Negative experiences can make committed Christians wonder: while we want to patiently endure difficult times, can we know when God merely PRUNES, not DECAPITATES, us? Since both hurt, can we know the difference?
While no hard and fast rules define the difference, consider five possible assurances that we’re being pruned for future fruitfulness. One, if we continually rivet our eyes on Jesus while being tested, Hebrews 12:2, not on the condition that afflicts us. For that fixation will keep us functioning as a Christian, whatever we face. Two, if we say, “Why not me” instead of “Why me” or “Why me now”, we prove that we know we’ll face trouble in this world, but can trust Christ’s overcoming life to empower ours John 16:33. Three, if we ask Jesus to remove from us what we’d like to keep, since it makes us what we are. FOR, if what makes us what we are limits Christ’s Lordship of our life, we want it LOST, not PROTECTED! Four, if we can say, “This trial has made me more alive in Christ than ever I’ve been,” instead of “This experience has nearly killed me.” For the very pruning of our life eliminates habits and attitudes that prevented HIS Greater Life in our SMALL Minds and Hearts. Five, if we can say, “This has made me a more Christ-like person,” not, “This experience has proved that I’m not physically the person I used to be.” Then we can understand Paul’s great declaration in II Corinthians 4:16-18. For no diminution in our physical body, and its eventual demise, can ever defeat Christ’s powers over life, death and the after-life II Timothy 4:6-8. You get the drift of this blog. End Part II.
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John 15:1-8 reveals Christ’s doctrine of Pruning, the process by which God makes better disciples out of good ones and overcoming-disciples out of better ones. In the same context he introduced Judgment, CUTTING OFF—A.K.A. decapitation—of branches—i.e., members who have allowed themselves to become mere hearing, not producing, believers.
History has multiple examples of bad people suffering for doing bad things. One example suffices. Germany’s infrastructure remained entirely intact after WWI: and suffered almost total collapse after WWII. Because: while Kaiser Wilhelm sought only geographical conquest in WWI, Adolph Hitler targeted the Jewish people for destruction in WWII. However, scripture in both Testaments offers examples of, and Jesus in John 15 the definitive purpose of, both. For this short series, consider this One: fruitful disciples experience PAIN akin to decapitation, but with a positive purpose. In short, obedience to God inevitably brings God’s discipline of his people. I Thessalonians 3:2-4 and I Peter 4:12-13 offer one way that discipline applies to us. In John 15, Jesus saw God as the Gardner/Farmer/Horticulturist/Husbandman periodically lopping off certain religious people and pruning others. All we need to know about pruning for now is that it doesn’t mean eating prunes. End Part I Sorry that other necessary events have prevented an earlier denouement of this short series. The necessity also has an important corollary result for each disciple.
The payment of the half shekel, about 1/5 of an ounce of silver, demanded in Exodus 30:13-16 for tabernacle maintenance, offered a symbol of the Self-Denial Jesus commanded as essential to Christian discipleship. Sinners can become church members without it. They can hold church offices without it. They can be preachers without it. But only Self-Denial qualifies individuals to be Christ’s disciples Matthew 16:24-25. Now…a corollary of becoming and being such a person produces two very great benefits-in brief. First, the discipline necessary to become and remain that kind of follower of Jesus has positive effects that:
Second, it delights in being a continuation of what Jesus perfectly modeled—using difficulties, sorrows and sufferings—as the means of spiritual conquest, not defeat. An idea strange to that culture, and stranger to our Christian culture, which sees only Joy, Celebration, Victory as proofs of Christianity. Hebrews 2:10-18 relates to Biblical truth. The Holy Spirit empowers us to do our duty as willingly as we do our pleasures. Empowers us to remain patient and positive when life gets mean with us. Empowers us to endure adversity as easily as we enjoy victories. Indeed, in Kipling’s words, “If you can meet both Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same,” we will not only be mature people, but more Christ-like than we have ever been. And that will be our greatest success ever! Fini Believing in Christ as a way to escape life’s tantrums introduces to Christianity a prosperity theology applicable only to Israel under Moses. Indeed, “it was fitting that God…should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering” Hebrews 2:10. Since our Lord accepted suffering, though perfect, how can we seek to elude it while forgiven sinners?
Indeed, I Peter 4:1-2 stresses the Master’s suffering as the paradigm of our discipleship. With this fortuitous result: that we do “not live…for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.” The apostle continued through verse 6 contrasting the redemptive value of having the body disciplined with the dissolution effect of pleasure-seeking. Adversity can have negative effects on us. It can:
Why would the objects of salvation allow any of the above, or worse, when God ordained suffering to FINISH our LORD’S PERFECTION End, Part III The experience of the Knott’s in their 3-year-odyssey in desert farming has particular lessons for Christians. First, God knows what load in life we can fruitfully handle. Consider two examples from the time of Christ’s arrest and his Via Dolorosa experience. Two men, close to him, one at least an acquaintance, and likelier a friend, the other a total stranger.
A young man looked on at Christ’s arrest. One of the Sanhedrin’s thugs saw him, noticed his linen sheet and reached to grab it. It terrified Mark and he fled, leaving the sheet behind Mark 14:51-52. The second man, Simon of Cyrene, passing by the procession when Jesus fell beneath his cross-bar Mark 15:21. The soldiers seized Simon and, unable to flee, he found immortality by carrying the heavy beam behind Jesus all the way to Golgatha. That experience had such an impact on Simon that he became a believer in Christ and the father of Christian sons. Two men associated with Jesus, one who avoided adversity and one who couldn’t. Both had good results from their experience. The principle to learn is: God allowed John Mark to lose his sheet without further loss. He didn’t allow Simon to escape his burden. Leaving us with two possible promises from God. One, he knows what we can bear in adversity, being but flesh, Psalm 78:39, and will allow avoidance of what we can’t. Two, when we face a burden we can’t escape, God provides strength and grace to carry it. End Part II Walter and Cordelia Knott, the couple who founded and funded Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, had a string of difficulties on their way to world-wide fame.
Walter noted that adversity can make us tough, not bitter. It can build character without weakening faith in God. It can rouse an aggressive “never-give-up spirit”, rather than an “I give up” defeatist surrender to trials. Their experience in desert farming tested their perseverance but couldn’t keep them from continuing to try. Where many others failed to last the three years to qualify for a free 160 acres, they, by-a-co-operative “can-do” effort succeeded. Indeed, he concluded, their experience made them tough enough that no challenge would ever be a threat to them again. End Part I Christiane Salts, Cordelia Knott – Pioneering Business Woman, page 27. Omitting interesting details in Simon of Cyrene’s experience with Jesus, Luke 23:26, consider the question, “how should Christians respond when we face unavoidable, difficult, unwanted, undeserved, negative circumstances? Never doubt: we shall confront them, more than once, over our lifetime. Being committed to Jesus won’t exempt us. Life has its own wicked way of throwing tantrums just when “peace like a river” flows into our lives.
Well…with whatever temper Simon of Cyrene raised Christ’s Cross-beam to his shoulder, and followed the Master, the experience changed his life from whatever Jewish faith he had into a Christian zealot. As the Centurion became convinced Jesus was a Son of God. As the penitent thief thought Jesus could bring him into a kingdom the unbelieving criminal couldn’t see. Briefly consider. First, if we accept our duty in Christ as willingly as we enjoy our pleasures, we find troubles are proof of our spiritual inheritance Hebrews 12:4-13. Second, boldly and confidently shouldering unwelcome circumstances for Christ bestows a confidence avoiding them never gives. For facing and enduring hardship offers this compensating assurance: no adversity experienced can shake our faithfulness to God when life turns mean to us. IN…that is…AS we live through and out of the problem, God is never CLOSER to our MIND and HEART. Third, when we buck up, throw back our spiritual shoulders and ENDURE, we find spiritually what Christian military men found in Viet Nam tortures: they felt themselves outside themselves what they experienced—but perhaps didn’t FEEL. That may help us understand why the apostles left the savage beatings inflicted by the Sanhedrin “rejoicing” Acts 5:41-42. As Psalm 78:39, 103:14 say, God knows we are but flesh. When we experience the worst we can hardly endure, God’s mercy, grace, love and presence will be at their BEST, bolstering us. Fini Let’s define the difference between a burden we carry and a cross we bear. Christians have but one CROSS—that of self-denial. See Matthew 16:24. Jesus exemplified and taught that truth. His Cross meant death to him; our Cross means death to our SELF-WILL. Paul personally declared his celebration of that truth in Galatians 2:20 and urged it on Christians in Colossians 3:3-4.
Self-will exists in what each person holds so precious he surrenders it last of all in a passion to retain it. And, yes, Jesus had such a relationship: his eternal fellowship with God, as God. Knowing he lost that on the Cross brought him to his knees, and perhaps to his face, in Gethsemane, struggling so fiercely that it broke blood vessels in his head and dropped bloody sweat on the ground Luke 22:40-44. Struggling so fiercely with God the Father’s will that God sent an angel to God the Son, strengthening his decision to suffer that loss. But let us not linger there, in that holy ground, where the Savior endured suffering we cannot calculate. It’s too HOLY a place for even saved mortals to intrude. Think instead of how mortals faced their personal Gethsemane when confronted by Christ and found the pleasure of knowing him worth the cost:
And some found that pleasure too high a cost:
What of us? What do we hold so precious that we desperately secrete it where it can’t be found, only to discover the Holy Spirit sees and demands we SURRENDER even IT to be Christ’s follower? End Part III Young John Mark followed Jesus and his men from the family home, likely in the Upper City, into Gethsemane. There he edged closer to the action, while standing apart from the larger group being surrounded by hostile forces. Transfixed by the maelstrom surrounding Jesus, Mark didn’t see a temple soldier eye him, covet his linen sheet and grab for it, leaving him naked and fleeing in terror.
Note: the soldiers had strict instructions to arrest JESUS of Nazareth. But not any of his disciples. The Sanhedrin knew JESUS as their enemy, and considered the disciples helpless with their LEADER removed. Thus, we conclude that the most Mark could have lost was his linen sheet, nothing more. Which he did. Which has a lesson for our discipleship. With exceptions, life in Christ has the same routine for believers, as C.S. Lewis wrote. We still eat, sleep, bathe, hold jobs, rear families, visit with friends and neighbors…and those all-important bathroom calls. Still…as Ken Idleman found as a teen, when his dad accepted Christ, all liquor disappeared from the family fridge, replaced by soft drinks. As Hardy Sledge told this preacher, once baptized, he threw away the pack of cigarettes he carried. As Ben Merold discovered, transitioning from a former military Drill Instructor to a Christian, cost him one-half of his vocabulary. We can’t say what his close call cost Mark. But he at least may have learned caution in making decisions. If so, he had plenty of time to deliberate when, 17 years later, Barnabas invited him to accompany him and Saul of Tarsus on their first missionary journey. In evaluating their life, all Christians can find ways that being in Christ has saved them from troubles afflicting companions without his grace. Nearly all of them will be intellectual, moral, spiritual, or a combination of all three. And that will be worth knowing Christ, as Paul detailed in I Corinthians 2:1-16. Next…how shall we respond when we cannot escape problems endemic to life or discipleship? End Part II
Two men, close to Jesus:
Each had life-changing experiences with Jesus by the terrifying circumstance of being nearly seized, but escaping, and being at the wrong place at the wrong time and forever blessing the occasion. Each teaches us valuable lessons about discipleship. End Part I |
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