WARNING PREACHY
Lately I have been praying about and pondering something:
hardships and sufferings. Specifically,
how are we Christians to think about suffering, as people of faith, and its
part in our daily sanctification. Please note that while
my thoughts are the result of my own times of prayer, I do not consider
my thoughts exhaustive.
When I am able to get people to open up, and talk
honestly, I learn that most all of them "suffer" in some way. Be it great suffering or small, a great
irritation of their minds or mild, or a major physical problem or minor, each
of them has a prayer request that would release them from their suffering. What I recognize is that all Christians struggle
with things that make them suffer in some way.
Each denomination seems to address how they think about
suffering. The Roman Catholic tradition,
for instance, will consider personal affliction and suffering as a way of personal
spiritual development or that suffering shaves time off of purgatory. The Reformed Christian will
view suffering as directly given by God for His Glory in some way, while other
denominations may consider it as direct punishment from God because He punishes those whom He loves. There are more ways of thinking about it, of
course, but the following are my personal thoughts, and I pray that they may
help in how you think about your own times of suffering as redeemed followers
of Jesus.
First, personal suffering may stem from our own wrong
expectations of God. The
equation D=(E+R)[1]
guides me in this. Disappointment = Expectations + Reality. As I observe my own struggles in life, I
recognize that quite a many have been simply the result of my own personal wrong
expectations.
Have you ever seen AFV (America’s Funniest Videos)? Quite often, the videos are of someone
jumping from the roof of their home into a backyard swimming pool only to hit the
side of the pool with the background noise of laughter added to the track to
ease our pain of watching it. I never
find these videos funny and with-in the first few frames, when I have seen the
person on the roof and the swimming pool below, my mind instantly knows that this
will end badly. And when the person hits
the side of pool, breaking four ribs to the music of canned laughter, I think to
myself, “what did he expect?” The
Reality of the jumper’s leap proved not to meet with his Expectations,
and so he was seriously Disappointed (D=E+R) and likely injured.
What I observe is that many Christians are like the
jumper in the video. They expect a
certain result from God and the Christian life, but when their expectations are added to the reality, they will often become disappointed. What will help alleviate this sort of suffering for us is two-fold: knowledge of the Scriptures and the leading of His
Holy Spirit.
First, a knowledge and humble acceptance to God’s wisdom
from the scriptures is an easy first step.
Let’s take a marriage for example.
While I am not at all trying to minimize the many complicated aspects
of the love relationship, I have learned over the years that many people have ignored
the scriptures’ instruction to “not be unevenly yoked”. The person married another person because they
“loved” them only to realize later that the person was not a devoted follower
of Jesus Christ, and the marriage failed.
Again, I am not trivializing anyone’s love relationship but too often
people go into marriage without the slightest attempt to humbly honor God ‘s
direction in the process.
And then second, there is the direction of God's Holy Spirit in each Christian's life. Often, people have confirmed that the Holy Spirit was indeed directing them to avoid the marriage, but they reasoned through it because they really wanted to be married. Again, I am not trying to humiliate anyone in a failed marriage, but what gives me pause is that some people pray that God will ease their pain while they begin the process of getting married again-- with the same exact disregard for the direction of the scriptures and leading of the Holy Spirit.
And then second, there is the direction of God's Holy Spirit in each Christian's life. Often, people have confirmed that the Holy Spirit was indeed directing them to avoid the marriage, but they reasoned through it because they really wanted to be married. Again, I am not trying to humiliate anyone in a failed marriage, but what gives me pause is that some people pray that God will ease their pain while they begin the process of getting married again-- with the same exact disregard for the direction of the scriptures and leading of the Holy Spirit.
He has shown you, O
mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and
to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
That walking "humbly" with our God is the sticky wicket for most of us.
Remember, I am talking about suffering and questioning how suffering is used in the life of the Christian’s daily sanctification. In this very first reason for suffering (wrong expectations of God and disregard for the Holy Spirit) we discover that in order to have better expectations we must humbly approach the leading of the Holy Spirit and the direction of the sacred scriptures with a genuine humility for God to lead us. Sometimes this leading is not in the direction that we would desire to go in life, and sometimes God says “no” to us because we are His soldiers and He desires us to do something different than what we may have thought. However, His calling for us to do something different than what we desired does not fall under this category of suffering, but under the third which is the result of simply being a disciple of Jesus. Before I broach that topic though, we will need to look at a second reason for Christian suffering, and that is because it is the direct result of living in a world of sin. We live in this world of sin so we should not expect more from it than what it can deliver.
However, this will have to wait until the next
installment of Why do Christians Suffer?
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