Fighting for Joy
Dec 11th, 2007 by Hugh
I’ve been discouraged a lot lately.
Here’s the latest link in my dark chain: yesterday, I was mildly irritated to wake up and discover one of my kids in the bed. Not a big deal by any means, but still, it was one of those “that’s not right” moments that gets your day off on the wrong foot.
A few hours later, I got a prayer request for a family whose only child—a sixth-grader—died. Her grieving mom wrote, “i held my precious baby today as she drew her last breath… to know that my precious girl is not sleeping in her bed, won’t be coming down this morning to jump in my lap, kiss me good morning, tell me she loves me, is killing me. i am rocked to my very core.”
While this poor mother will never again wake up to her daughter’s greeting, I’m getting annoyed at mine for being there when I woke up. Stupid, blind, ungrateful, proud, selfish fool! I hold myself in contempt… I repent… God have mercy on me, a sinner!
It’s not supposed to work that way… parents shouldn’t have to bury their children. It’s not supposed to be this way! Death is entirely alien, unnatural, and unwelcome. We have eternity in our hearts, but mortality in our flesh. The tension is unbearable. Chalk it up to sin, folks, and it’s a far bigger problem than any of us realizes. “The wages of sin is death,” and there’s a grieving mother and father paying up this week.
But John Piper—God bless him—gives me a handhold at times like these. He’s offered the following advice on how to fight for joy, advice which closely mirrors the content of his excellent book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy…
1. Realize that authentic joy in God is a gift.
2. Realize that joy must be fought for relentlessly.
3. Resolve to attack all known sin in your life.
4. Learn the secret of gutsy guilt - how to fight like a justified sinner.
5. Realize that the battle is primarily a fight to see God for who he is.
6. Meditate on the Word of God day and night.
7. Pray earnestly and continually for open heart-eyes and an inclination for God.
8. Learn to preach to yourself rather than listen to yourself.
9. Spend time with God-saturated people who help you see God and fight the fight.
10. Be patient in the night of God’s seeming absence.
11. Get the rest, exercise, and proper diet that your body was designed by God to have.
12. Make a proper use of God’s revelation in nature.
13. Read great books about God and biographies of great saints.
14. Do the hard and loving thing for the sake of others (witness and mercy).
15. Get a global vision for the cause of Christ and pour yourself out for the unreached.
But for now I think it’s sufficient to quote another line of Piper’s… “Hug and cry first, give God-centered explanations later.“
On that very day four years ago we lost our first unborn daughter very late in the pregnancy. At that moment we were beeing married for twelve years. She was our “Isaak”.
Some weeks ago a family in our church lost there firstborn nine year old son in a very unnecessary accident.
Yesterday I talked with a college at christmas dinner. She challenged my believe in god. What kind of god make people that bad?
It turned out that she never thought about the absurdity of calling something “bad” or “good” without god in the worldview, the problem with the free will or the impossibility to imagine a better world (Lewis).
I challenged her with logic und reason while the real issue was that she once was raped and someone in her family try to press her into christianity really bad. So I was a really bad ambassador of the kingdom. Not very kind and helpfull. I should have known better.
After the dinner we went out in the freash air and she said: “Isn’t life great! We should enjoy it.”
I have no answer at all, why pain drives some people closer to god and others away.
But I for myself do not know of any place to go but in the arms of the one who knows not only mine but all the suffering in the world…
Sven, thanks for your comments, and I am very sorry to hear of your loss.
All I can say is that I continue to trust God more than I hate these tragedies, but I do hate them. A lot. I pray that my trust isn’t tested in a way that’s as close to home as yours was.
I just read an update from the mother of the child who died. She knows the Holy Spirit is there, but she doesn’t feel him. She’s numb. She feels forsaken, but she knows she’s not.
Jesus, nailed to the cross, asked God why he had forsaken him. And yet he was in the very center of God’s will. As C.S. Lewis has said, Satan’s cause “is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Thanks for your compassion.
In the end everything went well.
We have two little children now. So I really understand your command about us “stupid, blind, ungrateful, proud, selfish” fools. Our son comes nearly every night and stole us our sleep.
We are so fast to forget … stupid ungrateful fools!
I had read parts of you blog entry in our small group this evening and had a hard time to finish it. A young couple await there first child and yesterday their doctor told them that he couldn’t see the right hand and that -very likely- something is wrong. These are really bad days…
It’s not hard to see that this all makes sense und a less painful world -in which gods purpose is fulfilled- is hard to imagine. God is a loving caring father but nevertheless … it still hurts …
P.S.: Please ignore my bad spelling … englisch is not my first language.
Sven, English is my only language, so I’ll just stand in admiration of your ability to speak more than one language!
It’s a real encouragement to me to know that people in another country—who speak another language—are reading something I wrote. I’m humbled. As I wrote last week, the Internet really can be a means of grace.
P.S. Which country are you from?
The internet definitely is a means of grace.
Half of the entrys in your A-list are part of my regular readings.
I’m from germany. The land with the critical theologians that invented the “historical-critical method” half a century ago … shame on them … not for beeing critical but for beeing critical without sound reason combined with bad historical research…
By the way, I’m a software developer too and enjoy your well worded thoughts a lot…
Sven, you’re making my fight for joy really easy tonight. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas!
P.S. Germany also gave us Luther… by contrast, I don’t think people will still be talking about Bultmann 500 years from now!
Thanks Hugh, I hope you and your family will have a good christmas too.
Strangely enouth this is is the most hectic time in the year…
P.S.: Yes, most people will finally recognize that there are galaxys of excellence between those two german guys.
Looking at the last century it makes me cry to see what had happend with my country … there is a long way to fall from the top … me manged that really fast …
But for the grace of God, the USA and other countries will go the same way.
I came across a Latin phrase that fits your sentiment: corruptio optimi pessima; it means “the corruption of the best is worst.”
Surely nothing was ever better than God’s wholly good creation of man in his own image; our corruption as bearers of God’s image is the worst imaginable.