Takeaways 1-10

Dannah Gresh: As Christians, we’re called to spread the good news. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth helps clarify what that means.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We’re not trying to get people to buy into a plan to reform themselves. We’re trying to point people to Christ. And in Christ we see the glory of God, and we are transformed into His image, as Paul says, “from glory to glory.”

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast, with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of Seeking Him, for December 27, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Did you have a good Christmas weekend? I sure hope so. It’s hard to believe this year is almost over. Well, whether you’re still basking in the glow of a great time, or you’re disappointed, down in the dumps, or somewhere in-between, here’s Nancy with a good dose of perspective for all of us.

Nancy: Well, as I look around the room today, I think of how the Lord has called each of us to different kinds of ministry. You may have a ministry to your husband, those who are married, to your children or your grandchildren.

I was just texting this morning with one of our staff who just had her first grandbaby born over the weekend, and she is just loving this new calling, this new role as Grammy. That’s a ministry.

Maybe you’re in a small group at your church or in a Bible study or involved in the women’s ministry at your church. Think about what kind of ministry you’re involved in, and then I want to ask: How’s it going?

As we come to the end of this year, could you use a dose of encouragement? Maybe there’s some hard things about the ministry you’re involved in right now. I think today and tomorrow is going to be a sweet encouragement to you wherever the Lord has you serving.

Now, let me give you a little background for what we’re going to talk about.

As you know, over the last several months we’ve been celebrating God’s faithfulness to Revive Our Hearts for the past twenty years. It seems like it was just yesterday we were going on the air. Well, actually, it doesn’t seem like just yesterday because we’ve done a lot of programs and a lot of ministry, but it’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years.

God has been so kind and so good. And over these months as we’ve been celebrating that anniversary, I have been journaling in the book of 2 Corinthians. I’ve spent a couple of months on this. It’s been just such a rich meditation and study. A few weeks ago I shared some insights from chapter 4. We called it, “We Do Not Give Up: How to Persevere in Ministry.” We learned that in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4.

Well, today I want to go back to 2 Corinthians and give a broader view of that book as Paul talks about his perspective on ministry. Now, Paul had a certain kind of ministry. He was an apostle. He was a preacher. He was a church planter. But I think these principles and insights apply to us in different ways in the various ministries the Lord has called us to.

So, I’m thinking of this as “20 Takeaways on 20 Years of Ministry.” I’m thinking about Revive Our Hearts’ ministry. So as I think about what God has done in Revive Our Hearts over these twenty years, here’s twenty takeaways. Now, that’s a lot to do in two programs, so I’m going to move fast. I’m just going to touch lightly on each one. But it’s been really encouraging to me and given me some fresh perspective on what we’re doing here on Revive Our Hearts. I hope it will be encouraging to you in whatever ways you’re serving the Lord.

I’m going to dive in and number them, but if you’re the kind who’s trying to take notes or remember the points, this is way too many points to try to remember. But you can go to ReviveOurHearts.com, and you can get the transcript. You’ll see the points there with Scriptures that support them. I won’t give every reference because those will be in the transcripts. And we’ve actually prepared also a PDF of this list of takeaways. You can get that. You might want to print it out, stick it in your Bible, and maybe even do your own additional study on some of these points.

Now, as I’ve been soaking in the book of 2 Corinthians, one of the things that has really stood out to me, number one, is that ministry is a gift from God—ministry is a gift from God.

Listen to these verses in chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians. It says,

God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. . . . God . . . has committed the message of reconciliation to us. (vv. 18–19)

We have been chosen by God, Paul says, to be recipients of God’s grace and then to be channels of His mercy to others.

That says to me that ministry, in whatever way God has called you, ministry is not a choice we make for ourselves. It’s not a platform we aspire to.

Sometimes I’ll have younger women come up to me and say, “I want to do what you do. I want to write books like you do. I want to teach Bible studies or do a podcast like you do.” And God may be calling some of them to do that, but ministry is not a platform that we choose or aspire to for ourselves.

Ministry is not a job. I see some of our Revive Our Hearts’ staff in the room today. Some of you open the mail. Some of you work in our customer service area, in our production team. Ministry is not a job. Now, it may involve a job, but more than that, ministry is a sacred calling to proclaim the gospel. It’s a stewardship that’s been entrusted to us by God.

Years and years ago I received a handwritten letter from Ray Ortlund, Sr., who’s now with the Lord. But he was my pastor when I was in college. He wrote me a note which I kept taped up above my desk for many, many years, and I’ve never forgotten this excerpt from that letter. He said,

Keep pointing us all to Jesus in your writing, editing, and speaking. And rejoice as you do it because ministry is a great privilege from God.

Now, sometimes I think of ministry, especially in the late-night hours or early-morning hours when I’m writing or editing and nobody sees and nobody knows what it’s taking . . . And you have places in your ministry, in your work, where you get stuck. You don’t know how to do something, or it’s thankless, hard work. It’s easy to forget that ministry is a great privilege from God, that it’s a gift from God. So, number one, ministry is a gift, rejoice as you do it.

Number two, another insight I see in 2 Corinthians is simply this: We are weak, but He is strong.

That’s been a phrase from the little song, “Jesus Loves Me,” that’s been on my heart throughout these years of ministry in Revive Our Hearts.

When you’re a speaker or writer, people, if they don’t really know you, they can think of you as a really strong person. Like, “You’re so gifted, and you can just get up there and do this.” I cannot tell you how many thousands of times probably over these years I have thought, If people only knew how weak I feel, how inadequate I feel for this calling.

I’m encouraged because Paul felt exactly the same way—the apostle Paul. He felt deeply inadequate to be a minister of the gospel. Paul understood that it was humanly impossible to give life to those who were spiritually dead. He says in 2 Corinthians 2,

To some, we are an aroma of death leading to death. But to others, an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things? . . . It’s not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant. (2 Cor. 2:16, 3:5–6)

Our confidence and our competence in ministry come not from ourselves but from God alone. There is no one and there is nothing that can transform lives apart from the supernatural life-giving power of the Spirit of God. And if our sufficiency is of ourselves rather than of God, we’re going to be useless in ministering to others.

Remember that passage in chapter 12 where God said to Paul, who was feeling so sick and weak,

"My power is perfected in weakness." Therefore [Paul said] I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may reside in me. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong. (vv. 9–10)

Our weakness showcases the strength of Christ, and our limitations—and we all have them, and we all feel them even if others don’t realize it—are no obstacle to His power. Celebrate we are weak, but He is strong.

Number three, ministry is hard. Now, instead of ministry, you could just say life is hard. Ministry is hard. Life is hard—sometimes overwhelmingly hard. And the apostle Paul, once again, related to this. He says in chapter 1,

The sufferings of Christ overflow to us. (v. 5)

In verse 8 he speaks about our afflictions that took place in Asia. He said,

We were completely overwhelmed beyond our strength so that we despaired of life itself. (v. 8)

That word “afflictions” that Paul uses in 2 Corinthians is a word that means “to crush, to press together.” One Bible dictionary says that word conveys the idea of being squeezed or placed under pressure or crushed beneath a weight. It says, “This word does not refer to minor inconvenience or mild discomfort but to great difficulty.”

Anybody feel that crushing weight of this season that God has you in? Following Christ and serving Him this side of heaven is not a vacation. It’s not a sight-seeing expedition. It means hard work. It means sacrifice. It means tears. It means bearing burdens and bearing pressure and engaging in battle.

But the truth we see in God’s Word is that pressure sanctifies. We need pressure. The greatest growth in our lives happens more often than not in the hardest places. I see some heads nodding. You’ve experienced that as you look back on your life.

You’ve heard me say it often in Revive Our Hearts: Anything that makes us need God is—what?—a blessing. You see, God is not concerned about using us to build a ministry, in whatever our role may be, as He is about using the ministry, with its hardships and its heartaches, its afflictions, to build us, to conform us to the image of Christ.

And so we come to number four is that God’s grace is sufficient for us in every hardship we face.

When we come to chapter 12 of 2 Corinthians, you remember the passage where Paul begged the Lord for his thorn in the flesh to be removed? Paul was a godly man. He was a praying man. But God did not grant him that request. Paul says,

But God said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you." (v. 9)

That’s not the answer Paul had hoped for. That’s not what he had asked for. But God gave Paul something even better than what he’d asked, and that was an infusion of divine grace.

You and I will never face a crisis or a situation for which God’s grace is not more than enough.

Sometimes I find we just have to counsel our hearts and say, “I know I’m going through this; this thing that is crushing me. It’s pressing me down. It’s weighing in on me.” (In some aspect of your life or ministry, we’ve had this happen at Revive Our Hearts again and again.) But I counsel my heart and say, “Thank You, Lord, that Your grace is sufficient for me, for this hardship—present tense, right now—and for every hardship that’s around the bend that I don’t know about yet.”

I know I’m looking into the eyes of a widow, a mom who just lost a grandchild not too many months ago, and other hardships and heartaches. And the thing that encourages our hearts in the midst of those afflictions is reminding ourselves that God’s grace is sufficient for us.

Here’s the fifth takeaway: God draws near to encourage us when we are suffering. You see this throughout the book of 2 Corinthians. In chapter 1, Paul calls Him “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort” (v. 3) (Do you think all comfort would be enough? All comfort.) And then in the next verse he says, “He comforts us in all our afflictions” (v. 4)

Okay, and I just made some people cry in this room. I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry because I know, as I look in your faces, that these are tears of, yes, pain and hurt and loss; but also I’m watching, and I’m looking into the eyes of women who have experienced the comfort and the presence of Christ in the midst of loss and suffering.

God draws near. He’s the God of all comfort. He comforts us in—how many of our afflictions? All of our afflictions. Those trials that squeeze us, that overwhelm us, they press us closer to the heart of our heavenly Father. They provide an opportunity for us to experience His comfort, His sufficiency.

And what does God do in our tears, in our hard places? He comes alongside us to help us in our time of need. The greater the suffering, the greater our experience will be of His comfort.

Number six, staying with this point of afflictions, our trials are purposeful, and they are for the sake of others. Now, they’re purposeful in our own lives, but they’re also purposeful in the lives of others who watch us go through those trials.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1,

So that we may be able to comfort those that are in any kind of affliction through the comfort we ourselves received from God, for just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. (vv. 4–5)

So, we suffer. God draws near with His comfort and His grace. And then we become a channel, a conduit of God’s grace and God’s comfort in the lives of others.

How often, as I look back over these twenty years of Revive Our Hearts’ ministry, have I seen how God has used the hard places, the pressing places, the afflictions, the hardships in my own life to make me more compassionate, to help me be able to draw near to others who are hurting or facing afflictions. So, our trials are not wasted. They’re purposeful, and they allow us to become a means of blessings in the lives of others.

Number seven, Satan is alive and well. You see this in the book of 2 Corinthians. In chapter 4, the apostle says,

The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. (v. 4)

Those around us who are without Christ are spiritually dead. They can’t see. They can’t receive. They can’t believe our message unless the Spirit of God opens their eyes because Satan is blinding their minds. He is keeping them from seeing the truth of Christ. He’s a master deceiver.

And Paul talks in 2 Corinthians about how Satan works through false teachers. In chapter 11 he says,

These false teachers disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! [He says] or Satan disguise himself as an angel of light. So it’s no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. (vv. 13–15)

You see, Satan masquerades as a beautiful, desirable creature, an angel of light. He works hard to get people’s attention, to capture their affections. He tries to draw them away from the light of Christ and into his domain of darkness. He promises freedom, but he places those who follow him in bondage.

So, we have to remember as we minister, whether it’s here in Revive Our Hearts, or in our local church or in a Bible study or small group, or in your family as you’re seeking to minister to them; remember that we cannot persuade anyone to believe the gospel unless God removes the blindness and opens their eyes and gives them sight.

That’s why prayer is so important in ministry. We plead with God to do this work that only He can do, and He must do, if they’re going to believe. That’s why it’s also important to remember.

Here’s takeaway number 8, God is able to turn on the light in the darkest places and hearts. We can’t; but He can. Second Corinthians chapter 4:

For God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness [referring to creation—'In the beginning God said, "Let there be light.'"] has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ." (v. 6)

You and I would never have believed the gospel and turned to Christ to save us, we would not turn to Him to sanctify us by His grace, if He did not shine light in our hearts. We can’t take credit for being Christians or for wanting to grow in our faith. That’s the work of the Spirit of God.

So as you think about that person that you love or that you’re ministering to who’s not responding to the gospel, this is why we pray because we say, “Lord, You are able to turn on the light.”

I got an email last week from a woman who brought a friend to a Revive Our Hearts conference. She and her friend drove two days each way. And this woman said, “She had agreed to come to the conference with me as a last-ditch effort to find God again. But she was planning to leave her husband and children and go hook up with an Internet boyfriend [someone she had never even met] as soon as we returned home from the conference.”

The day after the conference, these two women went for a long walk and talked and the friend said to the lady who had brought her, “I just don’t know if I want to follow God or not.”

The woman who had brought her was dumbfounded. She was so discouraged. “Look, she had just sat through the whole conference, and this is her response?”

The woman said to us, “There was no sense talking to her. So we prayed.”

She was writing to us to say, “I know you prayed, and so many other people prayed.” (She had sent this request to some of our staff, and our team had prayed for this younger woman who was coming to the conference.)

Well, when they got back home, the friend’s husband told her she could not come back in the house unless she agreed to stop communicating with her online boyfriends. The woman who had taken her, who was communicating with us, said, “She seemed distant and cool. And I honestly did not know what she was going to choose.”

“Well, she finally surrendered to the Holy Spirit,” said the woman who was writing to us. “She agreed to stay off the Internet and social media. She agreed to go home and try to work on her marriage.”

And then the woman writing us said, “But that’s not the most amazing part. A week or two later I saw her again. Her face was different. She was absolutely glowing. Someway, somewhere, she decided that she does want to live 100% for the Lord, and she is a different person now. She isn’t tormented the way she was. She’s happy, and it’s oozing out of her.” Can I hear an “Amen”? Is that amazing?

Now, what a reminder: We cannot open blinded eyes and hearts. That woman couldn’t do it for her friend. The Revive Our Hearts conference couldn’t do it. Her pastor couldn’t do it. Her husband couldn’t do it. But God could do it. And so, we pray in faith, “God, do what only You can do, and shine the light of the gospel of Christ into these darkened eyes and hearts and minds that they may believe.”

Well, number nine—just two more today. Number nine, our message is life-giving and glorious.

I’m just going to touch on this, but in chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians, Paul compares new covenant ministry with ministry under the old covenant.

The old covenant was based on the letter of the law. It was written on stones. It brought condemnation and death. The law cannot breathe life into dead hearts. Now, that’s not because the law is bad, but all the law can do is show us God’s holy standard and convict us of our inability to live up to that standard.

By contrast, the new covenant is based on the ministry of the Spirit that’s written, not on stones, but on our hearts. The new covenant brings righteousness, and it brings life, and it is glorious.

In fact, in chapter 3 in 2 Corinthians, that word “glory” or “glorious” is used ten times in just verses 7–17. It talks about the glory of the old covenant. There was some glory, but it was temporal, and it was fading. And then it talks about the glory of the new covenant, which far surpasses the glory of the old covenant and endures forever. The glory of that new covenant will never fade. And Paul says that “we are ministers, we are servants of the new covenant.”

So what does that mean? We’re not trying to get people to buy into a plan to reform themselves. We’re trying to point people to Christ who purchased us in that new covenant by His blood. And in Christ we see the glory of God, and we are transformed into His image, as Paul says, “from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (v. 18) So our message is life-giving, and it is glorious.

And then finally, number ten, ministry is not about us. We are not the main thing. We are not the main attraction.

There are three metaphors that Paul uses—probably more, but three that stood out to me in the book of 2 Corinthians. First, he says in chapter 4 that “we are servants of Christ and of others.” The servant isn’t the one you talk about. He says,

We are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. (v. 5)

We’re not sent to be served by others or to control them, but to serve them, to encourage them, to help them become rooted in Christ and strong in their faith. We are servants.

We are, secondly, containers of the treasure of the gospel. In chapter 4, Paul says, “We have this treasure in clay jars” (v. 7). Clay jars that are fragile. They’re breakable. They’re not impressive. Why? So that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.

And then he says ministry is not about us. We’re just helping the Bride get ready for her Groom. He says in chapter 11,

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, because I have promised you in marriage to one husband—to present a pure virgin to Christ.

I’ve often said I feel like my calling in life is to be a wedding coordinator, to help the Bride get ready for the wedding. We’re not the Bridegroom. We’re not the master. We’re not the treasure. We’re the servants, the containers, the clay jars, and the one who’s helping the Bride get ready for her Groom.

So our goal is not to shine a spotlight on ourselves or our own efforts, not to draw attention to our work. Our calling is to shine a spotlight on Christ, to exalt Him. It’s true in whatever area of service or ministry God has placed you. You may have a visible, upfront ministry. You may be way behind the scenes in a cube somewhere doing things that I don’t have the gifts to do, but God sees you as part of this ministry or some other ministry.

But through it all, our calling is to make much of Jesus and to help others see Him.

Dannah: That’s our host, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth with ten of the twenty takeaways from 2 Corinthians, things she’s found to be true in the twenty years Revive Our Hearts has been in existence.

Now, the list of those take-aways is available as a free PDF download. Just find the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com, and you’ll see the link to the twenty takeaways there.

Nancy: And, Dannah, I hope while people are there that they’ll take a moment to pray about whether the Lord would have them donate to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts at this time. We’re getting really close to the end of December, which means there are just a few days left when our donation to Revive Our Hearts will be matched dollar for dollar.

As we’ve been sharing with you over the last few weeks, our matching-gift goal is $1.4 million. So that makes $2.8 million over all, Lord willing. And all those funds will be used to help us continue our current outreaches ministering to women around the world in the year ahead as well as taking advantage of some amazing open doors the Lord has placed before us that we hope to be able to walk through in the year ahead.

If you want to know how we’re doing toward the match, you’ll see a progress bar at the website that shows where we are through today.

Now, we don’t want to do anything to take away from your regular giving to your local church, but if God puts it on your heart to do something extra, I hope you’ll consider making a gift to Revive Our Hearts on or before this Friday, December 31.

Dannah: To do that, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959.

Nancy: Tomorrow we’re going to look at ten more takeaways from 2 Corinthians as I reflect on twenty years of Revive Our Hearts ministry, and I hope that will be an encouragement to your heart as you consider where God has placed you to serve Him.

Lord, thank You for your Word. Thank You for the beauty and wonder of this calling, this gift we’ve received from You to serve You and to serve others. Thank You for Your grace. Thank You for Your promises. Thank You for the comfort You give us in the midst of the hard places.

I pray that these words will be a source of encouragement and grace and ministry to each of my friends as they consider where You’ve called them to serve You. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Dannah: Amen. Again, that’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, praying for you and for me in our different areas of ministry.

Now, the podcast listener, you’re going to get a little bonus today. After Nancy prayed, a couple of women in our studio audience shared from their own lives. Here’s Yesi:

Yesi: Basically, all what you said, “We are weak, but He is strong.” I was always made to be stronger and responsible, a go-getter. He’s teaching me how to be weak and humble verses being strong and being prideful, with basically a, “I can do this on my own. I don’t need anyone.” And that has been very hard.

And the way you just put it went together. I mean, I’ve heard it a lot, and it gets me. But the way you put it together, I guess, coming from a woman’s perspective, it’s like . . . I was raised to be a very strong woman and not be needing anything. I grew up basically without a father. They separated, so it kind of gets me back to I always needed that protection. Then the Lord, in that case, He’s really, like, “I’ll take care of you.”

It makes me want to break the walls of, “No, no, I’ve got this. I don’t need a strong male figure. I can do it.” So, He’s been teaching me, “You can let go now. I’ve got this.” It was very nice.

Nancy: That was beautiful Yesi. And thinking about how all of us, our natural bent is we want to be able to be sufficient. We want to be able to handle, whether it’s mothering or grandmothering or the work . . . You’re new here at Revive Our Hearts and serving and learning new roles. Welcome to the team, by the way. But wherever we serve, I believe some of the sweetest words God can hear are, “Help. I need You. I can’t do this by myself.”

God puts us into places where we realize we can’t do this. If there’s anything I resonate with over twenty years of ministry is feeling this great sense of inadequacy and weakness. And to many of us, if others just look at us, they would say (and people I’m sure would say this about you), “She’s a strong person. She’s confident. She’s competent.” But we know our own hearts, and we know how weak we feel—but that’s a good thing. That’s a gift.

As I think about you and the story God’s been writing in your life, what a sweet thing it is that God has given you a “Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort,” the one who is your strength. Sometimes I think it’s as if God’s saying, “You want to handle this on your own? Go ahead. Try. Oh, you’re weak? Well, let Me come help you.” And then we have that strong, strong Father-Husband God, Protector, Leader to lean on. “Leaning on the everlasting arms. When we are weak, then we are strong.”

I love that. Thanks for sharing that.

Woman: Just that trials are purposeful, and Satan is alive and well. I think so many times in the Christian community we forget that Satan is alive and well, and we forget how hard he works against us.

The last two years have been a lot of change for me, a lot of loss for me. I moved to a new area. I took on a new job. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t as rosy as I was hoping. And all of life was not as rosy as I was expecting. Not that I thought that God would hurry up and wipe away any of the pain that had. But in my new Christian community I kept hearing things like, “Maybe you just need to be on meds,” or “Maybe you’re not listening to God right now,” or “You just need joy.”

I kept wrestling, and I kept thinking, “God, I just don’t know what’s going on.” I was in Deuteronomy, and I just sat in Deuteronomy. I was reading furiously and reading over and over again. And yet there was more and more pain as I was walking through this dark season. And it was so dark; it almost felt black. And I kept thinking, “I’m not even hearing or sensing God. But yet I know my feeling are not real. The truth is real.”

So just the fact that what you said about Satan’s alive and well is such encouragement, because I think that as much as we love God, and we want to soak in Him, we need to keep that also in perspective and say, “God, protect me from what he can do to me, protect me from the lies that he’s feeding me.”

Nancy: And keep in mind, as the apostle Paul, godly, mature believer, set apart to be an apostle, etc., who is talking about afflictions and dark places and being overwhelmed to the point of thinking he’s not going to live through it, and talking about the attack of Satan on the work he was doing. I think sometimes we think if we’re godly, then we’re not going to have any of that. But we do have that. Every person in this room has that. Every person listening to this conversation has that.

So, there’s no magic erasing of all of this. We know that in the end Jesus wins, and Satan will not win in the end. He’s a defeated foe, but he’s still kicking. He’s still working. He’s still blinding eyes. He’s still trying to pull us away from clinging to Christ.

I love when you said, “Our feelings are not real. God’s Word is real.” Our feelings really are real—I use that word really too many times—but God’s Word is more true than our feelings. So, we do have those feelings, and you’re just acknowledged that you have those feelings. I see a lot of heads nodding in here, but it’s God’s Word that can be relied on even when our feelings tell us things about ourselves or God or life that would pull us down.

So, it’s not that we don’t have the feelings. It’s what do we do when we do have those feelings? And that’s what you’ve been doing. You’ve been going to God’s Word and saying, “I’m going to cling to Christ and to His truth.”

Sometimes it’s just with raw, naked faith, even when my feelings tell me this or this or this. And there is that time to grieve, to acknowledge, “This is hard. This is painful. This isn’t going away.” That’s what Paul did with that thorn in the flesh. He said, “Three times I begged the Lord, ‘Please, take this away from me.’”

And what did God say? “My grace—my grace—my grace—my grace—my grace is sufficient for you” in this moment, with those feelings, with those hard places, with those afflictions, with those crushing burdens, “My grace is sufficient.”

That’s not just nice words. I mean, they are nice words, but it’s not just pat words. It doesn’t make the pain go away. Paul still had that thorn in the flesh. But he had grace to endure, grace to persevere, and the Comforter, the “God of all comfort,” drawing near to him in all his affliction. And he became better suited, better fitted to be a minister of God’s grace to the lives of others.

The sufferings are purposeful. They make us better suited for heaven, and they make us better suited to be effective in ministering compassionately and tenderly in the lives of other hurting people.

I think sometimes we think, Wouldn’t it be sweet if God would just take this great magic eraser and just erase all our pain and all the memories of all the pain.” Well, one day that will be the case.

But in the meantime, imagine if we could not remember or feel what it was like to hurt really deeply, to suffer great or deep loss. What kind of help and comfort would we be to other people coming up to us or in our lives who are going through really painful, hard, hurting things when we could never remember or feel any sufferings of our own?

We’d be like Teflon. We’d be inaccessible. They couldn’t get close to us. We couldn’t really sympathize. We couldn’t care deeply. We couldn’t say, “Boy, I know. But I also know God’s grace.” You see, the pain works that in us and works through us.

Well, I’d still like to be without the pain, but we have the promise that one day we will be. No more. No more Satan. No more adversity. No more squeezing. No more tears. But in the meantime, we’re coming to see and know God in a way that we might not otherwise ever have known Him. And God is going to use us and give us greater ministry and be a blessing in the lives of other hurting people as a result.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth exists to point you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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