Over all these years of singing, writing, and working with people, we have heard one word over and over. It is a word mentioned in almost every letter we’ve received; we hear it from folks who come to speak to us after concerts and in retreats where I have spoken. The word is through. “The songs got me through.”
Whenever we have stood before a group, be it a small intimate group or an overwhelming mass of people filling an arena, here or abroad, we can be sure of one common denominator: Everyone is going through something. We all deal with “stuff,” and we will until we get through this life on earth.
How often we pray that God will remove or fix whatever we are going through: illness, broken relationships, sadness, estrangement, set-backs, disappointments in business or vocation, loss of hoped-for opportunities. We gather in each other’s homes or churches and ask for prayer that God will make the problems go away, that he will heal our bodies, make our spouses love us, change our children, give us that promotion or send an answer to financial difficulties.
All of these requests and supplications are legitimate subjects of prayer; God wants us to bring to Him anything that troubles us. We are told in scripture to “cast all our anxiety on him because he cares for [us.]” (1 Pet. 5:7) Yet we know, too, that the things we so often ask Him to remove from us are the very things he uses in our lives to grow in us the qualities we most desire and He desires for us.
We know, for example that no one really wants the life our unbridled fallible inclinations would precipitate. Galatians lists what selfish life without the Spirit looks like: sexual immortality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies. All of these are filling homes, neighborhoods, the workplace, and governments with pain and war. No one in her right mind would choose such a life. No one dreams of a marriage or a house or a family or a community filled with such things.
Instead, in our heart of hearts we long to go home to a place filled with these qualities: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But how do we get these qualities? Often the very things we ask God to remove or to fix are the very things He is using to bring out in us the qualities for which we long. We become patient, for example, by waiting, not by instant solutions. We get peace by relaxing in His ways, knowing they’re higher, deeper, more enduring than our ways. We become faithful by “sticking it out” when it would be easier for the moment to quit, throw in the towel and walk away.
We become good and kind and gentle by not reacting to slights, not giving the one who has hurt us “what they’ve got coming.” Going through stuff ourselves gives us insights into what others have gone through, the abuse they may have endured, the disappointments they’ve had, the opportunities they may have lost.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than this earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
There is that eternal perspective again – the big picture.
“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth…so shall My word be that goes forth the from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10)
We can be sure, then, that God is always up to something in our lives and it is good and it is eternal. What the temporal is after is immediate and transient, and, ultimately, often destructive. Selfishness is always destructive.
When God asks something of us, when he sends His word to the specifics of our days – His commandments, his promises, His blessings, His warnings – it is always to prosper us, but not always in the value system of earth. He always is in the business of prospering us in eternal terms – in qualities that will endure.
Sometimes just the “fall-out” from what He is developing in us brings with it the tangible good things of earth: notoriety, financial abundance, positions of leadership. Even earth is in desperate need of the good qualities of heaven. But be assured those things are never the end result God is after. His Word will always “prosper in the things for which he sent it.” And those things are eternal commodities.
God turns even our propensity to disobedience into a gift of sorts, so that when we hit a wall, we will know that we can never take credit for our so-called virtues, but be driven back to Him for mercy, grace, joy, forgiveness, and, most important of all, love--the deepest longing of both the human and the divine heart.
So, no matter what we are going through, be certain that God loves us too much to let us settle for the petty successes of earth when He longs to open to us the storehouse of His unsearchable riches. He has started something in us beyond our wildest imagination, and He will complete what He has started if we’ll just let Him take us through.
