Suffering Well

“The life of Jesus on earth, which culminated on the cross, modeled suffering well.”

It is interesting that the culmination of Jesus’ life is said to be the cross. Death. We all and our natural mindsets are inclined and wired to not even conceive about another option for the “culmination” of our entire lives. What will our lives head to? What will be the climax of our lives? Our entire lives…reach a certain zenith—what will that be? We all assume categories of a mountain peak, and that when we reach the height of that mountain top, we will have reached the culmination of our entire lives–a success that will change our lives and bring wholeness and satisfaction. We all assume a good thing will bring about this thriving, abundant life. And so we wait…we wait for that good thing to finally come and happen to us and change our lives forever.

But if a mountain is the picture we’re using, then Jesus assumed the valley—not the peak—as the thing that would describe the culmination of his life on earth. Death. On an agonizing cross. Suffering. Pain. Self-surrender. Sacrifice. Sacrifice was the culmination of his entire life. But of course Jesus was like us—he did not want this to be the culmination of his entire life:

“It was evident in the Garden of Gethsemane that Jesus did not want to go through with HIs imminent death. He was in so much distress that He was sweating blood…”

He was human, like us, and he craved and naturally was inclined toward good things. HE sympathizes with us in our slowness to suffer, our resistance to pain, our distress in tribulations.

“…yet He was still able to remain connected to the Father and think of the welfare of His disciples when the guards seized Him. Jesus did not change under pressure and exhibited the same thoughtfulness, forgiveness, and compassion as before. HIs deep connection with the Father enabled Him to suffer well.”

The culmination of Yeshua’s life was not just to suffer but to suffer well. Suffering was destined for him—it was his chosen portion and lot for his life to culminate in the cross. The goal for him was to suffer it well.

It is the same for us:

“God invites all of his followers to live our lives in the same way as Christ.”

Suffering, the cross, sacrifice were not just Jesus’ chosen portion. It’s ours, too. He is our example, we are his disciples. That means we need to stop thinking about the culmination of our lives in terms of a mountain top and move down toward the valley, accepting that God intends and destined a cross for each of us to bear and carry daily. The quicker we accept that suffering is the agenda and culmination of our entire lives, as it was Jesus’, the more we can begin learning our lessons in suffering well, which is the goal. When we stop fighting suffering and quit seeing it as the problem and our worst enemy, then we can finally begin perceiving God’s presence in the midst of trials and the purpose behind problems. The sooner we will be able to say “Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.” The sooner we will be able to reject all those other images and idols promising abundant life.

This is the only road God has carved out for us that leads to that thriving, abundant life. There is no other road to abundant life, transformation, love, and God himself.

These are the mysterious and higher ways of God.

The Cross.

Life through death.

Show me Adonai, how to walk down this road, what my personal and daily cross to bear is, and how to bear it well. God, like Jesus, we don’t want to. We desperately seek to exhaust every other way, every other road hoping to find another way.  Help each of us hear You say and be convinced that there still is no other way. For the sake of the One who went ahead of me and suffered on my behalf that I may live. Amen.

Quotes are taken from Joyful Journey, a book practicing Immanuel Prayer.

The Cross of Passover

Ironically enough, this Passover season God has put on my heart the centrality of the cross. We know the foundation for what happened upon Yeshua’s cross is what happened in Egypt millennia previous. Yeshua’s crucifixion is analogous to the lamb …

Kiddush Hashem in The Siddur and Scripture

Something that strikes me the most about the Siddur is how Kiddush Hashem, the obligation to sanctify God’s name in the world, makes up so much of the premise and drive behind Jewish prayer and Jewish theology. The ultimate Jewish …

Purim

Esther 2:5-7, 17-20, 4:13-16 2:5-7  There was a Jewish man in the Shushan palace whose name was Mordecai, son of Jair son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjamite, 6 who had been taken into exile from Jerusalem with the …

Jesus as a Person, not Theology

There really is something about knowing the Hebrew roots that solidifies Christian convictions (and corrects them too).  I think that’s because it’s not all spiritual stuff—it’s also very very historical, literal, material, and just plain realistic.  Very, very generally speaking, …

suffering grace

Accepting weakness.

Receiving the least of these.

This will come with suffering on our part, but benefit on their part. That’s the privileged calling of greatest honor.

“Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you..” (Col 1:24)

“So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” (2 Corinthians 4:11-12)

“Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.” (2 Timothy 2:10)

Sometimes it’ll be heartache, disappointment, grief, pain, and long suffering for us; but abundant life, blessing, growth, maturity on their part.

This once encompassed the great struggle of the Jewish leaders, probably the struggle that kept a lot of them from receiving Hope when He stood before them on the precipice of a changing world, a shift in history— can these weak, pathetic, immature, so ignorant Gentiles really actually come into what we have? Can they actually change? Can what was so blind now see? What was so perverse become pure? What was so crooked become straight? What was so wretched now be redeemed? It was a non acceptance of the despicable other, the least of these.

But the suffering of not suffering grace in each other’s weakness is the greatest suffering of all. And we are never less like God than when we despise the least of these.

We have tasted of great spiritual realities and abundant life. But God doesn’t want us to keep it to ourselves, our very own holy huddle. But rather, we’re to give it away, share it, bring the needy into the same abundance—not despise those who lack it. This is one reason believers suffer. To propagate these accessible realities of abundant life and spiritual healing and maturity to the needy, neglected, lacking ones.

Irony of Ironies

I am sympathetic to the Jewish predicament.

But first, a clarification.

 

When I say that, let the reader know I mean the general Jewish predicament, because not all Jewish people experience the exact same thing, even if it is on a large scale. For example, when people talk about the Jews rejecting Yeshua (Jesus), it does become important to specify that it was the national Jewish leaders of the day that rejected him and influenced a part of the Jewish crowd to do the same; but there were large numbers–thousands!–of Jewish people who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah, too, both during his ministry and after his resurrection/ascension. For example, we know Yeshua appeared to more than 500 people in his resurrected form–well, those were all Jewish people! The 3,000 souls to whom Peter preached on Pentecost and who all were added into the kingdom were all Jewish!

Indeed, I’m not against making general observations and speaking in general terms, but only if we are balanced and diligent enough to safeguard our general statements with boundaries so as to prevent and avoid generalizations which then open doors into false and distorted teaching/thinking/behaving.

Back to the Jewish Predicament.

What do I mean? What Jewish predicament?

In one word…irony.

The greatest irony there ever was, I think.

 

It’s reaching a place in your life where, when looking behind you, you see experiences that have enjoyed the truth of who God truly is, and yet when you look forward or even in the present, you find yourself struggling, baffled, confused, blind, perhaps even lost. Something changed. Something got lost.

 

It is the dynamic of relationships, and the inevitable great challenge that every relationship must face and endure–the challenge of time.  Many will come to find out that it is more difficult holding onto/guarding what they once possessed so easily at the beginning–the love, the thrill, the joy, the delight.  This is the great challenge of relationships…but also of religion.  Many will come to find out that it is more difficult holding onto the truth you know than discovering it the first time.

 

Well, this encapsulates the essence of the Jewish predicament. No other people group has had to face the challenge of time in their relationship with Adonai like the Jewish people have had to face–even the religions older than Judaism since they were never had the privilege of possessing the oracles and revelation of the true God. The predicament of the Jewish people is essentially the perseverance of a love relationship.

 

And here is the irony, the greatest irony: How is it possible that the very ones who know and have always known the most about the love and goodness of the one, true God should turn out to reject that love and be blind to that goodness right before their very eyes?  How is it that I, who have enjoyed a deep, true, and joyful quality relationship with God all this time since my youth can now find myself struggling the most with trusting him, doubting him, even recognizing him especially in the hard times?  I mean, this is the very One who made my relationship with him possible, the Anointed One who came to his own people in the flesh! How is it that two lovers can experience such depth of love that drives them to commitment “fall out” of that same love that now might even drive them to the commitment of divorce?  What was lost? Or rather, what was never there?

 

How can true, sincere lovers of God be prone to wander, prone to leave the God they love?  Why forsake a love that is above all?  Why exchange a fountain of living waters for broken cisterns that don’t even hold water?  Truly, that is a great evil. An incredulous irony.

 

Is it possible to know about someone but not know them?  How is it that I and so many in the believing world can know so much truth about God but know Yeshua so little?  How is it that I–like the Jewish people–who knows the way of salvation can stray so far deep into the snares of self-righteousness and get stuck in the caverns of doubt and fear? How can the God-dependent suffer so much under the yoke of self-reliance and deceit?

How could the man after God’s own heart behave in a way that breaks and wrings that same heart into pieces? How could God’s most knowledgeable chosen ones choose to crucify the One who makes God known?

 

It’s an irony whose answer, for me at least, demands silence. No superficial, cliché response will do. Not that any attempts toward a response shouldn’t be made or that an answer doesn’t exist, but it’s necessary to just sit in the sacred silence of this painful, incredible reality. I believe when it comes to such difficulties, it’s more about waiting for the real answer to come to us or for the light to guide us into the next step rather than forcing a response whose simplistic nature is just downright profane for such a sacred reality.

A real answer, although it beats to the rhythm of redemption and resurrection, comes wrapped in the scars of the emotional pain suffered.

 

You wouldn’t expect such experiences, such irony from those who have known the true God the longest…whether it’s the Jewish people, the church, me, or you. And yet there it is before us all. It does happen. It is possible to look and not see, to hear but not listen.

 

The only conclusion I can reach is that the challenges get harder and harder the closer and deeper you venture to the truth and perfection. It’s because we bring our sin nature to that point, and, as I once read, the corruption of the best is always the worst. The worst kind of corruption. It’s kind of like the higher you fly the greater the risk and the harder the fall will be…if it happens.

 

But now, certain questions arise:

Is failure and faithlessness inevitable experiences in the pilgrim’s progress?

What is the definition of faithfulness according to the Scriptures, according to God?

 

There’s another conclusion, and this one can be simple without being simplistic. After all is said and done and the impossible irony invades our idealisms, leaving us with a scarred reality, we can finally say with meaning and integrity…I need a Messiah.

 

A perfect, complete Messiah who succeeds in my failures while also covering my failures.

I cannot live up to the ideal; I need the Ideal to live in me.

 

In Our Generation

Have ever you wondered what God just might be doing in your generation?

I’m 27 years old this year, and I recently asked the Lord this very question..and then  inclined my ears to listen for His response back to me (a good and recent habit I got into which frankly revolutionizes prayer life).

Because I was driving while He and I were discussing this, I wrote things down in bulleted format. Here is what I heard back…

Actually, before I list them, I must say all of the things that came to mind were important themes and words and understandings that God had given me before but more as a separate ideas, like individual puzzle pieces. Much of His response to me in the car was Him connecting a lot of those separate pieces I received in the past together under the framework of this question, which was exactly the right question to ask (He doesn’t intend to keep us in the dark when it comes to big questions like this–they aren’t intended to be mysterious and we are not meant to be ignorant!).

It’s likely that in reading these you just might resonate or identify strongly with them; I’ve encountered lots of people who have received and shared in similar visions and themes:

-We are the freedom generation.

-Authentic spirituality.

-Revival–coming togetherness. Unity, especially of diversity.

-Reconciliation.

-Interconnectivity/interdependence, driven especially by media and artificial intelligence

-Movement toward more eastern ways of thinking/worldviews–including especially a greater recognition of a spiritual dimension of life.

-BIG ONE: Identity. People are hungry to be solidly rooted in a true and empowering knowledge of who they are–who they are meant to be.

Then I asked for and heard something even more specific:

There is a space where all these things can take place: Jew and Gentile both coming together in one common identity and where church life can finally look like and experience family life as it’s supposed to look like–a family of great diversity united greatly by the great power of Yeshua and the common identity He gives us.

But this space must first serve as a bridge between Jews and Gentiles, a place where the old testament Judaism and new testament Christianity can recover again their connectivity and unity that never was meant to be disrupted and divided.

I’ve been made to believe this space and context is the messianic congregation, the best meeting place for where Jew and Gentile can worship together as it was meant from the beginning through a single common identity in Messiah. I believe this has to come first and is the first step toward true revival, reconciliation, authenticity, interconnectivity, unity, and freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Respecter of Holiness

One of the biggest things needing to be restored to the family environment in addition to the child’s respect for his/her elder parent is the parent’s respect for his/her child, especially as a reflection and teaching of God’s own treatment and approach to us, His children.

Parents and children alike are invited to respect all people’s holiness, regardless of age or size, and including their own. We are God’s children, and He respects us tremendously especially in the way He treats us and communicates with us. He’s gentle, sensitive, and invitational, patient, and lavish in his daily doses of grace. He doesn’t force Himself or His will upon us. He waits on us. He respects us. He honors us. He respects the quality that makes up our personhood.
I think this is what we mean by the word “dignity.” It’s the reality of internal holiness God gives humankind and intends for us to live in. It would seem like there are only two ways to live in this life—clean or unclean; holy or unholy.
The special part of being made in God’s image is that God imparts to us dignity—holiness.
Perhaps that’s precisely why the human race is so “set apart” from the rest of creation.

Quote from an Essay:
*Unless we grasp God’s holiness, we will no longer be “amazed” at his amazing grace.

*It’s easy to take God’s grace for granted, and this is commonly done today. Rather than assuming God’s holiness and being amazed by His grace, we take for granted His grace and are amazed and offended by his holy wrath and judgment.

Essay on the Holiness of God:
http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/542