When was the last time you were tempted to loose faith?
We are getting ready to leave today and take my daughter to day camp. She is all dressed and ready to go. She is sitting on the top of the couch and makes her attempt to get down. As she does she scraps her back along the back of the couch. It's just a little fabric burn and you can't even see any redness, but it is enough to bring the tears.
I see this happen, give her comfort and a Popsicle thinking all the time this is nothing. I remember when I was a kid. We had a boat and I loved to knee board. One day we were out on the river and I caught some nice air off of the wake. But the nose of the knee board re-entered the water first. This flipped me over on my face and gave me major whip lash. I couldn't move a whole lot the rest of the boat ride home.
This is of course nothing compared to the pain my dad goes through every day with the discs in his back deteriorating by the moment.
And even still compared to a student of mine in Colorado my dad's condition is nothing as well. Working as a tree trimmer in high school, the branch he was hooked onto snapped and he wakes up in the hospital no longer able to move his legs.
There are degrees of suffering in this world. There are also degrees of temptation. Sometimes I think how can Jesus have any idea what I am going through. He didn't have all the stuff we have now. He didn't have internet, or drugs, or naughty emails, or movies, he wasn't even married!
Hebrews 12 helps bring it back in to perspective though. Have any of us been tempted to the point of shedding blood? I know I haven't. There might be some of you reading this that have, I don't know. The point is, Jesus has been tempted at every level as we have but he didn't give in so the devil had to turn up the heat. Why would the devil ever need to make it harder for us if we just give in at the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level? He wouldn't. So we haven't experienced anything close to the Son of God who never gave in.
I think this helps with the deeper more underlying temptation when we are in the middle of our own suffering. The temptation to give up on faith. The temptation to say, well God you aren't there for me so why should I pay any attention to you? I also believe this is why Hebrews encourages us to look to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith. Hebrews 12 goes on to tell us our Father in heaven disciples those he loves. He allows us to go through hard things to better shape us into the image of his holiness. He has not left us, he hasn't forgotten us. He is sustaining us through these are things so we can be stronger in the end.
I know this has been true in my life. Many of you know my marriage got really hard a little over a year ago. How could a pastor struggle so much with his marriage? Aren't they suppose to have it together more than the rest of us? Well I am here to tell you pastors are people too, and we need to grow just as much as everybody else. It was painful to confront the things not working in our marriage especially my stuff. But we did it and we are much better now because of it.
The truth of it is, no matter how bad our suffering is our Father in Heaven is there with us. My daughters little scrape on her back may have been nothing to me, but it was a big deal to her she needed me to be there. She needed me to take care of her.
Even if our temptation or our suffering in nothings compared to the suffering Jesus went through. He doesn't stand up there and scoff. He is our high priest who understands us, who has been through it. And going through it produced all the more compassion towards us.
May we have the same spirit today as does Christ, that through our sufferings we will not look with contempt on those who are going through less, but rather we feel compassion towards them and lift their eyes to the author and perfecter of our faith.
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