Digging Deeper: Trust Carries Us Through Suffering
38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary.5 Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42 (ESV)
TRUST CARRIES US THROUGH SUFFERING
As we learned about Martha and Mary this week, we have seen repeatedly how differently they treated the situation of Jesus’ visiting their home. While Mary sat and soaked up his words, Martha complained that she should be helping her prepare for the guests, to which Jesus replies, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things (Luke 10:41).”
Worrying about the wrong stuff instead of listening to the Lord, now that sounds too close to my life. It is normal to worry, to feel anxious, but when does worry become sinful?
According to Dr. John Piper, all the time. Answering a question about it on his podcast, he said “Worry or anxiety is a sin. God wants us to trust his sovereign, all-wise, all-good, all-providing, all-protecting, ever-assisting care. This is a trust issue.”
Trust is hard when it means we must forfeit control. We all want to feel “in control” in our lives as much as possible. Yet the older we get, the more we are forced to face the fact that we control much less than we would like to admit.
God tells us repeatedly to trust Him in the face of trouble (Proverbs 3:5, Joshua 1:9, Jeremiah 17:7-8, John 14:1, etc.). Sometimes He tells us that by putting us in impossible situations, stripping us bare of any notion of control and forcing us to our knees in desperate hope and prayer.
My wife, Deanna, and I faced such a situation with our first child.
When we were 36 weeks into an up-to-that-point “normal” pregnancy, Deanna received a phone call and we had to go in for terrifying news – our daughter, Roselyn, had a Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) and faced grim odds at life following her birth.
We were crestfallen. Our first child, the first grandkid of the family, might not survive. For the next four weeks we met with specialists, sought opinions from doctors all over the country and even debated trying to make a trip out of state to have her delivered at a hospital that might be better suited for such a high-risk birth and a surgery thereafter.
I scoured the pages of scripture daily, searching for whatever hope and truth I might be able to cling to in the words of God. And one night, weighing all of these tenuous options, a verse reached out and spoke to me from Hebrews: “So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised. (Hebrews 10:35-36 NLT).”
I was reminded, clearly, that I wasn’t in control. We have no choice but to trust in those moments because we are trying to seek his will, not our own. Patiently enduring until the end so that we can receive his ultimate promise – eternity in his presence.
We tearfully prayed at Roselyn’s bedside for every day of her life, and after 22 days she passed into eternity. We found a song, through a friend, called Though You Slay Me by Shane and Shane, and the song resonated deeply with us and was played at her service. Finding its roots in Job 13:15, the chorus goes like this:
Though You slay me
Yet I will praise You
Though You take from me
I will bless Your name
Though You ruin me
Still I will worship
Sing a song to the One who’s all I need
We listened to the song over and over, and in the online version there is a break and a snippet from a sermon by Piper is played where he talks about suffering. Preaching from 2 Corinthians 4:17, he insists that every second of anxiety, pain and suffering that we feel this side of Heaven is “working in eternal weight” to produce Glory for the Kingdom God. It all matters and it all counts.
It’s not easy to walk with the pain we all carry, like that of child-loss for us. We have to come to the cross for any chance at finding meaningful and lasting peace amidst this fallen and sinful world. For in this world we find trouble, but Jesus has overcome this world. (John 16:33).
Lee Wilson and his wife, Deanna, have been NorthStar Church members since 2010. They are parents to Everett, Henry and Roselyn. Lee is passionate about sports (Go Braves, Go Dawgs) and has the pleasure to serve on the worship team as a bassist.