Posts Tagged ‘pain’

Thank You For Tragedy and Suffering

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Tragedy and suffering are inevitable in this fallen world. Sin has corrupted God’s very good creation (Gen. 1:31) and has ushered in shame (Gen. 3:7), fear (Gen. 10), blame (Gen. 3:12), pain (Gen. 3:16), toil (Gen. 3:17) and death (Gen. 3:19). This is the world we now live in. It is not our home, oh Christians, but a desert we wander in for a time.

As we wander through this desert land we quickly come to see that God does not guard us from suffering. We are not immune to the grimacing pain of chronic illness. We are not protected from bodily hard. We are not always shielded from the evil of others. But we do have something through all of the pain. Hope and faith.

What do we have hope in? Hope that God will right all the wrongs done to us. Hope that these failing bodies will one day be perfected by the full application of the finished work of Christ. Hope that God will over-compensate for all the hardship we endure here in the desert land. Hope of a new home free from old pains. Hope in the faithfulness of Jesus.

What do we have faith in? We have faith that in “all things God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). All things. Let the weight of this phrase saturate your soul. God is in control, and sovereignly uses both good and evil to work the good of His people. What this means is that God, in His Perfect Wisdom, tempered by His Perfect Love for the Saints, carried through by His Almighty strength, has a purpose and plan that every illness, evil and tragedy we endure. Evil cannot touch us without God’s ruling permission. So when we suffer, we know that God is letting it take place for a reason. There is no tear wasted by Our Gracious Father.

Thomas Watson once said, “Afflictions to the godly are medicine” and that “No vessel can be made of gold without fire so it is impossible that we should be made vessels of honor, unless we are melted and refined in the furnace of affliction.” How does God use suffering, pain and tragedy for our good?

    Suffering purify our hearts and draws us to the most important things. Watson comments, “As we sometimes hold a crooked rod over a fire to straighten it, so God will hold us over the fire of affliction to make us more straight and upright. Oh how good it is when sin has bent the soul awry from God,that affliction should straighten it again!”

    Through suffering God teaches us to rely on His loving grace and not our own strength (2 Corinthians 12:8-9)

    Sufferings make us more like Jesus who was “despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (Isaiah 53:3)

    Suffering makes love this world less and place our treasure in heaven. As said above, this is not our home, but a desert. God will, in grace grant us desert heat so we never desire to settle here but always look for the hope to come.

    Suffering makes us happier. How is this so? Suffering makes us let go of lesser things (the comforts of this world) and to grasp with all our might the eternal things of Christ. Suffering brings us nearer to God who is the source of all happiness.

    Suffering brings us the opportunity to prove to this world the supreme worth of Jesus. To say Jesus is enough in comfort is good and important, but to say Jesus is supreme in the face of persecution or cancer is to prove to the world that He is more valuable than your own life.

So God, in Powerful Love, works all things, including suffering, tragedy, and pain, for the good of His people. We may not be able to see how God uses evil and tragedy (i.e. the death of an infant, the murder of a young girl, rape, genocide or any other heinous act of suffering or evil) for good, but we know Him; He is a compassionate God, a loving Father, a gracious King.

So what’s our response? Let me first answer that with a song.

Every Day

EVERY DAY | SOVEREIGN GRACE MUSIC

    In Your grace, You know where I walk
    You know when I fall
    You know all my ways
    In Your love, I know You allow
    What I cannot grasp
    To bring You praise

    Thank You for the trials
    For the fire, for the pain
    Thank You for the strength
    Knowing You have ordained
    Every day

    Your great power is shown when I’m weak
    You help me to see
    Your love in this place
    Perfect peace is filling my mind
    And drawing my heart
    To praise You again

    In my uncertainty, Your Word is all I need
    To know You’re with me every day (repeat)

OUR RESPONSE TO SUFFERING

1) Thank you Lord for revealing to me that this is within Sovereign Power. You are not suprised.

2) Thank you Lord for revealing to me that you will good for me. This good doesn’t mean my temporary comfort or happiness, but my eternal happiness in Jesus. You fight for my eternal joy. I know that even this will work for my good.

3) Thank you for the cross which proves to me your power to work evil for good. For Jesus, My Savior, Your Son, was crucified by evil men, but, at your hand, crucified for my sin. At the cross you used the greatest evil to bring the greatest good. I praise you Father for your Sovereign Grace. I praise you Father for the pain.

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The Morning Will Come

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Tim Challies:

    W.A. Criswell was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas for 50 years. He told the story of taking a flight to go and speak at an event on the east coast of the United States. As he boarded the plane he was excited to see that he was seated next to a seminary professor that he admired. As soon as they were underway, Criswell introduced to this man and they began to talk.

    The professor told Criswell that he had recently lost his son to a terrible illness. The boy had been at pre-school and had been sent home one day after coming down with a fever. The parents assumed it was just another little cold or flu, but through the evening the boy got worse and worse so they took him off to the hospital. After running tests the doctors came and gave the parents the worst possible news—that the boy had somehow contracted Meningitis and that it had progressed beyond the point that they could help. The disease would run its course and the boy would die. There was nothing they could do.

    For a couple of days the parents sat with their boy, praying and hoping. But the boy got worse and worse. Finally, after a few days, they could see that his body was too weak to go in. It was in the middle of the day and the boy’s vision began to fade. He looked up at his father and said, “Daddy, it’s getting dark, isn’t it?”

    “Yes, my boy, it’s getting dark.”

    “It’s time for me to sleep, isn’t it?”

    “Yes, my boy, it’s time for you to sleep.”

    The professor explained how his son liked to have his pillow and blankets arranged just so and that he always lay his head on his hands while he slept. So he fixed his son’s pillow and watched while the boy rested his head on his hands. “Good night daddy. I’ll see you in the morning.” The boy closed his eyes and drifted to sleep. His breathing became shallow and just a few moments later his life was over, almost before it began.

    That professor stopped talking for a while and looked out the window of the airplane for a good long time. Then he turned to Dr. Criswell and with his voice breaking and with tears spilling onto his cheeks he whispered, “I can hardly wait for morning to come.”

Pay close attention to the heart of this phrase, “The morning will come.”

    Christian, do you know that morning is coming? Do you believe it? This man was a suffering father, a man who missed his little boy, but he had hope, sure hope, hope that was grounded in the gospel. He had hope in the future, that Jesus had been raised and that he, too, would be raised. He wasn’t looking to the future and holding on to a vague promise. He was looking to the future with sure and unshakeable confidence that just as surely as Christ was raised from the dead, he too would be released from all the pain and all the hurt of this life.

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A Thoughtful Answer for God and Suffering

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

Since God is good and all-powerful, why does God allow suffering in this world? This is a question that is, and should be, asked by many people. Why is this such a common question? Well, everyone sees suffering on almost a daily basis. Either it be in our owns lives or in the lives of people we see on tv or read about in the news; we are faced with the cold reality of suffering.

Check out this video for an answer that puts this question rightly and ultimately finds the hope for all suffering in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus!

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God’s Role

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Mike Wilkerson:

Here’s what’s surprising about making sense of your life in God’s story: the story is not about you—it’s about him. He is both the author and the main character, and he has written you into his story to say something about him. Yet, if we are honest, we tend to script our lives with ourselves as the protagonists and God in some supporting (or possibly antagonistic) role.

Often, God is cast as a mere extra. At best, he adds to the background action; at worst, he’s overlooked. Some have written God into the story as an absent father who pays no attention to the damage being done to his child. Some have made him out to be a therapist whose job it is to prop up their self-esteem. Some treat God as debtor, holding him responsible for their pain and believing they are owed a free pass for sins of pleasure and escape in trade for their undeserved suffering. Others live a life of despair in a world they believe is controlled by a heartless mastermind, pulling the strings of the universe with no compassion for people afflicted by evil. Some treat God as though he were the source of a better high or a better escape than their drug of choice…

Rather than trying to write God into our stories, we would be wiser to sit patiently with our Father and let him tell us his. We would surely find ourselves in his story and learn that we are not defined by our hurts or our sins, as we may have believed. As he tells us his story, we must be willing to let go of the stories we’ve told to make sense of our lives. We must let his story rewrite ours and sweep us up into something much greater than ourselves.

This was taken from the introduction of his book called “Redemption:Freed by Jesus from the Idols We Worship and the Wounds We Carry.” You can read the rest of the Introduction for free here.

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