WORD DEVOUR
LEADING THROUGH TRIALS
“No one
wants to live in the slums. It’s like this train. It can only go where it’s
tracks take it…And there’s no getting off this train we’re on.”
~Cloud Strife,
Final Fantasy VII
I want to use a story that I know very well to illustrate the paper you’re reading, because I believe Jesus would use a story to bring to life whatever He was trying to convey (Matt. 13:34 “… without a parable, he never spoke to (the crowds)”). What I want to illustrate is the process of trials and transformation, and how that applies to a Christian’s life. The story I want to use is one you may never of heard of, but it was written by a Japanese man following his death mother’s death, and is the plot for the 1996 video game, Final Fantasy VII.
The story centers on Cloud Strife, a small boy in the lovely town of Nibleheim, who longs to win the affection of the prettiest girl he knows, young Tifa Lockhart. Finally at age 14 he secretly tells her one night his plans of going away to the world’s capital of Midgar, to join its armies elite forces, SOLDIER, and hopes to prove he’s man enough. He doesn’t like who he is, he doesn’t believe he’s good enough. Yet he wants to prove to himself, to his town, and most of all to Tifa, that he is.
Testing is the proving of genuineness. Everything has to be tried before it can be approved to go, whether a car or a computer, it’s tested to ensure it is what it says it is. Of course, God knows who we are, and He’s already told us as Christians who we are in Him. Sometimes He has to prove who we are to ourselves. And that’s when the trials come. You may ask, “Well then, what is a trial?” James 1:2 says, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” We can define a “trial” from this verse as “anything that test your faith”. How do you honestly know if you’ve ever had faith in God at all, if you’ve never been tempted not to?
Cloud does go to Midgar, and joins the ShinRa army. For two years he tries to work his way up into SOLDIER. The army is harder than he thinks, but Cloud survives, taken under the wing of a young man named Zack. Zack is amazing. He’s smart, strong, bold, and handsome. All the girls want him, and Cloud wants to be him, because he’s everything he’s always wanted to be. Zack easily gets into SOLDIER, but Cloud doesn’t make the cut, and remains a lowly ShinRa guard.
Why must out faith be tested? It is because we lack wisdom (James 1:6). The book of Romans ends with, “God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever, amen.” In anticipation of our needing guidance, direction, and knowledge, James tells us that God tells us to ask for wisdom, for it’s His to give, because He’s the only one who has any! So when you ask for wisdom, does God just make you smarter? Sometimes, in the moment, yes, the Holy Spirit can drop a discerning word in your heart. But keeps this verse in context; God gives us wisdom through tribulation! “We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseveravce, character; and character, hope” (Rom. 5:3-4). I ask you, where is the hope for us when the world beats us down? Just like Cloud, doesn’t it at times seem hopeless to get over the condition of our own selves? Something deep inside of us screams, “I’m so much more than this!” Maybe we run away to prove ourselves, and fall flat on our face. But like Cloud, we have to realize, that that is our hope, the very trial we are going through.
Zack is friends with SOLDIERS top warrior, the legendary Sephiroth, who is unmatched in battle. Sephiroth gets a special assignment to Nibleheim along with Zack, who brings Cloud along as a guard, knowing he’d like to see his hometown again. Yet Cloud is ashamed that he never made it into SOLIDER, and wears his grunt helmet at all times to hide his face, even from Tifa. Suddenly tragedy strikes. Sephiroth loses his mind and burns Nibleheim to the ground in an insane rage, killing both Cloud and Tifa’s families. In an effort to stop him, Tifa and Zack confront the mad man and are both nearly killed before Cloud’s very eyes. After losing it all, Cloud is pushed beyond the limits he believed he had, and in an amazing act of courage, bravery, and strength, he battles Sephiroth and is victorious, though barely alive. Cloud is transformed in an instant into the man he had always been, but never believed he could be.
That’s where the victory is, when the trials push us to the extreme, push us to things we’d only seen in nightmares, push us to the point where we have to act! And after the our enemy, Satan, is defeated, we find out we’re made of a lot more than we thought. 1 Cor. 15:52 tells us that “This corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” That’s transfigured. And I could easily end the paper here. But there’s more to Cloud’s story. Just like they’ll be more to your story.
After the incident at Nibleheim, Tifa is nursed back to health by several survivors, and escapes to the slums of Midgar. Cloud is in a coma, and unbeknownst to him, is infested with Jenova cells, a life form with Sephiroth has control over. Zack helps Cloud escape Nibleheim, and looks after him for the next five years, waiting for him to come out of his trance, even giving him his old SOLDIER uniform. Just outside of Midgar, Zack is found by ShinRa and shot down as a fugitive, and Cloud barley makes it into the city, where Tifa finds him. It’s at that point that Sephiroth uses the Jenova cells in Clouds body. Cloud comes out of the trance as a bold, strong, and distant man, telling Tifa how he was in SOLDIER for the last five years. He starts to believe the lies Sephiroth is telling him, that who he really is isn’t good enough (even though he knows it was Cloud, not Zack, who defeated him) and he has to be someone like Zack. Clouds shattered mind believes it, and he lives out his fantasy, unaware he’s living a lie, a false identity.
Satan will always tell us that we’re not good enough, that we have to be just like someone else to loved and accepted. He tells you that Cloud isn’t good enough, you have to be a Zack, when the truth is that Cloud can’t be Zack, he has to be the true Cloud. There are no short cuts; there is no simply imitating someone else to be just like them. You have to be tried as you and transformed as you. Cloud discovered who he was, but so quickly forgot it in favor of living someone else’s life. What a lie, yet Satan uses it on us again, and again, and again; “You have to be like them, you’re not good enough on your own.” He keeps us looking to everyone else’s life because he knows if we ever lived our own and received real wisdom from God through trials, we’d be unstoppable.
Tifa knew something was wrong with Cloud, and wanted to keep an eye on her friend, so she got him to join her in a resistance movement against the ShinRa Cooperation, who had grown evil and controlling. In the course of events, Sephiroth pops up again, and Cloud remembers enough that he knows he has to stop him. He, Tifa, and they’re friends travel many miles and face many hardships trying to find Sephiroth and defeat him before his world destroying plans come into play. But Sephiroth’s not worried. He knows only Cloud can stop him, and he’s not facing Cloud, he’s facing Zack, a “puppet”. It takes another catacyclisic event to wake Cloud up again, when Sephiroth runs through Cloud’s new love interest, Aerith. Not long after, Sephiroth mercilessly pulls away the cover from Cloud’s eyes and shows him the false lie he’s been living for so long, but never tells him who he truly is. Cloud unwittingly aides Sephiroth in his master plan, and the world lies on the brink of ruin.
The false self will work for a while… but it’s not really transformation, because it’s proven nothing to be genuine. It’s a lie, and Satan knows it, and one day it will fail you, and you’ll realize you’ve only been furthering his kingdom. That’s why Romans 12:2 warns, “Don not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
It’s only Tifa, his only loving faithful true friend, who won’t even give up on him, who can remind him who he is. After a painfully journey into both their past, and into the deepest corners of Cloud’s mind, they return to the truth, and Cloud remembers who he really is. As nobody else but Cloud Strife, he, Tifa, and their friends face Sephiroth and destroy him forever.
Don’t resent the trials. It’s the times God pulls us out of the world’s mold and can make us the Cloud’s we’re born to be, the only ones who can save the world. You may be going through a hard time, but in Matthew 5:3-6, Jesus calls you “blessed”. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the kingdom.” What is that? That’s transfiguration into you’re true identity.