Trust With an Expiration Date

It has been 10 years since my immune system “broke.” Constant ups and downs of intense pain, exhaustive treatments, brief improvements, and crushed hope. Grief intensified by heartbreaking church pain, encounters with injustice, poverty, and spiritual darkness around the world. I recently have felt beat up and exhausted. I don’t want this anymore, why hasn’t God changed it? It has ripped into my sanity and spoiled my plans.

Through it all, God has faithfully provided, comforted, and loved me. Though I have wrestled and struggled often, I firmly trusted in my sovereign and good God. But what have I trusted in him FOR exactly?

Other Christians will occasionally attempt to offer encouragement by pointing to what God could be doing, how he might use it, when He will reward obedience–well I guess if they can acknowledge it all. To many, chronic pain is too uncomfortable to get close to. They want circumstances they can pray for and support but quickly see results from their efforts. Health that refuses to improve grows old and hearing “Nope, still in pain” tired. This is not helped when most of the testimonies shared within the church are looking back on ended suffering, not speaking in the middle of it. We hear how God faithfully taught them good lessons and brought them to the other side to something far better. But rarely do they share their grief in the middle of brokenness and pain. This is far too vulnerable and definitely not inspirational, right? We want to avoid pain at all costs so we even convince ourselves that faith in God means somehow floating above the trial in some kind of blissful state. We pretend focusing on the clouds keeps us cool rather than calling it fire and saying, “it burns!”

Sometimes we get to see the end of something, we look back and praise God for lessons learned and the “better” He has provided from it. But does God’s promised blessing for obedience always look the way we hope it will? Does Faith + Obedience = Everything my heart desires? And I’m talking about good desires like health, work, marriage, ministry and restored relationships. More often than not, my experience and many of those around me have an unseen purpose, unknown ending, unjust response and continuous pain.

I have recently come to face that much of the trust I have rested in had an expiration date. It was trust in God with conditions. Conditions that included the lie that God would redeem it all soon and exactly in the way I hoped. Deep in my heart, I had bargained with the Almighty, “I will trust and love you now keeping my eyes focused on future hope, if you vindicate me, heal my broken heart and provide my deepest desires.” Needless to say, God has not responded to this bargain. He has not given me the end date, explained the purpose or offered the desired reward. And as I rip through Scripture, I can not find any assurance He will make things better in this life. I do not see a single promise to redeem my pain in the way my finite mind would prescribe it. I DO see promises to accomplish His good purposes and offer deeper desires. I see “Do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs it all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Cor 4:16-18

My misplaced trust has expired. And yet it feels like I’ve fallen off of a tight rope onto an invisible yet solid bridge a foot beneath it. Firm promises of what can happen when I face the pain rather than just get through it. I have the choice of a contrite heart humbled by the lack of control I have to change or get what I want and real joy from the only true source or I can harden my heart, live in denial and focus on the next thing around the corner that will offer comfort or satisfaction. I want real joy, not a false substitute as Jeremiah 2:13 describes “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” The most joy-filled people I have ever encountered were Food for the Hungry staff in northern Ethiopia. Believers surrounded by extreme poverty, intense persecution, separation from their families and unjust circumstances. Their eyes were focused entirely on who God is, what He accomplished at Calvary and how He has begun making all things new.

“He says to anyone with a heart to believe “The Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.” (Is 30:18) Yet he also says, “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” (Phil 1:29) Our call to suffer comes from a God tender beyond description. If we do not cling to this through life’s worst, we will mislead everything and grow to hate him. Jesus endured the thrashing due his creatures for their rebellion against his father, Jehovah. To this day he requires suffering of all his followers, some of it intense–but only for their good, and never equaling what he himself passed through.” (When God Weeps, Tada)

The theme of my trust, view of God and pain has all been me-centric. As if my grief was an offering to God somehow obligating or indebting Him to me. Christ gave Himself accepting my punishment, appeasing God’s wrath and offering sonship and life. I am indebted to Him beyond description. In addition to Himself, this sufferings allows me to experience His fellowship and taste the power of His resurrection (Philippians 3:10) – my eternal hope; He also pursues me here and now with goodness and mercy, showing himself mighty on my behalf and supplying me with everything I need for life and godliness. (Psam 23:6; 2 Chronicles 16:9; 2 Peter 1:3) I keep coming back to Hannah’s story and am amazed to see God’s tender compassion towards her. It is comforting to see how God welcomes us into laying our pain and desires at His feet. And sometimes He does mercifully respond to our cries with amazing seen goodness.

This I am sure of: My prayers and trust are not a formulaic attempt to guarantee the response I want. I am in a relationship with the living God who calls me to face the threat in my life and experience Him in it. I love this quote from J.I. Packer,

“Still he blesses those on whom he sets his love in a way that humbles them, so that all the glory may be His alone. Still he hates the sins of His people and uses all kinds of inward and outward pains and griefs to wean their hearts from compromise and disobedience. Still he seeks the fellowship of his people and sends them both sorrows and joys in order to detach their love from other things and attach it to Himself. Still he teaches believers to value his promised gifts by making them wait for those gifts and compelling them to pray persistently for them, before he bestows them.”