Category: 2 Corinthians

Following the death of my father the empty void in my life felt like a black hole encompassing me, often suspecting I’d never escape to the light. On a dark spring Sunday morning, while finalizing my sermon, I was on the cusp of giving up. I didn’t know where the strength or courage would come, not only for the sermon, but also for the long rugged road ahead of me. I prayed. I prayed for God to send me comfort to grant me the strength and courage I needed to preach. More so, I prayed for endurance as I was wandering through this season of spiritually barren wasteland and deserted wilderness.

As worship was beginning I found myself in the foyer of the church to welcome members who were still arriving. Terry entered the building. We shook hands and “small-talked” just for a moment before he headed toward our sanctuary. As he reached the closed doors he turned back to me and said, “You are the bravest man I know,” then proceeded to enter the sanctuary.

I was beat down, depressed, and my cup of anxiety was fizzing to explode like I was a shaken Coke bottle. To say I saw myself at the end of my rope was an understatement. But almost like the rainbow breaking through the clouds, Terry broke through my despair. Certain that I was not as brave as he claimed I was, his words offered hope. Without him knowing the ramifications he gave me the strength to move forward. It was a moment where I was at the end, “But God” comforted me with Terry’s words to remind me, “It’s only the beginning.”

Paul had his own “But God” moment in 2 Corinthians 7:6. The relationship between the church in Corinth and the apostle had all but disintegrated. The church he planted had turned on him, rejecting his leadership and message. He tried an intervention only to be run out of town (2 Cor. 2:1-2). Afterward he wrote a letter, outlining his expectations for the church, and sent it by Titus (2 Cor. 2:3-4). Then he waited. He waited some more. In the silence he waited. Without all the modern conveniences like “snail” mail, email, texting, or a phone call, Paul was forced to wait. We know about the waiting in the silence: an unanswered, sensitive text or phone call forces us to start filling in the gaps with our anxious details. Those details are always the worst-case scenarios. Always. In that waiting, Paul fought all the negative messaging of his mind where his anxiety overcame and conquered his peace. I can almost hear his second guessing, “Poor Titus. Why did I send this lamb to the wolves for the slaughter?”

We usually don’t think of Paul as having doubts and fears, do we? We normally hoist him on a pedestal of strength and confidence, untouched by the fallen world around him. He’s an apostle who travels the world to plant churches and is a prolific writer as well. We think anything bad happening to him almost seems to roll off him like water off a duck’s back. Yet the biblical story speaks otherwise. Paul says he comes to Macedonia worn out with no rest (2 Cor. 7:5). Then he adds how much he has been harassed at every turn. Not only was he having a bad day, but every step he took was one continuous bad day after another bad day. It was worse than Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

In a run of bad days, Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:7 describes these days in two ways. First, there are “conflicts on the outside,” a likely reference to the antagonism he faced for preaching the gospel. Imagine speaking a message counter to the culture where pushback just might be physical. Then again, his preaching is in conflict with the very church whom he planted and nurtured their faith. He’s almost waving his arms and hands at the church saying, “Hey guys! The conflict and breakdown in our relationship is tearing me a part.” Conflict with people is common and we’re constantly navigating friendships to keep them afloat. Conflict with people you love and have invested yourself tend to keep you unsettled and awake at night reliving the breakdown over and over in our minds.

Secondly, he describes, “fears within.” Such fears are the second guessing, doubts, anxieties and is certainly based on the fallout with Corinth. If you are continually putting out brushfires, you will eventually get burned. Paul was up at night with his head spinning and his stomach in knots over the conflict with Corinth.

Paul faced this battle every day: outside conflicts and inside fears giving him no rest. Why not? I don’t think I would either. Relationships that fall apart coupled with inward anxiety create a perfect storm that guarantees no peace, no sanctuary, no rest. His lying awake, night after night, worrying about the friends in his church was tearing him apart, leaving him no more than a wounded warrior.

The seventeenth century theologian and historian, William Fuller, once said, “It is always darkest just before the day dawns.” If the meaning conveys that things are at their worst just before they get better, then two questions remain? How dark will it get before the light comes? And, how will God bring the light when it does come?

As if Paul was anticipating the answer, he wrote these two small words, “But God.” The shift was felt. Good news appeared like it was the rainbow stretched across the grey clouded sky.

Let’s allow those words, “But God,” to wash over ourselves for a minute. Something changed, and changed like it turned on a dime. Paul was having a few bad days, but God was about to change all of that. Paul was experiencing stressful anxiety, but God was about to bring comfort. Paul was at the end of his rope, but God provided a safety net. Paul was undergoing a worried-fueled insomnia, but God was about to bring him into peaceful rest.

Here’s the thing – God won’t be performing some miracle to deliver Paul from his trials. God is not removing Paul from his conflict, nor will he deliver him from his fears. God could, but God won’t. The truth is, he’ll do something simpler. In the end, the something unadorned will be just as powerful as a miracle, and maybe even more beautiful than a miracle.

Basing God’s action on his character, Paul describes God as one who comforts the downcast. To say it another way, when we are spiritually cold, God is the comforter blanket that brings warmth. For Paul, God comforts him by sending Titus (I told you the solution would be simple). The silent void is now filled with the return of Titus. Not only is Titus present, but he brings even better news as the Corinthians, bathing in a repentant spirit, long to see Paul. Titus’s arrival was the “But God who comforts the downcast,” as Paul says in verse 8, because you never know when simply showing up is the comfort someone has been praying for.

Not long ago I was visiting a patient. I sat in her living room listening compassionately to her stories. Finally, toward the end of the visit she confessed, saying, “Jon, do you know what I was doing before you arrived?” Since my gift is not foresight, I told her I didn’t know. She continued, “I was in my room praying that someone might come by to visit me today. I was so alone, and I felt abandoned by my family, and did not want to be by myself. I prayed to God to send me someone, then you showed up.”

I couldn’t help but reflect on my morning before this particular afternoon visit. I was trying to decide who to see and who to delay their visit for another day. This patient was a potential visit, but I kept wanting to bump her visit to the next day. The next day would have worked better for me. The next day would have made more sense for me. But something else was tugging at my heart, telling me to see her today. So I did, and in the end, and only in the end did I realize, that I was being used to be her “But God” moment. She was lonely with feelings of being abandoned and forsaken, but God answered her prayer and led me to visit her.

This morning as you make your way through contacting patients and walking into their homes and re-engaging lives, remember that there has been a moment, an hour, or even entire day or more when you have lost contact with them. Time has passed since you last saw and talked to them, and who knows what has transpired since your last visit. So keep this in mind. As you step back into their lives you just might be the “But God” moment for them where their prayer has been answered by your arrival.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

Sometimes it feels like we’re not good enough, strong enough, brave enough, or talented enough for God’s service. Even worse, sometimes we feel like we’re damaged goods, easily broken or even broken beyond repair. The truth is, we are, but we are held together by something stronger than ourselves.

Keith was one of my childhood friends. He lived about three blocks away, but maybe only a block if I cut through my neighbor’s backyard. We spent many hours at each other’s homes pretending to be going on adventures. His own long rectangular shaped backyard included a small wooded section, a shack, and a garden. While I have no memory of the plant-life in that garden, I do remember the clay jars.

You know the kind of jars I’m talking about. The dirty brown jars you can purchase at Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot or any lawn and garden store from two to fifteen dollars or more depending on size. Or better yet, they’re dirt cheap at a garage sale. Keith’s mom had a stack of them laying in the garden, right next to a small boulder-stone. Let me set the stage: two ten year old boys looking for something to do find a stack of a dozen potting plant jars next to a huge rock . . . what could possibly go wrong? After we smashed four or five of the jars, Keith’s mother bolted from her house like a greyhound racing dog bolting from a starting gate. While Keith was used to being in trouble by his mom, I wasn’t. She sent Keith to his room; she sent me home. If she told my mom, I didn’t get punished for it and I certainly never confessed my sin to my mother.

 We treated the clay jars like they were disposable, insignificant, fragile, meaningless, and cheap. To be honest, they were. Two kids raised in a throw-a-way society were handling these clay jars with the exact value we placed on them. They were a dime-a-dozen, destined for the trash anyway, so we thought. We thought wrong, but looking back on that day, we had a point.

When Paul describes the powerful moment God partners with us in ministry, he notes the imbalance. Let that sink in for a moment. God wants to work with us in his ministry. The All-Powerful holy God teams up with the frail fallibility of humanity. Mind blowing, right? It’s like God taking something of value and giving it to the insignificance of someone else. Oh, and guess what? It is.

Here is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7a, “We have this treasure in jars of clay . . . ”  

Treasures are to be safely locked up in a secure and sanctified vault where moth, rust, or thieves cannot get access. God should have taken the gospel and kept it safe and secure in heaven, next to his throne. In doing so he would have prevented it from being perverted, twisted, devalued, and destroyed. If he maintained control of the gospel in heaven, every hundred years or so, he could have removed the gospel from his heavenly vault and provided a world tour to remind us the beauty of this treasure. We could have purchased a ticket to gaze our eyes upon and marvel at this prized treasure. Instead, he freely entrusted it to us.

Here we are nothing more than a clay jar. We’re easily broken, damaged, disposed of, and insignificant as we’re just bargain-basement humans filled with flaws, shortcomings, sin, pride, and anxiety. We are fragile, both mentally and physically, not-to-mention spiritually. Some of us, if we’re honest, feel like we’re broken beyond repair. And we wonder. Why in God’s vast universe would he take the great and precious treasured gospel and give it to us to for safe keeping?

A good question, answered by Paul as he not only confirms we hold this treasure in jars of clay, but also “to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” God gives us this power of the gospel so that he can display his great work in and through us. It’s not our power, but our impotence. It’s not our strength, but our weakness. It’s not our greatness, but our insignificance. In the end when something incredible happens: God gets the credit for the work he does, not us.

Thus, it’s not about us. It never has. It’s all about God. It has always been all about God. He glorifies himself by showing his great power working through the frail and broken people as if we are clay jars. It’s called grace.

That’s how we roll. All of us are damaged goods, wounded and broken by life and situations. We’ve been wronged by people as much as we have wronged people. The scars maybe evident to all, or covered up by our masks, good works, or false pretense. But here we are the walking wounded entering people’s homes or lives to minister, to care, and to bring healing. We do that, not by our own power but through our own weakness – our own brokenness. The strength we exhibit comes from God.

Sometime back I was attending a funeral visitation for a dear friend. He was a gentle soul filled with joy, love, and grace. His nephew pulled me aside to share a story in which his deceased uncle had helped shape his perspective, a perspective he is trying to pass on to his children and grandchildren. He told me he was a young teenager when a close relative passed away. The passing was a blow to the family and they were mourning. They were hurting. In his youthful pride he told his uncle, “We need to be brave for the women.” At the time he was like thirteen years old, attempting to be the “man of the house,” convinced that being tearless was the manly and adulating behavior. His uncle gently reminded him, saying, “You know, Jesus wept at a funeral too.”

It’s not about the strength we think we have, but about the strength we have in God. It’s not about how well we hold it together, but how well God holds us together.

The late Christian song writer, Rich Mullins, may have captured it best when he wrote these words:

Well, it took the hand of God Almighty to part the waters of the sea ● But it only took one lie to separate you and me ● Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are ● And they say that one day Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky ● But I can’t even keep these thoughts of you from passing by ● Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are ■ And the Master said their faith was gonna make them mountains move ● But me, I tremble like a hill on a fault line just at the thought of how I lost you ● When you love you walk on the water, just don’t stumble on the waves ● We all want to go there something awful, but to stand there it takes some grace ● Oh, we are not as strong as we think we are ■ We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made ● Forged in the fires of human passion ● Choking on the fumes of selfish rage ● And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart ● We must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.

The truth is we’re not. We are not that strong. Such lyrics drive home to the truth of Paul’s image that we are   like fragile, disposable clay jars: easily damaged, easily demolished, easily discarded. But herein lies the good news for those who feel like they are spiritually falling apart, for maybe the point Paul is making is that God acts like the duct tape holding us together.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

I wish I could see clearly. I have trouble with blurred and double vision, especially when fatigued – I have to take my glasses off to read. Not fun. Not fun at all. I also have trouble with perspective, which often keeps me from seeing clearly as well. But don’t we all? Between my own anxiety and blinders things seem blurry or distorted. Sometimes, we just need a vision-check. My own vision-check came by a fella I nicknamed, Hank.

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Almost six years ago I was hired to preach at a local church in Scioto County. A month into my ministry, Hank hobbled into my office. Time was not kind to him as his well-worn faced aged him. His clothes hung from his frail thin body. Cancer was a major set-back, but he credited God for his healing. He was the victim of a hard life and was filled with anger and bitterness, sometimes spewing unkind words about people, some of whom were those closest to him. His bent body reflected a bent anger. On top of his head was a black cowboy hat with a thin woven leather band. He wore it everywhere he went. As he sat in my office looking at me, he promised we were going to be close friends because he and my predecessor, according to his story, were close friends. I was skeptical, filled with doubt that a friendship could be sustained between the two of us. He was angry, opinionated, and we had nothing in common. My predecessor died of cancer after a twenty-plus year ministry. My predecessor presented Hank with a Bible he cherished like it was an Olympic Gold Medal. I couldn’t compete with that memory. No, it wouldn’t work and the friction between us was real. I didn’t trust him. If I was honest, I didn’t like him very much, either. Oh we were friendly, but we weren’t friends.

Time passed. A few months later Hank hobbled into my office wearing his black cowboy hat with the think woven leather band. I expected the worst; he was going to unload on me and let me have it. I braced for the assault, only to hear his rough voice say, “Jon, I think we got off to a bad start,” then he added, “I really do want to be your friend.” And from that moment, we were. We talked more. He drove me around the county, and took me to dinner at his favorite restaurant – some gas station on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. He showed me the covered bridge made of timber from my home state of Oregon. We were friends knowing that he had my back, and in turn, I had his.

Oh, he was still angry and bitter, sometimes saying words that made me cringe or shake my head. But I was blinded and he helped me see clearer, as I started viewing Hank as my friend, not my enemy.

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Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians is really about Paul exhorting the church to reconcile their relationship with him. This is a church he started a handful of years earlier. By the time Paul writes this letter, everything he had work for had blown up. For one, a seed of resentment from Corinth was planted when Paul refused to accept pay. For us, that’s a great deal, but for a Greco-Roman world, that was almost a faux pas. They didn’t trust Paul. Secondly, an antagonistic group infiltrated the church promoting a success oriented style of ministry and Paul looked like anything but success. Loyalties to Paul and the message of the gospel he preached was in jeopardy. Writing 2 Corinthians was his attempt to call the church back to him, back to God.

By chapter five, he really starts driving home the message of the gospel in terms of reconciling relationships. To do so, he offers a vision-check in verse 16 as we no longer view people from a worldly perspective. We stop focusing on status, wealth, power, race or even build relationships around manipulation like “what I can get out of it,” instead of “what can I offer.” We stop viewing each other as enemies or competitors or as problem people, but as a new creation in Christ. Therefore, he tells us five times in verses 18-20 to be reconciled, either to God, to Paul, to each other or to all three. We call the truce. We wave the white flag of surrender. We take the hit and loss. We stop the fight and battle while laying down our arms to embrace each other in peace. No longer holding grudges, we forgive. No longer building walls, we build bridges. No longer looking for division, we seek for unity. No longer war mongering, we pursue peace. At. All. Cost.  Why? you ask? Because, as Paul says in verse 19, “. . . God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.” So in our reconciling mode we do the same: we stop counting or holding the sins of people around us against them.

Such language is so important that Paul describes this ministry of reconciliation doled out to us as if we were ambassadors sent from God to lead in reconciliation. As ambassadors, we speak and act on behalf of God. As ambassadors we have the authority to act for God. As ambassadors we do not have the right to act beyond our mandate, for Paul clarifies in the verse 20, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.” No, as ambassadors, we model reconciliation.

On a side note, those of us in Spiritual Care take the lead in this reconciliation. When we perform an eval on our patients, we probe their lives to uncover whether reconciliation with their children, family members, or neighbors is needed. Later visits hopefully uncover those needs where we can lead them to reconcile with their needed people. Clearly, nurses and aids play a huge role in this as patients often reveal deep needs to those they trust the most.

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Sometime after I shifted my profession from church oriented work to hospice, Hank’s health took a big hit. His cancer returned with a vengeance. He entered our services and once more, I was his minister. The last conversation we had was at his house. He sat in his recliner refusing to sit or sleep anywhere else. I sat down from him on his couch. Next to me was his black cowboy hat with the think woven leather band. I picked it up and put it on my head, asking him, “How do I look?” His tired, old, wrinkly face was broken by an affirming smile. “You look great,” as he chuckled. Then he added, “When I die, you can have my hat.” And sure enough, Hank was true to his word. At his memorial, his family presented me with his hat, the same black cowboy hat with the thin woven leather band I wear today.

If you were to ask me why I wear this black cowboy hat with the think woven leather band, I’ll tell you it’s for two reasons. One, it keeps my balding head warm. And two, it reminds me that almost any relationship can be reconciled. Such a reminder that my friend Hank helped me understand so that I could see clearly. 

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is Glorified!)