God’s Training Program

(3 of 9 in a series on “Why do bad things happen to good people?”)

In Hebrews chapter 12 we are introduced to God’s training program for His children.  The author begins the chapter with the example of Jesus “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).  Jesus endured incredible pain to accomplish what God set out for Him to do.  In verse 3, the focus shifts from Jesus, our example in suffering, to us, God’s children.  “For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb 12:3).  The author then goes on to explain God’s training program in verse 5 and following as an encouragement to not “lose heart”.

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline [training program] of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.  It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Heb 12:5-7).  God’s training program for His children flows from His love for us and is as natural and expected as being trained by our earthly fathers.

“But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.  Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we much not rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?  For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness” (Heb 12:8-10).  If we are true children of God, we will all experience His training regimen.  Just as we respected our fathers who disciplined us for earthly goals, should we not more so worship and respect our heavenly Father who disciplines us for “our good and to share in His holiness”?  Our good and our holiness is the desired outcome of the training program of God.

And just as Christ “endured the cross for the joy set before Him”, so we too will experience the pain of discipline on our way to the joy and peace of righteousness that it produces.  “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb 12:11).  The goal of God’s training program is not only our good and our holiness, but also joy and a peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Now the beauty of this journey and what may set this apart from what you have heard in the past about God’s discipline is that God’s training program does not take place in a mysterious and unknown vacuum.  I think we teach and accept too often the idea that God somehow wants to keep us in the dark regarding the pain we go through.  Does this fit the character and actions of the God we see in the New Testament, especially as revealed in Jesus, His Son?  We will explore this next time.

Three Answers from the Bible

(2 of 9 in a series on “Why do bad things happen to good people?”)

The Bible gives three broad reasons for why bad things happen to good people.  First is the law of consequence.  Poor choices in life lead to bad outcomes.  Second is the training program of God.  God may send uncomfortable – I hate to use the word bad in describing God’s interaction with His children – situations to stretch us and grow us and mature us.  Third is the idea that we and God have a dark enemy, Satan, who is working in this world, including in the lives of believers, with ill-will toward us on both large and small scales.  While Satan has no power to possess us in the classic sense, he can make our lives trying and worse.  Let’s look at these three reasons one at a time.

The law of consequence basically describes the book of Proverbs in the Bible.  It is also the easiest way to understand bad outcomes because it fits our human understanding; it fits what we can readily observe.  If a life-long smoker develops lung cancer, or a couple living beyond their means goes into financial distress, or an obnoxious person has trouble keeping friendships, we can understand it.  It makes sense.  If a current challenge you are facing is easily explained by poor choices, it is time to change your choices and see where God takes you next in fixing the problem.  Bad outcomes due to poor choices is fairly easy to understand and in a sense is not exactly the crux of our question.  We are more interested in the bad outcomes we cannot understand and so we move on to reason two.

Reason two for bad things happening to us is that God has a training program for believers that may include pain.  This idea is developed in Hebrews chapter 12.  “And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives’ ” (Heb 12:5-6).

The Greek word translated discipline in this passage carries the idea of a training program such as for athletes.  God has us, you and me, on a training program.  With that in mind Hebrews 12:5-6 could be read, “My son, do not regard lightly the training program of the Lord.  And do not give up when you are corrected by Him.  The Lord puts those He loves through this training program.  And the program may involve pain”  Just like an athlete may experience pain in his training to win, so we too may experience pain while on God’s training program.

Reason three for bad things happening to us is a direct attack by Satan himself.  And honestly, this gets a little tricky.  We don’t want to scare up an image of Satan behind every tree or attribute God-equal power to him, but based on the Bible’s descriptions of the character and activities of God and Satan, ascribing the evil we see in the world and our own circumstances to Satan makes a lot of sense.  When your child suffers a stroke, when you are long-term unemployed for no apparent reason, when a serious relationship suddenly ends, what is going on?  Or more specifically, “Is God to blame?”

Scripture teaches us that the influence of Satan in the bad things that happen to us is at least something we should consider.  Let me visit just two of the several examples in Scripture that suggest this.  First, consider the woman Jesus healed in Luke 13.  She had been sick, bent double and unable to straighten up, for eighteen years.  Jesus healed her, but was immediately criticized for doing so on the Sabbath.  Jesus responds with an answer that ends with, “And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16).  In this case, the woman’s illness was a direct result of Satan.

Another example comes from Revelation chapter 2.  Jesus, speaking to the church at Smyrna, says, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer.  Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days” (Rev 2:10).  Again, Satan himself is the instigator of the believer’s upcoming suffering.

So, in summary, I believe the Bible describes three broad reasons bad things happen to good people.  First, good people sometimes make mistakes that lead to painful consequences for their actions.  Second, God has a training program for believers that can involve pain.  Third, we have an enemy with the desire and ability to do us harm.  But God has not left us in limbo regarding how these processes work and we will visit what the book of Hebrews says about God’s training program next time.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

(1 of 9 in a series on “Why do bad things happen to good people?”)

Another topic addressed in the book of Hebrews is the philosophical conundrum, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  The Hebrew believers were facing severe persecution for their faith.  It would be natural for them to wonder why this is happening; why adversity seemed to be the reward for following Christ.  Maybe it would be better to shrink back from such a dangerous faith to the comforts of the Judaism they had known in the past.

By God’s goodness, grace, and revelation we have answers in Scripture to the big issues of life including this one.  But first, let’s start with what the answer is not.  There is a certain brand of theology that, rather than answering the question outright, takes us a step farther back by suggesting that there are no “good” people.  In essence, they are dodging the question by lumping all of us together as “bad” folks.  The implication is that since all of us, believer and unbeliever alike, are poor wretched sinners, we are essentially getting what we deserve.  Whether on purpose or unintended, they are really setting the question aside as irrelevant when inquiring minds want to know, “Does God have answers for this exact question:  Why do bad things happen to good people?”

So let’s start by recognizing that this is a legitimate question to ask and to support that idea let’s challenge the notion that there are no “good” people. For those outside of Christ, their capacity for good is a result of their creation in God’s image and as such they have an ability to so some good things.  For example, when unbelievers work at being unselfish in their marriage or contribute money to a worthy charity, they are in fact doing good.  But we often get so caught up in our “depravity” theology that we insist they have some ulterior motive or some sinister plot behind the scenes.  While something unseemly is always a possibility, we should not, out of hand, dismiss someone’s good works as less than altruistic.

Now for the believer the argument that we are “good” people is even stronger since we not only have a capacity for good, but actually possess a propensity for doing good.  It is our default mode by virtue of the provisions of the new covenant.  We have a new disposition toward righteousness.  So in the spirit of our original question, we are “good” people – we have the mind of Christ (I Cor 2:16), the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9), and the righteousness of Christ (II Cor 5:21) – and it is perfectly appropriate to ask, “Why do bad things happen to us?”

The Hebrew believers, and all who fall under the provisions of the new covenant, are “good” people, and thus we are back to our question of how bad things fit into the plan of a God-honoring life.  We will look at the answers from the Bible next time.

Letting the River Flow in Ministry

“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit.  For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (II Cor 3:5-6).  As ministers of the new covenant, we recognize the flowing river inside each believer and we serve in ways that encourage its flow to come to the surface in our friends and family.

Let me give you an example of how this works in ministry.  Several years ago, Rhonda and I were asked to lead an adult Sunday School class at our church for young married couples who were just starting their families.  We were at the other end of the young family years as the first of our five children was just entering college.  We started our teaching assignment with some trepidation.  Would these couples be interested in what we had to say about biblical principles for marriage and family?  How would we drum up interest in these topics?  In short, would leading the way be like pulling teeth?

We had a choice to make.  We could lead the class with an old covenant approach to living the Christian life.  That is, this path ahead is a difficult one and you are not going to like it, but it is just what you have to do.  So buck up and give it your best.  In other words, “eat your vegetables”, they are good for you.

Or we could take a new covenant approach.  Under this system, we present the Christian life as an overflowing feast, not a lukewarm plate of vegetables.  We “stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb 10:24) by watering the fruit of the Spirit that is already present in every believer by the provisions of the new covenant.  Our teaching is under the overarching message of the New Testament; your old nature died with Christ, sin is no longer your master, you were raised with Christ, and infused with resurrection power to live the supernatural Christian life; to live into who you already are in Christ.

We took the new covenant approach and invited our new friends to join us in experiencing the river’s flow as a community.  In short, our message was, “You can do this”, and we found indeed that these couples were primed for us to join them in the flow that God was already leading them in.  Instead of needing to coax the class forward, we discovered that a desire to learn was already present in our fellow believers.  We just needed to join them and provide some leadership and mentoring in the direction they already wanted to go.  It became a collaborative effort as we encouraged each other in what new covenant living looked like in a family setting.

The whole enterprise was one of our most enjoyable ministry efforts.  Why?  Because we were experiencing the promise of Jesus in John 7 – the flow of the Holy Spirit – in a community of like-minded believers.  It was a great lesson in new covenant ministry, and we were energized by God’s presence and leading for us all!

Lining a Canoe Upstream

Writing about the river’s flow in our last post reminded me of the idea of “lining a canoe”.  The basic principle is this:  when seeking to take your canoe upstream against the current, you tie a rope near the front of the canoe and, walking upstream along the shore, you provide the power by pulling the rope and the river’s current keeps the boat from running into the bank.  When I googled “lining a canoe” to learn more, I found this explanation on The Alaska Hunting Forum:

“I can tell you from personal experience that lining any boat upstream any appreciable distance comes down to one thing – HARD WORK.  There’s just no easy way around it.  The truth is that you will be in, on, and around that river for a considerable amount of time.”  The author goes on to explain the details of the process and ends with these encouraging words, “If you decide to do this during the spring or summer, be sure to pack a big lunch and bring the bug spray!  You’re gonna be there awhile.”

I used to think that living the Christian life was like “lining a canoe” upriver.  I was always going against the current.  I was always going upstream.  And it was always hard work.  I justified this feeling with the idea that we were counter-cultural, always swimming upstream against the world’s current.  Always going against the flow.  In a sense that is true.  We are going against the world’s current.

What I was unaware of was that there is another river flowing; the river of God’s rest for the new covenant believer.  In this river, we are very much going with the flow – the rushing current of God’s infinite grace, love, acceptance, forgiveness, mercy, and indwelling.  This river never slows down or runs dry and God’s desire is that you find your rest in it.

This is the rest Jesus Himself offered his followers in the gospel of Matthew.  “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My load is light” (Mt 11:28-30).  Jesus’ offer of rest is not just for the world-weary in need of salvation, but for walk-weary believers as well, striving to “keep up” the Christian life.

You see, in this journey called the Christian life, Christ is inviting us to join Him in the yoke.  He is yoked with us.  Have you ever wondered how Jesus could give such a serious call to discipleship in the gospels; counting the cost, the hardship, and the promise of suffering, and then turn around and say, “My yoke is easy and My load is light”?  How do we reconcile what seem like opposites?  The key is to recognize that it is Jesus in the yoke living the Christian life through us.  He is doing the heavy lifting.  Is there nothing for us to do or contribute?  Our role is to join Him in the yoke, in the work, and to release the rushing rivers He has already put inside us.

Can I encourage you?  If you are striving to “line the canoe” upstream in your Christian walk, take a minute to study the situation.  Am I experiencing the “never thirst” that Jesus promised?  Do I see the work of the Holy Spirit – that flowing river within me – in my daily experience?  Have I believed all that became new under the provisions of the new covenant at my salvation?  Thank your heavenly Father that there is a believer’s rest and a river’s flow for the children  of God.