October Joy (Moments In Paradise 1) (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

Levi got out of bed and took a shower to start the day.  After being here in Paradise for three months, he still marveled at how modern and earth-like it was.  He had expected something much different to follow his life on Earth.  Something more heavenly and “out of this world”.  He hadn’t speculated about it a lot, other than trying to picture the descriptions of Heaven in the Bible.  He was more interested in making sure people got there than in what it would be like.  He realized now he should have paid more attention to the details God had chosen to reveal.  They were more than random “peeks” into the afterlife.  They had more to do with his earth-life than he had ever considered.

Stepping into the living area of his apartment in the City, he saw Joshua waiting for him at the table.  He had everything ready as usual, and Levi still wasn’t used to being served breakfast by
Yeshua
.  It didn’t seem right, but Joshua insisted, so he thanked Him like always and enjoyed a sip of orange juice before picking up his fork and having some warm eggs, toast, and fresh fruit.

“I have some things for you to do today, Levi,” Joshua said.

Levi was used to getting his morning mail now, and he had been going to all the scheduled appointments Joshua had for him on any given day.  Joy-sightings, Pearly Gate Arrivals, meeting various people, spending time with family members and friends.  But he wondered if Joshua was hinting at something of a different nature.  Something
important
?  Could it be?

Joshua read his thoughts.  “I know you’ve been waiting for this, and I think you’re ready.  But I want to ask you a question first.”

“Okay,” he said.

Joshua smiled at his casual response.  He used to say, ‘Yes, Lord’, every time Joshua had something to tell or ask him, but Joshua didn’t want him to be so formal.  ‘Talk to me the way you talk to your good friends, Levi,’ He kept saying, and Levi was slowly becoming comfortable with that.

“I know you’ve been learning a lot of new things here, and I’m proud of you for how far you’ve come in a short time.  I’m not surprised because you’ve always been eager to please Me, and I appreciate that, Levi.  I really do.”

“Thank you, Lo--Joshua.”

“So my question is--and I want you to think about it: What is the greatest thing you have learned since I brought you here?”

Levi began to think.  Nothing came to mind immediately.  He had learned so much it was difficult to sort out.  Joshua spoke again before he got very far.

“You are going to meet three people today who need some guidance.  One of them still can’t see Me.  One is too ashamed to look at Me.  And one is eager to please Me, like you, only she’s not letting Me lead her.”

“When will I meet them?” he asked.

“After you come up with your answer to My question, your mail will arrive, and then you’ll know where and when.  But make sure to keep
all
of your appointments today, not just those.  They’re all
important.

Levi nodded and felt eager to get started, but he had some thinking to do, so he decided to go for a walk once he was finished eating.  He put on his shoes and grabbed his hat from the rack by the door, but before he went out, he remembered one more thing he needed to take with him.

“I’m going for a walk, Joshua.  Want to come?”

***

On Thursday morning Andrew stayed at the house to work on his message for Sunday and then took Sarah to lunch before going into the office to meet with a couple he was doing premarital counseling with, and then to visit some men and women living in a nursing home, saying he was anxious to share about her and what had happened in his life since seeing them two weeks ago.

Sarah kissed him at the door and watched him drive away and then went to the family room to watch the fourth DVD in Andrew’s message series. And that one she found to be especially personal for her and contained several points she had never heard or considered before.

The title of the message was: “Enjoying God Through Suffering,” and Andrew started out by saying, “If you can learn to enjoy God through suffering, you can learn to enjoy Him through anything.”  And Sarah thought,
If you can teach me that, Andrew, then you can teach me anything.

She wasn’t too sure he could, even with as much as she loved him and what a great teacher he was, and yet she also knew he had suffered a great deal by losing Annika and was also clearly enjoying God, so whatever he had to say had to be from experience.  But she was surprised by how easily he changed her thinking.

He shared quite a bit about his loss of Annika and all the emotions he had experienced, the hardships in single-parenting, and the ministry challenges that had been magnified by not having her support and encouragement.  As he talked about what he had lost, Sarah could see more of how Andrew needed her now, and knowing she could be a source of encouragement and support to him gave her a joyful, peace-filled heart.  She heard God saying, ‘If that’s all you do, Sarah.  That’s enough.  Andrew needs you.  That’s the main reason I brought you here.’

Sarah had experienced the emotions and stages of grief Andrew talked about.  Some more than others, and in the same and different ways, but she could definitely relate to what he was talking about.

“The Apostle Paul tells us plainly one of the things we will experience as followers of Christ is we will share in His sufferings.  But often we only think in terms of the suffering Christ experienced in His death, rather than in His life.  We think of those who have been martyred for their faith or are experiencing great persecution today, but here in America we are not subject to that kind of physical suffering, so we tend to think that doesn’t apply to us.

“But some of you have experienced other physical forms of suffering through a difficult illness or a painful accident.  Through your pain you can experience Jesus’ physical pain, and that can be a difficult thing, but it can also be very valuable.”

He went on to talk about a woman he’d known who had suffered physical pain through a long battle with cancer.  Through it all he saw her drawing closer to Jesus, and she recognized that and even rejoiced because of it until the day she drew her last breath.  “Her reward in heaven is great, I’m sure.  But she also experienced many rewards God had for her in the midst of her pain she may never have experienced otherwise.”

Sarah had never endured great physical pain other than childbirth, and she hadn’t had that as bad as she knew some women did, so she couldn’t identify with that part of the message so much, but the next part was about suffering through loss, which Andrew used his experience with losing Annika as an example.

“It’s difficult for us to imagine what God’s pain must be like when He loses those He loves to sin and waywardness, unless we’ve had a similar experience of losing someone close to us.  When He sees us being blinded and manipulated into believing and doing things that are contrary to the truth, that has to absolutely break His heart.  His love for us is deeper than your love for that person you have lost.  And with as much as I loved my wife, I can relate to God’s incredible love for me more.  I can know how He would feel if He lost me.”

Sarah paused the DVD to meditate on that and wrote some thoughts in her journal.  Going back to the video to watch the remainder of the message, she thought it might be almost over.  She was surprised when Andrew had one more major area of suffering to cover.

He started out by saying he wanted to talk about some “secret sufferings”: things we may be experiencing no one knows about.  At first she thought he was talking to those who were suffering some kind of secret abuse by a spouse or something along those lines, but he wasn’t.  He was talking about things everyone suffers in various ways, for various reasons, and in every phase of life, from childhood to old-age.  Things like loneliness, depression, fear, disappointment, discouragement, frustration, despair, feelings of inadequacy, unfruitfulness, rejection, and other personal struggles.

Things that as Christians we may think we shouldn’t experience, and so we pretend we don’t.  We smile on Sundays and tell everyone we’re fine, but inside we’re dying and have no idea what to do about it.  We pray, we try harder, we put up walls to guard ourselves from being hurt again, we plan and prioritize, we read the Bible more and volunteer for more things, we listen to “experts” and try to take their advice, but nothing really works for long.

“We have some great days and think, ‘I’m okay now.  That was just my hormones being out of whack, or my schedule getting too crazy, or me having too much spare time on my hands.  I just needed to get into that Bible study God’s been nagging me about or do some good things for others.  I’m fine now.’  But then a few days or weeks or months later, it’s all back again.  Or someone hurts us.  Or life gets crazy, and we realize we never got to the root of the problem, and even worse, we’re still clueless about why we feel that way and how we can break free.

“Well, let me suggest to you those secret-sufferings have one major purpose--to draw you to the heart of God.  And not just into a greater dependence on Him, but as a way to know Him more deeply.  The writer of Hebrews tells us Jesus understands our weaknesses because He was subject to them too.  We often make the mistake of dehumanizing Jesus, but He was fully human with a heart and mind like ours.

“I think Jesus had to be incredibly lonely at times.  Lonely for a real friend--a deep, personal connection with someone He could share everything with.  That really close brother; a best friend; a wife.  Most men his age would have been married by the time he began His public ministry.  I doubt He had many buddies to hang around with.  I’m sure He was lonely for Heaven.

“If you’re lonely, He understands, and you have a glimpse into the heart of God.  You know how He felt during His time on earth, and how He feels when His children are too busy to spend time with Him and connect with Him on an intimate level.”

Andrew went on to share Jesus also likely felt depressed, fearful, rejected, misunderstood, unfruitful--at the end of three years of ministry He only had about one hundred faithful followers.  “A little low for the Son of God, don’t you think?” Andrew said.

“Can’t you feel His pain?  His discouragement?  If you’ve ever been in some kind of ministry or tried to help someone who didn’t want your help, then I’m sure you do.

“We can know what God feels.  Can you imagine that?  We can not only know about Him and believe in Him, but we can know how He feels.  We can understand His pain.  We can know His Heart.

“However you’re feeling right now, whatever secret-sufferings are plaguing you, remember that Jesus understands.  Suffering with Christ means that ultimately you win--you win Him.  You can know the God of the Universe like a trusted, intimate friend who loves you more than you could ever possibly love Him.  It’s a relationship that may not come easy, but it’s vital, and it will come if you let it.  And believe me, once you know Him in that way, you’ll never want to let go.”

Sarah let the DVD run through the final songs, and they provided good background music for her thoughts.  She had thought about receiving God’s comfort and help through her suffering before, and she’d done that in some ways.  When Levi died, when they left their beloved church in Kansas City, and when her mother had been very sick a couple of years back.  She had asked for God’s strength and peace, and she had often felt His presence with her.  But she had never thought of “sharing in Christ’s sufferings” like Andrew talked about.

Thinking about her hurts and difficulties during the last three months, and for the last twenty-five years, three primary conditions of her poor well-being stood out to her: loneliness, fear of rejection, and inadequacy.  They had plagued her on an ongoing basis, and she could never overcome them.  She tried to be different.  She tried to be more social and brave.  She tried harder with her tasks at church and forced herself to have a better attitude.

‘It’s not about me,’ she would tell herself.  ‘I’ll do this even if it kills me.’

Well, it had killed her.  It had killed her faith, joy, and any measure of self-worth she had started with, which wasn’t much.  She had been living that way for a long time, especially since moving to Minneapolis.  A few women in the church there had been especially hurtful.  They had all kinds of traditions and wanted everything done a certain way, but they didn’t want to head up any of it.  That was her place according to their unwritten laws, and she was fine with keeping traditions and serving them, but they expected her to do it all perfectly--the way they thought it should be done, and she never got it right.

Not all the women were that way.  Many of them seemed to appreciate her and praised her efforts.  Some of them had become her friends, and others had needed her friendship and care, and she had been there for them.  But anyone’s criticism always seemed to outweigh any sense of adequacy and fruitfulness she could see.  Levi would tell her, ‘Ignore it.  Don’t worry about it.  You’re doing the best you can.’  But she couldn’t shut out the pain.

Andrew had said something to her the other night that helped.  After she told him about all of her perceived failures others had been so willing to point out to her, he’d said, “You weren’t wrong, Sarah.  You were doing your best.  You were wronged by them.  They were the wrong ones, not you.”

She knew what Andrew said about Jesus was true also.  He would have been lonely at times.  He had certainly been rejected.  And she supposed in his humanness He would have felt inadequate.  He knew what shame felt like--the shame of being made into a laughingstock; the shame of being mocked; the shame of being told, ‘You did it wrong.  That’s not the way we do things here.  You’re not anything special.  Why should we listen to you?  You call yourself the Son of God?  Ha!  Everyone knows you can’t heal on the Sabbath.  Everyone knows the Messiah will be a great ruler of Israel, not someone pathetic like you.’