"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." (The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 1:8-9)

Abraham is called in Scripture "the father of all who believe" (Romans 4:11-12). What kind of faith did Abraham have?

He had faith that God would raise the dead. First of all, he believed that God would bring life from his and Sarah's dead and barren bodies, to give them the son that God had promised (Romans 4:19-21). Later, after that son had miraculously been born, he faced an even greater test when God demanded that he sacrifice him. Still, he didn't waver in his faith but believed that if necessary, God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19).

God tells us that this is the faith that saves us. When we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, he credits us his righteousness and our sins are forgiven (Romans 4:24, 10:9).

However, this faith goes far beyond salvation, as the example of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1 tells us.

Many times as Christians we are faced with situations in our lives that seem like death. In fact, they are death: the death of our hopes, our dreams, our desires, our loves, our flesh. Many times they can seem excruciatingly painful, "far beyond our ability to endure," as Paul put it.

There is a Christian aphorism that goes like this, "God will never give you anything that you can't handle."

I don't believe that is true.

I believe that very often, God can and does allow things in our lives that we cannot handle, that are "far beyond our ability to endure," that could easily crush us to death.

And why?

He does it so, as Paul says, "that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."

When you are faced with a situation that you simply cannot handle, that is impossible for you, that in your strength cannot be moved, this happens so that in your manifest weakness you would cry out to God, who is your only hope. It happens so that when you have put your hope in him, confessed to him that he alone is your refuge and your salvation, and that if he does not raise this thing from the dead there will be no life, you will see his deliverance.

Paul went on to say,

"He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers." (2 Corinthians 1:10-11)

Are you faced with a situation that is impossible? Does it seem like there is no hope, no end in sight, no deliverance that you can see? Your hope is in the God who raises the dead. Your salvation is in the God who does the impossible. Turn to him, trust in him, so you can see his salvation.

I believe that is why James can tell us, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds." Though the trials themselves are not joyful, there is joy in the opportunity to cast yourself on the God who raises the dead and see what he will do. There is joy in the opportunity to grow in your knowledge and trust of him, and to prove yourself faithful through the testing rather than abandon God.

He will be faithful to us.

Well, the good news is the wedding shoot yesterday went well. It was an exhausting 11-hour day, but the photographer was lovely to work with and it seemed to be a success.

I missed out the ceremony and most of the reception. However, I went in for part of it, as the maid and man of honour and bride and groom were giving their speeches, and then the first dance between bride and groom.

It was beautiful, there's no denying. I had that irresistible smile on my face that comes from watching the heart-touching beauty of a man and woman pledge their love for each other and join their lives together. No matter how many times you see it, it never grows old.

But something struck me as I watched it, and today as I was thinking about it again:

This is not the ultimate.

For the world, if you don't know God, and even for many Christians, the love between a man and a woman is the highest, the greatest, the most ultimate thing that it is possible to experience. In terms of love, in terms of relationship, in terms of life experiences, it is the apex.

Except it's not.

As beautiful, as wonderful, as glorious, as miraculous as the love between a man and a woman is, it is only a shadow. It is only a reflection of the true love, that is, the love between God and his people.

The apostle Paul talks about marriage in Ephesians, and he concludes by saying, "This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:32) We are told numerous times in Scripture that we are the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7). Jesus is called the bridegroom (Matthew 9:15).

Marriage is only for this life. Marriage to Jesus will be for eternity. We will be his forever, in a way and in a love that we can only begin to comprehend now.

But this is not just a word trick, calling something by a name to make it seem like something it's really not. The love between Jesus and his bride truly is the greatest, the most satisfying, the most fulfilling love we can ever possibly experience.

And we are meant to experience it, in a way and to an intensity that fills us up in a way that the relationship with a spouse, no matter how good, never can.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19)

The good news is that as single Christians (as Paul was) we have full and complete access to this love, just as married Christians do. We are not incomplete. We are not lacking. We are not second-level, or inferior. We have the same access to Jesus' love, a love that fills and that satisfies beyond compare, a love that is the ultimate love, the true love, the love of which married love is only a shadow.

I pray that you would experience it. If you're not, ask for the Holy Spirit. Abandon yourself before God. Cry out for him, until you are filled with that love, the love that surpasses human knowledge, the love that brings ultimate joy.

Recently I read a book by Bill Johnson entitled Face to Face With God: The ultimate quest to experience his presence. It's an excellent book, and I recommend it.

One statement impacted me more than any other in the book:

"God's love for people is beyond comprehension and imagination. He is for us, not against us. God is good 100 percent of the time." (p. 3, emphasis added)

"[I]f I had to pick one word to describe the nature of God revealed in Christ, it is that He is good. I never realized how controversial the subject of the nature of God could be until I began teaching week after week that God is good, always." (p. 103)

This simple premise shocked me, not only because it is profound, but because I realized I don't really believe it. Most of the time, even if I'm not outright angry at God and convinced that he is out to get me, the suspicion lurks strongly in my mind that mixed up in God's "good" motives are motives to punish, hurt, or damage me. If I really give myself over to him, I can't trust that the results will be in my favour.

Bill Johnson admits the difficulty of this teaching:

"While most believers hold the belief [that God is good] as a theological value...they struggle in light of the difficulties all around us. Many have abandoned the idea altogether, thinking it doesn't have any practical application. The hardest part is saying that He's always good. Some will say He is mysteriously good, which is about the same as saying He's good, but not as we think of goodness." (p.103)

The more I have thought about it, the more convinced I have become that central to a quest for the presence of God, central to giving up everything to follow Jesus, is a basic and settled conviction in our hearts that God is good. Not just good, but 100% good, 100% of the time.

How can we abandon ourselves to him, how can we completely believe and obey him, unless we believe that?

One of Satan's very first temptations in the garden of Eden, the doubt he sowed into Eve's mind to convince her to disobey God, was the idea that God was not good:

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:2-5)

The ugly but plausible lie behind what the serpent was saying was this: God is holding out on you. He knows that this will be good for you, and that's why he's forbidding it. If you take things into your own hands, if you go your own way, forgetting what God says, you will experience what is truly good, what God doesn't want you to have and what you'll miss out on if you obey him.

Eve fell for it. And ever since, generations down the line, every single human being has fallen for it too.

What Jesus Christ came to reveal, and what reconciliation to God is all about, is that God is actually good. That following him reaps ultimate rewards, both in this lifetime and the next.

And yet, we struggle to believe that. Someone far from God doesn't believe it at all: a basic hatred and mistrust of God keeps them shaking their fists from a distance, even if unconsciously. But many Christians probably feel the same way I do: a deep and stubborn suspicion that the love of God is a happy lie, that a benevolent Father can't possibly be true, that ditching the treasures of this life in favour of treasure in heaven won't ultimately pay off.

We follow Jesus because we feel we have no choice. We know he's the truth. But disappointments, unhappy circumstances, far-off things that are starting to look less like promises and more like cruel bait, keep us in a miserable state of depression, discouragement, fear, and fruitlessness. We turn to things we know we shouldn't in an effort to stem the demanding tide of pain.

If God is good, why? Why this circumstance in my life? Why this thing that I want so badly and can't have? Why this stuff that doesn't make any sense?

There's no easy answer to that. I can't promise that a belief in the goodness of God will reap quick and easy solutions to the disappointments and hurts of life. I still struggle with questions about things that are currently ongoing in my life, and I don't have any guarantee that I will have an answer soon, or indeed, any answer in this lifetime.

But key to overcoming the hurt, disappointment, fear, and fruitlessness is a little thing called faith.

We have a choice when confronted with our thoughts, our feelings, our circumstances, and the enemy's lies:

Do we believe God?

God has said, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28, emphasis added)

As believers, that's a shining light of truth, a promise God has given us that encompasses all circumstances in our life, both "good" and "bad".

The belief that God is out to harm us or to hold out on us is a lie.

We know the heart and the character of God as revealed in Jesus. We have the promises of God. What do we turn to when hurt or disappointment threatens to overwhelm us? We will be overwhelmed, unless we believe in the promises of God.

I'm not saying that bad things won't happen to us. Promises that we will suffer are sown through the whole New Testament. Following God definitely does not guarantee that we will get what we want in this life, or that it will be easy. There are no guarantees.

Except for the presence, the power, and the love of God. And somehow, that's enough to make us "more than conquerors", as Paul says (Romans 8:37).

Paul knew what he was talking about. He had suffered and lost more than any of us probably ever will. And yet, he could triumphantly state his all-conquering belief in the goodness and the love of God.

Don't sell yourself short. Disappointments will happen. Hurts will happen. God tells us he uses them to make us mature and complete and shape us into the image of Jesus (James 1:2-4; Hebrews 12:1-13). The question is, will we believe him?

I have gone through many hurts in my life. Sometimes I've felt that God wanted to make me into a test case for suffering! (Which, of course, is not true). Looking back at my major disappointments, I can trace God's hand and see how he has used each one to draw me into new stages in my relationship with him and deal with sin issues. What I thought would destroy me has ended up turning out for my good. Even if, and when, those things were not good in themselves!

With that experience, and with God's promises, I can look at the current hurts and disappointments in my life and say, "God, I don't understand this. I don't like this. This hurts. I don't know why you've allowed it. I wish it could be another way. But I know with total certainty that you will work this out for my good, no matter how it ends up. Therefore, I can walk forward with faith and confidence and continue trusting you and doing what you have called me to do."

Faith in God's goodness does not mean denying, ignoring, or minimizing the pain. It doesn't mean saying that everything that happens to us is good. We live in a sinful, fallen, evil world. Bad stuff can and does happen. People sin, and they sin against us.

But faith in God does mean a settled conviction that, in the life of a believer, God both can and will turn out everything, including the bad, the sinful, the ugly, the painful, for our good, because he's promised. It means a conviction that our perspective is limited and faulty, and God's is eternal and perfect. What from our time-bound, human viewpoint looks only like destruction, from God's heavenly vantage point looks like an opportunity to display his grace and his goodness. It means believing what we cannot yet see, which, after all, is the very definition of faith (Hebrews 11:1).

With faith like that, nothing can shake us.

God help me, and all of us, to believe.

My "vacation" in New England ended up being more than just that. In the timing of God, it ended up being a bit of an ambush.

We are called to live for one thing. As Christians, that one thing is following Jesus and knowing God. It's living to see his kingdom come and his love and power manifest on earth, no matter what the cost to ourselves.

It is easy to become sidetracked from that goal. A lot of us, for a lot of the time, even though we're saved, aren't really living for that goal. We're taken up with the things of this life: jobs, taking care of ourselves, family, hobbies, sports, whatever. We're saved and we're going to heaven, and we go to church on Sundays, but God and his kingdom are not our magnificent obsession. Our attention is captured by a million and one other things and our effectiveness for the kingdom is sabotaged.

It wasn't meant to be this way. Jesus said many hard things about the way we are supposed to live.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." (Luke 9:23-26)

It's a hard call. But it's what it means to be a Christian. Jesus never meant for us to live with anything less than total devotion, a passion for him and for the kingdom that consumes everything we are and everything we have to the point that we will give it all up and suffer anything to have him.

But there's another side to this perspective. Jesus also told this parable, one of my favourite passages in the whole Bible:

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all that he had and bought that field." (Matthew 13:44, emphasis added)

Whatever we give up for Jesus is more than made up for by what we gain. He is the treasure. He is the all-surpassing treasure that once we catch a glimpse of, will outshine anything on earth that we once thought valuable.

That's what makes living for Jesus worth it. That's what makes giving up whatever we have to give up, whatever cost we have to pay, whatever we suffer, worth it. Yes, there is a cost. Yes, sometimes it is very pricey. Yet, when we see him in his beauty, we are more than willing to throw it all away so that we can gain him.

What are you living for that makes the beauty of Jesus dim in your life? What do you prize that you are unwilling to give up to receive more of him? Whatever it is, spend time seeking God until he gives you a glimpse of his glory and beauty. Once he does, you won't want to live for anything else. You'll be willing to do whatever it takes to have him. Trust me, you'll be happier for it. You'll discover what you were made for.

I discovered something very interesting while reading the book of John. I got to the part when Jesus has risen from the dead and encounters Mary Magdalene outside the tomb. He tells her,

"Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" (John 20:17, emphasis added)

I was struck by that last phrase. It seems such an odd and emphatic way of putting things. It was as if Jesus wants us to notice something.

I couldn't remember Jesus using the phrase "your Father" or "your God" anywhere else in John, so I did a search to find out. He'd just had an extended discussion with the disciples about his relationship to the Father, their relationship to the Father, and their (and our) relationship to him (chapters 13-16). That would have been the perfect time to say it, but he always says "My Father" or "the Father" throughout the whole of rest of the book.

It's not that he doesn't talk about the subject. Jesus has a lot to say about the Father. He came from the Father, he is going to the Father, he does the works of the Father, he speaks the words of the Father. His relationship with his Father is integral to the book of John.

But it isn't until after the resurrection that he says "your Father" and "your God" to his disciples.

Two things strike me about this:

First, the death and resurrection of Jesus are what changed our relationship to God. Now, "[T]hrough him [Jesus] we...have access to the Father by one Spirit." The death and resurrection of Jesus secured a place of sonship to God for everyone who has faith in him.

Second, we now have the same kind of sonship that Jesus has. We actually have the same kind of relationship to God that he does.

That's an incredibly awesome realization.

Following Jesus is hard. There are reasons why it is called “the narrow way”, as contrasted to “the broad way”.

Following Jesus involves saying no to our feelings. It involves picking up our cross, dying daily, and following him. It involves saying “no” to our wants and desires, and saying “yes” to his.

It is about believing that he alone can satisfy us, against all the evidence of our screaming flesh.

It is about saying “no” to and walking away from the things that our flesh thinks will make it happy, and choosing to allow God to fill those empty spaces, even if we don’t know how he will. Even if it seems to take him a long time to do so, or even if it looks like he’s not going to.

It’s about stepping into the things he is calling us to, even if it involves great personal cost and pain. It is about following him no matter what, in the good times and the bad. It is about having the courage to step into a place of calling, even if it means turning our back on what once would have meant everything to us.

If we’re single, it means saying “no” to the desires for sexual intimacy and deep emotional companionship at the price of giving ourselves too much to someone to whom we don’t belong. It means crying out to God to satisfy us, even if part of that involves him sending us a mate.

It means speaking the truth to another in love to help his growth, even if he gets angry with us and doesn’t speak to us or retaliates in other ways. It means accepting the fallout from another’s actions and working together to pick up the pieces (not, however, enabling the behaviour).

It means believing the truth ourselves, and speaking it to us when we can’t believe it, no matter what we would like to think otherwise. It means saying “no” to fantasy and lies.

It means being willing to be seen as the one in the wrong, even if we aren’t. It means being willing to humble ourselves, even if we don’t have to. It means humbling ourselves when we HAVE done wrong. It means giving up our lives so that others can live.

It means being willing to bear the shame of Jesus before the world and accept the hatred that they will heap upon us as his followers.

It means giving up your life, even to death.

Who will follow him? It is hard.

People who don’t know God worship idols. There is no middle ground of non-worship, where I give my allegiance to nobody and nothing. As human beings we are made to worship, and we will worship substitutes if not the true God.

Idols can be many: in the Western world, not usually literal idols, but more often jobs, homes, money, cars, family, relationships, study, good health, beauty, fame, etc: the “good life”. We devote our time, money, energy and attention to procuring and maintaining these things, while God falls by the wayside and receives little or no attention. These “idols” are what we look to for life, security, and happiness, and we truly believe our existence is tied up in them. We manipulate them, others, and circumstances endlessly to ensure they will provide us what we seek.

Today, I was thinking about prodigal sons and older brothers.

Everybody in the world falls into one of those two categories, in terms of their life and their relationship to God. (If you don't get this, see the story Jesus told: Luke 15:11-32).

I've been thinking of writing about forgiveness for some time, but TR's comment on yesterday's post about the man in our church arrested for sexual assault gave me the push I needed:

"I must admit that when it comes to sex offenders, I can not muster up much forgiveness. There are always exceptions, but studies show if you've done it more than once, you'll keep doing it.

I think of a Lyle Lovett song about a woman who cheated on him, desiring forgiveness -

God does, but I don't.
God will, but I won't,
And that's the difference between God & me."

That probably sums up most people's feelings on forgiveness, especially of serious, unrepented-of offences.