May 25, 2003
"Living Without Fear" 1 Peter 3:8-17
Pastor Jon MacKinney
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We have added to the menagerie of pets at the MacKinney home. These pets, they don’t take a lot of care. They’re fish. I’m a terrible garage-saler. I mean terrible in the sense that I love to do it and I was looking for an aquarium and finally saw a small one. So, we got it and this time I listened to people instead of just dumping water in and dumping fish in and hoping they live. Got some nice fish. Got the water right. Got some nice fish. And it’s interesting to notice as Tom and I, we kind of sit on the floor there and watch the fish swimming around, it’s interesting how different their personalities are from the kind of fish you get. We got the little zebras, which are really the garbage fish you put in to bring the bacteria level up. They’re kind of like a band of wild dogs. They swim around the tank in a pack and everybody’s afraid of them. They’re also good when it’s time to feed them, they just rush to the surface and eat it all before anybody else gets a chance. Then there’s the little neons. The neon tetras that have a little kind of a glow light in them. And they also like to stay together, those two.
One of the fish that I really like is a gourami. I think it must be Japanese, or maytbe Indian. And there’s a little red dwarf gourami that’s got red, kind of orangish-red stripes on it. He was my favorite fish until I got a little blue dwarf gourami just to keep him company and that caused the red guy to go into some kind of a funk. And all he does, basically, is float near the bottom of the aquarium (which is a lot better than floating at the top of the aquarium). And even when the food comes out, he just kind of hides there behind the rock. And all the other fish are eating, and he’s just kind of hovering there. Once in a while he’ll come out and do a lap or two around the aquarium and then go back. But, I had to conclude that he’s just afraid. He’s afraid of me, perhaps. Or maybe he’s afraid of the other fish. But, for some reason he’s become afraid and so he just does this hovering thing all the time.
Well, you know, fear makes us do funny things, don’t you? Fear causes people to do strange things. I heard of a man who, every morning before he went to work, got out and rotated the tires on his car. Every morning. I made up a name for this. It’s called "uneven treadwear phobia." Every day. Now, he’s afraid of something, or he’s just really compulsive. He does it every day. Fear, of course, can be a really paralyzing force in our lives, can’t it? It forces us sometimes to retreat into a solitary world without dreams and without hope, without relationships. We’re so afraid of people, perhaps, that we just pull back. We don’t want to be hurt. We don’t believe the little pithy saying, "It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Really, a fearful person will say, "I don’t want to take the chance of being hurt." Sometimes we will remain in touch with society, but fear causes us to be constantly on the look out for people attacking us, for people ready to hurt us, for people who are going to do something bad to us; so we’re constantly on the defensive, constantly looking for people who are going to hurt us and try to hurt them before they hurt us or defend ourselves against their attack. Zig Ziglar writes this particular story. He says that his brother, the late Judd Ziglar, loved to tell the story of the fellow who went next door to borrow his neighbor’s lawnmower. The neighbor explained that he could not let him use the mower because all the flights had been canceled between New York and California. Well, the borrower asked him what canceled flights between New York and California had to do with borrowing his lawnmower. To which the man responded, "It doesn’t have anything to do with it. But, if I don’t want to let you use my lawnmower, one excuse is as good as another." I have set this pattern up to protect my lawnmower and I’m going to hide behind any excuse that’s possible. We do this.
Now, fear, as I read the Scripture over and over again, I find that fear is exactly the opposite of what God is seeking to do in our lives. Now, I’m not talking about the fear of the Lord, which is a lot different than the fear I’m talking about here. The fear of the Lord is an awesome response to God’s majesty. That’s the fear of the Lord. But, we’re talking here about human fear, a response of faithlessness. Saying, "I can’t do that because I’m afraid of what it might cost me." And so we run our lives that way. But look at what Peter is calling us to do in verses 8 and 9 here of chapter 3, "Finally, all of you live in harmony with one another, being sympathetic, love as brothers. Be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil for evil, or insult with insult, but with blessing because to this you were called, so that you may inherit a blessing." Brothers and sisters, it is impossible to obey those commandments if you’re afraid. Amen? Because a person who is afraid will never be, will never be so other oriented because, "Who’s gonna take care of me?" A person like that would never say, "I can’t respond to an insult with a blessing, because pretty soon people would walk all over me." Fear is the enemy of the consistent Christian life, because it is a self-preserving emotion, attitude. It says, "If I don’t take care of myself, nobody will. So I’d better look out for number 1 and number 1 is me." And if you have a group full of numbers 1s or a church full of number 1s, a neighborhood full of number 1s, a family full of number 1s, you’ve got a mess.
But, God always, always presents a positive response. When He calls us to stop doing something, He calls us to start doing something else. It’s a very consistent pattern throughout Scripture. "I want you to quit doing this. I want you to quit being fearful and I want you to start being…" What? "Faithful." Because here is the bottom line, brothers and sisters. The normal Christian life is a life of faith. The normal Christian life is a life of faith. Sometimes we think that the only people that live a life of faith are the super-spiritual people who are out being missionaries or something else. They’re living the life of faith. The rest of us can life the life of fear or a life of some other kind of quasi-faith. I want you to turn back in your Bibles, just one chapter, to chapter 2 because I believe this verse, chapter 2, verse 23, is the crux of this whole book. This is one of the best definitions of faith we will ever find. Talking about Jesus here, "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats." Now, here comes the definition. How was He able to do that? How was He able to live a life of faith? "Instead," instead of giving in to those natural human responses, "He entrusted." He didn’t say, He just shut His mouth and bit His lip and clenched His teeth and clenched His fists and didn’t say anything. It says, no He did something active. "He entrusted himself…" to the One who got the final word. And that wasn’t the Pharisees or Sadducees screaming insults at Him there at the cross. The final word was God’s. God’s gonna have the final say in Jesus’ life and so Jesus entrusted God, entrust Himself to God, saying, "Lord, they’re saying all these terrible things against me. They’re making these ridiculous charges. They’re pounding nails through my wrists and feet, putting crowns of thorns on my head and they’re about to stab me in the side with a spear. But, I trust You with all these terrible things that I don’t deserve are under Your control." That’s the definition of faith: entrusting ourselves to the One who judges justly. See, 1 Peter is not just about suffering. The book of 1 Peter is a book that teaches us how we can be effective, how we can remain effective, in the suffering that we may experience. None of the people in this room, I do not believe, have suffered in any way like the recipients of this letter who were under the rule of Nero. And yet, they are being called by Peter to remain effective.
Faith is entrusting myself to the revealed will of God, especially when the circumstances call for fear. And in that light, let’s look then at verses 8 and 9, which we’ve already read. "Finally," he says, "to all of you." Now, in the last couple of weeks we’ve seen that Peter has talked to citizens of a country. He has talked to masters (???? ) slaves. He has talked to about Jesus being crucified. He’s talked about wives living with nonbelieving husbands and to husbands living with their wives, briefly. And now he says, "Now I’m going to make a more blanket statement to everybody. So that if you weren’t part of those other groups, don’t think that you’re off the hook because the fact of the matter is I’m going to say this to all of you now." "To all of you, live in harmony." And these are all in the imperative tense, which means these are commands. "Live in harmony with each other. Be sympathetic." The word sympathetic means to have, it actually talks about the bowels, your guts, to feel towards someone else the way they feel, to share their pain, their emotions. "I want you to love as brothers." Now, that could be misinterpreted. Love as brothers. Because brothers don’t always love so much, do they? But this is really in the best sense, philadelphia, which isn’t a very good illustration either these days, especially in the sports scene. But love in the way brothers who really love each other would love. "And finally," he says, "be compassionate and humble." All of these responses to other people’s needs take faith because they are other-oriented. "I am going to give myself to you. I am going to allow myself to come into your life. I’m going to allow myself to take up the burden of your emotion and add it to the burdens I already carry. I am going to be compassionate to you. I am going to be sorry and feel badly for you in a particular situation. And I’m going to be humble." Humble meaning considering someone else, not better than me, but as Paul says in Philippians 2, "more important than I."
Now verse 8 might be tough to live according to, it may be tough to live according to that verse. But let’s look at verse 9, "Don’t repay evil for evil or insult with insult, but with blessing." Now this is really, isn’t Peter going a little bit too far here when he says that if somebody insults you, I want you to instead of responding in your natural way, I want you to respond with a blessing? Now, we all know how easy it is for us to respond naturally to an insult or a blow. When I was in college, in just one year, my sophomore year in college, I lived in this dorm and a group of us had gotten together. It seemed like every quarter we would pick a different thing to do besides studying. One quarter it was chess, and another quarter it was boxing. And we went down to the sports store and got these 16 ounce gloves. Now we thought that 16 ounce boxing gloves would be softer, and they are in fact softer, but they really pack a wollop when you hit because it’s a pound worth of glove on your hand which you hit someone with. And we used to go out in the hallway and have these boxing matches. And they were really pretty, they weren’t mean, there wasn’t too much blood. No one hardly ever got knocked out. I was boxing with this one friend of mine, his name was Dennis Walker. And he was a lefty. You know whenever you’re fighting a lefty, it’s different and he tagged me once in the face and a combination of his hitting me and my pulling back my head bounced off the plaster of the hard wall of that old dorm. Now this all happened very quickly, but when he hit me and he saw my head bounce back against the wall he dropped his hands and leaned in to see if I was okay. And what do you think happened to him? It didn’t even actually hurt, not me, it hurt him because I bounced off that wall and right crossed him right to the floor. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to pray about it. I just did it because he hit me and I hit him back. I wasn’t mad at him. It was actually kind of fun.
There was another kid who had been my junior counselor at the camp that I had taught at during the summer and he was a tall kid. Amazingly enough, taller than me. And we put the gloves on him and he was kind of nervous about it. But, he had the reach on me, like nobody’s business and he kept tagging me with his left jab. My friends started to encourage him because he had been so fearful. Then, of course, my friends would always come and tell me that when we were boxing, if I got a little mad they could see it in my eyes. And I got a little angry because he was tagging me and I just gave him the right overhand right on the nose, blood flows, he runs out of the room and that’s the last we saw of him. But there is this natural response, you get insulted, you pay back. Somebody talks trash to you, you talk trash to them. Someone hits you, you hit them. Someone gives you an evil turn, you give it back. We don’t have to think about it, it’s just part of our natural self. And then Peter says to us, "Stop doing that." And not just, "Stop doing that," but "I want you to take the amazing step of responding to that insult, that evil act, with blessing." That’s not easy, is it? Everything in our being wants to get back, get it right, see justice done, defend ourselves. And God calls us to respond with blessing, which is a desire, a stated desire, for the best for that abuser. It’s like when Jesus said on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing." That’s a statement of a desire for someone…. The best thing that could happen to those soldiers who were crucifying Jesus was that God would forgive them. That was the best thing He could possibly wish. He didn’t say, "I want you to give them all a Maserati or give them better horses for their chariots." No. He said I want to give them the best that You can give them, and that’s the forgiveness of God. To respond to such abuse with blessing, means that a person, listen now, that a person is believing that God is allowing that abuse to take place for His own glory and therefore accepting it without the natural response of retaliation but with the response of God to bless.
Chuck Swindoll has said, "Nothing under God’s control is ever out of control." Nothing under God’s control is ever out of control. You feel out of control once in a while, like people are taking it to you and you can’t do anything about it and you’re just a target? It’s under God’s control. Really? Here’s the question we need to ask ourselves as we battle with these forces of fear that are so prevalent in all of our lives: Is it possible for anyone to live, to walk as a consistent believer and not exhibit faith in God on a regular basis? In other words, is it possible for a person to say, "I am a consistent Christian and yet live a life of fear."? And it may be that the answer that we know "up here" is no, but I think we also know that the way we live "in here" many times says sure.
Secondly, the normal Christian life is a life of faith and when we live that kind of faith that faith then becomes the basis of every relationship we have. When Peter comes off of this, in verse 10, he gives this long quotation from the Old Testament, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good. He must seek peace and pursue it." There is the Old Testament fact. It may seem a little bit strange for Peter to all of a sudden to inflict, or to put in this statement about lying. And what does lying have to do with fear or faith? What’s the problem with lying? Here’s what happens: Lying is a self-protective device that we use when we believe that the truth will cause us pain, isn’t it? Why does a person lie? Does a person lie or a person deceive just so because it’s fun? No. A person lies, a person speaks with deceitful lips because he believes or she believes that telling the truth is going to cost them something that they’re not willing to pay. So, instead of trusting God. Instead of telling the truth and trusting God with the results, we will lie because that’s our plan. We don’t trust God with His plan. We trust ourselves with our plan, so "I’m going to lie about it and that will make it better." We’ve all been victims, haven’t we, of false advertising? We’ve all been victims of false advertising when someone has said something that wasn’t true. How many of you have ever been lied to by the advertiser? Anybody? How many of you have fallen for it? Sure, I have too. Why do they do that? They do it for one reason: They’re afraid that if they tell you the truth about their product, you won’t buy it.
The guy on WGN every morning, I think his name is James. He sells a weight-loss product. You ever hear this guy on the radio? He says, you take his stuff for 90 days, "My 90 day program. You just melt the fat away!" Well, I’ll tell you here, it don’t work. It doesn’t work. I’ve lost exactly zero. I called them up and told them that and they were surprised. But, you see, if James got up and told you, "I want you to buy this stuff, but it doesn’t work. And you’ll be just as fat as you were at the beginning at the end," you wouldn’t buy it. And then he couldn’t pay for his Masterati, his Rolls Royce, his big house on the hill, so he’s got to lie to get you to believe that so he can benefit.
So, Peter quotes, "Don’t give in to fear by lying. Whoever would love life and see good days must not lie his way there, but in fact, he must trust." Look at verse 12, "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayers." In other words, what Peter is saying here is that a person who believes God is going to say, "I’m going to do what God says, even though in the short run it would appear to be the foolish way to go. I am going to go this way because I believe that God’s ears would be attentive to my prayers, His eyes will be upon me, and I would rather live with God’s attention than with Plan B, my idea, how I would like it to work." Do what you know to be right and let God sort out the details, or results, even if it means the short end of the stick. After Jesus was dead and buried, what do you think was the word on the street about Him? "Well, He sure got what was coming to Him. What can I tell you? He kept telling that truth stuff and it finally cost Him. There you go, He’s dead. He’s a failure." Except in the eyes of one Person and that one Person is the One who matters. Because He is the final judge.
Verse 11, "He must turn from evil and do good. He must seek peace and pursue it." How can peace ever be achieved? How can peace be achieved in the Middle East? How can peace be achieved in Northern Ireland? How can peace be achieved in Iraq? The problem is in order for peace to be achieved, some person or some group of people have to say, "Okay. I will give up my rights so that you can have peace." "What causes fights and quarrels among you?" What is it that causes a lack of peace? "Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?" In other words, "Isn’t my flesh warring with yours?" Even in a relationship of two, if each one of those two people require that their needs, objectives and desires are number 1, what are you going to have? You’re going to have a fight. Some person has to say, "I’m going to bow my rights to yours and have peace and I will let God worry about me and my rights." Now, in verse 14 here, Peter returns to the toughest situation that we can find once again. He says in verse 13, "Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?" And it’s kind of a rhetorical question, "Who is going to harm you?" Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? Well, I’ll tell you: there are some people that will. There are some people whose response to good behavior is always evil, is always negative. And if we can’t find a human being to do it, certainly Satan will fit the bill, won’t he? He’ll come riding in and he’ll say, "I’ll do it! I’ll oppose you! I’ll respond to your goodness with evil."
And then in verse 14, "Even if you suffer for doing what is right," that’s the toughest situation, Peter has the audacity to say, "you are blessed." Blessed? I mean, the word suffer and the word blessed don’t seem to belong in the same sentence, do they? And yet they appear in the same sentence time and time again in the Word of God. "You are blessed. You are walking in the footsteps of the one who was blessed above all others – the Lord Jesus Christ." We respond to a situation of unjust suffering, not with defensiveness and boy, is it hard. This is hard. I don’t stand before you this morning as a person who has successfully done this. I only stand before you as a fellow learner before the Word of God and say, "Here it is. Here is what I’m called to do. Here is what I’m called to respond. And perhaps next time it will be better." If Jesus is my Lord, I will accept the suffering that He sends.
Look at verse 15, but the end of verse 14 is important, "Do not fear what they fear. Do not be frightened." There it is again. There’s a negative, don’t respond this way. Don’t respond to unjust suffering in a fearful way, in a self-defensive way, in a way that will give back insult for insult or evil for evil, but instead, and again, there’s a ’but’ in verse 15 at the beginning. Here’s the right way to respond, not just not doing this, but doing this. "But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord." Now let’s stop for a minute and look at that. Here is the critical issue: Who is it that is the Lord of my life? If I am the Lord of my life, then anyone who attacks me on my throne is going to get it right between the eyes, because they’re attacking me. But, if I have set apart Christ as the Lord and Master of my life, then when things happen against me, when I receive insult or evil behavior, I can say, "You know what? This is the same evil behavior, this is the same insults that were directed against my Lord and I’m going to let Him dictate my response and my response is going to be like His." And what’s that? "He entrusted himself to the one who judges justly." And, "He blessed those who persecuted him." Set apart, that word, is the word sanctify. It means to set apart as holy, to venerate, to place in a position of honor. If we will not vacate the throne of our lives, if it’s all about me, then I will not be able to live the kind of life described in this passage. I can’t. I’ll always have my fists up. I’ll always have my guard up. I’ll always be ready to snap back when someone snaps at me. But if Christ is the Lord and I say, "Okay, You’re sending this into my life and I’m going to respond to it in a godly manner instead of a fleshly manner," then you have set aside Christ as Lord and are accepting these things in our lives as something that God is allowing for our benefit.
Now let’s look at the rewards of faith because sometimes we think, "In the Christian life we’re called to misery. We’re called to abuse. We’re called to accept terrible things and our life has got to be miserable. But, finally after a miserable 70 years, I’ll get to go to heaven." Well, that’s not exactly the biblical picture. What does God say? This word, and you’ll see it pop up several times in this passage, is this word ’blessing.’ Blessing and misery are not the same thing. It pops up first here in verse 9, "Don’t repay evil for evil or insult for insult but with blessing because to this you were called." Now listen to this, "So that," and here is the purpose, "that you may inherit a blessing." Peter is saying, "Don’t give in to the natural response of defensiveness. Don’t give in to the natural response of returning insult for insult, but instead, you were called to respond with a blessing and if you will do that, the purpose of God in calling you to do that is so that you may receive the blessing of God." You know what, the short term reward for retaliation is a sense of personal vengeance gotten? "Oh, he said this, but I said that to him right back and man, he melted." It may be a short term response of, "Boy, it felt good to get that shot in!" But God wants more than that short term fleshly feeling. He wants blessing.
Paul says it, too, in Romans 12, "Bless those who persecute you. Bless them and do not curse them." Says it in Matthew 5, the words of Jesus, "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me." And this is the most amazing statement, the most amazing command of Scripture, "Rejoice and be glad." You can’t do that if you’re living a life of fear. Who would ever rejoice and be glad that they were persecuted, lied about and had all kinds of evil things done against them, would ever rejoice? But, Jesus says, "Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven." In other words, God is storing up a blessing for you.
This brings me to quite a scary conclusion. One that has been growing in me for months, ever since I started thinking about suffering and did a class about the book of Job. As hard as it is for us to accept, I believe that God calls particular people to suffer and it is a sign of honor and blessing rather than a sign of discipline or God’s anger. So many times we think, "Oh, I’m suffering, therefore I must have done something wrong." And there’s no doubt that there is discipline in the life of the believer. But, when I look at the people who have been called by God to suffer unjustly, to suffer for no reason, and you start with the person of Job, who God Himself said about Job, "He didn’t do anything." When God says, "He didn’t do anything," it means he didn’t do anything. And twice it was that God brought up Job to Satan’s attention. The first time He said, "Hey, did you notice my servant Job? You know, he’s out there doing a great job. What do you think of him?" And Satan said, "Yeah, but take away that hedge of protection and he’ll curse you to your face." So God, said, "Okay, go ahead." All of his animals died, all his servants died. His whole family got wiped out except his wife. He was in trouble. So the next time Satan showed up before God, God again says, "So, what do you think of Job?" Satan says, "Yeah, but if you let me put my hands on him, that’ll change his tune." And God said, "Go ahead." How could God be so sure about Job? I don’t know, but wouldn’t you like God to be as sure about you? And you might say, "Well, I’m not so sure about that."
But you cannot avoid the conclusion because the greatest people in Scripture are the ones who suffered the most and every one of them suffering for doing good. When we suffer for doing good, instead of shaking our fists in the face of God or in the face of our accusers, Jesus tells us, "Rejoice and be glad." But what happened to Peter and John, the writer of this book, when they were told by the Sanhedrin. They were whipped, they were told not to speak anymore. Listen to what they say, "The apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for his name." Is that the way we would leave? We would if it was a faith response, but if we were surrounded by and overwhelmed by fear, we would think, "How can I avoid having that happen to me again?"
Rewards of faith are the blessing of God. Oftentimes, delayed gratification, the blessing of God didn’t come to Jesus until He had died a horrific death. The blessing of God didn’t come to Paul until he had died a horrific death. The blessing of God didn’t come to Job until he had suffered in ways we’ll never imagine. One of the signs of maturity is the ability to delay gratification, isn’t it? Those of you who are parents know that the child, when they are young, can delay gratification about 3 seconds then it works up to a minute and then maybe it’s even an hour or a day or even, like in Jan’s kindergarten class, it’s a week. If you behave yourself all week, at the end of the week you get to got to the treasure box. And for some of the kids it actually works. And for some of the kids it doesn’t because it’s got to be now or never. God says, the hardest thing He asks us to do, is wait in faith. Amen? To wait in faith.
Now some of the good things that happen to us, happen quickly. Bill Hybels writes this. He says, "Recently I saw a letter written by a relatively new Christian to the person whose life had influenced her so greatly. She actually lists about a dozen qualities she found contagious in the life of this older Christian. Listen to some of what she wrote, ’You know when we met I began to discover a new vulnerability, a warmth, a lack of pretense that impressed me. I saw in you a thriving spirit, so signs of internal stagnation anywhere. I could tell you were a growing person and I liked that. I saw you had some strong self-esteem, not based on the stuff of self-help books, but on something a whole lot deeper. I saw you lived by convictions and priorities and not just by convenience, selfish pleasure and financial gain. I had never met anyone like that before. I saw the depth of love and concern as you listened to me and did not judge me. You tried to understand and you sympathized and you celebrated with me. You demonstrated kindness and generosity, and not just to me, but to other people as well. You stood for something. You were willing to go against the grain of society and follow what you believed to be true, no matter what people said and no matter how much it cost you. And for those reasons and a whole host of others, I found myself wanting what you had. Now that I’ve become a Christian, I wanted to write and tell you I’m grateful beyond words for how you lived out your Christian life in front of me." The older woman who lived that exemplary life, was living a life of faith. You hear it sprinkled through there, all the other-orientation, all the refusal to protect self, just to live a life of faith, just to believe in God, just to entrust myself to the one who judges justly. And that had a powerful impact, and that’s a reward. What a wonderful reward for that woman to be able to get that letter and to see that her life made a difference just because she lived by faith and not by fear.
Brothers and sisters, the ways of God are opposite of the ways of the world. The flesh wants instant gratification. This flesh is involved in self-promotion and self-protection. But, God’s plan is clearly otherwise. He says, "Trust me that I know what I’m doing. That what looks like foolishness is really blessing." A man named Arthur Bennett, wrote this, called The Valley of Vision, "Lord, High and Mighty, Meek and Lowly, Thou hast brought me to the Valley of Vision, where I live in the depths but see You in the heights. Hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Your glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up. That to be low is to be high. That the broken heart is a healed heart. That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit. That the repenting soul is the victorious soul. That to have nothing is to possess all. That to bear the cross is to wear the crown. That to give is to receive. That the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from the deepest wells and the deeper the well, the brighter Your stars shine. Let me find Your light in my darkness, Your life in my death, Your joy in my sorrow, Your grace in my sin, Your riches in my poverty, Your glory in my valley." Suffering is tough. It’s the way of the cross. It’s the way of God. It’s the way of joy.
