Sometimes “young” Christians can develop a somewhat jaded view of life after they pray the “sinners prayer”.
They get up off of their knees and almost immediately develop this misguided conception of a utopian lifestyle begins to form within their minds.
“I follow Jesus now! My life is going to be a walk in the park from here on out! My days will be problem free Everyday will be perfect! My health will be perfect! My finances will be perfect, my cup will always be running over! My relationships will be perfect! I mean after all, the Word does tell me that “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want!” And, if I “delight myself in the Lord, and He will give me the desires of my heart!”
Anybody who has been a Christian for more than a minute will tell you that the only thing perfect about that way of thinking, is that it is perfectly wrong.
Why? Well, because of two words no one wants to even think about. Trials and tribulations“.
Trials and tribulations are best defined as tests of the spirit. They can be brought to us by God. By Satan, but only with God’s permission. Or, even by ourselves. They have one purpose, and one purpose alone. That is to test the health our faith, and to to show us where our weaknesses are, and where we need to strengthen our spiritual resolve.
Christians go through trials and tribulations just like everybody else. Sometimes, they face greater and more intense troubles than just about anybody else.
If you’re not facing, or haven’t faced any trials, that means you’re lucky! Right? Well…I once heard an evangelist put it like this once.
“If the devil ain’t chomping at the bit to get his hands on you, then you might want to take a another look at your relationship with the Lord.”
In other words, the only reason Satan wouldn’t want to concern himself with you, is if you are no threat to him at all.
Remember how we talked about how a person with strong faith was like a bitter drink to Satan?
These are the witnessers. The prayer warriors. Those with the hearts of true servants.
These are the people who are the greatest threat to Satan. These are the people he asks God to be able to oppress the most.
People with weaker, confused, or even those with “pretend” faith, are of no threat of disrupting Satan’s agenda. Therefore, they are not worth his concern, time, or effort. He has bigger fish to fry.
Wait, did I just say Satan has to ask God for permission before he can come against a Child of God?
Yes, in fact he does. As Jesus told Peter in Luke22:31…
“And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.”
Although at that particular moment Peter was still very much a spiritual diamond in the rough, in the matter of just a few weeks Peter would deliver a message that would lead three thousand into salvation!
It’s no wonder Satan was begging to dismantle Jesus’s chief disciple! He couldn’t just come against Peter on his own authority. He didn’t, and still doesn’t, have that type of self imposed power. The devil can’t do any more, to anyone, than God allows him.
This is clearly made evident in the Book of Job.
Job’s story begins when Satan enters into a Heavenly hierarchy meeting taking place in the Third Heaven. Now. From the narrative of the Scripture, it’s is not evident at this point, if Job had even come in range of Satan’s radar. Yet.
“Then the Lord asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil.” Job 1:8
With that, Job came out if the shadows of relatively obscurity, and became Public Enemy Number One on the demonic Ten Most Wanted List.
From that moment, Satan salivated over getting a crack at breaking old Job. That should come as no real shock to anyone. But what might take you by surprise is that God readily agreed to let him.
Well, Satan wasted no time in cutting Job’s happy little life down to the quick.
In the matter of a few hours, Job lost his wealth, his servants, and livestock to bandits and thieves. Then, because of freak, and particularly strong wind, he lost his children who were gathered together at feast. Job had gone from being on top of the world, to laying crumpled at the bottom of the heap in a literal instant.
Through it all, he never once blamed God or sinned.
This must have infuriated Satan. He asked for God’s permission, to once again afflict Job. This time he wanted to come against the righteous man’s health. Once again, surprisingly, God agreed. In an instant, Job was covered in painful boils and sores.
Through it all, Job never sinned. Oh sure, he questioned why all this pain, both mental and physical, was being heaped upon him. Which one of us wouldn’t do the same thing? But Job never once faltered in his faith, never once blamed God for any of it, even after being berated to do so by his own wife.
Job was a man in love with God. He was so concerned that something in his life might offendThe Almighty, that he made sacrifices on behalf of any family members who may have unknowingly offended the Creator.
Job went through some of the most fiery trials ever allowed on a human in the history of mankind.
Why would God agree to let such calamities befall one of His most faithful servants?
King David gives us insight into this question in Psalm 66:10.
“You have tested us, O God;
you have purified us like silver…”
David’s son, King Solomon, confirms his father wisdom in Proverbs 17:3.
“ Fire tests the purity of silver and gold,
but the Lord tests the heart.”
God allows His faithful to go through trials not to weaken their resolve, but to strengthen, to purify, their faith. Faith is something that can never reach a state where it can’t be made any stronger.
And, no one is immune from feeling the sting of trials. Not even Jesus Himself.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus made a puzzling statement to His disciples in Matthew 26:38
“Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”
This is an amazing statement to make. Jesus was sorrowful, grieved, about what was about to happen to Him! Was Jesus afraid of going to the cross? Was He having second thoughts?
I don’t think so.
You see, if Jesus was worried, or scared about His being crucified, it would have gone against the core of His teachings found in Matthew 6 which was …DO NOT WORRY!
No, I think what was troubling the Creator of everything that night, was that the time had come for Him to experience the most horrible feeling that a human being could ever feel.
We are told that Jesus had felt every temptation, experienced every emotion, known every sensation, that we feel.
Except one.
We have to understand here that He knew, and accepted, that the cross was the only bridge that could gap the void between man and God. He also knew that death would have no lasting hold over Him.
But… what He had never felt was the heavy, oppressive, weight of sin on His heart and in His spirit. Also, He had never experienced even a single second of total separation from God. What He did knew was that within the matter of just a few hours, that the crushing weight produced by sins of the world would be laid upon His outstretched arms, and it troubled Him. You see, God knows everything, except what it feels like to sin, and be separated from Himself.
He knew He would, for the first time, experience the shame, the guilt, the condemnation, that we feel when we sin.
Think about this. When we sin, those same oppressive feelings weigh on our spirit like a crushing weight. That misery is just for our sins! Jesus was about to shoulder the anguish of the sins of the world!
He knew that when He absorbed those sins, that His Holy Father would have to look away from Him, even if it was just a small period of time. That was something that He had never, ever, experienced. Not even for a single moment in time.
That, in my opinion, was the trial Jesus faced that night.
To be continued…
LG&LG! (2.0)
LG&LG! (2.0) 