The Success of Trials

What is your picture of success in life? 

Is it wealth, health, and girth? 
Is it the American dream -- the pursuit of happiness? 
Is it to achieve something noteworthy you wish to accomplish? 
Is it to have a life that is picture perfect and the envy of all your friends and neighbors? 

Please, do me a favor and fill in the blank: ____________________________.

Whether you’ve discussed it with someone or not, your picture of personal success in life is the very motor that drives you and guides your every decision. Your picture of success informs your daily habits, your trips to the mall and McDonald’s, your fitness goals or your puzzlement at the very meaning of the word fitness, your work ethic or lack thereof, your spending tendencies or your stinginess, your secret sins or the display of your good deeds. The way you live broadcasts your concept of success to the world.

This morning, would you and I pause and consider this: What is God’s picture of success in this life? Since God’s glorious Son came to earth and lived as a man, is there some insight coming from His life that tells us of His picture of success?

John 19:30 records a quote from the lips of Jesus that speaks volumes to me. 

Picture Jesus on the cross: 

blood-streaked face 

mutilated flesh

puffy eyelids

parched lips

From those very lips, a satisfied smile further creased his face as He said, “It is finished!”

Success! 

Wait a minute. 

Success? 

Where is the commendation, the human recognition, the adulation that would surely accompany the success of any man? Instead of commendation, He was given condemnation. Instead of human recognition, He was given rejection. Instead of adulation, He was served with accusation. Yet, in plain words that have been recorded for everyone to know, He said, “It is finished!”

Success! Indeed, He was and is and always will be successful because of this secret: He said in Luke 23:46, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.” Have you and I committed our spirit into the hands of the Father? 

On our currency is still inscribed the motto “In God We Trust.” But, would banks, credit card companies, and merchants say of us that we trust in God based on our money management?

What about the devil himself? Should he be allowed to strike us, like he was with Job, could he say that we are a people committed to trusting in God despite the trials and afflictions that are so very present in our lives?

As I think of trials, images of fire and water flood my brain:

Trusting God through Fire        

A cigarette is lit. 

A few puffs of smoke appear and then fade into thin air. 

The cigarette is dumped on the ground; the driver thoughtlessly pulls away. 

Eight hours later, an uncontrollable wildfire causes millions of dollars of damage -- destroyed properties, depleted resources – and more tragically, thousands of lost lives.

Trusting God in Deep Water   

A few raindrops fall on the dusty windshield. 

The drops multiply, intensify, and turn into a flood. 

The car is engulfed by the quickening pace of the water. 

An hour later, an unconscious man is revived just in time to see the bodies of his wife and their four children being taken away to the morgue.

The Success of Trials

Fire and water are dangerous. 

They are dreary, destructive. 

They kill.

Yet, they are divine gifts. They allow us to encounter God in the midst of danger, destruction, and disaster . . . if our eyes are open and our hearts made ready.

Fire and water take many forms in life -- an HIV+ diagnosis, an Ebola outbreak in Dallas, a missed promotion, a discontinued position, an earthquake in Haiti, a tornado in Oklahoma, a drawn-out lawsuit, exorbitant bills. They could be the heart-wrenching news of cancer or the horrific news of a suicide. 

Today is the two-year anniversary of an event which reminds me that fiery trials and fearsome floods know my address and come knocking often: I buried my dad.

A little over two years ago, at the very end of a most difficult week, a text from my sister jolted me – my dad suffered a heart attack and an aneurysm, both of which led to his completely unexpected death later that day. Throughout the drive from Shawnee to Fort Worth, I kept praying that God would wake me up from the horrible nightmare I was having. I simply had a hard time believing that the man who, for 37 years, tirelessly prayed for me, encouraged me, hugged me, kissed my forehead, counseled me . . . would actually die. I was on I-35, just 30 minutes from the hospital, when my brother called to say Papi was snatched away from us but he had convinced the doctor to wait for me to arrive so I could see him first before they took his body to the morgue.

I made it to the hospital. 

My eyes saw his inert body. 

I touched his hair and saw the joyful expression on his face. 

He looked as radiant in death as he did in life. No one who spent more than a minute with my earthly father could ever deny that he was a man madly in love with his Heavenly Father, passionately committed to his wife, sincerely devoted to the spiritual raising of his children, and singularly interested in the well-being of his fellow man. Spiritually speaking, he was the richest, most successful man I have ever met.

Following Papi's departure, other colossal losses have kept me company:

My eldest brother -- abducted and assassinated

My high school friend -- killed by a huge tumor

My brother/friend -- succumbed to cardiac arrest

My cousin's husband -- succumbed to cardiac arrest

My book royalties -- snatched away by an embezzling publisher 

My dear sister -- ravaged by invasive ductal carcinoma triple negative 

My OBU colleague -- shockingly taken from us at the beginning of this semester

My childhood friend -- yet again victimized by the wildly infamous breast cancer

I have shed more tears, my heart has ached so much more in the past two years than I ever could have imagined. Each loss is enormous, a huge bereavement. At one point, God used my wife to text me an encouraging verse from David’s second miktam – Psalm 56:8, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle. You have recorded each one in Your book.”

Friends, that verse teaches us that we do have a solid Rock upon Whom we can stand. If our trials and tears are recorded in God’s book, that means success is guaranteed. Indeed, our trials and tears are useful to teach us, rebuke us, correct us, and train us in righteousness so that we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. It means that at the end of our rope stands a God who is waiting to guide us, work in us, and transform us completely. You and I are invited to approach His throne of grace with confidence and dare to pass through the fire and water under His watchful eye so we may "be transformed by the [daily] renewing of [our] minds." (Romans 12:2)

My trials have caused me to break down before God. They have given me permission to not try to pull it together. Instead, the Holy Spirit has used them to draw me to simply sit or humbly drop on my knees or meekly lie on my bed or unreservedly drench my pillow as Christ's strength is made perfect in my boatloads of weaknesses. 

He comforts me as He collects my tears in His bottle.

He restores my soul.