Lockdown can be really difficult. As a weekend bonus, here’s a short article from the wonderful Heather Fellows reflecting on what God is doing in us when we find our circumstances hard.
We are living in strange times and I have got to confess that having started this lockdown process with a fairly positive mindset and feeing like I was succeeding in the transition to home-schooling mum, I have found the last couple of week much harder. I am definitely struggling with being patient with the people around me and my attitude towards this situation in general. And I came across this verse in Romans which really struck me. I thought I would share it with you, as I imagine lots of us are struggling with similar feelings:
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”Romans 5:1-5
The book of Romans is a letter written by Paul to the early church in Rome. It seems a strange thing for Paul to say that they ‘glory’ in their sufferings. More often I complain about mine! And it got me thinking why Paul was able to say this. What was it about his sufferings that he was able to glory in?
Firstly, suffering is inevitable in the world. Jesus is recorded as saying in John 16:33 that, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” I love that Jesus doesn’t hide that from us. He never promised us a life that would be easy and in fact he is very upfront that we will have trouble in this world. And Jesus reminds us here that we should take comfort in the fact that he has overcome the world – in other words, if we believe in Jesus, then we can know that there is nothing that this world has to throw at us that he has not already overcome. There is hope, in other words, for a better future.
But what about when we are in the midst of the suffering? Paul says that suffering produces perseverance. The word is also translated patience. So Paul seems to be saying here that suffering actually produces patience in us. (Clearly I need to endure some more suffering because i don’t feel very patient yet!). In other words, what Paul seems to be saying here is that it is only actually through struggles and suffering that we ever really learn patience. It makes sense I guess – when life is going well and the people around us treat us well or don’t bother us we don’t need much patience. The apostle James says something very similar in James 1:2-3.
So why is patience important? Well Paul says that it produces ‘character’. Character here means like the process of proving who you are. James 1:4 gives us a bit more detail on this:
“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
So this perseverance or patience is necessary because it is part of the process of completing us and making us mature in our faith. So we see that learning patience is actually a really important part of the process of shaping us to be more like Jesus.
But that’s all very well, but it’s really hard! I am finding it incredibly hard to be patient, especially with my kids, when I am with them 24/7. Well because Jesus loves us and is so gracious and understands that we are weak willed beings, he has sent us some help.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he says this:
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” – Colossians 1:9-14
Paul is reminding the church that Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit and that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are strengthened with power that we might have patience. Again and again at the moment I am reading about just how much we NEED the Holy Spirit to help us. I think because at the moment I feel all the worst bits of my character being exposed and so I really need that supernatural power from the Holy Spirit if I am going to stand any chance of learning patience.
And so I want to pray, like Paul did, that we would all be filled with the Holy Spirit to strengthen us for the challenges we face right now, that we might learn to persevere and so that our character would be proven in Christ.
And finally, Paul said in our original passage that character produces hope. That hope is the hope of the fulfilment of all the promises we see presented in the gospel. The promise that Jesus died for us. The promise that he died for all our sins. That when we believe in him, those sins are forgiven and not only that but we are washed whiter than snow by the blood of Christ. The promise that in Jesus we are a new creation and that we have been given the gift of eternal life to enjoy with God – not because of anything we have earned on our own merits, but because it is the free gift of a God who loves us more than we can possibly imagine. And having been forgiven and cleaned up in Jesus, he sends us his Spirit to help us to live differently, to live as God intended his beautiful creation to live. Not consumed by selfishness and greed anymore, but characterised, as he is, by love.
When we suffer and learn to persevere in Jesus and our faith is proven, we have hope. We have hope because if God can change a wretched, stubborn sinner like me, then God can do anything.
I hope this blesses you today.
Living God 