by Sarah Van Diest @SarahVanDiest

“And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” Hebrews 12:1b-3.

I need You, Father, so very much.

I’m struggling today. In words to a writer friend I wrote, “I think this writer’s-giant-mountain-of-a-wall is going to swallow me whole and eat me alive. That’s all.” Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m paralyzed with words of every size and color shooting through my brain and hitting the canvas of my writing like bugs splattered on the windshield. It’s a gooey, bloody mess.

I know what I want to say. I want to say that God is good. That He loves us more than we can imagine. That He has a purpose beyond our understanding for the pains we endure, if we will let Him use them. I want to tell you that it helps if our perspective is right. That our loads are lighter if we can see things from a “God’s got this” vantage point. And it’s going to be okay. Really.

Victor Frankl wrote: “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning…the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy in to triumph.” That’s what Hebrews tells us about Jesus and His ordeal on the cross: “For the joy set before him he endured the cross.” It was the anticipation of the blessings to come that the most extreme moment of pain, sadness and sorrow in all of human history was borne.

Perspective and right understanding are key.

I have known the helplessness of a hopeless situation. I have lived in foreign lands amid foreign tongues with foreign faces and foreign ways. I have felt lost and abandoned, alone and frightened. I have felt the cold hand of death reach into my lungs for the last bit of air. I have faced a fate I could not change, and found I had a choice.

Choice means our pain doesn’t have to be empty.

By the way, some declare pain is the hallmark of God’s absence, that He has left us to suffer alone. Others say the presence of pain reveals a weakness of faith, and condemn us for not trusting God enough. But in this life we will have pain, trouble and sorrow. We will suffer loss. Sometimes this life hurts! The only thing we can say with certainty about pain is that pain indicates we are still alive. Nothing else.

I knew I had a choice to either trust God or not. And though my concept of God’s overall plan at that time was more limited than it is today, I understood that when I trusted my Heavenly Father, when I believed in His love for me and His sovereignty, it pleased Him. My mind’s eye would picture His smile, like a father holding His child, and it gave me strength. I wanted to see Him smile. I wanted His heart to be filled with joy because He knew His child trusted Him. It didn’t stop the pain or change my circumstances, but it changed me.

What choice did Jesus have on the cross? Of course, because He was/is God, He could have chosen to come down from it, but that was not an option because He had decided to do the Father’s will, so what choice did He have? He had the choice to be the victim or to look ahead to the glory yet to come. Either would have been legitimate choices, but only one was good and only one had imbedded in it the strength He needed to stay on that cross. He chose to scorn the shame of the victim and look ahead to the joy to come.

Part of the lie we believe is that becoming the victim in our hopeless situations will secure our comfort and safety. Somehow we believe that giving weight to our circumstances and allowing them to rule over us will bend them to treat us better. We put our faith in the thing that is hurting us, giving it reign over our lives, and ignore and discount the choice that leads to freedom and hope.

It really comes down to this: do we believe that with Him we can get through this? Do we believe God’s got this? And I mean that in an overarching kind of way, because I’m not saying trusting God means we won’t lose something or someone we love. We may. Even our very lives may be lost. What I’m saying is that there is an eternal perspective that holds our feet firmly on the foundation of our Father’s faithfulness. He will not leave nor forsake us. He will search for us and find us. He will never abandon us. Never. He will reward those who diligently seek Him. This is our hope and joy set before us.

There is no situation where hope is fully gone. A hopeless situation is only hopeless if the choice has been made to ignore hope’s presence. Pain is endured, but a perspective like what Jesus had, and like what Frankl wrote about, gives strength to trust God through it. There is joy to come. There are rewards to be had. There is victory over the enemy. There is life!

So, let us run the race before us, set our eyes on Jesus, on hope, on truth, for there is joy to come!

Educated as a teacher, Sarah taught school for nearly 20 years. As a young woman, she lived in China amid the rice paddies and water buffalo near Changsha, and then later taught English in Costa Rica for four years and raised her two sons. 

Sarah is married for the second time, the mother of 2 boys and the step-mother to 3 more. She and her husband, David, work together in their agency The Van Diest Literary Agency. Her full name is Sarah Ruth Gerke Van Diest. She’s 5’5” and cuts her hair when stress overtakes her. 

She is a freelance editor (including a New York Times and USA Today bestseller), blogger (The Write Conversation) and writer for hire. Her first book releases with NavPress in 2018. 

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