To Remove Our Self-Sufficiency
2 CORINTHIANS12:5-10
Death by Fire
Converted at the age of eighteen, Dwight flung himself into Christian work a few years later. Highly energetic and fearless, the next decade became a whirlwind of spiritual progress and effective ministry. His Sunday school grew to a previously unprecedented size of fifteen hundred boys and girls, all from off the street, most coming to a life-changing relationship with Christ. When the nation went to Civil War, Dwight, as a leader of the Young Men's Christian Association, went to work as an evangelist, winning huge numbers of soldiers to Christ. Then he launched a Chicago church that rapidly grew in impact and size. He raised the funds and oversaw the creation of the first
large, multipurpose YMCA building in America. He also helped develop unified Sunday school lessons that were soon taught by Sunday schools everywhere. All this time, he was out speaking around the country three or four days a week in large conferences and churches.
Outwardly, Dwight was a picture of spiritual power, yet he knew all of the activity was mostly the result of his own energy and zeal. He was financially broke, emotionally burned out, and spiritually bankrupt. He became deeply discouraged. Exhausted by his ministry treadmill, Dwight began to cry out to God for help. Once in a prayer meeting, he even broke down, rolling on the floor and groaning to God for spiritual power.' Days later an answer came to Dwight in an unexpected form. Sunday night,
124
To Remove Our Self-Sufficiency
October 8, as he finished preaching in his church, a fire alarm rang out. Droughtlike conditions and a strong wind quickly spread the fire across the city. Within minutes, flames engulfed huge sections of the town. The next morning a brokenhearted Dwight surveyed the damage. Four square miles of city were totally consumed, eighteen thousand buildings destroyed, one hundred thousand people left homeless, and over one thousand people dead. Destroyed in the fire was the new YMCA building, Dwight's church building, and his house. Later he stood with his wife and children, staring at the ashes that had once been their home. Ironically, nothing was salvageable except a tiny toy oven. Everything he had spent his life building was gone.
Insurance had not been held on any of the buildings, leaving nothing with which to rebuild. Dwight had to begin an exhausting campaign to raise funds to try and rebuild. He hated it, admitting, "My heart was not in the work of begging. I could
not appeal. I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit."2
For Dwight, the anguish of his incredible loss stretched into an agonizing season of honest evaluation and numbing introspection. The purpose of the cross he was bearing is always one thing, and that is death, death to self. Dwight confessed:
God seemed to just be showing me myself. I found I was ambitious; I was not preaching for Christ, I was preaching for ambition. I found everything in my heart that ought not be there. For four months the wrestling went on within me. I was a miserable man.3
Why did a good God allow such bad things to happen to such a good man and tireless servant? Sometimes God permits pain and suffering to strip us of our self-sufficiency. It is only then that we can realize His all-sufficiency.
125
21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People A New Man
For Dwight, his incredible loss led to a rebirth of true spiritual power and truly effective ministry. Later he wrote, 'After four months the anointing came." Describing it, he said, "Ah, what a day!—I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it, it is almost too sacred an experience to name—Paul had an experience he never
spoke of for fourteen years—I can only say God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand."'
Dwight explained his experience to his friend D.W., who recorded it in his diary.
God blessed him with a conscious incoming to his soul of a presence and power of His Spirit such as he had never known before. His heart was broken by it. He spent much time just weeping before God, so overpowering was the sense of His goodness and love.5
The change in Dwight was profound. In describing the new Dwight, one of his biographers wrote: "The quality of his relationship with God and his discernment of the difference
between God's call and man's was so sharpened, and his power in ministry so enlarged that it sometimes seemed to him as if he had scarcely been—let alone useful—until this blessed time."' Such is the power of the resurrected life.
A New Power
Soon after this event, Dwight could not escape the sense that the Lord wanted him to spend some time in England resting, studying, and praying about his future. So he went and tried to hide on the sidelines. Eventually, however, he was recognized, and a pastor asked him to preach. Revival broke out in the church, and four hundred people made professions of faith
126
To Remove Our Self-Sufficiency
during the ten days of impromptu meetings. Later he made the amazing discovery that Marianne Adlard, a bedridden girl, had literally prayed him over to England to be the tool of revival in her church. As a result, Dwight was given opportunity to be the tool of revival in many other English churches.
Dwight manifested the power of the resurrection in every association. A decade and a half before becoming president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson mentioned an unusual encounter in a barbershop when describing Dwight.
I became aware that a personality had entered the room and sat in the chair next to me. . . . I purposely lingered in the room after he left and noted the singular effect his visit had upon the barbers in that shop. They talked in undertones. They did not know his name, but they knew something had elevated their thought. And I felt that I left that place as I should have left a house of worship.'
Dwight L. Moody returned home to Chicago a new man, and new ministry resulted. Orphanages, schools, ministry opportunities for women, and large crusades resulted. Most of his efforts still live and thrive today, 125 years later. They include Moody Press, the Moody Bible Institute, and Moody
Church. Scholars estimate that in the pretelevision age, Moody preached the gospel to more than one hundred million people, and more than one million made professions of faith in Jesus Christ.
Why did a good God allow such bad things to happen to such a good man and tireless servant? Suffering removed his self-sufficiency and enabled Moody to experience what he truly wanted, the power of God's all-sufficiency.
127
21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People Same Song, Second Verse
Dwight was not the first or last person who drank of the deep waters of devastating difficulties only to find a wellspring of real life and power. The apostle Paul gave this testimony:
I will not boast about myself; except about my weaknesses. . . . To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 CORINTHIANS 12:5, 7-10
Paul was a high-octane guy. Prior to his encounter with Christ, he was a respected scholar, an influential, up-and-coming leader of Judaism, and a Roman citizen, as well. After meeting Christ, he became the voice of Christianity, a great church planter, a mighty missionary, and a powerful minister. Beyond that, his letters were considered the very words of God and were collected as scripture. Moreover, he was given amazing revelations of heaven and the future, unlike anyone before him.
Through it all, Paul was a scholar in the school of severe suffering. He faced hunger, homelessness, cruel criticisms, frequent imprisonments, physical beatings, spiritual attacks, and more. In suffering he learned many priceless lessons, including this: "When I am weak, then I am strong." His pain and weakness removed his pride and self-sufficiency so he could more fully experience God's strength.
128
To Remove Our Self-Sufficiency
In this passage, Paul mentions a source of frustration and torment neglected in his other catalogs of personal sufferings: "a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan." For two millennia,
scholars have debated the exact nature of this thorn in the flesh. Some think it was physical, in the form of chronic maladies, such as eye problems caused by a severe form of ophthalmia (Galatians 4:15), earaches, malaria, migraine headaches, epilepsy, or a speech disability. Others see it as an internal struggle coming in the form of incessant temptation. There are those who view the thorn as human in nature, caused by persistent persecutors or constant Christian critics. Some view the thorn as an emotional burden, such as depression. Some say it was spiritual assault, an actual messenger of Satan in demonic form.
So who's right? What was Paul's We don't know.
I think it is intentionally unclear. Why? So no matter what your "thorn" is—physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, demonic, or whatever—you can still apply the principle that God's strength is made perfect in your weakness.
Paul considered this thorn a hindrance to wider or more effective ministry (Galatians 4:14-16), and he repeatedly petitioned God for its removal (2 Corinthians 12:8). Paul's language here suggests that this was probably the most intensive prayer struggle he ever faced.
And yet God said no three times. Why?
It was through the continual torment of the constraining thorn that Paul was constantly reminded of the critical lesson anyone eager to be used of God must learn: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
As I study the lives of dozens of servants of God who were greatly used by Him, one common denominator links each: All have endured severe suffering. They all testify that their thorns were used to strip away their self-sufficiency and to bring them to a much deeper place of dependency on God.
129
21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People
Why?
So why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Sometimes He wants to remove our self-sufficiency so we can really live His sufficiency; He reminds us of our abject weakness so we will fully rely on His amazing strength.
Notes
1.Sarah Cooke, Wayside Sketches (Grand Rapids: Shaw, 1895), 363.
2.D. L. Moody to C. H. McCormick, April 15, 1868, Moody Bible Institute archives.
3.Lyle W. Dorsett, A Passion for Souls (Chicago: Moody, 1997), 156.
4.A. P. Fitt, The Lift of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody, n.d.), 65.
5.D. W. Whittle diary, quoted in James F. Findlay Jr., Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837-1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 132.
6.Dorsett, Passion for Souls, 159.
7. Woodrow Wilson, quoted in John McDowell, What D. L. Moody
Means to Me (Northfield MA: Northfield Schools, 1937), 23.
|