Preparation in Pain
Letter to Our Injured Sons
I can suggest no reason for your torture
For it was not justified
The evils done to you
Were initiated before birth
And increased while you were a child
I can tell you that the enemy reasons
That when he sets about poisoning a soul
He will successfully produce caricatures
Whom he can claim as his own.
You’ve asked me why God allowed it
There are many answers I do not know
But perhaps His sacrifice of His own Son
Demonstrates He has a master plan
I doubt the disciples understood when they committed
To love not their lives to death
That they would be sawed in halves or boiled in oil
or hung till they gave up their breath
The enemy believed that his assaults on the apostles
Would have presented a threat to mankind
Such that men would forgo any notion
Of surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ
But a spiritual explosion broke out
The Cloud of Witnesses now recognise
That because of the apostles’ sacrifice
The spread of the gospel multiplied.
Son, we have a choice when we face tragedies
To follow the path the enemy would drag our eyes
He wants to us to look perpetually inwards
And bear the guilt for the sins he designed
I can’t tell you why God allowed it
But I encourage you to fasten your eyes
On the One who before your conception
Knew the role you were assigned
Each hit you took and the punctures
Those blows to your soul that the enemy supplied
Were all meant to make you so injured
That you reject there is healing in Christ.
God will reveal the deep cause for this torture
Although it may take a while
I know that what the enemy fashioned to maim you
Has qualified you as a soldier for Christ
As a soldier, you have a duty in your dark place
To reject the urge to languish and resign
For this torture is the pressure that will form you
With the strength required for your fight
You are facing the mental foes Joseph encountered
When his brothers left him in the pit to die
Or that David in his isolation experienced
When he fled from Saul to the mountainside
All these chosen men of distinction
Those whom compatriots did not understand
Discovered through battles in their soul’s trenches
The loving Father who authored their plan.
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