I’ve been thinking a lot about “trials” lately. God sets a pretty high bar in scripture for
our conduct in the midst of a trial. You
know the verses, things like “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face
trials of many kinds…” (James 1:2) It’s
the word “pure” that gets me in that verse.
If it just said “joy”, you could muster up a tough exterior and try to
put on a determined face and gut it out... in Jesus name, amen. But “pure joy” implies something entirely
different. PURE joy summons visions of
pom-poms and stadium waves to me. That’s
a high bar when brain tumors are involved, or when there’s a recurrence of
cancer before your body even recovers from the last round of chemo, or when
your husband tells you and your three kids that he’d rather live elsewhere now,
but thanks for the swell memories.
All three of those examples are real issues going on
right now with people I dearly love.
I’ve been asking God to give me a RIGHT perspective of “trials”
because MY view of “pure joy” doesn’t seem to fit with the names of God I’ve
been studying – the very nature of His character.
I’d like to tell you that I tackled it in a very
scholarly fashion - you know - hitting the commentaries from the seventeenth
century really hard and sorting it all out with the deep thinkers. But I didn’t do that. I just prayed and said, “God, I’m seeing such a wide variety of reactions to trials in the
people around me – and I’m reading such confusing and seemingly impossible
scriptures on the subject. I know my
thinking is probably wrong on this, so will you help me gain a perspective that’s
more like YOURS?” That’s it.
That’s all I did.
And little by little, through a podcast here or a passage
of scripture there or some bantering with Him during a jog, He began to help me
SEE. He knows He wired me athletically and
created a love for sports in me, so often times He communicates with me in
those terms.
My 16 year-old nephew is a proud member of the “O-Line”
on his high school football team. I’ve
been learning that there’s a certain “code” that these guys follow. For example, members of the Offensive Line DO
NOT wear long sleeves under their football jerseys , EVER - no matter how cold
it is outside. It’s a matter of honor
with them. (I’m in the bleachers with hand-warmers and foot warmers and thermal
underwear under three layers of clothes, and a parka… and Keaton is on the field in short sleeves.) Members
of the O Line set the training standard
for the team in the weight room. They do more sets and reps and they use more
weight than anyone else. They train that
way because if they don’t… the defense runs over them like they were “breath
and britches.” Doing time in the weight
room helps ensure their ability to STAND in the face of a serious blitz by the opposing
defense and helps them protect the members of their backfield.
Are the weight room sessions fun? Uh, NO.
Muscles shake and burn. Sweat
runs like a river. There’s no glory in
the weight room either. No marching band or
cheerleaders. No screaming fans. Nobody doing the wave. But the weight room is where O Linemen get
STRONG.
God has been showing me that we are far more than just
physical bodies down here. We are SPIRIT
too, and there are many parallels between the two to help us understand life
better. Our spirit must grow strong if we really want to have an
abundant life. How in the world does it
do that? Regular Church Attendance? Praying?
Having a Quiet Time? Listening to
Podcasts?
Well, there certainly ARE spiritual disciplines that must be followed to ensure good spiritual
health. Those things listed above are
like spiritual “food.” We feed our
physical bodies every single day don’t we?
Multiple times per day, in fact.
So why do we think we can be strong spiritually if we deprive our
spirits of the nutrition it needs? An O
Lineman would be weak if he didn’t EAT.
But if ALL an O Lineman ever did was EAT… he’d just be a
FAT lineman, not necessarily a strong one.
Same goes for our Spirit. Ever
met a “professional Christian?” You know…
the person who knows ALL the answers in Sunday School – and can recite entire passages
from Leviticus? That’s not necessarily a
testament of their STRENGTH… it just means they eat a lot. I might want that person on my O Line, and I
might not. I’d need to know more about
them first.
So what do our spirits need besides spiritual “food” to
grow strong, rather than just fat? You’re
not going to like the answer.
Trials.
O Linemen get through the rigors of the weight room
BECAUSE they keep the vision of VICTORY on Friday Night in their minds during
every rep and every set. They visualize
pancake blocks and touchdowns. They know
the crowd roars for the tailback who carried the ball across the goal line… but
they KNOW, he wouldn’t have made it without the blocking. A smart and successful tailback, walks to the
sideline after every touchdown and slaps his O Line on the back, and says “thank
you.”
James urges us to “consider it pure joy” when we have
trials BECAUSE our spirits are getting strong and preparing us for future victory
in LIFE. Do we like the trial? Probably not any more than an O Lineman likes
the weight room. Do we dread it? Yep.
Do we mentally focus on the pain the trial will cause? Oh yeah.
But a Christian who wants to succeed in life learns to
see the trial for what it is.
Preparation for future battles, future glory. Strength training. Without that perspective, we’ll just fall
apart DURING the trial and give up before we make it to the other side. No self-respecting O Lineman quits the team
in the middle of the weight room on Wednesday...he's focused on Friday night. Think
about the people you GENUINELY respect and turn to for advice and counsel. Aren’t they people who have been THROUGH some
stuff? And gained strength and wisdom? Trials create people with something to offer.
My nephew, the O Lineman?
He’s not at practice this week with his team at Flowery Branch High
School. His physical body has been
sidelined, but his spirit is in the weight room. He’s getting stronger for life, not just
football. He’s doing that through a trial. This week his weight room is in Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore. He’s got a brain
tumor and will undergo surgery on Friday.
Obviously, he’d rather be at football practice with his teammates,
complaining about the heat. But Keaton
is a Christian, and he trusts God during this trial. Is he scared?
I don’t know… would YOU be scared if you were having brain surgery in
two days? I would be. But it’s those times when we realize we have
NO CONTROL in a situation that our faith begins to pump some serious iron.
Keaton, if you’re reading this buddy – know that a strong
FAITH is the ultimate O Line in life. So
we’ll go through this trial and we’ll have a stronger spirit on the other side
of it. I don’t know what it is that God
is training you up for, but I know He won’t waste this trial. He’s not like that. He sees the future, and He’s making you into a
person with something to offer the world.
Trust THAT, when the rest of this trial gets confusing. But also trust THIS: unlike the weight room
at Flowery Branch, your Johns Hopkins weight room has LOTS of cheerleaders!!
For the rest of you out there… how about we eat some
spiritual food together this week? Let’s
pray for Keaton.
