The Valley

Hey friends,

This is a bit of a different letter. I’m calling it “The Valley.” I’d write this to myself if no one else read it. I wanted to address the idea that if you live perfectly, you would somehow have a perfect life without issues or toil. Life has peaks and valleys, and so often, when we are in a valley, we can get pretty funny ideas about ourselves, God, and others.

The best example of this is obviously Jesus. He was perfect, and yet His life was not without difficult choices, extreme effort, incredible pressure, sweating-blood kind of pressure, and brutal persecution, the worst from His own people. Jesus definitely demonstrates that perfect living and obedience do not equal perfect circumstances. Jesus shows us the spotless standard, a standard that we aspire to, but ultimately fail to uphold, opening us up to a myriad of doubts and condemnation that eat away at our faith.

So, in this case, while Jesus is the standard, Paul shows us a redeemed man striving to walk out that standard.

Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 4,

“ We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Paul is saying two things here. The first is:

I’m hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.

The second is:

I am not crushed, despairing, abandoned, or destroyed.

For the first time, it occurred to me that Paul is admitting that he feels incredible pressure from every angle and is perplexed by it, probably wondering, as we do, why it is there and how to alleviate it. And when he looks for help in the natural, all he finds is more problems: persecution. They are glad he’s hurting. They want him to fail. To sum it up, he’s struck down, brother.

How can such a mighty man of faith, who sang in prisons, who was used mightily in miracles, and who wrote more of the New Testament than any other believer, honestly say these things?

If Paul wrote this to a church nowadays, he’d receive something like this:

“If you’re perplexed, then ask God for wisdom. If you’re hard pressed, then retreat to the secret place of the Most High. If you’re persecuted, then who cares if you’re approved by God? If you’re struck down, then ask God to help you stand back up. Come on, Paul. Man up.”

I’m pretty sure he knows all these things. What Paul is saying here is that he is in the valley. He’s fighting for his life. He’s wrestling with whether each persecution and problem is of his own making or just part of the territory of his obedience. Does he need to pray until the answer comes? Does he need to keep marching forward? He knows the broad strokes of what the Lord has spoken to him. He knows he has to get to Rome, preach to these people over here, and to those people over there, and yet all of these things are happening in between:

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.

-2 Corinthians 11:25-31

Paul is no stranger to the valley. He often finds himself in it. And if you think, “Well, Jake, Paul may have had problems, but he didn’t cause any of them. He was obeying God,” well, this verse leads me to believe he had his fair share of mess-ups:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

-Romans 7:15-19

So I’m pretty sure that Paul had to fight off the same questions and doubts that you do. So, if, like Paul, you find yourself hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, you’re in good company, my friend.

Now let’s key in on the second part, because Paul never stayed in the valley.

I am not crushed, despairing, abandoned, or destroyed. Paul is saying that though he is in the valley, he refuses to let the valley be in him. He may feel pressure on every side, but he is not crushed by it. He may be perplexed, but he is not despairing as one without hope. He may be persecuted by man, but God is with him. He may be knocked down, but he is not knocked out or out of the fight. If he still has breath in his lungs and blood in his veins then he is going to fight.

Whether this situation was produced by his mistake, an attack from the enemy, or a problem God wanted him to fix for the sake of others, the bottom line is that he had to overcome it. Whether the prison was a setback or a setup, he still had to overcome. Shipwrecked. Beaten. Left for dead. The man gritted his teeth and overcame, which begs the question: how?

He tells us:

I know how to be abased and live humbly in straitened circumstances, and I know also how to enjoy plenty and live in abundance. I have learned in any and all circumstances the secret of facing every situation, whether well-fed or going hungry, having a sufficiency and enough to spare or going without and being in want.

I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me. I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.

-Philippians 4:12-13 AMPC

It didn’t matter how or why he was in the valley when the solution was always the same: Christ. Christ is his Deliverer. His Healer. His Savior. His strong tower. He has the Holy Spirit in him, fighting for him and interceding on his behalf. Every day he’s praying. He’s staying close to Christ. He’s talking to God. He’s leaning on the Holy Spirit. He’s asking for wisdom. He’s asking for the next step. He’s casting down doubt, he’s forgetting what is behind and pressing on. After he’s done everything he knows to do, and the problem is still blowing hard against him, he keeps standing firm in faith in the One who is in him.

Just. Like. You.

“Yeah, but I’m not reading my Bible as much as I should, and I’m not…”

Insert whatever reason you want here, and it still doesn’t matter. Christ is still the solution. Even if you just got done sinning, guess what? He’s your Savior, and He forgives. He doesn’t deliver you because you have been faithful, have prayed every day, read your Bible, attended church, and volunteered every time the doors were open. No, He delivers you because He is faithful. The answer comes when you humble yourself, get your mind off yourself, and ask Him for help. You are not in the valley alone, my friend. Look next to you.

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

-Psalm 23:4

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. 20He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.

-Psalm 34:19-20

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

– Jesus (John 16:33)

Paul did not walk his valleys alone, even when it seemed like heaven was quiet. Even when he did the things he shouldn’t, and the things he should, he didn’t. He steadied himself with the confidence that Christ was with, for, and in him. So he leaned on Christ, he partook of His peace and His stability, and he chose to respond to his valleys with joy.

He was the one who wrote from prison, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Then, he added because he knew we were thick headed, “Again I say, rejoice.”

“Surely he doesn’t mean always…”

He did.

However, if you are called to rejoice always, there is another always that you can enjoy:

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.

-2 Corinthians 2:14

Christ is the solution. He will always cause you to triumph. It is time we stop letting the valley get in us. It is time we stop building doctrine out of pain, disappointment, and experience instead of the Word of God. I know you may be hurting, disappointed, and unsure. But you have to take it to God.

Tending the wound matters.

Disappointment left unhealed becomes doctrine.

Many have written entire theologies around pain they never brought to God. Do not turn a moment of confusion into a lifelong conclusion.

If you want to know why the valley came, and if it was avoidable so next time you don’t face needless hardship, that’s wisdom. So ask the Lord to reveal that to you if that is so, and then cast the weight of it off you. Don’t think about it again, and turn your voice and thoughts toward thanksgiving. Rejoice that, regardless of the reason for the valley, Christ is in it with you, and He will most surely get you out of it.

I think I’ll let Paul close this letter out. There is a holy boldness in the way he writes here. Instead of merely making statements, he starts asking questions, with an intensity I often mimic to myself when I’m in the valley.

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.

Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

-Romans 8:31-37

With all the love I can muster,

Jake