2 Corinthians 4:1-18

The apostle Paul often wrote about perseverance. He urged believers not to tire of following Christ and doing good, even when persecuted. The reason was that in time, their faithfulness to plant seeds would produce an amazing harvest.

If anyone had a right to say that, it was Paul. He’d been beaten, stoned, whipped, and driven out of town. He’d survived riots, shipwrecks, illness, and abandonment. He had a thousand reasons to be disheartened and want to give up, yet he knew his obedience to God wasn’t in vain. Some might surmise, Well, it doesn’t look as if he reaped much: he was persecuted, moved from prison to prison, and eventually executed. But if we assume that rewards come only in material terms, we miss a powerful truth.

Consider the awesome harvest that actually resulted from the apostle’s faithfulness. For one thing, the gospel spread across the Roman Empire, and the early church grew far beyond the Jewish world. And the seeds Paul planted by writing his epistles resulted in billions of lives being radically changed. Any strength we draw from these letters is fruit of the hardships he endured. Yet when he urged believers never to tire of obeying the Lord, he didn’t know the full extent of the impact his life would have. He just believed in the power of faith.

Do you realize how impactful your life is? Don’t be deceived by Satan’s lie that your suffering or obedience will amount to nothing. Here’s the truth: Your faithfulness to God never goes to waste–it’s making an eternal difference in someone’s life, whether you know it or not

“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” was a slogan I heard over and over again as I grew up. As a young person, this slogan meant that all my plans would be wonderful because God loved me. Now that I am older, I understand that this slogan had more to do with the Christian gospel’s understanding of salvation than it did with guiding me down the primrose path of life. Yet, it still reverberates in my head when I experience hardship, pain, and loss. How does one square a belief in the love of God with a series of professional and personal failures and hardships?

The seeming contradictions between stated beliefs and life experience make faith complicated. For me, many of the cherished beliefs I held imploded, and what was once a fortress came crashing down as life experience smashed up against them like a battering ram. In the aftermath, the alternative shelters of cynical doubt or blind faith beckon. For many in this predicament, we run perilously between both extremes, without a strong sense of security that the fortress once provided.

Yet there are so many, past and present, who have experienced the difficult conflict between what was held to be the truth and what was experienced in life. Knowing this gives me comfort that I am not alone. I am reminded of the biblical narrative of Joseph as one example. He was told by God through a sequence of dreams that he would be great one day—so great, in fact that his own brothers would come and bow down in reverence for him. He had been given a glimpse of his destiny as God’s dearly loved child, and perhaps he believed his path to that destiny would be paved with gold. Instead, his gilded trip to glory turned into an attempted murder by his own brothers, his enslavement, and spending a portion of his life in prison having been falsely accused of various crimes he did not commit. How could this be the path to glory God supposedly promised to provide for Joseph?

Joseph’s trust in a God who loved him and had compassion on him was now being challenged by this confusing demonstration of divine care. Sitting in his jail cell, I’m sure Joseph wondered about his dreams of glory as he grappled with his nightmarish existence. How could things go so badly for one who put his trust in a loving God?

The story of Joseph’s life ends up in glory. Made second in command of all of Egypt, his position ultimately saves his family and the people of Israel from famine and starvation. Despite the contradiction between his life experience and what he thought he knew about God, Joseph came to affirm that God is good and trustworthy. How did he arrive at this conclusion?

Even though the narrative doesn’t state this explicitly, it is hard to imagine that Joseph didn’t wrestle with God during all that time in prison. Like his father Jacob, Joseph wrestled with God in the seemingly contradictory details of his life experience. In the process of this wrestling, God gave him a new perspective and a deeper understanding. But that new perspective is not lightly gained. Noted author and pastor Craig Barnes poignantly describes the emergence of new perspectives as the very process of total conversion:

“The deep fear behind every loss is that we have been abandoned by the God who should have saved us. The transforming moment in Christian conversion comes when we realize that even God has left us. We then discover it was not God, but our image of God that abandoned us…. Only then is change possible.”(1)

Indeed, Joseph reveals his new perspective to his brothers who betrayed him: “As for you, you meant evil against me but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Genesis 50:20). This is no biblical cliche. Joseph did witness God’s intervention and care. But not in the way he expected. If we know intuitively that life doesn’t always go as planned, perhaps we too can gain a new perspective and a new vision as a result of wrestling through the contradictions and conundrums. Perhaps as we realize that though our image of God has abandoned us, the real God will yet be revealed. It is a perspective not easily gained and it may not come from our eyes, but from God’s eyes.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

 (1) M. Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 123.

The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

1 Kings 17:16

Consider the faithfulness of divine love. It is clear that this woman had daily necessities. She had to feed her son and herself in a time of famine; and now, in addition, the prophet Elijah was also to be fed. But though the need was threefold, the supply was not spent, for it was constant. Each day she made withdrawals from the jar, but each day it remained the same.

You, dear reader, have daily necessities, and because they come so frequently, you are apt to fear that the jar of flour will one day be empty, and the jug of oil will fail you. Rest assured that, according to the Word of God, this shall not be the case. Each day, though it bring its trouble, it shall also bring its help; and though you should live longer than Methuselah, and your needs should be as many as the sands of the seashore, yet God’s grace and mercy will last through all your necessities, and you will never know a real lack.

For three long years, in this widow’s days, the heavens never saw a cloud, and the stars never wept a holy tear of dew upon the wicked earth: famine and desolation and death made the land a howling wilderness, but this woman was never hungry but always joyful in abundance. So it will be with you. You will see the sinner’s hope perish, for he trusts in himself; you will see the proud Pharisee’s confidence crumble, for he builds his hope upon the sand; you will even see your own plans blown apart, but you will discover that your daily needs are amply supplied. Better to have God for your guardian than the Bank of England for your possession. You might spend the wealth of the nations, but you can never exhaust the infinite mercies of God.

The family reading plan for February 28, 2012

Job 29 | 1 Corinthians 15