Trouble Brings Joy

“My brothers and sisters, you will have many kinds of trouble. But this gives you a reason to be very happy.”

‭‭James‬ ‭1:2‬ ‭ERV‬‬

Why does trouble make you happy?

“You know that when your faith is tested, you learn to be patient in suffering. If you let that patience work in you, the end result will be good. You will be mature and complete. You will be all that God wants you to be.”

‭‭James‬ ‭1:3-4‬ ‭ERV‬‬

The enemy shows a counterfeit to joy and happiness. He shows relationships that are going perfect, promotions in jobs, wealth, beautiful houses, free time to watch TV, lots of food, perfect health, ... you name it. The enemy says that these things provide joy and happiness. Then he flips things around and interprets suffering in the wrong way.

Satan lies and says that suffering means that God is not able to provide all that you need. He says that broken marriages, rebellious children, financial hardship, health problems are symptoms that God is not big enough and kind enough and does not love you enough to take care of your troubles.

He started those lies with Eve and she fell for it. He tried the same lies with Jesus and Jesus quoted the word and the devil fled!

“If I had not found joy in your teachings, my suffering would have destroyed me.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:92‬ ‭ERV‬‬

What a powerful truth! We need an arsenal of scripture to quote and claim when troubles come and they will. If I want to be all that God wants me to be, I need suffering in my life. As paradoxical as that may be, the way to grow in the Lord is to allow suffering in our life and dig in deep with it. If I say that I want to be like Christ, point my eyes in the right direction.

We must never stop looking to Jesus. He is the leader of our faith, and he is the one who makes our faith complete. He suffered death on a cross. But he accepted the shame of the cross as if it were nothing because of the joy he could see waiting for him. And now he is sitting at the right side of God’s throne.”

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭12:2‬ ‭ERV‬‬

Every time we pray, picture Jesus at the right hand of God’s throne and thank him for paying the price it took him to get there. He counted it joy! Let us count our suffering as joy to get us where we want to be.

Myth of Perfection

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.” Brene’ Brown

I have been reading some books by Brene’ Brown and this quote has stopped me in my tracks. How many times do we try to be perfect so that we “can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.” In our Christian life, are we needlessly trying to be perfect in order to please God’s favor? Do we feel like we could earn God’s love? Do we continue to bury the feelings of shame of the sins in our past so that God will view us as perfect?

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭103:13-14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

What a promise in this verse! God knows how we are formed. We are made of stinking dust! He knows our frailties too well. We can’t hide our imperfections from our creator. No matter how hard we try, we can’t hide the past mistakes that we are ashamed of. But that is the point and the victory in this verse,

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8:1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

None! Absolutely no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are wasting our time and effort to run from our imperfections. It is impossible to run from them because there is a delete button.

“And he has taken our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭103:12‬ ‭ERV‬‬

We can’t comprehend how far the east is from the west. No way to measure this. God is trying to tell us that he does not see us with our past sin sitting in front of our face. He sees Jesus standing in front of our face, as the covering for past and present and future sins. He literally covers our imperfections! Highest praise to Jesus!

“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭12:2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

There is No Growth Without Change

There is no growth without change; there is no change without fear or loss; and there is no loss without pain. We fear these losses, even if our old ways were self-defeating, because, like a worn out pair of shoes, they were at least comfortable and familiar.

Every change involves a loss of some kind: You must let go of old ways in order to experience the new. ~Rick Warren

I love this devotional by Rick Warren. Pair of old shoes. Yep those shoes are comfortable and familiar. After 40.5 years of marriage, our marriage was comfortable. But God asked us to grow, to change, maybe lose some habits. Ouch! No, Lord, I’m comfortable. But we jumped out of our comfort and went to a marriage retreat. I have written several blogs about the sessions. But the telling part was what would we be willing to do to actually change?

I absolutely love this small detail that we have changed. The speakers, Les and Leslie Parrot, called this, “sharing withhold. “ I told Mark we were going to rename it because I can’t ever remember what it’s called. I am going to call it the two positives and 1 negative. At least once a week, we have done this and it is a game changer. I love it! It seems so small and insignificant. But isn’t that the way change often happens...beginning with a small thing?Bad or good change?

The reason it’s called “withhold” is because we “hold onto” a negative feeling about something that happened. There is power in holding onto that thought. It grows and grows and becomes larger than life. We will remember this action or the words that our spouse said and festers like a infection that does not get air or any way to get healing. 

By the same way, sometimes we hold onto a compliment that we noticed about our spouse and we keep it inside because they are not worthy of our praise. Oh my goodness, the compliment may have been the breath of life that our spouse needed to hear.

So here is how it goes...at least once a week one of us say, “How about two positives and one negative?” One goes first and says one positive, one negative and end with a positive. The negative can get sandwiched in the two positives. Here is the wonderful part, our spouse can only say “thank you” for all comments. If they have something else to say, they must wait thirty minutes to address any of the comments. You can guess, after 30 minutes, it will rare to even remember the negative.

This simple act is like a fresh rain on our marriage. It washes away the infection that had been hiding under a rock, waiting for an opportunity to bring it up in the worst way and the worst time. Cool thing, your spouse can not justify the negative for 30 minutes. We love to justify, don’t we? But this exercise gives us time to think about why our spouse said this...why this was important enough for our spouse to mention it. If we are wise enough to be quiet for 30 minutes and think about what they said, miracles may happen that we did not anticipate. Love this tiny change in our marriage that will help us grow our marriage for the next 40 years. I love you, Mark Cooper(aka Superman).