Matthew is identifying a pattern, a way that God tends to work. It’s a pattern, that takes place with Israel in the Exodus, and one that’s repeated in the life of Jesus. If we learn this pattern, it will help us when we face it as well. There’s a trajectory that’s repeated so many times that we’re supposed to figure out, “Oh, okay, that’s how God works.” It’s really a lesson about how God works. It’s “based on a conviction of the unchanging character of the principles of God’s working.”

Big Idea: No matter how bad things get, God’s pattern is clear: He always ultimately delivers his people.

Kay Bruner is a licensed professional counselor who lives in Dallas, Texas. But for a while she was also a missionary to the Solomon Islands, working to complete a New Testament in the Arosi language, which she completed after ten years of hard work.

Bruner married her high school sweetheart, Andy. They had four children together. She loved God and served him.

One Sunday morning, she declared herself done. She left her house, walked to where her church was meeting. Out of nowhere, she heard herself saying, “I can’t do this anymore.” She thought of dying. “This question ran through my mind, over and over:  how had trying so hard to do what I thought God wanted me to do, ended up in being so done?” she asked.

What happened? Trying so hard had led her to feel anxious, which over time led to depression. Her husband, Andy, used pornography to deal with his issues. “Eventually, the façade of our fabulous goodness fell, and we were left with a marriage and a missionary career in crisis. At that point, there was no more try-hard left in me. I just could not.”

A marriage in crisis. A husband with a porn habit. Some difficulty with the missions organization. All of this conspired to push her to the edge. She experienced a major depressive episode.

I had lost my capacity for feeling good things, doing things right, being in control, being the good wife, the good mom, managing the home.  I was in the dark, and I lost my ability to pretend otherwise. I couldn’t protect myself, much less anyone else, from my emotions. The pain and the panic and the inability to process created an undertow that drew me down, time and again, until I thought I would not survive it. (As Soon As I Fell)

How does someone like Kay Bruner end up like that? You would think that someone who dedicated her life to God like that would end up with a good life, not with her marriage in crisis, her ministry over, and worst of all, with depression.

An Old Question

It’s an old question: why do God’s people seem to end up in crisis so often?

Why did God allow the Chinese government to raid the Early Rain Covenant Church in the city of Chengdu, arresting about 100 church members? Why is the pastor Wang Yi missing in Chinese custody?

Why did Derek Bass plant a church in Providence, Rhode Island, only to make the “extremely difficult, gut-wrenching, and tearful” decision to pull the plug on the church plant?

Why do God’s people seem to end up in trouble so consistently?

You may have wrestled with this question personally. You may be in the middle of a personal crisis yourself. You may relate to the question a famous nun supposedly asked God one day when she slipped down an embankment and fell squarely into the mud: “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder why You have so few of them!”

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