Earlier this year, I wrote a blog called NOT IDEAL. The purpose of this was to place our current struggles into the eternal plan of God and to give a focus for the discomfort we were all feeling. My hope was that we would not let the suffering overwhelm or define us. I wrote:
We should groan inwardly in anticipation of both being able to worship closer to God’s design, but also for the day when we will be at the perfect worship service in the presence of Jesus. As we feel the tension now, let it remind us of the distance that always exists between who we are and who we will be.
We must also recognize God’s grace in the midst of the struggle.
When I wrote this, I had no idea that we would still be in a similar place 8 months later. While I still believe that we should groan inwardly and recognize God’s grace in the midst of it, what a prolonged struggle does to us is robs us of passion. We keep trying to push through and make things as normal as possible, but at a certain point it feels futile. Nothing seems to spark joy; instead, all efforts seem exhausting. At this moment of COVID-fatigue, we need to rethink how we are approaching this cultural moment.
I believe that John Piper has given some great guidance on this in his book: Don’t Waste Your Life (which I obviously stole my blog title from). Published 17 years ago, this book had a profound impact on many with its challenge to find joy in bringing glory to God. A summary of the book is found in this quote:
God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—-namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.
What Piper does here is uses the answer to the first question of the Westminster Catechism as the starting point for organizing life. That first answer tells us that the purpose of our life is: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. From here, Piper begins to build a worldview of how we may approach this world to both find this joy and declare this glory in all we do. In many ways, his outline echoes the Power in Dependence and Power in Proclamation that Paul focused on in his writings. It forces us to focus less on how we want things to be, and to look more at how we can bring glory to God in how things are.
Piper took this idea one step further when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Facing surgery and treatment, he applied this single passion to how he viewed his cancer. He wrote an article, Don’t Waste Your Cancer, that laid out how to approach struggle in a way that finds joy in the declaration of God’s glory. He gives 10 ways that we waste the opportunity that suffering brings (which I have modified a bit for our current situation:
1. You will waste your [pandemic] if you do not believe God designed it for you.
2. You will waste your [pandemic] if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.
3. You will waste your [pandemic] if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.
4. You will waste your [pandemic] if you refuse to think about death.
5. You will waste your [pandemic] if you think that “beating” [COVID] means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
6. You will waste your [pandemic] if you spend too much time reading about [COVID] and not enough time reading about God.
7. You will waste your [pandemic] if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.
8. You will waste your [pandemic] if you grieve as those who have no hope.
9. You will waste your [pandemic] if you treat sin as casually as before.
10. You will waste your [pandemic] if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.
Similar to what we looked on Sunday, this list is not just another system or scheme to find happiness and meaning; it re-frames the very purpose that we exist for. If we were created to find joy in bringing glory to God, then a time of prolonged struggle is not a hindrance to us accomplishing our purpose, but an accelerator. The frustrations that we are experiencing now should help draw out all of the places where we are rooted to temporary things for hope and truth. As another pastor struggling with cancer (Tim Keller) recently prayed:
For Kathy and me, that we use this opportunity to be weaned from the joys of this world and to desire God’s presence above all.
There will be a day when all of this is behind us, but we should not waste our time getting there. There is joy to be found and glory to be declared NOW. May we all pray that God helps us to find it:
God, please help us in this frustrating and difficult time, not to get sidetracked by the concerns of the world, the flesh and the devil, who all seek to find their joy apart from you. Do what is necessary in your people to draw them to yourself, even if that is through pain. Help us not to waste our pandemic. Amen.