Our trials are a tool that our loving Father uses to help us grow. Jesus suffered; you will too. But your suffering is purposeful. It’s evidence of his love and it’s designed to help you grow. So keep going. I never would have wanted the trail that we went through. You probably don’t want trials either. But you’re not alone. Your Savior suffered for you. Even in trials, your loving Father is at work, and he will use it for our good. Keep your eye on him. He will bring you safely home.

A few years ago, our family entered one of the most severe trials in our lives. It’s not the first time we suffered, but it was the most intense time of suffering we’ve experienced. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
We would get the kids ready for school. When they were gone, we would sit on the couch, not knowing how we were going to get through another day. Sometimes we’d sit in silence. Sometimes we’d cry. We’d often pray, but our prayers weren’t articulate prayers. Our prayers were sometimes just simple requests for God to help us.
That period lasted about four years. God was good, we learned a lot, but it was brutal.
I’ve learned that we’re not alone. As Ray Ortlund comments on the book of Job:
I used to think that the book of Job is in the Bible because this story of suffering is so extreme, so rare and improbable and unusual. I thought the message of the book is, ‘Look at this worst case scenario. Now, come on. Surely in your comparatively small problems, you can find your way.’ I don’t think that anymore. Now I think that the book of Job is in the Bible because this story is so common.
What should we do when we face troubles like this, when it feels like we’re barely hanging on?
Some of you know what it’s like to experience extreme trials. You know what it’s like to lose a marriage, to stand at the grave of a loved one, to experience chronic illness. What do you do when you face this kind of suffering?
Hebrews is written to a church in which some had experienced intense suffering for their faith. Their particular trial was persecution for the cause of Christ, something that you and I may face too. But what he writes also applies to other kinds of suffering too.
In this passage, the writer tells us three things we can do when we face this kind of suffering.
One: Consider Jesus (12:3-4).
“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (12:3).
You are not alone! God the Son himself knows what it’s like to suffer. As verse 2 says, he endured the cross and despised the shame. Jesus understood what it was like to be betrayed by friends. He knew what it’s like to be unjustly accused. Jesus understood physical pain. But even beyond that, Jesus experienced a kind of pain that you and I never will. He bore the sins of all who those who call him Lord. Jesus experienced an even more intense level of pain than you and I ever will.
In fact, that’s the point verse 4 makes. “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” You’re suffering, but, unlike Jesus, you haven’t shed your own blood in the struggle against sin. If Jesus endured this greater trial, you and I can endure the lesser trial we’re facing.
Consider the suffering of Jesus:
He was despised and rejected by men,a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;and as one from whom men hide their faceshe was despised, and we esteemed him not.Surely he has borne our griefsand carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken,smitten by God, and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions;he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;we have turned—every one—to his own way;and the LORD has laid on himthe iniquity of us all.(Isaiah 53:3-6)
Jesus did this for me and for you. Jesus was willing to suffer for our sake. Jesus was willing to suffer the agony of the cross so that anyone who turned to him could be free from the penalty of sin. John Stott wrote:
I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his.
Consider him, so “you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” When suffering, don’t lose heart. Don’t give up. You are not alone. Jesus suffered too. Consider Jesus and his sufferings. Remember his faithfulness and perseverance. Consider his willingness to suffer for you, and your sufferings may become more manageable in light of top his.
But that’s not all.
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What does spending endless hours on Latin, Greek, Logic, Rhetoric, Jurisprudence, Physics, and Metaphysics result in? An elite capable of navigating the scientific, theological, and political milieu of early modern Europe. No wonder the educational system produced such polymaths—renaissance men—able to discourse on law as theologians, theology as lawyers and politicians, and politics as theologians. The reason civil magistrates were so invested in university education was precisely because they were political institutions. Education is inherently political as one recent outfit has noted. Even our own American political tradition has recognized the political and anti-egalitarian nature of education. 

Classical education advocates often make the claim that true education—done classically—is not about career training, social advancement, or college preparation; instead, classical education is primarily, if not solely, concerned with virtue formation and a pursuit of the transcendentals—truth, goodness, and beauty. Any social or political benefits are simply ancillary to the real aim of a classical education: learning to think, becoming a better person, and knowing what to love. Insofar as this is merely a description, rather than a prescription, of how the modern classical education movement conceives of its own teleology, regrettably this may very well be true. Yet, rarely do such advocates interrogate how “classical” such a view of education really is. Is it really the case that education in the medieval and early modern periods did not aim at career training? Did early modern grammar schools (our equivalent of secondary schools) focus on preparing their students for further university education? What sort of education produced the likes of John Milton and John Donne, Francisco Suárez and Pierre Gassendi, John Owen and Gisbertus Voetius, Robert Boyle and René Descartes? 
Desiderius Erasmus’ De civilitate morum puerilium (On the Cultivation of the Manner of Boys)—a paragon of the new humanist educational program in early modern Europe—laid out four aims of education: piety, love for the liberal studies, instruction in daily life, and the teaching of customs and manners of civility. The first two were not unconnected from the latter two. Good people were to live good lives. Johann Sturm, the great 16th-century German educator, in his treatise on how the gymnasium (the modern equivalent of a secondary school) in Strasbourg makes this connection more concrete: “For as it was almost always useful for individual private citizens to have their children conversant with the discipline of the liberal arts, so in the public realm it was essential for all for the preservation of the state that some persons stand forth who, in periods of crisis and danger, would look after the needs of state not only advantageously, but also wisely.” In other words, liberal learning has its usefulness, especially in the formation of a political elite who would rule wisely. This is not my interpretation of Sturm’s belief. Lewis Spitz, the great Lutheran historian begrudgingly admits it: “Sturm’s inflexible standards fueled his determined optimism that the elite, and thus only a very small fraction of the youth, who were trained in the classics, could achieve the highest cultural goals their society had to offer them.” What were these standards? A mastery of language (grammar), a mastery of thinking (dialectic), and a mastery of speaking (rhetoric).
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When I was first saved, I loved talking to God and seeing Him work. I still do. Yet, I now see that there is a lot to be gained from a little structure, like actually having a regular quiet time where I pray the Bible. 

I was almost 30 and had been in the Marine Corps for about a decade when God abruptly entered my life in a Damascus Road type of experience. The spiritual change was immediate, but my ignorance of spiritual things was entrenched. I knew nothing about God except that He was real, He was personal, and that I was His. These basic realizations made prayer the most natural thing in the world for me.
From the point of my conversion forward, I wanted to do everything in my life by reference to God, and so I needed to be constantly talking to Him. I was naïve and overwhelmed, but I had not yet thought that I could pray wrongly. It was clear to me that God was God and I was not; therefore, I had no problem with deferring to Him, no real desire to get my own way, and no inclination to ask merely for the benefits package. However, as I learned more and became increasingly exposed to private and public prayer, I realized that my way of doing it had some deficiencies.
How did this realization hit? First, I read about true prayer in the Bible. Second, I observed or experienced some issues with prayer, particularly with Session and in corporate prayer gatherings. Third, I recognized that the biblical condemnations of praying wrongly might apply in different ways to committed Christians.
Below are some of the errors in prayer that I have witnessed or fallen into over the course of Christian life. My hope is that this brief list highlights some things all of us – and especially us ruling elders – need to be careful about while trying to serve the church.
Hypocrisy
The first of these “prerrors” (if I can coin the term) is hypocrisy. In Matthew 6:5, Christ warns us not to pray like the hypocrites, who are people who like to be seen publicly as holy and righteous. Because they are looking for public approval, they do not gain God’s approval. I do not think I have seen an awful lot of hypocritical grand-standing in PCA churches, but I have experienced a different problem with hypocrisy as an elder. The problem on my mind is that the awareness of my own tendency toward hypocrisy can paralyze me.
My sin makes me want not to pray, especially publicly, because I am aware of the all-too-present danger of hypocrisy. I know intellectually that this paralysis can only happen if I am listening to the enemy and not to God, so I have found a couple of practices that help with addressing this. I have to first constantly remind myself that when the paralysis strikes, it is because I am adopting a works-oriented view of myself. Of course I am not good enough on my own to earn God’s approval. Christ alone is perfectly righteous, but I enjoy that perfect righteousness of Christ as my own through faith in Him. To allow remaining sin to cripple me in my walk and duties is concomitant to denying that my name is written on His hand. Then I think about 1 John 1:9, which says that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Reminding myself that I am judged by Jesus’ performance and not my own, and confessing my sins without reservation, have helped me deal with my feeling of hypocrisy and to pray publicly without this paralyzing self-focus.
Vanity
The second prerror is vain repetition. God denounces this in Matthew 6:7, where Christ cautions His disciples against imitating the babbling of Gentiles and pagans, who say meaningless words and have meaningless practices. By contrast, the Christian is here called to pray with faith and trust, enjoying a freedom of expression like that which exists between a child and a loving father who already knows that child’s needs.
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