I
want to tell you about a song I wrote that is aimed at helping God’s people
through our seasons of suffering for our faith in Jesus Christ. I wrote this
song primarily for myself, because I am not very good at handling suffering,
rejection, and persecution. It is a way that I remind myself of distinctive
truths of God’s word that guide us through these painful experiences of life.
This
song is based on Jesus’ blessing upon his suffering brothers, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[1]
All through the ages, the church has known that suffering for the righteousness
of faith in Jesus Christ is an evidence of real-life participation in the
kingdom of heaven.
However,
not only are we to think of our seasons of persecution as a blessing because we
are on the winning team, we are to consider them as distinct reasons for joy
and gladness. In Jesus’ own words, “Blessed
are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil
against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is
great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”[2]
Along
with the words of Jesus’ breathed out during his earthly lifetime, we have the
words he breathed-out in the rest of Scripture. Paul wrote, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our
sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces
character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame,
because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who
has been given to us.”[3]Paul
could write about rejoicing in sufferings not only as an apostle recording the
breathed-out words of God, but as one who had experienced enough suffering in
his lifetime to make him a seasoned veteran of this distinctive kind of joy.
Paul’s
legacy to us is that suffering produces such excellent things in our lives,
constantly shaping us to be like Jesus “from
one degree of glory to another,”[4]
that we should rejoice in our sufferings. While it may appear that those
causing our suffering prosper in this lifetime, we are to rejoice in the good
work of God taking place in our souls, and welcome the love-based relationship
with the Holy Spirit that is ours no matter what we go through.
James
also wrote of suffering in this distinctive, impossible-to-ignore kind of way, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you
meet trials of various kinds…”[5] He
doesn’t say that these trials and sufferings are pure joy, or all joy, but that
we are to count them as such. Why? Because of what these trials do to us.
But
don’t these trials destroy us, and ruin us, and fill us with grief and
heartache because people betray us, and revile us with their false stories? Don’t
we experience such trauma of the soul that we must hide ourselves in
self-protection, and withdraw into ourselves so that we don’t feel anything?
James’
response is to tell us that it is not only possible to feel “all joy” in our trials, but it is
expected as a distinctive quality of life in Jesus Christ. He encourages us to
this “all joy” experience by
reminding us that, “you know that the
testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its
full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”[6]
Believers in Jesus Christ want to be “perfect
and complete,” and so we joyfully endure the trials that bring about this Christ-like
effect. We want to enter that experience of “lacking
nothing” in our righteous standing before God, so we welcome the trials and
suffering that transform us into that likeness of our Savior.
I
wrote this song as someone who is not very good at rejoicing in persecution. My
experience of people reviling me has often been so personal that my wounds
threaten to restrict my joy quite considerably. Some of those who have uttered all
kinds of evil against me falsely on account of Jesus have been very close to
me. Pain has a way of superseding joy.
However,
we have such clear teaching about these things in Scripture that we must at
least acknowledge the will of God in our trials. The fact is that our greatest
worship to him is expressed in joy. He is doing such good things in our lives,
making the church “more than conquerors
through him who loved us,”[7]that
we must pursue joy in our sorrows.
Not
only did Jesus and his apostles call us to this joy, but Jesus emulated this in
his own life. Scripture exhorts us to follow his example by, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter
of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”[8] In
Jesus’ suffering there was horrendous pain, and completely undeserved shame.
But Jesus endured that, not because he was overwhelmed with joy on the cross,
but because there was joy set before him. He knew he would rejoice in the
blessing that came out of his suffering.
Jesus
was not telling us that we would feel joy while family members are brutalized
and murdered right before our eyes, but that our view of all forms of
persecution was to be like this joy set before us. The reward of serving Christ
in persecution and death was so great, that whatever losses, and traumas, and
anguished seasons of life we go through, are actually nothing compared to the
surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord in both suffering and
rest.
Or,
as Paul said, “For this light momentary
affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that
are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are
unseen are eternal.”[9]
We
can look at our Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane and accept the depths of his
anguish of soul as a demonstration of how we can suffer, and rejoice in these
sufferings.[10]
Jesus could go through the labor of bringing the church to life through his
suffering and death, knowing that the labor would be forgotten as he held his
new baby in his arms, so to speak.[11]
It
is in this context of the joy set before Jesus that we can read of him, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up
prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to
save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.”[12]
We can look at the anguish of Jesus’ soul as perfectly consistent with his joy
in the reward that was set before him. We can allow that there is an immediacy
to fear, and anguish, and shock, and grief, as our earthly lives are torn to
pieces by the red dragon’s army, and then we can gather with God’s elect, those
“sealed for the day of redemption,”[13]
and rejoice that we “were counted worthy
to suffer dishonor for the name.”[14]
There
are so many shades of suffering for God’s people. It is enough that I have
experienced something of these trials to invite people to fellowship in these
things, and encourage each other to grow in joy as we, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself,
so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”[15]
No matter where we are starting from in our suffering, we can pursue the joy
that is our pure worship to God in our trials.
Now,
while I know what it feels like to wonder, “How
shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?”[16] I
also know that we can help ourselves to rejoice in the Lord by singing encouragement
to one another. I hope this song helps you with your joy as it helps me to seek
the joy-based experience of unwavering faith in unbearable trials.
Note: If you are able to help me create a
choir of voices to sing this song for the building up of the church, send me an email and I will send you the audio file. If you can record the audio of you
singing along, or playing an instrument that could enhance the music, send me the audio file, and I will try to figure out how to
combine everything into a resource of blessing to the suffering church.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
[1] Matthew 5:10
[2] Matthew 5:11-12
[3] Romans 5:3-5
[4] II Corinthians 3:18
[5] James 1:2
[6] James 1:3-4
[7] Romans 8:37
[8] Hebrews 12:2
[9] II Corinthians 4:17-18
[10] Luke 22:44
[11] Jesus used this
imagery of a woman’s labor, and subsequent joy in her child, as he prepared his
disciples for his death and resurrection in John 16:16-24
[12] Hebrews 5:7
[13] Ephesians 4:30
[14] Acts 5:41
[15] Hebrews 12:3
[16] Psalm 137:4
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