Glad Tidings and Cups of Bitterness

I was recently in Colorado Springs, speaking to some ministry leaders. As a friend and I drove past the complex of Ted Haggard's former megachurch, New Life, our conversation turned to various failings we've each witnessed in recent months at other large ministries.

As I young pastor, I believe it's healthy to reflect on such failures. I'd rather be a janitor in God's kingdom than rise to influence and disgrace his name.

The next day, when I returned home, I found myself deeply discouraged. Actually, depressed might be the better word. I was supposed to be preparing Christmas sermons about joy, peace, and glad tidings, but all I felt was grief, agony, despair—not only at those specific failures, but also at the gleaming Colorado Springs buildings I visited, the seeming gap between the wealthiest Church in world history (ours) and the New Testament church. Adding to my melancholy was my own seeming inability to lead myself or the ministries I serve as close to Christ's words as I'd like.

Godly grief

There is grief in serving Christ. Sometimes we grieve for persecuted believers or struggling ministries. Often, it's our own inadequacies, our unfulfilled desires to reach more souls, bear more fruit, or advance the Kingdom.

Every servant of the gospel will travel, eventually, through dark forests of grief, even despair. But judging by the popular books and "successful" ministries out there, you wouldn't know it. You get the impression that truly spiritual Christians are always well adjusted, smiling, high-energy successes. In some circles, grieving is proof positive you must not be trusting in God's providence and sovereignty.

But grief and faithfulness are not mutually exclusive. Didn't Christ trust the Father's sovereignty in Gethsemane, even as he groaned, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death" (Matt. 26:38)? Was Christ unspiritual when he fell to the ground in agony, begging God to let that bitter cup pass?

In America we rarely see models of ministry that discuss paralyzing sorrow, deep discouragement or lethargy. When we do, they're things to be conquered in a day of prayer, sure, but not embraced for a season.

However, if you've found yourself recently in a season of grief, you're in good company. Christ's example is enough. But God gives us many more. We know Jeremiah as "the weeping prophet" because of the agony he carried. Jeremiah did not bear this grief because he was running away from God's will and service. Quite the opposite. Jeremiah's weeping was the cost of doing precisely what God called him to do.

It's okay to mourn, to grieve, to sorrowfully long for redemption, to join the earth in "groaning" (Rom. 8:22) for Christ's return—even if your season of grief arrives during "the most wonderful time of the year."

How would Jesus feel about such spiritual agonizing during Christmas? Well, it may put us in the company of those few who saw Christ for Who He was in the Christmas story. Simeon and Anna held Christ the infant and praised God for Messiah when most people were looking for someone bigger, happier and stronger than a baby. Simeon and Anna touched Christ in the temple because they were "waiting for the consolation of Israel" (Luke 2:25) and "looking forward to the redemption" (Luke 2:38). In the same way today, sorrow and grief can knock our gaze forward to our coming consolation and redemption.

Blessings of sorrow

The disciples could not pray one hour with the Man of Sorrows in Gethsemane. When you have the same opportunity, do not squander it as they did. When we experience sorrow we keep company with the Apostle Paul who spoke of this in Philippians 3:10. The abandoning of everything else life has to offer in order to "know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings."

Our acquaintance with Christ's sorrow is an unwelcome but sure confirmation that we are indeed about his work—and not simply about the building of some social group or human organization. The best way of knowing Christ, Paul discovered, is through this intimate "fellowship of sharing in his sufferings" (Phil. 3:10).

Like Peter in the upper room, most of us know little of this fellowship of suffering when we begin following Christ or ministering. But we all come to a moment, like Peter did, when we are asked, "Can you drink the cup I drink?" (Mark 10:38).

The bitter cup was not only the atoning drink of our punishment; it was also the cup of the Father's will. From the beginning, Jesus stated that his food was to do the will of him who sent him (John 4:34). Christ pursued daily—as food—the Father's will, whether that meant the multitudes praising him or shouting, "Crucify him!"

Jesus' insistence on eating the food of his Father's will culminated with that final meal, in which he ate and drank his own crucifixion. Moments later, in Gethsemane, Jesus asked, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matt. 26:39).

As we follow Christ, we faithfully but imperfectly pray, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." As we pray this prayer of surrender (perhaps in other words), at times we will taste the fruit of success. But, even as we faithfully follow, we will also endure seasons when the cup is bitter. Will we give up in those times?

When grief surrounds you, go to Gethsemane. And, with a will emboldened by heaven's grace, drink the dredges of bitterness that heaven has measured out for you.

Let us resolve again to know the Man of Sorrows—no matter the cost. Let us choose again that our only ambition is "to do the will of him who sent" us, to eat that bread and drink that cup, no matter how sweet or bitter.

We eat and drink, knowing it is not our final meal. As Christ promised Peter and John, so he promises us. We will eat and drink again with him "in the kingdom of God" (Luke 22:14-18). What a feast he will have for us at the wedding supper of the Lamb.

In that day Jeremiah will not be weeping.

In that day, Paul who knew Christ in all His suffering will "share in his glory" (Romans 8:17).

In that day no one will regret having walked through grief with the Man of Sorrows.

"But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed" (1 Pet. 4:13).

Fix your eyes on this. And drink.

John S. Dickerson is author of The Great Evangelical Recession. Follow him on Twitter @JohnSDickerson or Facebook.com/JohnSDickerson.