Where is God When We are Hurting?

Yesterday, I capped off an amazing afternoon in a horrible fashion. I came home to find our 13-year old Dachshund, Scooter lying dead at the end of our neighbor's driveway. The little guy who never wandered from the house had gotten too far from home and I assume was hit by some idiot teenager who thought it would be cool to run over my dog. This really brought to the surface some things I had been mulling on for the last few weeks about life's pain and victory and their relationships to God.

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting with my cousin about how sometimes it seems like God strings us along. He had a successful career as a construction foreman for a very large homebuilder in one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. When the housing market fell out a couple of years ago, he was laid off and has spent the majority of his recent months trying to begin a new career, which finally happened a few weeks ago. He asked me how I was doing, and I said I was "feasting on the riches of his grace," a line from the hymn "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest Name I Know." You see, for the last year, my wife and I had been battling health problems, and financial problems but a few weeks prior, we had a breakthrough and God opened up a door for Cindy to use her talents, abilities, and life story, to share the love of Christ to women in crisis pregnancies and to be able to get paid for it. In the wave of highs and lows that life brings, we were riding the crest of a big one.

But yesterday, when I saw our "little man" lying in the road, it all came crashing down. And I remembered my conversation with Ken. We discussed why God seems to come through in his time, not ours. What we realized is that God designed us for a relationship with Him. He is a relational God, even in relationship with himself between Father, Son, and Spirit. He extends that relationship to us. When life is fine and dandy, our human nature kicks in and while we may give lip service to our dependence on God, often times we are not truly dependent on him, because we feel like we are self sustaining. But it is in our times of tremendous need, and deep pain, that we remember there is one greater than us who loved us enough to die for us.

Philippians 4:6-7 is one of my favorite passages. This passage says that we shouldn't be anxious about anything, but through prayer, we should present our requests to God with thanksgiving. Then the peace that passes all understanding will guard our hearts. That means when we depend on God, he gives us peace that we can't understand. That is the peace I have today in spite of my hurt. Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall." I Peter 5:7 also says, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Since God included this in the Old and New Testaments, maybe he was trying to tell us something.

I don't know where you are today. But if you are hurting, just know that God loves you. He hurts when you hurt. And the only thing he wants more than to make your hurt go away is for you to grow closer to him through the hurt. That's why redemption is better than healing. When Jesus healed the 10 men with leprosy in Luke 17, all of them were healed. But only one used that experience to draw closer to God. Ten were healed, but only one was redeemed. Remember that when we hurt, it's not always about healing, but about redemption.

The Role of Pain in a Healthy Approach to Ministry

I consider myself to be somewhat "connected" to the world outside...not just the people around me who I do know, but those whom I may have never met but exists in similar circles (musicians, worship leaders, youth workers) through the miracles of modern technology. One website I frequent is basically a forum for youth workers and other ministry personnel to come together and ask questions and debate various topics. I recently posted a debate about an upcoming youth event which was met with a lot of criticism. And I began to examine why my approach to ministry is different from a lot of people who serve the church in the same capacity I do.

From a loss standpoint, I grew up in a pretty sheltered way (and for that I am thankful). I never had to go through the pain of my parents divorcing when I was young or losing one of them in an untimely death. Having no siblings, I never sent a sibling off to war or felt the loss of losing one of them. I had lost grandparents, but their deaths were timely for the most part and time had given them an opportunity for life. My life for the first 25 years, although not perfect, was in many senses ideal. But the quarter-century mark was not a good time in my life. I went through a divorce and lost my wife of nearly 3 years whom I'd been in a relationship with for nearly 5 years. For the first in my life I hurt in a new way. And not only did I hurt, but no one in my circle of influence was able to stop it. Not my parents, not her parents, not my pastors, not my friends. I was left there in a town with no family and few friends to weather the coming storm. In that time I hurt in ways I never had before and had an overwhelming desire to kill that pain.

Just prior to my divorce, our church had lost its senior pastor and I was the only ministerial staff person. My best friend had moved out of town six months before as well, and I remember the feeling of having never been that "alone". My church really did not know how to minister to me and take care of me. In that particular denomination, divorce is kind of a "hush hush" subject and people have all kinds of views on it. Also, during this time, I was serving as a youth pastor, a choir director, and was going to seminary full time. The pain of divorce, the lack of community, and the shear stress of personal and professional pressures put me on a roller-coaster ride for the next two years. This ride came to a screeching halt the weekend I graduated from seminary when I found myself in another life-changing situation that was beyond my control.

Spiritually depleted, emotionally broken, and just plain exhausted, I resigned from my church staff position a couple of weeks after getting my Masters Degree in Christian Education. Having no plan or job, I moved back in with my parents at age 27, trusting God that he would show me the next step of the journey. During this time I became a part of a great church and was able to make a decent living selling insurance for a very good company. But I was hungry for ministry. Two years to the day after starting at the insurance office, I took a position as Director of Youth Ministries here at First United Methodist Church in Palestine. The Methodist Church was a good fit for me because it didn't carry all of the stigmas I'd experienced before. They were just excited to have me on board. That was nearly four years ago. And my ministry now is completely different than it was when I was in my early 20s. The thing that makes my approach to ministry different is the pain I experienced.

In Scripture, the greatest stories of triumph (Moses, David, the missionary journeys of Paul) are the ones that stared the darkest fates in the face and rose victorious by God's grace. Having been through trials, I approach things differently with my kids hoping that when they face the gut-wrenching pain of loss in their life they will be able to weather the storm better than I did. I don't try to convince myself that we live in a perfect world and that if we follow Jesus everything will turn out right. God has a way of making things harder on us in such an amazingly wonderful way. I also worry less about the smaller things and worry more about whether or not they are "getting it" when it comes to faith in God. I also try really hard not to isolate them from things that are in the world. Many people in my line of work feel that by talking about something, we are somehow promoting it. Jesus talked about a lot of social and moral issues in his day, but by giving lip service to these issues he was in no way condoning them. I would rather a student encounter a taboo message under the leadership of Christian adults who love and care for him than to have him run across it late at night when surfing the internet or watching movies at his friends house. If I can't be the one to talk about these issues with him, then who can?

I am thankful that God has placed me on this amazing journey of life and this amazing journey of ministry. Since my hour of darkness, he has since blessed me with a new wife and family. But I can't erase the scars of what happened. And to not learn from those experiences and to not pass that knowledge on would be doing a disservice to my students. I feel my ministry now has more focus than it did prior to this dark time in my life. I now teach with the goal that when my students hit rough water they cling to it rather than abandon it. And personally, there is no substitute for the role it had in my life and ministry. If you are in ministry or any area of service in your church, what personal experiences have shaped the way you carry out God's call on your life?

Just Doesn't Feel Like Christmas

Last year, my family and I had a very memorable Christmas. The weekend after Thanksgiving I was out hanging lights on the outside of the house (a first for me), and we put up our 7ft tall tree right in the living room. We did probably more than we should have in terms of Christmas shopping. And the wonderful day was met with great anticipation. This year things are just...well...different. It's nearly ten days before Christmas and I'm just now getting around to putting up a miniature version of last year's tree. There are no lights on the house, and we've barely done any Christmas shopping. Maybe we're just tired. Maybe because the recently-acquired recliner cuts into the amount of available space for a tree. Maybe it's because we now have a cat who we know will make a destructive hay day out of a full-sized tree. Maybe it's because we've felt the disappointment and loss of two miscarriages this year. Maybe... well...

This year, it just doesn't feel quite like Christmas--for me anyway. And maybe I'm not the only one who feels this way. But with Christmas comes the message of hope. It's the message that when Christ comes into the world, things are never the same. So for me, the message of Christmas is not something that happens once a year. It must be a daily reality. Sometimes life causes us to lose track of what's really going on in life. We all experience hardships, loss, and heartache. I hope that we can all remember, though that as Peter walked out on the water, it was his circumstances that caused him to sink and the hand of Jesus that kept him above the water.

No matter what you've experienced this year, and how you choose to reflect on it, that we can all remember that there is something greater than this world that is watching us. God bless.

Sin and Consequences (What I Learned from Mud Volleyball)

This weekend, I took my youth group to an event at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, TX called Omega Fest. This was a fun Saturday event that featured a crawfish boil, live music, and a mud volleyball tournament. The sun was hot, the music was great, the mudbugs were spicy, and the volleyball was...well...muddy. You can't participate in a mud volleyball tournament and expect to stay clean. But on a hot summer day, the mud was cool and wet.

As our team was called up, we eased into the cool mud and it actually felt kind of good. It was at least six inches deep throughout the entire court, so none of us were quite sure what was underneath it. After a showdown of Rock, Paper, Scissors, our team got the first serve. I bumped the muddy ball up over the net and it was vollied right back at me just a few feet up from where I was standing. I jumped forward and went down on my knees to get my hands up under the ball. As I watched the ball go back over the net, I realized there was much more than mud in the pit. It seems as I attempted to return the ball, my knees had landed on a pile of rocks under the soft cool mud. After a hose-down and later a real shower I noticed scabs forming on both my knees as I suffered the consequences of a seemingly innocent game of mud volleyball. (The picture above is a shot of my knee taken on Monday after the Saturday match.)

As I pondered my experience, I began to realize that this is how sin is. Just like that soft cool mud (although dirty) looked good on the surface, I didn't realize until after I got in the pit that there were rocks in there. Once the rocks had cut me (both on my knees and the bottom of my feet), I didn't seem to notice it as much as long as I was covered in the cool mud. But when I got out of the pit and cleaned off, I really noticed the pain of what I'd done. James 1:13-15 says: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." As sin entices us, and we give in, it brings pain in our lives and sometimes it seems like the only way to mask the pain is to keep on sinning (remain in the pit). However, God is light and what light does is expose the pain of our sin. 1 John 1:7 says "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." If you will allow me to extend the metaphor, God is the one who gets us out of the pit and washes us off and allows our wounds to heal. Thanks be to God that he calls us out of the pit of sin and cleanses us from our pain to bring about healing!