When the Future You Planned for Never Comes

Article by Bryan Stoudt
Pastor, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Before we turned 32, my wife and I said goodbye to our golden years — and to the second half we had hoped for. The one where our kids, deeply committed to the Lord, finally grow up and leave college, giving us long-awaited margin and freedom to serve the church more deeply, relocate, and travel together.

Our precious son Matthew has autism. His diagnosis changed our family’s future forever. Matthew will not go off to school, get married, or do all the other things we typically hope for our children. At a time where we were hoping to launch him into the world for Christ, we need to have him declared legally “incompetent” so we can make decisions on his behalf. But the hardest losses are unseen, and we still grieve not truly knowing, and being known by, the person we thought he’d be.

While we know this is God’s best for us, it’s still very hard and can bring us to tears on any given day, often without warning. The next season of our lives is going to be messy, unpredictable, and far more restrictive than we imagined on the day he was born.

We know we are not alone. Many of you are facing your own challenges as you look ahead. A failed, or cold, marriage. Physical limitations that make life painful and slow. Children who aren’t walking with Jesus. Aging parents who now need you to parent them. Work that pays the bills but offers little else. Yet even if the journey ahead looks bleak, God invites us to find deep joy in him, often through stories like Job’s.

What to Do When All Goes Wrong
We can’t be sure how old Job was when calamity found him, but he was old enough to have ten children, and be known as “the greatest of all the people of the east” (Job 1:3). He was on top of the world until disasters struck, and he wasn’t. In a matter of minutes, he lost his property and wealth (Job 1:15–17), children (Job 1:19), health (Job 2:7), and his wife’s support (Job 2:9). All that remained were his life, and God. His second half wasn’t going to be anything like his first.

But Job’s life offers us massive hope when our own futures seem to veer off course. Here are three lessons to increase our joy in God, even when storm clouds loom on our horizon.

1. Don’t look back and obsess about why you’re suffering.
When our future looks grim, it’s easy to look back and become consumed with why we’re suffering. To question whether better choices might have led to a different, happier path forward.

After Matthew’s painful diagnosis, I wondered if stubborn defects in my character had played a part in his condition. At the time, I had just finished seminary and still had a fairly academic faith. Did I need a serious dose of reality — in the form of Matthew’s autism — to prepare me for the pastorate? Day and night, new possibilities pressed in on my conscience and made a dark future feel even darker.

Job, “blameless and upright,” certainly did not cause his suffering (Job 1:1). But he and his friends didn’t know that, and they tortured themselves trying to determine what went wrong as they faced his new reality. When suffering derails our future, we should repent of any known sin and consider that God may be disciplining us. Usually, though, we simply don’t know why we’re suffering. We’re not supposed to, which frees us to rest in God’s sovereign care.

2. Remember that God doesn’t owe us the future we wanted.
Like I did, many of us quietly assume our second halves will glide toward a predictable, carefree retirement. When God rewrites our story, we can get angry and demand a rationale. God has never fully explained Matthew’s autism to us, and he never fully explained Job’s suffering to him. He probably won’t fully explain yours — at least this side of glory — either. He doesn’t owe us that.

After the initial shock of our son’s diagnosis passed, the implications for our future began to sink in. We felt despondent as we realized Matthew would never get married, have children, or possess the ability to share his heart with us. Overwhelmed with these realities, my wife took a weekend away and read through the entire book of Job. As she reached the part where God shows up, her perspective began to change.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38:4)

God reminded my wife she was a creature who simply couldn’t comprehend God’s purposes for Matthew, or why our future wouldn’t follow the usual script. While God didn’t change the forecast, he transformed my wife’s perspective on it by reorienting her toward his majesty and loving care. When we truly learn that God is both sovereign and good, we can open our hands, without resentment, to the future of his choosing rather than our own.

3. Bring your confusing, frustrating future before the King.
As we truly come to terms with the limitations God places on our future, it’s natural for our thoughts and emotions to bounce all over the place. I remember the day we discovered Matthew’s yearly therapy costs would approach half of my salary. And then, learning our insurance company wouldn’t cover them. In one moment, I would experience deep anger and resentment toward God, then in the next a desperate hunger for forgiveness and faith.

In his distress, Job accused God of wronging him and withholding justice (Job 19:6). But in the next breath, he erupts with this beautiful confession:

“I know that my Redeemer lives,
     and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
     yet in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25–26)

When we’re struggling with the rocky path God has placed before us, we don’t need to pretend we don’t struggle. God invites us to bring our sorrows and confusion to our Father. As Paul Miller puts it, “The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God.”

The Coming of the Lord
You may be thinking, Job’s suffering was worse than mine, but his story had a happy ending. God gave him back everything he lost. That’s never going to happen for me. You may be right. Often, God orchestrates deep losses that are never restored in our lifetime. That’s where we need to look beyond Job’s story — and frankly, our own stories — to Jesus.

Jesus endured unparalleled suffering and shame by keeping his focus squarely on “the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). His unhappy ending wasn’t really the end. And your second half, no matter how unhappy, won’t be the final word for you, either.

While we persevere in suffering like Job (James 5:11), we’re waiting with him for “the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7–9), when God will transform the future we’re dreading and everything that caused it. One day soon, I’m going to have a long, heartfelt talk with Matthew, and the sorrows still ahead will fade away. In the twinkling of an eye, your bleak future will be transformed, too. Can you picture it?

At that time, as C.S. Lewis puts it, we’ll begin “Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
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What Comes First: My Obedience to Jesus or My Joy in Jesus?

Interview with John Piper:our dear man of GOD 

How is my obedience connected to my joy? It’s a question today from Jonathan. “Hi, Pastor John. I’m a seminary student in South Africa. My question is about Christian Hedonism. What a deep and powerful thing enjoying God is. God used this greatly in my conversion!

“After a couple of years, however, my joy in God grew very dim. Not only my joy, but also my contentment and prizing of God above all else — a most joyful state — disappeared. This is especially true when I fall into sin. I feel sin blinds me to who God is and thus I don’t enjoy him for who he is because I can’t see him for who he is. Is that true? And how much of our joy in Christ is only achievable and possible in a state of robust obedience?”

Joy and Obedience

I’m going to say things a little differently than Jonathan, but first let me affirm his insight. When we are living in disobedience to Christ, our joy in him will be minimal or nonexistent, depending on the depth and duration of the disobedience. That’s true. You might say our greatest enjoyment of Christ can be enjoyed only in a robust state of obedience. I think that’s true.

“If we treat obedience as something we do first and then joy in Jesus follows, we will have turned obedience into a work of the law.” Tweet Share on Facebook

But I think it’s important to penetrate into the relationship between obedience and joy a little more deeply. Let’s not stop at simply saying, “If you obey Jesus, your joy will be greater.” If we leave it at that, we won’t really see clearly what the nature of obedience is and its relationship to joy and Christ.

I would ask Jonathan, or anybody, “Do you think that obedience to Jesus is distinct from enjoying Jesus?” In other words, is it accurate to think of obeying him as one thing, and then, as a result of doing that, this other thing happens called “enjoying him”? It’s really not like that, is it? Why not?

Well first, we are commanded to enjoy him, to “delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4 and elsewhere). We must rejoice in the Lord. That obedience is enjoyment of God, not just a cause of enjoyment.

Second, all Christ-honoring obedience is rooted in our treasuring of Jesus, our enjoying of Jesus, so that it wouldn’t be accurate to say that enjoying Jesus is only the result of obedience. In fact, joy is a part of obedience, the cause of obedience, the root of obedience.

Losing Sight of Christ

So what Jonathan is saying is not at all wrong; it’s only half or maybe a third of the picture. He’s stressing the utterly necessary truth that whenever we are walking in disobedience, our joy is going to be limited, even canceled. That’s true.

“Our greatest enjoyment of Christ can be enjoyed only in a robust state of obedience.” Tweet Share on Facebook

You can see it especially in John 14:21–23, where Jesus says, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21).

In other words, there’s a correlation between our loving Jesus and keeping his commandments and the clarity and sweetness of the manifestation that we have of Jesus and the Father in our hearts. Jesus says, “I will manifest myself to him.” He says this to those who are loving him and walking in fellowship with him and keeping his words.

Those manifestations of the preciousness and sweetness and power and reality and presence and beauty and worth of Jesus will be forfeited when we are loving other things more than Jesus, and not keeping his word. That’s true. That’s the truth that Jonathan is seeing and emphasizing.

He has experienced the loss of joy, and of the intimate, sweet manifestations of Christ to his soul because he’s walked in sin. That’s true; that’s what will happen.

Pathway to Obedience

But, there’s another side to this. If we miss it, there will be no way out for Jonathan. How’s he going to get out of this? Because if he thinks simply in terms of “I’ve got to obey so that I can enjoy,” he’ll never get out.

Because seeing Jesus as satisfying and experiencing him as precious is the pathway to obedience, not just the result of obedience. You can’t obey first in order to enjoy if the enjoyment of him is the path to obedience.

If we treat obedience as something we do first and then all joy in Jesus follows, we will have turned obedience into a work of the law, or a legal external performance that has in it no Christ-exalting worth and therefore will not result in true enjoyment of Jesus.

All Christ-exalting, gospel-rooted obedience is the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5). Obedience comes from faith, and faith is a seeing and savoring of the truth and beauty and worth of Jesus in the gospel. Therefore, faith, specifically what Paul calls in Philippians 1:25 “the joy of faith,” is the root of all Christ-exalting obedience, not just the fruit.

So by all means, Jonathan, cease from all outward sin. Cease. But let the main battle of your life be not just against outward actions that have to change, but mainly against inward blindness that needs to be overcome with fresh glimpses of the glory of Christ. Then the new obedience will not be a tribute to your willpower, but a tribute to the beauty of Christ that has broken the power of the deceitfulness of sin.

Where the Battle Lies

Jonathan has been walking in disobedience because of the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13; Ephesians 4:22). Sin is telling lies to him. It is saying that the path of disobedience will produce more pleasure. It won’t. It’s a lie.

“All Christ-exalting, gospel-rooted obedience is the obedience of faith.” Tweet Share on Facebook

The pleasures are fleeting (Hebrews 11:25). They are shallow. So the battle to be fought in Jonathan’s heart, in all of our hearts, is not just how to stop doing bad things so that we can enjoy Jesus. No, no, no, no, no. The battle is how to stop believing false things.

By all means, forsake bad behaviors. But mainly the battle is to look to Jesus. Look to all that God is for you in him, and pray for eyes to see his all-satisfying beauty and worth, so that you rest in him and are so satisfied that the root of sin is severed, and you walk in obedience.

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No Soul Is Too Far Gone

Article by Francis Chan
Pastor, San Francisco, California


My teenage daughter and I burst into tears in worship last weekend. One of our pastors was preaching about the cross. Ellie and I were overcome with emotion as he described Christ absorbing our sin and enduring the wrath of God, all on our behalf.

Why? Why were we weeping with joy and wonder while others felt nothing? Our weeping was a gift from God.

Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3–6)

As we heard the story of Good Friday again that Sunday, we could have felt nothing — blind, dark, unbelieving — but God showed up in our hearts again with light.

Beg God for Them
I remember the first time I climbed deep into a cave. Until that day, I had no idea what “pitch dark” really meant. I could hear the voice of my friend who was right next to me, but I couldn’t see him. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

Then my friend turned on his flashlight. Everything changed. Darkness was gone, and the cave was visible and beautiful. This is what the apostle Paul describes in his letter. We all walk in complete spiritual darkness unless God decides to shine his light on us. In some mysterious way, God shines light in a person’s heart so that he instantly sees the beauty of the gospel. No amount of human effort can produce this. Salvation is a miracle of God.

Many of us would say that we believe this theological truth, but our actions betray us, revealing just how much we trust in people, speeches, and events. On more than one occasion, people have begged me to speak to their lost friends, believing that my words would make the difference. Too often, I have granted their wish (rather than correcting their theology), and tried desperately to come up with the perfect words to talk their friends into falling in love with Jesus. Do you see yet how ridiculous this is?

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan has blinded these people. Apart from God’s working, our begging someone to see the beauty of Christ is as pointless as begging a blind man to enjoy the beauty of a sunset. Do we direct our begging, first and foremost, to God?

My Thirty-Year Prayer
Jesus tells us the parable about a persistent widow to remind us that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). There is tremendous power in perseverant prayer. God is not like us; he is not bothered by his children asking for the same thing over and over. He is pleased by the faith demonstrated when we pray and pray for someone to be saved.

When I love particular people deeply, it’s natural to persistently pray for them. I think it would actually require more effort to refrain from praying for them. My best friend in college decided that he didn’t want to follow Jesus. It broke my heart. Ken and I went our separate ways, and our lives went in opposite directions. I never stopped praying for him though — I couldn’t. Whenever Ken’s name would pop into my mind, prayer was my natural reflex.

Two years ago, I was speaking in Seattle where Ken lived. I invited him to the event so we could reconnect. We graduated from high school in 1985. After thirty years of prayer, God decided to shine his light on his heart. Suddenly Jesus looked beautiful to him and he couldn’t believe that he didn’t see it all this time. A few weeks later, Ken and his wife flew down to San Francisco, and I baptized them. I can’t express what a gift that was. He is one of the few people I have prayed for consistently for thirty years — a small price to pay to be with him for the next thirty million.

No One Is Too Lost
No soul is too far gone for God to bring back. No heart is too hard for God to soften. No son or daughter is too lost for God to rescue. Keep praying for God to do what only he can.

When we understand the consequences of rejecting Christ, and we are filled with love for another human being, persistent prayer should be the natural response. To this day, I still have questions about how the decreed will of God meshes with the effectiveness of my persistent prayers. For now, I’m more than content to obey and pray. Though I’m still uncertain how it works, I have seen it work. Meditate with me on Luke 18, trust the words of Christ, and then pray with sincerity and expectation.

If you can see the riches you have in Christ, take time to thank God with all of your being. He has given us the greatest treasure we could receive. He has “shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

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