Trust for Deliverance Again

What's Best Next post:  The Pattern of the Christian Life

The pattern of the Christian life seems to be trial, deliverance, trial, deliverance, trial, deliverance:

“. . . my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:11-12).

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Corinthians 1:8-10).

The Christian life does not seem to be simply one long trial. There are phases. You enter a trial or difficulty, the Lord delivers you, and you learn to trust him more. You enter another, and he delivers you, and you grow more in faith. He doesn’t deliver us from trials by always keeping us from them, or always delivering us in the way we might expect, but he delivers us out of them all (cf. Psalm 34:19). Some trials are larger, and some are smaller, and some trials do of course last for our entire lives (ongoing health problems, for example). But a primary pattern throughout the Christian life, even within the long-term trials, seems to be trial, deliverance, trial.

And this continues, in various degrees (with some seasons of peace, to be sure) until he delivers us from the final trial, which is death. Paul brings this together in 2 Timothy 4:18: “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.” That is, God rescues us from our trials here (“the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed”), and then delivers us from the final trial of death by taking us safely to be with him (“and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom”).

Two applications:

1. When a challenging circumstance or period of suffering comes to an end, that’s not just the natural outworking of things. That is the Lord delivering you.

2. We shouldn’t only look for the Lord to resolve all of our troubles in heaven. He resolves many now, and we should look for him to do so. This doesn’t give us an earthly mindset, centered on this world, because the point is that he resolves them to build faith in us. And then we trust him to rescue us from the next trial, and the next one.