Pastor's blog

The Good News About Bad News

Neh. 2:1 – Now I had not been before time sad in his presence (KJV).

Happily, it is the message of the Bible that is infallible, not the people. For what we encounter here is evidence of human weakness. Nehemiah, a great man of God in the service of the king of Persia had come to a low point in his life. There may have been many other times in his life when he experienced sadness, but until now he had been able to contain his emotions. The arrival of bad news put Nehemiah into an emotional nose dive. Here was a great man of God serving a pagan who could not focus on his work for the heaviness that shackled his heart.

Believers today are beset with a pop Christianity that urges them to desensitize themselves to their circumstances. This brand of spiritual level-headedness burdens one with the hard labor of bringing up the lows and bringing down the highs. The clear implication is that if one is not immune to one’s circumstances, one is in danger of falling into disfavor with the Lord. In pursuing my conviction that I need to live beyond my circumstances, I run headlong into a man of God, a great man of God, who was deeply and profoundly affected by circumstances. In a moment of reflection, I begin to rethink my tendency to measure the believer’s maturity by how he responds to circumstances.

I ask myself, “What purpose did sadness serve in Nehemiah’s life?” Reasonable speculation would lead one to conclude that sadness prompted the king to comment on his servant’s dejected countenance that opened the door for Nehemiah to make request of the king. The king’s gracious response enabled Nehemiah to live out God’s will for his life and to bring to completion the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. This passage of Scripture destroys the myth that great men of God are immune to the petty emotions that plague the average person. But even more, it enables me to see how God can use a negative emotional response to affect a positive outcome.

It would certainly be a boost to my image if I could muster a positive response to every dose of negative news. I can just hear the accolades pouring in, “Why, he simply refuses to let anything get him down!” While this may reflect an admirable trait of character, it is by not means the indicator of one’s spiritual maturity. If my glory is the objective, they I am certainly buoyed by a reputation of indifference to circumstances. But if the object is that Christ be exalted, then I am a pretender. I am pretending to be untouched by my world. Yet, Scripture teaches me that my Lord was touched with the feeling of my infirmity (Heb. 4:15). So, if the Lord is touched by my bad news, then who am I to let on to a cynical world that my problems can’t touch me? I may not be big enough to withstand the emotions of negative news, but when circumstances put me on the run, I know to whom I can run.