Remembering God in Our Affliction

June 28, 2025Todd R 1 Comment

Dear fellow travelers,

Psalm 119 is memorable in many ways, including that it is the longest chapter in the Bible, with 176 verses. But the Psalm was also designed to be memorized in Hebrew, with 22 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In Hebrew, each stanza has 8 lines that each begin with the same letter.

It is also memorable for its topic: a lengthy meditation on God’s law and its positive, multi-faceted qualities. The Psalm uses 8 words to describe God’s law, and all 8 appear in 5 of the stanzas while every stanza has at least 6 of them. [1]

However, in addition to meditating on God’s law, at least 7 verses also refer to affliction and/or its benefits in one way or another:

“This is my comfort in my affliction,
that your promise gives me life.” (verse 50)

“Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.” (verse 67)

“It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes.” (verse 71)

“I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous,
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.” (verse 75)

“If your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished in my affliction.” (verse 92)

“I am severely afflicted;
give me life, O LORD, according to your word!” (verse 107)

“Look on my affliction and deliver me,
for I do not forget your law.” (verse 153)

Why the repetition? By repeating the idea of affliction in this Psalm, the writer wants to make one more thing memorable: in our affliction, God is faithfully present, giving us life, teaching us, and reminding us of His goodness. His steadfast love remains, even when this broken world and our own sinful condition present endless difficulty.

The law cannot save us, and affliction in this world is difficult, but “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” (Romans 8:28-29)

What God uses all things for, and what He has predestined, is that His people will be conformed to His holiness: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6). Even affliction, in God’s hands, contributes to our development in holiness.

As J.I. Packer sums up these verses from Psalm 119 in his book, Rediscovering Holiness, “God’s faithfulness consists in his unwillingness that his children should lose any of the depths of fellowship with himself that he has in store for them. So he afflicts us to make us lean harder on him, in order that his purpose of drawing us into closest fellowship with himself may be fulfilled.”[2]

Whatever our affliction, God will deliver us and bring us to glory. Amen.

[1] According to the Reformation Study Bible
[2] Packer, J.I. Rediscovering Holiness (1992), P. 268. I “miraculously” discovered this quote within ½ hour of posting this blog, then had to add it, and repost.

Letting God Pick Our Battles II

June 17, 2025June 13, 2025Todd R Leave a comment

^{Photo by Andrey Grinkevich on Unsplash}

The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through him who strengthens me,” yet he also wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 that “to keep me from becoming conceited,” a “thorn was given me in the flesh.” He writes: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

The nature of Paul’s “thorn” has been disputed for centuries, but Galatians 4:13 suggests it was a physical problem, a “bodily ailment” rather than a moral shortcoming. So, the lesson of the “thorn” is not that God prevented Paul from overcoming some specific sin to keep him humble – He wants Paul (and us) to be satisfied with nothing less than righteousness.

However, one lesson of the “thorn” is that Paul didn’t mean by “I can do all things” that he could do whatever he wanted and succeed. Instead, the “thorn” is an example of a battle Paul would not win, because this “thorn” had a purpose in bringing Paul closer to God’s grace and power. In God’s wisdom, Paul was better off with this ailment than without it.

Yesterday’s post said “Picking your battles, rather than trying to fight and win every fight that comes your way, is a good piece of advice. However, who should pick which battles to fight?” In the case of the “thorn”, God picked a battle for Paul not to fight, telling him instead to focus on growing in faith. The thorn had a purpose in Paul’s striving toward righteousness, which was more important than any physical ailment. Had Paul continued to insist to God that the thorn should be removed, he would still have the thorn, but he would also not grow in his relationship with his Lord.

Sometimes there are battles He wants us to fight in His strength for His glory, and sometimes there are battles He tells us not to fight so we can focus on His grace and power while in this life, in light of His promises to heal our physical ailments in Paradise.

Today’s post closes the same way as yesterdays: “Sometimes life is hard on purpose, so that God alone may be glorified in victory, and also so that we may grow in our faith in His strength. When we let Him pick our battles, we learn that His righteousness is the only thing that will satisfy us. Nothing less will do.”

Letting God Pick Our Battles

June 16, 2025June 13, 2025Todd R Leave a comment

Picking your battles, rather than trying to fight and win every fight that comes your way, is a good piece of advice. However, who should pick which battles to fight? The Old Testament book of Judges is a record of the consequences of Israel’s failure to completely conquer the promised land, a battle God gave them to fight and win. Judges also shows more generally what happens when anyone picks the wrong battles to fight: they end up with less than what God intended for them.

For example, Judges 1:19 tells us: “And the LORD was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.”

This verse, especially the second part, is written from a human perspective. God did not tell Israel to conquer all of the promised land, except for the plains. God is not afraid of chariots. He told them to conquer all of it, but Israel thought that chariots couldn’t be defeated, so they decided not to fight in the plain. By using their own judgement and preferring to fight in hills or forests where chariots were less effective, they failed to fully receive what God had promised them.

An application to us is that our inheritance is Christ’s righteousness, and Jesus tells us “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”[1] Jesus is telling us that righteousness is like food and drink. We can never have enough because no matter how much we eat and drink, our hunger and thirst soon return. We are all in different places, at different levels of knowledge and maturity, but in Christ we are all on the same path and have an appetite only He can satisfy.

To be satisfied, we cannot settle for what we have already accomplished, the hill country we have already taken. To be satisfied, we must fight the chariots in the plains if that is what God wants us to do, so that we learn to rely on His strength. To be satisfied, we move from only fighting battles we choose based on our own wisdom and ability to choosing the battles we will win in His strength.

Sometimes life is hard on purpose, so that God alone may be glorified in victory, and also so that we may grow in our faith in His strength. When we let Him pick our battles, we learn that His righteousness is the only thing that will satisfy us. Nothing less will do.

[1] Matthew 5:6

The Benefit of Faith

June 4, 2025Todd R 1 Comment

One of my favorite comedians (and the only one I’ve paid to see live) is Steven Wright. His deadpan delivery and observational humor were a combination no other comedian could do like him. One of his lines is: “You know when you’re sitting on a chair, and you lean back so you’re just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time…” He has a bit of a bizarre personality, so you’re tempted to believe him.

In that moment, we feel a sense of danger. We’re convinced that we’re going to fall. That the chair isn’t going to what we expect it to do and what it’s designed to do – support us. In other words, we lose faith in the chair and that feeling of doubt shocks us into catching ourselves. However, it was our faith in the chair that gives us the confidence to sit on it in the first place, and our misuse of the chair that almost made us fall.

See, the purpose of a chair is not to make us believe it is strong enough for us to sit on, but to give us a place to sit when we need it, when we use it correctly. A chair doesn’t exist to generate an abstract, unused faith, but it exists to provide a specific benefit when we exercise our faith in it. It serves a specific need, but it won’t fill that need if we don’t trust it. Mere faith in a chair gives us no benefit.

In some ways, our relationship with God is like this. When we believe in Him, we can have a purpose and meaning to our lives because we understand our origin and destiny. We can know we aren’t accidents that nobody cares about, but that we are created, loved, beings. However, we may live like we’re constantly at that place where we feel like we’re going to fall backwards if we don’t trust God enough to do what we were designed to do – which is to love Him and to love our fellow man.

The purpose of our faith in God isn’t to make us only believe that He can give our lives direction and meaning, but our faith exists to enable us to trust Him when He tells us that the way He designed for us to live is actually the way we should live. We can feel secure living our lives to glorify Him not because we have an abstract, unused faith, but because we decide to actually live our lives to glorify Him.

When we feel like we’re going to fall spiritually, we may actually be feeling that way because we’re not exercising our faith as we’re supposed to. We may need to ask God where we aren’t living out our trust in Him, and He may show us the right path where we can feel (and actually be) secure. But we need to decide to walk on that path, otherwise our faith has little benefit.

So, you know when you’re sitting on a chair (on all 4 legs), and you are fully trusting the chair to support you? You can feel like that all the time…but it takes some faith, maybe repentance, and maybe even effort.

A Spiritual Lesson from a Roller Coaster

June 3, 2025Todd R 2 Comments

^{Intimidator 305 at King’s Dominion. The first hill at the top, with the following airtime hill in the middle.}

My teenage son is a roller coaster enthusiast. He memorizes how tall they all are, how many inversions they each have, who the manufacturers are, how they work, and anything else he can find out. He takes lots of pictures of roller coasters, including the one I used for this post. Fortunately, I like them too. We’ve been on well over 100 different coasters together and will ride anything, but we do have slightly different tastes. Usually, he likes airtime more than I do, and I like intensity more than he does. As an enthusiast, he’s the one who told me what a greyout is: “a transient loss of vision characterized by a perceived dimming of light and color, sometimes accompanied by a loss of peripheral vision.”[1] Caused by low brain oxygen levels, a greyout can happen on roller coasters and can be a precursor to fainting.

Intimidator 305 at King’s Dominion in Virginia was my first greyout. The ride, with a 90-mph top speed on the 300-foot first drop, is themed after NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, whose nickname was “The Intimidator.” At the bottom of that first drop, the track banks into a 270-degree turn to the right, and the first time on it, the edges of my vision began to fade as blood rushed to my legs and feet. I felt the intensity rising, and my field of vision gradually narrowed into a small pinpoint, and I nervously tensed up. However, before I knew it, I was fine and back to enjoying the ride.

After we got off, I mentioned my greyout and my enthusiast son explained why I recovered so quickly. It was no accident. Intimidator 305 was designed by people who knew what the ride would do to people, so after the 270-degree turn, there is a 150-foot airtime hill. As the train comes up this hill, the track bends down at a lower angle than the train would go on its own momentum, which not only gives riders “airtime” as they feel weightless, but also gives a rush of blood to the brain. So, by design, I experienced greyout, followed by an amazingly quick return to normal, without fainting.

What’s the spiritual lesson in this? There are times where our lives feel like we’re in that disorienting 270-degree turn at 90 mph. Our awareness narrows to where we can only see the problems in front of us and our body begins to feel stress. In some cases, the stress itself might become the only thing we can see, having forgotten what caused it. That intense turn can seem like it will never end, and we can’t see the relief ahead of us. Sometimes it comes after a great success, perhaps right after the thrill of dropping down a hill at high speed…Or perhaps after experiencing a miracle. Peter had such faith that he walked on water, “But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’”[2] Even Apostles felt hopeless sometimes.

Like Peter, when we cry out “Lord, save me” we may need a reminder of 1 Corinthians 10:13, where Paul wrote: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

We may need a reminder from a Christian enthusiast, or maybe from our Father Himself, that we have a way of escape by design. After every sharp turn we think will never end is a refreshing moment where we feel weightless, held by our Lord in His loving embrace. In Peter’s case, “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’ And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.”[3] In the Father’s wisdom, relief will not always be immediate – it may take longer than we expect, but it is inevitable because He promises it.

That day, we rode Intimidator 305 three more times and every time I wasn’t as worried about the greyout because I knew that airtime hill was coming. It’s now one of my favorites. Thankfully, our lives also are in the hands of a Designer who knows how to teach us to trust Him, and also how to heal us when life’s troubles feel like they’re going to knock us out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyout
[2] Matthew 14:29-30
[3] Matthew 14:31-32