welcome to gospel in life thank you for joining as we go through this special series of meditations by Tim Keller trusting God and difficult times this new series is meant to encourage you to trust God more deeply and to meditate on his word and what it promises to give you strength and hope in difficult times and now here’s today’s meditation the title of this reflection is don’t waste your sorrows I want to read just verses five and six of Psalm 126 those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy those who go out weeping carrying seed to sow will return with songs of joy carrying sheaves with them now this is a this is a remarkable metaphor in which your sorrows your tears are like seed which when sown properly can bring you a harvest of joy the implications of the metaphor are at least these – first of all the first implication is that it’s possible to waste your sorrows imagine a a farmer going out with a sack of seed and he’s supposed to be sowing it all over instead what if he just dumped it in one spot that would be a waste of seed there wouldn’t be a harvest there might be a few fruit that that grew up right there or maybe nothing it would be a total waste and it’s possible therefore to grieve in such a way that doesn’t produce any fruit in your life at all and although it’s possible to just dump especially when you’re grieving that’s actually a very good metaphor it’s possible just to just just weep just cry just just yell and scream and and basically not see any real fruit in your life from it so it’s possible to waste your sorrows but secondly the most intriguing part of this idea here is this metaphor is that the joy is produced by the sorrow you see we all hope and believe that that joy will follow sorrow and there are passages of the Bible where it says Psalm 30 verse 5 weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes in the morning and most of us think yes we were very sad but we’re hoping God brings joy in our sadness time is over but this is going beyond that it’s not just saying that a joy follows sorrow it’s saying that joy is actually produced by the sorrow and what can that possibly mean what it can mean is that sowing seed the the the sadness and the grief actually makes you I can make you a happier person in the long run and if you sorrow in the proper way now how could that possibly be and the answer is I mean I don’t know what the psalmist knew but what we know because we’re Christians is this if you look to Jesus this can come true first of all Jesus is the ultimate example of someone who brought joy out of sorrow Jesus Christ literally brought joy brought us joy out of his weeping his IgAN II and his weeping was substitutionary he stood in our place and therefore when he took our punishment his weeping was the ultimate sowing in tears and it brought the ultimate harvest of joy now when I see him dying so that I could live when I see him going through all this incredible grief and sorrow so he could bring joy to the world that enables me to sorrow in a far better way why well first of all when I think of him suffering for me I won’t suffering guilt I won’t sit there and say well maybe I’m suffering because God is punishing me no Jesus took my punishment secondly I won’t when I’m suffering I won’t saw suffer in self-pity and anger I won’t say how dare God let this happen to me I said wait a minute God suffered more than I did so that I can someday live with him forever and that gets over yourself pity in your anger and then of course thirdly when I see him suffering for me I can suffer in patience because I say look his disciples did not understand what was going on when he went to the cross he said what could look at God ever bring good out of this and yet God did of course so when I see him suffering for me Ike makes me patient it may it keep guest rid of my anger and self-pity it also gets rid of any sense that I might have of guilt and you know what happens then then I just become pay leaning on him humbling myself and when it’s over the sorrow creates a new Christlikeness an ability to depend on God and not on my circumstances Jesus Christ was the ultimate example of sowing tears that reap joy and if you watch him suffering for you if you keep your eye on him when you suffer your sorrows will not be wasted but they will bring long-term great joy and now here’s Tim and Kathy Keller for a short time of qat on today’s meditation going through difficult times and even tragic times and coming out on the other side with nothing to show for it seems to me to be the ultimate waste I mean you talked about people who try to just put their mind somewhere else I find in myself other people there’s a tendency to just put your head down and grit your teeth and wait for it to be over rather than using it as a learning opportunity come up with some things that people can do to make a tragic time or bad time into a learning experience the reason I ask this is because we’re told in Scripture that we’re supposed to comfort other people with a comfort that we received so if we didn’t receive any comfort if we haven’t done anything to a mass comfort that then we can then share out to other people then we just we’ve wasted the whole thing it’s doubly tragic so how do you amass those things that you’re going to be able to share with other people I actually think that the main way you do that is to do what you should be doing as a Christian anyway but under the suffering so it’s a little bit like the what you’ll often see when it before a batter gets up into the batting box he’ll be not just he won’t be just having one guy having me a sports metaphor I am doing you sports metaphor a metal bat or some other bad it’s something heavier so that when that when he finally sheds all the heaviness and he goes back to just having a bat the bat will feel very light in his hands the practice bat is weighted that’s right and then the real one is light that’s right you see how he has that he has the real bat the one he’s really gonna use along with the practice bats and so when you’ve just read the Bible pray go to church take the sacrament reach out and help people under your suffering it just feels awful and yet Paul says our slight momentary affliction is achieving for us an eternal weight of glory which far outweighs them all and right before he says that he says though our outer body is wasting away or inwardly we’re being renewed every day and what that simply means I think is that when you just do the normal things use the means of grace obey God be kind other people especially reading the scripture especially the Psalms and praying when you have that practice bat on you then when it goes away you’re gonna find and I have grown I have become more patient I’ve become more caring I’ve become more loving because what’s happening is your inner spiritual person is being developed that’s like lifting weights in the gym exactly like that you feel weaker you feel worse you feel terrible exactly like I don’t like this and yet you’re actually getting stronger okay okay if you found today’s meditation encouraging please subscribe below and be sure to share it with a friend to encourage them as well and if you’d like to hear more teachings by Tim Keller you can listen to new sermons every week at gospel and live.com slash podcast thanks again for watching gospel and life