How many of us here enjoy suffering?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I don’t know anyone who
truly enjoys suffering. There’s no fun in suffering at all. Suffering is painful, it’s frustrating, it’s
depressing. A lot of times, it’s lonely.
In fact, a lot of times nobody even knows we’re suffering. The source of our suffering is not
obvious--we don’t have a broken bone or anything--and we don’t say anything
about it to anyone. And so, nobody knows about it. We just suffer in silence. And we’d do just about anything to get rid of
our suffering if we only knew how to do that.
We know, of course, that suffering is a part of life.
I don’t know of anybody who’s never had to suffer somehow. Some may
suffer more than others, but no one is exempt from suffering. In fact, I
don’t doubt that there are people here today who are suffering in some way.
I may or may not know what the cause of it is, but I know there are
people here who are suffering. That’s just the way it is.
It’s the way it is, and we have to accept it, whether we
like it or not. And we don’t like it, of course. We wish there was no suffering. And yet, here’s the Apostle Paul, in our
reading for today, making sure we know that, as Christians, we are going to
suffer. And of course, we know that’s true.
We know it’s true, but we don’t talk about it a whole lot.
It’s certainly not something we emphasize when we try to bring people to
Christ. You know, I went to Annual Conference a week ago, and they had
various workshops about things we could do to build our churches and things
like that. Not once did I hear them say, “Tell people that if they become
Christians they’re going to suffer.”
Suffering is not one of the big evangelistic tools we use. You don’t
see any inspirational Christian posters that say “Glory in your
suffering.” And yet, that’s what the
Apostle Paul tells us to do.
We wonder sometimes why that is. I mean, if we’re
serving the one true God, if we’re doing our best to love God and to show love
to others, why does God not give us an easy life? It only seems fair,
right? We do things for God, God does
things for us. We serve God, God helps
us. We love God, God makes our lives
easier. Why not?
That’s not how it works, of course. That’s not how
it’s ever worked. Some of the greatest
heroes of the Bible had very difficult lives. Paul himself wrote about
something he called a “thorn in his side,” something that was very painful to
him. He prayed repeatedly for God to take it away from him, and God
refused. We don’t know what that “thorn
in the side” really was, but we know that Paul had to live with it for the rest
of his life.
There are others. Joseph, in the Old Testament, was
thrown into slavery and later thrown in jail for a crime he did not commit.
And of course, Jesus himself was tortured and ultimately killed in a very
painful way. Being a Christian does not
mean that we will not suffer. In fact, sometimes being a Christian causes
us even more suffering on earth.
We wish God would get rid of our suffering. And not
just ours, but all the suffering on earth. God could do that, you
know. God can do anything. But God chooses not to.
And you know, we really have to be a little bit careful
about wishing God would get rid of suffering. Because that’s part of what
the temptation of Jesus by Satan was about, right? Satan says, Jesus you don’t have to suffer
hunger. Neither does anyone else.
Just turn those stones into bread.
Satan says, Jesus, you don’t have to suffer the indignity of going
around the countryside trying to convince people you’re the Messiah. And
they won’t have to suffer from not believing, either. Just jump off the top of the temple. The angels will catch you, everyone will see
it, and they’ll all believe in you.
Satan says, Jesus, I’ll give you the whole world. You can stop the
suffering of everyone, everywhere, forever.
Just bow down and worship me.
God chooses to allow suffering in the world, at least for
now. Why? Well, because we live in
a broken, fallen, sinful world. And
until that day when Jesus comes again, it’s going to remain a broken, fallen,
sinful world. And that means we’re going to suffer sometimes, whether we
like it or not.
Paul does point out some benefits that can come from
suffering. He says suffering produces perseverance. Suffering teaches us to keep going, to keep
working, to keep trying, even when things go against us and even when things
look bad. And perseverance produces character. The things we go through, the things we
overcome, make us stronger. And then
comes the big one. Character produces
hope.
But they raises another question, right? Why is hope
so important? If suffering is the first
part of a chain that leads to hope, then what is there about hope that makes
the suffering worth it for us as Christians? Why does God want to give us
hope?
Well, first, understand what we mean when we say “hope”.
And I’m sure a lot of you do understand, but just to make sure, we’re not
talking about hope in the sense we often use it in conversation. We’re
not talking about hope in the sense of “I hope it’s a nice day” or “I hope the
Twins win the World Series”. “Hope”, in
that sense, is just a wish, a desire for something to happen but with no idea
whether it actually will. The kind of hope we’re talking about here is a
feeling of expectation that something good will happen and trust that something
good actually will happen.
That’s the hope God gives us. That’s the hope we have
as Christians. We expect, and we trust, that God will eventually make
something good happen. We expect, and we trust, that better days are
coming. We expect, and we trust, that
there will come a day when all suffering will end. We may not know when
that will happen. We may not know how that
will happen. But we expect, and we
trust, that God will make it happen.
And we need that. Because you know, when you think
about it, suffering, even really bad suffering, is not the worst thing that can
happen to us. At least I don’t think it is. The worst thing that could happen to us is if
we were suffering without hope. If we
were suffering, and we had no hope that things were ever going to get better.
That our suffering was going to get worse and worse until we died. And that our death was going to be final,
that there was no heaven, no place we were going to go where we will be
released from all our suffering and be in the presence of God. That kind
of hopelessness is about the worst thing I can imagine.
But as Christians, we never have to face that.
Because we do have hope. Yes, we
have to suffer sometimes, but we never have to suffer without hope. No
matter how bad things are, no matter how much we may suffer, we always have
that hope. We expect, and we trust, that
things will get better. Maybe they’ll get better in our life here on
earth, or maybe they’ll get better in our eternal life in heaven. But they will get better. No matter how bad things are, no matter how
much we may suffer, God never, ever leaves us without hope.
And that is why, as Paul says,
we can glory in our suffering. Not because we want to suffer. Not because our faith makes the suffering
less hard or less painful. But because we have that hope. We have the hope that comes from faith in
Jesus Christ as the Savior. We have the
hope that comes from the promise of salvation and eternal life that our faith
gives us. We glory in our suffering because we know that our suffering is
not forever. We glory in our suffering
because we trust in the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We suffer because we live in a broken, fallen, sinful
world. But this world is not our real home, nor is it our final home.
Our real home, our final home, is with God in heaven. That’s the hope, that’s the expectation,
that’s the trust we have. That hope is a gift from God, made real to us
through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And with that hope, we can handle the
suffering and anything else life can throw at us.
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