In my last blog posting, I mentioned the four spiritual lessons driven home deeply into my heart from my recent illness. Those four lessons were identified as loss of control, fear of the unknown, vulnerability, and identification. I want to take all of this a step further to demonstrate that our own opportunities for spiritual insight and growth are for the sake of others!
This principle of God using our life experiences for the sake of others is nicely illustrated by the following passage from the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7…
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort, too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
If we are open to God working in our pain and suffering, Paul tells us that we may be able to turn around and minister to others who are going through what we just went through. We are able to build a bridge of understanding that leads to careful listening and meaningful help.
So, I want to talk about the four spiritual lessons mentioned above and how they help me with understanding and connecting with the life of the church. As you read this, my hope is that you can begin to see wonderful opportunities for you to build bridges to the hearts of others who are experiencing something you have been through and that you really understand.
Loss of control. Meaningful ministry begins with recognizing how little control any of us has on life itself. I heard someone say to me recently that “life can turn on a dime.” We all know that truth of that statement!
Giving up control is a challenging thing. But I would say that our ability to give up control on the outcome of many things is in direct proportion to our own spiritual maturity. We find out the hard way in life that we cannot control others, we cannot control outcomes, we cannot control events, we cannot control the future. We cannot control.
Because we cannot control, we must be ok with that. This is where the gift of peace from the Holy Spirit is a divine blessing for our inner self. We pray for the unspeakable gift of inner peace, knowing that in His sovereign love and care God will indeed impart it to me.
Peace, perfect peace. We sing this hymn, and it speaks deeply and profoundly to our restless hearts. We live in this dark world of sin, and we need assurance that our lack of control is seen dealt with by a God who knows and cares.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, the apostle Paul says, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice here that God is the source of this peace we are talking about, and that this divine peace will completely shape and mold us for divine purposes. This process of sanctification (setting aside for his purposes) prepares us so that our whole spirit, soul, and body will be kept blameless as we anticipate Christ’s second coming. What a wonderful point of view to embrace Christ’s coming from a perspective of peace and putting everything in God’s hands!
Church leaders (ministers, evangelists, elders and deacons) serve best as a servant leader, a transformational, Christ-like leader when they give up the need and desire to control.
Fear of the unknown. Meaningful ministry is always pursued in the face of fear. There is the fear that when I reach out to respond to your need, I may be doing it wrong. And there is the fear that I may be rejected by you as I reach out. Correspondingly, on the other hand, fear is present in the lives of those we reach out to. There is the fear of death, there is the fear of rejection, there is the fear of the unknown in so many areas of life.
I remember responding to a believer who wanted me to pray with them because they thought they were going to die. The New Testament is clear here on this point…there is only one thing that truly dispels rampant, unchecked, and pervasive fear: faith.
Listen to the aged apostle John on this point: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18). In the body of Christ, we do not relate to each other with suspicion and fear. We do not engage in gossip that is driven by the fear of the unknown of the other person. When fear rules the day, John is clear here, we have not been perfected in love. We have not allowed the process of love to grow in our hearts to replace fear.
Church leaders (ministers, evangelists, elders and deacons) are never to resort to fear as a power play. There are so many factors in church life that need to be faithfully prayed about and faithfully placed in God’s hands. There as so many aspects of church life that can be susceptible to the adverse shaping power of fear, if we let it.
Vulnerability. One thing I have seen over the years is that being real about our limitations with each other is healthy. I came from a time and a place where the church could never admit its faults. We had to make sure that everything looked like it was perfectly in place and had the power to accomplish great things.
Those days are over. People are looking for authenticity, openness, and transparency. The church is full of vulnerable people. In fact, there is no such thing as vulnerable-proof person. We all have limits, we all are flawed, we all are weak, and we all need help!
The apostle Paul learned and communicated this truth in his sharing of his own struggle with his “thorn in the flesh.” Whatever his thorn was, it is clear that he thought it was hindering his performance of apostolic ministry. What he had to learn was that his apostolic ministry was not rooted in his own strength to perform. His faithfulness in his ministry was dependent on his willingness to let the power of God work through his weakness.
In his wonderful book on congregational life, Peter Scazzero contrasts two types of churches: the proud & defensive church vs. the broken and vulnerable church [Scazzero, P. (2010). The emotionally healthy church: A strategy for discipleship that actually changes lives. Zondervan Publishers.]
Church leaders (ministers, evangelists, elders and deacons) gain credibility in the life of the church when they are seen as people who also need help. What better way to model dependence upon God than to let people know that we do not have it all together!
Identification. There is a fascinating New Testament principle about suffering: our suffering enables us to identify with the suffering of Christ and make his suffering complete. It completes the cycle. He suffered for me. I suffer for him. My own suffering helps me identify with the lives of others who suffer.
Let me give you an example. Since I was 38 years old, I have suffered from Plantar fasciitis and flat feet. I know the pain and suffering of heel spurs. On occasions I have had an opportunity to listen to others’ stories of their suffering with their feet. I have been able to share my own journey of successfully dealing with it, and a certain level of the tolerance of pain that never goes away.
On a more serious note, I know that pain of a family when a member takes their own life and completes that act of suicide. This coming January, it will be 30 years since my father took his life. Perhaps I can reflect on that in an upcoming blog. Suffice it to say, God has this tragedy in my life to identify with others when their families have experienced the same thing. There is a full range of emotions that are experienced by the ones left behind. My heart knows and aches for those who go through this kind of pain and suffering.
Church leaders (ministers, evangelists, elders, and deacons) best reach out and minister to others through their own experience of pain. We need to be self-aware enough to know where our own woundedness has taken us so that we can identify with the wounds of others. Listen to this note of hope given by the Christian writer Henri J. M. Nouwen,
“Indeed if we listen to the voice and believe that ministry is a sign of hope because it makes visible the first rays of light of the coming Messiah, we can make ourselves and others understand that…ministry can indeed be a witness to the living truth that the wound, which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation” [Nouwen, H. J. M. (1979). The wounded healer: In our own woundedness, we can become a source of life for others. Image Books, Doubleday Publishers, p. 96]
It is my prayer that all of us, in our own experience of pain and suffering can embrace the loss of control, fear of the unknown, vulnerability, and identification in such a way that we truly are being shaped and molded more and more into the image of Christ for the sake of others!
In Christian love,
Curtis