Out of the Cave by Chris Hodges

Author:Chris Hodges
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2021-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11, emphasis added)

Most striking here, at least to me, is that Paul didn’t question God about what was going on in his life. His focus remained on what he had in Christ, not what he lacked circumstantially. I would look through those prison bars and wonder, Did I miss something, Lord? Where are you? Why are you allowing this to happen? Paul kept an eternal perspective, allowing the hope of heaven to clarify his purpose, not his temporary, earthly circumstances.

After questioning God, I’d probably start looking for someone else to blame, as so many of us do when circumstances crash. When we blame others, though, we give up the power we have to change. Carl Rogers, a pioneering twentieth-century psychologist said, “The only person who cannot be helped is the person who blames others.”1 Accepting responsibility—not for what happened to us but for our response to it—is essential for exercising faith and sustaining spiritual joy.

Paul could easily have focused on being falsely accused and sentenced to death. He could have obsessed about his dirty, dank cell and the terrible food he received occasionally. He could have complained about being chained to someone watching his every move.

But Paul didn’t complain about anything.

Instead, he chose to look beyond the distraction of his painful circumstances (2 Corinthians 4:16–18). He refused to doubt what he knew was true eternally because of the discomfort he experienced temporarily. Short-term suffering could not shake his bedrock faith in God’s power, promises, and goodness. His jail term didn’t have to make sense to him because Paul knew God ultimately had things under control—no matter how out of control he might have felt at times.

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