The Perfect Storm Is No Match For The Perfect God

Hover over image to save to Pinterest.

Battles of the heart and mind remind me of a seashore. When the storms come and the waves crash on the beach, layer upon layer of sand is swept out to sea, eroding the soft covering to expose jagged rocks. After the storm subsides, the beach is littered with reminders of the trial. Like monuments to each blow we took in the battle, little pieces of jagged rocks and shells stick out of the newly exposed sands waiting to bruise or cut our feet. Though we can see the storm rolling away out to sea, we sit there shaken and feeling incredibly raw... vulnerable... and wondering how long it will be before another trial comes. In our flesh, we can wallow, sink down into the sand among all the reminders of the pain, and miss the fact that the sun is breaking through the clouds on the horizon. Rest is coming. Healing is coming. But we are still mesmerized by the reminders of pain on the beach scattered around us. 

That’s because it’s monumentally hard to move on from a battle. The wounds are easily reopened until they have time enough to heal. Eventually, there may be scars left as reminders of the pain. Even these can remain tender, causing us to wince when we encounter any circumstance that offers us even the slightest reminder of what we endured. So we tend to pull away, and not walk in those places for fear of hurt again. We fixate on what it was like, recalling the suffering, but more magnified than before. The more we relive the pain and the blow-by-blows, we think we can see the past more clearly. No one can convince us otherwise as we go back in time repeatedly, hoping to gain some new level of understanding or uncover a new reason to find fault. Yet, science proves that belief to be very wrong. Things in the past can never be seen or experienced again as they actually were. Memories are never as accurate as we think they are. Good times get sweeter and sweeter, enticing us to believe that nothing will ever be that good again. And the bad times get worse and worse, making us feel that the injustice and pain were more meaningful and powerful than they really were. Memories are mile markers of important learning experiences, but God never intended them to be relived. But that doesn’t keep us from trying over and over, thus causing us to miss out on living in the moment and the blessings God has for us. Sometimes we remain in the past because we’ve assumed the identity of a “survivor," and we don’t know how to leave that behind for the next phase of our growth. We're afraid of losing the hard-earned identity we formed while fighting through the trial, and we’re scared to death to move on because it might mean new trials or hardships. We think that if we hang on to the remnants of the current trial, it will shield us from going through another one. Other times we remain in the past dwelling on “the way things used to be,” as if God is not capable or doesn’t want to bring us new joys and dreams ever again. 

Paul, the apostle, knew — perhaps more than anyone else other than Jesus — what it was like to be in battles, trials, mental anguish, and even prison. But, despite being able to clearly wear the survivor t-shirt and having many battle scars, he kept running forward to the next phase of his ministry. (Hebrews 12:1-2) And while Paul endured hardships most of us can’t fathom, we face our own version of prisons and battles, which often show up in the form of a difficult relationship, health crisis, crippling anxiety, financial hardships, a dead-end job, and unmet expectations of all kinds. Some of our prison experiences are excruciating as if we have been put in solitary confinement and told that torture will be coming any day. Other prison times are more like a prolonged stay at a bad roadside motel that we can never leave. Sure, we’re not in a crisis, but nothing is comfortable and we never feel like anything is cleaned up or safe. And if we’re not careful, some of our excruciating experiences morph into the long-term bad motel stays, where we think we’ve “moved out” of the crises. Instead, we’ve only moved into a new, slightly more comfortable, but incredibly more dangerous location. The more we linger on that middle ground — trapped somewhere between the crisis and a completely restored soul — the more it feels like home, until eventually we don’t realize that we are riddled with bitterness, hopelessness and frustration. 

While there are times when God allows us to be in a place of extreme suffering, the Word makes it clear that our Savior is never content to leave us in the middle-wasteland once the storm subsides. So why then do we want to stay there? Why do we feel like we can never check out of the bad motel? Why is it that when the time of healing and rest comes, we want to stay in the false, unhealthy comfort zone, rather than moving forward into the restorative grace of God’s green pastures? 

When Paul was in prison, he served God with joy and great expectation in the midst of it. He was able to say with unwavering faith, “Ok, God, I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with this!” Then when he was set free, Paul would go straight back to living an abundant life (Acts 16:40). He didn’t linger just outside the prison walls and look back at his former place of confinement wondering if he’d be back there again. He never camped out on the roadside on the way back. He didn’t spend his evenings wallowing in the time he’d lost, fearing that it would happen again. Most of all, he didn’t feel guilty that he had been set free from the chains. He gladly accepted the freedom of the moment and purposed in his heart to move into the next phase for God’s glory. 

All too often we come out of a battle or a time of imprisonment feeling shaken and blindsided. Instead of receiving the healing, we get mired in the fear that more trials are coming our way or we drown in guilt for being set free. Satan whispers to us that we are not worthy to be set free and that we deserved that trial. Or he tells us that we should feel so bad about the difficulties of others, that we shouldn't enjoy the periods of rest God gives us. And then there’s the shame we often feel when the trial is over. Whether the storm we endured was a consequence of our own sin or someone else’s, Satan wants us to feel ashamed of what we’ve been through. He wants us to keep it to ourselves, bottled up inside until it festers and threatens to consume all our hope and joy. But Paul’s example challenges us not to be ashamed (Philippians 1:20), but to go forward in the full courage of Christ. He pushes us not to be quitters that stall, sit down, or pout on the road back to healing. Instead, he encourages us to follow Jesus through the hard work required to surrender, forgive, forget, and then step out on faith by trusting Him to take us to a better place. Simply put, Paul tells us we must fight for joy again. In Philippians 4:4, he emphatically commands us to pursue joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.” It is very clear from Paul’s tone that he understands that being joyful and receiving the gifts of the spirit, which include joy and peace (Galatians 5:22), is not easy, nor do they come naturally to us in the face of trials. Joy must be practiced constantly, by pushing ourselves to rejoice and delight in God. By praising Him and thanking Him when we don’t feel like it, we train ourselves in the holy discipline of joy, opening the door for the Holy Spirit to flood us more and more with God’s grace and power. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13) 

Blessings come from every battle. Every prison experience. But only if we allow them to. God will not force his mercies and grace upon us. The question is, will we let our pride trap us in the vast wasteland between the crisis and the healing? Will we let fear tell us what to do, rather than taking up the mantle of victory to move forward? Our culture teaches us that independence and self-reliance are valued above all things. But God teaches us that only by learning to become more dependent on Him — to become living vessels for Him with no ambition for ourselves — will we find the way to true happiness. Every trial is another opportunity to slay our pride and reveal our authentic selves to those who need to see the power of Christ at work in our lives. If we always keep up appearances, the Holy Spirit will never appear to be at work in us to a world that desperately needs to see that Christians are not a bunch of hypocrites or fakes. One of the most beautiful scenes imaginable is that of a person who has known great suffering, getting the opportunity to use that experience to better comfort and support someone else going through the same thing. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 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.” Only the perfect God can take the perfect storms of our lives and turn them into His perfect plan. And when we share these stories of brokenness turned into triumph, we offer our true selves as sacrifices to God, so that others may find hope and healing on their journeys out of the wastelands into wholeness.  

---