(preparing article based on Sunday church services today and will have ready tomorrow evening. I just returned from very rare dinner out with family to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday. she chose to eat at the seafood chain Oceano and I ordered halibut, which could not have been more disappointing--it was overcooked and the lemon caper sauce was too sparse and unexciting to help. truly makes you realize that eating out is overrated anymore. overpriced and kitchen doesn't know how to prepare a beautiful piece of fish even when they charge arm and a leg and don't even have many other customers. couldn't even give me a side to go with fish--just some asparagus underneath. I wish I had just ordered their fish and chips or maybe their New Orleans-style shrimp pasta dish. bummer!)
“People who have themselves experienced both grief and fear know how alike those two things are . . . They are equally disabling, distracting and destructive,” says world-famous missionary wife, Elisabeth Elliott, whose husband was brutally murdered (1956) trying to give the gospel to a semi-nomadic Indian tribe (considered among the most violent in the world) deep in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador.
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“Fear is a natural emotion common to all human beings, and it is neither inherently sinful nor godly,” reads another quote online. “Our fears are often connected to the things we love the most. We may fear losing something or someone we love. Or we might fear that we will fail to obtain something we desire. We may fear offending one we love. Or perhaps we feel a reverential fear of something or someone we admire. The cause of our fears is often the love or admiration of some created thing over God Himself.”
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Fear of what might happen (or not happen) is not to be a curse, but a circumstantial context in which God works in a Believer's life. God uses our circumstances and surroundings as a context in which to apply sound doctrine.
"Paul tells us it's the trying of our faith that works patience," says Richard Jordan. "The problems of life say, 'Are you going to rest in who you are in Christ or are you going to go on your devices?'
"What issues in life test is your resolve to walk by faith. It tests whether or not you're going to stay with the doctrine—stay with your identity in Christ—or you're going to go on your emotions, or other counsel.
“Tribulation is designed to teach us that if we stay with the doctrine, and that's where patience comes in, that ‘staying’ works experience. We develop a persistent fortitude and unwavering endurance by just sticking with the Word.
"And when you stay with it, and stay with it, and stay with it, in spite of the circumstances swallowing you—meaning you say, 'This is the truth, I'm not going to walk by sight, I'm going to walk by faith'— you get some experience.
"Experience is simply skill in handling a problem. Experience comes when you face the problem, deal with the problem, and it comes to a successful conclusion.
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“Paul tells us God is ‘the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’
“The idea is that the experience gained through tribulation lends an enhanced capacity of maturity to effectively help and comfort others by giving them some of the hope we've gained through our experience. It's about a maturing process.
"The justice of God can give you peace, but it can't give you patience. He can give you access, but He can't give you experience. Patience comes from the life application of the sound doctrine.
“Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’
"Paul says the thing you learn in your Christian life—and keep learning at different levels—is, 'It's not I, but Christ.' You see, when he says, 'You're complete in Christ,' you can't get God to give you any more.
"You can't say, 'Oh, God, give me some more of this or that.' He's got no more to give you. He gave it to you already. All you can do is appropriate what He already gave you and to appropriate it, you've got to do two things. One, you've got to know about it, and two, you've got to need it.
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“Life is made up of attitudes and actions. You go out in life and it doesn't take long before you know you need something bigger than you to take care of the way you act and your attitudes about life, and it's going to be Christ, His life. It's sort of a partnership in maturity, in wisdom, and it comes progressively as you grow spiritually. This is just the process of growing up spiritually.
“Through the tribulations, Believers are meant to reach a level of maturity where nothing motivates them but the love of God in Christ Jesus. That's why Paul says, ‘The love of Christ constrains us.’
“Through this maturing you're willing just to relax and not be motivated by a desire to make God happy with you so that He'll accept you and bless you. You're not motivated by being a big shot and showing everybody what you know. The thing that love lets you do is relax.
“Paul says in II Corinthians 4:14, ‘Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ Life is designed to be a walk of faith, and the things we endure down here temporarily on earth build a capacity in our inner man that will last FOREVER. The suffering is what strengthens that inner man.”
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