Expect Suffering And Grow From It
Tom Shrader teaches that suffering and trials are normal for Christians, not exceptions to avoid. Drawing from James 1:2-4 and Romans 8:28, he explains that God uses difficulties as 'spiritual aerobics' to test and strengthen our faith, producing endurance and drawing us closer to Him. He emphasizes that what we know from Scripture must trump what we feel in difficult circumstances.
“The testing of my faith produces endurance, perseverance - so when you pray, Father, I want to grow strong, I want to love you, I want to follow you, I want to be your guy, I want to persevere until the very end, I want to finish strong, He hears, God, let me suffer.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How Do I Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2006)
Recorded: 2006 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 1 hr 3 min
Themes: suffering, trials, endurance, faith, growth, perseverance, trust, hope, facing hardship, going through trials, workplace difficulties, struggling believer, new christian, experiencing loss, dealing with tragedy, questioning faith
Scripture: James 1:2-4, Romans 8:28, 2 Timothy 3:12, 2 Corinthians 1:3, John 9
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual formation, biblical worldview, providence, spiritual maturity, testing of faith, divine sovereignty, christian discipleship
Full Transcript
The Story Behind "It Is Well With My Soul"
Gentlemen, thank you so much for that. How pretty that is, and Wade, thanks for sharing. That song was written by a guy by the name of Horatio Spafford. I don't know if you know the background. Some of you know the story, probably, that led up to that song. It's a wonderful story, tragic.
He and his family were in Chicago, and he was a businessman, and he had been under just a lot of pressure. The plan was to take a trip across the Atlantic and over into Europe. Time to depart was coinciding, he was in Chicago, with the Great Chicago Fire. They said, listen, if you hope at all to collect on any of your insurance, you need to be here in person. I think there were about 300 people killed in that fire. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people displaced and homeless and thousands of buildings destroyed.
So he was sending his wife and children, and he said, you just go ahead. What happened is the ship that they were on sank, and he got a telegram from his wife saying all is lost, I am safe, something to that extent. As he then is going to visit her, to catch up with her, he is on the ship, and he asked the captain if he could kind of approximately say when they got to that place where the ship sank, would he call him, let him know. It was out of that experience that that song was born, It Is Well With My Soul. When sea billows roar, it's a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness. What a wonderful song.
Questions About Difficult Situations
Guys, thank you both for sharing that with us. I like doing this, I think. I think it's been better than, for me anyway, than just taking a Friday and doing it. I had a couple of questions here, and let's see if we can address them.
One is, as a Christian, how long should you stay in a difficult work situation? You have the option of leaving, but believe you should remain as a witness, a testimony for Christ. To me, the answer is in the question. If you believe you should stay, you should stay. There's not a formula here.
It is amazing, and I don't have a box for it, how some guys can go and be involved, ladies be involved in ministry, and literally spend a decade and see almost no substantial fruit from that, and yet they're convinced that God has called them to that place. If God has you in a difficult situation, I certainly wouldn't leave a place just because it was a difficult situation.
When Relationships Can't Be Reconciled
The next question ties right into this: If there's a strain-broken relationship between two Christians, and one person has tried to work it out, the other person refuses to talk, at what point should the person stop trying? And if the person who is refusing to reconcile is in ministry, does that change anything? Well, it should. I don't know that it will, but it's the same thing.
Here's what Paul says in the book of Romans, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with one another. Some relationships just simply never get reconciled. As far as it depends upon me, I have to do all that I'm convinced that God's called me to do, and then at some point, it seems to me almost in a healthy sense, I say, listen, I've done this, it's up to God to work in this other person's life. I'll pray, I'll work, I hope that He does.
But I don't think, both of those kind of look for a formula, and I honestly think you've got to go before the Lord. Just like so many of the other things, confess your sin, repent, and then ask God to show you your life, work on those things. But in terms of a work situation or a relationship, as far as it depends on you, live in peace with one another, it seems to me implied in that is not always is that going to work out. There are just some situations that for whatever reason just never seem to get reconciled, never seem to get put back together. The issue is, I think, not for me to focus on the other person, but on myself, and I pray that God continues to work in that relationship.
Tom? The year of the hymn, It Is Well With My Soul, and the Chicago Fire, 1871. There you go. If you were wondering, you now know, 1871.
Speaking Truth With Actions and Words
Francis of Assisi said, preach the gospel everywhere, and if necessary, use words. This is usually quoted when Christians are challenged to witness. Please respond in relationship to point seven. Point seven on our outline was speak the truth boldly. It was to make the invisible God visible and speak the truth boldly.
I don't know. I've heard that quote, and I'm sure many of you have as well. I don't think, or I would hope, that Assisi is not suggesting we don't deliver a wordless sermon only. No one has ever been one to Christ through a wordless sermon alone. It's a testimony, but somewhere in there, I have to say Jesus. I think what Assisi, I think the point that he's making there is exactly the same point I'm making. Your words and your message need to line up. I preach a wordless sermon in terms of my action, but at some point, I have to speak that truth.
Let me put it in a context where we live. If you kind of have your life together, and you've got your family together, and everything looks okay down where we live, you know what they're going to think? They're going to think you're Mormons. That's what they're going to say, gosh, they've got a suburban, there they are. Lots of people are just going to say, well, they're just wired that way. They're just nice that way. That's their disposition. I don't think you can separate those actions
The Bible's Unpopular Promises
Jesus said, "Whoever will come may come." There was another question about whether we aren't too inclusive with homosexuals. I've discovered that I can say almost anything, but when you mention the word homosexual, people get all excited about this. I've gone out of my way, every time we've mentioned homosexuality, to also talk about adultery and premarital sex. I've always put that package together, and yet we seem to hear only that one part.
God says, "Whosoever will, you come, you bring your sin with you." Would we in our context in our church welcome someone who was gay? Absolutely, if they weren't practicing. Just like we'd say, we want the adulterer to come. We want you to worship with us, we'd love to share the truth with you, but at the same time, we have to deal with your sin. If you're a gossip, we'd love to have you come, but we still deal with it.
I don't think God's word stutters when we get to a specific sin. We need to be very careful in this whole idea of love the sinner and hate the sin. We are all inclusive in saying all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It takes no more grace to save one person than another. We've emphasized that point pretty consistently over our time together.
We want to make sure that we communicate that. We want to make sure that we talk about God's grace in that context, and we don't want to single out any sin one over another. But we still also want to deal with sin as we see it in the scripture.
Building on Biblical Foundations
We are winding down session 10 tonight, 11 in the morning, 12 tomorrow night. I remind you on the back of this page is all of the information. Several of you have talked about emails and websites, so all that information is on there. One of the websites is the church, the other is the ministry through the week, and you can find just about anything you want on that.
We have tried to build on the basis that the Bible is the infallible word of God. Consequently, we develop a lifelong passion for learning God's word, for immersing ourselves in God's word. We try to make decisions that flow from the scripture. We then live boldly, not because of anything intrinsic in us, but because of what God is doing in our life.
We try to integrate our faith into our life. We are challenged to make the invisible God visible, to speak the truth boldly. We talked last night about contentment and how God has called us to be satisfied, not complacent, not apathetic. It's not a call to mediocrity, but a call to be content. This morning we discussed rejoicing in the freedom that we have, and tonight, number 10, to expect suffering and grow from it, to expect it, to understand that this is the norm for the Christian life.
A Discovery in the Christian Bookstore
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to James chapter 1, and that's where we're going to spend some time tonight. I had not been a Christian very long, and I went into the Christian bookstore, and it was an interesting experience for me. I've been in a lot of bookstores in my life, but never in a Christian bookstore.
In this bookstore, I found all sorts of fascinating books that caught my attention. I found books that, as I said earlier, seemed to have the best packaging, although that's changing now. The books that were presented most attractively typically had the worst doctrine in them. Those that looked a little dry and stale tended to be the better of the two.
I remember one day I was checking out the Christian bookstore, and there was a book right in the front, leather-bound, gold-leaf edition, called The Promises of God. There was this book that had in it all these promises of God. I didn't want to pay for the leather-bound gold-leaf, so I went back and found in the used book section a book on the promises of God, and it was filled with these wonderful things that God promises to us.
But I also discovered that there were some promises in this book that didn't make it to the other book. Let me read you one of them. 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 12: "Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." I didn't find that in the Promises of God book.
The Complete Picture of God's Promises
I found that as I read my way through, there were some promises that God makes in His Word that didn't make it to these pithy little sayings. I'm not in any way trying to diminish those, I'm just saying that there's a more complete list that we need.
When we come to Christ in repentance and faith, if we're coming to Him for relief from circumstances, if we're coming to Him thinking that all of a sudden now everything is going to be smooth and easy, we're in for a rude awakening, aren't we? What I've discovered is we have a tendency to say, we don't believe our path will be strewn with roses, but then when hardship comes, many of us have a flinch that says, "Wait a minute, why would this be? Look at what I was, look at what I am, God, You surely have to be pleased with me. Why would You allow these kinds of things to happen?"
The Reality of Christian Persecution
We talked about it last night, there are approximately 200 to 250,000 people martyred for their faith every year in this world we live in now, as compared to about 25,000, about 10% of that at the time of Nero. You and I are going to suffer. We're going to have trials, we're going to have hardship, difficulties.
It almost troubles me in a way that there's a promise of persecution and yet you and I honestly don't feel a ton of that, do we? There may be some of those times where there's somebody who kind of fires a snide comment at you.
People who I know, at least they claim, and their friends say the same thing, have been passed over maybe in promotions at work because of their faith. There may be that slight, almost always for us, of verbal persecution, but our life is filled with suffering and pains and trials, difficulties, hardship.
James: From Skeptic to Servant
Look at James chapter 1, verse 1, just to give us the setting: James, like Paul, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. What makes that introduction so powerful is who James is. We believe that James is the half-brother of Jesus. Joseph, his father, Mary, his mother, He's the half-brother of Jesus. And in and of itself, if you just think about that, that almost screams of the deity of Christ. It's very difficult for me to imagine calling my brother the Lord.
This is somebody who's been with Him, seen Him. We're told in Scripture that there was a point in time when His family did not embrace Him. This is James, one of the pillars of the early church, along with Peter and John. His nickname was Old Camel Knees. They say that his knees were so swollen, so calloused from hours and hours and hours of prayer.
James, a bondservant of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad. These are the Jews who are scattered, who have left Jerusalem, dispersed for probably a variety of reasons. Some out of obedience, some who took the Word of God that said, go, and they went. Some who are dispersed probably out of suffering and pain and hardship. As a Jew, when they came to Christ and repentance and faith, where they declared their faith in Christ, most of them at that point would suffer economically, would suffer and be separated from family.
The Paradox of Joy in Suffering
So it makes all the sense in the world that he would go right to trials, right to suffering, right to persecution. "Consider it all joy, count it as joy, evaluate it as joy, reckon it as joy, consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trial."
Now that sounds almost sick when I hear it. Consider it joy when I encounter trials. The word various there is translated in other places, multi-colored. There are various trials. They come in every shape and size. What may be a trial for you may be something I never experienced. What is constant in my life may never appear in your life. Suffering, trials, hardship. "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials."
That makes no sense to me humanly. Consider it all joy when I encounter various trials. Why would that possibly be?
The Purpose Behind the Pain
Here's why. It's a key word: knowing. You know something. "You know that the testing of your faith produces endurance." The word testing has with it the idea of proof or proving. The testing of your faith produces endurance, tenacity, perseverance.
Here's what He's saying: The testing of your faith produces endurance. The testing of your faith, here you go, hang on with me now, is spiritual aerobics.
Spiritual Aerobics: A Personal Illustration
We talk about physical aerobics. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I got on a kick a few years ago where I decided I needed to start going to the gym. And I didn't have any background. I was totally out of shape, just a mess. And I went up and I wasn't sure exactly what I needed to do.
I started with some weights first. There was a circuit there. And there was a young lady who was going through the circuit. I had no idea what to put the weights at. I didn't know what to expect. So I just decided whatever she had them on, I would have them on. She was going boom, boom, boom, boom. And I sat down and got about this far on one rep. One was my rep.
I decided to do aerobics. So I got on the bike. I'm sitting on the bike. I decided I got to punch in something. So I punched in 30 minutes. Then it had level 1 through 20. I said, well, I don't know. I'm above average, 15. So I'm on. No, not a good move.
So I'm on this bike. I put the towel over it because I know I can't stand to watch. The countdown is too slow. I'm grinding. I'm working. All of a sudden, I'm not feeling too well. I said, OK. I know I'm close to it. I picked it off. And 26 minutes and 30 seconds left. I got off and drove home and stopped a couple times on the way home. I was sick as could be.
Within a couple of months, I was doing 40, 45 minutes as much as I wanted on the bike and had all of these weights now set at least above the little girl that I was following. It makes no sense to me. But here's how it works physically: I take my body and I push it and I push it and I push it. The harder I push it, the further it goes.
The Divine Personal Trainer
The same is true spiritually. If I want to take my faith and I want to stretch it and stretch it and stretch it, what does that are difficulties and trials in my life. Here you go: Someone has said this, that God knows the maximum elasticity of our faith. He knows just how far to take us. He will take us to this and He will take us there and we'll say, "God, I can't think anymore. I can't anymore. I think it's just a little bit for God." "I can't only just a little bit further." "I can't anymore." "So that's right. You're done."
Now my tendency is to say, "I'm glad I'm done with that." And all we've done is loosen up the rubber band so we can just start out there next time. The testing of my faith produces endurance, perseverance.
So when you pray, "Father, I want to grow strong. I want to love You. I want to follow You. I want to be Your guy. I want to persevere until the very end. I want to finish strong," He hears, "God, let me suffer. God bring the trials. God bring the difficulties." Why? Because You don't like me? No. Because I love you. Knowing that the testing of our faith produces endurance, perseverance.
Bob Craning and Bob Vernon are here next week. I had dinner with Craning a couple of years ago and I don't know, some of you must know Bob. You probably run into him up here. Bob's 73 or four years old. He used to be the executive director
at Forrest Holme. We're having dinner and I said, "Bob, tell me what you're thinking about. Tell me what it is you want to do." And he says, "Here's what I want to do. I want to finish strong."
God allows or causes suffering, pain, trials in our life. Why? Well, God uses those. R.C. Sproul writes this: to remove God from human suffering is to quit the pilgrimage of faith. God majors in suffering. God displays Himself in holy involvement in all suffering. Rather than be removed from our suffering, it's those circumstances that allow us to see God.
We talked about it last night. Start with John. Go around the room. Tell me where you saw God work last in your life. And almost always it'll be a time of difficulty, pain, suffering, hardship, trials, a Chicago fire, a sinking of a boat, a death of a friend, loss of somebody that you love, an accident. It's all in God's timing. We get at this point at the essence of God and who He is. We get to the sovereignty of God. John sang a song, I think it was on Sunday night. He is an on-time God.
The True Beginning of Romans 8:28
I'm going to invite you to turn to the left to the book of Romans, Romans 8, verse 28. As you're turning there, probably many of you would say in your mind, "I know that verse," right? Anybody, can you tell me what that verse is? Okay. Give it to us again. Okay. Well, we got a couple of versions going. Why don't we see which one we have here and you both hit the essence of it.
There's a tendency when we quote Romans chapter 8, verse 28, to start with this: "all things work together for good." When we do that, we miss the essence, I think, of that verse. It says all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. That is true. But if I start that verse at that point, that tends to put the focus on me. "All things work together for good." But the verse doesn't start with that. It starts with this: "and we know," and we know God causes all things to work together for good.
I want to hang on that a second. "And we know," this is absolutely certain. "And we know," like I said, I'm breaking in a new Bible, so this doesn't have the writing in it that I have in my other Bible. But in the other Bible, right next to that, I have written the word "fact." And we know, we don't speculate. It's not wishful thinking. It's not a hope. "And we know," and we know God causes all things to work together for good.
The Certainty of Knowing
You get the same word back there in James chapter 1, verse 3: "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing." See this idea of knowing is really important. How do I know? How do I know for certain? How do I know for real? I know it because God's word says it. And I know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
Here's the promise that God has for us: God takes everything in our life, even the sin, even the bad things, even the things that are done to us, even the things that we do ourselves, and God works them together for good. Now there's a couple of things we want to point out. That's not a universal promise, is it? "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose," to His people.
If you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I don't want you to embrace this promise. This is not a promise for you. All things are not going to work out well for you. Life has a very unhappy ending for you. To be absent from the body will be to be eternally absent from the presence of God in a place called hell. I mean, that has to weigh in. I have to know that. I have to understand that. Those are the stakes. It is life and it is death.
The Reality of Death and Tragedy
We had a young man in our church die not long ago, and some people were swept away in the tragedy of this young man dying. That was not the tragedy. The tragedy was he didn't know Christ. That's the tragedy. Not that a young man died. Listen, there's never... Susan and I have had this conversation a thousand times in the last two years. There's never really a good time for this death thing. There really isn't a good time.
You know, we've talked about it since she's been sick. The kind of cancer that she has, the survival rate 10 years ago in this cancer was 1%. So it's serious, serious stuff. And what she prayed when this whole thing started is, "I just want to live long enough to see Braden born." He was, but that isn't enough. Because once I see him born, I want to see him smile. I want to hear him talk. I want to see him walk. I want to see him go to school. I want to see him hit his first home run. I want to see him graduate. I want to see him fall in love. I want to see him get married. I want to see his grandkids. There's never a good time for this death thing. It is always a tragedy in that sense.
And yet for us who are followers of Christ, the greatest moment we can experience is to see someone die who we know loves Christ and we know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And I remember grieving. And that's a very difficult circumstance to be in, to conduct a memorial service for someone that you are absolutely certain that they don't know Christ. And to hear the sorrow, "What a tragedy to see someone taken away in their teen years." It is. It's awful. I've got that. But the tragedy isn't just that. The tragedy is the young man didn't know Christ.
This is not a universal promise. "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose," to His people.
What This Verse Reveals About God
Now let's look at this again. Let's say you have a Bible and the Bible you have only has one verse in it. This verse, Romans 8:28. If you have just that verse, we know it's from God. We know it's true. Just knowing that one verse, what do we know about God? Two things jump right off the page. Number one, if He causes all things to work together for good, He has to be all-knowing and
He has to be all-powerful. He has them both. If He was all-knowing but not all-powerful, He'd be sitting in heaven saying, "Oh, I know that's going to happen. There's a tragedy. Oh, don't go down. Don't do that. I knew, but I couldn't do anything about it." Or if He was all-powerful but not all-knowing, He'd be saying, "Oh, if I'd have known that, I could have fixed that. I could have stopped that." But He's a God who's all-knowing and all-powerful.
We know God causes all things to work together for good. It tells us about God and who He is. It tells us about His power. It tells us about His knowledge. It tells us about His love and His goodness and all that goes with it. He's an all-powerful, all-knowing God.
The Danger of Diminishing God's Sovereignty
There was a book years ago, I think it was about 25 years ago, because I think the Silver Anniversary edition came out last year. It was a book that I had Christians giving to me and saying, "You should read this. It makes me feel good. It's helpful." And it was called "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" So I started to read the book and I see how they got comfort from it. The problem is this: the book is filled with heresy.
Chapter 7 of that book is called "God Can't Do Everything, But He Can Do Some Very Important Things." The author calls on us to love God and "forgive him despite his limitations." He's not an all-knowing God. He's not an all-loving God. He doesn't know. He's not powerful. He's an impotent God.
No, He reigns. Everything that happens in your life and my life is either caused by or allowed by God. If that's not true, He's not sovereign. If He's not sovereign, He's not God. And we know, there's the key word, and we know God causes all things to work together for good. And we know the testing of our faith produces endurance.
When Tragedy Strikes: A Real-Life Test
I came home one night. It happened to be a Thursday. Thursday is my teaching day. It's my business community teaching day. It was about 7 o'clock. The phone rang, and Susan was out there, and she was doing her best, I think, to make sure that I didn't end up taking this phone call, and she was saying, "I know he's here." And finally, she said, "Tom, you better take this."
So I went in, and I took the phone call, and I just heard this crying, uncontrollable sobbing. Then I heard the phone hit the floor. Someone picked it up and said, "That is Connie, and you need to come over here as quickly as you can. Their husband's just been killed." I said, "Okay. I don't know how to get there, so you're going to have to tell me how to get there."
I went over to her house, and I've been in situations like this before. I came in. Connie's a young gal. Just to maybe give you a sense of my age, Connie's 42, so that's young. Connie's there, and I come in the door, and she is just weeping. She's just hanging on, and she's just weeping.
Processing the Devastating News
So we sit down, and I said, "Tell me what happened. What's going on?" And she'd start the story, and she'd just get into it a minute or two, and then somebody else would come in, and every time somebody came in, it was reliving that experience again. "What happened? What's going on?" So finally, I said to her, "Listen, why don't you grab a jacket, and let's go outside. Let's go for a walk."
We're walking along, and she said to me, "Here's what happened. Her husband was a helicopter training pilot, and he was taking his last flight of the day. Had a student with him, and another guy who was making his first solo flight flew his plane right into him." And she said, "That's all I know. She said, I talked to him, and he said, 'I'll be home as soon as this flight's over.' And an hour later, she gets a call that says he's dead." And it was literally that cold. "There's a crash. He's been killed. That's all the information they have."
And she said, "Tom, tell me it's going to be all right." And I said, "You know, I can't. Tell me what you're feeling right now."
The Raw Reality of Grief
And she said, "I'm mad. I'm mad at the air traffic controller. I'm mad at that other person. I'm afraid. I've got a daughter. What are we going to do? I don't know anything about funerals or insurance. What am I going to do with the truck?" It sounds weird, maybe, even cold or sterile. But in that moment, in that time, I think that's where your mind races. It races to all of this. It races back to the practical. And she just listed these things. I said, "Let her fly, Connie. Tell me what you're feeling." She said, "That's why I'm afraid."
I said, "All right. Connie, tell me what you know." She said, "All right. I know God causes all things to work together for good. I know God will never test me beyond that which I can endure. I know that God either caused or allowed this for a reason. I know the testing of my faith produces endurance. I know that Brad is in heaven because to be absent from the body is present with the Lord. I know that God will use this and He will use me." And she rattles off these things that she knows. There are these wonderful truths.
When Knowledge Trumps Feelings
Connie was a lady that came to one of our studies, got saved there, been hanging around the church, and what came out of her was like five years of lessons. It was just wonderful. And I said, "Connie, everything is going to be okay because here's the deal: What you know trumps what you feel." That's what I have to do in those moments. That's what I do in those moments.
Feelings are feelings. Listen, if you're in the middle of a hardship or trial, you get that call, let me tell you, your feelings are going to race away with you. And feelings are feelings. Feelings are good. Feelings have an appropriate place. But when it feels like God's left me or forsaken me, I know that's not true. What I know trumps what I feel. What I know trumps it. I don't have to figure all of this out. I know God's in control.
Being up here is really weird because we have no television and I'm a television freak. I have a radio in my room, but it only will stay on a station for about 45 seconds and
then that station's gone. It's essentially useless.
I bought a newspaper today just because Susan and I were out. So it's the second we bought—twice up here we bought a newspaper. We get connected and all of a sudden a little bit of the news that I hear, the little bit of the TV that I see back in the restaurant or the things on the radio, they just remind me what's going on in the world. And again, I know how it feels. It feels like things are out of control.
God Remains in Control
They are not. They're beyond your control or my control, but they aren't out of God's control. He's on the throne. September 10th, September 11th, September 12th, He was in control on all of those occasions. I may not always understand Him. I may not always be able to figure this out, but I know this: God's in control. And when we're talking about suffering and pain and hardship, it doesn't mean that somehow He's blinked or He's lost track of you. He allows or causes that.
Learning from a Paralyzed Woman
I was in Tucson teaching one Sunday and they asked me to talk about suffering and pain and hardship. Now, my Sunday is I had to teach down there and get back home to teach Sunday night. I taught. They had a closing song. I went back. I'm changing real quickly for the drive back and I'm trying to sneak out without having to talk to anybody. I need to get out of there, get on the road, get back home. I got three messages to do that night.
I'm going down, out the back door, down a hallway and I'm down the hallway to the point where I can't turn back and there is a lady pushing a lady in a wheelchair. And I don't know what to do. I'm going to have to say hello, so up I go and I say something extraordinarily stupid. I say, "How are you doing?" And she said, "I'm doing fine."
And now I'm there. For whatever reason, I'm now engaged. There's a smile on the lady's face, both of them, and I find myself attracted to them. And I'm saying, "Were you in there?" And yes. And I said, "I'm talking about suffering and there you sit. I'm not qualified really to speak to it as you are."
And she said, "No, no, this was an accident." And she's essentially paralyzed from the neck on down. And her friend said, "Show him what you learned this week." And she took a long stick and on the end of it was a flat piece with a hole in it. And her friend would put the stick in her mouth and with the stick in her mouth, she could put that little loop over her joystick and push her wheelchair, move it forward or backward.
And I said, "That's pretty cool. I said, we're going to talk about suffering here. I said, what have you learned from this?" She said, "You know what? She said, I will tell you, my besetting sin in my life was patience. I used to pray, God give me patience. God give me patience. And she said, now I have real patience."
Finding God in the Midst of Pain
God has structured or organized our lives to include problems and suffering. And our task or our mission is not necessarily to stop that suffering, though you'd be foolish to discontinue it unnecessarily, but to find Him in the midst of the hurt and the pain. Not to absorb the pain and try to find a way out, but to find Him in the midst of it.
I had a guy that came up to me a while ago when I was done and we had done a Q&A. And he stood up and he said, "I just want to..." And he went on literally for two or three minutes. And I said, "I am really sorry, I don't know what you're saying." And when I was all done, I went up to him, I said, "I'm really sorry, I don't know what you're saying."
He said, "That's okay." And then he stuttered through the words that said, "When I was 16 years old, I was in a car wreck. When I was in a coma for three and a half months, he said, I just want to be an evangelist. I want you to tell me how I can achieve that." And it's the midst of that suffering and pain. Just when you heard that story, did you hear what you did? He made the invisible God visible, and now he speaks the truth. See how that works?
Why Does Suffering Happen?
What do we do or why does suffering happen in our life? We'll take a few minutes, this will be our close. Why would people suffer? It's interesting. I asked this question a while ago, and a guy gave me a handwritten note. And this guy said, "This is from my own reflection on my life." And he gave me eight reasons why he saw suffering in his life. Let me share them with you and see if they have a place in your thinking.
Number one, the testing of my faith. That's what we talked about. Why would I suffer? Because my faith is tested.
Number two, to humble me. I tend to think I'm pretty strong and along comes something like a period of suffering and all of a sudden I begin to see I may not be the spiritual giant that I thought I was.
Number three, I love this, to wean us away from earthly things.
Number four, to call us to an eternal hope, very similar, to get our eyes off of this world, to get us on to the next world, to put a heavenly yearning in our heart. Jesus said, "I go and prepare a place for you." I take that and I don't want to do injustice to the scripture. But I get from that that He says, "I go to prepare a place for you." And I almost get the sense that it's a customized place, that it's a place just for me. That when I die, there is a place. And He's already populating that. It's amazing how many things and people I love are not here but will be there.
There's a show on television on Sunday night called Extreme Home Makeover. You've seen it? And I don't ever get to see the show except the end because it's on while I'm in church. And every time I get home, what they've done is they take this family, they move them out of the house, they just rebuild the house. You've seen the show, right? They rebuild the house. They bring the family back and the family's there. And they've got them behind the bus, right? And then they'll say, "Take away the bus." And these people are going, "Oh my," and they're high-fiving. I got that sense that there's a day. And I understand this is really fast and loose with scripture, so cut me a bit of
Clinging to Temporary Things
I have this idea that there's this day when I'm standing with Jesus and He says, "Take away the bus. There's your house. There's eternity." Listen, we ought not feel at home here. We're not designed to be home here. This is not our permanent place. And yet we cling to it like it is, don't we?
I have a rental car. Saturday morning, we've got an early flight, so we're going to pack up tomorrow night. We leave Saturday morning at like 4:30 to get to the airport. Let me tell you what I will not do with this car when I take it back. I will not wash it. I won't check the oil. I won't rotate the tires. You know why? It's not mine. I don't give a rip. I'm not going to abuse it. I'm going to fill it with gas. I'm not going to beat it up. But it's not mine.
This isn't my home. And yet we treat it like it's really our place. We're decorating it. And some of us, can we be honest, God has blessed us so well with so many things that we don't even really want to get to our real home because this has become so permanent in our mind. And suffering reminds me, "Hey, this isn't the final destination."
Eight Reasons for Trial
Listen to this. This is a great reason for trial. Number five, it reveals what we really love, reveals what we really care for. Number six, it helps us value the blessing of God. Number seven, it enables us to help others who are going through the same. That's what Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3: "Blessed be the God who's given us this, who's allowed this suffering, who's afflicted us and comfort us so now we can go and comfort others." Number eight, to develop enduring strength.
It's an interesting list. Let me just add some things to it real quickly. And I know if you're one of those that are writing this stuff down, this is driving you crazy. I'm sorry. But it produces patience and joy in our life.
This is one of my favorites. This is from Wilmington's Book of Lists. I love this. Suffering reveals ourself to ourself. It allows me to see who I really am. It drives me closer to God, right? I tell you, sprinkle a little suffering in your life and I will guarantee you, your prayer life improves. Your dependence on Him improves.
A Personal Journey Through Cancer
November 22nd of 2004, Susan had come to me a little bit earlier in the month and she said, "Tom, there's something really wrong with me." And I said, "Really?" She said, "Yeah, I'm really wrong." And I said, "Well, you need to go see the doctor." And she went to the doctor and the doctor said, "You have an infection." And she came home and she said, "I don't think it's an infection." I said, "Why? Susan, I don't know. He's the doctor. He gave you these pills. Try it."
A couple of weeks later, she said, "It isn't any better." And probably every doctor's worst nightmare has become the internet. And so she's on the internet going through this and she said, "Tom, here's what I have. I have something called inflammatory breast cancer." I said, "Susan," she said, "Tom, there's 13 symptoms. I have all 13 of them. I know that's what this is."
And she went back to the doctor, who's a family friend of ours, and he said, "Susan, that is so rare. I've only seen one case in three decades. But let me do a biopsy. Let me do a test. Come back in on Monday." And we went in, and this friend of ours is from German descent, he's a wonderful surgeon. If I was ever going to have somebody cut on me, he's the guy I'd want, very precise, and not a ton of emotion, you know, stoic. And we came in, and we sat down, and he started to tear up, and he said, "Susan, it's exactly what you said it is, and it's really, really serious. And we need to get on this right now."
Let me tell you, two things happened right away. Our prayer life increased, and our relationship deepened. I guarantee you, she would never have said, "I'm all right with this, I just want to have this cancer, let's see what God does with it." But everything began to change. Her love for the family deepened, and we're a really close family. Probably four or five times a day, we're talking to our kids up here. Everything changed. And now we live with that.
I don't know, there's never a day goes by that I don't think about it, and she's thinking about it all the time. And she's been now through four surgeries, and she has chemo Tuesday, this will be her last chemo, this is our second round of that. And I will tell you that her world is richer because of that suffering. My world is richer because of that suffering. We haven't had a lot in our life of suffering. We had a daughter that was in a car wreck with a brain seizure, and God taught us that He's in control.
What to Do When Suffering Comes
Why do you suffer? Well, for all of those reasons. What do you do when suffering comes? Give you some quick tips and out the door you go. Number one, don't be surprised by it. Don't be caught off guard. "Count it all joy when," did you catch that? Not if. "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials." These are inevitable. This is part of life. Suffering is as certain as the fact that this podium is here.
Number two, commit yourself to the Lord. Commit yourself to Him. Number three, don't try to understand all of it. You're not going to get it in a box. Your mind is going to try to figure out 50 different things. Well, what is it? Has God tried to teach you this? Is there some sin in your life? Who knows? It may be as a result of sin.
Remember John chapter 9? John chapter 9. Jesus and the disciples are walking into town and there's a blind man. And the disciples said, "Who sinned? This man or his parents?" Remember that? Because that was traditional thinking. Here's this blindness. It must have been caused by this man's sin. And Jesus' response was, "It was neither who sinned, but that this man might become a display case for the work of God." And so Jesus heals them. Their suffering becomes a display case to the people around you. Some of the most powerful messages you'll ever preach
will be as people watch you in the midst of the suffering and the pain and the hardship. I'm telling you, when you start those questions that begin with the word why, you rarely get an answer. Now, hang on, because you may not like this. God doesn't owe you an answer. He's the potter and you're the clay. For His honor and for His glory, there's your answer.
You Are Not Alone in Your Suffering
Number four, realize you aren't the only person who suffers. Whenever I get sick, I'll be in bed. I'll say to Susan, no one has ever had the flu like this. Others have tried, but no one's ever been this sick. No one's ever hurt like this. That can happen in the midst of suffering, can't it? Oh, woe is me. Nobody's ever really hurt like this.
That's not what God says in His Word. He says He'll never test you or tempt you or try you beyond that which you can endure. And He said these temptations and tests are common to men. Whenever you're walking in that suffering, somebody's gone there before you.
The Power of Prayer in Suffering
Here you go. We could have put this as number one. We could put it with all eight of these points, pray. When I pray, here's what happens. Think about this for a second. When I pray, I'm acknowledging that God's in control. There'd be no point to pray if He couldn't do something about it. When I pray, I acknowledge that God is in control.
Number six in this suffering, thank God for it. It's funny, we're sitting around at the Thanksgiving meal. That's my favorite holiday. I love Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. It's like all of the things, good things at Christmas without any of the gifts. I love it. There's the food, the football. I love everything that goes with it.
But when we're there at Thanksgiving, we tend to say, thank you for the family. Thank you for the house. Thank you for the food. Thank you for the jobs. Thank you for tuition, for school. We rarely say, God, thank you for the hardship and the suffering. Because we see Him in the midst of it.
Avoiding the Victim Mentality
Here's number seven. Don't become a martyr. By that, I mean, don't try to, don't just play the idea here that I'm a victim in this. You may be, but I'm saying you don't need to be a martyr in the midst of it. You are a martyr in the sense that you are a testimony to the living God.
And number eight, don't suffer needlessly.
A Powerful Example of Faithful Suffering
I've mentioned that my mentor, Larry Wright, he is a wonderful example of this to me. Larry was, in the early 60s, the man in radio in Phoenix. He was the rock and roll disc jockey who owned the market. He was the guy. And then in the midst of this, God saved him.
Larry prayed early on for humility. Prayed for humility and God gave him, the next week, rheumatoid arthritis and hemorrhoids. The hemorrhoids went away. John and I actually met through Larry's ministry. First time I ever met John was John was coming into town to sing for Larry up at one of the camps.
Larry was a little guy. Now that sounds strange for me because I'm a little guy, but I could kick Larry pretty well. Larry was about this high. And the rheumatoid arthritis was so much that his hands were so swollen and his muscles so weak that gravity just kind of gradually pulled his hands out.
He had a key chain that had a key on it and it was attached to a stick. And the reason the stick was there is to get the key in the door because they didn't have the old buttons then. To get the key in the door to turn it, he needed the stick to have the leverage. And he'd have to back up to the door like this to get it open, to get enough power to open it. He'd kind of walk like this.
He and I went one time to an NFL conference and Larry thought he was really cool. He had a powder blue, crushed velvet suit that he wore, an athletic suit, a jumpsuit, workout suit. Crushed velvet, powder blue. And he's walking into that conference. And he put that on. We had the big old football players with us and he said, I love it when all us jocks can get together like this.
And then in the midst of all this, I get a call one day. You could see something growing in his neck. Literally, I'd see him three or four days apart and you could just see his neck growing. I said, Doc, you've got to get that checked, that's a problem. Cancer. They cut this out. This guy was beaten up.
He died exactly the way he'd want to die. He died in that chair, saddling up to go and preach the word on a Sunday morning. I was on the other end of town and I knew something was up because I could see, you know how you can tell, people are gathering around, they're waiting for me to come off and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, something's happened. It just didn't occur to me it was Larry. And he was dead.
His wife has a great line. They came in and said, do you want to do any organ donation? And she said, I can't imagine a part of this man's body anybody would want.
A Life-Changing Quote on Temporary Suffering
I'm driving along one day listening to one of his tapes and he said something and I stopped the car and I got out my pen and my paper and I wrote this down and let me read it to you because you too are going to want to write this down. Here's what he said, I would rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently, I'll come back and repeat it, because I know my temporary suffering is as certain as my disobedient prospering.
I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently, because I know my temporary suffering is temporary like my disobedient prospering. Get that? Both of them are temporary. That's his whole point. I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently. Why? Both of these are temporary. There's the whole key.
The Eternal Perspective
D.L. There's a guy on his deathbed and he said this, soon you will read in the newspaper that I am dead. Don't believe it for a moment, I'll be more alive than ever before. There's the focus. There's the understanding. There's the certainty. How do I get this life and get
Finding Clarity Through Suffering
It's like when I went to the doctor not long ago to get my eyes checked. Here's what he said. He said, "All right, we've done all these tests. Now we want to do a little test." You've done this, I bet you've done this. "Which is better? This or this?" Well I take these things pretty seriously and I'm saying, "I don't know, you're going to have to go this or this." I said, "I'll do it again. This or this?" He said, "Tom, if we're down to where it doesn't matter and it's that close, it doesn't matter. Just say it's this."
Here's what the suffering does. Now I can see the world. Is it this or this? It's suffering that opens my eyes, that clarifies the world, that puts it in perspective, that allows me to see things as they really are. I can get swept away. I can build this whole artificial world and think this is reality. It isn't.
I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently because I know both of those are temporary. My obedient suffering is as temporary as my disobedient prospering. God's in control. That's why suffering comes in my life. God uses it, and He's used it from the very beginning of time.
Joseph's Story of Suffering and Purpose
We talked about Joseph. Look at Joseph. Here he goes again and again and again, and he goes deeper and deeper in the dungeon. Finally he has this moment with Potiphar's wife. Potiphar's wife says, "Come and lie with me. Have sex with me." And he says no. He runs away. But it says in the scripture, she came to him—do you remember the phrase?—day after day after day: "Lie with me." And finally there's a day when the servants are gone and Potiphar's gone and everyone's gone and Joseph runs away.
You would think at this moment, God would say, "Yeah, there you go, Joseph. You're the man. You did the right thing." And what happens to Joseph? Into the bowels of the dungeon he goes. You could hear Joseph or me or anyone else at that moment saying, "This is the thanks I get God. I'm your guy doing your things your way, and this is where I end up."
But that's not what Joseph does because Joseph understands the Lord is with him and he understands that God is in control and he understands that God is going to work this for his good.
God's Ultimate Purpose Revealed
In fact, isn't that the culmination of the story when the brothers come and they reveal themselves, and Joseph reveals himself to them, and now they have this encounter? Now his father Jacob dies. Now they're afraid. And Joseph said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on boys. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." Why? Because we know all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose.
In this life, you need to expect suffering, pain, hardship, trials, difficulty, persecution. Why? That's how God grows us. That's how God uses us.
Let's pray together.
---
God, we thank You for that truth. Thank You for the love that You demonstrate to us. And because You love us, You allow trials and difficulties and hardship and suffering and persecution to come into our life. God, we would rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently because we know our obedient suffering is as temporary as our disobedient prospering. God, we are passing through.
Let us say like the great D.L. Moody, "Soon you'll read in the newspaper that we're dead. Don't believe it for a moment, we'll be more alive than ever." God, we can't wait to hear You say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." And that's not pie in the sky or wishful thinking, not some opium to satisfy us so we endure this world. That's the hope that we have, the promise that we have. You are an on-time God.
God, thank You. Thank You for the hardship and the suffering and the pain and the trials and the difficulties. We don't mean it in some masochistic way, but we know You use that suffering to produce in us endurance, dependence on You, love for You. You use it to show us patience and mercy, joy, maturity. You reveal ourselves to ourselves. You drive us closer to You. You prepare us really for greater ministry. You're a sovereign God. We worship You. We praise You. In Jesus' name, amen.