Sanctuary - Moments In His presenceНамуна

‘God, surely You wouldn’t do that, would You?’

(Trying to make sense of adversity)

I have an expression in my head, sometimes used in preaching,  these times to come to His children to ‘prepare’ them, perhaps to increase their trust and deepen His relationship with them. It doesn’t always feel like it, I admit, and we certainly never welcome them, but, as I reflect on my most difficult times, I do, albeit retrospectively, see God’s hand marvelously in the circumstances of my life. Here’s a thing, and you won’t often hear sermons on it; listen to Jesus speaking about Himself, the Chief Cornerstone…

It goes a little way to cover our incredulity, shock and puzzlement when God allows things, or doesn’t seem to do the things we expect Him to do. Having traversed some demanding times of adversity in my life, I cannot guarantee to offer you any all-encompassing illumination, but I will do my best. Adversity will come. Jesus said it would.

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In this world you have tribulation (affliction, anguish) but take courage, I have overcome the world.”  (John 16 v 33).

Great characters in Scripture rarely live lives unscathed by troubles. Moses was forty years in the back of the barren desert watching over someone else’s sheep. (Exodus 3 v 1) That was not a picnic for someone raised in a royal household! Joseph was flung down a well as a young man, and later flung into prison for many years on a trumped-up charge - although God was with him. “Now his master saw the Lord was with him and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand”, (Genesis 39 v 3), and so the stories of trouble, perplexity, pain and discomfort go on.

Somewhere in all this mystery there is a sense that God allows these times to come to His children to ‘prepare’ them, perhaps to increase their trust and deepen His relationship with them. It doesn’t always feel like it, I admit, and we certainly never welcome them, but, as I reflect on my most difficult times, I do, albeit retrospectively, see God’s hand marvellously in the circumstances of my life. Here’s a thing, and you won’t often hear sermons on it; listen to Jesus speaking about Himself, the Chief Cornerstone… “And He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.’ (Matthew 21 v 44). What sort of God says things like that?! As we do not have liberty to sanitize Scripture for your comfort we will, this week, explore some of the moments of adversity encountered by various Bible characters and try to make sense, without resorting to trite platitudes, of what God was doing and how the saints of old responded.