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Each battle prepared him for the next one.
I’m convinced that the people God uses the most are often the people who have experienced the most adversity. This isn’t necessarily what I want to write, and it isn’t necessarily what you want to read, but it’s true. Adversity can produce an increased capacity to serve God.
know so many people whose adversity has become their ministry. They go through a painful divorce or the death of a child or a destructive addiction, but God helps them climb out of the pit so they can help others in similar circumstances. God is in the business of recycling our pain and using it for someone else’s gain.
Now here is what you need to understand: If you don’t turn your adversity into a ministry, then your pain remains your pain. But if you allow God to translate your adversity into a ministry, then your pain becomes someone else’s gain.
have a theory: The more problems you have, the more potential you have to help people.
No one rolls out the red carpet and invites tragedy into their life, but our greatest gifts and passions are often the by-product of our worst tragedies and failures. Trials have a way of helping us rediscover our purpose in life.
No one had more problems than Paul. No one experienced more adversity. But God used adversity to increase his capacity. The more problems you have, the more potential you have.
Maybe God is remodeling you. Maybe God is increasing your capacity via adversity. Maybe the problem you never thought you could overcome will turn into a five-hundred-pound opportunity.
Points to Remember • Opportunities often look like insurmountable obstacles. • Someday we may be as grateful for the bad things as the good things, because the bad things helped prepare us for the good things.
We should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking Him what He wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances. • Prayer is less about changing our circumstances and more about changing our perspective. • Worship is forgetting about what’s wrong with you and remembering what’s right with God. • God wants us to learn to see bad experiences through the good we have gained from them.
God is in the business of recycling our pain and using it for ...
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Mark says that “the circumstances you complain about become chains that imprison you. And worship is the way out.” Worship is the best way to reframe a problem. Name one area in your life where you could begin right away to replace complaining with worship.
foregone
unlikelihood.
The unknown doesn’t scare them. It beckons them like a long-lost love or childhood dream. In a sense, security scares lion chasers more than uncertainty.
But lion chasers are more afraid of lifelong regrets than temporary uncertainty. They don’t want to get to the end of their lives and have a million what-if regrets. So they chase lions. In the short-term, it increases uncertainty. But in the long run, it reduces regrets.
know different people have different callings. I know different people have different personalities. But I also know that embracing uncertainty is one dimension of faith. And regardless of your vocational calling or relational status, you have to do something counterintuitive if you want to reach your God-given potential and fulfill your God-given destiny. Sometimes you have to run away from security and chase uncertainty.
Lion chasers are often considered crazy, but they are able to do these things because they aren’t afraid of uncertainty. They don’t need to know what is coming next because they know that God knows. They don’t need explanations for every disappointment because they know God has a plan. Lion chasers refuse to settle down because they want to experience every divine twist and turn that God has in store for them.
We focus our energies on telling God exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. In fact, we repeat ourselves over and over again just to make sure God didn’t miss any of the important details. But what if, instead of spending all of our energy making plans for God, we spent that energy seeking God?
There is no way they could have predicted what was about to happen. You can’t plan Pentecost. But if you seek God for ten days in an upper room, Pentecost is bound to happen.
“The imprecise measurement of initial conditions precludes the precise prediction of future outcomes.” Or to put it in layman’s terms: There will always be an element of uncertainty.
if life is infinitely uncertain and God is infinitely complex, then all we can do is accept our finitude and embrace uncertainty. I think many people have the mistaken notion that faith reduces uncertainty. Nothing could be further from the truth. Faith doesn’t reduce uncertainty. Faith embraces uncertainty.
relationship with God will complicate your life, but it will complicate your life in ways it should be complicated. Sin will complicate your life in ways that it shouldn’t be complicated. One way or the other, life is complicated. Good complications or bad complications—it’s your choice.
The longer I live, the more I think that spiritual maturity is less about figuring out the future and more about a moment-by-moment sensitivity to the Spirit of God. I’m not saying we shouldn’t make plans. But you might want to use a pencil with an eraser and have a shredder handy.
believe in planning. I believe in goal setting. But there are some things in life you can’t plan or predict. And that drives the obsessive-compulsive part of us crazy. We want control, but the decision to follow Christ is a relinquishment of control. Following Christ is letting Jesus take the wheel. Of course, some of us act like backseat drivers. Or worse yet, we’re like little kids that make their parents crazy by asking one question over and over again: Are we there yet?
What I’m trying to say in a nice way is this: We’re control freaks. But faith involves a loss of control. And with the loss of control comes the loss of certainty. You never know when a five-hundred-pound lion may cross your path. And faith is the willingness and readiness to embrace those uncertainties.
Most of us have a love/hate relationship with uncertainty. We hate negative uncertainties—the bad things that happen that we didn’t expect to happen. We don’t like pink slips, IRS audits, or flat tires. No fun. But we love positive uncertainties—the good things that happen that we didn’t expect. Flowers for no reason. An unsolicited bear hug from your kids. A surprise birthday party. But here’s the thing: You can’t have it both ways.
used to hate uncertainty, but I’m learning to love it. It is an acquired taste. I am discovering that the greatest moments in life are unscripted. They are unrehearsed and unplanned and unpredictable, and that is precisely what makes them unforgettable.
Faith is embracing the uncertainties of life. It is chasing the lions that cross our paths. It is recognizing a divine appointment when you see one.
Embrace relational uncertainty. It’s called romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It’s called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It’s called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It’s called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It’s called revelation.
More than half the time, Jesus says and does the opposite of what the disciples expect.
Jesus never promised security. What He promised was uncertainty:
I’m not convinced that following Christ reduces circumstantial uncertainty. I think it reduces spiritual uncertainty. I think we can have what Scripture describes as a peace that passes understanding. I think we can know that we know we are children of God, our sins are forgiven, and we’re going to spend eternity in heaven. But following Christ may actually increase uncertainty in other areas of our lives. When you follow Christ, it is sort of like tracking a fox or chasing a bird: You never know where it’s going to take you. Jesus didn’t even know where He would end up at the end of every
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His disciples learned to embrace the daily uncertainty that was part and parcel of following Christ.
We’ve got to develop an affinity for uncertainty and learn to enjoy the journey.
No problem equals no miracle.
“Sometimes the unexpected is an unforgettable moment that transforms a standard wedding into a memorable experience. The sweetest memories are seldom the result of planning.”
At the end of the day, embracing uncertainty comes back to our perspective on life. (Doesn’t everything?) Do we really believe that God is ordering every footstep even when it feels like we’ve taken a misstep? Do we really believe that God is sovereign when nothing seems to be going our way? Do we really believe that God is good even when bad things happen to us? It is the sovereignty of God that gives us a sense of destiny. And it is the sense of destiny that helps us embrace the positive and negative uncertainties that happen in our lives.
“Your way of explaining events to yourself determines how helpless you become, or how energized, when you encounter everyday setbacks as well as momentous defeats.”3
For thirteen years things went from bad to worse. But Joseph never lost faith, because his faith wasn’t contingent upon his circumstances. After thirteen years of what seemed like bad luck, in what must be the most precipitous rise to power in political history, Joseph interpreted a dream and went from prisoner to prime minister of Egypt.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
God is in the business of using those experiences to prepare us for future opportunities.
Someday God will answer all of our malignant questions. Someday God will explain all our painful experiences. Someday God will resolve all our spiritual paradoxes. In the meantime, I have a Deuteronomy 29:29 file filled with things I don’t understand.
There are secrets the Lord God has not revealed to us.
Dissonance comes in two primary flavors: unanswerable questions and unexplainable experiences.
Sometimes it feels like God isn’t listening, but He considers every sigh. Not only that, He is interceding for us day and night. Scripture says that God makes prayers out of our wordless sighs and aching groans. The Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
Our confidence is contingent upon the character of God. Our circumstances may not make sense, but we know that God is planning His work and working His plan.
Some of your experiences won’t make sense this side of eternity, but lion chasers know that God is connecting the dots in ways they can’t comprehend. Lion chasers are humble enough to let God call the shots and brave enough to follow where He leads.
You have to do something counterintuitive if you want to reach your God-given potential and fulfill your God-given destiny. • Stop spending all your energy making plans for God, and start seeking God. • Faith is embracing uncertainty. • Following Christ reduces spiritual uncertainty, but it
doesn’t reduce circumstantial uncertainty. • Your explanations are more important than your experiences. While you can’t control your experiences, you can control your explanations. • Some of your experiences won’t make sense this side of eternity, but lion chasers know that God is connecting the dots in ways they can’t comprehend. Starting Your Chase What questions do you have for God in your own Deuteronomy 29:29 (“There are secrets the Lord God has not revealed to us”) file? What could you do to help yourself accept that they may not get answered in your lifetime?
