Romanian Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, a man who suffered for Christ more than anyone else I have ever met, said that it is not how much we endure that is important. It is how much we love. Without joy, I discovered, it becomes very difficult to love as we should. Our love becomes wooden and dutiful. True joy, which encourages our love for others, can only become deeply genuine when our love for ourselves is rediscovered and our love for God is re-enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit revealing His great love for us.
I have discovered that we get glimpses of that revelation of love in a myriad of different and often unexpected ways. It is those who care enough to come into the valley with us that reveal the most love.
The judgment of the world is cynical and is reflected in the loveless judgment of derision from people who stand looking down the steep valley sides at us. We become despised. Those who sit in judgment bay for our blood in their judgment of us. They long to see our joy stolen, our self-worth destroyed, and our ability to love ourselves and others vanquished further.
The judgment of God is the judgment of love. He loves us in spite of ourselves, in spite of our numerous shortcomings and sin. He knows what it is to be despised, rejected, and in the depths of the most excruciating physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. He knows what it is to have the weight of all our shortcomings and sin upon His own shoulders.
And from that place, that pitiful canyon of a grave of sorrow, that dark place of deep and debilitating depression, that place of rejection and complete loss, I have discovered that He is able to burst us out of the dark “chrysalis” so that, butterfly like, we emerge, because He, Himself, experienced that place of death before us; and He emerged from the grave triumphant, complete, and in glory!
We are told four times in Revelation that we as His Church are the “bride of Christ”—beautiful, radiant, made pure. We will only overcome as “the Bride” in the challenging days ahead—many of which could be very dark—if we can understand these Biblical truths profoundly. “They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, by the Word of their testimony; and they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”[8]
I share this testimony of overcoming in order to breathe fresh courage into you so that together, in the difficult days ahead, we can overcome the dark forces that wish to steal our joy and render us ineffective in loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others. Together, we will “overcome, and as we hope in God, we will renew our strength and soar on wings like eagles and run and not grow weary, and walk and not be faint.[9] I pray this truth for each and every one of us.
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Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.