When we experience hardships, we usually wonder why God allows these painful situations to come our way. It just doesn’t seem to fit with His role as our loving heavenly Father. We struggle to reconcile our suffering with His love for us and His power to prevent or stop it. In order to understand what’s going on, we need to consider the possible sources of adversity.

A Fallen World: When sin entered the world, suffering came with it. God could have protected us from these harmful effects by making us like puppets who could not choose sin, but that would mean we’d also be unable to choose to love Him, because love must be voluntary.

Our Own Doing: Sometimes we get ourselves into trouble with our foolish or sinful choices. If the Lord stepped in and rescued us from every negative consequence, we’d never grow into mature believers.

Satanic Attack: The Devil is our enemy. To hinder anything the Lord wants to do in and through believers, Satan will never cease to harass us. His goal is to destroy our lives and our testimonies, thereby making us weak and useless for God’s purposes.

God’s Sovereignty: Ultimately, the Lord is in charge of all adversity that comes our way. To deny His involvement contradicts His power and sovereignty over creation.

For us to accept that God allows–or even sends–afflictions, we must see adversity from His perspective. Is your focus on the pain of your experience or on the Lord and His faithfulness? As believers, we’re assured that no adversity comes our way unless He can use it to achieve His good purposes.

 It is nearly impossible for me to keep a surprise. Perhaps I’ve bought a special gift, or have a surprise party or dinner planned for a friend or a loved one, and before you know it, I’m jumping up and down with a frantic enthusiasm spilling the beans and ending all possibility of surprise. I just cannot keep things a secret for long.

 Part of this inability comes from genuine enthusiasm in giving gifts to others. But, if I’m really honest, part of my enthusiasm is motivated by a strong desire to please. More importantly, I want to be known as that great friend, or spouse, or family member who always does such nice things for others. I don’t allow things to stay “under wraps,” as it were, because I want to be noticed. In this admission, I acknowledge that I have not learned well a discipline of secrecy.

 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks a great deal about keeping things secret. “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…but when you pray, go into your inner room, and pray to your Father who is in secret… [B]ut you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that you may not be seen fasting by men, but by your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:3, 6, 17-18). In Jesus’s kingdom, there is something to be said for keeping secrets, especially when those secrets nurture humility and protect us from a certain kind of pride that often accompanies very public living.

 Dallas Willard, writing about the spiritual discipline of secrecy Jesus espouses in the Sermon on the Mount, says, “[O]ne of the greatest fallacies of Christian faith, and actually one of the greatest acts of unbelief, is the thought that spiritual acts and virtues need to be advertised to be known… [S]ecrecy, rightly practiced enables one to place the public relations department entirely in the hands of God… [W]e allow God to decide when deeds will be known and when light will be noticed.”(1)  When we desire the humility of secrecy, Willard goes on to suggest that love and humility before God will develop to the point that we’ll see our friends, family, and associates in a different light; developing the virtue of desiring their good above our own.(2)  The apostle Paul expressed this notion in his letter to the Philippian church. He told them to “do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

 Perhaps this practice of secrecy is why Jesus urged many who he healed not to tell anyone or to reveal his identity. Perhaps this practice of secrecy is why Jesus avoided the crowds and would often go off to “lonely places” to pray. Jesus placed his public relations department in the hands of God, even when he was misunderstood or mistreated. He never had the need to be well-liked.

 We can follow Jesus more closely by keeping our own acts of service, gifting, or care as secrets. We do not have to do things in order to gain the approval of others, when we believe that the things done in secret are seen by God. Like Jesus, we can practice secret piety, secret prayer, and secret giving. “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Matthew 6:18).  

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

 (1) Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, (HarperCollins: New York, 1988), 172-173.
(2) Ibid., 173-174.

 Morning “After that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen,

settle you.” 1 Peter 5:10

 You have seen the arch of heaven as it spans the plain: glorious are its

colours, and rare its hues. It is beautiful, but, alas, it passes away, and

lo, it is not. The fair colours give way to the fleecy clouds, and the sky is

no longer brilliant with the tints of heaven. It is not established. How can

it be? A glorious show made up of transitory sun-beams and passing rain-drops,

how can it abide? The graces of the Christian character must not resemble the

rainbow in its transitory beauty, but, on the contrary, must be stablished,

settled, abiding. Seek, O believer, that every good thing you have may be an

abiding thing. May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an

inscription upon the rock! May your faith be no “baseless fabric of a vision,”

but may it be builded of material able to endure that awful fire which shall

consume the wood, hay, and stubble of the hypocrite. May you be rooted and

grounded in love. May your convictions be deep, your love real, your desires

earnest. May your whole life be so settled and established, that all the

blasts of hell, and all the storms of earth shall never be able to remove you.

But notice how this blessing of being “stablished in the faith” is gained. The

apostle’s words point us to suffering as the means employed–“After that ye

have suffered awhile.” It is of no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if

no rough winds pass over us. Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree,

and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of the many storms that

have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the depth into which the

roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made strong, and firmly

rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then from the

tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their rough

discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you.

 

Evening “Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and

their children another generation.” Joel 1:3  

In this simple way, by God’s grace, a living testimony for truth is always to

be kept alive in the land–the beloved of the Lord are to hand down their

witness for the gospel, and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to

their next descendants. This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family

hearth: he is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The

heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be

searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order

of the Lord’s arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we

cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids; these

can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; proxies and

sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and fathers must, like

Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their

offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High. Parental teaching is

a natural duty–who so fit to look to the child’s well-being as those who are

the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our offspring

is worse than brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the

family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots Popery is

covertly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for

resisting its inroads is left almost neglected, namely, the instruction of

children in the faith. Would that parents would awaken to a sense of the

importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons

and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted

work, for God has saved the children through the parents’ prayers and

admonitions. May every house into which this volume shall come honour the Lord

and receive his smile.

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.  Genesis 1:5 

The evening was “darkness,” and the morning was “light,” and yet the two together are called by the name that is given to the light alone! This is somewhat remarkable, but it has an exact analogy in spiritual experience. In every believer there is darkness and light, and yet he is not to be named a sinner because there is sin in him, but he is to be named a saint because he possesses some degree of holiness. This will be a most comforting thought to those who are mourning their infirmities and who ask, “Can I be a child of God while there is so much darkness in me?” Yes; like the “day,” you do not take your name from the evening, but from the morning; and you are spoken of in the Word of God as if you were even now perfectly holy, as you will be soon.

You are called the child of light, even though there is darkness in you still. You are named after what is the predominating quality in the sight of God, which will one day be the only principal remaining. Notice that the evening comes first. Naturally we are darkness first in order of time, and the gloom is often first in our mournful apprehension, driving us to cry out in deep humiliation, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”1

The place of the morning is second; it dawns when grace overcomes nature. It is a blessed maxim of John Bunyan, “That which is last, lasts forever.” That which is first yields in due season to the last; but nothing comes after the last. So though you are naturally darkness, once you become light in the Lord, there is no evening to follow; “your sun shall no more go down.”2 The first day in this life is an evening and a morning; but the second day, when we shall be with God forever, shall be a day with no evening, but one, sacred, high, eternal noon.

1Luke 18:13 2Isaiah 60:20

Family Reading Plan Jeremiah 6Matthew 20