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reports, reviews, thoughts, news (and fun) posted by Gary Ware

Category Archives: Spiritual Warfare


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A Few Words On Suffering

Our suffering and sadness, well navigated, will cause us to look inward, but our gaze should not, must not remain there.
Instead, acknowledging the emptiness, loss and confusion within, and convicted of our inability to endure suffering, we look to Jesus, who came and endured the true suffering of which ours is but the echo.
Look to Him in Whom there is no shadow of turning or failing; the One who will wipe every tear away.
Put your trust in Him.

An excerpt from Tremper Longman’s commentary on Job, especially for friends who are feeling deep sadness today.

Everyone suffers in this life. I have never met anyone who has denied this fact. If I ever did I would call them a liar or a sociopath. They certainly would verge on heresy. After all, Paul, reflecting on the effects of the fall (Gen. 3), talks about our “present sufferings” as a result of God subjecting the world to “frustration” and presenting in “bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:18–21). Disease, natural catastrophe, betrayal of relationship, abuse, slavery, death, the list goes on and on.
Don’t get me wrong. There are seasons of life. There have been many times in my life when people have asked me how things are going, and I have responded “Great!” and it was true. Of course, I was talking about the world close to me. I was doing well, as were my wife, children, grandchildren, parents, intimate friends, and so forth. Of course, if I watched the nightly news or read the paper, I would know that the world was not “Great!” And even my own world is not great forever. And there are some people whose world is never great.
The inspiring Joni Eareckson Tada spoke recently at Westmont College where I teach Old Testament. As a young woman in her teens, she dove into a pool and hit her head, and she has been quadriplegic since. Over forty years later she movingly spoke of how every morning is a struggle to get up and continue life. She also spoke of disabled people in many parts of the world who are chained in a locked room during the day while their parents go about their business shielding them from public view.
Why does such suffering take place? We want an answer. We want to say, for instance, that human suffering is a result of sin—at least, those of us who aren’t in pain at the moment hope so. After all, we can control our pain that way. We can delude ourselves into thinking that as long as we are good, we won’t suffer.
Of course, that was the view of the three friends of Job. They believed that suffering resulted from sin, so if someone suffered, that person must be a sinner. Thus, when they confronted Job, they immediately thought he had sinned to deserve what he was getting. The funny thing is that Job felt the same way. Why else would he think when he suffered that God is unjust? While Job knew he didn’t deserve it, he still felt that God owed him. He wanted to find God in order to set him straight. Job got his wish to meet with God, but it didn’t go quite the way Job wanted. While the book makes it perfectly clear that Job’s suffering did not result from his sin, he never gets an answer about why he suffered. In a word, the book of Job tells us that we have to live with mystery. The book of Job shows us how God wants us to respond to the difficult things in our life. Yes, as many have pointed out, he allows us to rant and rail like Job does (and the lament psalms illustrate). But ultimately like Job at the end of the book (and the “man of affliction” in Lamentations 3), God wants us to submit silently before him and put our trust in him.
Of course, the book of Job is not the final word about suffering. God’s ultimate answer to our suffering is Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, who comes and suffers and dies on our behalf.


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The Antidote To Self-Pity (via Mark Altrogge)

I need a double dose of this today.

“Self-pity is a vacuum into which gratitude cannot enter. In fact, self-pity and thanksgiving cannot coexist. They are mutually exclusive. Although thanksgiving is the antidote to this poison, few bound by self-pity will take the foray into expressing thanks for all the blessings they do have.” – William P Farley, “The Poison of Self-Pity”

Thanksgiving is the antidote to self-pity.
Self-pity is a weed that grows in the garden of expectations. I expect an easy life. I won’t have to suffer. Things should always go my way.
Self-pity says things like: I can’t believe this is happening to me. I don’t deserve this. How could a loving God do this to me? You’ve got to be kidding me. Why does this have to happen now?
Self-pity forgets all God’s benefits. It fails to give thanks. Instead it focuses on what it doesn’t have. What it thinks it should have but doesn’t.
That’s why its antidote is giving thanks. So if you’re entrenched in self-pity, or have recently been slipping into it, you can turn it around.

Start thanking God for anything and everything you can. Thank him for saving you and forgiving your sins. For giving you eternal life. For giving you his Holy Spirit. For adopting you into his family. For his steadfast love that never ceases.
Thank him for his mercies. For NOT giving you what you DO deserve – his condemnation and wrath. For being your refuge and strength. For being a sympathetic high priest who knows what you’re going through and cares about you in it. For any respite or relief from your pain, for the gift of sleep, for friends who pray for you and care about you.
Thanksgiving is a fight. Especially when you don’t feel like it. It’s a fight against self-pity. It’s a fight of faith.

Thanksgiving is the antidote to self- pity.
Write that down. Read the above quote again. Get a journal and record all God’s benefits. Thank God for as many things as you can each day – your food, your sight, hearing, taste and touch. For whatever provision God supplies.
Thank God that he is using your suffering to make you like Christ, to produce perseverance, character and hope. And thank Jesus that someday he’ll wipe away every tear from your eyes.

So if you catch yourself asking why is this happening to me, grab yourself, shake yourself and start to offer up a sacrifice of thanksgiving. You’ll find joy will begin to trickle back into your soul.


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Resisting Post-Prayer Satanic Whispers (via David Murray)

Last night mgpc had another first Sunday prayer service.
That’s three.
After prayer it’s common to feel some sense of inadequacy about the words, the duration, the number of folk, all of which strike at your confidence about God’s will to answer prayer.
David Murray puts it this way…

“…and forgive my sins. In Jesus name, Amen.”

Within seconds the wicked whispers start.
“Too short.”
“Too shallow.”
“Too distracted…again.”
“Missed out her, and him, and them…”
“Yawn. Nothing new to say?”
“You call that a prayer?”
“Not enough faith…not enough passion…not enough anything.”
“You don’t actually believe that made a difference, do you?”
“You’ll probably not even think about prayer for the rest of the day”
And on, and on, and on it goes.

Relentless, cruel, malicious Satanic whispers that begin the second I end my morning prayer with, “Amen.”
Anyone else get that? It’s so discouraging, isn’t it. I mean, why pray if all you get at the end of it is an even heavier feeling of guilt and failure? Prayer should be a delight not a dread.
I’d really welcome your own input on this, but here’s how I try to fight back, silence the whispers, and turn prayer into a soul-refreshing delight again.

  1. God has forgiven me all my sins – even my sinful prayers.
  2. Jesus is perfecting my prayers and presenting them absolutely flawless to my Heavenly Father.
  3. My salvation does not depend on my prayers but on Jesus’ prayers.
  4. My Heavenly Father listens even to the raven’s ugly grating squawks (Ps. 147:9) and gives it food; how much more will he hear and answer the ugly grating squawks of one of His children?
  5. God delights in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy (Ps 147:9).
  6. God knows I’m a limited creature who cannot possibly pray for everyone everyday.
  7. Surely the Devil would simply leave me alone if my prayers were really so pathetic and useless.
  8. Just because my children don’t (can’t) tell me everything about their lives doesn’t make me love them less, nor does it reflect a lack of love on their part.
  9. But maybe best of all, “You, Satan, are going to be crushed under my feet shortly” (Rom. 16:2o).

At his blog Murray has requested folk to contribute their own defenses against these baseless discouragements to prayer.


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Your Conscience Can Only Tell You The Bad News, Not The Good News (via Ed Welch)

The problem with ‘And always let your conscience be your guide’ is that the human conscience may be able to tell you you’re doing the wrong thing, but it can’t tell you what the right thing is.
Ed Welch points out that in addition to an informed conscience you also need an objective source of guidance.

Feeling guilty is natural. Be human, feel guilty. You don’t need any particular ability to feel guilty. It’s called the conscience, and it comes standard. H. L. Mencken said it is “the mother-in-law whose visit never ends.”

The conscience is a fine thing, but has limitations

The conscience is a fine thing. It reminds us that we live before the God who judges the living and the dead (2 Tim. 4:1). It is that spark of light that is nearly impossible to extinguish. It is a little island of sanity in a world of relativism. Three cheers for the conscience and its willingness to make moral judgments.

The conscience does have its limitations though, and they are significant. For one, it can only make you feel bad. Every once in while you might have a clear conscience—meaning that there is nothing you have to hide—but it only lasts for a moment. That’s just the conscience being the conscience. It has the power to make us feel guilty but not innocent. It has the power to say “don’t do that” but not the power to keep us from doing it.

Here is the problem. The conscience, when it is our only source of information, will end with some form of penance or self-salvation strategy. Deny yourself, punish yourself, try harder, and so on. It is good for what it was intended to do and only for what it was intended to do. It is not able to give direction on how to be right with God. The conscience is a natural ability, not an enlightened one. The conscience is a valuable asset, but you can’t get to any place good from there.

We need a new way of seeing

The conscience must give way to a new way of seeing. We call this faith, and it is different in every way. One looks inward for truth, the other looks outward. One sees judgment, the other tender mercies. One sees us naked and alone before the judge, the other sees Jesus.

Have you ever made yourself cross-eyed by staring at a Magic Eye picture? With your normal way of seeing, the picture looks like a two-dimensional array of random designs. Now look more deeply. Focus farther away. Keep looking. Don’t give up until you see a completely different scene. Refocus until you can see the world in three-dimensions. Once you see it, enjoy it.

The next time you pick up the Magic Eye book you will need a little less time to find this new world. With practice, you will see it even more quickly.

In the same way, to be able to see the new world of grace and faith you must access it in a very different way. It is unnatural and counterintuitive; you need your spiritual eyes. There is nothing natural inside us that will lead us to discover the wonderful exchange in which “Christ takes away all evil that our conscience tells us we have, and gives us every good thing that our conscience tells us we lack.”[1]

To get from the guilt-producing conscience to the ‘every good thing’ you must switch from one system to the other. Two-dimensions to three.

You feel guilty – that is the easy part.

Now, use your spiritual eyes.  Don’t stop until you can see the good stuff.

[1] Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 162.