The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
For the Spread of the Gospel
When “bad” things happen to Christians, we frequently wonder what they have done in the past to deserve it. The Bible is clear that tribulation and suffering are not necessarily deserved or earned. Reasons for trials in a Christian’s life include God’s training by testing, God’s glory, the spread of the gospel, Satan’s sieve, or the consequences of unconfessed sin. The spread of the gospel is the topic of this week’s devotional.
Paul is a good example of God’s use of tribulation to spread the gospel. As a young man he was the chief persecutor of the early church, even holding the coats of Steven’s murderers (Acts 7:58 and 22:20). Because of that persecution, the early believers were scattered. But they didn’t go quietly to compromise their faith. Acts 8:4 tells us, “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word.”
Paul himself was arrested in Jerusalem where he spoke the gospel to Festus, King Agrippa, and all others in the court that day (Acts 26). Following an arduous journey by sea, he was taken to Rome where he “…dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him” (Acts 28: 30-31).
Our own experience of this aspect of God’s work through trials is recorded in Chapter 9 of The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith (pp. 95-99).
“The ‘new thing’ God brings into each of our lives with a disaster or devastating illness is, in part, a new mission field. In the first place, we are, all of us, “missionaries” in whatever venue God has chosen to put us. We touch the lives of people in places and in ways no one else can. And so we share Christ through the way we live and are sometimes lead to share the gospel in words as well. Your life, work, and family dynamic were uniquely assembled through personality, experience, and skill-sets by God and meant for His glory, no matter what the hardship.
I remember a missionary speaking at a meeting I attended when I was a child. She said that she had felt lead to go to the mission field, but had no clear direction as to the specific place. She had prayed, “Lord, send me anywhere but not Timbuktu. It’s just too close to the Sahara, and too far from the beaten path.” We all laughed when she said, “And guess where the Lord plopped me. Not Timbuktu, but about 30 miles from there, even farther inland.”
Now suppose this missionary, once arrived at the scene of God’s choosing, had sat about moaning and groaning about how awful the Lord had treated her, why on earth had he put her there in the middle of the Sahara, and was God really even interested in her anymore anyway, or had he completely abandoned her. The ministry God had set for her would never have materialized. In fact, she would have so alienated the local culture and people that they might never have allowed another American missionary to come again, thus effectively sabotaging the work of the Lord in that place for generations to come. Satan would love that, wouldn’t he?
Instead, the missionary went willingly, after many years of hard lessons in the United States taught her glad obedience to the will of God. And her labor produced a profound love of the local people and a Bible School to train both men and women to be spiritual leaders in local churches planted by others. Her joyful obedience to God’s will for her continues to draw people to Christ, even a generation after her death.
Let’s make an analogy to the position of a person whose life is suddenly altered by devastating circumstances beyond their control. Like Dan and I. We could have moaned and groaned about how awful the Lord had treated us, asked why on earth had he put us here in the middle of a Medical desert, and was God really even interested in us anymore anyway, or had he completely abandoned us. Instead we recognized that there was nothing we could do about our circumstances, but we could choose how we reacted to them. We also recognized that we had neither the energy nor the time to feel sorry for ourselves.
Although we felt like Dan was under a death sentence at first, we quickly realized that God had placed us in a new mission field. What other reason would there have been for us to spend time in doctors’ waiting rooms with other patients or to have contact with the doctors and nurses themselves?
The new mission field began immediately. While Dan was having that first MRI, a family from our church came into the waiting room. I breezily said that Dan was having an MRI but didn’t go into detail (we didn’t have any details yet). Their young adult daughter was having terrible migraine headaches and so the doctor had order tests to be done, including an MRI. Before we left the waiting room we prayed with them for their daughter. They were not in the least interested in our reasons for being there, so we knew that God had set this divine appointment for their comfort, not ours.
We began stepping into each setting asking God to show us what opportunities He was giving us that day to exercise our new mission (part of “the new thing” of Isaiah 43:19). That is what God calls each of us to do, no matter what our circumstances!
…Early on we had already experienced that peace that passes understanding as we found ourselves in places we would never have been, except for this disease. With each doctor we had been able to share our faith to a certain degree. In each waiting room, there was someone God asked us to pray for and sometimes speak encouragement to. At the hospital, nursing staff would walk into Dan’s room and just stand there, breathing in the peace and calm they experienced there, away from the chaos and pain expressed throughout the rest of the oncology ward.
In that ward God gave us opportunity to share with other patients, too:
*The first round, God gave us fellow patient Will and his wife Sue to pray for. We saw them during round four again, amazingly growing in the Lord, and well on the road to health.
*From round one we also prayed for CNA Danielle, a Christian whose pregnancy was at risk and whose husband needed a job. During round three, she brought us up to date on the exciting news that the pregnancy was going well, her husband had been hired for a lucrative construction contract, and they were once again attending their church on a regular basis.
*Round 2 brought us another Christian CNA to pray for in her decisions on what school to attend for her nursing degree.
*During Round 2, we also prayed with and for the family of a woman who was close to death.
*Rounds 3 and 4 we met, encouraged, and prayed for a family whose 18-year-old daughter had a rare blood disease. We did not see them again.
*Round 4 we prayed for an elderly woman who had had surgery for breast cancer and for her husband.
The new mission field in which God placed us included not only people who needed to hear about the Lord, towards their salvation, but also Christians who needed to be encouraged and taught. This aspect of our new mission field became very clear from the beginning of our ‘call’.”
