I was recently in Colorado Springs, speaking to some ministry leaders. As a friend and I drove past the complex of Ted Haggard's former megachurch, New Life, our conversation turned to various large-scale failings we've witnessed recently at other ministries.
As a young pastor, I believe it's healthy to reflect on such failures.
The next day, when I returned home, I found myself deeply discouraged. Actually, depressed might be the better word. I was supposed to be preparing Christmas sermons about joy, peace, and glad tidings, but all I felt was grief, agony and despair.
Godly grief
There is grief in serving Christ. Sometimes we grieve for persecuted believers or struggling ministries. Other times, we grieve enemy victories, fallen warriors, or the choices of people willfully resisting God.
Every servant of the gospel will travel, eventually, through dark forests of grief, even despair. In those forests, I have learned that grief and faithfulness are not mutually exclusive. Didn't Christ trust the Father's sovereignty in Gethsemane, even as he groaned, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death" (Matt. 26:38)? Was Christ unspiritual when he fell to the ground in agony, begging God to let that bitter cup pass?
In America we rarely see models of ministry that discuss paralyzing sorrow, deep discouragement or lethargy.
In America we rarely see models of ministry that discuss paralyzing sorrow, deep discouragement or lethargy. Across the Atlantic, Spurgeon wrote of frequently battling such emotions.
If you've found yourself recently in a season of grief, you're in good company. Christ's example is enough. But God gives us many more. We know Jeremiah as "the weeping prophet" because of the agony he carried. Jeremiah did not bear this grief because he was running away from God's will and service. Quite the opposite. Jeremiah's weeping was the cost of doing precisely what God called him to do.
It's okay to mourn, to join the earth in "groaning" (Rom. 8:22) for Christ's return—even if your season of grief arrives during "the most wonderful time of the year."
How would Jesus feel about such spiritual agonizing during Christmas? Well, it may put us in the company of those few who saw Christ for who he was in the Christmas story. Simeon and Anna held Christ the infant and praised God for Messiah when most people were looking for someone bigger, happier, and stronger than a baby. Simeon and Anna touched Christ in the temple because they were "waiting for the consolation of Israel" (Luke 2:25) and "looking forward to the redemption" (Luke 2:38). In the same way today, sorrow and grief can knock our gaze forward to our coming consolation and redemption. Like Peter, we can set our “hope fully on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming” (1 Peter 1:3).
Blessings of sorrow
The disciples could not pray one hour with the Man of Sorrows in Gethsemane. When you have opportunity to join the Man of Sorrows, do not squander it as they did. Your acquaintance with Christ's sorrow is an unwelcome but sure confirmation that you are indeed about his work—and not simply about the building of some social group or human organization. The best way of knowing Christ, Paul discovered, is through this intimate "fellowship of sharing in his sufferings" (Phil. 3:10).
Like Peter in the upper room, most of us knew little of this fellowship of suffering when we began following Christ. But we all come to a moment when we are asked, "Can you drink the cup I drink?" (Mark 10:38).
The bitter cup was not only the atoning drink of our punishment; it was also the cup of the Father's will. From the beginning, Jesus stated that his food was to do the will of him who sent him (John 4:34). Christ pursued daily the Father's will, whether that meant the multitudes praising him or shouting, "Crucify him!"
Jesus' insistence on eating the food of his Father's will culminated with that final meal, in which he ate and drank his own crucifixion. Moments later, in Gethsemane, Jesus asked, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matt. 26:39).
As we follow Christ, we pray, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." At times we will taste the fruit of success. As we faithfully follow, we will also endure seasons when the cup is bitter. Will we give up in those times?
When grief surrounds you, go to Gethsemane. And, with a will emboldened by heaven's grace, drink the dredges of bitterness that heaven has measured out for you.
Let us resolve again to know the Man of Sorrows—no matter the cost. Let us choose again that our only ambition is "to do the will of him who sent" us, to eat that bread and drink that cup, no matter how sweet or bitter.
We eat and drink, knowing it is not our final meal. As Christ promised Peter and John, so he promises us. We will eat and drink again with him "in the kingdom of God" (Luke 22:14-18). What a feast he will have for us at the wedding supper of the Lamb.
In that day Jeremiah will not be weeping.
In that day, Paul who knew Christ in all His suffering will "share in his glory" (Romans 8:17).
In that day no one will regret having walked through grief with the Man of Sorrows.
"But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed" (1 Pet. 4:13).
Fix your eyes on this. And drink.
John S. Dickerson is author of I Am Strong: Finding God’s Peace and Strength in Life’s Darkest Moments, a study of Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” Download free sample chapters at IAmStrongBook.com.
