In Time of Apparent Defeat - by Tim Burkholder

By nature in America we are geared to win. We look up to successful men and have little regard for unsuccessful men. We wonder what the unsuccessful did wrong.

But we all at some point experience the sting of defeat, or apparent defeat. It hurts all the more because our culture puts so much emphasis on success.

As Christians we gravitate toward verses that say "We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us" or "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world." We like the story of Daniel, who emerged victorious from the lions' den. We think so much about success in the Christian life that when faced with defeat we often don't know how to take it.

But 1 Peter 5:8-9 says, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world."

Notice that our brethren experience the same afflictions we do. We're not the only ones who get knocked about. Just because we are born again and have the Holy Ghost doesn't mean we won't have trouble. Somehow we have come to think that we can avoid the perils of life, and when the inevitable struggles come we get discouraged.

Why do we still get sick? Why do we still have financial needs? Why so many trials? Peter tells us in verse 10: "But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." God uses our trials to prepare us for eternal glory.

Two men in scripture teach us much about how to respond to trials. The first, Moses, was a highly touted, highly successful man. First, he should have been killed at birth with all the other boy babies, but his mother hid him for a while and then put him in a basket in the river, where the king's daughter found him and adopted him. And so Moses was raised with every advantage. Acts 7:22 says, "And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds." Moses knew how to lead; he could speak well and act wisely.

When he was 40, "it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel." When he saw an Israelite mistreated by an Egyptian, he avenged the Israelite by killing the Egyptian. Verse 25 says, "For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not." That's when Moses' troubles began. He was a mighty man and knew that God was going to use him to deliver the children of Israel. He was a born leader and expected others to follow. He had success, prosperity, popularity--sounds American, doesn't it? It sounds like what we Christians like, doesn't it? But Moses soon discovered that things weren't going to go his way.

His successful leadership ended abruptly the next day, when he saw two Israelites fighting and tried to make peace. One of them thrust him away, saying, "Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, as thou diddest the Egyptian yesterday?" Moses was rejected by the very people he thought would be grateful for his leadership. He expected great support from the Israelites and got only sneers.

Moses was handed his defeat by God. In essence God said, "You've had success. You've had riches. You've had glory. Now what will you do with rejection?" And we see what Moses did--he got scared to death and ran off into the wilderness. What a defeat!

For 40 long years Moses labored in the wilderness. Can you imagine the thoughts that must have gone through his mind? "Lord, I thought you called me to a great work. Why did you let me down?" From the king's palace to the wilderness he had fallen, and no one was even grateful for the effort he had made. No doubt such thoughts of defeat kept going round and round in his mind.

Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a burning bush, calling him to deliver God's people from the Egyptians. Calling him to the position of leadership in which he had failed so dismally 40 years earlier.

You see that God had to work something in Moses he could work no other way than by having defeat in his life. Though Moses had been wise, eloquent, and successful, he had not known what he needed most to know: how to trust the Lord.

In Acts 7:35, God makes it clear where Moses got his power to rule and deliver: "This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush." The hand of the angel of the Lord is the mighty hand that established Moses as ruler of the Israelites.

Too often when things go our way we become the success and not God. God has to hand us defeat to show who is in charge and whose success is important.

The account in Exodus tells us that Moses protested to God. "Who am I to go up unto Pharaoh?" When he was younger he was confident of his calling, but now that God is really calling him, Moses says "Who am I?" Do you see how defeat changed him? He had moved from trusting his own capability to "Lord, who am I?" The man who had been "mighty in words and deeds" now says, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant." In other words, "I'm not eloquent now, nor was I ever."

So Moses, one of the most eloquent men in the nation 40 years ago, now realizes he is nothing in his own power. That's what 40 years of defeat will do. It will bring us to the point of "Who am I, Lord?" We know that in the end Moses successfully led the Israelites, but he did it through God's strength and understanding and not through his own.

Now look at Joseph. We read in Genesis 37 about how Jacob loved Joseph more than his brothers, because even from his boyhood Joseph displayed courage and valor. God also gave Joseph dreams about how his family would come and bow down to him. Joseph was destined for success from the beginning.

But of course his brothers hated him, jealous of the attention he received and the special coat of many colors that distinguished him. His brothers, in fact, handed him his first defeat. Joseph knew only love and acceptance until he came to his brothers, but they altogether rejected him. It seems that God always teaches his people what it is to be rejected.

Not only did his brothers reject Joseph--they threw him in a pit and even planned to kill him. A mighty calling in a pit, isn't it? What can he do in a pit? He was stripped of his coat and dignity and then sold as a slave. The mighty man and born leader had to serve others as a slave. When it comes to the ladder of success, a slave can't reach even the first rung.

And it even got worse. For doing something right--for running away from sin--Joseph was thrown into prison and utterly forgotten. Who knew where Joseph was? His own dad thought he was dead. When God chooses people, he teaches them not only what it means to be rejected but also what it means to be forgotten, to be nothing. Joseph had sunk down to the lowest level. Even when he interpreted dreams for the baker and butler and correctly foretold that the butler would be restored to the king, the butler failed to remember him. "Remember me, please," Joseph had asked, but the butler forgot. Though a gifted and obedient child of God, Joseph remained in prison, rejected and forgotten.

We know that eventually Joseph was remembered and elevated to his rightful place of leadership, and those boyhood dreams of success came true. The time of testing and trial was a necessary preparation for the position of leadership Joseph was to hold.

Most of us probably look at these two men and think, "Well, this is not my lot in life. God never called me to be a leader." But God has called us to something. He calls every one of us to fulfill his purposes, and the preparation for our calling will be in many ways similar to the preparation of Moses and Joseph. We will be dealt defeat.

Look what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7-9: "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed...."

Have you ever been troubled on every side? You are in the same boat as Paul. Are you perplexed or confused about all that trouble? You are in the same boat as Paul. "Lord, why did you let me go through that? I don't understand." Yes, we aren't the only ones to ask those questions. Paul did, and certainly Moses and Joseph did.

But notice what the passage says. "Troubled...but not distressed...perplexed, but not in despair...cast down, but not destroyed..." Yes, we will be perplexed, but we need not lose our faith or fall into despair. We will face defeat--but we need not be destroyed. And the purpose of our defeat is made clear in verses 10-11: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

Our struggles are for a reason--so that the life of God might be made manifest in us. If we see a man who has total "success," we will not see much of the life of God in him. If we see a lady who has everything going for her, we will not see much of the life of God in her.

As we struggle, we often think that if we can just get over this hill we will be able to coast through the Christian life. But if we want the life of God to be made manifest in us, we will not find a place of coasting. If there is no defeat for our flesh, there will be no life for our spirit.

In the verses to follow, Paul says that the sufferings we endure are for our benefit, and by not giving up we allow God to make our inner man stronger and stronger. Verse 17 sums up our experience: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory...." We know that this life is not our final end. Our bodies will return to dust, but our eternal souls have a higher calling. We are going to go on forever!

Do you think God will arrange for this temporary shell to be prosperous or for the eternal inward man to be prosperous? It's only by handing defeat to the outside man that God can build up the inner man. The next time something doesn't go just the way you thought it should, remember it might be going just the way God thought it should. He handed you a defeat in order to build you up eternally.

Friction in marriage. Financial distress. Business troubles. All these trials and defeats can let God build us up inside. What God is building has an "eternal weight of glory."

The chapter ends: "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." If I asked you whether you wanted God to work on temporal things or eternal things, I think you would make the right choice. But next week when defeat comes, you will see that temporal things get pretty big, don't they? They can hurt pretty bad. We often find ourselves wanting a Christianity that promises success in the natural realm. But we must remember what God is doing with our defeats--building something eternal, something much more precious than any "success" the natural world can offer.

Lest you think that the great men of scripture didn't have to suffer as much as we do, turn back to 2 Corinthians 1:8: "For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life...."

Paul, the great man of God, was wishing he could die! But in the next verse his faith holds firm: "But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead...." God brings us to the point that we can't trust in ourselves any longer. If we are going to be successful people of God who have an eternal weight of glory, we are going to have to quit trusting in ourselves and trust only in God--for our finances, for our marriages, for our church. In fact, if we want God to use us and strengthen our faith, he will have to hand us enough defeat to force us to turn wholly to him.

We must learn to trust even when we don't understand. Proverbs 3:5 tells us to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." Don't worry about whether or not you understand your trials. Just keep trusting God.

At any time, Moses and Joseph could have turned bitter. They could have said, "Lord, this is enough. I just don't understand what you're doing." They could have resisted the work of God in their lives and let a root of bitterness creep in.

Hebrews 12:15-16 says, "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright." Esau didn't respond to trouble like Moses and Joseph did. When he was pressed by faintness and hunger, he gave his blessing to another man. He relied on his own understanding. When he faced trouble and perplexity his faith didn't hold, and he fell into distress and despair. He thought he was defeated, but it wasn't until his faith gave out and he sold his blessing that he knew true defeat. He had looked defeated and he had felt defeated, but it wasn't until he gave in to defeat that it overcame him.

Have the defeats of your life worked something good in you? Or have you given in to them and let them work something bad? Have they produced gold in you? Or wood, hay, and stubble?

When we're in the midst of the furnace, we must remember that God is in control. He knows when to turn the fire up and when to turn it down. He knows how much we can take, and he knows just what is needed to work his eternal work within us. We must trust him.

And don't let the trial darken the understanding God has given us. We must keep "looking diligently," as Hebrews says. I once laid a hardwood floor over a poor subfloor, and eight of the boards popped back up. When I went back to fix it, I found a distraught woman who began second guessing the whole project. "I wish I had done this differently," she said. "I wish I had you put in an unfinished floor and finished it ourselves. My husband said it would be cheaper." When a customer gets in that frame of mind, look out. She was looking at one little area that had gone wrong and blowing it up to find something wrong with everything.

I said, "Now wait a minute. Think it out. You sell houses for a living, right? Doesn't it distress you when a prospective buyer spots one thing wrong with a house and then can't see all the good things about the house because of that one wrong thing?" She saw my point and agreed: "Yes, I know. The customer gets a negative frame of mind, and I just can't sell those houses." I pointed out to her that just one thing was wrong with the floor, and it was easily fixed. Later I learned from someone else that she really liked her new floor. Her frame of mind had changed.

That often happens in our Christian lives. One thing goes wrong, and suddenly we forget all of God's blessings. We must keep "looking diligently lest we fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble us...."

Let's not run from our trials. Let's not be crushed by our defeats or grow bitter at the trials. In times of apparent defeat, let's praise God that he is working gold in our lives.