Pain to Purpose Devotional - DAY 39
Week 6: Jesus & The Early Church
SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 16:18-19 (NIV)
18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Psalm 27:13-14 (NIV)
I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
DEVO:
There is often a gap in the plot of our pain to purpose story. First, there is the trauma, the hurt that comes and blindsides us. The wake of destruction can often leave us in a strange place, a place in between the initial moment our lives forever changed and the place we long to be where our story is redeemed, where resurrection comes. It reminds me of the time that was sandwiched after the Friday in which Christ endured the worst pain we could imagine and before the Sunday in which He walked out of the grave. It reminds me of the Saturday.
I think about all those who witnessed what had happened the day Christ was killed. I think about his mother, his disciples, his siblings and those who had become His followers. Imagine what they must’ve thought after the wailing and screams of shock and disbelief of those who loved Him and watched Him suffer had softened to a continuous, gentle sob in the corner of the room. Imagine the day that followed the chaos of what happened on Golgotha. Incidentally it was Sabbath. A day in which they would have been forced to sit and reflect on the nightmare they witnessed the night before. For a moment, it must have felt like what they had hoped for, would never be. The salvation they were looking for was forever lost in a tomb just down the road. With no hindsight or explanation from God, it must have felt eerily quiet. It must have felt as if there was no way this situation could be redeemed.
I know for myself the silence of Saturday can be deafening. It’s in those moments when hope seems completely and irreconcilably lost. In my own story, I distinctly remember moments in which I wondered, where are you God? I felt disappointed, disenfranchised, distraught. I can imagine those who loved Jesus were thinking and feeling the same thing. They wondered what God was doing in the aftermath of their trauma as they sat waiting.
We have an advantage that those who watched Christ’s crucifixion did not have. We know that in the middle of loss and resurrection, Christ was still at work. There is very little mention in scripture as to what Jesus did in that in between of pain and redemption. Scholars often argue over exactly what Jesus was doing on that Saturday, but this we know for sure, Jesus was at work.
He was fully experiencing death and by doing so was breaking the chains death would have on those who would accept His gift of salvation. Death was never meant to be the final scene in the story and so God was preparing what was to come, the resurrection of lost hope.
So much of what happens in our own Saturday is the wait before redemption. It is that point in time when we can’t see how our own story will experience any sort of beauty from ashes. Disappointment and delay can lead us down a path of despair and discouragement. Where do we find hope in the space between trauma and triumph?
The enemy of our soul loves Saturday because he can use it to convince us that God is dead. He can make us think the silence is a sign that all hope of redemption is lost. He can take our “to be continued” and convince us that it is a “game over.” He wants to make us forget all we already have in Christ as we await what is to come. But I once heard someone say that we shouldn’t put a period where God puts a comma.
I love how Paul talks about this in Romans 8:
“We who have already experienced the first fruits of the Spirit also inwardly groan as we passionately long to experience our full status as God’s sons and daughters—including our physical bodies being transformed. For this is the hope of our salvation.
But hope means that we must trust and wait for what is still unseen. For why would we need to hope for something we already have? So because our hope is set on what is yet to be seen, we patiently keep on waiting for its fulfillment.
And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don’t even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs[c] too deep for words.
God, the searcher of the heart, knows fully our longings, yet he also understands the desires of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us, his holy ones, in perfect harmony with God’s plan and our destiny.
So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose.” (Romans 8:23-28 TPT)
Did you catch that? Hope means that we must trust and wait for what is still unseen. Sitting in our Saturday is an invitation to hope, to learn how to trust and await what has yet to be revealed. It can feel impossible, but as Paul says, God is never not working. In fact, we can be confident that “every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good.” It doesn’t mean every detail will be good, but it does mean that we can trust that even when it seems like the curtain has closed on our story, God is still in the business of bringing forth life where we thought only death resided.
I don’t know what you have come to believe about this delay in your life after your pain and before redemption, but I’m guessing you might find yourself a bit weary in this place. Friend, I want you to remember that while Jesus’ friends and family may have thought death was the end of the story, He was not done yet. In fact, it was during that Saturday that He was busy getting the keys of heaven to unlock the chains that sin entangled all of humanity with.
When I was in college we attended most of the home basketball games in our school’s gymnasium. I was a baseball player and loved watching others compete at an elite level in their respective sport. On occasion, our school’s team would be way ahead of the opposing team as the final minutes were ticking off the play clock. Once we knew we had the victory sealed, all of the fans would stand up, take out their car keys and begin shaking them. The reverberating jingle bouncing off the walls of the gymnasium was quite the statement. Everyone -- including the visiting team -- knew exactly what we were saying. “It’s time to warm up the bus and go home, because the game is over. Victory is ours. Now, I’m not saying this was a kind thing to do, but there was something satisfying and empowering about dangling the keys of victory in our opponents faces.
Did you catch what I mentioned earlier about what Jesus was up to on that Saturday? He was taking back the keys from our opponent, Satan. When Adam and Eve swapped the truth of God’s Word for a lie in the Garden of Eden, sin fractured the universe. Adam had previously been given dominion and authority -- the keys -- over the earth (Genesis 1:28). But when he and Eve sinned, they relinquished that dominion to Satan. In Luke 4:6, Satan accurately tells Jesus that the authority over the earth had been given to him. For centuries Satan taunted mankind with those keys. The only way for that dominion to be purchased back was through the blood price of Jesus’ life on that tragic Friday.
Most scholars, therefore, believe that in the time between the cross and the resurrection Jesus descended into hell and took the keys back from Satan. Satan thought death was the final word in Jesus’ life. But little did he know God was so pleased by the willing sacrifice of His Son that resurrection victory was awaiting Jesus with the rising of the morning sun. As dawn began to break on that Sunday, I can imagine Jesus shaking the keys of sin and death in the devil’s face with a righteous taunt, “You better warm up that bus, Satan. The game is over. Victory is ours.”
That victory is a reality we now get to live from. Even when our story seems to only speak of defeat, our hope, as Paul says, is set on what is yet to be seen so we wait patiently. Redemption is coming. Saturday won’t last forever because Sunday is on its way. So take heart, press on in that space between loss and revival and one day you will realize all the ways God was at work in the messy middle of your story. Until that day, you have been given the keys -- the power of the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead -- to open the door of healing and walk through it.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND JOURNALING:
When it comes to your story, do you feel like you are in the Saturday? In what ways does hope feel lost?
What are some things God could be working in this time of waiting? How might God be preparing for redeeming that which you think is dead?
How can you stay encouraged in the waiting? What verses could you remind yourself of? Who could be an encouragement to you as you wait for resurrection?
PRAYER:
Lord, it is easy to believe that you are done working during “the Saturday.” It is easy to think that because all seems quiet and hope seems gone that you aren’t weaving together the details of my life for my good. Father, encourage my spirit in this space between trauma and triumph. Help me to trust that even here, though I may not see you, you are moving and bringing together the pieces of my story. Give me faith to believe that Sunday is on its way. In your name, Amen.
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