Cedric Fisher: "earnestly contending for the faith."

Ever Think of Blaming God and Giving Up?

There were times when the thought of giving up tried to overwhelm me. It was a difficult enduring the infamous  church splits, injustices, slanderous gossip, poverty, and broken trust by numerous people that we thought were friends. There were many more afflictions and harsh situations that I will not mention because they pale in comparison to what the Believers are suffering and have suffered in other nations. I only state these few incidents to help folks understand that I do not speak from a life on easy street.

Being in church leadership can result in some very harsh experiences. It is not fair and other than being  a grumble pot of negativity the only other option is to complain to God about the unfairness of it. Really? The fact is that life is not fair, people are not fair, adverse church situations are caused by unfair people and those situations do not always end fairly. There are few people in Christianity with the character and integrity to stand firm for what is right no matter what the cost. It will leave a pastor alone with no one but his family console him. They cannot minister to his grief, but he must minister to them in his grief.

It is a chaotic world with many disordered individuals who are much more responsive to satanic influence than they are to the Holy Spirit. They are not spiritually stable or even clean, so they can be used as tools of Satan to harm God’s people. However, they dwell among us without compassion and assemble with us as spots (spiritual lepers) among our feasts of charity (Jude 1:12).

But becoming bitter and soured with self-pity, and turning to the world system for the substance to ease the pain and misery of unhealed wounds, and giving up, is wrong for one great reason. It is blaming God for something that Satan and/or satanically influenced people did. If you want to talk about unfairness, that’s about as unfair as it gets.

God did not promise us an easy stroll through life until we reach heaven’s gates. He warned about tribulation, about ungodly people, about satanic attacks, about personal failures, and more. But He said that He would always be with us. But if we push Him away because we are hurt and sullen from we suffering, then He cannot help us.

The fact is if you are right now in a place of discontentment because you think that you paid too great a price to obey God, Satan has you right where he wants you. He has you dangling over a chasm of dark self-pity mixed with petulant resentment toward God and has handed you a knife to cut the rope.

Please bear with me as I present some clear and piercing truth. A true Christian’s life consists of one battle followed by another. We live in constant victory because we win most of them. The ones we lose we submit to God and He gives us the victory. There is a vast difference between winning and being handed a victory. While both can build your faith, the former does much more to build faith than the latter.

However, we want God to hand us every victory. He tells us to fight the good fight of faith. But the influence of the Prosperity Gospel has today either openly or subliminally contaminated our belief system. It leads us to believe that God would do all the fighting and win while we have a good time. We can go down that road to the point where we believe God should do everything for us as a supernatural puppeteer, pulling all our strings and leading us woodenly through life. That’s not going to happen no matter how much the lying teachers claim that it is.

Beloved, He called me to preach, but He does not move my lips and tongue or vibrate my vocal cords. He called Jonah to prophesy to a wicked people, but as if he was an autonomous prophet, Jonah tried sailing away from God. We are called and chosen, and that is God’s part. Our part is to be faithful. To be faithful means that we must fight the good fight of faith. The weapons of our warfare are not things we shout about in a church meeting or brag about when everything is going well. They are what we launch against the enemy of God and His people each time he raises his flag in our territory.

There is no victory without a battle even when God hands it to you. Someone must fight—either Him or you. There is no battle without wounds. We are too human and flawed to consistently fight a perfect fight of faith. But we also have the human flaw of magnifying the wound so that it is larger than the victory. Then we infect it with self-pity and blame God because we have no balm or bandage. He has the balm and bandage, but He also has some fire for us. Some wounds can only be healed by fire.

Here is an illustration may help to understand. History records that in certain cultures, long before the discovery of infection-fighting medicine, people did not know how to cure an infection. They often had to cut out the infected part or even remove a member to keep the infection from spreading. However, someone discovered that searing the wound would kill the infection. They knew how to treat a burn and bring it to healing, but not an infection.

Sometimes we need fire before we get the balm and the bandage. God will not overpower our free moral agency to heal the infection of our self-pity and resentment, but He will sear it with fire if we fall into His care in complete surrender and faithfulness.

The easiest thing to do is to complain and give up. It does not require any skill for a fighter to lose by quitting.

“But I’m tired of fighting and tired of the suffering.”

We all get that way, but blaming God is not the path to overcoming those sentiments. Instead, we must trust Him to be as faithful and just as His word declares. He said, “I AM” and He is.

Instead of making our light afflictions (compared to martyrdom) huge and impossible mountains, turn them into prayer requests that Christ will intercede for us before God.

I read once where someone wrote, “People stumble over pebbles, not mountains.”

Yes, we cow down before mountains when we should look up higher and bow before God. Don’t give up—give in to God’s love and care.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” – Romans 8:18

4 Comments

  1. Linda

    Dear Cedric,

    I know exactly how you feel! I have a bag of similar stories to tell and am sure that many do. Of course the devil plants these tares to destroy God’s harvest. How I long for a group of newly saved souls! The enthusiasm, the teachableness, the hunger for the Bible, to grow, to worship, to serve, the humbleness, the love and joy and excitement! And to see that messed up is heartbreaking, not to mention the personal agony you mentioned. It brings me to tears. In my own life, it really has been my close relationship with God that keeps me from so many such temptations. I just love Him too much. It surely ain’t the ‘love of the saints’ that I am surrounded by, or the exemplary role models in the modern church, or the admiration of the worldly, or so many other things like that that keeps me strong! Most of the time He is all I have and He gets me through so many tough places. And I myself have to be strong for so many people. My life has been so hard so much for a long time that martyrdom has a sweet sound to it. Don’t worry, it doesn’t count if you do it yourself! But I know the days are coming.

    And I know that so much of the organized church is structured that way. It’s not the real ‘church.’ It’s just this organizational structure, a hierarchical power structure revolving around money and power and ego just like the system of the world and all its many mini harlots within it. Since most true believers don’t meet in homes, at least in the USA, we are like vines hanging on to this structure so that we have a place to congregate. But oh the woes that are within those walls! Even the early church was plagued with false teachers and abuse by them, as John’s epistles show. It’s sort of like that parable where the wheat and tares are mixed together. But in general I feel that times are so tough right now in so many ways because we are on the brink of the darkest hour. And of course after that comes the dawn. It’s that last stretch in the race before the finish line that is the hardest. The temptation to just ‘throw in the towel’ is overwhelming. But that’s when you are just a few inches away from the victor’s crown, the worst time, after all that running, to quit.

    I know how bad things are going to get. The storm will engulf the whole world and we are the target. Even this is the calm before the storm. It will all change quickly and life will truly never be the same as we once knew it. It won’t matter anymore if we had a house or not, if we have retirement funds or not. (And I have neither!) All that will matter is what is in our heavenly bank account. When all hell breaks loose, the material things won’t matter to anyone else either. Only they won’t have that ‘bank account’ in heaven, or that peace and calm and love that we do. They will be in a panic about their eternal destination (at least sooner or later). But first comes the false peace.

    What comes to my mind often are these scenes like in Titanic where the ship was going down, it was inevitable. Sort of like our planet. These four guys were on deck playing the violin calmly as all manner of chaos broke loose around them. No one’s destiny changed. They just decided they would rather play the violin instead of running to and fro in a mad frenzied panic. In our case, we know our destination and it’s heaven. We just have to rest in Him, relax, enjoy the fellowship of our relationship with God, worship Him and honor Him. That is our hiding place, our source of everything, and all that will matter in the end will be our loyalty to Him. Like the only treasure sparkling in dark surroundings. There was also a movie about the Holocaust called the Pianist. It was similar in that way where a guy escaped to make music while the world fell apart around him. Similarly, our refuge is in God’s wings.

    One thing to remember is that the bigger the cross we bear, the bigger the crown we will wear. And dying to self is emphasized for a reason in God’s Word. There are many secrets of victory in that counter intuitive act. But like so many other things in there, people just don’t want to hear it. If you truly die to self, it won’t matter anymore what people think of you. It won’t matter how much stuff you have to show off, or how successful you were in the world’s standards, or so many other things. Some of them are superficial while others are the flesh or something else we are better off without. But the more we die to self and surrender to Him, the more Jesus can take over. When He does, we start to look like Him in our actions. We are obsessed with bringing glory to God, like Jesus. As the bride, we bring glory to the Godhead and point people to Jesus. We reflect Him and they are either drawn to Him or away. I see this both in and out of the church.

    I know, it hurts in so many ways. But all we can do is forgive and keep the door open. In the end, all that will matter is how much we reflected, magnified, and glorified the Lord. That is all we can control. Love God with all our being and love our brother and neighbor. Both now and later, He is our comfort.
    Take refuge in Him!

    Love,
    Linda

    • C.H. Fisher

      I revised the article because I shared too much about our past struggles. My goal was to reach some really discouraged Believers that are in despair. Pastors are quitting, and so are numerous other leaders that have been through many hardships for simply trying to present truth. It is very taxing to be a pastor during such a time of apostasy. My heart is compassionate for these leaders and their families.

      • Linda

        I don’t think you shared too much. Sharing that you have been through that will encourage someone else who is going through the same struggles. It also shows that you are being real with us, not just like some smiling cardboard prop in a website window. That is why we can relate to others who struggle and we feel for them and want to help encourage them.

        Like that refiners fire, or all those other examples, beautiful jewels like diamonds are only made under intense heat and pressure, gold is refined by fire to remove the dross, pearls by adding bits of salt, etc. Sometimes it is the only way to grow and be pruned. Whatever we lose here for Jesus is multiplied into a reward much bigger in heaven!

        “They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.” John 16; 2
        “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for the sake of My name will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.” Matthew 19; 30

        : )

  2. Nancy

    Never!

    John 6:67, “Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?”
    6:68, “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”
    6:69, “And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”

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