Faith in the Wilderness: Never Lost
Editor’s Note: This post is excerpted from Faith in the Wilderness: Words of Exhortation from the Chinese Church, a collection of letters from Chinese leaders that will awaken readers to the reality of the gospel—the ground of our hope—in the midst of darkness. Faith in the Wilderness is edited by Hannah Nation and Simon Liu (Kirkdale Press, 2022).
Han Baolong, a Chinese pastor living in Canada, once said, “We suffer from different things in our lives and we believe God’s will is behind all of them.” Sometimes God’s will is known to the person who goes through the suffering, but sometimes it is not, nor can it be. As you suffer, you may or may not understand what is happening to you. Pastor Han also said, “When we undergo suffering, we need to seek God’s will and accept his sovereignty. We should not interpret what others are going through, nor should we force our thoughts onto them.” We are limited in what we know.
When people suffer, when we face the unknown that only God knows, we should not ask why, but how. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children” (Deuteronomy 29:29). We should not ask why suffering comes, but how we can comfort and support others in its midst. In the middle of a pandemic—whether in China, India, Italy, the United States, Europe, or Africa—Christians must only ask: “How can we bring comfort to others?” When we do not try to play the role of God, we take up the role of God’s servants.
When suffering happens, ask God to grant you power to endure, to produce perseverance through suffering. Let those around see that you are still able to find joy in God. If suffering is caused by sin; repent. If it is a trial from God, seek his good purpose, and manifest his righteousness through living out this purpose in suffering. If it is Satan’s attack, rise up by the victory of God’s Son on the cross and wage war against the devil.
In this vast universe, there are many more things we don’t know than those we do. We ought not lightly explain others’ suffering, jump to conclusions, or categorize it as “God’s discipline” or “the consequence of forsaking God.” Let us be especially careful to not be other people’s God. The Bible is silent about the suffering of Elimelech and Naomi.
The years of suffering were extremely hard for Naomi. With the loss of her loved ones, death instantly and completely overturned her youth. Her life was redefined. People would henceforth call Naomi “widow.” Years of toil and hard work had resulted in emptiness. Today similar devastation leads us to say, “Life is hopeless. My life is finished. All my hard work cannot give me courage.”
These losses do not necessarily mean our lives are failures. Beethoven lost his hearing, but composed his famous Symphony No. 9. Helen Keller lost her hearing and sight as a child, but she became a world-renowned writer. Losing something does not mean losing everything. Christians have not lost everything when we encounter loss, for although we have lost what is visible, there remains something invisible which we cannot lose. There are many things you have never experienced, never thought of, and never seen waiting ahead.
We who have God ought to have a deeper understanding of loss. We are ready for all loss, so that we may be able to proclaim what we believe: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” ( Job 1:21). Neither gain nor loss affects my relationship with God.
Because we have God, in the midst of suffering we may pray, “O Lord God, you are my Alpha; my Omega; my shepherd. Lord, you are still my God.” God is your greatest treasure. You will never lose him whom your eyes have never seen. You have never lost, because you have never lost your relationship with God, nor will your worship of God be affected. Naomi understood that the Lord her God had cared for his land and the people of his covenant. Suffering had been endured for a short time. Suffering is not God’s ultimate intention, but it is a means to accomplish his purpose. Through suffering, God’s people learned that God cared for Naomi’s small family. Naomi returned to the God she loved, because he was still her God. She had indeed lost much, yet she had not lost God.
Whatever happens, you have Christ. If he is with you, you have everything. He laid down his life for us to win back the eternal life we had lost, so that in him we may have abundant life! “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). When you have God and realize that he is everything, you will say, “I can lose everything but God, for his love is better than life.” The love of God is beyond time and space. Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ loved us. In Elimelech’s days, God loved his people. Today, this unchanging God loves everyone.
We see the loving work of God in Naomi’s story. One small family was nothing in the midst of a chaotic era, a national calamity, a time when people did not care about others and fled for their own lives. Yet this miserable, no-name family was cared for by the God of the covenant. He turned this little family around in the midst of misery. We rejoice for the people of the covenant who have lost everything but still have God.
This is the redemptive history of God. How blessed are those who trust in God. Although small and worthless in the eyes of other people, God valued a small family and visited them in their misery. God’s actions are rich in love and mercy. Our covenant-keeping God loves his people. We have never lost, because we have him.
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