Not the Cesspool!

It smells so bad! Could a person actually get used to toxic odors and it not bother him anymore? Recently I learned about an imprisoned brother who was given the grace to actually overcome the horrid smells of a cesspool and find reasons to be thankful for it.

Chen Min Lin lived during a time and place in history where it was illegal to talk about his personal conversion and the Bible. This pastor shared his faith … to a fault some would say. He was incarcerated for 18 years for this crime. After many years, he was assigned to the dreaded cesspool duty. He felt that he had been given a death sentence.

How I View My Challenges

How do we view heavy challenges that come our way? I know how quickly I am tempted to complain. Yesterday I was struggling through sitting in a very hot church service. It was a fiery day in the mid-nineties outside and our church was going through load-shedding with no power. So not even the fan would work. I was listening to David teaching a Bible college course for four hours in the afternoon.

As I sweated and tried to fan myself with a paper, I realized how easy it was for me to get irritated with something as little as heat. What about all the Ukrainian believers who are right now freezing to death and starving, going weeks without bathing? My endurance surely was quite lacking. 😦

Oh, how good it is to view our challenges with God’s eyes.

James gives us a great perspective. Hard times build endurance and fully-outfitted maturity:

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.“

James 1:2-4

New Resolve

So whatever my hard thing is presently, thank you, Lord!

These difficulties have a purpose. They are shaping me. God is using the difficulties to create something beautiful in me … if I will allow Him to do that! In some cases, the hard thing ends up being a growth point, or a growth era, in my life. Though I may hate it now, I will look back and see glory in the cesspool … where my gray prison walls were exchanged for a radiant sun and gentle breezes … where a kaleidoscope of watching eyes were exchanged for the freedom of being alone with God.

“For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

2 Corinthians 4:15-18

Help me, Lord God (Simakade in isiZulu), to worship you on the pathways you have chosen for me. You may call me to cesspool duty. You may call me to endure the trauma and unspeakable losses of war. You may call me to a dithering and withering job. You may call me to a disappointing and discouraging marriage. You may call me to something as simple as sweating in a hot African church. But as you choose my path, also choose your largest vial of grace and pour it out on my soul to see Your fingerprints, Your opportunities, Your promises, and Your image being formed in my person.

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”

C.S. Lewis