Tim Keller's
book was important enough for me to summarize it in detail. I'm now near the
end, but I hope to go back over his main points to really make this part of my
life. Here's the next part of his account of pain and suffering:
He talks
about ways to walk with God. Remember in the last blog I ended with his comment
that we must learn to walk with God through our difficulties. Keller says walking is nondramatic, rhythmic
– it consists of steady, repeated actions. Walk is day in and day out praying,
day in and day out Bible and Psalms reading, day in and day out obeying, talking
to Christian friends, and going to corporate worship, committing yourself to fully participating in the life of the church.
It will be slow and steady progress. We are called to walk, to grieve and weep,
to trust and pray, to think, thank, and love, and to hope. Each of these will
be explored later in the book.
Keller's
previous chapter covered walking with God. This chapter (12) covers weeping--one
of the ways we walk with God. Many psalms are expressions of frustration with
God himself. We should not assume that if we are trusting in God we won't weep,
or feel anger, or feel hopeless. Suffering people need to be able to weep and pour
out their hearts, not immediately be shut down by being told what to do. Nor
should we do that to ourselves, if we are grieving. Believers may stay in
darkness for a long time. God is patient and gracious with us – he is present
with us and all our mixed motives. It is perhaps when we are still in
unrelenting darkness that we have the greatest opportunity to defeat the forces
of evil. Our darkness can be relativised by Jesus's darkness. Because he was
truly abandoned by God, we only seem to be or feel to be abandoned by him. But
we aren't, despite our failures. Suffering creates inner sorrow; it does make
you weak. To deny your hurt means you will likely pay a price later. You may
find yourself blowing up, or breaking down, or falling apart suddenly. See 1
Peter 1:6-7 where Peter says we can rejoice in Christ and wail in pain; we must
do both if we are to grow through our suffering rather than be wrecked by it.
To rejoice in God means to dwell on reminders of who God is, who we are, and
what he has done for us. Sometimes our emotions respond when we do this, and
sometimes they do not.
Similarly,
the sorrow and grief drive you to God to show you the resources you never
had. The weeping drives you into the joy. Rather than expecting God to remove
the sorrow and replace it with happiness, we should look for a glory – a taste
and conviction and increasing sense of God's presence – that helps us rise
above the darkness.
In Chapter
13 Keller focuses on another way we walk with God – through trusting. Keller tells
the story of Joseph and all his suffering and how God was in control the whole
time. Joseph did not turn from God. We must do the same thing. Again, Keller
makes a point I want to emphasize, so I'm stressing it: The Joseph story tells us that very often God does not give us
exactly what we asked for. Instead he gives us what we would have asked for if
we had known everything he knows. If the story of Joseph and the whole of the
Bible is true, then anything that comes into your life is something that, as
painful as it is, you need in some way.
Plenty here
to think about. I'll stop at this point. We need to go through his ideas slowly
in order to have them become part of us.
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