I was pretty sure I was ready for that first day of basketball practice as a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. After all, I had been recruited to play there, and I had arrived in Annapolis in fairly good shape. I had even survived the torments of “plebe summer,” that six-week Navy version of boot camp that made the new guys (yes, it was all guys in those days) run, swim, march, and do calisthenics for hours on end. In what little free time we had, I played a few pick-up games with some of the better plebe players and knew I could compete at their level.
I had met Head Coach John Mahoney only once, however. We walked into Academy Fieldhouse that October afternoon, suited up, and started shooting around. I felt comfortable with the other guys. This was all familiar territory for me. I wanted to get into a scrimmage of some kind so I, a six-foot guard, could let the coaches see my ball-handling skills and outside jump shot. I looked forward to making a clever pass to a teammate for an easy lay-up, or maybe being able to “shake-and-bake” my opponent.
“Okay, guys, that's it!” Coach Mahoney called out. “Come on over.” And then he added, “Team managers, collect all the balls and get them out of here.”
What? We Middies looked at each other in confusion as a dozen or more balls were gathered up and carted out the door. What in the world was going on? How were we supposed to become a basketball team with no basketballs?
“I know you guys want to get out there and show me how you can dribble and pass and score,” the coach said. “That's what you came for. But as far as I'm concerned, being in top physical shape is the very foundation of a great season. Here's what we're going to do….”
For the rest of that day's practice we did nothing but defensive drills that didn't require a ball. Down in a crouch, we slid to our left, then right, then left, then right till our thighs burned. We did “suicide drills,” where you start on the end line of the court, race to the free-throw line, then back again, then to the center court line, then back again, then to the opposite end, then back again … over and over and over, until you start thinking suicide wouldn't be such a bad option after all. The coach ran us absolutely ragged. We thought we were already in shape from plebe summer. We quickly found out that he was taking us to a whole different level.
We all limped off the court that day. Heading back into the locker room, I saw a large sign with the now-famous Vince Lombardi quote, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” I wouldn't admit to being a coward, but I was definitely fatigued that afternoon. By the next morning, I had never known my muscles to hurt so much. Whether Coach Mahoney knew what he was doing was still an open question in my mind.
When You Don't Understand
That certainly wasn't the only time in my life I have been perplexed by a situation that didn't go the way I thought it would—or should. Far beyond the field of athletics, I have faced many a moment over the years that has made me say, to use the current vernacular, “What's up with this? I don't get it.”
I suspect you have had these moments in your life as well. In the spiritual realm, God is sometimes harder to figure out than Coach Mahoney. We know God is sovereign and fully in control. We know “the LORD makes firm the steps of those who delight in him” (Ps. 37:23). But what's this latest surprise all about, anyway? When negative things happen to us, when our expectations are left twisting in the wind, when we are crunched by pressures we don't understand, we naturally want to tell God, “This doesn't make sense. I've put my faith in Jesus Christ; I am a child of the King. So why is all this happening? God, what are you doing?”
In his farewell speech to the people of Israel, Joshua brought up just such an occasion. He began by reviewing Israel's national heritage:
“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his family went down to Egypt’” (Josh. 24:2–4).
What is that last half-sentence all about? The rest makes sense: the call of Abraham to serve God alone and to migrate to this bountiful land of Canaan, the blessing of a son named Isaac, then more generations and growth … all this is familiar Bible history. But of Isaac's twin sons, Jacob was the chosen one. It was through him, not his brother Esau, that the promised blessing of abundant descendants in a special land would continue. If that promise was true, why did Esau get the hill country of Seir while Jacob and his family got ticketed for Egypt—away from the Promised Land?
Granted, the high terrain of Seir (southwest Jordan on modern maps) was not as lush as the plains, but it had its advantages. For one thing, it was a lot easier to defend. It was definitely a better deal than having to go down to Egypt, where slavery awaited Jacob's family after some years had passed. So why did his family get the short end of the stick?
The Bible tells us that God's ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts like ours (see Isa. 55:8–9). As high as the heavens are above the earth, so far are God's thoughts and purposes beyond our comprehension. We have to keep reminding ourselves of this when things don't make sense on the surface.
And sometimes they don't make sense.
A faithful young couple in our church decides to start a family. They are thrilled to find out a child is on the way. Then a month later, the husband gets laid off from his job. Months go by, and he is unable to find work, even though he and his wife pray constantly for employment. What's up with this, God?
In my book Fresh Faith I tell the story of Vincent and Daphne Rodriguez, who adopted a baby girl addicted to crack cocaine. The baby's young birth mother was a working prostitute. This family knew they would have many a sleepless night due to the baby's withdrawal symptoms. But they didn't expect to find later that the baby also had hepatitis C—
and learning disabilities.1 They thought they had done something right and good for this child, the kind of thing God wanted to happen. Why did it turn out to be so hard?
Take courage: The mystifying things that happen in all our lives have several benefits we usually don't see at first.
Unseen Benefit 1:
Hardships Produce Iron in the Soul
The first benefit is that these experiences cause new kinds of growth. The Bible tells us that as times got tougher and tougher for the family of Jacob down in Egypt, “the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread” (Exod. 1:12). Their population increased to the point that the Pharaoh got worried. He attempted to clamp down on them by ordering the mass murder of all male newborns. It didn't work, of course.
Instead, this adversity produced tenacity and endurance. The Israelites expressed their hope for the future by having more children (one of whom turned out to be the remarkable Moses). They refused to buckle under pressure. Hardship in Egypt produced iron in the soul of this nation.
The idea that hardship produces benefits is difficult for us to appreciate today, surrounded as we are by a culture that shuns any kind of pain, no matter the gain. The goal of most people is ease, comfort, and self-gratification. People find it unreasonable to think that challenges and struggles might be a regular part of God's plan for their lives.
This misunderstanding of God's way is exacerbated by too many television preachers. The airwaves are filled with success formulas (supposedly based on the Bible) that actually pervert God's goal for his people. God predestined us “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29), not to be the richest, best-dressed, most comfortable folks on the planet. Solomon and some of the other kings of Israel enjoyed incredible material blessings, yet God sent more than a few prophets to rebuke these men for spiritual and moral bankruptcy. This vital distinction isn't highlighted much in the message of “success”-oriented ministries.
The Bible makes it clear that most believers in the early church experienced nothing that could be described as success. The book of Acts tells how the first Christians were persecuted and chased all over the Mediterranean world. Some of them were killed because of their beliefs. When they faced difficult times, no one stood up and said, “What's wrong with you people? Don't you have enough faith? Just rebuke the devil. Nobody has to die! Stephen's death was unnecessary. He should have just ‘confessed’ he would live a long, comfortable life. In fact, since God's plan is for everyone to prosper, you all should be living in the biggest houses in Jerusalem. Why are the unbelievers living there? Start claiming those houses and taking them over. Those ungodly people don't deserve them, but we do.”
I hope the foolishness of this way of thinking is obvious to you. Paul wrote to one church in a city where he had lasted only three weeks before getting chased out by a mob, “No one [should] be unsettled by these trials. You know quite well that we are destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know” (1 Thess. 3:3–4).
Despite the Bible's clear teaching on this issue, many believers still fall prey to “success” theology. As a result, sincere, Bible-based pastors around the nation are forced to deal with the fallout of this distorted teaching. People come to us confused and frustrated, saying they have followed the formulas but somehow have not gotten the payoffs that were advertised. They sometimes end up questioning their relationship with God and whether the Bible is actually true. “I've been doing what I'm supposed to do,” they say, “but God isn't holding up his end of the bargain.” Or else they condemn themselves: “There must be something wrong with me. I guess I don't have enough faith.”
I want to state clearly that Satan does attack God's people in a variety of areas, including health and finances—and when this happens, we must stand boldly on the Word of God, resisting the devil to make him flee from us. But to conclude that problems and hardship are automatically a sign of Satan's harassment in our lives is too simplistic and unbiblical an explanation. We need a knowledge of God's Word and the discernment of the Holy Spirit to know what is really going on. In fact, I am convinced that more often than not, tough times in the lives of faithful believers are indicators that God is preparing them for something special down the road.
Jesus himself told those who followed him that the life of faith would not be easy. His summary line at the Last Supper, just before heading out the door to Gethsemane and the Cross, was “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). He didn't promise his disciples a smooth road. Of course, he went on to declare in that moment, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” When we put the two statements together, we realize that Jesus was saying that God will accomplish his purposes, regardless of the disappointments and bumps that life brings our way.
Trials are part of the Christian territory. God shows us how to avoid some of them, but he walks through others right alongside of us, just as he walked with the Israelites through their time of Egyptian slavery. In many places around the world today, believers understand this exactly—better than we North Americans do. Think of all the brave Christians in Muslim countries who face daily threats of personal harm as well as destruction of their places of worship. The feel-good gospel from North America makes no sense to these faithful Christians, some of whom have to trust God just for enough food to make it through the week.
The mature response to tough times is to affirm, by faith, that God has a purpose in everything he does or allows, even though that purpose might not be clear. Romans 5 has the audacity to ask us to “glory in our sufferings” (seriously!), “because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (vv. 3–5). It is obvious that God's interest is in spiritual growth more than material possessions.
According to several Scripture verses, we should not run from difficult times but rather embrace them, because they make us stronger. We become people of firm character. How do we get that way? By persevering. Persevering through the middle of what? Suffering.
That is what I eventually came to believe was Coach Mahoney's philosophy. He wanted to make practices so hard for us Middies that our actual games would seem easy. He had a strategy all along—we just didn't recognize it. We found out later, when we went up against good teams and they ran out of steam about three-fourths of the way through the game. Although they held tough through the first half and into the second, we eventually saw them buckle under our relentless pressure. It was at that point that we could “impose our will on them,” to use the coach's phrase, due to their fatigue. They just weren't in condition up to our level.
The principle behind almost any form of exercise is that resistance is required to make a person stronger. Muscles can't build without some force working against them. The same is true in the spiritual realm. Without “powers and principalities” working against us from time to time, our spiritual muscles don't have a chance to be developed.
Jesus told the church at Smyrna, “I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich!” (Rev. 2:9). Here was a church that had no money, no nice sanctuary, no gymnasium for the youth department, no office suite for the pastors. And Jesus did not say, “What in the world is wrong with you? Where is your faith? Why aren't you claiming your rightful blessings in this world as the ‘King's kids’?” Instead, he saw a much different kind of abundance. He defined “rich” in ways that had nothing to do with money. He saw courage and faithfulness under persecution from a “synagogue of Satan” (v. 9) as their true riches. Even more astoundingly, he went on to say, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor's crown” (v. 10).
That challenge flies in the face of those who attempt to make a long life and material blessings the signs of successful Christian living. Even these voices, however, have a hard time making their case in the current environment. Who are the richest people in the world? The list includes plenty of those who have no time at all for God. We really don't want to go down this path, do we? Isn't Christianity about something more important than money, which perishes in a moment?
Never forget that God loves you more than you can imagine. Let that understanding overpower any feeling of confusion or frustration you may have during times of trial. He is building character in you, which is something far more valuable than a big paycheck or a huge house. The ordeals of this life are in fact part of his strategy for producing iron in the soul.
Unseen Benefit 2:
Hardships Drive Us to Prayer
The second benefit to mysterious happenings in our lives is that they give birth to the practice of prayer on a whole new level. When the slavery began and things started getting ugly in Egypt, the Israelites called out to God like never before. This is when serious prayer was birthed among the ordinary people. Exodus 2:23–25 says, “During that long period … the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.”
We know that Abraham had been a praying man, and that Isaac and Jacob prayed. But we have no record of their descendants calling out to the Lord until they began suffering under the taskmasters' whip in the hot Egyptian sun. This caused them to blurt out, “Oh, God, help us! We need you!”
We do not often think about the fact that it is high on God's priority list is to make us men and women of prayer. He wants us to be people who understand deep inside what praying in faith is all about. He wants people who will pray from their hearts, not just their heads. In fact, this is the only way. As he said through Jeremiah the prophet, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (29:13).
Too much of our praying today tends to be glib and shallow
—a mental exercise, a religious tradition. Too little of it evidences a sense of desperation that says, “I must have you answer me, God!” But that is the way the prophet Elijah prayed. That is what Paul meant when he wrote to the Galatians, “I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (4:19). That is what E. M. Bounds, the great Methodist apostle of prayer, had in mind when he wrote a hundred years ago:
Fervor-less prayer has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life must find place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God….
Prayers must be red-hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that availeth [a reference to James 5:16 KJV]. Coldness of spirit hinders praying; prayer cannot live in a wintry atmosphere. Chilly surroundings freeze out petitioning, and dry up the springs of supplication. It takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of soul creates an atmosphere favorable to prayer, because it is favorable to fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat, nor noise. Heat is intensity—something that glows and burns. Heaven is a mighty poor market for ice.2
If Bounds's zeal makes us a little uncomfortable, let us admit how few answers come to our shallow prayers. By contrast, fervent prayer was forged among the Israelites as they suffered. And God heard them and responded. This was one of the good things that developed among the people after “Jacob and his family went down to Egypt.”
Compare this fervent mode of prayer with my experience at a recent conference where, ahead of a session in which I would be speaking, I was asked to join the various participants backstage. We formed a circle, and the moderator began praying. I guess he wanted to impress us with his cleverness, so he said, “Well, God, it's great to talk to you again. Let's see, we're going to start this session here in a few minutes, and we just really hope that …” Pretty soon he was off into a random thought from the Bible: “Lord, it's like I was reading earlier today, let's see, was it Genesis 18 or 19? I'm not sure—it was somewhere around there, you know what I mean….”
My heart was grieved at the flippancy of this mere mental exercise. I doubt anyone in the circle opened their heart to God. This had no resemblance to the prayer the apostle James described as “powerful and effective” (James 5:16).
In contrast, I have heard people pray who could barely articulate words, let alone construct smooth sentences with proper grammar. But their hearts were in tune with God as they cried out in desperation for answers only he could provide. Some of the most powerful prayers are just a one-word cry from the heart: “Help!” Some are not even verbal, but simply a tear that falls from the person's eye.
In Egypt the Israelites learned to pray from their hearts. Rest assured that none of them were saying to God, “Hey, it's great to talk to you again, Lord. I've been thinking today about that thing Abraham said back in Genesis 13, or maybe it was 14….” No, they groaned in anguish, “God, look down at the mess we're in! Have mercy on us! Deliver us, Lord. We have no one else to turn to but you.”
Go through the book of Psalms and listen to David pouring out his soul to God. See Elijah crouching with his head between his knees, pleading for rain until the first small cloud appeared on the horizon (1 Kings 18:42–45). Likewise, by the time Israel left Egypt, they knew the power of calling on God. This would do more for their nation than a million-man army.
Andrew Murray, a pastor and prolific author in South Africa in the nineteenth century, once suggested that God's main goal for you and me each day is to humble us to the point of drawing us to pray. This sense of weakness is what brings us to the throne of grace, where God can pour out all his wonderful blessings into our lives. Think how much we miss if we live as prayerless people.
With this in mind, we should look at trials and difficulties in our lives as catalysts to bring us nearer to God in prayer. Let Esau and his family have the Seir hill country with all its advantages. Jacob and the chosen people must learn the practice of heartfelt prayer. The Holy Spirit is the one who, according to Romans 8:26, “helps us in our weakness” by teaching us how to really pray in the will of God. When this activity of the Spirit is stifled, God often uses circumstances to reignite it. We don't need to complain about this; instead, let us rejoice and cooperate with the Lord's loving purpose for our lives.
A few years ago in a Dallas church, I preached my sermon entitled “The Greatest Discovery of All Time,” based on Genesis 4:26, which says, “At that time people began to call on the name of the LORD.”3 I included the personal story of our dark two-and-a-half-year ordeal when our oldest daughter was a rebellious teenager, away from the Lord and separated from us. I talked about the Tuesday night prayer meeting where the congregation bore down for Chrissy so intensely that it sounded like a labor room.
At the end of the sermon, I asked people who had wayward children to come forward to pray. Why only study about God's faithfulness without going to the throne of grace for a transaction with the Almighty? I could hear sobbing as people called out to the Lord that day, although this church tended to be unemotional and reserved.
About ten months later, I went back to speak there, this time on a different topic. After the service, a woman came up and greeted me, smiling broadly. “Do you remember what you preached last time you were here?” she asked.
“Yes, I spoke on Genesis 4:26,” I replied. “It was about calling on the name of the Lord in the midst of our darkest moments.”
Then the woman told me the story of how her own daughter had been straying from God and breaking the hearts of her family. She said my sermon that night had moved her to believe God and boldly intercede for a spiritual turnaround. And God had heard her cries. She joyfully told about the dramatic reversal in her daughter's life.
“Is she here tonight?” I asked.
“Yes! She sits next to me in the choir,” she replied, pointing toward the risers, where some of the choir members were still lingering. There I saw a beautiful young lady smiling and waving at me. Her mother and I rejoiced together at the goodness of God.
This painful experience taught this woman to pray at a deeper level. In that, she has gained a priceless treasure. I am reminded of G. V. Wigram, a Plymouth Brethren writer in England, who wrote, “Which would you rather have? A smooth path, or a road so rough that the Lord is compelled to reveal his face to you at every step?”4 For me, I would rather have the intimacy of knowing Christ in all his love and grace, even if it requires a stony trail to get me there.
Unseen Benefit 3:
Hardships Give Us a Story to Tell
The third benefit when we emerge successfully from a “what in the world is going on?” experience is that it provides a real-life testimony we can share with others. The Israelites who got delivered from Egyptian bondage never stopped talking about it. It became part of their national and spiritual identity.
God told the Israelites to make sure their children caught the importance of the Exodus moment. Deuteronomy 6:20–21 says, “In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?’”—in other words, when kids ask the typical kid question about why are there so many rules in life, don't just talk about the rules! Instead—“tell them: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes the LORD sent signs and wonders.’”
It is so important for the young generation to know that serving God is more than a matter of do's and don'ts. It's an incredible story! It's about the awesome power of God setting us spiritually free when we call upon his name. It's about his faithfulness to us at times when we don't know where to turn. Life's problems are real, but God is more real.
Sharing what we have experienced in Christ can go beyond our local setting. Psalm 105 begins by telling us to “Give praise to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done.” Later, it gives a detailed recitation of the bondage and miraculous release, sixteen verses in all, ending with “Egypt was glad when they left, because dread of Israel had fallen on them” (v. 38). What an amazing story to tell to people everywhere!
How much more should we share how Christ has proved faithful in our lives. Repeatedly, in the later chapters of the book of Acts, we see Paul telling his personal experience to a variety of listeners—the Jerusalem mob that wanted to stone him (Acts 22), a Roman governor (Acts 24), and King Herod Agrippa and his wife (Acts 26). Paul's story always carried an impact.
We need to realize that what God does in our lives is not just about “me, myself, and I.” He is doing things that will overflow into the lives of others through our testimony of his faithfulness. God is always into making his children channels of blessing. Remember this every time you face a difficult challenge. The day is coming when you will be a source of inspiration and hope to someone else who is undergoing a deep trial.
Have you ever thought about who are the strongest Christians you know? To whom would you go if your back was against the wall and you needed someone to go to God with you? Would you approach the person who lives on Easy Street or Problem-Free Boulevard? Or would you go to the person who has been through the fire, the person with iron in their soul, the person who has learned to trust God and hang onto his promises through the worst kind of trial?
How many millions of desperate people down through history have been comforted and encouraged by what God did for the Israelites in Egypt. Take, for example, the thousands and thousands who came to America on slave ships. They had almost nothing to live for in this strange new land of oppression. Yet listen to their songs, the classic Negro spirituals. Notice how often these victims sang about the ancient Hebrews in Egypt. See how their hope was sustained by the expectation that God could do it all again.
This is just one example of how the testimony of Israel's deliverance has echoed through the centuries. But remember, there would have been no liberation story without first the hardship. Without a “what's going on?” experience in your life, there will be nothing going on worth talking about later. God develops testimonies of victory out of settings of difficulty and sometimes even desperation. Then he puts them to use with people who are struggling today just like we did yesterday.
My son-in-law, Brian Pettrey, is on our pastoral staff and was recently working with a thirty-four-year-old man whose business talent was being repeatedly undermined by his addiction to crack cocaine. This man has a college degree in economics and made good money over the years, all of which he smoked away. Although he had grown up in an evangelical church in Georgia and knew much about the Bible, he lacked an understanding of Christ's power to deliver and keep him on the straight path day by day.
Now he was at a point of desperation, out of money and with no place to live. Brian persuaded him to come to a Tuesday night prayer meeting. There he walked forward and fell on his face at the altar, admitting that his life had come down to nothing. He had made many promises to change in the past, but could fulfill none of them in his own power. He had, as we sometimes say in New York, “turned over more new leaves than the trees in Central Park.”
I picked up a microphone that night and said, “Here is a man who desperately wants to get free at last from drugs. How many former addicts do we have here tonight who could come up and lay a hand on his shoulder, asking God to set him free like he did for you?” Dozens of men began to stream down the aisles, each one a testimony to God's amazing power in their personal lives. They began to send up a chorus of what E. M. Bounds would call “fervent” and “red-hot” prayer for this man's deliverance. It was a powerful season of intercession. The victories of the past were put to strategic use here in the present.
The men swarmed him with words of encouragement from their own experience. It actually held up the meeting for a few minutes as they hugged and encouraged him to keep his trust in Christ. I stood back and let this moment run its course while the rest of the congregation sang praises to God for his grace.
The unwanted, troubling, mystifying, “senseless” things that happen in our lives are occasions to instill strength in our character, force us to pray as never before, and give us a testimony to help others in need. Our struggles are simply a sign that we, like the ancient Israelites, were made for more.