Pastor Powell's Column

April 2010

What’s the Use?

Sometimes I feel tempted to give up. Do you? When troubles and trials and worries and griefs pile on, how can we make sense of it all? Do you ever feel like saying “What’s the use?”

The Bible is realistic about life. It doesn’t sugarcoat what seems like senseless suffering. That’s where we live. Pretending won’t make it go away. But the Bible shows us how to make good use of trials. Two examples of this are found in the opening verses of 2 Corinthians.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. (2 Corinthians 1:3-5.)

In other words, trials and troubles can prepare us to help others. This is the neighborly use of trials. It makes us better able to help others who face the same trials. Don’t neglect this. If you have to pass through trouble, why let the suffering go to waste? Use it.

One example is our ministry called DivorceCare, and DivorceCare for Kids. It’s a place where people who have already been through the pain of divorce help others who are just beginning that journey. DivorceCare leaders are not professional counselors. They are just sincere believers sharing out of the depths of their experience. DVD presentations from expert counselors form the basis of each week’s discussions, but it’s the personal sharing that makes it so meaningful. Many have found healing and faith and support in these sessions.

We are hoping soon to see that same 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 pattern—sharing from the experience of grace—serving to bring hope in many other challenges: Surviving cancer. Recovery from addictions. Surviving bereavement. Support for grandparents raising grandchildren. Marriage enrichment. Support for parents of special needs children. Ministry to first time parents. Support for caregivers of elderly parents and others. Outreach to internationals in our community. Ministry to college students. Surviving unemployment. Welcome to new residents. Help with management of personal finances. This is a wide variety of challenges, each with unique needs. Yet for each, there are people in our Fellowship who can say “Been there, done that.”

Help and care and support and encouragement on these matters often comes on the very spontaneous person-to-person level. In addition, whenever God leads us to offer help as an organized group or ministry team, there’s the potential to touch even more lives. We are calling our new effort to develop such groups “Hope and Help.” (See 2 Corinthians 1:10-11!).

Leaders at The Fellowship sense that God may be leading us into a new season of ministry expansion, especially through outreach to needs in our community. Some of those ministries are already underway (Marriage Initiative, Care Givers Support), some are on the drawing boards (Celebrate Recovery, Outreach to Internationals), and some are still just dreams. Stay tuned.

But all this depends on another use of trials. The support group or helper team has little to offer unless there has been the Easter use of trials:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)

Here’s the highest use of trials: learning to trust God who raises the dead. Sometimes that won’t happen until circumstances bring us to the end of trusting ourselves. Among New England Yankees, self reliance has been a cardinal virtue since Emerson and Thoreau. But in the spiritual realm, we must learn to rely on God. Learning that kind of faith is one of the best uses of trials. And God is completely trustworthy, even in impossible situations. This is a significant part of the Easter message.

Without the Easter use of trials, we have nothing to offer in the neighborly use. But these two together, the Easter use and the neighborly use—the horizontal and the vertical—form a cross. It is only through faith in God that we have anything to offer our neighbors. When we enter into that faith, when we identify with both the suffering and the resurrection of Jesus, then we can be channels of his truth and love to others in need.