Miserable for the Right Reason

I started reading Spiritual Depression by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones today, a collection of his sermons preached on causes and cures of depression from a biblical perspective.  He has a lot of good insight on a tricky topic.  One thing I read today that I found especially relevant and wise is this:  "You must be made miserable before you can know true Christian joy.  Indeed the real trouble with the miserable Christian is that he has never been truly made miserable because of conviction of sin.  He has by-passed the essential preliminary to joy, he has been assuming something that he has no right to assume." (Spiritual Depression, Lloyd-Jones, pg. 28)  So true.

It is safe to say that everyone in their lives will face degrees of misery over seasons of their lives.  Some might be due to a troubling event or a physical illness.  This misery can range from an itchy sunburn to the death of a loved one, a breakup or even losing a valued possession.  Misery can be fleeting or chronic.  Everyone faces obstacles and difficulties which could potentially bring much misery to our lives.  Yet there is also misery of a spiritual kind:  a conviction of sin and the unbearable weight of condemnation.  For much of my childhood I had a belief in God.  Though I had faith in the Word of God and the power of Jesus Christ to save, even into my early adulthood I found myself powerless over several sins which kept me bound.  It was not until I became miserable in my sin and was broken because of my terrible offense before God that I found deliverance through repentance.  Misery was the path to reconciliation before God and empowerment by the Holy Spirit.

It is a rare thing today, to see people miserable because of their great sin before God.  There is no shortage, however, of miserable people!  Most people are miserable because their prime focus is on themselves.  Their eyes are blinded by unbelief.  They are disappointed and frustrated with the circumstances and the people in their lives.  They lust and covet and cannot obtain.  They are miserable due to sin, but they cannot see it.  In their eyes, they are miserable because their desires remain unfulfilled.  Only God and the conviction brought through His Word can open our eyes to this truth personally.  Those who have been most miserable in their sin are the least likely to return to that vomit.  They also seem to be among those greatly used by God in His service.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones speaks of miserable Christians:  "They are in the realm of the Church, and very interested in Christian things; and yet when you compare them with the New Testament description of the new man in Christ you see at once that there is a great difference.  Indeed they themselves see that, and this is often the main cause of their depression and their unhappiness...They take up Christians biographies and read the lives of various saints who have adorned the life of the Christian Church, and they admit at once that they are not like them...They read books which are meant to give instruction about the Christian way of life, they attend meetings and conferences, always seeking this something which they do not find.  And they are cast down, their souls are cast down and disquieted within them." (Spiritual Depression, pages 24-25) Lloyd-Jones observed that people who feel this way often have never felt themselves to be sinners.  They know they are sinners in an almost theoretical sense, but have not felt it in a personal way.  They have never been buried under the weight of conviction and guilt and felt they would die unless they were somehow relieved.

That is where the Gospel of justification by faith in Christ comes into play.  I believe we can make the mistake of offering the peace and consolation of the scriptures to the selfish and unrepentant.  We make a great error to rush them to the cross for salvation before they had been brought to absolute misery by their sins.  They cannot appreciate the love, grace, and sacrifice Christ has made for them.  Somehow they feel they deserve such love.  Praise the LORD it is not my job to make someone feel guilty!  We are called to speak the Word in love, and the Holy Spirit will open the eyes of the blind.  He is the One who convicts and judges in righteousness.  Unless a man is under conviction, he cannot repent.  And when a man is without repentance, salvation through faith will elude him.  That is why God gave us the truth of His Word and the Holy Spirit to convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment along with our conscience.  After we have been freed from the miserable weight of guilt through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, we have fulness of joy.  Miserable circumstances will come and go, yet we are more than overcomers through Christ.

Why is There Sickness?

Days after returning from Cambodia, I am now in my second full day of being the guest speaker at Camp Kedron, a holiday camp for primary students years 3 to 6 with a strong Christian emphasis.  Today the kids and leaders have gone on an excursion to a local beach, and it is the perfect opportunity to catch up with email and prepare future messages.  It has already been a huge blessing and a lot of fun.  The leaders and directors put in so much effort with amazing activities and seek to make every kid feel included.

One of my favourite times has been the discussion groups after main sessions.  During those times each cabin groups meets together and everyone is invited to talk about the session, God, or about life in general.  I sneak in like a "fly-on-the-wall" to take in the discussion and contribute if appropriate.  There have been many excellent, honest questions among the smattering of chaff.  God has placed an incredible, almost insatiable desire in the human heart and mind to discover and learn.  These kids are hungry for answers to questions that even aged people long to look into.

A compelling question was asked yesterday:  "Why does God allow disease or cancer?  Why does God let people die?"  During my trip to Cambodia, I saw many cases of sickness, conditions requiring surgery for correction, or advanced tooth decay.  Two boys in different villages came seeking medical care who had abdominal hernias.  Fixing a hernia through surgery is relatively simple, but these little kids had no access to surgeons.  They lived far away from hospitals and likely did not have the cash to pay for surgery.  It is a real possibility they will live with this condition for many years to come.  It was no doubt hard for the doctors in our clinics to send away desperate children who have conditions beyond our power to fix.  The good thing is that God is not limited in awareness or ability like people are.  It took me going to Cambodia to for me to meet two little boys who had hernias, but God already knew.  He also knows about the millions of children throughout the globe who carry with them pains, cancers, and life-threatening conditions.  Glory to God that He has the power to heal too!

The answer to this difficult question is found in the scripture.  When we see sickness, sorrow, pain, cancers, and death on earth, it is the fruit of the curse of sin.  God created the earth to be perfect and made Adam without sin.  Yet Adam deliberately chose to rebel from God in disobedience.  Romans 5:12 tells us that by one man sin entered the world, and death through sin.  Sin and death therefore have passed to all men.  All sickness, sorrow, and disease - all the things that lead to death and ultimately separation from God - is all a result of sin.  Sin not only kills the body but the soul in hell.  In God's wisdom He has seen fit to allow the side-effects of sin to remain so we might personally recognise our need for salvation.  Even those who have been born again through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ still experience the effects of sin in our flesh.  All sickness, disease, sorrow, and pain is just a foretaste of the dregs of the damnable curse under which we operate in the flesh.  C.S. Lewis is credited with saying, "Pain is God's megaphone," and there are few things which better bring us to our senses.  When we see people sick or face illness ourselves, it affirms the Bible's claim that sin and death have passed to all men.  If we ask, "Why does God allow sickness and death?" we must also ask, "Why does God allow people to live?"  It is all of love and grace, and sometimes in a clever disguise.  Only by faith in God according to knowledge through the scriptures do we find answers which satisfy our souls.

The day is coming when God will make all things right.  We read in Revelation 21:3-5:  "And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. [4] And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:  for the former things are passed away.  [5] And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.  And He said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful."  In Christ we find the only means of life, healing, and salvation.  I don't know about you, but I look forward to this day of which God speaks:  a day when all things will be made new.  No more crying, no more death, no more sorrow, no more hernias, poverty, shame, and pain.  Worship the One who makes all things new! 

S21 - Tuol Sleng

Below are excerpts from a journal entry I wrote the evening after touring the notorious S21 in Phnom Penh, a school the Khmer Rouge turned into a facility of torture and imprisonment.

Cambodia:  a nation which still lies under the shadow of brutal, systematic torture and murder of her own children.  As I saw hundreds of faces photographed during their imprisonment in S21, one cannot help but be haunted by their vacant, expressionless, almost soulless faces.  The only thing is, their souls were still there.  Their eyes had beheld tortures no created being should see or imagine.  They were unfeeling eyes, detached.  Their ears had heard the screams of the tortured and the dying.  The mind had ample time to play, making every waking moment an exercise in psychological torture and oppression.  When it was inevitably your turn - when it was happening to you - it made even less sense.  Tears were punishable by more pain.

What of the killing fields?  What of the macabre keepsakes of torture, the photographs, the artistic renderings?  Is there a place in this world for them?  Should we instead build picturesque pools for reflection, wiping away the hideous memories?  What of the piles of bones, skulls, and stories recounted in S21?  Cambodia has done well to encapsulate and preserve the incredible brutality of the regime.  The horror, raving madness, carnage and loss should be remembered in graphic terms.  No sanitised art, lilting song, or poetry could be this compelling:  raw, graphic, hell.

Sin constructs hell in the human heart, a raging monster revealed in mad violence.  The killing fields cannot be undone, nor should they be memorialised with songs, smiles, and the release of doves.  Weeping is the only appropriate response.  And if you cannot weep it begs the question:  why not?  These deaths count for something good when we say with conviction, never again!  No more will there be hurt, fear, and killing within our walls - only healing, peace, and joy through Jesus Christ.  We will never forget Pol Pot was a wicked man, but he had a lot of help to initiate and pursue his heinous, demonic, and ruthless ideologies.  There seems to be no shortage of men on earth to willingly do the devil's work:  to steal, kill, and destroy.

There will always be a Pol Pot until Christ binds and throws him into hell.  His name is Satan.  Instead of acquiescing, I will stand and fight against him in the powerful name and authority of Jesus Christ.  He has done worse than any man, though he brutally uses all men who wander from God.  In Christ alone our hope is found and rests!

No Looking Back

"And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶ But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them."

Hebrews 11:15-16

Abraham was a man God called out of his own country as he walked by faith, not by sight.  He had no problems with giving Lot first choice of the land.  While Lot lifted and fixed his eyes upon the lush greenery towards Sodom, Abraham only looked to God for security, provision, and life.  Abraham did not continually remind himself of the country God brought him out of.  Should he have done so, the writer of Hebrews tells us he would have had opportunity to return.  But Abraham desired more than land:  he longed for the presence of God in a heavenly country,

As I was growing up, one of the songs I remember often sung at baptisms goes, "I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back, no turning back."  The writer of Hebrews in the next chapter clearly states where our eyes ought to be focused.  Hebrews 12:1-2 reads, "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."  I am typically mindful of whatever I set before my eyes.  If my eyes are watching a football game, my mind is also involved in thinking about it.  Where the eyes go, the mind follows.  It is for this reason we are to lay aside every hindrance, repent of all sin, and then look to Christ alone as our example and King.

Throughout scripture the correlation between eyes and the mind is clear.  Should Abraham have looked back with longing to his home city, it showed some of his heart remained there.  When Lot and his family escaped from Sodom, they were told not to look back upon the destruction of the city.  Genesis 19:26 tells us, "But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt."  Looking back cost Lot's wife her life.  Jesus says in Luke 9:62, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."  A man who looks back cannot plow straight.  His eyes are to be focused straight ahead, on his present task.  God may not have called you out of your country, but He has certainly called you out of your old life.  If we find ourselves looking back to the old life with longing or deep regret we will not advance or mature in our walk with Christ.  That is why Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-14, "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, ¹⁴ I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  Paul refused to allow past apparent successes or failures distract him from pressing forward in the call God had upon his life.

Instead of wallowing in thoughts of the past or becoming lost in the future, let us fix our eyes, minds, and hearts upon Jesus Christ.  If we will be fit for heaven, we must put our hand to the plow without looking back.  As the old song says, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus.  Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."