February 16, 2024 • 27 mins
episode 60
Welcome to another enlightening episode of The Harder Way Podcast, hosted by Scott and Mattie. This episode unravels the significance of enduring hardship as a pathway to a deeper understanding of Christianity and steering clear of transactional faith. Drawing from their personal insights, the hosts illuminate the discipline and the transformative power of challenges, justifying hardship as a fertile ground for spiritual growth.
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Through heart-opening conversations on their faith journeys and insightful reflections on the American Christian perspective, this episode triggers a re-evaluation of faith beyond comfort and ease. It stresses the importance of an intimate relationship with God and the need to avoid spiritual imposture and offers tactics to stay steadfast in adversity.
This episode also explores stirring narratives of persecuted believers around the world, relating their unwavering faith to the disciplined determination seen in sports. It expands on the concept of being ‘double-minded,’ with compelling examples of Christians demonstrating an uncompromising commitment to their faith amid acute opposition.
As we close this episode, Scott and Mattie extend an invitation to get the Courier Update Newsletter to gain invaluable insights from the testimonies of persecuted believers and those who serve them. The enduring message of the episode is to give thanks and praise to God, despite any circumstance, encouraging spiritual resilience and unwavering faith.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everyone, I'm Scott. And I'm Maddie, and welcome back to the Harder Way Podcast.
Scripture says to endure hardship as discipline.
What in the world does that mean? Pastor Samuel Lamb told me one time,
learn to love suffering to prepare yourself for more religious restriction.
(00:21):
It took me 20 years to figure out exactly what that meant.
But today we're going to share with you what we understand those things to mean.
Yeah, I think it's a really important topic.
And it's funny because this is something that keeps coming up in my life.
I was just at a worship rehearsal and the little devotional time we had beforehand,
(00:41):
we were talking about the portion of James where it talks about,
you know, in your testing of your faith and trials, basically producing endurance
and endurance or perseverance, depending on the translation,
having its perfect result and that growing you and maturing you.
And so this is something that I keep hearing from different people in my life.
(01:01):
And then also just seeing in scripture very clearly is this idea that hardships,
trials, difficulties are not always a bad thing.
Yeah, I think American Christianity, and this is specific to American Christianity,
has embraced a version of Christianity or a version of the gospel where you better be good.
(01:26):
And if you're not, bad things are going to happen to you.
It's become very transactional.
Oh, that's a really important word there, because I think there's a whole lot
to be discussed just with the idea of Christianity as a whole being kind of
this transactional thing now, right?
You can say, okay, well, I'm just going to say this prayer, and now I've got
(01:48):
my ticket to heaven, and I'm going
to stay where I'm at for the rest of my life. I'm never going to grow.
I'm never going to deepen my relationship with the Lord. It's just like,
oh, said this prayer, got my ticket to heaven, made the transaction.
We're good. Right. Right. And that mindset, if those folks don't fall away...
I mean, I heard a statistic years ago that there were just a massive number
(02:09):
of people who get saved that way through just to say something and then you're
saved. Say a little prayer and you're saved.
So many of them fall away. They're like that seed that doesn't fall on the good soil.
You know, something sprouts, but then it dies quickly.
They were never truly regenerated, right? Or poured again for the layman.
(02:32):
Right. Right. Well, you know, I think, I think, you know, in the academic world,
there's something called imposter syndrome.
Society as a whole, too. There's a lot of articles and stuff about that right now.
Right. And so there's this idea that, you know, like when you're earning your
doctorate and then you become a doctor, you feel like I'm an imposter. I'm not legitimate.
(02:56):
And so you almost feel like you're a con man.
And I think, you know, in Christianity, we have the same kind of an experience
where we feel like we are, am I really born again?
Am I really growing in Christ? Am I really secure in my salvation?
You know, we have these questions we're asking ourselves.
(03:16):
And I think our adversary is there whispering the whole time,
you're not really born again.
Or, yeah, you don't need to do anything. Just be.
Or look at those bad things happening. God must be mad at you. You better work harder.
And there are all these disruptive messages that separate us from the love of
(03:37):
God. They separate us from the peace of God.
They separate us from an intimacy with Jesus.
And so I'm going to say something, and then you can riff on it if you want.
I think it might be something that you have experienced personally,
which is there's an intimacy with Christ that can only be known through suffering.
That's absolutely true. You know, if we look at, you know, living our lives,
(04:02):
we see that there are so many things that different people go through, right?
And to varying degrees, you know, suffering is a very general term and it covers
a really wide spectrum, right?
But if we're talking about genuine suffering, it's this idea that when we're
going through something that makes no sense, we don't understand why it's happening.
(04:25):
All we want is for this thing to go away or for this thing to not be.
The only, we could say, recourse that you have is to go to God. God.
It's the only thing that you can do. Because when you're in that deep state
of suffering, there's nothing in the flesh, nothing in the physical that you
can do to genuinely make yourself feel better.
There are things that you can do to kind of put a bandaid on it,
(04:47):
you know, sort of, oh yeah, just go for a walk or go talk to somebody or,
you know, eat some more vegetables, take some vitamins, whatever.
But all that's doing is kind of just helping you cope. It's not really dealing
with that ache in your soul.
And the only thing that is going to help that is going to God and connecting with him.
(05:11):
And so when you do that, you get this really cool experience because we know
that Jesus himself suffered and he suffered more than any of us will ever be able to understand.
He suffered in a way that is is really inconceivable to our simple human minds.
Right. You know, and if you read something like Fox's Book of Martyrs,
(05:34):
or you read Jesus Freaks, which was a rewrite of the Fox's Book of Martyrs with
some modern stories added in.
And even since that one came out, I think in the late 90s, early 2000s,
they've done a redo of Jesus Freaks.
So there's lots of books like that. So you read those stories and you find out
about persecuted Christians who really, really pay a price for their faith. Mm-hmm.
(05:56):
And, you know, I think, you know, we should really question ourselves.
If our only desire as a Christian is to experience the good,
easy life, and that we're focused on transactions that we think are going to
bring that, whether it's a manipulative prayer,
trying to pray in a certain way so that God has to do this.
(06:17):
You know, reminding God of His promises is great because we're really,
He doesn't need to be reminded, but it reminds us and it kind of puts us on
the same page with the Lord.
But reminding God of his promises so that we can make him do our own will, right?
And I think when you're raising a child, there are a lot of times when your
(06:37):
child wants something and you want to give it to them, but you know it'll put
you in a place of danger that you can't see,
or it will cause some kind of, it could lead you down a really bad path,
or it will put you you into a place of having to make decisions that you're
(06:57):
just not intellectually or emotionally ready to make yet.
And so the parent has to say, no, I can't. Or even when a child has misbehaved,
and, you know, I always had a rule when you guys were little and your older
siblings were little, especially,
they would, if they misbehaved, and let's say we were planning to go see a movie,
and this actually happened on more than one occasion.
(07:18):
We were all planning on this Saturday afternoon, we're going to go see the matinee,
and we're going to go see this new kid's movie that came out.
And the kids are fighting, and you say you want to punish them,
you need to give them some kind of a punishment.
And every child is different. Some respond to corporal punishment.
A lot of kids don't respond as well to that, and so you need to find other ways
(07:40):
to discipline and correct.
Well, what I found was that I didn't want to ever say to you or your siblings.
You've been bad, so we're not going to the movies.
Because I know I wanted to go to see the movie too, And it was my day off and
I wanted to relax and I, and I love, love the movie theater popcorn and all of that.
And the only one of the kids was getting in trouble.
(08:02):
And so then do the other kids have
to, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't take away something that I wanted to do.
Yeah. Because then you wind up going back on your word and then you wind up
losing trust with that person.
Yeah. That happened to me. That happened to me once I got in trouble at school
for the only thing I ever got in trouble for at school, which was talking.
And i came out and they're like
(08:23):
oh how'd you do in school today i had to say oh i got in trouble and we
were supposed to be going to the movies to see the chronicles of narnia and
i was like oh man we're not going to get to go and you're like no remember like
we said we were going to go we want to go your brother wants to go so we're
still going to go and then when we get home you know you won't be able to watch
tv tonight and we'll have to have some talks but you know it's Just that idea of,
(08:45):
I think, punishment being for the purpose of learning or being punishment that is just...
Punitive to really kind of just make you pay and
rub in your face hey you need to suffer because you
did something bad and i think that so many of us misunderstand god's disciplining
(09:05):
of us because we think of god because he's so much greater than us sometimes
we can think of him as just saying oh well you messed up well great now i'm
gonna send all these bad things to happen to you because you messed up just to punish you.
But the thing of it is that God, when he is sending things that seem like just
(09:26):
punishments, they're always to help us learn.
They're always to redirect us. We've mentioned this on the podcast before,
the difference of beating a horse versus hitting a horse with the little stick thingy.
The crop. Yeah, the crop. There you go. Because you're training them to follow you.
You're not beating And can we just pause for a moment and acknowledge the fact
(09:49):
that for every hundred times you have to come up with a word that I can't remember, there is one.
That was the one. He got it on recording. It says in Psalms,
see law, now then reflect.
So I'm going to think about this moment and revel in my glory.
But, you know, I think, you know, you're nailing it right on the head is that we need to recognize,
(10:13):
we must recognize that the hardships we experience are allowed by a loving father
who loves us more than we could ever love ourselves or anybody else could ever love us.
And who only wants the best for us.
And if it was best for us, for the Lord to only give us good things and to only
give us great gifts and to only bless our socks off and to only pour out all
(10:37):
wealth and everything else upon us, he would do that because he loves us.
But it's because of that love. His love is a delivering love,
as we've spoken about before.
And he wants to love us in the way that's going to be best for us.
For our good and for his glory. And so that means that we're going to have to have.
(11:02):
Consequences. We're going to have to have some things that aren't even consequences.
They just come into your life and it's this whole hard thing.
And it's really for the purpose of drawing us nearer to the Lord.
And I think you can really continually make parallels with parenting and the
discipline of the Lord, because you can see that from a child's perspective,
(11:26):
there are a lot of of things that are good,
right? Like, oh, I'm a little kid.
Ice cream is good. And as a parent, you're like, yeah, ice cream is good.
It's not good to eat it for breakfast.
It's not good to eat it three times a day. And as a child, you're thinking,
wow, this is so mean. I don't get to have ice cream whenever I want.
And you feel that that's some kind of suffering or a punishment.
(11:49):
And the parent is saying, I'm doing this so that you'll be healthy.
I'm doing this so that you're You're going to grow up. You're not going to have
stunted growth from nutrient deficiencies from only eating ice cream all day.
You know, and so being able to say, look, I understand that when I'm going through
difficulties in my life, it's not because God is punishing me for something
(12:12):
bad that I did. And I think that's that transactional piece.
The reason that we think, oh, if I just do X, Y, Z good thing,
I'll be able to have things going better for me.
It's because in the back of our minds we think
the reason that the bad thing is happening is because
we did xyz bad thing well
(12:33):
even we'll say oh oh i will say it's a prayer really it's a prayer it's well
we so we'll say oh god what did i do to deserve this it really is a prayer and
it's that's such a bad bad theology to have right because the truth is you you
you are a sinner in in need of a savior.
(12:53):
So you deserve every bad thing.
We do. But when we're born again, we are imputed the righteousness of Christ.
And so we're treated that way. And so the Lord is working by the Holy Spirit in us.
Jesus is working, giving us an example, interceding for us.
(13:15):
He's the right hand of the Father. Father, and our Heavenly Father is parenting
us and growing us to be the person that He designed us to be.
Scripture tells us that there are works that God prepared in advance for us
to do, every single one of us.
And these aren't works that earn your salvation or keep your salvation,
(13:38):
but they're the thing God made you to do.
You know, like we might say to somebody, you'll you'll meet a
football you'll meet a an athlete of some kind
and you see them and you'll say they were born to do that
and i think of like jerry rice he's not a he's not my you know pillar of of
ethics or morals or anything else but he was born with a tremendous amount of
(14:01):
natural talent to play wide receiver he played for the 49ers he was he's in the hall of fame.
But anybody who trained with him during the time when he was playing for the
49ers will tell you he was the hardest working guy in the NFL in the offseason.
So not only did he have he was born for something and then he worked hard at it.
(14:24):
And the Lord has given us, we have a work that we're advanced.
There's something that we were born to do. There are things that we were born
to do, and we've got to work at it.
But the Lord is working at it in us.
So even if we're not working at it, he's working at it in us.
And I think something I've heard you say a lot of times before is this idea
that God is opposed to earning.
(14:47):
He's not opposed to effort.
Yes. Right? It's not that we should never cry.
It's not that we should never be intentional because we should,
but it's that we should never see what we're doing or our intentionality or
our work as a way of earning our salvation,
as a way of earning God's favor, as a way of earning blessings,
(15:10):
or as a way of getting rid of suffering and hard time.
Because, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, the Bible says that we should
endure hardships as discipline.
And it's that discipline of a loving father.
The Bible also says, you know, who, if your son asks you for bread,
will give them a rock. Right.
(15:31):
Right? And that God is the same way. And so sometimes we get confused because
we ask God for something and we don't get it.
And I think what we can say is it would be like, you know, your little kid comes
up to you and they've got, you know, their hand is like practically severed
(15:51):
off and they're not even noticed.
They haven't even noticed that their hand is practically severed off.
And they're just coming up to you saying, Hey, I'm really hungry.
Can we go to McDonald's? I'm really hungry. I I'd like something to eat.
And your parent is like, yeah, we'll deal with that in in a little bit,
we need to deal with your hand, right?
It's not because your parent is punishing you.
(16:12):
It's not because your parent doesn't love you. They don't want you to eat.
They're not giving you the blessing of going to McDonald's. It's because they're
like, hey, let's deal with the imminent danger of.
You're partially severed. And
if you think about it with this partially severed hand, what do you know?
You know that when you get to the ER, that that child's going to be going under general anesthesia.
(16:32):
Yep. And so you don't want them to eat.
Because it would be a danger for them to have eaten before they go in for a
surgery. Yeah, exactly.
So if you think about that, then our Heavenly Father, who is perfect,
is always aware of, he's omni, he's omniscient, all-knowing.
Shut up, you're just going to say he's omniscient. He's all omni. He's omni.
(16:54):
And so because of that, he's aware of those factors that we don't think of.
And so he knows, oh, you're in shock. You need a blanket on you.
Oh, you might bleed out. You need a tourniquet or you need a pressure bandage.
Oh, you are going to go into surgery.
We should not get you food. We give you some little water or some ice chips,
but we've got to get you right.
(17:15):
He's he's and the 10,000 other things that we haven't thought of.
When we can think of it in that perspective, then we can look at it,
we can say, okay, I don't understand why I have to be hungry.
I don't understand why I have to have surgery.
I don't understand why I have to endure this hardship or that hardship.
But what I know is this, my Heavenly Father loves me and He knows everything
(17:41):
and He is perfectly wise. eyes.
And so whatever is going on right now is part of His plan and that I can rejoice
in Him knowing that I'm in His will, no matter how uncomfortable it is,
no matter how inconvenient it is, no matter how hard it is.
You know, I think about my little problem of not being able to go on this,
(18:01):
this courier mission because of the wound on my foot, which is,
it is healing and it is healing, but it's healing slowly.
For those of you that are praying for me and for healing, Thank you so much.
But I had a lot of time and a lot of, you know, planning and a lot of desire to do this.
And I have to thank the Lord and say, Lord, this is not your timing.
(18:24):
This is not your will for me now. I thank you for this. I thank you for this hardship.
And who knows what other things I may have avoided, you know?
You just have no idea because we keep going back to that example of the parent,
how much more does a parent know than a child, right?
And let's take that times infinity when we want to think how much more does God know than any of us?
(18:51):
How much more does God know than the person who's known the most in all of human history?
You can't even calculate it because it's so much more.
And so there are more factors, more possibilities, possibilities,
more things that we would never even think to consider, that we would never be able to conceive of.
And it's funny because we're talking about.
(19:13):
About this idea, and I just keep thinking about this concept of resilience.
Because I think that that passage in James really gives us the recipe for resilience, right?
It says endurance, perseverance, but resilience is a little bit more of a modern
word and it's taken on some new meanings in recent years.
(19:33):
So I feel like that really is the recipe for resilience, which is having one
of our key things that we've talked about on this podcast, a redefinition of suffering.
Because what is a redefinition of suffering if not considering it pure joy when
we encounter various trials to you this is a verse 2 of chapter 1 of james so
(19:54):
james 1 verse 2 count it all joy my brothers remember sisters are included in
that in the greek brethren and sistren yeah.
Count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds for you know
that the testing of of your faith produces steadfastness.
(20:14):
And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without
reproach, and it will be given.
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a
wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
(20:36):
For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
He is double-minded, And I think this is an important transition that goes into
this second thought in this passage is that,
you know, the harder way is preventing us from being double-minded.
(20:56):
Yes. Right. Okay. Let me break that down just briefly. We think about the persecuted church.
Okay. I want you to imagine you go to church this week and somebody comes in
with a gun. And supposedly this actually happened in the Soviet Union.
I've heard the story told by numerous people who were in the Soviet Union during
the Cold War, during these persecution eras.
(21:17):
So it happened somewhere at some time. I don't know the exact details,
but this is supposedly a true story.
And so a Soviet soldier walks into the church and he has, he held his gun up
and he says, I'm going to shoot anybody right now who does not,
who doesn't leave the church.
If you, so if you're going to stay here and worship Jesus, you're going to die.
(21:40):
So a bunch of people get up and leave. Then he gets, but not everybody.
So he gets really aggressive and he's like, I'm not kidding.
I've already shot a bunch of people. I'm going to shoot a bunch.
I'm going to shoot people.
I have, I have authority from the government. and if you're
if you're unfortunate enough to survive being shot you're going
to be thrown in the gulag so if you are not
willing to renounce your faith in jesus christ right now or to renounce you
(22:04):
know being in this church right now you're going to be shot a bunch of people
are like okay but we'll leave and he does this two or three another time and
then finally there's only a handful of people left in the church and they and
the and the soviet soldier puts down his gun takes off his hat and his jacket,
and he says, finally, brothers,
let's have church, right?
(22:25):
Because he needed to get all the double-minded people out of there.
Because those double-minded people would be the ones who would turn him in to his higher-ups.
Right. And so when persecution comes to the church, the double-minded are removed.
Yes. Right? And so they're enduring hardship, and they learn to love it because
(22:45):
they recognize, And this is what pastors in the persecuted church have told me personally.
They recognize that when persecution comes, God is doing something. God is moving.
And when persecution comes, while the church in public may shrink,
behind the scenes, the church grows.
The individuals grow spiritually, and they also grow numerically.
(23:08):
Even now in China, where persecution is the worst it's probably been ever in history.
Yes, that is something important to be noted is that it appears based on what
we have read and seen and heard that the persecution going on in China at this
point right now today is probably even worse than it was during the Cultural
(23:30):
Revolution. Which is shocking.
Yeah. And yet the church is growing at an unprecedented rate behind.
I mean, it sounds crazy to say it.
Hopefully it doesn't sound crazy for our listeners to hear it,
but it sounds crazy to outsiders, non-harder way folk, if you will,
to say that the church in China is actually thriving.
(23:52):
Right. Now, that's a weird thing to say, but it really is.
And so this will shock you, the listener probably, and you've heard this before.
Therefore, there are persecuted Christians who pray for us in America to experience persecution.
Because they want our church, the body of Christ here in America,
(24:12):
to experience the purification, the growth, the revival that occurs.
The single-mindedness that has developed. Yeah.
And so in that, we can learn then to have great joy and we can learn to have
a great great attitude of thanksgiving.
And of course, Scripture says, I will enter his courts with thanksgiving in
(24:35):
my heart. I'll enter his courts with praise.
And we will enter the Lord's presence and enter his courts, if you will,
that spiritual place of fellowship through thanksgiving in all circumstances,
through praise in all circumstances.
So I encourage you, Maddie, whatever's going on with you right now,
whatever hardship you're enduring, whatever internal strife is going on in your
(24:58):
life to praise the Lord, no matter what it is.
And I'm going to do the same. That's great advice. And we actually did an entire
episode, I believe, two or three weeks ago, where that was our topic.
And so anybody who didn't get a chance to listen to that, please go ahead and
listen to that because I think it'll really encourage you and really goes in
line well with what we just talked about here today.
(25:20):
Yeah. And again, if you want to hear about the challenge of not renouncing your
faith under Under Great Religious Restriction and Persecution,
and then some keys to preparing yourself for that.
We want you to get the courier update, and you can get that by going to atlasbible.org forward slash bci.
(25:41):
Bravo, Charlie, India.
And Atlas Bible is all one word and all lowercase.
Atlasbible.org forward slash
bci. and there's a place for you to click and sign up for the letter.
And we will get that out to you this next episode coming out.
We'd love to get that information to you. We find a lot of folks really are blessed by it.
(26:03):
And that's the only place where we're going to share the testimony of our couriers
when they get back from this mission.
And in a couple of months, those stories will be coming directly to the readers.
We don't put them directly or immediately onto our podcast because we don't
want to really kind of expose people unnecessarily.
(26:23):
Yeah. Just a matter of, you know, doing what we can to best steward those relationships
and the safety of those people. Right.
They would tell us, don't try to hide us. Put it all out there.
But we do that for them. So we praise the Lord for their faith and for their testimony.
But we try to keep things on the QT, a little OPSEC, as the military would say.
(26:46):
Oh. All right. Well, listen, we love being with you every week.
We're looking forward. We have some new equipment coming.
Finally, our podcast will be much higher sound quality, and we hope if we use it right.
So we're grateful to the donors to our podcast who have helped us with that,
and we can't wait to share it with you in the very near future.
(27:09):
God bless you guys. Bye-bye.
Hello everyone, I'm Scott. And I'm Maddie, and welcome back to the Harder Way Podcast.
Scripture says to endure hardship as discipline.
What in the world does that mean? Pastor Samuel Lamb told me one time,
learn to love suffering to prepare yourself for more religious restriction.
(00:21):
It took me 20 years to figure out exactly what that meant.
But today we're going to share with you what we understand those things to mean.
Yeah, I think it's a really important topic.
And it's funny because this is something that keeps coming up in my life.
I was just at a worship rehearsal and the little devotional time we had beforehand,
(00:41):
we were talking about the portion of James where it talks about,
you know, in your testing of your faith and trials, basically producing endurance
and endurance or perseverance, depending on the translation,
having its perfect result and that growing you and maturing you.
And so this is something that I keep hearing from different people in my life.
(01:01):
And then also just seeing in scripture very clearly is this idea that hardships,
trials, difficulties are not always a bad thing.
Yeah, I think American Christianity, and this is specific to American Christianity,
has embraced a version of Christianity or a version of the gospel where you better be good.
(01:26):
And if you're not, bad things are going to happen to you.
It's become very transactional.
Oh, that's a really important word there, because I think there's a whole lot
to be discussed just with the idea of Christianity as a whole being kind of
this transactional thing now, right?
You can say, okay, well, I'm just going to say this prayer, and now I've got
(01:48):
my ticket to heaven, and I'm going
to stay where I'm at for the rest of my life. I'm never going to grow.
I'm never going to deepen my relationship with the Lord. It's just like,
oh, said this prayer, got my ticket to heaven, made the transaction.
We're good. Right. Right. And that mindset, if those folks don't fall away...
I mean, I heard a statistic years ago that there were just a massive number
(02:09):
of people who get saved that way through just to say something and then you're
saved. Say a little prayer and you're saved.
So many of them fall away. They're like that seed that doesn't fall on the good soil.
You know, something sprouts, but then it dies quickly.
They were never truly regenerated, right? Or poured again for the layman.
(02:32):
Right. Right. Well, you know, I think, I think, you know, in the academic world,
there's something called imposter syndrome.
Society as a whole, too. There's a lot of articles and stuff about that right now.
Right. And so there's this idea that, you know, like when you're earning your
doctorate and then you become a doctor, you feel like I'm an imposter. I'm not legitimate.
(02:56):
And so you almost feel like you're a con man.
And I think, you know, in Christianity, we have the same kind of an experience
where we feel like we are, am I really born again?
Am I really growing in Christ? Am I really secure in my salvation?
You know, we have these questions we're asking ourselves.
(03:16):
And I think our adversary is there whispering the whole time,
you're not really born again.
Or, yeah, you don't need to do anything. Just be.
Or look at those bad things happening. God must be mad at you. You better work harder.
And there are all these disruptive messages that separate us from the love of
(03:37):
God. They separate us from the peace of God.
They separate us from an intimacy with Jesus.
And so I'm going to say something, and then you can riff on it if you want.
I think it might be something that you have experienced personally,
which is there's an intimacy with Christ that can only be known through suffering.
That's absolutely true. You know, if we look at, you know, living our lives,
(04:02):
we see that there are so many things that different people go through, right?
And to varying degrees, you know, suffering is a very general term and it covers
a really wide spectrum, right?
But if we're talking about genuine suffering, it's this idea that when we're
going through something that makes no sense, we don't understand why it's happening.
(04:25):
All we want is for this thing to go away or for this thing to not be.
The only, we could say, recourse that you have is to go to God. God.
It's the only thing that you can do. Because when you're in that deep state
of suffering, there's nothing in the flesh, nothing in the physical that you
can do to genuinely make yourself feel better.
There are things that you can do to kind of put a bandaid on it,
(04:47):
you know, sort of, oh yeah, just go for a walk or go talk to somebody or,
you know, eat some more vegetables, take some vitamins, whatever.
But all that's doing is kind of just helping you cope. It's not really dealing
with that ache in your soul.
And the only thing that is going to help that is going to God and connecting with him.
(05:11):
And so when you do that, you get this really cool experience because we know
that Jesus himself suffered and he suffered more than any of us will ever be able to understand.
He suffered in a way that is is really inconceivable to our simple human minds.
Right. You know, and if you read something like Fox's Book of Martyrs,
(05:34):
or you read Jesus Freaks, which was a rewrite of the Fox's Book of Martyrs with
some modern stories added in.
And even since that one came out, I think in the late 90s, early 2000s,
they've done a redo of Jesus Freaks.
So there's lots of books like that. So you read those stories and you find out
about persecuted Christians who really, really pay a price for their faith. Mm-hmm.
(05:56):
And, you know, I think, you know, we should really question ourselves.
If our only desire as a Christian is to experience the good,
easy life, and that we're focused on transactions that we think are going to
bring that, whether it's a manipulative prayer,
trying to pray in a certain way so that God has to do this.
(06:17):
You know, reminding God of His promises is great because we're really,
He doesn't need to be reminded, but it reminds us and it kind of puts us on
the same page with the Lord.
But reminding God of his promises so that we can make him do our own will, right?
And I think when you're raising a child, there are a lot of times when your
(06:37):
child wants something and you want to give it to them, but you know it'll put
you in a place of danger that you can't see,
or it will cause some kind of, it could lead you down a really bad path,
or it will put you you into a place of having to make decisions that you're
(06:57):
just not intellectually or emotionally ready to make yet.
And so the parent has to say, no, I can't. Or even when a child has misbehaved,
and, you know, I always had a rule when you guys were little and your older
siblings were little, especially,
they would, if they misbehaved, and let's say we were planning to go see a movie,
and this actually happened on more than one occasion.
(07:18):
We were all planning on this Saturday afternoon, we're going to go see the matinee,
and we're going to go see this new kid's movie that came out.
And the kids are fighting, and you say you want to punish them,
you need to give them some kind of a punishment.
And every child is different. Some respond to corporal punishment.
A lot of kids don't respond as well to that, and so you need to find other ways
(07:40):
to discipline and correct.
Well, what I found was that I didn't want to ever say to you or your siblings.
You've been bad, so we're not going to the movies.
Because I know I wanted to go to see the movie too, And it was my day off and
I wanted to relax and I, and I love, love the movie theater popcorn and all of that.
And the only one of the kids was getting in trouble.
(08:02):
And so then do the other kids have
to, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't take away something that I wanted to do.
Yeah. Because then you wind up going back on your word and then you wind up
losing trust with that person.
Yeah. That happened to me. That happened to me once I got in trouble at school
for the only thing I ever got in trouble for at school, which was talking.
And i came out and they're like
(08:23):
oh how'd you do in school today i had to say oh i got in trouble and we
were supposed to be going to the movies to see the chronicles of narnia and
i was like oh man we're not going to get to go and you're like no remember like
we said we were going to go we want to go your brother wants to go so we're
still going to go and then when we get home you know you won't be able to watch
tv tonight and we'll have to have some talks but you know it's Just that idea of,
(08:45):
I think, punishment being for the purpose of learning or being punishment that is just...
Punitive to really kind of just make you pay and
rub in your face hey you need to suffer because you
did something bad and i think that so many of us misunderstand god's disciplining
(09:05):
of us because we think of god because he's so much greater than us sometimes
we can think of him as just saying oh well you messed up well great now i'm
gonna send all these bad things to happen to you because you messed up just to punish you.
But the thing of it is that God, when he is sending things that seem like just
(09:26):
punishments, they're always to help us learn.
They're always to redirect us. We've mentioned this on the podcast before,
the difference of beating a horse versus hitting a horse with the little stick thingy.
The crop. Yeah, the crop. There you go. Because you're training them to follow you.
You're not beating And can we just pause for a moment and acknowledge the fact
(09:49):
that for every hundred times you have to come up with a word that I can't remember, there is one.
That was the one. He got it on recording. It says in Psalms,
see law, now then reflect.
So I'm going to think about this moment and revel in my glory.
But, you know, I think, you know, you're nailing it right on the head is that we need to recognize,
(10:13):
we must recognize that the hardships we experience are allowed by a loving father
who loves us more than we could ever love ourselves or anybody else could ever love us.
And who only wants the best for us.
And if it was best for us, for the Lord to only give us good things and to only
give us great gifts and to only bless our socks off and to only pour out all
(10:37):
wealth and everything else upon us, he would do that because he loves us.
But it's because of that love. His love is a delivering love,
as we've spoken about before.
And he wants to love us in the way that's going to be best for us.
For our good and for his glory. And so that means that we're going to have to have.
(11:02):
Consequences. We're going to have to have some things that aren't even consequences.
They just come into your life and it's this whole hard thing.
And it's really for the purpose of drawing us nearer to the Lord.
And I think you can really continually make parallels with parenting and the
discipline of the Lord, because you can see that from a child's perspective,
(11:26):
there are a lot of of things that are good,
right? Like, oh, I'm a little kid.
Ice cream is good. And as a parent, you're like, yeah, ice cream is good.
It's not good to eat it for breakfast.
It's not good to eat it three times a day. And as a child, you're thinking,
wow, this is so mean. I don't get to have ice cream whenever I want.
And you feel that that's some kind of suffering or a punishment.
(11:49):
And the parent is saying, I'm doing this so that you'll be healthy.
I'm doing this so that you're You're going to grow up. You're not going to have
stunted growth from nutrient deficiencies from only eating ice cream all day.
You know, and so being able to say, look, I understand that when I'm going through
difficulties in my life, it's not because God is punishing me for something
(12:12):
bad that I did. And I think that's that transactional piece.
The reason that we think, oh, if I just do X, Y, Z good thing,
I'll be able to have things going better for me.
It's because in the back of our minds we think
the reason that the bad thing is happening is because
we did xyz bad thing well
(12:33):
even we'll say oh oh i will say it's a prayer really it's a prayer it's well
we so we'll say oh god what did i do to deserve this it really is a prayer and
it's that's such a bad bad theology to have right because the truth is you you
you are a sinner in in need of a savior.
(12:53):
So you deserve every bad thing.
We do. But when we're born again, we are imputed the righteousness of Christ.
And so we're treated that way. And so the Lord is working by the Holy Spirit in us.
Jesus is working, giving us an example, interceding for us.
(13:15):
He's the right hand of the Father. Father, and our Heavenly Father is parenting
us and growing us to be the person that He designed us to be.
Scripture tells us that there are works that God prepared in advance for us
to do, every single one of us.
And these aren't works that earn your salvation or keep your salvation,
(13:38):
but they're the thing God made you to do.
You know, like we might say to somebody, you'll you'll meet a
football you'll meet a an athlete of some kind
and you see them and you'll say they were born to do that
and i think of like jerry rice he's not a he's not my you know pillar of of
ethics or morals or anything else but he was born with a tremendous amount of
(14:01):
natural talent to play wide receiver he played for the 49ers he was he's in the hall of fame.
But anybody who trained with him during the time when he was playing for the
49ers will tell you he was the hardest working guy in the NFL in the offseason.
So not only did he have he was born for something and then he worked hard at it.
(14:24):
And the Lord has given us, we have a work that we're advanced.
There's something that we were born to do. There are things that we were born
to do, and we've got to work at it.
But the Lord is working at it in us.
So even if we're not working at it, he's working at it in us.
And I think something I've heard you say a lot of times before is this idea
that God is opposed to earning.
(14:47):
He's not opposed to effort.
Yes. Right? It's not that we should never cry.
It's not that we should never be intentional because we should,
but it's that we should never see what we're doing or our intentionality or
our work as a way of earning our salvation,
as a way of earning God's favor, as a way of earning blessings,
(15:10):
or as a way of getting rid of suffering and hard time.
Because, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, the Bible says that we should
endure hardships as discipline.
And it's that discipline of a loving father.
The Bible also says, you know, who, if your son asks you for bread,
will give them a rock. Right.
(15:31):
Right? And that God is the same way. And so sometimes we get confused because
we ask God for something and we don't get it.
And I think what we can say is it would be like, you know, your little kid comes
up to you and they've got, you know, their hand is like practically severed
(15:51):
off and they're not even noticed.
They haven't even noticed that their hand is practically severed off.
And they're just coming up to you saying, Hey, I'm really hungry.
Can we go to McDonald's? I'm really hungry. I I'd like something to eat.
And your parent is like, yeah, we'll deal with that in in a little bit,
we need to deal with your hand, right?
It's not because your parent is punishing you.
(16:12):
It's not because your parent doesn't love you. They don't want you to eat.
They're not giving you the blessing of going to McDonald's. It's because they're
like, hey, let's deal with the imminent danger of.
You're partially severed. And
if you think about it with this partially severed hand, what do you know?
You know that when you get to the ER, that that child's going to be going under general anesthesia.
(16:32):
Yep. And so you don't want them to eat.
Because it would be a danger for them to have eaten before they go in for a
surgery. Yeah, exactly.
So if you think about that, then our Heavenly Father, who is perfect,
is always aware of, he's omni, he's omniscient, all-knowing.
Shut up, you're just going to say he's omniscient. He's all omni. He's omni.
(16:54):
And so because of that, he's aware of those factors that we don't think of.
And so he knows, oh, you're in shock. You need a blanket on you.
Oh, you might bleed out. You need a tourniquet or you need a pressure bandage.
Oh, you are going to go into surgery.
We should not get you food. We give you some little water or some ice chips,
but we've got to get you right.
(17:15):
He's he's and the 10,000 other things that we haven't thought of.
When we can think of it in that perspective, then we can look at it,
we can say, okay, I don't understand why I have to be hungry.
I don't understand why I have to have surgery.
I don't understand why I have to endure this hardship or that hardship.
But what I know is this, my Heavenly Father loves me and He knows everything
(17:41):
and He is perfectly wise. eyes.
And so whatever is going on right now is part of His plan and that I can rejoice
in Him knowing that I'm in His will, no matter how uncomfortable it is,
no matter how inconvenient it is, no matter how hard it is.
You know, I think about my little problem of not being able to go on this,
(18:01):
this courier mission because of the wound on my foot, which is,
it is healing and it is healing, but it's healing slowly.
For those of you that are praying for me and for healing, Thank you so much.
But I had a lot of time and a lot of, you know, planning and a lot of desire to do this.
And I have to thank the Lord and say, Lord, this is not your timing.
(18:24):
This is not your will for me now. I thank you for this. I thank you for this hardship.
And who knows what other things I may have avoided, you know?
You just have no idea because we keep going back to that example of the parent,
how much more does a parent know than a child, right?
And let's take that times infinity when we want to think how much more does God know than any of us?
(18:51):
How much more does God know than the person who's known the most in all of human history?
You can't even calculate it because it's so much more.
And so there are more factors, more possibilities, possibilities,
more things that we would never even think to consider, that we would never be able to conceive of.
And it's funny because we're talking about.
(19:13):
About this idea, and I just keep thinking about this concept of resilience.
Because I think that that passage in James really gives us the recipe for resilience, right?
It says endurance, perseverance, but resilience is a little bit more of a modern
word and it's taken on some new meanings in recent years.
(19:33):
So I feel like that really is the recipe for resilience, which is having one
of our key things that we've talked about on this podcast, a redefinition of suffering.
Because what is a redefinition of suffering if not considering it pure joy when
we encounter various trials to you this is a verse 2 of chapter 1 of james so
(19:54):
james 1 verse 2 count it all joy my brothers remember sisters are included in
that in the greek brethren and sistren yeah.
Count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds for you know
that the testing of of your faith produces steadfastness.
(20:14):
And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without
reproach, and it will be given.
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a
wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
(20:36):
For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
He is double-minded, And I think this is an important transition that goes into
this second thought in this passage is that,
you know, the harder way is preventing us from being double-minded.
(20:56):
Yes. Right. Okay. Let me break that down just briefly. We think about the persecuted church.
Okay. I want you to imagine you go to church this week and somebody comes in
with a gun. And supposedly this actually happened in the Soviet Union.
I've heard the story told by numerous people who were in the Soviet Union during
the Cold War, during these persecution eras.
(21:17):
So it happened somewhere at some time. I don't know the exact details,
but this is supposedly a true story.
And so a Soviet soldier walks into the church and he has, he held his gun up
and he says, I'm going to shoot anybody right now who does not,
who doesn't leave the church.
If you, so if you're going to stay here and worship Jesus, you're going to die.
(21:40):
So a bunch of people get up and leave. Then he gets, but not everybody.
So he gets really aggressive and he's like, I'm not kidding.
I've already shot a bunch of people. I'm going to shoot a bunch.
I'm going to shoot people.
I have, I have authority from the government. and if you're
if you're unfortunate enough to survive being shot you're going
to be thrown in the gulag so if you are not
willing to renounce your faith in jesus christ right now or to renounce you
(22:04):
know being in this church right now you're going to be shot a bunch of people
are like okay but we'll leave and he does this two or three another time and
then finally there's only a handful of people left in the church and they and
the and the soviet soldier puts down his gun takes off his hat and his jacket,
and he says, finally, brothers,
let's have church, right?
(22:25):
Because he needed to get all the double-minded people out of there.
Because those double-minded people would be the ones who would turn him in to his higher-ups.
Right. And so when persecution comes to the church, the double-minded are removed.
Yes. Right? And so they're enduring hardship, and they learn to love it because
(22:45):
they recognize, And this is what pastors in the persecuted church have told me personally.
They recognize that when persecution comes, God is doing something. God is moving.
And when persecution comes, while the church in public may shrink,
behind the scenes, the church grows.
The individuals grow spiritually, and they also grow numerically.
(23:08):
Even now in China, where persecution is the worst it's probably been ever in history.
Yes, that is something important to be noted is that it appears based on what
we have read and seen and heard that the persecution going on in China at this
point right now today is probably even worse than it was during the Cultural
(23:30):
Revolution. Which is shocking.
Yeah. And yet the church is growing at an unprecedented rate behind.
I mean, it sounds crazy to say it.
Hopefully it doesn't sound crazy for our listeners to hear it,
but it sounds crazy to outsiders, non-harder way folk, if you will,
to say that the church in China is actually thriving.
(23:52):
Right. Now, that's a weird thing to say, but it really is.
And so this will shock you, the listener probably, and you've heard this before.
Therefore, there are persecuted Christians who pray for us in America to experience persecution.
Because they want our church, the body of Christ here in America,
(24:12):
to experience the purification, the growth, the revival that occurs.
The single-mindedness that has developed. Yeah.
And so in that, we can learn then to have great joy and we can learn to have
a great great attitude of thanksgiving.
And of course, Scripture says, I will enter his courts with thanksgiving in
(24:35):
my heart. I'll enter his courts with praise.
And we will enter the Lord's presence and enter his courts, if you will,
that spiritual place of fellowship through thanksgiving in all circumstances,
through praise in all circumstances.
So I encourage you, Maddie, whatever's going on with you right now,
whatever hardship you're enduring, whatever internal strife is going on in your
(24:58):
life to praise the Lord, no matter what it is.
And I'm going to do the same. That's great advice. And we actually did an entire
episode, I believe, two or three weeks ago, where that was our topic.
And so anybody who didn't get a chance to listen to that, please go ahead and
listen to that because I think it'll really encourage you and really goes in
line well with what we just talked about here today.
(25:20):
Yeah. And again, if you want to hear about the challenge of not renouncing your
faith under Under Great Religious Restriction and Persecution,
and then some keys to preparing yourself for that.
We want you to get the courier update, and you can get that by going to atlasbible.org forward slash bci.
(25:41):
Bravo, Charlie, India.
And Atlas Bible is all one word and all lowercase.
Atlasbible.org forward slash
bci. and there's a place for you to click and sign up for the letter.
And we will get that out to you this next episode coming out.
We'd love to get that information to you. We find a lot of folks really are blessed by it.
(26:03):
And that's the only place where we're going to share the testimony of our couriers
when they get back from this mission.
And in a couple of months, those stories will be coming directly to the readers.
We don't put them directly or immediately onto our podcast because we don't
want to really kind of expose people unnecessarily.
(26:23):
Yeah. Just a matter of, you know, doing what we can to best steward those relationships
and the safety of those people. Right.
They would tell us, don't try to hide us. Put it all out there.
But we do that for them. So we praise the Lord for their faith and for their testimony.
But we try to keep things on the QT, a little OPSEC, as the military would say.
(26:46):
Oh. All right. Well, listen, we love being with you every week.
We're looking forward. We have some new equipment coming.
Finally, our podcast will be much higher sound quality, and we hope if we use it right.
So we're grateful to the donors to our podcast who have helped us with that,
and we can't wait to share it with you in the very near future.
(27:09):
God bless you guys. Bye-bye.
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