Trials Turned To Joy
Twist ending! Is it crazy to anyone else that a passage that starts with killing, persecution, destruction, and mourning ends with the spread of the Gospel and with great joy?
How did we get from persecution to joy? Because that's what God does. He redeems our suffering and makes something useless useful. In this situation, he used wickedness to spread the Gospel.
What is God doing in this passage? Giving the gift of joy.
I have no desire to get into a debate about whether or not God caused this persecution to drive the Church out of Jerusalem. I think that debate misses the point. The point is simply that God didn't waste the suffering of his kids and neither did they.
This is how it works in the Kingdom of God, if we are willing.
But, God didn't make them move from persecution to joy. They had to participate. They didn't have to react they way they did. They could have wallowed, gone home and buried themselves in some coping mechanism. They could have opted out and gone back to the way things were before. Maybe this Jesus thing was just a summer camp high. Maybe they had just gotten swept up in the emotion of it all. Maybe they were wrong. It had gotten too hard. Maybe they should just walk away. But they didn't. When the wind of opposition blew, this fire grew stronger. How did they do that? They valued the right things.
How do we pull that off? Let’s see how they did it:
They way in which they suffered shows us what they valued.
They valued growth above spiritual experience.
They valued mission above community.
They valued joy above enjoyment.
They valued Jesus above all.
If they were in it for something else, they would have disappeared when that thing went away. When the experience faded, they would have left. When the community faded. When the enjoyment faded. When all the gifts went away, they stayed faithful. Why? Because they valued Jesus above everything.
The truth is a lot changed for them. Many of the good things they had experienced, things they had loved about the church, went away when the persecution started. But they didn't leave.
The sheer number of people who leave the Church, who walk away from Jesus is shocking, and I wonder if it is because one of these things went away, and that was really the anchor.
Growth (maturity) over experience
Mountaintops vs valleys: where is the harvest
The difference between spiritual experience and growth. Oftentimes, our growth is accompanied by seasons of spiritual dryness (lack of experience) because we must learn to obey without being overwhelmed first.
Do you want to experience God, or do you want to be godly?
Growth comes through hardship.
If you're in the middle of hard times, it's possible that you're feeling buried, but you're not. You're planted. James, the pastor of the Jerusalem church, tells us:
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4)
Mission over community
Community is a beautiful thing, but it cannot be the end goal.
Christian community is always a so that community (so that the world will know).
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
What kind of boat is it? Is it a pleasure cruise or is it a galleon?
As soon as the conversation around the church ceases to be about those outside the church, you know you've got a problem. Jesus commissioned the church to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. They had gotten the Jerusalem part fairly well figured out, but there might have been an impulse to stop there. After all, things in Jerusalem were really great!
Christians are like manure...
When community went away; they didn't drift away. They built community. Like the seeds of a redwood being spread through fire.
Joy over enjoyment
When things get hard enjoyment evaporates, but joy flourishes.
Two things must happen to choose joy: surrender ourselves to God, and surrender ourselves to one another
Receive the gift of joy: our first reaction in suffering is to flail, then it's to cope, but in both instances our hands are full and can't receive the Father's embrace.
It's hard to receive the gift of joy when you're flailing. This doesn't mean that you can't ask questions and be angry and even rage at God. Just know that, at some point, if you want to receive the gift of joy, you're going to have to surrender and be still.
They chose one another over all the reasons not to.
Jesus over all
They held the truth of who he is in the highest esteem.
An all-consuming vision of Jesus: suffering and risen (suffering identifies with us in despair, risen brings us through despair to hope). I know it hurts, and I would never say or do anything to diminish that hurt, but our suffering doesn't mean that Jesus isn't risen. And if he's risen, well, everything changes.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings… (Philippians 3:7-10)