When you cannot take another step or take another breath because of the pain that this world has dealt you, listen closely because there is someone who knows, cares and bears your grief with you. His name is Jesus, He is by your side and will never leave nor forsake you. F. B. Meyer wrote this beautiful portion in the 1800’s about the One who bore our sorrows.  

 “YOU ARE PASSING THROUGH a time of deep sorrow. The love on which you were trusting has suddenly failed you, and dried up like a brook in the desert now a dwindling stream, then shallow pools, and at last drought. You are always listening for footsteps that do not come, waiting for a word that is not spoken, pining for a reply that tarries overdue. Perhaps the savings of your life have suddenly disappeared. Instead of helping others, you must be helped; or you are suddenly called to assume the burden of some other life, taking no rest for yourself till you have steered it through dark and difficult seas into the haven. Your health, or sight, or nervous energy is failing; you carry in yourself the sentence of death; and the anguish of anticipating the future is almost unbearable.  

At such times life seems almost unsupportable. Will every day be as long as this? Will the slow-moving hours ever again quicken their pace? Will life ever array itself in another garb than the torn autumn remnants of past summer glory? “Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies?” (Ps. 77:9). 

Jesus Christ Himself trod this difficult path, leaving traces of His blood on its flints; and apostles, prophets, confessors, and martyrs have passed by the same way. It is comforting to know that others have traversed the same dark valley, and that the great multitudes which stand before the Lamb, wearing palms of victory, came out of great tribulation. Where they were we are; and, by God’s grace, where they are we shall be. 

Sorrow is a refiner’s crucible (a cup or container where metals are melted in a furnace into a liquid).-It may be caused by the neglect or cruelty of another, by circumstances over which the sufferer has no control, or as the direct result of some dark hour in the long past; but inasmuch as God has permitted it to come, it must be accepted as His appointment, and considered as the furnace by which He is searching, testing, probing, and purifying the soul. Suffering searches us as fire does metals. We think we are fully for God, until we are exposed to the cleansing fire of pain. Then we discover, as Job did, how much dross there is in us, and how little real patience, resignation, and faith. Nothing so detaches us from the things of this world, the life of our five senses, and of earthly affections. There is probably no other way by which the power of the self-life can be arrested, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.                                                                                   

But God always keeps the discipline of sorrow in His own hands.-Our Lord said, “My Father is the husbandman.” His hand holds the pruning-knife. His eye watches the crucible. His gentle touch is on the pulse while the operation is in progress. He will not allow even the devil to have his own way with us. As in the case of Job, so always, the moments are carefully allotted. The severity of the test is exactly determined by the reserves of grace and strength which are lying unrecognized within, but will be sought for and used beneath the severe pressure of pain. He holds the winds in His fist, and the waters in the hollow of His hand. He dares not risk the loss of that which has cost Him the blood of His Son. “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tried above that ye are able” (1 Cor. 10:13).  

  In sorrow the Comforter is near. very present in time of trouble. He sits by the crucible, as a Refiner of silver, regulating the heat, marking every change, waiting patiently for the scum to float away, and His own face to be mirrored in clear, translucent metal. No earthly friend may tread the winepress with you, but the Saviour is there, His garments stained with the blood of the grapes of your sorrow. Dare to repeat it often, though you do not feel it, and though Satan insists that God has left you, ‘Thou art with me.’ Mention His name again and again, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Thou art with me’. So you will become conscious that He is there.” 

-‘A Very Present Help in the Time of Trouble’ F.B Meyer

Recently, Glennis and I walked down to a creek that is part of a large river that flows into the Puget Sound waters and eventually, the Pacific Ocean. It’s been the time of year where salmon make their run from the ocean to their original birthing places upstream. Salmon spend most of their adult life in the ocean, when they reach maturity and are ready to spawn; they begin their journey up river. As I’m sure in countless other places along their journey, we saw how the salmon had already been through a gauntlet of fisherman lined up in a continuous row for over a mile just off the mouth of the river. They were standing waist high in the river, with fish nets and fishing poles, eager to bring in a catch.

On our walk further upstream, we watched as the salmon had to negotiate and overcome a series of rapids and smaller waterfalls. What impressed us was the determination and will of these fish; to never give up no matter how difficult the obstacle they faced. We watched them make attempt after attempt to jump a waterfall. They never quit, they circled around and tried again until they made it. We’ve learned that after surviving a grueling journey back to the place where the salmon are born (sometimes a distance of 1000 miles & 7000′ in elevation) the fish will select a mate and begin the spawning process in shallow, gravelly water in the upper reaches of the river. Shortly after their eggs were laid the salmon would die.

“Speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?” Job 12:8-9

God has a plan and a strategy to fulfill in every one of His creatures. He supplied the salmon the drive and instinct they need in order to make their long difficult journey home. In a similar sense, God knows our nature and has put eternity in our hearts (Ecc 3:11), He wants us to seek Him while on this earth and has given us a blueprint for finding Him. Jesus tells us the way to having eternal life is by dying to our self-life in this world and living in Him.

 ”I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains [just one grain; it never becomes more but lives] by itself alone. But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life loses it, but anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. [Whoever has no love for, no concern for, no regard for his life here on earth, but despises it, preserves his life forever and ever.] If anyone serves Me, he must continue to follow Me [to cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying] and wherever I am, there will My servant be also. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him” Jn 12:24-26.

God has promised us that if we die to our life in this world He will give us life eternal. As we learn to lay down our will and our ways for His ways we will begin to see that when we let go of willful ways we are actually more alive spiritually than we were before.

Oftentimes, we don’t see or feel that we are more spiritually alive, we ask God to show us how the principle works. If we pray for God to do something for us and He has already done it, do we really believe that He has done it? If we are unaware of His work, we think He hasn’t done it and we don’t depend on it. We have not moved our expectation out of the spiritual realm by faith into the physical.

A great man of faith, Manley Beasley, put it this way, “When we ask God to do something on His side (of heaven) that He has already done positionally, we are not asking to get into the room we are asking to get out of the room we are already in.” He goes on to say, “We need to ask God to open our eyes to see that God’s done it and I already have it by faith”. We become a hindrance to our own prayers when we ask God to do something that He has already done. Our prayers should be “Lord, open my eyes to see what I have in you so that I can accept it, and believe it, and experience it.” This is the essence of having a faith expectation, believing and trusting God, even if we do not see it.

God is pleased with our faith. He has already prepared a supply according to our need (and He knows our true needs, not just our wants). If we are Spirit-sensitive we will see God’s provision by faith every time we have a need. Often times, our circumstances are critical and we don’t see any way out of our crisis. This is exactly where God wants us, in the place where we cannot deliver ourselves; having to depend on Him. In this “tribulation journey” we are challenged to spawn spiritual growth and become strengthened in His grace, expressing with a confident resolution that “If God is for me, nothing shall be against me”.