A Holy Contradiction: Joy in a World of Pain

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Well, you know, whenever there's a national event like the coronavirus that's going on right now, it seems there's a way we should react, you know?

It seems like there's a way in which all human beings are supposed to react, and it seems like the only options are fear or indifference.

It seems that the options right now are to go along with your life in some type of blissful ignorance or to punch somebody for a roll of toilet paper at Target.

Those seem to be the options of the general worldview of our life if you just kind of listen.

For our society, you know, a virus like this is equated with fear, and that that makes sense to us.

Something like this happening in our world, it just makes sense.

Yes, we should be afraid.

But aren't there other ways to live?

Aren't there other options to live within a time where something, yes, is a serious threat and yes is a serious problem, but are there other reactions other than fear that can happen?

I really enjoy and have friends that work with the Christian movement in China.

And it was interesting to hear that in China, just five days ago, there's a report of churches in areas where the virus was an imminent threat, that Christians are actually handing out masks and sanitation materials and praying for people.

Like Christians are not holed up in isolation, but unafraid, are courageously learning to love their community in an intense time.

And it's that kind of thinking that actually drops us into our series today called A Holy Contradiction, because it's rooted in this simple question.

Are there ways and areas of life where Christians should not just go with the flow of society and the flow of the general zeitgeist, but to move in an opposite direction and live as a holy contradiction, like the Christians in China?

Right?

There are certain pockets of Christians right now that are living contradictory lives.

How are you courageous in a time that is threatening?

Or put it in a different season in a different time period, right?

A time that is anxious, how are you living with peace?

Right?

Those seem contradictory.

All of the things in our world should prove that we should be filled with anxiety.

But somehow, in some way, Christians are to live against the grain.

It seems contradictory to meet such a threat with courage and patience.

But is that kind of response possible?

That's what we want to explore.

To answer these and many other questions, we're going to begin a long season in our church, a decent season in our church, through the New Testament book of James.

If you have a Bible, you can actually go there.

You could go to the end of your Bible, it's after Hebrews, but if you're in the Peters, you've gone too far.

Or on your app, you can just type in James.

It's that simple.

You can go to James chapter one.

We're just gonna take, in this three-week series, a holy contradiction, the first 12 verses of the whole book.

So we're not gonna do the whole book in three weeks.

We're gonna just take a chunk of the first chapter in just three weeks.

The book of James is a New Testament letter or an epistle.

This is a way of saying it was written to a community by a church leader.

That church leader was James.

And he begins his letter this way in James chapter 1, verse 1.

James 1:1

Look at this verse.

It says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings.

That's the way you started letters.

Back then you didn't sign your name at the end of the letter, you signed your name at the beginning of the letter to show who this was from.

Let's look just at the kind of like schematic of the book of James.

The author is James the Just.

This is how he's referred to in church history.

He was the brother of Jesus, which is a crazy thing.

Let's just pause there.

He was the brother of Jesus and an overseer of the church in Jerusalem.

So he's related to Jesus Christ, which makes it shocking that chapter 1, verse 1, he says he's a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is that while he was related to Jesus, he recognized the Lordship and majesty of Jesus, that Jesus wasn't just a teacher.

His brother wasn't just a teacher, his brother wasn't just a prophet, his brother wasn't just a healer, his brother was God incarnate.

And James pauses and says, I live my life in service to my earthly brother, who's actually the eternal father.

Pretty crazy.

You have brothers and sisters?

Would you ever say you would never say that?

You would never say that.

I love my siblings.

If they're watching, I love you.

I would never say anything like that about them, right?

But James the Just, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, says that he wrote this letter in 40 to 45 AD, meaning that's seven to ten years or seven to twelve years after Jesus would have been crucified and rose from the dead.

So we're actually very close to the think about 10 years ago is 2010, right?

You can remember what happened then.

It actually, you know, for some of us doesn't seem that long ago, right?

I got married 10 years ago.

It doesn't seem that long ago to me.

And he was writing mainly to a Jewish Christian audience.

Okay, so he oversaw the church in Jerusalem, meaning he was actually pastoring a lot of people who were Jewish converts.

We have to remember, the Christian movement, when it began, was a Jewish movement of conversion.

And actually, one of the largest big like theological emergencies in the first century was the fact that not just Jews became Christians, but Gentiles, non-Jews were becoming Christians, and that was a huge issue.

And so what James is doing is he's leading predominantly Jewish Christians and writing to predominantly Jewish Christians throughout the Palestine-Syria regions north of Jerusalem, okay?

But we're pretty sure, because this book is currently in our Bible 2,000 years later, we're quite sure that the book of James was circulated throughout a large network in the Middle East of home churches and city churches.

That this book, because it was written by such an authoritative figure, was circulated with incredible authority around the early church.

And he's when that's when he's writing, he says, to the dispersion, the twelve tribes.

You say, what is he talking about there?

These 12 tribes, this dispersion, was the way the Jewish people, and James, who was a Jew, leading Jewish people, would have talked about the regathered, spiritually renewed Israel, which is the church, the new people of God.

That actually the dispersion, the displaced people who are Jewish all over the world, the tribes that had been scattered throughout the ancient world, were now being regathered, and even Gentiles were beginning to join, and that this people group, this dispersion, was the group that God would use now for his new redemptive purposes.

He would take Israel, as he always said he did, and he said, I'm gonna make Israel a nation for the nations, a blessing to bless other nations.

And that God will use Israel in a powerful way to gather all people.

And that's what begins in the early church.

The church begins to live like a dispersion or as a contradictory community, because the people of Israel always lived as a contradiction.

They always had things that were weird about them.

They would always live, Leviticus told them to live holy as God was holy.

And all holy means is unique or set apart, right?

Holy, we think, is morally pure.

And yes, God, when we speak about God, he's morally pure, but he's also other.

That's what we mean when we say holy.

And so God's people, Israel, and the church back 2,000 years ago, and the church today, in all of these different timelines, will live as a holy contradiction in their world.

They'll be dispersed throughout the world in all kinds of regions, but they'll live differently, set apart as a contradictory community.

And James, in his intro, will get right into one way this the community of God will live contradictory, and that's around this area of trials.

Look at what he says in James chapter 1, verse 2.

James 1:2

He says, Count it all joy.

You may have heard this verse before.

This is a famous verse.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.

For 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.

Count it all joy when you meet trials.

James is saying, when things don't go your way, you do not have an obstacle, but an opportunity.

That opportunity is to live in such a way that might contradict the people around you.

In other words, you can have joy in the midst of trials.

How can you live that way?

Well, let's pause for a second.

What does he mean when he says trials?

Trials, I'll use trials, pain, suffering kind of interchangeably today.

Here's how I would define trials the unexpected, uncomfortable, uncontrollable circumstances of pain that can cause us to want to bail on faith in God.

Let's just read that one more time.

That is the unexpected, uncomfortable, uncontrollable circumstances of pain that can cause us to want to bail on faith in God.

Have you had a trial?

Have you walked through a season that you didn't expect that was uncomfortable?

And that you couldn't control?

And suddenly you were like, is this God thing worth it?

Trials of various kinds, he says in James chapter 1, verse 2.

James 1:2

Counted all joy when you acquired trials of various kinds.

One thing I love about the Bible is that it tells us that suffering is deeply complicated.

That suffering has many forms and types.

And there's a temptation, I think, and many Christians have taken it unfortunately, to simplify pain and trials.

What I mean by that is they want to make it just one thing.

And they want to make trials to just be God sends all trials.

God makes all trials.

God is the author of all suffering.

And they simplify it.

Or God is not the author of any suffering.

He has no control.

He's totally left his hands off the earth.

But you know, the Bible, when you read it, and actually, particularly with the Bible reading plan, when you read the wisdom literature, you'll see that the Bible affirms a complicated world.

That trials are the result often of what the Bible calls sin or rebellion against God's ways.

So oftentimes, the reason things are hard or the reason suffering has occurred is because we have rejected God's wisdom and gone our own way.

That's all through the Bible, right?

And you've seen that in your own life, I've seen that in my own life, right?

The other way is through brokenness, or the scripture calls it like iniquity, which is like a bentness that the world has, a fractured nature about our cosmos that goes into the cellular level of this creation.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that sin is not just moral wrongdoing, it is the effect of moral wrongdoing upon all creation, which leads us to not live in a perfect world.

You see, God created a world that was good, and he filled it with people who had choice and a world that had choice and a world that also had abundance.

He said, Be fruitful and multiply, tons and tons of things happen.

And as you trace the storyline of scripture after Genesis 3, you start to realize there is just something wrong with the world and creation, and it leads to things like disease and disasters.

But another kind of various kind is so there's sin, there's brokenness and iniquity, but also a various kind of trial would be like spiritual.

One of the things the Bible absolutely affirms is that God is involved in this world.

And that sometimes the trouble that is brought upon our life is from God, but sometimes it's not.

And that's an important affirmation.

Also, sometimes because we live in not just a physical world but a spiritual world, that the suffering in this world is not God but the his enemy.

And it's this complicated picture that James alludes to when he says, Count it joy when you inquire uh when you encounter trials of various kinds.

Not everything that happens in this world is God's will.

That's why Jesus told us to pray, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

There are active agents working against the will of God.

You don't live in a world where it's just your voice, your head, God's voice, God's head.

You live in a complicated, broken, spiritually fractured world.

And experiencing that is painful.

This is the way because of that pain, we've tried to explain it.

I I kind of crib here from Tim Keller, but also other sources and kind of put some things together my own.

I have five stories I think were told about suffering through the world, and let's just put them all up uh, well, let's put them one up one by one.

Yeah.

The secular story.

The secular story is that trials are an accident, right?

There's no rhyme or reason, there's no author, there's no control, they're total accident.

So arrange your life and society to avoid it.

Have you believed this one?

I've I've been there before, right?

It's okay if when I walk through some of these, you go, wait, I thought that's kind of how it goes.

Because these are the ones I think the stories we've kind of been told.

And a secular mindset, which has no uh categories for the spiritual, is going to say something like, Trials are an accident, so arrange your life in society to avoid it.

The fundamentalist story.

If you grew up in a rigid fundamental background, trials are inevitable, they will come, so endure it and receive honor.

Now you're gonna hear parts of this that are gonna be sounding true.

Are trials inevitable?

Yes, trials are inevitable, suffering's inevitable.

But this fundamentalism which says, man up, right?

You ever heard that?

Or suck it up, just get through it, grind it out, tough it out, move forward.

If you endure that, you're an honorable person.

Stoicism would teach this too, right?

The Greek philosophy of stoicism, fundamentalist story says they're inevitable, just endure it.

Have no feelings, don't lament, just walk through as an honorable man or an honorable woman.

There's also a story of the mindfulness story.

You'll see this in a lot of Eastern religions, particularly in Buddhism and Hinduism, but it's also crept into the church.

It's crept into Christian theology, and I don't think it's right.

The mindfulness story says that trials are a kind of illusion, and so you have to detach yourself and become enlightened.

Now, I know some of this phrase might have helped you at some point in your life, so I don't want to like totally, you know, destroy this or whatever, but I kind of hear that when I hear people say, let go and let God.

I just kind of hear that idea of like leaking into the church that like we don't have to, we just have to, we don't have to even think about our trials, just forget about them, forget about our suffering, and just ascend to a kind of spiritual plane wherein we engage with uh, you know, nirvana, right?

That would be the Eastern teaching.

Or some kind of like meditative state that leads us to transcendent peace.

That's the mindfulness story.

The next one is the moralistic story, which tells us that trials are a result of your wrongdoing.

Maybe you grew up this way.

Do good, you'll be blessed.

Do good, and you'll be blessed.

Trials are always a result of you doing the wrong thing, and so when you do the right thing, you'll live a happy life.

That's overly simplistic and moral, right?

Now, you'll read the Proverbs, and the Proverbs will actually sound a little bit like this.

But again, it's important to read all of the wisdom literatures as well.

I love about the Bible.

Because then you meet Job.

And Job is the man who lived Proverbs and he suffers.

And Job helps you reckon with the question: what happens when you follow the rules to a T and you still experience trials?

How do you trust God's wisdom?

Powerful stuff, right?

But the moralistic story is an oversimplification.

How about the hedonistic story, last one, which is that trials are confusing, so forget it and have fun.

Have a glass of wine, go on vacation.

I know life is hard right now, but just have fun.

Hedonistic means pleasure seeking.

Just go have sleep with whoever you want, enjoy life.

Like just it's YOLO.

You only live once.

It's the hedonistic story of our world.

Trials are confusing, forget it and have fun.

But for us, for us, there's a Christian story.

And I think I would summarize the Christian story as this trials are a process.

Stay faithful and be transformed.

Trials are a process.

As we stay faithful and remain under God's life for us and with us, we will be transformed.

Notice that I didn't say stay faithful and transform yourself.

I actually believe that the operating work of God begins in us in a new way when we endure suffering and we allow the Spirit of God to do the transformative work as our life feels depleted and empty.

All throughout your Bible, it talks about trial as a process.

Look at Psalm 66.

This is a song from the ancient Hebrew scriptures that James would have been, probably had it memorized, let's be honest.

For you, O God, have tested us.

There's a process, you have tried us as silver is tried.

Look at the end, at the end in verse 12.

Yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

So you've took you took us in, you've tried us the way silver would be tried, but you brought us out.

Process.

Job, when he's in the middle of his suffering, he cries this prayer that I think if you're going through a trial right now is a beautiful verse to memorize.

Though he slay me, which is a really dramatic way to put it, I will hope in him, yet I will argue my ways to his face.

God, I'm going through something that is so painful, but I know on the other end of this is something I cannot see.

In the meantime, I'm gonna let you know I disagree.

If you are going through pain, you have the freedom to argue your ways to God's face.

Jesus Christ in the garden would teach us that it gets enemy.

You have the freedom today to worship at awakening and argue with God.

But I would say, take this whole verse.

God, I will hope in you.

But I so I don't know what you're doing in my life right now.

Proverbs, the ancient wisdom book, verse, chapter 17, verse 3.

The crucible is for silver, the furnace, the fire is for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.

So just the same way that gold's got to go through a process, the heart must go through a process.

The heart must go through a test.

How about Romans 5 in the New Testament?

Paul almost, in a strange, beautiful Holy Spirit matchmaking way, almost exactly writes what James writes.

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings or our trials.

We glory in them.

Why?

Because we know that suffering, and if you're looking at your Bible or you've got it on your app, highlight this, produces perseverance.

Perseverance character and character hope.

Suffering is a process that produces something in you.

Suffering is a factory for character development.

Suffering works in our life in such a way that it transforms us.

So how do we get to the joy of it?

Well, let me clarify because all these writers seem to be saying the same thing, that suffering is this process.

But hear me very carefully and closely here.

That just because good is on the end of suffering, or abundance is on the end of suffering, or transformation is on the end of suffering, good is on the end, doesn't mean that the thing itself is good.

Can we talk about this for a second?

You went through something in your life, a trial.

And God will make it into something good, but it's still evil.

There's twisted theology that makes you start people will tell you you've got to start seeing the abuse as good.

No.

The abuse is wicked, cancer is evil, disease.

Is sin is a result of this sinful world, this broken world we live in, right?

There's no place in which we should look back on our life of the suffering point and go, that was a good thing.

It's a hard thing, a difficult thing, a trial, suffering, evil.

But God is so good and so transcendent that he takes the very thing that is defined as evil and he works it, rearranges it, recapitulates your life to bring it to a place of good.

That's how powerful he is.

But it doesn't mean that the thing originally was good.

And so, how do we then have this joy that he talks about?

James says to count it joy.

And it's partly to know that joy will come when we see what I've just outlined a little bit.

It's this joy comes in suffering with a perspective shift that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.

Joy in suffering happens with a perspective shift that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.

What we're asking us to do is to step back from our suffering and to see the process that God might be taking us through.

To pause for a second to realize that suffering might be something that God is utilizing in our life, albeit strangely, mysteriously, we don't understand, but shifting our perspective to see that faith in Jesus, that comes from faith in Jesus.

Three ways that I would have us shift our perspective.

The first is how we see life.

How we see life.

The perspective could go like this: Life is about God's formation of my character in Christ.

That's the perspective.

We talked last week, Ryan closed our relational intelligence series and said that the pursuit of happiness or the deservedness of happiness, that I deserve to be happy, is not the framework we should operate our lives in.

It will lead to disastrous things.

It will lead to letdowns in relationships, it will lead to us probably in unhappy marriages.

It's strange that the pursuit of happiness itself leads us to unhappiness.

Go back, listen to last week's message.

So helpful.

But we have to remember that life in general is not about my personal well-being, the achievement of my goals, but the life that I'm living is about God forming my character to Jesus Christ.

That's why he says this in verse 4.

James says, and let steadfastness have its full effect.

You can look back at that verse in your bulletin.

Let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Steadfastness, that's a very biblical word, is it not?

It's kind of confusing sometimes.

We don't often talk about, hey, how is work?

Well, um, I was very steadfast today.

Uh but I actually this is a really helpful and beautiful word.

In the Greek, it's hupamenoi.

It means the ability to remain under.

Isn't that cool?

And what James is saying is he's saying, if you have the ability to remain under God, steadfastness.

It's also called perseverance, if you heard that, it's a biblical term.

Perseverance.

If you have the ability to remain under your life with God and continue to exalt him as your Lord and walk in his ways and submit to his ways, when that it says has full effect, it says you'll be perfect and complete.

You won't lack anything if you're able to remain.

It's cool.

I love that scripture tells us, man, when you're suffering, one foot in front of the other.

Like remain, right?

Just keep keep going.

That's the encouragement.

Keep going in life with God.

It's gonna be hard.

Keep going in life with God and remain under God's good word, and you'll be complete, lacking in nothing.

It says perfect, though.

Doesn't that make you kind of feel strange?

The Greek word is telios, which is where we get telescope.

It's the ability to see the end.

So it's more of a completion of going like when you're steadfast, you're going, God, I'm trusting, while I don't understand right now, I'm trusting the then, right?

I'm trusting the telios, I'm trying to trusting the end of this will result in the building of my character.

Because we know life is about my formation in Christ, and when I rearrange how I think about my life, I'm able to remain under you, God, knowing that every beautiful thing requires pressure, right?

And I'm another beautiful thing that requires a little bit of pressure.

That's why scripture talks about gold, silver.

It requires pressure to make beautiful pearls, requires pressure under the deep sea to make beautiful things.

The best music you have heard, I would say objectively, comes from pressure.

The Irish fiddle brought us folk music out of seasons of suffering and oppression.

The African drum out of the early slave movements brought us rhythm and blues and jazz.

Gospel music comes from there, soul music comes from there.

Why?

The most beautiful music happens in a space of pressure.

Again, it doesn't mean that those things were good.

It means that somehow, mysteriously and magically, good came out of it.

And for us, we view our lives that way, that there's there's something about our life that's happening that we can't see.

And I tend to tell young leaders and young Christians this sometimes when they're going through a trial.

And I say, this might shock you, you know, but I'm actually kind of excited for you.

And the reason I'm excited for you is because I can see, and I've said this to some of you, by the way, in this room.

It's because I can see God working something in your life in the midst of the difficult circumstance.

And I get excited about you remaining under God and Him producing something beautiful.

And the only reason I think I can see that and say that is because I've been there.

Is because I've been 19, 20, 21, and going through a couple of years of pain.

When I was 19 years old, well, when I was 17, I was in high school, and there was this girl that was a part of her friend group that got diagnosed with cancer.

And it was only a year and a half later, when I was 19, that she died.

And I was in college and I remember reckoning with this fact that a young girl would ever die of cancer.

And I played those stories I talked to you about, moralism, hedonism.

I played those stories through my head through that time.

And I argued with God.

And it was only months after Lauren had died that my friend had really spiraled into addiction.

Another friend of mine, one of my closest friends, had spiraled into a deep addiction.

A deep addiction that caused him to betray me, lie to me, lie about me to other people.

And in one of the more painful moments of my life, led him to take his own.

And I couldn't pray for like that year, I would say.

Because simultaneously to that, my parents were splitting up too.

And so I'm 20 years old and I've followed Jesus for give or take five, six years.

I was starting to feel the call to be a pastor when this stuff was going on in my life, and I don't know if I had the ability to remain under God.

And I'm not here to tell you that I'm somehow stronger or somehow somehow this great Christian because I got through that.

I don't know how I got through that.

I have guesses, I had people praying for me, people encouraging me.

I was in Christian community.

There are definitely things around my life that were helping me, but I really look at that season and I go, there is some way God was gracing me through it to help me remain under Him.

And that's not the only season of suffering I've had.

I had, when I was 24, I was a youth pastor.

I did four funerals in 55 days.

You don't get into youth ministry to do funerals.

And when I've gone through these seasons of concentrated pain, it's strange.

You always look back and you wish they never happened.

It's never, you never get to a point where you're like, I'm glad my parents split up, or man, that season was great.

You never never really get there.

It's weird.

But don't you get to a place on the other end where you start to realize maybe the person I am today is more to do with that than the good stuff that I would call good stuff.

Maybe I'm a more humble, helpful, maybe, maybe I don't know.

Maybe I'm a more humble, helpful pastor because of some of those difficult things.

It's not that they were good things, it's that God mysteriously worked these bad things to make good in my life, to where there's now a recognition of how life goes.

I look back, I wish none of it happened.

I still don't think any of it is good, but I'm certain that God used it for his good in my life.

And it's strange sitting at 32 now thinking, I don't know the kind of 32-year-old I would be apart from those things, simply because that's the way life works.

We don't get to choose everything that happens to us.

We get to choose how we respond.

And suddenly I've looked back and learned that maybe we as Christians need to learn how to suffer.

We need to learn to endure suffering, to persevere in suffering, and allow perseverance to do its thing, which is to develop in us a kind of character that looks like Jesus.

That changes how we see joy, how we see life, but also how we see joy.

And what I think about with joy is a new perspective, is this what brings me joy is not the satisfaction of my desires or the achievement of my own goals, but the formation of my character into Christ likeness.

So I've through my life and through Scripture and God's grace have changed a little bit of my perspective to say what brings me true joy is not when I do something great, but when God does something great in me.

And sometimes God does his great thing in me when I am broken.

But I recognize that formation of my character as the essential thing God is doing.

The weird thing about humility is you can't achieve it.

You can't conquer humility.

In some strange way, humility conquers you.

Isn't that interesting?

It's like, as much as you want to make yourself a humble person, it's actually God's operating work in your life that makes you the humble person you ought to be.

And oftentimes that is through circumstances you cannot control.

Finally, how we see God.

Not just how we see life or how we see joy, but it changes how we see God.

And the perspective is this if Jesus was perfected by suffering or shaped into completeness by suffering, then I will be as well.

I don't know if you've ever read this verse in Hebrews 5, but it's so weird and interesting and deep.

And I've thought about it for a decade.

Look at Hebrews 5 7.

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, Jesus himself, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

Although he, Jesus, was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

And being made perfect, there's that word, the telios, and finding his end completion, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.

I guess I would just put it this frankly, I've thought about this a lot through my life.

I just don't know if you can become like Jesus and not suffer.

Because Jesus, we say, Chris, I want to be like Jesus.

But if we want to be like Jesus, we gotta take all of who Jesus is and was.

That's what Philippians says.

Paul says this in Philippians, I want to know Christ.

Amen, right?

I want to know Christ.

Yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow attaining resurrection from the dead.

I think, like, you know, maybe my generation of millennials, it's like, we want the resurrection Christianity, forgetting that the definition of resurrection is to get up from the dead.

Paul goes, I want the resurrection, but I also want the participation with his sufferings.

To be formed in the way of the cross means to be formed in the way of trials.

To realize that God is operating in you the way he operated in Christ.

Strangely, at the moment of his death was operating a power of resurrection, which tells us that our trials and our suffering and the telos the end of our suffering is not a grave, but a resurrection.

That the end of our difficulties is not pain, but power.

At the center of the Christian faith is a God who suffered.

The cross welcomes us into a new understanding of suffering.

Suffering not as punishment, but as a purifying process.

Suffering not as judgment, but as redemption.

Somehow, by staring at the cross of Christ, we see the plan for us does not end in our demise, but our glory.

Trials can only mean we'll become more like Jesus.

Pressure means pearls.

The misery precedes the music.

This is not an adjacent lesson to Christianity.

This is the center of Christianity.

The gospel itself, that death has no power, that death has no sting, that we can pass through death to life into resurrection.

Only because of the power of the cross, only because the power of the empty grave, only because the power of God can we see this.