A Note from Hixon Frank
Hey Church,
Several weeks ago, Margie and I were in our kitchen studying. She was preparing to teach a women’s Bible Study, I was working on a sermon. As is our habit, we would periodically ask each other questions about the best way to say something or, if we had an illustration, to make a point “stick”. The more she talked about what she was working on the more interested I became.
She was working through …
1 Peter 4:12-13
12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. 13 Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.
I’ve read that passage many times, used it in messages, and even at memorial services. Maybe it was the way she said it, or the fact that, like many other people, we are in a season that requires endurance. But whatever the case is, I jumped in to learn and contribute to the preparation she was doing.
Over the next couple days, it became a theme in our home. We talked a lot about ENDURANCE, the need for it, the difficulty in it, the pain required to have it, and the blessing that ENDURANCE can be when you get through to the other side!
It has often been said that, “Endurance is a Loving Gift in a Painful Package.” We need Endurance. It’s the difference between finishing strong and “puttering out.” But endurance really isn’t a gift. The opportunity for endurance is the gift and it is gained through getting through hard times while clinging to Jesus.
We have read this passage most of our lives and yet we still bristle at how God gives us endurance. Much like patience.
James 1: 2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
We are told that pain will come.
It will come in spite of our insulation.
It will come in spite of our planning.
It will come in spite of how good we have been.
It will come when we are confident that it won’t.
AND it will come because it needs to come for us to gain endurance and to be able to minister to other people. You see, God never wastes our pain. He uses our pain to be the very thing we minister out of.
Margie has often taught, “if we can persevere through our deepest pain, it will become the greatest source of the ministry that God has called us to!”
2 Corinthians 1:4-6
4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.
- The widow can comfort the widow like no one else
- The parents of a prodigal speak hope in a position of experience…
Same for ….
- The single mom…
- The broken-hearted teen…
- The cancer survivor…
- The abuse victim…
- The recovering addict…
- The one who has been wounded by fellow believers…
- The person who has been betrayed…
- The one who has been rejected…
- The one who gets fired…
- The one who struggles to make ends meet…
- The one who is an outcast…
- The one who suffers from depression…
- More…
…. everyone who has been transformed by Jesus and endured will have a ministry that is powerful to those going through what they have already walked through.
If we are willing to minister in that way, God will do things with you that you did not know He would do. The sure sign that you have endured is that you are able now to turn your attention from your own pain, and in a healthy fashion, fix it on someone else. Your words and actions will be provide comfort and hope like no one else.
Margie, an interior designer, likens Christians in crisis to the show Extreme Home Makeover. “Hardships,” she says, “can transform us into something beautiful. That causes indescribable JOY– not because of the pain but because of the purpose behind it.”
Our daughter Sarah Clare, when talking about young women going through difficulty, says that “When someone has walked through something hard, they carry a weight that is beautiful. It’s like that suffering has made them more beautiful because they have a depth to them.”
Church family, on the other side of your season of difficulty lies a ministry that you may not have seen coming. Endure until you get to it! Embrace it! There is someone (or many someones) who need you to help get them through what God has already graciously brought you through!
I love you and pray for you!
Hixon