Facing Trials, Part II

*Edited July 9, 2015*

Why Do We Suffer? (Continued)
In 1 Peter 1:7, the apostle writes that trials must happen in order "that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ."  Peter paints a brilliant metaphor here.  Our faith is so precious to God that He wants it to be pure.  We purify gold through fire.  Through the process of making gold pure, we remove alloy and other impurities by putting gold in a crucible and applying intense heat to it until all the impurities are destroyed and all that remains is the gold.  Peter's argument here is that if we do this with gold, then how much more this needs to happen with our faith!  Throughout our entire lives, God puts us in different trying crucibles, applying intense heat to the trial each time in order to eliminate all of our impurities until all that remains is our faith — purified and perfect.  Faith is this remarkable gift from God that takes a person who's dead in sin and makes him alive in Christ and therefore a new creation — a new man or woman in Christ (hence 2 Corinthians 5:17).  I'm not saying that every trial we face occurs at the command of God.  For example, with an alcoholic, God does not place the alcohol in his or her hand and neither does He plant thoughts of temptation into their mind that forces them to make unwise decisions, for God is not a tempter (James 1:13).  Such an example is something that we bring upon ourselves.  The point I'm trying to make is that God may at times permit trials to happen to us because for the Christian, everything we do and everything that happens to us has the future appearing of Jesus Christ as its ultimate objective.  We are in these "manifold trials" because of the character of our faith.

Faith is a forever growing process.  As I described earlier, He can test us by trials or permit them to happen at no cause of His own as if putting our faith through fire in order that the things that don't belong to the essence of faith may be destroyed.  At times we may think that our faith is perfect and that we can resist anything, but then a trial will suddenly present itself and we find that we fail.  Why is this?  Well, that's just an indication that the trust element in our faith still needs development; God develops our trust in Him by trying us in this way or permitting it to happen.  The more we experience these trials and God pulls us through, the more we learn to trust Him in everything.  Our natural inclination is to trust Him when He's smiling down upon us and is blessing us, but the very moment something bad happens for a day, a week, a month, or for however long, we begin to wonder whether God is still with us and loves us (or if He actually exists) and if we had a false understanding of what the Christian life is supposed to be like.  But I say, examine Abraham.  Abraham "hoped against hope" (Romans 4:18).  God told him to sacrifice his only son Isaac.  (Abraham had another son named Ishmael, but Isaac was the one whom Abraham's bloodline would continue through.  Also, his wife Sarah was barren and gave birth to Isaac as an elderly woman, so he was literally a miracle child.)  Of course, Abraham was deeply conflicted with what God was asking him to do because He was asking him to do the unthinkable:  to kill his own son.  In spite of this, he still trusted God and was going to do just that.  Imagine what must've been going through his head.  God promised Abraham that he would become a nation and have as many children as there are stars in the sky, and now here God was telling him to sacrifice his only son — the one He promised to continue his bloodline.  He might have thought God was contradicting Himself, but he had faith that God would provide despite the seemingly contradicting command.  However, we see that the Angel of the LORD appears, tells him to stop just as he's about to sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham sees a ram stuck in a bush, which he uses that as the sacrifice instead.  In the spectrum of the Old Testament into the New Testament, God was portraying a very important Christological image.  God would not allow Abraham to sacrifice his only son for the nation because not only would that sacrifice not be enough, but also because God was already going to do that for us with His only begotten Son Jesus Christ on the cross.  My point is that Abraham continued to trust God against all odds even when everything around him and his thoughts told him otherwise; this is the kind of trust and faith we ought to develop.  We don't start off like this, but as we experience more and more great things and trials with God we realise that "behind a frowning providence He hides a Father's face" (William Cowper's poem, God Moves In A Mysterious Way).

This is exactly the same with patience and endurance — the capacity to keep on in the faith in spite of discouragement. That is one of the greatest tests a Christian can ever experience.  As we become newly adopted children of God in the Christian life, we're exactly like little kids — we want everything at once and if we don't get it, we become impatient and whine about it.  Then God puts us in timeout due to our temper tantrum.  This is because we are lacking patience and endurance, which is ultimately self-discipline.  We need to tell ourselves, "God knows what's best for me.  I will trust God."

Enduring trials helps to certify our faith.  Let's read the parable of the sower:  "A sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.  Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched.  And since they had no root, they withered away.  Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.  Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  He who has ears, let him hear" (Matthew 13:3-9).

I would explain this parable, but Jesus explains it just fine in verses 18-23:  "Hear then the parable of the sower:  When anyone hears the Word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.  This is what was sown along the path.  As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the Word, immediately he falls away.  As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the Word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, and it proves unfruitful.  As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the Word and understands it.  He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty" (bold print added).

The print in bold is exactly what I'm talking about.  There is nothing that so certifies the genuineness of a person's faith than his or her patience and endurance of it through the strength of Christ, who enables one to maintain the faith in spite of every discouragement coming from all directions.  Peter is saying that these things happen to us so that the genuineness of our faith may be perfectly evident before all of man.  Christians who fall away are certainly no recommendation and those who start off in the faith strong but don't continue in it disgrace the faith.

Only For A Season
Although these trials happen to us, they are only "for a season."  Please don't get the impression that what I'm teaching is that constant trials are the perpetual condition of the average Christian; that's not what I'm saying at all.  These trials come and go as God sees fit.  First Corinthians 10:13 says, "There hath no temptation take you but such as is common to man:  but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."  God is our loving Father, and He knows exactly how much each of us are able to handle.  If He brought us into it, He can bring us out of it.  If God doesn't bring us into a trying situation but was our own doing, He can still bring us through it.  Do you feel that you're unable to approach prayer like you were once able to?  Have you lost your faith?  Or do you feel that it's been dwindling?  Do not be troubled.  You are in the hand of your Father who loves you.  A glorious period may be coming for you; He may have some unusual blessing for you; He may have some great work for you to do.  So do not be troubled and just keep pressing on; it is only "for a season."

Before I continue, I must again briefly mention that every single suffering we experience is not a result of God's action.  We cause our own suffering most of the time.  A lot of the time we deliberately choose to make unwise decisions that lead to suffering.  The good news is that when something like this happens, we have great words of comfort from Christ Himself:  "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).  Whenever you are weary or burdened with so much stress and suffering, lay yourself down at the foot of the cross and surrender your entire situation to Christ, taking up His yoke and learning from Him, and He shall give you rest.

Wherein Ye Greatly Rejoice
As you experience trials, remind yourself of the things "wherein ye greatly rejoice."  The dilemma is that when these trials come, all we think about are these trials and how miserable we are.  Go back to the third verse of this first chapter in Peter's first letter.  When all you can see are your trials and misery, read this:  "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance and incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith and unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:3-5).  Say to yourself, "I acknowledge that these things are happening to me and seem to be coming from all directions, but I will not give up.  Rather, God is good and I know Christ died for me, I know I belong to God, and I know my inheritance is in Heaven.  I can't see it now but I know it's there.  I know God is preserving it just for me and nobody can ever take that out of His mighty hands, not even the Devil."  Then go on to the ultimate statement in verse seven and say to yourself, "It's coming, and I don't know when, but the day of the Lord is coming, and I will be there.  Therefore, I know that everything that happens to me in this earthly life has the revelation of Jesus Christ as its ultimate objective."  That is what we have to rejoice in.  Remember the promise in Christ and rejoice in that promise.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 4:1-4, "This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.  Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.  But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.  In fact, I do not even judge myself.  For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.  It is the Lord who judges me."  In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes:  "But we cannot apply human logic and justice to the living God.  Yahweh does not conform to his model.  If Israel is unfaithful, God remains faithful against all logic and all limits of justice because He is" (p. 101).  Thank God that He doesn't judge us as we would judge each other.  If any human being were to look at my life and my past and current sins, through human logic they would condemn and sentence me to life imprisonment in Hell (indeed, we all deserve this sentence).  But God the Father looks upon me with bountiful mercy and grace as He sees me covered in the blood of Christ, as He also sees you.  People always say, "God's not fair!"  And they're right.  Thank God that He's not fair because we justly deserve condemnation and punishment in Hell!  If He were fair, He would've just let us rot on this earth with the inevitability of spending eternity in Hell, but against all logic and reasoning and all fairness, He sent His only begotten Son to die for our sins!  Praise the Lord!  It's not logical to us because we don't deserve such a gift, but in spite of all logic God did it anyway!  That is the grace of Jesus Christ, the greatest gift of all.

Looking Forward
Likewise, Peter says that the revelation of Jesus Christ is a great thing we have to look forward to.  On that glorious day, our faith will be made evident.  Our faith that we may think is so little will stand out as something enormous.  At this point it will have stood against all those tests and it is going to minister to the "praise and honour and glory" of Jesus Christ, and Jesus will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things:  enter thou into the joy of the Lord" (Matthew 25:23).  Second Corinthians 5:10 says, "For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."  Along with what we did wrong, there will be a judgement of rewards, and we the faithful shall be rewarded according to our faith and the way it has stood against trials.

You may be in "heaviness" right now through one or several trials and temptations and you may be weeping as you endure them.  But again, it is only "for a season" and after you have suffered through them, they will seem insignificant.  We are promised that the day will come when "the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne... shall lead us unto living foundations of water" and that God Himself "shall wipe away the tears from our eyes" (Revelation 7:17).  Draw upon the strength of God and declare to Him:  "Send what You will.  My only concern is that I may please You in Your sight and accomplish Your will."

References
Manning, Brennan.  The Ragamuffin Gospel.  Sisters, Or.: Multnomah Publishers, 2000.

Facing Trials, Part I

*Edited July 9, 2015*
*Edited August 3, 2015*

"Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:  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" (1 Peter 1:6-7).

This passage is difficult for many Christians to understand because St. Peter is describing a people who are simultaneously rejoicing in Christ's name while being distressed.  One who does not understand Scripture will immediately, or eventually, conclude that this is contradictory.  We call this example (and the Christian life overall) paradoxical, but it is not contradictory.  There exists a superficial view of Christianity that claims that when a person converts to the faith, all the problems he or she had will disappear forever and that they will be happy all the time with a zero percent chance of facing anything troubling or upsetting.  Not only does that sound too good to be true, but it also sounds like an incredibly boring life.  Or that when they do face a trouble, they can easily conquer it.  No, that is a new age do-good religion; that is not New Testament Christianity.  Such people cannot accept this teaching by Peter and thus believe that if any Christian is in this state of "heaviness," distress, or unhappiness, that it is doubtful whether they're Christian at all.  And heretics such as Joel Osteen who preach that God wants all of us to be happy do not help at all.  These false beliefs are not New Testament Christianity.  These are the kinds of thoughts that cults have always offered and also what some modern psychology offers, and unfortunately we can add charismatic Christianity to that list (e.g. the teachings of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer).  One thing we can be very grateful for is the blunt honesty of the Scriptures; they give us the simple truths about ourselves and about our life in this world.  This is exactly why the world hates Christians because whom we live for — Jesus Christ — testifies against the sins of the world and its evil (John 7:7).  In this two-part blog series I will be discussing the necessity of facing trials and why they are necessary.  Also, in this study of theodicy, the reason for bad things happening to us is only applied to people who are Christians, not those whose identity lies outside of Christ and upon the things of the world.  So keep that in mind as you're reading this.

Heaviness
Let's start by examining what Peter means by this "heaviness."  It means to be in grief — that we are troubled.  Christian teachers usually take this passage and teach that it means we have to suffer certain things because of the sinful condition of the world we live in.  That is very true, but it also means that the suffering of these things cause us grief.  Like I said, this paradox given by Peter is hard to fathom for some Christians, but as Christians it is definitely true that we live paradoxical lives.  A perfect example is a list of paradoxes that St. Paul uses to describe the Christian lifestyle:  "We are troubled on every side yet not distressed; we are perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus" (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).  The paradoxical condition of the Christian lifestyle is what makes it so amazing — that we can simultaneously experience a downcast spirit in multiple ways but also be comforted by and rely on the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit.  For, "if we are faithless, He remains faithful — for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).  In a sermon, Reverend John Rathje of the LCMS once said, "God's  promises are based on His faithfulness, not ours."  One may say, "If that's so, then what's the problem?"  The problem is when we fail to maintain the balance and we allow this heaviness, grief, persecution, and distress to overwhelm us and cause us to be in a perpetual state of misery.  Paul is not saying that we don't experience these things and he's not saying we ought to deny those feelings.  We acknowledge those feelings, but we hold on to Christ in spite of those feelings.  He's saying that although we become troubled, Christ can prevent us from being distressed.  Although we become perplexed, Christ does not let us fall into despair.  Although we are persecuted by the world, Christ never forsakes us.  Although we are cast down by our enemies, Christ catches us and prevents us from being destroyed.  Whom or what else can do this for us?  Nothing!  The danger is not that we become temporarily upset by any of these things, but that it becomes a perpetual trouble that we cannot get ourselves out of and that as a result, people scrutinising Christianity will become more conscious of this grieving heaviness than they are of our great rejoicing in Jesus Christ.

We have to remind ourselves that Christians are not immune to the events happening around them.  Christians are still subject to grief and sorrow.  When we go through the Scriptures, there is nothing more encouraging and instructive than observing that the servants of God have been and always will be subject to human frailties.  We see it a lot in the life of St. Paul, perhaps more than anyone else.  Or just read the book of Job.  One of the things that I highly admire about Paul is that he never conceals the troubles he faced or the guilt in his sins.  The glory of the Christian life is that through Jesus Christ, you have the ability to rise above all these negative emotions you experience through trials even though you feel them.  The Christian lifestyle is not an absence of feeling.  The reason why Christians find themselves in "heaviness" and thus the conditions of grief and despair is because of these "manifold temptations."  Other translations says "various trials," which means the same thing.  Manifold means "many coloured."  In this letter that Peter wrote to his audience (read verse one for whom they were), they were all experiencing these manifold trials.  These trials come in different ways and various colours, shapes, and forms; there is no end to the variety.  Many of these Christians were being persecuted, even worse than we currently are in America.  A lot worse.  In 1 Peter 2:11-12 we read:  "I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles:  that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation."  Because the Christian is what he or she is, we are subject to this torment presented from the world.  Because you are a new man or woman — because you are born again, you are inevitably bound to be misunderstood.  You are a pilgrim — a stranger in a strange land.

Paul writes to Timothy:  "In fact, all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Timothy 3:12).  According to the New Testament Scriptures, it is practically a law that the deeper our relationship with Christ develops, the more likely we are to face troubles in this world.  Why?  Examine His character.  He did no evil and there was no guile found on His mouth.  He spent His time healing people, performing other miracles, preaching to the lame and the poor, and socialising with ragamuffins; yet look at the opposition and trials He had to face and endure.  Why?  Because of whom He was.  The world hates Christ and it therefore hates Christians because such holy living condemns it (again, John 7:7).  Peter explains this a little further by writing:  "For there has already been enough time spent in doing the will of the pagans:  carrying on in unrestrained behaviour, evil desires, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and lawless idolatry.  In regard to this, they are surprised that you don't plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation — and they slander you" (1 Peter 4:3-4).

Why Do We Suffer?
Moving on, let's identify what St. Peter means by "manifold trials."  What sort of experiences would classify them as such?  It can be anything in this life that tends to trouble you or haunt you, something that hurts you at the most sensitive and delicate core of your soul, heart, and mind — things that tend to make you miserable.  How do we get past these things?  Well, prayer is one way, but let's examine Peter's instruction, and that is to gain a little understanding of why these things happen to us.  The danger is to just allow these things to happen to us and endure them with groans and whines and complaints and not do anything to discover why these things are happening to us.  Or, we come into the danger of thinking, "Why is God doing this to me?"  However, most of the time it's not to discover "why" these things happen to us, but rather what.  Instead of thinking, "Why me," think instead:  "What can I learn from this?  What does God want to teach me?"  And then how:  "How will this make me grow closer to God?"  In short, other than the sinful condition of the world we live in, that is why we suffer — to learn something from God and to grow closer to Him, and then the why may come later as God works out His progressive revelation in your life.  That's the short answer, but now let's discuss the long answer.

Examining a section of the first letter from Peter again, he writes, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be..."  If need be.  What does he mean by that?  In effect, what he means is, "If it is necessary."  As I said earlier, this statement by Peter is not a general one that in the sinful condition of the world we live in, these things must happen.  Again, it is true, but Peter does not merely leave it at that because it's not that generic.  In essence, he is saying, "You are enduring this grief at the moment because it has proven necessary by God's will that you ought to experience it."  Trials don't just take place because of the whole organisation of the sinful world we live in.  It plays a role, but it's not the sole reason.  Peter is saying that these things happen because they're good for us — they are part of our discipline in this life and this world because God has appointed it.  Rather than moping around and complaining in our distresses, we can use them as an opportunity to draw close to God and rely on His good mercy.  In this way, trials always serve as a good reminder that God is our Sustainer.  From the examples in Scriptures and even our own lives, we know that God always responds when we call out in trouble.  Nothing illustrates this more than the psalms.

This is how we must view the Christian lifestyle:  We are living in this world and walking on our paths under the eye of our Heavenly Father.  You must say to yourself, "There is a very definite plan and purpose for my entire life.  God has examined me and has adopted me into His family."  Why does He do this for us?  So that He may bring us into perfection (which is not acquired in this earthly life).  That is His objective — that you may "be conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29), as Jesus Christ will say, "Here I am with the children God gave Me" (Hebrews 2:13).  If we do not believe and recognise this fundamental conception of ourselves as Christians, then we are bound to go astray and misunderstand these things as God's children as they happen to us.

There are two possible reasons for God to cause a trial to happen to us.  God permits these things to happen to us, but not for the purpose of making us suffer and watching us squirm, as we like to think.  God may at times order these things to happen to us for our own good.  First, He may do it in order to chastise us, which He enacts due to our complacency and for our failure.  In 2 Peter 1:5-7, the apostle writes that Christians are to discipline themselves and to supplement attributes to their faith, not merely to be content with minimal faith but for it to be forever increasing.  There are Christians who do not take heed of this exhortation and instead are indefatigable with their complacency and indolence.  As I understand New Testament doctrine, if we do that we should not be surprised if we start to experience troubles — that God perhaps begins to chastise us by shaking us off of our shiftless butts.  Hebrews 12:6 says, "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."  God does not chastise those who are outside the faith.  He may punish the wicked, but He does not chastise them.  He chastises His children, but He does not punish them.  Chastisement and punishment are not the same thing.  The dictionary defines "chastise" as to "rebuke or reprimand severely."  So, in chastising us, God is simply correcting a wrongful behaviour of ours.  Punishment, however, is an infliction that someone causes upon you in order to pay for an offence you made.  God doesn't work like that towards His children, only to the wicked.  As God's children, He may choose to chastise us for our own good, much like your own earthly father chastising you for your failures and indolence versus other kids' wrongful behaviour.  Those kids don't belong to him because they're in a different family, and such is the same as those outside the faith — they aren't God's children because they belong to the family of Satan.  First John 3:9-10 says, "Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God.  This is how God's children — and the Devil's children — are made evident."  Now, it is very easy to misinterpret and misunderstand this passage.  It's not saying that God's children are incapable of sinning.  This is a great example when people don't read the context around the verse.  Before this, we are told that as children of God, we are able to receive forgiveness through Jesus' death (1 John 1:7) as we confess our sins (1:9).  Christians are "born of God" by the work of His Word, and this makes us able to do "what is right" (3:7).  Basically, because we are children of God, His Spirit gives us the power to choose holiness over sin.  The Devil's children do not get this luxury because they don't know the difference, and/or they have it confused, or they just don't care.  John is not speaking of sinless perfection but of a life imputed with Christ's righteousness.  Anyway, I'm not saying that God's chastisement is inevitable to every Christian and that it's always the case when we face troubles; I'm just saying it's a possibility.

Secondly, God may permit troubles to happen to us in order to prepare us for something.  When God has a particularly great task set for a man or woman to perform, He usually tests them.  So, one may have to pass through a certain trial because of some great task ahead that God has planned for them.  Think of any biblical character that had to endure such a trial — Abraham, Job, Jonah, St. Paul, pretty much every person of faith that we read of in the Scriptures.  Read the list of Paul's sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12 to go through some of his "manifold trials," then come back here...  So, one may have to pass through a certain trial because of some great task ahead that God has planned for them.  At times God will, in His tenderness and mercy, send lesser trials in order to prepare us for something great.  "If need be" — if it is necessary — if God, in looking upon us as our Father, sees that we need to face a certain trial for our own good, He will do so.

In September of 2014, I was under a spiritual attack, unbeknownst to me.  I was beginning to question my direction and call to be a pastor that I was once so certain of for a very long time, and such an occasion is very indicative of a spiritual attack, but I was unaware of that at the time.  I was really doubting my competent ability to being a good, effective pastor.  Come December, after finals for college, I decided to leave the pre-seminary programme I was in.  I told myself that it was because I don't have the right personality to be a pastor (I'm extremely introverted).  That was a lie.  It was a lie I created and forced myself to believe.  Honestly, my personality is only a very small portion of that decision; it's an insecurity I've suffered with my entire life.  During my doubts, I was aware of other fears I had — my fear of failing my congregation and God Himself by exercising poor management skills in managing people (the congregation) and the church's finances.  Those fears are the real reasons that underpropped my decision to leave the pre-seminary.  I recognised those fears, but for some reason I didn't connect those fears to being the real reason for my uncertainty.  SO, the new career path I took was Business Management and Accounting (although now my minor is Human Resources Management because of my passion for helping people).  After many signs God gave me that He's still leading me towards ministry, I came to the liberating realisation that God was using my fears to put me in (seemingly) another direction that inevitably caused me to become confident in the things I feared:  business and financial management.  My change to HR Management is a continuous reminder for my passion in helping people. I can't help but laugh at the fact that I had changed my major and minor to my biggest two insecurities in being a pastor.  So, currently (as of April 2015), I am finishing my business degree and will continue on to the LCMS seminary.  This is a great example of God allowing a trial to happen in order to further prepare me for the great task(s) He has set ahead for me.  God knows what's best for us and what we need to experience in order to get us where He wants us to be.  As our Heavenly Father, He may see the need for trials and prescribe the necessary trial that is destined to make us grow in Him for our own good.

To Be Continued...

What to do When the Workplace Gets Tough, Part II

*Edited July 9, 2015*

The next passage I'm going to cover basically testifies to the prior passage in First Thessalonians discussed in part one of this blog series.  Philippians 2:3-4 says, "Do nothing in rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.  Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others."  We are not to be in rivalry with anyone, including our co-workers — to not make useless competitions with each other.  When management is more concerned about getting their next promotion, it doesn't suit the needs of the branch/department/organisation very well.  Your subordinates will also lose respect for you and end up resenting you.  It's one thing to healthfully compete with someone, but it's something entirely different to create a hostile work environment out of rivalry.  For example, in the Army I would work out with one or several of my buddies to maintain physical fitness for an upcoming PT test and we would healthfully compete to see who could do more push-ups and sit-ups before muscle failure, just for the fun of it.  This healthy competition enabled us to push ourselves harder than we would have if we were working out alone, thus preparing us for the upcoming PT test with better results.  However, if we were to just compete to prove who's better or stronger than the other just to satisfy our masculine egos, that in turn would have created a hostile spirit in the work environment.  This creates conceit, which this passage also says to avoid.  Instead of being conceited in yourself, you have to humble yourself before others, which is to consider their well-being more important than your own.  That does not mean to neglect your own well-being for another's well-being.  Sacrifice your desires for other people's needs, but don't sacrifice your needs for their desires.

By humbling yourself, you can then look out for other peoples' interests instead of solely your own, and the way you can do this is exactly what I discussed with 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15 in the prior blog entry.  There's nothing wrong with considering your own interests, but that's not all you should consider; you should also consider the interests of the employees you manage.  Be considered with their growth in the company and do what's necessary to help them develop professionally by enhancing their skills or training them with new skills.

Dealing with Nuisances
Sometimes when we spend a copious amount of time with our colleagues, they start to become a nuisance — we grow tired of their presence and become irritated.  The key factour to remember here is forgiveness.  Jesus said, "For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.  But if you don't forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing" (Matthew 6:14-15).  This is something that we often don't like to admit.  We don't like to admit that if we don't forgive people and just hold grudges all the time, then God won't forgive us, since He forgives all sins through Christ, after all.  While this is true, it is also true that He will not forgive us if we do not forgive others indefinitely.  That's the problem with the American Church today.  The Bible is not a bag of Trail Mix; you don't get to pick out what you like and leave the rest.  If people don't deserve our forgiveness, then how do we deserve God's?  Well, we don't deserve God's forgiveness, but He forgives us anyway because of His unconditional, merciful love.  In the very same way, we are to forgive others through the love and mercy of Christ.  God doesn't have any reason to be merciful toward us; He just is.  Just because we're not comfortable with this does not mean that we should not accept it and not practise it.  Jesus said this, so we must accept it and practise it.

I made this point in the prior blog entry, but I'm going to say it again:  living like Christ is not a comfortable lifestyle!  So why, then, do we pick and choose what we want to follow in Scripture?  Because we want to live comfortable lifestyle.  We don't want to put ourselves at risk for the sake of Christ, which is absurd considering that He died for us.  In the Old Testament, God was the true and only King of Israel, but then the Israelites rejected God as their King and instead wanted a human king so that they could manipulate the king to do what they wanted, therefore habitually falling into the sins of the other nations that they desired to be like, for the other nations also had human kings (1 Samuel 8).  (But while Israel had human kings, God still remained as the true King of Israel.)  In the very same way, we rejected God's Word as the Word (ὁ λόγος) and instead create our own word just to follow and believe what we wish to follow and believe rather than doing what God calls us to acknowledge and therefore put into practise.  To put it a simpler way:  the Israelites rejected God as their King and demanded their own king in order to follow the ways of the other nations, and today we reject parts of God's Word (or His Word altogether) and demand and create our own word in order to follow the ways of the world.  That is exactly why such controversial issues such as homosexuality exists in the political world today because we reject the Word of God.  God's Word speaks  against it and defines it as sin, but the world accepts its abomination, and because we want to be accepted by the world we therefore create our own word and a flawed sense of morality instead of accepting God's authoritative Word just so we can be accepted by the fleeting world.  We have to make necessary adjustments in our lives that we're not comfortable with.  Forgiveness does not just come down to friends and family; it comes down to the workplace, school campuses, random strangers throughout the day — every single person on this planet.  Just because someone is simply your colleague does not mean you get to exclude them from the grace and forgiveness of God, nor your own.  Forgive  them of their trespasses  even if they don't deserve it because God forgives us even though we never deserve it, and that hostile spirit in the work environment will disappear.

Now, if there's literally just one person in your entire life whom you don't forgive, I don't believe God will leave you unforgiven and just condemn you to Hell for it because He's a merciful God.  He'll still judge you for it, but I don't believe He'll send you to Hell just for that one thing.  The mistake we often make is that we often compare God to our human limitations and ways of life.  We bring God down to our level and imagine how He would judge someone based on our subjective percepetions.  That's actually blasphemy.  Leave God where He is.  We can't imagine God forgiving somebody for something like murder or pedophilia if we ourselves cannot forgive it, but that's not how God functions.  God declares, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways" (Isaiah 55:8).

Moving on, if a colleague trespasses against you several times, you still have to forgive him or her.  Jesus said, "Be on your guard.  If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.  And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and comes back to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive him" (Luke 17:3-4).  As manager, if someone disrespects or disobeys you, rebuke him or her.  To rebuke is to reprove their trespasses, which is to gently correct their action.  (If it's something severe, however, like stealing property from a company or breaking the law in some other way, then deal with it accordingly in a serious and assertive manner.)  After this is done, you must forgive him or her, especially if they apologise.  When they come back with an apology, no matter how many times this happens, we are obligated to forgive them, not consider it as an option.  It is our duty as Christians to forgive, no exceptions, when they come with apologies.  Even if they don't apologise it is still required of us to forgive them, otherwise you'll just end up living your life in the futility of grudges.

First Peter 3:8-9 says, "Now finally, all of you should be likeminded and sympathetic, should love believers, and be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you can inherit a blessing."  Again, there are several principles listed here as well.  It first says to be sympathetic and to love believers, which translates to brotherly-loving.  When someone does wrongly against you, be sympathetic.  It could be stress that caused them to react the way they did or any number of things, so it's important to show them sympathy and understanding because face it, you're no different; and I'm sure you've been in a similar situation before.  But if they're just someone who's difficult to deal with at work and is one of those conceited or rude  people by nature (a.k.a., a "bad apple"), then we are to show them brotherly love, which is the love that Christ showed to us when He humbled Himself as a man.  Bad apples need to either be reformed or terminated.  It's good to try and reform them first, especially if they're a vital asset to the company, but if they refuse to change their attitude or actions, it's best to fire them because studies show that bad apples in a group of people decrease performance from 30-40% (Sutton, 2011).  If termination is the end result, then forgiveness still must follow.  Vengeance, or payback, is unwise and unloving, and that's not how we are to respond to such events as Christians, but on the contrary blessing them, and as a result we will be blessed in return for God's joy, for God calls us to do this.  However, if termination is absolutely necessary.  (One of the principles of managing is "don't be afraid to say no.")  To bless people, just show them sympathy, love, compassion, and humbleness, as Peter says.

Doing all these things eliminates a hostile work environment and creates room for a positive work environment.  By your actions alone, the people you work with can witness the compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, acceptance, and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Acting in Christlike ways is against the flesh, but by practising His ways we can then control our hearts.  And lastly, we must be thankful to God that we can do all this because of our Lord Jesus Christ.

References
Sutton, R. (2011, October 24).  How A Few Bad Apples Ruin Everything.  Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405297203499704576622550325233260

What to do When the Workplace Gets Tough, Part I

*Edited July 9, 2015*

Just like in many other situations, it is not very easy to act Christlike when things get stressful in the workplace.  Having served in the Army, I experienced this far too often, and there were other factours that made it even more difficult to be Christlike in and outside of work.  The battle is maintaining a Christlike attitude in the workplace when work gets busy and stressful and the people become a nuisance.  Everything that I'll be posting in this two-part series can apply to other things in life such as college, family, social situations, whatever the case may be.  Considering the context of this blog entry, I'll be specifically focusing on the workplace with an emphasis on management positions.

Biblical Direction
Fortunately, God's Word gives us direction when this problem arises.  Colossians 3:23-25 says, "Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men, knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord — you serve the Lord Christ.  For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong he has done, and there is no favouritism."  This is simply a reminder to maintain your enthusiasm in Christ in everything you do, and that includes your job.  But that's exactly the problem, isn't it?  It's easier said than done.  Some may find this enthusiasm rather odd, but you're not doing it for man; you're doing it for Christ.  I myself have a difficult time being enthusiastic at work and school every now and then whether it's because I'm too tired or because my spirit is downcast for whatever unfortunate predicament that besets me.  In fact, it was this exact lack of enthusiasm in my calling that caused me to temporarily leave my path to being a pastor.  Of course, God corrected my path.  We remain enthusiastic because we know by faith that God will reward us with the inheritance of His kingdom, for we are servants and co-heirs of Christ.  We don't do this for man because most of the time, man cannot keep a simple promise, but God keeps all of His promises.  We can simply know this just by looking at a rainbow — God's promise to Noah that He would not destroy man by flood again.  God created a new thing called a rainbow just for Noah.  That's pretty amazing.  We also know this not only by our faith, but also through the example of many others such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, etc. (see Hebrews 11).  We ought to remain enthusiastic for the Lord when things get tough because the alternative — doing wrong — will just come back to pit itself against you.  To us, it may not seem wrong for a while, but anything against God's Word is wrong; there is no grey area because there is no partiality with God.  Every time we claim that a grey area exists in the Word of God, it is when we are too indolent to distinguish the black from the white.

Encourage Your Co-Workers
Another method to consider is to encourage others in the workplace.  First Thessalonians 5:12-15 says, "Now we ask you, brothers, to give recognition to those who labour among you and lead you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.  Be at peace among yourselves.  And we exhort you, brothers:  warn those who are lazy, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone.  See to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all."  There are a lot of principles listed here, so we'll approach them one-by-one.  It's important to give recognition, or appraisal, to people in the workplace, especially those in a lower position than you are.  An effective strategy that HR (human resources) personnel use within an organisation is performance appraisal and evaluation.  It is a formal system for evaluating an employee's job performance.  Appraisal results are used in making decisions about who will be promoted (or demoted), transferred (or dismissed), and the amount of raises given to employees.  With this, HR personnel may also utilise what's called the 360º performance appraisal, where every employee is evaluated not just by their supervisor, but also by their peers and subordinates.  This is highly effective because your peers and subordinates know more about what you do than your supervisor does because you may hardly interact with him or her.  This HR system can give some negative feedback about an employee's performance, but when it is positive, it has an enormously positive effect on the individual.  That's just a formal example.  Informally, letting someone know every now and then that they're doing a great job, no matter how small or large of a task it is, will mean a lot to them that someone has noticed their efforts, which will ultimately boost their morale.

It doesn't matter whether they're a janitor or hold an executive position at a company.  Every single job has its place in society and each organisation, no matter how lowly or glorious.  If a job had no purpose, then it simply wouldn't exist.  Would you like to clean all the bathrooms and every room in the building you work in?  Of course you don't; that's why you're not a janitor.  (If you are are janitor, then thank you for what you do for us.)  Therefore, they are necessary, and recognising somebody's labour with such a job, or any job, is a way to shine Christ's kindness upon them and possibly even begin to witness to them.  If that happens, you can then begin to admonish them when necessary, which is to earnestly warn them about something that is not in line with God's Word.  Admonishing is in three basic steps:  a warning, correction, and teaching.  Basically, if you do what Job's three friends did to him (they failed to rebuke him and instead condemned him), you're doing it wrong.  This is out of everybody's comfort zone, but we're not supposed to be comfortable when we live as Christ did.  John the Baptiser was certainly not comfortable.  He was imprisoned in human filth and was beheaded by the order of King Herod because of an absurd promise he made to his wife.  Of course, this doesn't happen to all of us, but the fact remains that living the Christian lifestyle is not always a comfortable one.  It's a difficult life!  Anyone who walks into Christianity expecting it to make their life easier doesn't understand what Christianity is at all.

Be At Peace Among Yourselves, Warn the Lazy
Moving on, the passage goes on to say that we must be at peace amongst each other.  This is a huge topic to discuss, but I won't be getting into that here.  But for reference, Romans 12:14-17 gives us a list of principles on how to live in harmony with one another.  Anyway, Paul writes here that we must warn the lazy and correct them and guide them into diligence.  Proverbs 13:4 says, "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied."  Advise the indolent.  Let them know that they lack what they crave because they're lazy — they don't work hard for it, and only then will they become full satisfied in what they desire.  Hard work pays off because hard work is the only way to pay for success.  You can't succeed if you're lazy.  As manager, "know well the condition of your flock, and pay attention to your herds..." (Proverbs 27:23).  Don't neglect someone from God's grace just because they don't believe; it's just that much more important for them to experience it.  Jesus, after all, came not for the righteous, but for sinners (Luke 5:31).  Thomas Merton once said, "The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners."  And we are all sinners, even the "best" Christian (which is a myth).  I'm not saying to go right up to them and start spouting verses at them or put your hand on their forehead and begin to pray; that's the wrong approach because it'll just make them uncomfortable.  It all begins with your actions, and when they ask questions, then you can bring up God, but don't push it onto them.  Be meek (James 3:13).

Comfort the Discouraged
The next thing the passage says is to comfort the discouraged.  If someone is discouraged at work or just about his or her abilities in general, then recognition and leadership and guidance are of the utmost importance.  If you notice it and do nothing, their work productivity will decrease and they'll end up losing their job.  From a business perspective, this could be good for the business because they'll hire somebody who will efficiently and enthusiastically get the work done, but we're in the business of God here, not man.  The bustiness we work for as managers may be that of man, but every aspect of our lives belongs to God, including our professional vocation.  Therefore, we cannot tolerate discouragement and a lack of self-esteem anywhere, even in the workplace.  All they need is simple encouragement, recognition, and direction; it doesn't have to be formal like the HR strategy explained above.  Let them know that you notice their work and by this recognition, they become encouraged for the simple fact that somebody noticed them.  Give them a reason to believe that what they do makes a difference in the workplace and even peoples' lives.  Give them specific examples of things they do well in their job.  If there are some things that they do poorly and that gives them plausible reasons to be discouraged, then help them get better!  Don't just stand idly by and watch them crumble into disaster.  The antithesis of love is not hatred; it is indifference — it is apathy.  Hatred is simply the absence of love.  Help is the ultimate form of encouragement, and that is exactly what heals their discouragement.  The most diligent and successful organisation is one where its employer takes care of its employees and the employees take care of each other.

Before I continue, as a reminder, when you encourage and help people in the workplace, it would be wise not to go around preaching.  (This is different if you work for a Christian organisation, in which case spiritual encouragement is necessary.)  In a secular business, doing such things will only turn people away from Christianity because they'll find you ignorant of other peoples' beliefs, arrogant of your own beliefs, and forceful on them, even if you're not.  As I said earlier, it begins with your actions.  Just show them the kindness of Christ and love int he way you act and speak and there is the potential that they will individually come to ask you why you do what you do and how you do it, and that's the opportunity where you can say something along the lines of, "Honestly, it's because of the man [or woman] God transformed me to become by His grace alone."  And if they're interested, you can then begin to actually teach them the Word.  Be an opportunist; don't be annoying.

Help the Weak
Now, the next thing is to help the weak, and this varies depending on the situation.  For you men, where a woman is having difficulty lifting heavy materials, be a gentleman and help her.  Also for you men, if a younger and smaller in stature male is having the same difficulty, help him.  Don't be a jerk and just stand there and think to yourself, "Oh he'll get it eventually because he's a man!"  That has the potential to lead to injuries.  Such a situation is exactly what led to my injury when I was in the Army.  One particular morning in 2012, my unit was doing PT (physical training).  We were working on our upper bodies, so we were lifting a lot of heavy objects.  One of the exercises we were doing was lifting a tire that belonged to a 5-ton truck, so you can imagine how heavy that is.  During the exercise, I couldn't quite handle the weight anymore (and yes, throughout the entire exercise I was lifting with my legs).  I told the NCO in charge that I could't lift it anymore due to pain, but he forced me to keep lifting, and that's when my back went SNAP! and I got injured.  The NCOs of that unit at the time learnt a valuable lesson:  young people are not superhuman.  Now I have lumbar spinal stenosis, which has also caused sciatica.  What this means is that I now have a narrow spinal canal and the joints in that part of my spine are really weak.  So weak that it caused a disc to slip and puncture my sciatic nerve, which caused my left leg to be in pain all the time.  Currently, I'm in the late stages where I can't even stand for more than 30 minutes at a time without feeling extreme pain in my back, feet, and left leg.  Also, my sciatic is in the late stages where my left leg will cramp for no reason.  Poor management can lead to injuries.

Help the man or woman with a physical condition that prevents them from doing something that you're clearly capable of, whether they're handicapped or temporarily injured (e.g. broken limb, strained muscle, etc.) or something that's more underlying that you can't see, like my injury.  My condition is something within my body, which causes me to be unable to lift heavy objects and I can't be on my feet for long periods of time.  You can't see this underlying condition, so when my co-workers are aware of it, they are responsible for ensuring that I don't do anything that pushes me beyond my physical limits (especially the supervisor or manager).  For everybody, there are tough jobs that require you to come to work in spite of illness (or simply due to one's own stubbornness), which weakens and tires the body as well as the spirit and stresses the immune system even more, so help someone who is ill at work.  Or, as manager, if someone calls in sick, don't be a jerk and tell them to come in anyway.  They need rest and they could infect other employees.  (If they have a strange pattern of illness, however, I believe it's legitimate to suspect they're lying.)  These are all simple things to do and it's just simple generosity and compassion.  All you have to do is just do it.

Be Patient with Everyone
Next, we have to be patient with everyone.  Again, this is easier said than done.  Patience is very important when it comes to admonishing someone in the workplace, especially if they're discouraged.  Depending on someone's level of discouragement and their psyche, they're not likely to quickly get back on their feet and start working productively and enthusiastically, so it requires a lot of patience.  God is very patient with each and every one of us, so we are likewise to be patient with discouraged colleagues and employees to come around, become encouraged and enthusiastic, and hopefully come to Christ in the end, because love "always hopes" (1 Corinthians 13:7).  We're human and so we like to dwell on our negative emotions, especially when one is discouraged and/or depressed, so it takes a lot of time — some more than others.  This is why patience is so important.

Do not Repay Evil for Evil
Lastly, the passage says to be sure that no one repays evil for evil to anyone.  This is what we call vengeance.  Things happen in the personal lives of employees after work that will often cause enmity in the workplace, whether it's a trial in their personal lives or is caused by interaction with one another after duty hours (or even during), and that's not healthy for the organisation or the human being.  You don't have to be a leader in the workplace to make sure this doesn't happen either (although as manager, you have the most influence).  If employees never looked out for each other, then all hell would break loose.  So look out for your colleagues.  I'm going to repeat what I said earlier:  The most diligent and successful organisation is one where its employer takes care of its employees and the employees take care of each other.  See that no evil spirit enters the workplace.  Evil spirits don't just supernaturally float around as an invisible black orb of smoke and make a man spontaneously go berserk.  It is an insidious time bomb that invests in the human mind, heart, and spirit, so it is vital to keep a watchful eye.  By paying attention to detail and looking out for your colleagues, you pursue "what is good for one another and for all" (v. 15).

To Be Continued...

God Does Not Favour Suicide

Before I begin this harrowing, dark topic of suicide, I'll share some things applicable to us all.  Also, this blog entry is not for condemnation, but to help people and have people understand where the Word of God stands on suicide.  Matthew 11:28-30, "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."  When you carry heavy burdens, give them to Jesus and you will certainly find rest in His peace.  Jesus carried the wages of our sins on the cross; He can certainly carry anything troublesome that we may have.  It is not His duty to have you suffer alone and never recover.  He wants to help each of us with every single tribulation we go through and it begins with our submission to Him and your trust in Him with your life and its inevitable troubles.  Always remember that Jesus is "able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).  As humans, we all have limits, but Jesus has no limits.  There are things that He can do that we do not understand or can ever imagine.  It's no wonder we don't fully fathom God.  There are probably things that we have yet to see from Jesus, such as His second coming (and His first coming and resurrection are hard to imagine as it is, even for us believers).

Depression is the ultimatum of suicidal tendencies, and the root of depression begins with troubles, and it escalates from there.  Second Corinthians 1:3-11:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.  He comforts us in our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For as the sufferings of Christ overflow us, so our comfort overflows through Christ.  If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in the endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.  And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will share in the comfort.  For we don't want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction that took place in the province of Asia: we were completely overwhelmed — beyond our strength — so that we even despaired of life.  However, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.  He has delivered us, we have placed our hope in Him that He will deliver us again.  And you can join in helping with prayer for us, so that thanks may be given by man on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.

Through this tribulation that Paul and his companions faced, they literally wanted to die ("we even despaired of life").  However, realising that they do indeed have a death sentence not by their choice but by God's, they put their hope in God to save them, which He did.  Through their hopes and afflictions they helped others, and Paul encourages Christians to do the same, which some of us do.  Notice I said some, not "many" or "all" of us.  Troubles, or tribulations, are an inevitable part of life.  Complaining about them and doing nothing about it won't make the problem go away.  What can you do about it?  Hope and trust in the Lord and overcome it.  If not, the dilemma will indwell and manifest itself in your thinking patterns, and the forces of Satan will invest in the forthcoming spiritual bankruptcy.  These are trials, and often trials come one after another.  James 1:2-4, Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.  Trials are a necessary act of the will of God so that God will be sure and that you will be sure that you are complete in Him, lacking nothing from Him.  And so we come to grow jealous of other peoples' successes.  Proverbs 14:30, A tranquil heart is life to the body, but jealousy is rottenness to the bones.  When food is rotten it dies and decomposes until it becomes nothing.  In the same manner, jealousy can do the same thing to our spirit.  Depression causes us to be jealous of other peoples' successes — ultimately their success of being happy, and suicide is the breakdown of the matter of our existence into nothingness — both our corpse and our spirit.  You also start to feel shame because we feel guilty of sins, but I tell you, if this ever happens to you, do not hide it.  Proverbs 28:13, The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.  So you see, hiding what you are feeling from God, or your sins, won't do you any good.  You can't hide anything from Him; He is our God in secret who sees in secret (Matthew 6:18).

Ultimately, you begin to feel lonely. What do you do about this?  Psalm 37:4-6, 25-26:  Take delight in the LORD, and He will give you your heart's desires.  Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act, making your righteousness like the dawn, your justice like the noonday...  I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous abandoned or his children begging bread.  He is always generous, always lending, and his children are a blessing.

Stay committed to God, trusting in Him always, and you will find the help that you need.  This is a Davidic psalm, and David lived for 70 years, and for all that he had seen he had never seen the people of God abandoned by Him.  I'm really young at the moment, but many others and I have yet to see God abandon His faithful people.  For more than 5,000 years He has never abandoned a single faithful human being on this planet.  Notice that I say faithful.  If you are unfaithful to Him, do not be surprised if He abandons you because if you abandon Him, He will not be there for you.  People don't understand this because He's such a loving God but He is also our Father, and as our Father He gives us a tough love, so tough it out.  If you remain faithful to the best of your ability, He will be generous and merciful towards you and He will lend you His hand.  The question is if you will take it.  But you have to ask for His hand first.  You're never lonely if you trust in Him.  Take David's troubles as an example and then what he resolved to in Psalm 13:

LORD, how long will You continually forget me?  How long will You hide Your face from me?  How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day?  How long will my enemy dominate me?  Consider me and answer, LORD, my God.  Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death, my enemy will say, "I have triumphed over him," and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.  But I have trusted in Your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in Your deliverance.  I will sing to the LORD because He has treated me generously.

In spite of his depression he trusted in God, and look, he was happy as depicted in verses five and six.  As a man of God, he trusted in Him.  As a musician, he praised His name, and I imagine he played his lyre as well.

You also begin to feel that no one understands.  But take heed in Hebrews 4:14-16, Therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens — Jesus the Son of God — let us hold fast to the confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but One who has been tested in every way as we are, yet without sin.  Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time.  In spite of the immense weakness and insignificance/worthlessness that you may feel, Jesus understands!  He's been there before!  Because He experienced it as well He can relate to and sympathise with every single one of us.  I say again:  Jesus understands!  He gets it!  Be bold and approach Him and give Him time to work with you.  Second Corinthians 12:9, And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness.  Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  This is the attitude we all ought to have, whether you're suicidal or depressed or not; it is humbleness.  The power of Jesus Christ's power is so amazing that you can do everything through Him who gives you strength (Philippians 4:13).

Hebrews 13:5, ...and be content with what you have, for He has said, "I will never eleave you nor forsake you."  When we feel abandoned, Jesus never leaves us nor forsakes us.  Suicide is leaving Jesus!  "Be satisfied with what you have" is what the Apostle Paul teaches us through the Holy Spirit.  Suicide is not being happy or content with what you have.  If it were that easy to be with Jesus, I would seriously commit suicide right now!  I am not kidding.  If it were unquestionably logical that suicidal people automatically go to Heaven, then Christians would commit suicide every day for that very reason.  Christianity would probably be an extinct religion if that were true.  That action would be leaving Him to be with Him; it doesn't make any sense.  Life is sacred, as God says childbirth is a blessing (Psalm 127:3-5).  John 16:21, "When a woman is in labour she has pain because her time has come.  But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world."  This reminds me of when my mother says my siblings and I are a blessing in her life.  How deeply troubled my mother, father, siblings, and close friends would be if I decided to commit suicide!  When you're depressed and/or are having suicidal thoughts, you are being selfish because all you can think about is yourself and and your own predicament and not how it affects others around you but rather how it will solve your problems.  I don't say that in condemnation; it is a sheer psychological fact that depressed and suicidal people are selfish, although they are incognisant of this fact.  As a victim of depression and suicidal thoughts myself, I can certainly testify to this fact because during that predicament all I ever thought about was myself and how my suicide would affect me and not those who love me and care about me.

Utterly nullifying that sanctity of life that God created is practically spitting in His face.  First Corinthians 6:19-20, What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?  For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.  In the Old Testament, a corpse that touched a person would become spiritually defiled, and therefore defiling God's Tabernacle (Numbers 19:13).  The Tabernacle was where God dwelled among the Israelites, so as God's children if they touched a corpse they would not only defile themselves, but especially God.  And now, as Paul describes in the above verse to the Corinthian church, our bodies are literally sanctuaries of the Holy Spirit.  Since this is true, if we kill ourselves and therefore become a corpse, we therefore defile God's Holy Spirit, defiling ourselves and ultimately defiling God.  You are expensive; you are God's valuable item, for He sacrificed His only Son to die for your sins.  What a waste that sacrifice would be if you were to commit suicide.  Do you honestly think you'd be glorifying God with your body if you destroyed it through suicide?  God is our Father, and like any earthly father whose son or daughter commits suicide, He weeps.

Jesus does not want you to die and remain in that state forever.  John 10:10, "A thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance."  Suicide is denying His life and purpose for you.  The Devil himself tempted Jesus to commit suicide.  Luke 4:9-13, So he took Him to Jerusalem, had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down here.  For it is written:  'He will give His angels orders concerning you, to protect you, and they will support you with their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' "  And Jesus answered, "It is said:  'Do not test the Lord your God.' "  After the Devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him for a time.  Satan tempted Jesus that if He truly is the Son of God, then he should risk taking His own life into His own hands because God will protect Him according to His Word, but how did Jesus respond?  He quoted God's Word, refuting Satan's intentions, proving his misinterpretations wrong.  And Satan ran!  This is exactly how we are to drive the Devil away (James 4:7).  Likewise, do not test God by committing suicide with the thought that you'll go immediately to Heaven; that's now how the faith works.

That being said, do I believe successful suicidal people go to Hell?  After thoroughly studying the Scriptures, I can honestly say that I do, as morbid as it is.  My evidence is as explained earlier in I Corinthians 6:19-20 and Numbers 19:13.  It is silly to think that they go straight to Heaven because as I just explained, committing suicide is not an immediate way to Heaven because that's not how our faith functions.  As I understand New Testament doctrine, the faith that brings us to Heaven is something that we have to work at.  Faith is a work ethic that you build up for your entire life, not something that you just receive when you believe in Christ.  Now, the next couple verses I will be giving can be used to explain why suicidal people go to Hell.  But if you take the texts literally, which we all should, you will find that nowhere in these passages does it say they go to Hell indefinitely.  Although I believe successful suicidal people go to Hell, these verses I will be giving are not evidence for that, which Christians use as evidence.  You can certainly say that they imply the possibility, but you cannot say it proves it indefinitely.  I will be listing each passage and explaining them in their literal terms.  Let's first look at Judas and examine what the Apostle Peter said about him:

"Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled that the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David spoke in advance about Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.  For he was one of our number and was allotted a share in the ministry."  Now this man acquired a field with his unrighteous wages; and falling headfirst, he burst open in the middle, and all his insides spilled out.  This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that in their own language that field is called Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood (Acts 1:16-19).

The way Judas' death is written about is basically saying that he died a shameful death.  So shameful to the point that they named the field he committed suicide in after his traitorous deed.  His death is portrayed as shameful, not condemning.  When someone commits suicide, nobody ever thinks how honourable that was; they think of how sad, unfortunate, wasteful, and unnecessary it was.  If that weren't so, then people wouldn't try to talk suicidal people out of their suicidal thoughts.  It's only stupid to think that suicide is a one-way ticket to Heaven.  Now, Judas was a disciple of Christ — he was "one of our number and was allotted a share in this ministry"; he was one of us.  However, he "enacted unrighteous wages" by allowing money to tempt him to betray Jesus, eventually causing his unrighteous and shameful suicide.  Like Judas, people who commit suicide are not with Jesus.  As described earlier in this blog entry, Jesus wants us to put our burdens on Him, but suicidal people don't do that and by not coming to our Lord in time of need, how are they with Him?  I'm not preaching this to condemn and judge any suicidal person.  Many others and I, and most importantly Jesus Christ Himself, want to help suicidal people.  If you failed an attempted suicide or you have thoughts of suicide and you're reading this, do not be so anxious about this failure to God.  Second Timothy 2:13, ...if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.  It's that simple; God will take care of you should you come to Him.  So we can see that in this passage, Judas' suicide is described as shameful and unrighteous, and we can automatically assume that he did not receive a one-way ticket to Heaven (not because of who he was, but because of his suicide), but we cannot assume that he received a one-way ticket to Hell either because nowhere in this passage does it say that.  You can argue that it alluded to it because of his "unrighteous wages," but that's an implication that we come up with on our own, not something that happened indefinitely.

Another verse that people use to condemn suicidal people to Hell is Revelation 9:6:  In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.  From this verse alone we cannot say indefinitely that this means people during this time will commit suicide because of their misery.  It is not known how God will prevent the death wish of so many people from being carried out, but He is God; He can do anything.  This will happen at the sound of the fifth trumpet (9:1) and locusts will harm only people who do not have God's seal on their foreheads (9:4).  (Now, these are the new believers after Christ raptures His Church.  There will come a time when these new believers will have God's seal on their foreheads as opposed to the mark of the beast.)  The locusts will not kill the unfaithful; they'll only torment them for five months (9:5).  Like any other immensely tortured human being, people will want to die and will probably try killing themselves because they'll think death will stop the pain, but during this time it will be ineffective every single time (9:6).  Because where we see that death wishes and self-inflicted death will not bring you to God since He prevents that death from happening, which would defeat the whole purpose of punishing the left over sinners.

Even in this passage we do not see an indefinite condemnation to Hell for those who commit suicide.  You can say that that is so for these specific people during this time of the fifth trumpet since they are the left over sinners suffering God's wrath and are going to Hell anyway, but you cannot say that indefinitely for all the others before this time, which is now.  But you can still make the argument that it is the same for suicidal people before this time, but you can't prove it.  We can only speculate.  I would like to believe that suicidal people go to Heaven, but I fail to see that as a one-way ticket to Heaven because of the sanctity of life depicted in Scripture, especially since a larger number of unbelievers commit suicide than believers do.  It goes against Christian doctrine that an unbeliever who does not choose God would go to Heaven after committing suicide.  As far as a believer who has once submitted themselves to Christ and committing suicide at one point, I honestly cannot say whether they go to Heaven or not, and neither can anyone else.  There are two simple sides of the argument here.  You can argue that because they were a born again, baptised Christian, nothing can separate them from the love of Christ (Romans 8:34-39) and therefore go to Heaven.  This is very true, but my argument against this is that if Christians still go to Heaven after committing suicide then I would seriously commit suicide right now so I wouldn't have to live in this terrible world any longer; and there would probably be mass suicides in Christendom if this were indubitably true.  And if I committed suicide, the work that God has set before me to do His will on this planet will be incomplete, dishonouring His will and His image in multiple ways.  And to support my argument I again use I Corinthians 6:19-20 and Numbers 19:13.  In the Old Testament, if somebody touched a corpse, therefore defiling himself and does not purify himself, he would literally "be cut off from Israel" — separated from God.  As I Corinthians 6:19-20 explains, our bodies are the literal temple of the Holy Spirit, and as I explained earlier committing suicide and becoming a corpse is defiling yourself and God, therefore separating you from God with no chance of purifying yourself from it, because you'd be dead.  The other argument is just the opposite — that because they committed suicide they have chosen to not be in Christ and therefore suffer an automatic condemnation to Hell, which is obviously the side that I have struggled to come to, and you have my evidence.

However, those who have attempted suicide and are still alive, they are not condemned to Hell.  They need our help and especially the love of Christ.  Like any other sin, we have I John 1:9 to cling to:  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  I want to end this with Hebrews 12:15:  See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness springs up, causing trouble and by it, defiling many.

Self-Discipline As A Christian Soldier, Part III: Control Your Attitude

Moral Impurity
A type of moral impurity is sexual impurity, which Jesus describes its severity in Matthew 5:27-28.  I explained this in an earlier blog entry, and it would behoove you to contemplate this even further.  Romans 1:24, Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.  If you are sexually impure you will face God's wrath.  However, through baptism (sanctification) and repentance, you are saved and justified.  First Corinthians 6:9, 11:  Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit God's kingdom?  Do not be deceived: no sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals... will inherit God's kingdom.  Some of you were like this; but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.  Verse eleven is extremely important!  When people preach against homosexuality, for instance, they always leave out verse eleven.  In this letter to the church of Corinth, as a leader of the church Paul recognised that there were people in the church who were suffering with all these things.  He reminded them that they were washed and sanctified and justified in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God (baptism) and that because of this, all these sins he listed are not fit for their faith!  They're not natural and they must be eliminated!  I want to urge you yet again with the repentance and renouncing of your sins, especially any of these, in Proverbs 28:13 and I John 1:9.

You must repent in order to be saved.  Let's look at Jezebel as an example in Revelation 2:20-22:  "Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess.  By her teaching she misleads My servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrifices to idols.  I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.  So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways."

In Revelation, Jezebel is not a literal person but she represents a church, maybe even a cult.  In the Old Testament, the actual woman named Jezebel married Ahab king of Israel and they both began to worship Baal (I Kings 16:31).  Because of the influence that Jezebel had on Ahab, they spread cult worship of the pagan god Baal throughout the northern king of Israel.  Jezebel (the church) dominated Ahab (the state) and thus controlled it (I Kings 21:25).  The result of this apostasy was a drought for three and a half years (II Kings 9:22).  She persecuted the faithful people of God (I Kings 18:3-4; 19:1-2).  She encouraged fornication — sex outside of marriage (Revelation 2:20).  However, the ultimate end of this false prophetess was and is death, both literally and figuratively, meaning her past existence and people who practise what she stood for (II Kings 9:36-37; Revelation 2:22-23).  Now, her influence still exists today, and Jesus gives us warnings of the ultimate outcomes of those who practise her teachings.  Those who practise her cult teachings will not be saved at the Judgement, for she has not repented (and refused to).  When Scripture says "she" in Revelation, it's including all those who practise her ways; it's not speaking of the woman herself.  We learn something else from this.  If you're a Christian who's sexually impure and have not repented, you may not be saved because Jezebel taught fornication — which, translated in Greek from the word ekporneuo, means "giving one's self to fornication" and can also be translated as "pornography."  So, if you're a Christian and are rather promiscuous and sexually impure without forgiveness, you are a hypocrite, for your actions are not examples of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If you're Christian and you're sexually impure and have not repented, you might want to do something about that.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."  People always misinterpret a "pure heart" as never committing a sin.  They're terribly mistaken.  Their interpretation is that of perfection, but purity is not perfection.  How I interpret a pure heart is one who seeks to be pure sexually and morally — as free as they can get from gossip, slander, malice, quick temperance, strife, promiscuity, sexual immorality, idolatry, hatred, selfish ambitions, envy, drunkenness, and dissension.  How can one achieve this?  Use Romans 13:11-14 as an inspiration:  Besides this, knowing the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.  The night is nearly over, and the daylight is near, so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light.  Let us walk with decency, as in the daylight: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to satisfy the fleshly desires.

Here is Paul's aspiration for us:  Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord:  You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their thoughts.  They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.  They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practise of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more (Ephesians 4:17-19).

If you don't want to be like everyone else around you, aspire to not walk in the ignorance and lustful desires they all walk in.  First peter 4:1-4, Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same resolve — because the One who suffered in the flesh has finished with sin — in order to live the remaining time in the flesh, no longer for human desires, but for God's will.  For there has already been enough time spent in doing the will of the pagans: carrying on in unrestrained behaviour, evil desires, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and lawless idolatry.  In regard to this, they are surprised that you don't plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation — and they slander you.

Verse four describes that when you're very self-disciplined in sexual manners and other moral purities, people insult you because they're astounded by your extreme self-discipline (and because it's not the norm of the world).  In my own life, when my peers who aren't in the faith find out that I'm waiting until marriage to have sex for spiritual reasons, they're astounded and call me crazy, stupid, and even worse accusations; but it doesn't bother me.  They're even more surprised since I've already committed premarital sex.  However, I quickly realised my fault and repented and committed myself to that repentance, so I know that God has forgiven me and I will not burn in the fiery depths of Hell.

Sanctify yourself!  Acts 2:38, "Repent," Peter said to them, "and be baptised, each of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."  Titus 3:4-7, But when the goodness and love for man appeared from God our Saviour, he saved us — not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.  This Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that having been justified by His grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

Dissension
Remember when I said to remember this word in the last blog entry?  Dissension is possessing an argumentative attitude.  First Timothy 6:4-5 explains in great detail a person with dissension:  ...he is conceited, understanding nothing, but having a sick interest in disputes and arguments over words.  From these come envy, quarreling, slanders, evil suspicions, and constant disagreement among men whose minds are depraved and deprived of the truth, who imagine that godliness is a way to material gain.

This is how Paul describes one who does not teach the Gospel — ultimately people who oppose Christianity and seek dissension amongst the members of the body of Christ, and those who practise and preach false doctrines.  Here are Paul's words on being a successful servant of Christ:  And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil... (II Timothy 2:24).  We Christians are not to fight amongst ourselves, for we are selfless servants.

Second Timothy 3:16-17, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.