The Lord of the Storm 

When the wind and waves of life

Drove my soul to find relief,

I was guided by the storm

To find Jesus underneath.

When the storms of life betray

All the promises You’ve made,

I will cling to Calvary’s place;

I will trust Your sovereign grace.

Though Your presence with me goes,

I seem to still be tossed and turned

By an unseen enemy

And I know I need to learn.

When the storms of life betray

All the promises You’ve made,

I will cling to Calvary’s place;

I will trust Your sovereign grace.

And when life is finally o’er

And I stand before You, Lord,

I’ll see the storms that stirred despair

Were the winds that blew me there.

When the storms of life betray

All the promises You’ve made,

Let me cling to Calvary’s place;

Let me trust Your Sovereign Grace.

Michael Anthony Milton, “Your Sovereign Grace,” He Shall Restore (Chattanooga: Music for Missions, 2005), CD.

Michael Milton is the Chancellor/CEO-elect and James M. Baird Professor of Pastoral Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. He is the author of Songs in the Night: How God Transforms Our Pain to Praise. 

Originally posted at the Gospel Coalition

Tags: Michael Milton, Sanctification, Suffering

Quotes of Note on Suffering and Comfort

Note: I’ve taken the following quotes of note from God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting. These are my personal favorites that most impact my own life. Feel free to use them in your life and ministry.

“When tragedy strikes, we enter a crisis of faith. We either move toward God or away from God.”

“There is no human experience which cannot be put on the anvil of a lively relationship with God and man, and battered into a meaningful shape.”

“Christianity doesn’t in any way lessen suffering. It enables you to take it, to face it, to work through it, and eventually convert it.”

“God’s Word empowers us not to evade suffering, but to face suffering face-to-face with God.”

“In suffering, God is not getting back at you; He is getting you back to Himself.”

“Shared sorrow is endurable sorrow.”

“No grieving; no healing. Know grieving; know healing.”

“We live in a fallen world and it often falls on us.”

“The world is a mess and it messes with our minds.”

“Spiritual friendship with God results in 20/20 spiritual vision from God.”

“To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled. It is to reject dependence upon God.”

“Crying out to God empties us so there is more room in us for God.”

“Faith does not demand the removal of suffering; faith desires endurance in suffering.”

“Faith understands that what can’t be cured, can be endured.”

“Comfort experiences the presence of God in the presence of suffering—a presence that empowers me to survive scars and plants the seed of hope that I will yet thrive.”

“In this life, your scar may not go away, but neither will His. He understands. He cares. He’s there.”

“Spiritual emergencies can produce spiritual emergence.”

“Faith looks back to the past recalling God’s mighty works. Hope looks ahead remembering God’s coming reward.”

“In Christ, loss is never final. Christ’s resurrection is the first-fruit of every resurrection.”

“When we wait on God, we cling to God’s rope of hope, even when we can’t see it.”

“Hope waits. Hope is the refusal to demand heaven now.”

“Waiting is refusing to take over while refusing to give up. Waiting refuses self-rescue.”

“In Christ, we move from victims to victors.”

“God is a ‘time God.’ He does not come before time. He does not come after time. He comes at just the right time.”

“Faith is entrusting myself to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective.”

“Faith is seeing life with spiritual eyes instead of eyeballs only.”

“Through faith, I look at suffering, not with rose colored glasses, but with faith eyes, with Cross-eyes, with 20/20 spiritual vision.”

“Instead of our perspective shrinking, suffering is the exact time when we must listen most closely, when we must lean over to hear the whisper of God.”

“True, God shouts to us in our pain, but His answers, as with Elijah, often come to us in whispered still small voices amid the thunders of the world.”

“God’s eternal, heavenly story doesn’t obliterate my earthly, painful story; it gives it meaning.”

“Grace math teaches us that present suffering plus God’s character equals future glory. The equation we use is the Divine perspective.”

“Worship is wanting God more than wanting relief.”

“Worship is finding God even when you don’t find answers.”

“Worship is walking with God in the dark and having Him as the light of your soul.”

“Every problem is an opportunity to know God better, and our primary battle is to know God well.”

“Problems can either shove us far from God or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him.”

Join the Conversation

Which quotes are your personal favorites? Which ones most impact you? What other quotes bring you comfort and encouragement during times of suffering?

Tags: God's Healing, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grief Recovery, GriefShare, Suffering, Terry Waite

When Life Is Hard: Book Review

Book Details

• Author: James MacDonald

• Publisher: Moody (2010)

• Category: Biblical Counseling, Suffering, Grief, Consolation

• Discerning Reader Review: You can find the Discerning Reader review here.

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, and free resources at www.rpmministries.org.

Recommended: When Life Is Hard shares a refreshingly candid and challenging message that teaches Christians not only why God allows suffering, but also what God wants us to do with our suffering.

Review: Refined by God

Greg Laurie, in his Foreword to the book, notes that according to the Barna Group the number one question people want to ask God is, “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?” James MacDonald skillfully, relevantly, and biblically tackles this gnawing question in When Life Is Hard.

Equally important, he speaks personally—out of his own spiritual struggle to face suffering face-to-face with God. In his Introduction, Pastor MacDonald shares a litany of personal, family, and ministry tragedies that seem Job-like in proportion. For MacDonald, the Psalmist’s cry became his own, “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” (Psalm 42:3). In response, MacDonald preached a series of six sermons that became When Life Is Hard. Perhaps this personal struggle to grapple with God is the reason why this is the rare book derived from a sermon series that is well worth reading.

Truth for Life

No one reading a book about suffering, even a book reviewer, does so simply as an academic exercise. Knowing this, Dr. MacDonald implants several ways for readers to download God’s truth into the center of their souls:

• Glimpses of Gold: Meditations at the beginning of each chapter upon Job 23:10, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

• From God’s Heart to Mine: Verses at the end of each chapter to memorize, apply, and take personally.

• Mining for Gold: Each chapter includes a set of personal questions designed to help the reader to implement biblical principles.

• Come Forth as Gold: The final chapter has an unusual format—a series of brief meditations that summarize the sixteen key lessons covered throughout When Life Is Hard.

Pastor MacDonald begins at the beginning—what are trials and why does God allow them? His answer is foundational and scriptural: trials are painful circumstances allowed by God to change my conduct and my character. Exegeting Hebrews 12:5-11, MacDonald demonstrates that trials are God’s parental perfecting love. The Lord disciplines the one He loves. Right from the start, readers learn the lesson that in trials God is not getting back at them, He is getting them back to Himself.

In chapter two, MacDonald wisely encourages his readers to candidly ask the “Why?” question. He also challenges readers to be prepared to accept God’s answer, using James 1:2-8 as his text. That answer is the core of the book—God allows trials to deepen our faith and transform our character. MacDonald personalizes this by asking readers to ask God, “Why has this come into my life now? What do you want to teach me?”

What to Do After the Hug

Throughout chapters three, four, and five, MacDonald urges readers to reject the “self-help Jesus” who “came to build your self-esteem and maximize your human potential by Friday.” Some readers, accustomed to this Western worldview of Christ may be taken aback and may wonder, “Where’s the empathy in When Life Is Hard?” The empathy comes in the personal illustrations of pain and in the obvious passion for people in pain. However, MacDonald doesn’t want to leave people simply with a written hug. He wants to teach people what the Bible says to do after the hug.

Believing that God’s Word is sufficient for all life issues, Pastor James shares a myriad of practical principles drawn directly from Scripture. These are not trite behavioralistic “to do steps.” Instead, they are core heart issues played out in our relationships with God and others. They are other-centered and God-focused applications such as “Grace Your Relationships,” Give Away Your Gifts,” and “Glorify God.”

As only James MacDonald could say it, “some Christians treat God’s desire to get holiness into their lives like He’s giving them cod liver oil.” That captures When Life Is Hard in one picturesque sentence.

God spanks us because He loves us. He loves us too much to allow us to get too comfy. Pain enters. Other hug us—rightfully so. And after the hug we get on with the business of becoming more like Christ. We make a conscious choice to count/consider our trials as joy—the joy of being formed and fashioned into the image of Christ.

Principles to Live By

Don’t miss chapter six. MacDonald arranges sixteen principles from the four passages he has focused on (1 Peter 4, James 1, Hebrews 12, and 2 Corinthians 12). They are worth the proverbial “price of the book.” In one-to-two brief pages, he outlines each principle and then suggests profound, practical, and personal applications. A reader could spend a lifetime in this chapter alone.

Having published about grief (God’s Healing for Life’s Losses) and presenting seminars related to grief and growth in Christ, I wondered if I would learn anything new from When Life Is Hard. How arrogant of me. I was gripped again by the greatness of God’s grace—a grace that does not wink at sin, but rather crucifies sin. When life is hard, cling to the cross of Christ and the Christ of the cross. Enter into the mortification process that our loving heavenly Father ordains so that the salvation won by Christ is applied deeply in our daily lives. That’s the refreshingly candid and challenging message of When Life Is Hard.

Join the Conversation

What books and materials are grief and suffering have you benefitted from?

Tags: God's Healing, Grief, James MacDonald, Suffering, When Life Is Hard

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures.

A Personal Journey with a Personal God

Moving through hurt to hope is a journey—a personal journey. Finding God’s healing for life’s losses is a trek—a messy trail with far more detours than we would ever wish.

That’s why I’m not promising you eight easy steps. However, as we journey together, I will offer you eight biblical markers on your personal healing journey. As you begin exploring these trail markers for life’s trials, you’ll experience the ups and the downs, the hills and the valleys, the zigs and the zags.

View these markers as your personal suffering GPS: God’s Positioning Scripture derived from God’s Word. Nothing ever written can compare with the honesty and reality of the Word of God. It is totally sufficient to light our path. It is utterly profound in its capacity to resonate with our experiences.

The various “stages” we’ll explore in the grief journey provide compass points in God’s process for hurting and hoping. They empower us not to evade suffering, but to face suffering face-to-face with God.

A Crisis of Faith

When tragedy occurs, we enter a crisis of faith. We either move toward God or away from God. We’ll probe how to move in the direction of finding God in the midst of our suffering.

The end in sight is not quick answers through easy steps. Our goal is deep healing through a personal journey . . . with God, in Christ. He never lets you walk alone.

Our Journey Together

Through God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I invite you to walk with God and God’s people. At the end of chapters two through nine, you’ll find a built-in “Grief and Growth Workbook.” You’ll be able to trace your journey and you’ll be able to journal about your healing process.

While you can read and apply God’s Healing for Life’s Losses alone, I’ve also designed it for group use. Consider gathering with some other spiritual friends to share your progress along your journey. At the very least, invite one other friend in Christ to be “Jesus with skin on” for you.

Grief tends to tempt us to walk alone. Fight against that temptation. Walk with God and His people as you journey on the healing path.

Join the Conversation

How has God’s Word been a GPS for you in your suffering?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, GPS, Grief, Healing, Scripture, Suffering

Searching for God in the Rubble of an Earthquake

In terms of the toll of human lives, the terrorist tragedy of 9/11 will likely pale in comparison to the earthquake tragedy of 1/12/10. How do we respond as Christians? Certainly, we can and should respond monetarily, giving graciously. Certainly, we can and should respond prayerfully, praying fervently.

But how do we respond theologically? How do we even begin to decipher the deeper meaning behind 1/12/10? How do we grapple with such immense human suffering in light of our faith in a sovereign God?

What we need are Cliffs Notes—an instruction manual on how not to read life’s grand adventure and on how to read life’s heroic narrative. No one in the Bible is a better reading tutor for the topic of unspeakable tragedy than Job. Join me as we read Job’s grand adventure narrative and learn that God and Satan use the same material—the story of our lives. Whose interpretation of our life story will we believe? Satan’s or God’s?

To interpret Job’s story and ours accurately, we need to understand that God tells it on two levels. We find the smaller story or the earthly, temporal perspective, and the larger story or the heavenly, eternal perspective. Satan desires that we focus only on the smaller story and conclude that “Life Is Bad, and So Is God.” God urges us to focus upon the larger story and realize that “Life Is Bad, but God Is Good.” One of the keys to our spiritual life, especially during times of personal suffering or national tragedy, is to move people from Satan’s view of life toward God’s perspective on this life and the next.

To continue reading this post (it’s long–one can hardly respond to such tragedy in brief, pithy phrases…) visit my RPM  Ministries Free Resource document.

Tags: Biblical Sufferology, Earthquake, Haiti, Suffering

*Note: If you’re disappointed that I’m saying that some biblical counseling is only half biblical, then please read my comments at the end of my first post in this series: http://tinyurl.com/n8k799.

My Premise: Half Biblical Counseling

Some modern biblical counseling considers the seriousness of sin—sinning, but spends much less time equipping people to minister to the gravity of grinding affliction—suffering. When we provide counseling for sin, but fail to provide counseling and counselor training for suffering, then such biblical counseling is only half biblical.

Let’s Play, “Can You Top This?”

I have suggested that counseling that is truly biblical could be defined as:

Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed biblical counseling depends upon the Holy Spirit to relate God’s inspired truth about people, problems, and solutions to human suffering (through the Christian soul care arts of sustaining and healing) and sin (through the Christian spiritual direction arts of reconciling and guiding) to empower people to exalt and enjoy God and to love others (Matthew 22:35-40) by cultivating conformity to Christ and communion with Christ and the Body of Christ.

If this is true, why then do some biblical counselors minimize suffering? Why do they ignore large tracks of biblical data about “sufferology”?

Throughout this blog mini-series I’ve suggested several answers to those questions. In this post we consider another reason—this one a personal reason.

I believe that there’s great pressure in the biblical counseling “movement” and in the Evangelical world to “prove” one’s “credentials” as a biblical counselor. There’s so much venom out there and false accusations of “psycho-heresy” that some counselors may be tempted to play, “Can You Top This?”

One “biblical counselor” says, “Biblical counseling is about confronting behavioral sin.”

The next counselor, going a step further proclaims, “That’s shallow. Biblical counseling is actually about confronting motivational sins.”

Another counselor responds, “That’s still not deep enough, you have to confront hidden idols of the heart and false lovers of the soul.”

Each counselor “proves” his or her right to claim the mantle of “biblical counselor” because of an ever-deepening emphasis on the depth of sin. Each counselor seems to think that the right pedigree for comprehensive biblical counseling is met through depth confrontation of sin.

Now, please hear me clearly. I believe in a depth of exposure of sin.

In Soul Physicians and in Spiritual Friends, I show that in biblical and historical reconciling we help one another to understand that it’s horrible to sin and it’s wonderful to be forgiven.

Yes, truly biblical counseling exposes sin comprehensively: relationally, spiritually, socially, rationally, volitionally, and emotionally. I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

Incompetent to Counsel

However, there seems to be a false assumption that the person who exposes sin the most comprehensively is the person with the most comprehensive model of biblical counseling.

That’s like asking:

“Of Job’s three miserable counselors, who was the most comprehensive biblical counselor—Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar?”

Well, duh! None of the above!

They each exposed sin. In fact, they competed with one another to be named the champion sin-spotter. Yet God said they did not speak right of Job nor of God.

In the name of trying to be comprehensively biblical, they became incompetent to counsel.

The Fear of Man

Let’s be honest, in Evangelical circles, we get quite competitive about proving our bona fides (supplying evidence that serves to guarantee a person’s good standing, reputation, and authentic credentials).

If I am a Reformed Calvinist, then I’m going to out-Calvin Calvin! “A five-point Calvinist? No way, I’m a 5.5 pointer!” (If you don’t get that, it’s okay.)

Sad to say, in Evangelical circles we succumb to the pressure to out-do one another in order to prove that we have cornered the market on the current “in” issue. “I’m more biblical than you are because . . .”

For counselors today, is it possible that our egos get involved? Is it possible that “eye service as men pleasers” (as the King James puts it) gets involved? Is it possible that the “fear of man” tempts us to become like Job’s counselors?

Nobody wants to be an “outsider.” Nobody wants to be called “weak on sin.” Nobody wants to be labeled a “psycho-heretic.”

So, to be an “insider,” to be called “strong against sin,” to be labeled a “biblical counselor,” we yield to the temptation to bark louder than the next guy about sin’s depths, while rarely addressing suffering’s depths.

We yield to the temptation to minimize suffering because we fear that someone will call us weak on sin. We fear that we’ll be accused of making excuses for sin by talking about suffering.

Let’s refuse to give into the temptation to prove our credentials, to brandish our pedigree, or to please men, by outdoing one another in pitting sin against suffering.

Biblical counseling is rightly big on confronting sin. Hopefully, it is rightly even bigger on sharing grace (where sin abounds, grace super-abounds—Romans 5:20). And hopefully, it is equally big on dealing with suffering.

If we truly want to be comprehensively biblical, then let’s be sure that we address sin comprehensively and that we address suffering comprehensively.