“HOW LONG CAN YOU STAY under water without coming up for air?” That was the challenge my boyhood friend made to me. He boasted himself a full minute-and-a-half. “No contest!” I said. “Three minutes! Watch this.” I sucked in as much air as I could, and I plunged myself face-first beneath the surface of the pool. In the muffled quiet of the moment, I knew my friend had begun his count: “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi….” I’d show him. I was determined. I was under the water for what seemed to me like an eternity. Surely, my three minutes was up. My lungs burned, yearned for release. It was painful. I couldn’t stand it another second. My body broke the surface with a surge upward, I blasted out the used-up air and gasped for a fresh supply. Breathless, I asked my friend, “How long?” “Not quite a minute,” he said. Of course, I didn’t believe him. But, later, when I tried to hold my breath topside, I discovered: It’s harder than you think.
How long can you stay under. That’s a question not just for the swimming pool but for life. “How long can you stay under?” That’s the question that seized Jesus’ first disciples. How long can you endure what it is you’re having to go through? Jesus told that first band of followers, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (Jn. 16:16). And they knew they were about to go through something.
They didn’t understand entirely, but they knew he was going away. He had told them he was “going to the Father” (v. 17). They knew they would be separated from him. They knew Jesus would be gone. But for how long? That they didn’t know. He who had “the words of eternal life,” (Jn. 6:68), the very One whom they had “come to believe and know [as] the Holy One of God” – he was going away (Jn. 6:69). Their life’s breath was being squeezed from their spirits. “What does he mean by… ‘a little while’?” they asked. “We do not know what he is talking about” (Jn. 16:18). How long is “a little while”?
We know that question. That’s the question we ask everyday. When we’re going through adversity, when the path is steep and the way is narrow – and the air is thin and we’re near exhaustion – That’s what we want to know: How long is “a little while”?
When I first began to think about what to preach on during Lent this year, I asked God to show me what it is that you might need to hear. And as I reflected on that, I began to think how much pain you are enduring. As a church, we are divided over worship styles. We are trying to find our way through the changes that are occurring in our denomination and in our society. We are in the midst of selling a property that has been symbolic to us of better years. We are in transition with our staff – currently we’re seeking to fill a music spot and looking for someone to take the baton for youth ministry when Tyler goes off to seminary.
And those are just the things we’re dealing with as a congregation. Many of you are facing your own hurdles. Several of our members are dealing with health issues, some are looking for employment, some will soon be moving away, and many families in our church are suffering grief and loss – four just this past week.
With all our sorrow – in the midst of all our pain – is there a word from our Lord that will restore our joy? That’s the question I was asking. As I sat down to plan this series for Lent, I wanted to know what we needed if we were to bear up under our trials. Jesus addressed the heartbreak of his first disciples. Does he also have something to say to us?
And, of course, he does. Here in John 16 he is talking to us as well as to his first followers, “Very truly I tell you…., you will have pain” – no breaking news there, right? We know that much; we’re feeling the pain. But that’s not where he stopped. He went on. And here’s where our lungs begin to fill up with air again. Jesus says, “You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy” (v. 20). This is what we need to hear. This is what we long to hear. Jesus doesn’t tell us how long our “little while” is going to be, but what he does tell us is: However long it is, there is joy on the other side of it. Whatever we’re going through, He will get us through. But how can we be sure? That’s a nice thought, but what evidence is there that we can depend on it?
There are two things. First, he has gone through it himself. And second, he knows the territory. He will get us through it. So first, he has gone through it himself. When Jesus said, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me,” that’s what he was talking about. He was talking about what he was soon to go through. He was talking about his death and resurrection. He was talking about what we affirm in the Apostles’ Creed when we say that he was “crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell and rose again from the dead.”
This is the heart of our faith, the core of our hope, and the guarantor of our joy. He died. He rose again. He went through hell, and he came out on the other side. And there will be joy because we will see him again. “Again a little while, and you will see me.” The Bible calls us to look to Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has [now] taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2, emphasis added). Did you catch the part about “the joy that was set before him”? He endured the sorrow. He bore the pain. He suffered the same way you and I do. And he did it knowing that his pain would turn to joy.
He went through it himself and now…now, because he’s been there, he knows the way. Death has no mystery for him, nor does any other trial in life. Now he will carry us through. How? One of the ways he will get us through is prayer. In verse 23, he says, There is a day coming when you will ask me no question (v. 23, margin). All the mysteries will have been solved. You will see all things clearly. You will understand why things happened the way they did. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully” (v. 12). What a day that will be!
But that is then; this is now. In the now I can’t see the outcome. I don’t have the answers I may feel I need. But what I do have is prayer. Jesus said to his first disciples, “Until now you have not asked anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete” (Jn. 16:24).
Prayer – talking to the Father in Jesus’ name – is the way you stay in connection with the triune God. You carry your struggles to God, and he carries you through your struggles to the joy that is waiting on the other side of your pain.
Sometimes it’s a long wait. So, what exactly is it that you should pray for while you are waiting? If you’re like me, you pray for relief. Even Jesus in the Garden, the night before his death, prayed, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). In other words, If there is any way, I ask you not just to get me through this but to get me out of it. That’s the way I pray. And what I’ve learned is: God doesn’t always deliver us from our troubles; he sometimes delivers us through them.
And so, what we pray for is perspective. We pray as Jesus did in the Garden: “Yet not what I want but what you want.” That is perspective. That is looking at our situation through the eyes of faith, trusting God’s will. We pray for the longer view. We pray for the perspective of eternity. You and I may have to go through many afflictions, but on the other side of them is a joy that can be ours in no other way.
But I don’t want you to think that the joy is only to be found on the other side of the storm. It is here with us now, and I can say that because God is here with us now. And he is going through the ordeal with us. In Isaiah 43, he promises us: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you, for I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (vv. 4f.). Jesus has gone through the fire himself, and he will carry us through. Jesus has waded through the deep, rushing waters, and he will get us across.
I can’t tell you how long your “little while” will be – or how short it will be. But I can tell you this. The message of the gospel, the testimony of the Bible, and the witness of the Spirit all converge to assure you that whatever you’re going through, Jesus will get you through.
I want you to try something if you will. I want you to get a blank card, or a small piece of paper – something you can carry with you this week – and I want you to write on it these words: “Whatever I’m going through, Jesus will get me through.”
And here’s what I want you to do with that card or that slip of paper. Read it before you go to bed tonight. And then put it on your nightstand, so that, when you get up in the morning, you can read it again: “Whatever I’m going through, Jesus will get me through.” Then put it in your pocket or your billfold or your purse, and take it out some time during the day and read it again. And do that each day this the week.
Then I want you to do one more thing. I want you to pray each time you read those words. Just a simple prayer: “Jesus, you have promised me that my pain will turn to joy. Help me to believe your promise.”
At one point, I thought about entitling today’s sermon Wait Your Turn. And what I intended by such a title was this: I wanted to encourage you to believe that, as you wait in your time of turmoil, you can trust that that pain – whatever it is – will, in God’s time, turn. It will turn to joy.
