Dear Missionary Lady,
Greetings in the name of the One who works all things for good. In the life that we live on this fallen earth, what a blessed consolation that is.
As I was praying for a friend last night, I was considering how many challenges have entered her life recently. It has been one thing after another. Significant challenges still loom on the horizon, and more changes are potentially possible. Perhaps one way to express the situation is to say that when it seems like things can't possibly get any worse, they do.
This is not the only such situation that I know of. I was just reading about the country of Lebanon, where the economy has absolutely collapsed. Electricity and gasoline are very difficult to come by, and the article stated that 80% of the population has been plunged into poverty. This country has been in a difficult setting for some time, and it seems to be getting increasingly worse.
Then there is Afghanistan, which is much in the news lately. There are Christians there. There are pastors and missionaries, who have always served and followed God at great risk to themselves. Now with the rapid overrun of the Taliban, their situation has become much more critical and potentially deadly.
Other bad-to-worse situations are taking place around the world. Myanmar, still greatly oppressed by the recent coup, has faced terrible devastation from COVID. I have heard from numerous Christian sources that healthcare and even basic supplies are scarce, leaving people vulnerable and resulting in many deaths, including of multiple pastors and Christian leaders. Other countries are facing similar rampages of the disease and discouraging third and fourth waves and resulting lockdowns.
So what do we do when it can't possibly get any worse but it does anyway? How do we evaluate that? How do we keep going?
I thought of Joseph. He had lost basically everything. As a young man, he was separated from his family with no reasonable expectation of being reconciled, and this separation lasted decades. When it couldn't get any worse, he was falsely accused and demoted from slavery to prison. I thought of Abraham. He had given up everything to follow God. He had left his family and his homeland and wandered as a pilgrim in an unknown land. After years of agonizing waiting, it got worse. He was asked to sacrifice his only son. There was Job, who faced incomprehensible tragedies in a single day, wiping out his wealth, his livelihood, and his children. Then it got worse when his health was viciously attacked.
I think there is great similarity in these three stories from the Bible and in the story of my friend and in the story of many others throughout history. It is as if God is shaking them upside down until everything falls out. Or it is as if one after another God is taking away comforts and resources and everything that has been depended upon, until all that remains is naked trust and unshakable resolve to follow God anyway.
Then I thought of a more biblical picture. It is as if God is heating the fire hotter and hotter. He is creating temperatures that burn away all dross and impurity until all that is left is highly refined and absolutely pure gold. “For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried” (Psalm 66:10). “And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin” (Isaiah 1:25).
How did the biblical characters mentioned above endure and process such intense refinement? They clung to God's truth at whatever level it had been revealed to them. Joseph had dreams as a young man, and even his brothers correctly and immediately interpreted those dreams as meaning that they would someday bow down to him. This required a reconciliation at some point. God had promised a mighty seed to Abraham through Isaac. This required that Isaac live. Abraham believed that God would raise his son back from the dead if necessary to keep His word. Job expressed his unshakable resolve and naked trust in God when he said, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Moreover, Job saw God’s picture and expressed it in these words: “When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
In our own challenges and tragedies, it would seem that these are also the correct responses. We must first cling to God's truth. We must remember His promises. Every one of them is still true. He really will not leave us nor forsake us. He really will work all things for His good pleasure. He really will give us all the grace that we need. Unlike some of these biblical characters and their limited knowledge, our Bibles are complete and are filled with reassuring truth.
Our second response has to be that naked trust in God when everything else has been taken away. When we do not understand or see any possible reason, we must maintain that one thing - an unshakable resolve to follow God anyway. If God shakes out, takes away, or burns off every other thing, what must be left is continued devotion and determination to follow God. Even if it costs us everything, and even if it leads to death, there is no other path to follow. Meanwhile, while we do not see it happening, God is refining. God sees something through His work in us that is shining each day more brightly, that is glowing each day more purely, that is approaching that unflawed level that will resplendently reflect His face in us.
What about while we are in the fire? We do not walk through that fire alone. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee” (Isaiah 43:2). God is with us in the fire, and He can keep it from harming us and can control it incredibly so that it does only what He wants it to do and no more. Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? God walked in the fire with them. God incredibly controlled that fire for His purposes. God allowed that scorching fire to kill the men who threw the three friends into the fire, and God allowed that blazing fire to burn off the ropes that bound the three men, but that same fire did not burn their clothing or singe their hair. God's fire is so precise that we can be confident it will accomplish His purposes and nothing more. “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (I Peter 1:7).
May God give each of us the grace and trust to walk faithfully through whatever He ordains for us. May He enable us not to resist, but to humbly submit to His hand so that His precise refining work is optimally effective. God bless you, my sisters.
Love in Christ,
Peggy Holt
member at Open Door Baptist Church in Lebanon, PA
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