As Sparks Fly Upward

 

Sparks Fly Upward

Resentment destroys a fool and envy slays the unwise. 
They live in turmoil, filled with all their lies. 
I myself, have seen them take root,
in the lives of those they pollute. 
As they are trying to make their way,
their house is cursed as there is destruction in all they say. 
Then others feed on any harvest that comes,
consuming it like locusts and leaving only breadcrumbs. 
They lose all they have, even among the thorns,
as others, greedy for gain, around their wealth swarms.
For hardship doesn’t spring up or trouble sprout from the ground,
yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward bound. (Job 5:2-7)

The word for trouble in this verse is the Hebrew word amal, Strongs #5999.   It means more than difficulty but rather anguish that is the result of toil, injustice, perverseness, and wickedness.   We know that this is the case as we read in Genesis that when Adam and Eve sin, that man will have to toil as the ground would be hard.

Sin created a chasm between Paradise and the world where man resides.  Sin overtook the ground, and we know pain and suffering as a result.   Jesus tells the disciples in John 16:33, “In the world you will have trouble.  But take courage, I have overcome the world!”

While it is a different word, as it is from the Greek, rather than Hebrew text, the word thlipsis, Strongs# 2347, it means the same basic thing.   It means persecution, affliction, distress, tribulation and anguish.   Even more specifically, it relates to an external pressure that causes one to feel they are without options and lack a way of escape.

Here, Jesus is telling them these things so that in Him they might have peace.   The peace comes from knowing that injustice is part of life.  Being hurt and people causing you pain is just part of the world system.  When you are a Christian, it is all the more as you can add persecution to the list.  We are the fragrance of Christ to those who know Him and the stench of death to those who do not.  

So, in telling us this, we cannot take it personally.  It is not that we smell terrible, look terrible, and were given a defunct personality.  It is that the enemy hates us because we are Christians and he is out to get us.  Anything we do, has the fragrance to some and stench to others of Christ. 

I have struggled with this recently. I shut down because I took persecution personally. I just didn’t want to expose myself to any more of it than I had to. So, instead, I decided that I would try to manage it by limiting my exposure to it. I would protect myself.

But protecting myself was something I did for many years and it never worked for me.  As I experienced trauma in my youth as a result of “sparks flying upward” in my family, I closed the doors and shut everyone out.  I had walls around my walls around my walls.   I had so many layers of walls that I couldn’t see outside of them.  Nobody was getting in. 

I trusted no one.   I opened up to no one.  I loved no one and I let no one love me.   I just was not open to any of it.  I expected to be let down and disappointed so I didn’t put myself in a position to be.  Then what happened is that when I got pregnant from my husband (who was my boyfriend back then), I let this small little baby in.  My world centered around him and what was best for him. 

Then my son became sick with Pertussis from his vaccination.   I was scared to death and it rocked my world.  Now the one person that I let into my heart and let love in, was maybe not going to make it.  I fought for his health and his life, but when it was over, my heart grew all these more walls.  

I loved my son more than anything or anyone.  But it made me feel vulnerable and unprotected.  As I got in the workforce, I found I could hide behind a wall of professionalism.   I could keep a safe distance from everyone and feel good about it.   Then as I was rewarded at work and seen I could function well in this kind of professional environment, it became more and more who I was.   Work had a hook in me and I had a hook in my work. 

My dad, who I struggled with greatly growing up and so lacked his approval, also gave me accolades for working.  I could for once, feel like I had people’s approval and respect, having order in my life as I lived behind a wall and worked.

When I came to know the Lord, it began to shake me a little in living this life of professionalism.  I hungered for something more and it felt like my heart started beating again.   Then my dad got cancer.  It came about right as he retired.  It was an aggressive cancer and moved quickly.   He tried chemo but struggled so much with it that he decided not to get the treatment.  At the time, my dad did not know the Lord. 

When my dad was dying, I was working all the time.   He would ask about spending time with me and I would tell him all about everything I was doing at my work.   While it all seemed fine and under control on the surface, inside, I was crumbling.

I went into a severe depression and began to struggle with functioning. My mind would just ruminate over and over on the same things.  I couldn’t figure it all out anymore.  And all the pain I buried behind these walls was starting to come up.  It was a mess as I was becoming incapacitated. 

Then as I went with an employee to a Christian women’s event, something happened.   Someone prayed for me and all this pain came out.  Then someone else prayed for me and more pain came out.   I left and spent hours vomiting out all this pain.  Then as I went home, I woke up with my eyes swelled almost totally shut but this severe, incapacitating, depression was gone.  It was like someone turned the lights on.  

Then the next week, God spoke to me about letting one of the women who had prayed for me into my life and trust them.  He said that as I trusted and let Him in, to extend this trust to her.  I cried about it.  I was terrified.  But I agreed and called her up asking her out for coffee.   It turned out it was her birthday so she invited me to meet with her the next day.  I still remember our meeting as she asked me some pointed questions about wounding in my life and I trembled the whole time I talked with her and it kept shaking the table. 

She had a difficult childhood and struggled with trust as well as she was young so she seemed to understand me in ways that others couldn’t.   She became my pastor and I helped in her women’s ministry for some years until she went home with cancer herself some five or six years later.

She used to preach sometimes on the verse about having trouble in this world.   She would frequently note that God never promised us an easy life.   She never had an easy life as she was abused as a child and then drugs and alcohol for some time, hurt someone by pushing them off a roof, and then she lost a child.  This is when things changed for her.   She made a deal with God that she would give her life to Him if He would save her baby.  Her baby did live for a short time but then died.   In the midst of it, she found His compassion, love, and healing for herself.  

Our troubles are not meant to destroy us.  Like my first pastor who had such a beautiful walk with the Holy Spirit, our troubles and sufferings are meant to create dependence.   They are to close us in on the outside so we turn in to the Holy Spirit for His help.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:9, “In fact, we expected to die.  But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.”  

As she learned she could not get through life on her own strength, she started to depend on the Lord’s strength for everything.  As a result, her life became this beautiful continual walk and partnership with the Holy Spirit where He brought life everywhere she went. 

Besides knowing trouble, she had learned the second part of the verse: “But take courage: I have overcome the world!”   This is our answer to pain, trouble, and difficulty.   Our answer is not to shut down, run away, or hide.  Our answer is to have courage and press through tribulation to the place of overcoming.   We never gain by giving the enemy a foothold, shrinking back because of trouble.  

We cannot control the world by our actions.  Putting up walls, protecting ourselves, or trying to manage our circumstances cannot bring about the results we hope.  We may even have a life that is unshaken and comfortable as a result, but it will not be a full, joy-filled, and purpose-filled life.   It will be a life of crumbling walls of self-protection we need to keep putting up.

It takes courage to live a God-filled life as it does mean that we will be persecuted at times and can even experience more difficulty.   But having “good courage” means both having good cheer and a positive outlook about it, but being confident and unafraid.   Rather than build walls, we build bridges. 

We see this with Joseph from the Bible.   He experienced a great deal of persecution he would have not known if he didn’t have dreams from God.  But because of his dreams, he moved from aggravating to his brothers to intolerable.   They hated him.  

Yet Joseph never used it as an excuse not to live life, to be bitter, angry, and stuck. Have you ever met someone like this? At the Crisis Line, I talked to folks like this all the time. I specifically remember one man who was raging mad every time he called. He was probably in his 50s, but he would rage about his childhood over and over again. He could never move beyond it and was completely stuck for 30+ years.  

For Joseph, rather, he kept doing life with people around him the best he could in courage.  His heart never shut down even with disappointment after disappointment of being sold into slavery, sold out in slavery, left in slavery, and finally redeemed only to make the cupbearer look good.  

The end of the story is not just that Joseph ends up in this successful position.  The end of the story is that Joseph loves and cares for his brothers who so hurtfully betrayed him.   He never let it stop him from loving others.  He cares and provides for these brothers that did him wrong.  He lets resentment go for God’s greater purposes to be accomplished. 

Joseph also never shut down.  No matter what difficulty he went through, he did not become so self-protecting that he could no longer be vulnerable.   Even with his brothers who hurt him so deeply, he opened himself up to love them again and care for them.  

It takes courage to love people, sacrifice for them, and give them what they need.  The reason we can have this unflinching, bold courage and inner confidence is only because our eyes are on the Lord and not man.   It is our love and belief in the Lord that strengthens us and makes us more like Him.

It is in this place that we can learn to be vulnerable and open.   1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, the Son, purifies us from all sin.” 

It is by being vulnerable that we can humbly love others.  Being vulnerable also is the place of healing.  It is only as we confess our sins and the ways that we fall short that we will be set free from the bondages that hold onto us.     

If we close down our hearts, we not only shut out others but also the Lord. We cannot live a self-protective life with others and have an intimate relationship with God. Anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time knows that our walks with others and the Lord are interrelated. 

1 John 2:10 goes on to say, “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.  Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.”

Have you ever considered that the endgame of our faith is to love others because we love and trust Jesus? At the end of the day, this is it. The measure of our faith, our maturity, and our walk is not how far up the ladder we climbed but how we love others around us.  The measure of our success is loving others.   It is the opposite of the world where we compete and climb over others to get ahead.

We get to choose which standard we live by.  In choosing the Lord’s standard, we can rejoice in suffering.   Suffering for others and the result of others not only reflects Christ but grows us to become more like Him.  It grows us and blesses us in the stretching. 

As we turn to the Lord with our pain and difficulties, He not only comforts us but also makes us comforters of others (2 Corinthians 1:4).  When we suffer, if we stay in a trusting state and do not run or lash out at others, we grow in compassion and our ability to comfort those hurting the same way we were. We become more understanding.  

Lord Jesus, forgive me where I have been complaining about being hurt and not wanting to do things Your way anymore.  I don’t know where I picked up stubbornness as You have done so much in my life— and all undeserved.   You have turned my waste places into a Garden of joy!    Have Your way among us.   Help us to move through trauma and not get stuck and sit down in it.  Give us the courage to work through all things that come our way with unrelenting courage, compassion, and passion to serve You.