The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it round the neck and use it.
~Brennan Manning, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus
You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him;
if we endure, we will also reign with Him;
if we deny Him, He also will deny us;
if we are faithless, He remains faithful—
for He cannot deny himself.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in 2 Timothy 2
Oh beloved, it is true. The walk on the path He sets before us does not get any easier. Oh, the Hope is enormous the closer we get to Home. We can taste it. The Hope is thick and full and heady and real… But the brambles and stones and war machines set up against us on the way, make our way in The Way sometimes feel like a gauntlet.
This fool of a writer is a soldier of The Cross. i have no life but His. Any life of my own drained away many years ago through the enormous cracks in the idiotic cisterns of my own making. Where He sends me, i go. What He would have me do, that, becomes my food.
And with a Life like this, in Him, comes a profound sense of peace. There is a living beyond any doubt, or fear, or even wishing that it could be any other way. i no longer believe in G_d, for to do so would be foolish – foolish like me “believing” in the keyboard i am currently typing on. He is real. And, He is my Captain.
Our Love, though, is that same Love that crushes stars and tears the stony heart out of a man that it might beat in a fleshy rhythm. my Captain has already laid down His Life for me, so… i have simply given my token of existence to Him. We are one. And nothing is ever going to change that.
But, in this oneness does come something we (on our foolish part) never quite expect.
Pain.
Hurt.
Morbid exhaustion.
We thought, in the wrenching of our wretched eyes off of our wretched self – and the putting of them firmly onto Him – that the pain would go away. And the self-inflicted sort does indeed subside in the fullness of His gaze.
However, we do find that the full-armour He fits us into, also has very little padding. So, as the hammer-blows of cultural change, and new assignments – along with those in the brutal spiritual resistance around the strongholds we have been called to dismantle – make contact with our protection, we feel the impact and resistance. Perhaps too, we are moving now at such a pace, that any entanglements with the physical realm create enormous drag.
Said more simply: doing His will is so painful in some moments as to leave us gasping. We know we will survive any assignment, so we go in gladly for our King and Friend. But, it never gets any easier.
Thankfully, ease is not the point.
Can we see it? There does come though, with the hurt, an understanding that is so exquisitely valuable that we nearly come to crave the pain. As we move on through His missions, He is smashing back the gates of the very hell we escaped. And we find that the pain we feel is not really the dis-ease of the mission, but the pain of the very Heart of G_d over our disease called sin. And further, He is using us to wrench others free from the wreckage of this world.
So, are you feeling the pain of doing His will? Good. Perhaps the rantings of one soldier might help put them into perspective for you tonight. i have been thrust into 5 different cultures over the past few decades. i have hurt beyond measure of any ability of a man to sustain. And through all of this, though, i have watched His victory grow… And, i am beginning to see His Heart literally move in its solid beating for our good, and His glory.
The pain is worth it. Tonight is your night to believe it soldier. Battle on.
It is through such failure and weeping that the Abba of Jesus conforms us to the image of His Son. Yet if our faith is not alive and dynamically operative, suffering is absurd, pointless.
~ Brennan Manning, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus
