Affliction sounds a retreat, to call us off the immoderate pursuit of earthly things. When two things are frozen together, the best way to separate them is by fire; so, when the heart and the world are together—God has no better way to separate them than by the fire of affliction.

Knowing God is in control and that he loves us should lead us to look for his loving hand even in our suffering. If you are facing difficulty right now, as a Christian, you may not fully understand what God is doing, but during it, you can look for the work of grace in your heart. No one seemed to understand this better than the Puritans. Below are four spiritual advantages of affliction, as summarized by Thomas Watson.
1. Affliction shows us more of our own hearts.
Water in a glass looks clear but set it on the fire, and the scum boils up! Just so, when God sets us upon the fire, corruption boils up, which we did not discern before.
Sharp afflictions are to the soul as a soaking rain to the house; we do not know that there are holes in the roof until the shower comes, but then we see it drop down here and there.
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When our hearts and minds are in danger of being unnerved by the prospect of evangelism, we need to marinade our perspective in the assurance Jesus gave that a Helper would – and now has – come who would be the very ‘Spirit of truth’, sent from God the Father to stand alongside us in bearing witness to Christ. In that sense, no matter what our abilities or experience, we will only ever be Junior Counsel to the Senior Advocate that God has given in presenting the world with the case for Christ. 

Some years ago I was given the opportunity to move from my home in Northern Ireland and spend two years living and studying in Oxford. I had been offered a place to read for a theology masters at the university, as well as a position on an evangelism training programme run by a Christian apologetics centre in the city that I would do alongside my academic studies. I can remember being utterly flattered and enchanted by the opportunity: Here I was being invited to study at arguably the world’s most prestigious university; to be taught and mentored by people whom I regarded to be among the world’s leading Christian evangelists and apologetic thinkers. Yet when the romantic fantasies of Oxford’s dreaming spires faded and I sobered up to what the practical realities of going would demand, the inconvenient truth that the whole enterprise was actually a huge risk dawned on me rather uncomfortably. There was the professional and financial risk: Living and studying in Oxford would cost tens of thousands of pounds and going would mean abandoning both a job I enjoyed and an stable income, as well as having no guarantees of future employment once my studies were complete. There were the academic and psychological risks: Would I have the ability and resilience to cope with the intellectual and emotional challenges of so rigorous an academic environment? There was the relational risk: Due to circumstances beyond our control, my wife was unable to join me in Oxford for the first year. What pressures might this bring to our fledgling marriage and would we be able to cope? And there was even the faith risk: I had heard horror stories of deeply sincere believers who had had their faith shipwrecked when studying theology at top secular universities. How would my faith fair in the inevitable crucible of being confronted with ideas and arguments contrary to what I had hitherto believed?
As I crossed the Irish Sea heading for Oxford that September morning I had no idea what the answers to these questions would be. There were no guarantees that it would all work out positively, no assurances that I would not need to come home after one term to search for a new job and face the embarrassment of needing to explain the situation to people – some of whom had financially supported my going. Thankfully, none of these fears were realised and what transpired into the five years that my wife and I spent in Oxford proved to be the most beneficial and formative season of our lives so far. Yet it was an experience that we would never have known had we not been prepared to embrace the opportunity in spite of the inherent risks. As I left Ireland for Oxford that first day, all I had was an open door of opportunity, the promise that God would be with me, and a sense that this was what the Lord wanted me to do even though it didn’t come with any certifications that it would all work out. But it was enough. Like Moses (Ex. 3:12), I would have to discover in retrospect that this was precisely what God wanted me to do – and not because the entire experience was smooth or simple!
In many ways, Christian evangelism is a lot like this. There is simply no getting around the fact that public witness to Jesus is an inherently risky affair – no matter how gifted or experienced we might be. There is simply no guarantee that people will react positively to the Gospel or, indeed, to us as bearers of it. Jesus forewarned his disciples that even though God himself had specifically chosen them to bear his fruit in the world, many in that world would both hate and even persecute them on account of his name (Jn. 15:16-16:4). When they then began their witness to the world there were, of course, many who became followers of Jesus. Yet the New Testament is also painfully honest that they were also regularly maligned, misrepresented, socially ostracised and even imprisoned for communicating a message considered an offence to most Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:23). If the absence of risk or the guarantee of a positive response had been a prerequisite for the apostles taking up the Great Commission they would have never left the Upper Room in Jerusalem. But, instead, they were utterly convinced that God has demonstrated His appointment of Jesus Christ as Lord and they were left in no uncertain terms by that Jesus that they have been given a mandate to take the message of His Lordship to the world, whatever the personal cost or risks. They were, therefore, fully persuaded that Christianity was public Good News. In their own words: ‘we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard’ (Acts 4:20).
Nothing much has changed on this front in the two thousand years since their witness: Jesus is still Lord and his command that his disciples publicly witness to the Gospel remains unchanged. Yet doing so continues to harbour various kinds of risk. There is the reputational risk: that once people discover our Christianity they will inevitably think less of us, either because we are in their eyes irrational, or just plain weird, or even because we are committed to certain values or ethics that they consider to be, at best, on the wrong side of history or, at worst, dangerously dehumanising. There is the professional risk: the legitimate concern that any conversations with colleagues about faith could be interpreted as proselytising and land us in trouble with the Human Resources department. There is also what we might call the counterproductive risk to the Gospel: this is the concern that some people have that, if they do try to evangelise, they fear that they will do such a bad job of it that they will actually be counterproductive to someone’s openness to Christianity – perhaps only confirming rather than debunking stereotypes – and, ultimately, creating more work for the Holy Spirit by compounding the confusion or scepticism of the person they share the Gospel with through their limitations and mistakes.  Add to these dynamics the new phenomenon of cancel culture, where any individual can be socially no-platformed because of something they said or did decades ago (even if it wasn’t in any way controversial at the time!), as well as the ways we have been perennially educated to approach the risks of Covid-19 over the last year. It’s probably no wonder then that the Risk Gap remains one of the biggest impediments we have to engaging in evangelism.
So what can we do to avoid allowing these inherent risks in Christian evangelism to hinder us from sharing the Good News of Jesus with others?
First, we need to continually remind ourselves that even though evangelism doesn’t come with a guarantee of success, it does come with the guarantee of God’s help and presence. Jesus personally promised that as you ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…’, He will be ‘…with you always, to the very end of the age’ (Matt. 28:18-20). When our hearts and minds are in danger of being unnerved by the prospect of evangelism, we need to marinade our perspective in the assurance Jesus gave that a Helper would – and now has – come who would be the very ‘Spirit of truth’, sent from God the Father to stand alongside us in bearing witness to Christ. In that sense, no matter what our abilities or experience, we will only ever be Junior Counsel to the Senior Advocate that God has given in presenting the world with the case for Christ. We are, therefore, never alone in witnessing endeavours. Whether it’s in the staff room, at the gym, in the Sixth Form Centre, in university halls, at the pub with colleagues after a long working week, on the sports field, or around the kitchen table, the moment we open our mouths to communicate Jesus the most experienced, empowered and effective evangelist God ever has – or ever will – give the world is by our side supporting and enabling us. In fact, even if we should find ourselves unexpectedly hauled before authorities because of our faith, Jesus commands us that we are not to be anxious about how we will defend ourselves or what we shall say, “for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very moment what you ought to say” (Luke 12:11-12).
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Harper took hold of the debris I clung to. His face was pale, his lips blue from imminent hyperthermia, above the sound of the turmoil around me though his voice was weakening I heard him ask, “Are you saved?” I replied, “No.” Harper shouted the words, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.” Even in my desperation, something in me wanted to reject his offer. Waves drifted us apart, but a few minutes later the current brought us together. In one final attempt to persuade me to accept the remedy for my lost soul, again Harper shouted, “Are you saved?” He asked me to believe in Jesus. Then he slipped under the waves for the last time, never to be seen in this world again. 

Like me, you may never have heard of John Harper. It was a surprise for me to discover that he played a pivotal role in helping many people caught up in an event that has captured the imaginations of countless millions. It was the sinking of the Titanic.
With his “six-year-old daughter [Annie], and his sister, he boarded the Titanic… for the privilege of preaching at one of the greatest churches in America, Moody Church in Chicago, named for its famous founder Dwight L. Moody.”
Deadly Disaster
This disaster occurred during the ship’s maiden voyage across the Northern Atlantic Ocean from Southampton, England to the USA on the night of 14 April 1912. As it steamed at a top speed of 22 mph through calm Atlantic waters, it sideswiped a large iceberg that loomed out of the darkness at about 11.40 p.m.
The collision resulted in catastrophic damage to the starboard side. The ship dubbed the ‘unsinkable’ eventually sank to the bottom of the ocean in under three hours, with the loss of over 1,500 of its 2,224 passengers! The rest were taken on board the limited number of the ship’s lifeboats.

Selfless Solicitude

Recently, I discovered a part of this story totally unknown to me. As I recount what happened, I hope you’ll allow me to use some sanctified imagination. We begin “four years after the tragedy at a Titanic survivors’ meeting in Ontario, Canada, where one survivor recounted his interaction with Harper in the middle of the icy waters of the Atlantic.”
My name is Steve Crain. Like many of you here, I am one of the survivors of the sinking of RMS Titanic. Today I want to honour one man whose heroic actions changed the future of my life.
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