Find the Hidden Grace

In her classic autobiography The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells of the time she and her sister were forced to take off all their clothes during Nazi inspections at a death camp. Miss ten Boom stood in line feeling forsaken and defiled. Suddenly she remembered that Jesus hung naked on the cross. Struck with wonder and worship during that seemingly forsaken moment, ten Boom leaned forward and whispered to her sister, "Betsie, they took his clothes, too." Betsie gasped and said, "Oh, Corrie, and I never thanked him." Thanksgiving does not require bounty--just recognition of what our Savior has already done.

When things are bad we often ask ourselves three questions:

1.     Where Was God?

John 11:21

"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Q. We always seem to want to ask God where He was when we were being attacked, hurt, trampled on or abused.  Where was God when my husband or my child lay sick and in pain and dying?

A. He was right there. 

There have been many studies done in regression therapy in which the patient, under hypnosis, is taken back to the time and place where the abuse or the tragedy took place.  Then the patient is asked to look around the setting to see if they see if anyone else was present.  What they have discovered is that in the vast majority of cases the patient is able to see that they were not alone, but that God was there.  Even more importantly, they were able to see God crying over the pain and the injustice that was being inflicted.

2.     Why Didn’t He Stop It?

Job 13:24

“Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy?”

Q.      “Why do the righteous suffer?” is a question that has been around as long as creation.  If God is good and loving God, as we said last week, then why does He allow bad things to happen to good people?

A.      There is, of course, no easy answer to these questions.  The best that we have been able to come up with is that as the result of Adam’s choice, sin entered the world.  Sin has consequences.  Those consequences always end in pain and suffering.  The only way that God can allow us free will, is to allow us to choose evil and its’ consequences.  Even though an infant has no sense of right and wrong and therefore cannot sin, that child is born into this world with a sin nature.  The whole nature of sin is that it is rebellion against God and so it is always perpetrated against the innocent.

Of course this is man’s feeble attempt to answer this question.  God’s response is quite different.

Job 38:4-7

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

The rest of chapter 38 and all of 39 is basically the same.  “I am God and you’re not!”

While this might seem like a harsh and indifferent response it isn’t.  God is merely telling us that while we are wrapped up and consumed by our own little pity-party, He sees the big picture.  Even to the extent of caring about the blades of grass and the birth of a goat in the hills.

Perhaps the most telling of God’s responses to Job is this one:

Job 40:8

"Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

We don’t trust God’s justice because it does not match our own.

3.     Why Do Things Have To Change?

John 16:5-7

"Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, `Where are you going?' Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

Q.      Why can’t things stay just the way they are right now? 

1.     Things are good just the way they are and I don’t want them to change.  “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!” syndrome.

2.     “Better the devil you know…” As a counselor one of the questions that I usually ask is this: “Do you want to be healed?”  Often, people get very angry when you ask this question but it is a legitimate question.  Sub-consciously, people struggle with these kinds of thoughts.  Yea, things are bad, but at least I know what I am dealing with.  I’ve living with this for so long that it is a part of who I am.  I wouldn’t know how to act if I didn’t have this problem.  I am a victim and no one can change that.  If you take this away from me, I’ll have to start taking responsibility for my life and I won’t be able to blame my problems on someone else.  No one will have pity on me anymore.

A.         What you think is the worst possible thing that could happen to you may be precisely the thing that God wants to use to bring you a blessing.

When I worked in the men’s rehab program some of the men were terrified of letting the police know where they were for fear of having their parole violated and ending up in jail.  Well, jail is never a great place to be, but there are worse things in life than jail.  Most of the time, however, once the parole officer found out that they were in a rehab center they were more than happy to work with us.  At times, though, it did mean jail.  But it never ceases to amaze me how much closer to the Lord these guys got while they were in jail.  Invariably, when the case came up before the judge, we almost always got custody and many times the sentences were reduced pending on completion of the program.

The questions we should be asking are:

Q.        What would Jesus do?  Sure, it’s become a merchandising slogan, but it is the best question you can ask yourself.  Jesus always had a non-traditional approach to handling every situation.  He had endless mercy, compassion and love for people, regardless of their sin.  The only thing for which he had no time for was religious pride, hypocrisy and self-justification.  In all other cases, Jesus showed love to the sinner.  In doing so He won them and brought about repentance.

A member of the Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Dragon Larry Trapp of Lincoln, Nebraska, made national headlines in 1992 when he renounced his hatred, tore down his Nazi flags, and destroyed his many cartons of hate literature.  As Kathryn Watterson recounts in the book Not By the Sword, Trapp had been won over by the forgiving love of a Jewish cantor and his family.  Though Trapp has sent them vile pamphlets mocking big-nosed Jews and denying the Holocaust, though he had threatened violence in phone calls made to their home, though he had targeted their synagogue for bombing, the cantor’s family consistently responded with compassion and concern.  Diabetic since childhood, Trapp was confined to a wheelchair and rapidly going blind; the cantor’s family invited Trapp into their home to care for him.  “They showed me such love that I couldn’t help but love them back,”  Trapp later said.  He spent the last months of life seeking forgiveness from Jewish groups, the NAACP, and the many individuals he had hated.

Q.        What is God trying to teach me?

James 1:2-5

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

       1 Peter 1:6-7

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

       Rom 5:3-5

“Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Q.        What hidden grace am I missing?

In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom describes a situation in which her sister Betsy and her were in a Nazi concentration camp.  The living situations were simply deplorable.  They had little food, even less medical attention and sanitary conveniences were simply non-existent.  On top of all of this they were constantly abused by the guards and prohibited from practicing their faith.  Corrie was wearing down and didn’t know how much more she could take.  She was also wondering where God was in all of this.  Then it seemed as if Satan decided to up the ante even more by visiting them with an infestation of lice.  Corrie was beginning to get quite angry with God for allowing this lastest indignity, when Betsy opened her eyes to something she was missing.  True, they were constantly itching from the lice, but it also meant that because of the lice, the guards would no longer enter their cabin.  Thus, in the middle of everything, God had wrapped his loving purposes around something that Satan had intended for evil and had created a little “grace island” for the sisters.  They could now retreat into their lice infested cabin and worship the Lord without fear of reprisal from the guards.

About ten years ago I worked as a maintenance man for an office complex.  One of my duties was to get to work at around 6:30 am and strap on gas blower back-pack, put on a heavy duty sound-blocking headset, a pair of safety glasses, and go blow the leaves and other trash from the parking lot.  This usually took up the first hour and a half of every day.  I hated it!  First of all, I am not a morning person.  I had to get up real early, for me, to get there before the parking lot filled up with cars.  Secondly, it was a noisy, dirty, smelly, sweaty job.  By the time I was done I was usually covered with sweat, dirt and grime.  I considered quitting the job because of it.

One day I went to God in prayer.  Well, it wasn’t so much a prayer as it was whining and complaining.  Then God answered me in a most remarkable way. 

First, He told me that I had no right in complaining about my boss for making me do this job.  He told me that I wasn’t working for my boss, I was working for Him.  As such, He expected me to do the job to the best of my ability.

Second, He revealed to me a hidden grace.  Since I had to wear a headset anyway to protect my hearing, why not put on a stereo headset like they use for car races and connect it to a walkman?  So I did what God told me to do.  Soon, it became my favorite part of the day.  Everyday I would listen to either a worship tape or a teaching tape.  The first hour and a half of every day became my time alone with God.

 Another hidden blessing was the fact that because the office knew that I was blowing off the parking lot and as a result there was no way I could hear or feel my beeper, no one ever bothered during this time.

Understand that the job itself hadn’t changed in any way.  It was still, smelly, dirty and I still had to get up early to do it.  What had changed was my attitude towards it once God had revealed to me His hidden grace.