Have you ever wanted to go to a secluded place and scream at the top of your lungs, "God, why are You taking so long?" I have. Everything about my life has seemed too slow. My last name even means "gradual." Some people might look at my life and say, "You are blessed and successful." But I waited a long time to see that fruit. Nothing came quickly. My first job lasted eight difficult years, and the pay was horrible. Then, at age 31, the ministry I worked for imploded. After that, I went through lengthy seasons of dryness. I often wanted to quit.
Everywhere I go, I meet Christians who were hurt in a church or wounded by the words and actions of other believers. Some people become bitter because of these experiences. Others throw up their hands and give up on church altogether. And a few even leave the faith. The typical scenarios of "church hurt" might include these:
During the apostle Paul's second missionary journey, he was determined to go from the Galatian region to a place called Bithynia, in what is now northern Turkey, near the Black Sea. There was nothing wrong with Paul going to that place—the people there needed the gospel. And yet Acts16:7 says: "…they were trying to go to Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them." This must have been frustrating. The fire of the Holy Spirit burned in Paul. He wanted to tell more Gentiles about the salvation of Jesus. But the Spirit put on the brakes.
Just before the prophet Elisha died, he put the king of Israel to a test. Elisha told Joash to take a bow and arrows. Then he put his hands on Joash's hands and asked him to shoot an arrow out the window as a prophetic sign of God's coming victory over the enemy. "You will defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have destroyed them," Elisha promised (see 2 Kings 13:17b, NASB 1995). But then Elisha tested Joash further. He told him to take some of the arrows and strike the ground. Following those orders, Joash half-heartedly tapped the ground three times and stopped, and Elisha got angry.
Shortly after Elijah was carried to heaven in a fiery chariot, a group of young prophets asked his successor, Elisha, to go with them to build a new living quarters. While one of the men was cutting down a tree, the blade of his axe fell in the water and sank into the murky depths of the Jordan River. The construction project came to an abrupt stop. This was before the days of flashlights and sonar devices. They couldn't stop by Home Depot for a new axe. These guys were in trouble.
In early December I hosted a men's retreat at a camp near my home in Georgia. We hiked four miles, enjoyed great Southern food, enjoyed fellowship around an outdoor fireplace, slept in bunkhouses, worshipped and prayed together, and listened to several of the younger guys share short sermons. Because of the relaxed atmosphere, many of the guys opened up and shared that they were feeling battle-weary.
Some Christians are notorious for downplaying the Holy Spirit. Many churches lock Him in a box of tradition or just ignore Him. Others treat the third person of the Trinity as if He magically appeared in the book of Acts like a genie out of a bottle and then vanished after the early church was established. And strict cessationists deny that the Spirit works in miraculous ways today. Yet Luke, who recorded the account of Pentecost in the book of Acts, paid close attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel that bears his name.
When I visited Egypt a few years ago, a pastor from a church in Cairo told me about an outreach he had organized in a rural community. Medical professionals from his church set up a clinic in a village and advertised that they would be providing free care. When the doctors and nurses arrived at the location, residents were already lined up for the complimentary consultations.
My life was transformed many years ago when I was filled with the Holy Spirit as a young man. I had read in the book of Acts about people who were baptized in the Spirit, and I noticed that they always spoke in tongues—whether it was the disciples in the upper room on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Gentile believers who met in the house of Cornelius in Acts 10 or the 12 Ephesian disciples who prayed with the apostle Paul in Acts 19. It intrigued me that Paul, an intellectual guy who was trained as a rabbi, told the Corinthians: "I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all" (1 Cor. 14:18).
British pastor Charles Spurgeon, who lived from 1834 to 1892, was known as the "Prince of Preachers," but he was candid about his struggle with depression. That's one reason his written sermons are so popular today. He didn't pretend to be perfect, and his admission of human weakness made his words all the more powerful.
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