Southern California. We still have some stops on the way home, but our trajectory has changed once again due to the unseasonably cold weather. We’ll be cutting across the bottom of the U.S. with a stop to visit Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and catch up with some dear friends along the way. Our final stop will be near Phoenix, AZ, November 21-22.

As we make our way home, we will complete this chapter and be ready to begin another. What will that look like? We have no idea at this point. We set out on August 22 from our former home in Newbury Park, CA, without a plan or itinerary. We thought we’d be home by October 18, but as it turns out, we won’t get there until November 24.

This entire experience with Sara has deepened our walk with God and each other. I’m hopeful that will continue as this story continues to unfold. We have both discovered so much about ourselves, his life in us, and how to hold people’s pain in an entirely different way. We have learned to live more in the present than trusting our familiar patterns and rely on Jesus’ direction rather than our plans. (If you’re curious about some of that, Kyle and I have been talking about most of it on the podcasts this fall.)

Will I finish the book I started before all of this, or travel as I had been before? Will we settle back in Newbury Park? What will become of Lifestream or The God Journey? All those questions are still in Father’s hands. We may come back to those things, but it will be with very different hearts. And we are also open to an entirely different way of living to accommodate what Father has for us in this next season of our lives.

We are excited to see how that will turn out and probably won’t know for some time. We know this—we will continue to follow Jesus as best we see him and love the people he puts in our path so that they can come to know Jesus the way we have and experience his freedom for them.

There is no greater joy than the adventure of following him and encouraging others as they seek to do so as well.

Just a couple of quick notes before we get back to life on the road—

First, the need for $168,000.00 in Kenya has been met. A dear friend called me to say he’d pick up whatever we lacked for those children. I’m deeply grateful to all who again contributed to this dire need. Two nights ago, Sara and I watched an NBC news story about the horrible drought and starvation occurring in the northern reaches of Kenya. We are grateful to have been a small part of God’s provision in such an impoverished region and thankful to hear that other resources are coming into the area.

Second, as you think of Christmas gifts for family and friends, keep in mind the possibility of sharing some of the books I’ve been involved in. Live Loved Free Full is a daily devotional with inspiring thoughts to invite people into a relational engagement with God each day. He Loves Me continues to touch new hearts every year with the relationship people have wanted to find with God. In Season offers a farmer’s view of John 15 to help people discover what it means to abide in Jesus organically. And, A Man Like No Other is a powerful portrayal of the life of Jesus in art and prose that invites people to see Jesus outside the distortions of religious interpretation and fall in love with the person he is.

Finally, Sara and I want you to know that the joy and freedom we find in Jesus are available to each of you. He is no respecter of persons. His course may be very different for you, but he is the Way for you too, and he can carve a path through the pain, fear, and struggles you endure.  To that end, you have our prayers and support.

Two nights ago, I sat among giants.

Five people, each of them, had come face-to-face with a conflict between their consciences and the system of power that held the keys to their salary and advancement. And they each chose to follow their nudging consciences growing deep within them. For three of them, it was a recent experience.

And it cost them—relationships with “friends” and family, reputation, salary, and immediate fulfillment of their ministry aspirations. They were threatened by people they had previously admired, ambushed by those who could easily use deceit as a weapon, and rejected by those who had previously affirmed them.

Their choices led to dark days of pain and agony. Falsely accused and isolated, they second-guessed their consciences and questioned the God who had not intervened on their behalf against those acting in unGodly ways.

But in those long days of darkness, their hearts grew. They began to see the difference between human power and God’s authority. They came to see the full fury of a religious system more obsessed with power than truth and healing, even for their own people.

When they saw through the illusion of power and how far it would take them off course from the passion they held for Jesus and his people, they discovered that grief and disappointment can lead them into a rich vein of God’s wisdom and that enduring the affliction of others would only increase their compassion for the broken and wounded.

Some were still in the throes of that process, but I was touched by each person’s heart and honored to hold their stories and honor their choices. Two were black men who expressed the added pain and exploitation of the racial realities behind the choices of white leaders who had exalted them and then turned on them. One was a woman with little power to resist the manipulations of the men who decided her fate. Their added powerlessness multiplied their pain and negated their attempts to be treated graciously.

And yet, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of their desire to choose authenticity over expedience and truth over comfort.

I heard the exact words reverberating in my mind that Jesus spoke to the disciples one afternoon in Matthew 13, “To you it has been given to know the secrets and mysteries of the kingdom. . . . ” Others would have to content themselves with parables they didn’t understand because they choose the illusions of reputation and power over the pathway that leads to life.

I’ve been honored to meet many such people throughout the last thirty years of my journey. Each time, I’m reminded of Jesus’s words,

Count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds.

I know it doesn’t feel like joy, which I suppose is why he said, “Count yourselves blessed.” At the time, it doesn’t feel like a blessing. However, being lied about, insulted, or excluded by those you love is not the end of your journey; it’s the trailhead into a journey for which your heart has truly hungered.

Follow your conscience beyond the wall of illusion, and you will find the rich, fulfilling reward of a life well-lived that will be worth whatever price you had to pay to get there.

And all of heaven applauds.

I had this email exchange a few months back with a friend in Nigeria who hit a dry patch in his journey. I’m sure he’s not alone in this struggle or his questions, so I thought I’d share that conversation here:

I’m going through a crisis in my life right now, and I would have to admit that it’s tearing me apart and turning my world upside down. I have never felt so lost.

In the past, I used to wonder why people didn’t just have a relationship with God and why they always said he wasn’t conversing with them. I would usually respond, “You don’t know what you’re doing. Just sit there and read the Bible. That’s what relationship with him is.”

Recently I started to discover that reading the Bible and spending time in God’s presence may not be what relationship with Jesus is all about. I used to feel like he doesn’t love me anymore because of my past mistakes. But recently I’m learning to trust his love for me. I’m handing my weaknesses over to him so he can help me with his strength. Thanks to your series Embracing His Glory, I’m learning to see how powerless I am towards sin and how deeply I need his hand to transform me to the person he desires.

I’m not proud of my decline in my relationship with him. In the past few weeks, my quiet time has been of less interest to me.  Sometimes I get back on my feet and so enjoy it. Other times, I just fall asleep from beginning to end. I feel God’s sadness, trust me, and I’m so angry at myself for making him feel that way.

When I was 16, I would always carry my Bible and buy new notes and write down whatever God was teaching me. I always looked forward to my quiet time and would read the Bible every day. Unfortunately, my parents became so legalistic you would wonder if they were modern Pharisees. They loved God, but they feared him more. Initially I wasn’t affected by this new turn they had taken, but it later did. They brought in rules that began to kill my relationship with him. Rather than something I enjoyed, my quiet time became something I had to do to earn God’s blessings or  to be safe.

That lifestyle haunts me now. So when I sit for my quiet time to read the Scriptures, it’s a rule for me, not something I love and enjoy anymore. I told God I just want him back in my life. Why do I find it difficult to enjoy my time with God? Why do I find it difficult to spend time with the Bible and just pause to listen to him at his feet?

My response:

A lot of things could contribute to this. Keep this in mind, though—God invites us to walk with him out of endearment, not obligation. It sounds like your devotional times became an obligation, and that will always kill them. God wants to walk with you through life, not become an obligation to be satisfied three times a day.

As I read this, it sounded like you ended up with a relationship with your Bible and your quiet time, and those aren’t as exciting now. Perhaps, God has let those dry up so that you could lean into a relationship with him that is close and endearing. Don’t think something is wrong because those times have grown tedious. It doesn’t mean God is boring; it just means you’ve outgrown the form you’d been using. It’s just like going to grade school. It was challenging when you were there, but you would be bored if you went back today. That doesn’t make it wrong, just that you’ve grown beyond it.

I suspect God is stirring something new in you, He’s inviting you into a different journey, and you’re still trying to resurrect the old journey, or at least feel bad that it doesn’t happen the same way. Loving God isn’t complicated. Inviting Jesus to walk with us isn’t fulfilled by doing something three times daily. The Bible is a magnificent resource for discovering who God is and how his purpose unfolds in the Creation. But Jesus left us his Spirit to guide us into all truth, not a book. I think all of this is shifting in you, which may be disorienting for a season. This could be God’s doing to set you free to enjoy him, rather than his life in you being a chore.

Relax. Enjoy what you see of him each day. Read the Scriptures as he draws you to them. Speak to him all the time about your joys, worries, concerns, and need for insight. Watch as his truth surface in you, even at times you’d least expect it.

He responded to my email a few days later:

Oh my God! This cleared the doubt I had left in my heart. Wow!

The day I sent that email to you, I spoke with a friend and she was going through the same struggle that I was. So, I shared your response with her and she felt God had just confirmed what we are learning in the last few days through your words.

It was only a few days ago that I sat to read the Bible very early in morning and I whispered these words in my heart to God: “Father, I’m tired of everything. I know the Bible so well, but I don’t know you as I desire to. I’m so far from who you are. Please help me to behold you as you really are.” As soon as I had whispered that to him, something happened. It’s as if everything in the Bible was pointing to Jesus. I sat to read John, not hoping for anything at all: I just wanted to behold Jesus, though I didn’t know how.

Honestly, I remember hearing you on your podcast correcting someone who referred to the Bible as the ‘Word of God.’ You gently told him, “Scripture holds God’s words, but only Jesus is the Word of God.” I disagreed with you. How could Scripture not be the Word of God? Now, some years later, here I am, crossing my legs with a sigh: “Wayne is correct.”

Even my walk with Jesus didn’t begin that way and yet it only took a few years before I found myself depending on the Bible for almost everything. It was my guide. If I didn’t read it for three days, I would feel so bad. I would feel that I hadn’t touched God’s word for a while. I know it’s healthy to read the Scriptures as God unveils himself, but that wasn’t the case then.

Since my friend and I are on a similar journey, this is about the two of us. She and I are starting to follow Jesus anew, this time as the Word of God, the One God is speaking to us. More important, we are so grateful to find that Father confirms the truth of himself that he is unveiling to us. We are glad to know we aren’t going crazy.

When God seems boring, I’m sure it isn’t him at all. He’s incredibly endearing, hilarious, insightful, and gracious. Every day with him is an adventure, and when he seems boring to me, it usually means I’ve lost sight of him and am just mindlessly going through the motions of superficial, religious activities. It’s one thing to read He Loves Me and be touched by it, and quite another to spend the day with Sara and me and discover who I am. God wants us to know him; the Bible is a poor substitute for that knowing.

If you, too, are hungry for him, keep looking for him. Scripture won’t be enough. Church attendance won’t be enough. Even fellowship with good friends won’t be enough. He wants you to know him, see him, and feel him surge in your heart as you negotiate your day.

As someone told me a couple of weeks ago, “It’s not your piety he loves; it’s you!”

And if you want help sorting out how the Scriptures fit more effectively into a relational journey, you can check out the free video series, The Jesus Lens.

(First, a personal note:  It finally caught up to me. I’m blaming my visit to Disneyland last week to celebrate a granddaughter’s graduation from middle school though I don’t know for sure if that’s where I got it. But early Monday morning, I came down with symptoms of COVID-19, and a test later that day confirmed it. I’m doing OK for the most part, except for an extremely painful sore throat and being forced into quarantine away from those I love.)

If you’ve been listening to the podcasts at The God Journey, you’ll know that the last three months have been quite a ride—from the brink of despair to the heights of great joy. If you’re missing that story, you can hear the first two of seven podcasts under the label: “Redeeming Love.” It’s the story of the enemy’s attempts to destroy our marriage to God’s victory over a trauma we didn’t even realize Sara had in her past. The first one aired on July 8, titled, The Unforeseen Circumstances, and the second is called What Sara Faced. The rest will follow on subsequent Fridays.

At the lowest point in this story, a close friend of mine saw how much pain I was in and held it with me. That night in a dream, he saw Jesus sitting on a park bench, so he went and sat with him. He then asked Jesus if there was anything he could do to take my pain away.

Jesus turned toward him and answered, “I can’t take his pain away without taking away his love for Sara.”

He shared that with me the next day, and I immediately knew it was a prayer I didn’t want Jesus to answer. If I were in excruciating pain because of my love, I would rather endure the pain than lose the love. And it made me think of other prayers I have prayed, not realizing the result I wanted may be at the expense of some greater good I wanted even more.

We want pain to go away; Jesus wants love to triumph. We rarely recognize the cost involved in the things we ask of him. While we seek comfort, he’s drawing us into the truth that will be our ultimate joy. That’s why if you only seek comfort in this broken world, don’t expect that it will lead you to God’s fullness. Some of his greatest gifts reveal themselves in our moments of pain and vulnerability.

Fortunately,  Jesus didn’t take my pain away and instead used it to re-shape my heart with what I needed to walk a different road he was asking of me. You can hear that in the podcasts as well. All of that has led Sara and me to far more spacious places of freedom and love than I could ever have imagined.

Paul was right, “momentary, light affliction” can work in us “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). No, it didn’t feel light or momentary at the time, but given what it has produced and who it helped rescue from the darkness overwhelming her heart, it seems so now. Who would have thought that those days of agony would bring such incredible healing and redemption?

I will never view prayer quite the same way again.

On an unrelated note, the next gathering of the Jake Colsen Book Club will be held Sunday, July 24 at 1:00 pm PDT. You’ll have to work that out in your time zone. We will cover Chapter 4 on why accountability is a horrible tool for discipleship and transformation. You can get a link to the Zoom Room by emailing Wayne and asking for it.

A good friend of mine, Jack Gray, passed away last week. That’s him with his wife Margaret alongside Sara and me when we first met them in 2004. Many have heard me talk about Jack over the years. He was born in Scotland, served as a missionary surgeon in the Congo at the time of the revolution, and then lived out much of the rest of his life in New Zealand. I had numerous opportunities to correspond with him as well as visit him twice.

Though I came to know Jack late in his life, his life, character, and passion deeply inspired the trajectory of my own journey. He was a man of profound wisdom, gracious generosity, and a joyful spirit that touched many worldwide. I miss knowing he is in the world, but grateful that he has reached the gateway for the most incredible adventure any of us could take—an eternity in the presence of the Jesus he loved and a reuniting with his beloved wife. He was a remarkable gift, and it is all the better for having had him among us.

Advancing age tests the mettle of a person. Some grow more loving and tender, while others become more fearful and angry. When Dave Coleman was a hospice chaplain, he told me it was his experience that 80% of Christians were afraid or anxious about facing death. I have had three close friends and “older brothers” pass away in the last eighteen months. In their 80s and 90s, they were all men whom Father’s love had sweetened over many, many decades. It’s impressive to see what living at rest in the love of Jesus does to someone’s character over time and how it is reflected with such tenderness and confidence at the end of their days.

Jack turned ninety-nine this past February. He recorded this video a couple of weeks before he died last week. It reveals those things most in his heart as the veil between this life and the next grew thinner.

(If the video doesn’t play, click on this link: https://vimeo.com/727491540)

After his days in Africa, Jack began to find his rest in the Father’s love. He was expelled from the country during the revolution and told me he was home in Scotland in deep depression because he had failed God. “How had you failed God?” I asked, incredulous at the thought. He said because God sent him there, his faith was not strong enough to stop the revolution that got him expelled. In time, he came to see how that thinking was wrong in so many ways and thus began his encounter with a Father’s love that transformed him over a lifetime.

Jack was one of the heroes of the faith, and his life touched many people as a surgeon, hospital administrator, friend, and passionate follower of Jesus.

I have another video I’d like to share. It came to me on the same day that Jack’s did. This is from Ukraine and it’s by a man whose family I met and whose fellowship I enjoyed when I was in Kenya in 2019. Here’s that video, which shows how they are coping with this conflict by serving others. I hope these days of war and torment will spark a similar journey in them to discover a Father bigger than their expectations and a love more significant than their unanswered questions. I pray they, too, will be able to grasp how wide and deep the Father’s love is for them even in such horrific days.

God can hold us in any storm and help us endure the most excruciating trial until his glory comes—whether in this life or as we pass on to the next.

_______________

If you want to listen to two podcasts that I recorded with Jack Gray, you can do so from our archives at The God Journey.

If you want to help Misha and his team in Ukraine, you can pray for them and help by raising funds as they coordinate relief efforts for travel, housing, food, and basic necessities. You can help them at the Reliant fund:  https://reliant.org/ukraine.relief.fund