Suffering and control

I was very lamely trying to translate 2 Cor 1:3-6 this morning and it read like this:

Blessed(I wish I knew a better modern day equivalent) be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement, the one who encourages us in all our trouble in order that we are able to encourage those in any trouble through the encouragement with which we were encouraged by God. That just as the sufferings of Christ overflow into us, so also Christ’s encouragement overflows to us. If we are CRUSHED, it is so we can later encourage and save you, if we are encouraged , it is so we can encourage you, which enables you to patiently endure the same suffering which we are also experiencing.

God is at work in your life. The work he is trying to accomplish in our lives sometimes seems counter to the goals that we have. Goals that we even seem to have got from him!?! When we moved to Omaha to start a post-modern church I was excited! When I took a job at Napa and was working with unchurched people I was excited! When I realized $7 an hour was almost more of a detriment than a help to our family I got a little depressed. When I realized that the Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t be hiring again for another year an a half I got more depressed. When I realized that I was going to have compete against 300 others for 10-20 openings in the metro area I got more depressed. When I tried to move up at Napa and realized that there were 3-4 less educated people in front of me in line I got more depressed. Then I realized that I was trying to make everything happen. I wasn’t giving God space and time to work. My desperation was causing me to try to force God’s hand. So he had to bat all my silly attempts at control out of the air and leave feeling hopeless so that I would know with out a doubt that it was him solving these problems and not my efforts. I learned a lot about humility during that time, much of which I think I have forgotten now that I am back in a place of “power.” Still 2 ½ years later there is no church. God is still at work. If I try to rush him he will probably stop and wait for me to regain patience so we can move on. God much more often seems to work on the 40 year plan than the 40 day plan. Even as I write that it is still hard to take.

The passage continues:
And our hope for you is firm, knowing that since you are sharers of the suffering, you are also sharers of the encouragement. For I don't want you to be ignorant, brothers, about the suffering which we experienced in Asia, which was so far beyond what we could handle that we were hoping to die! But we had the sentence of death within us so that we would not trust ourselves but the God who raises the the dead!