This week, the blog is sponsored by Moody Publishers and is adapted from Platform to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God’s Presence by Mark Sayers.
A week after I preached my Platforms to Pillars sermon in London, I was leaving a speaking event, feeling exhausted after a brutal season of conflict, betrayal, and discouragement. On this trip, I had the privilege of catching up with other friends who had gone through similar journeys and still longed for God to move. The last few days of my trip filled me with hope, and I prayed that these past days would signal that the long and challenging period I had been walking through would be over.
As I entered St James’s Park tube station, I stood on the platform and rang my wife, Trudi, back home in Australia. Instantly, I could tell that something was wrong. She told me she had gone for a test on a lump in her breast and was called back to the doctor a few days later. “They have done a biopsy on the lump, and it is cancerous.”
I had never felt so far from home as I woke in my hotel room the next day. Yet a remarkable thing began to happen. A truth was revealed to me. Pillars are those who reveal themselves when you need them. They are often hard to see in good times but assemble when the chips are down. Within minutes of waking, friends were calling to offer support. The pastoral team at King’s Cross Church interrupted their schedules to spend the afternoon praying for Trudi and me.
Unable to get an early flight home, I kept my speaking schedule and headed to Oxford to speak at St Aldates Anglican Church. As I walked around Oxford, the streets seemed to give testimony to those pillars who had gone before. I realize the great chain of belief in which I am but a link. Before me have lived great witnesses. Men and women who had walked through suffering, struggle, even martyrdom, yet whose devotion and discipleship still passed the knowledge of God down through the generations.
The suffering, this time of wilderness, has deepened her spiritual authority and sharpened her sense of what is of heavenly value.
As I preached my Platforms to Pillars sermon that night, I could feel it was different. This was no longer a theory but a living reality I was stepping into. The pillars felt no longer hidden but incandescent around me, reflecting God’s love.
As we struggled with the news of Trudi’s cancer, the pillars kept appearing around us. Our church rallied in a way I had never seen before. A team of pillars from our church gathered every Monday night to pray for our family as news spread of Trudi’s condition. A wave of prayer began across the world. Amid her pain and the reality of the fragility of her life, Trudi was living as a pillar.
Trudi’s treatment so far has been successful. She now lives from scan to scan, in faith that the cancer will not return, determined to follow God regardless of what the future holds. The suffering, this time of wilderness, has deepened her spiritual authority and sharpened her sense of what is of heavenly value. God has brought around Trudi a new network of those who live and pray as pillars.
Before Trudi’s battle with cancer, I felt discouraged, hurt, and betrayed. I feared for the church’s future and lamented those who had pursued platform and fallen. However, now I see through a different lens. I am amazed by the pillars that fill the church, pointing glory back to God through their lives.
Continue your journey to move beyond platform culture and live as pillars of strength and community.
