Success Turned Upside Down

"...the truth is that none of us knows how God has ordained that we would glorify him. The Lord uses each of his unique children in unique ways. Perhaps the way that he's chosen for us to make much of him is through . . . intense suffering. Perhaps it will be through sin and failure...Yes, every believer is called to consciously seek to glorify Him, but we're not the only ones who do. God is too great to be glorified only through the lives of his victorious children. He is glorified by our suffering and even by our sin. His sustaining strength is glorified when we walk through the furnace of affliction. His mercy and patience are glorified when he continues to love us despite our failures. He is so great that he is even glorified by the evil in the world...Everything that happens does so for only one reason - to glorify Him...Americans generally can't wrap their minds around a success that seems like a failure. God's glory and our sins seem mutually exclusive. We treasure strength, not weakness, victory not defeat, happy endings not tragedies. But is this the message of the Bible? When we look closely at the Scripture, do we see people who were always faithful, always strong and victorious, people whose lives were shining examples of virtue and faithfulness? Do we see heroes who left exemplary examples for us to follow? Or do we see something else in their lives?And then we come to the paradigm shattering, unfathomable gospel message. Here we see a little unwed pregnant girl, a midnight flight into Egypt, an itinerate preacher from a nowhere city who attracted a crowd of nobodies for a while and ended up deserted, shamed, and hanging exposed and bloody. In the end he was confounded by His Father's absence and seemed to die in utter humiliation and defeat. How on earth can a story like that ever bring the Creator of heaven and earth glory? Evil appears to have triumphed. Sin has been victorious. All is lost. God's glory might have been seen if he had been able to get everyone to hail Christ as the beloved Son worthy of all praise and obedience. But this story? This weakness? How would his glory be seen now? Had sin really triumphed over God's desire to be glorified? God's methods turn everything we assume about glory upside down."Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace