The Value of a Crisis

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.

–Psalm 119:67

When we are far away from God, the first stage on the journey home is a crisis. I’ve never known a Christian living in the far country who returned to God without a severe crisis coming into his or her life. C. S. Lewis said it this way: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge paid tribute to the value of pain in his own Christian life. He said, “Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness.”

When we come home to God, we gain a different perspective on the painful things God used to bring us back to Himself. Think about our ultimate homecoming, the day we get to heaven. In Revelation 21:4, John said, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain.” John was not saying that God will wipe our memories so we don’t remember the terrible things that happened to us. Instead, when we get to heaven, we’ll gain a new perspective on the suffering we went through in this life. One day, we’ll see our suffering as the prelude to an even greater existence.

In the same way, when we come back into a right relationship with God, it’s not that we will look back at a divorce, an illness, or the death of a loved one and say, “Wow, what a happy experience!” But if God uses those difficult circumstances to bring us back to Himself, one day we’ll be able to look back on them, as Muggeridge said, with particular satisfaction.

I think that’s what David had in mind when he said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word” (Psalm 119:67). David was never going to be happy about the crises God used to get his attention. Yet when he finally came back to God, he saw the value of those afflictions. God uses crises to bring us back into a right relationship with Himself.

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Today’s devotion is adapted from “The Journey Home” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2009.

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2015), 91; Malcolm Muggeridge, A Twentieth Century Testimony (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 35.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.