What Makes It Possible for the Christian to Rejoice in the Midst of Pain and Anxiety?

By R.C. Sproul

In 1993, my wife and I were involved in an historic train wreck. The crash of the Sunset Limited into an inlet from Mobile Bay killed more passengers than any Amtrak accident in history. We survived that eerie accident but not without ongoing trauma. The wreck left my wife with an ongoing anxiety about being able to sleep on a train at night. The wreck left me with a back injury that took fifteen years of treatment and therapy to overcome. Nevertheless, with these scars from the trauma we both learned a profound lesson about the providence of God. Clearly, God’s providence in this case for us was one of benign benevolence. It also illustrated to us an unforgettable sense of the tender mercies of God. In as much as we are convinced that God’s providence is an expression of His absolute sovereignty over all things, I would think that a logical conclusion from such a conviction would be the end of all anxiety.

However, that is not always the case. Of course, our Lord Himself gave the instruction to be anxious for nothing to His disciples and, by extension, to the church. His awareness of human frailties expressed in our fears was manifested by His most common greeting to His friends: “Fear not.” Still, we are creatures who, in spite of our faith, are given to anxiety and at times even to melancholy.

As a young student and young Christian, I struggled with melancholy and sought the counsel of one of my mentors. As I related my struggles, he said, “You are experiencing the heavy hand of the Lord on your shoulder right now.” I had never considered God’s hand being one that gave downward pressure on my shoulder or that would cause me to struggle in this way. I was driven to prayer that the Lord would remove His heavy hand from my shoulder. In time, He did that and delivered me from melancholy and a large degree of anxiety.

On another occasion I was in a discussion with a friend, and I related to him some of the fears that were plaguing me. He said, “I thought you believed in the sovereignty of God.” “I do,” I said, “and that’s my problem.” He was puzzled by the answer, and I explained that I know enough about what the Bible teaches of God’s providence and of His sovereignty to know that sometimes God’s sovereign providence involves suffering and affliction for His people. That we are in the care of a sovereign God whose providence is benevolent does not exclude the possibility that He may send us into periods of trials and tribulations that can be excruciatingly painful. Though I trust God’s Word that in the midst of such experiences He will give to me the comfort of His presence and the certainty of my final deliverance into glory, in the meantime I know that the way of affliction and pain may be difficult to bear.

The comfort that I enjoy from knowing God’s providence is mixed at times with the knowledge that His providence may bring me pain. I don’t look forward to the experience of pain with a giddy anticipation; rather, there are times when it’s necessary for me and for others to grit our teeth and to bear the burdens of the day. Again, I have no question about the outcome of such affliction, and yet at the same time, I know that there are afflictions that will test me to the limits of my faith and endurance. That kind of experience and knowledge makes it easy to understand the tension between confidence in God’s sovereign providence and our own struggles with anxiety.

Romans 8:28, which is a favorite for many of us, states that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (NKJV). There’s no other text that demonstrates so clearly and magnificently the beauty of God’s sovereign providence than that one. The text does not say that everything that happens to us, considered in and of itself, is good; rather, it says that all things that happen are working together for our good. That is the master plan of God’s redemptive providence. He brings good out of evil. He brings glory out of suffering. He brings joy out of affliction. This is one of the most difficult truths of sacred Scripture for us to believe. I’ve said countless times that it is easy to believe in God but far more difficult to believe God. Faith involves living a life of trust in the Word of God.

As I live out the travail that follows life on this side of glory, hardly a day goes by that I am not forced to look at Romans 8:28 and remind myself that what I’m experiencing right now feels bad, tastes bad, is bad; nevertheless, the Lord is using this for my good. If God were not sovereign, I could never come to that comforting conclusion — I would be constantly subjected to fear and anxiety without any significant relief. The promise of God that all things work together for good to those who love God is something that has to get not only into our minds, but it has to get into our bloodstreams, so that it is a rock-solid principle by which life can be lived.

I believe this is the foundation upon which the fruit of the Spirit of joy is established. This is the foundation that makes it possible for the Christian to rejoice even while in the midst of pain and anxiety. We are not stoics who are called to keep a stiff upper lip out of some nebulous concept of fate; rather, we are those who are to rejoice because Christ has overcome the world. It is that truth and that certainty that gives relief to all of our anxieties.

Posted at: https://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-makes-it-possible-christian-rejoice-midst-pain-and-anxiety/

The Opposite of Envy

Tim Challies

A thought struck me the other day: As far as I know, the English language has no word that expresses the opposite of envy. There may be phrases or sentences that can begin to convey it, but we have no single word we can use to express the virtue that lies opposite that ugly vice. We can wish and pray that we would be less envious, but as we put off that sin, what’s the righteous behavior we ought to be putting on in its place?

Envy is a strange sin, in that it is a personal and often very visceral response to the success and failure of other people. It is a sin that involves comparing ourselves to others and forming our identity around that comparison. Just as we can be affected by our own success and failure, envy affects us through the success and failure of others. Envy is responding to the success of other people with resentment toward them and despair within ourselves, longing that their success was our own. Or, envy is responding to the failure of other people with joy, gleeful that their failure is not our own. At its fullest bloom, envy is not just wanting the success of another person for ourselves, but also wanting that person not to have it; it is not just wanting to avoid personal catastrophe, but wishing catastrophe upon someone else. It is a sin that combines jealousy, hatred, and theft into an ugly, chaotic whole.

Sir John Gielgud summarized envy well in these despairing words: “When Sir Laurence Olivier played Hamlet in 1948, and the critics raved, I wept.” The success of another person made him feel small. Had the critics panned Olivier, Gielgud would have felt big, so that the failure of another person would have been his triumph. And here we see another ugly element of envy: It tends to alienate us from people who are much like us, people who ought to be our allies. A musician rarely envies an author and a pastor rarely envies a historian. Instead, we envy people who have similar interests, similar gifts, similar callings—the very people with whom we could and should co-labor. But envy drives us apart. It makes potential allies into competitors.

Envy produces no good fruit. It is a sin that seems to offer happiness via comparison, but it is a lie. If we lose the comparison, we move toward despair and resentment. We hate our neighbor and eventually hate God for holding back what we consider an essential element of happiness. But if we win the comparison, we grow in pride, in our sense that we are a unique gift to the world. Here too, we hate our neighbor and eventually see God as a power who exists to give us the success we’re sure we are entitled to.

“The opposite of envy is rejoicing especially in the success of the people who are closest to us”

So what is the opposite of envy? I think the Bible speaks to it when it tells us to “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). The opposite of envy is finding joy in the success of other people and feeling sorrow in their failure. The opposite of envy is rejoicing especially in the success of the people who are closest to us, who received accolades we would like for ourselves, who took home awards we believe we deserved, who garnered praise for accomplishments much like our own. The opposite of envy is feeling true sorrow at the failures of a person in the same field as us or of a person who may be considered a competitor. I’ve heard Sanskrit has a word—mudita—that refers to a joy that is pure and unadulterated by self-interest and delights in the good fortune of other people. That seems to capture it well.

We can have that joy, but only if we first find our ultimate joy in Christ. And our joy in Christ comes by understanding and acknowledging that our deepest identity is not found in success or failure, but in our union with him. We have to know that our standing before God does not depend upon our accomplishments. Neither someone else’s success nor our lack of success changes who we are in Christ. Neither some else’s failures nor our own has any bearing on who we are in him. It is only when we are secure before him that we can be secure before others. It is only when we are secure in him that we’ve secured the opposite of envy.

Posted at: https://www.challies.com/articles/the-opposite-of-envy/?fbclid=IwAR0f6JOS_vdIYyVHsjXH444fwLBwy94eaL6VeaiYd0cHXQB-z8AWs7Vm3xI