Going after God (5) Through Suffering
- Rev Norman Cameron
In Matthew 2:13f. we come across the part of the Christmas story that we
know is there but which we usually avoid reading at the carol service or the
children’s nativity for it seems so out of place amongst the tinsel, carols and
good cheer of the Christmas season. Herod is nervous that there may be a king
being born who might be a rival to his authority and he orders that all boys in
Bethelehem and its vicinity aged two years and under were to be killed. This awful deed was carried out and Matthew
then quotes these words of Jeremiah: “A
voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her
children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Christmas can be a jolly time, the best of times - but for some it can
be the worst of times, the loneliest of times, the saddest of times. While our
world increasingly sentimentalises Christmas, the
Bible reminds us that it can be a brutal time. Christmas is about joy coming
into the world, but that joy came at great cost, the cost of tragedy and
suffering. The holly adorning our Christmas tables may be attractive but it can
hurt when held. The birth of a baby brings joy, but the birthing process often
brings blood and pain.
As we near the end of our series on Going after God I want us today to
consider Going after God through Suffering. We probably expected Going after
God through word and worship and service – but suffering, pain? Yet if we know
our Bibles we know that the suffering of God’s people is a theme that runs
through both Testaments and that glory and suffering are often close partners
in the spiritual life. The witness of scripture and of our own experience
surely is that our souls are shaped more by suffering than pleasure, more by
the wilderness than by Disney world, more by how we cope with the darkness than
with the daylight.
At the centre of our Christian faith there stands a cross – a symbol of
shame, of pain, of weakness and of hurt. Paul says “we preach Christ crucified” a stumbling block to people but the
essence of salvation. Suffering lies at the heart of the Christian faith and it
is something that we need to come to terms with if we are to understand the God
that we worship and try and get to know Him and live our Christian lives with
honesty and integrity.
Suffering will either drive us away from God or closer to Him, it never leaves us the same as people. We can never be
indifferent to suffering, it profoundly shapes us as
people. It can humble us, or it can fill us with hate. It can make us wise, or
it can drive us to foolishness. It can drive us to selflessness or it can drive
us inward to addiction and despair.
The Psalmists often vented their frustration and pain to God – many of
the Psalms are laments although they tended to end with a note of hope. Perhaps
our worship should have more of the minor key to recognize that real worship is
for real people to engage with God where they are and sometimes people are not
in a good place and they do not feel much like singing or being happy clappy. Our praise needs to recognize the pain of people
but in and through it all always seek to show God who transcends where we are
at personally and to lead people to the hope that we find in him and in the
gospel for we do not grieve as others do who have no hope.
When we think of suffering in the Bible we go to a whole book on the
subject, a case study, the book of Job. Job shows us suffering at a tragic
level – at a stroke he loses his livestock, his children, his servants, his own
health. His wife urges him to curse God and die but in his numbed state he
still manages to bless God and say why should we accept good from God and not
trouble – at least initially. After a while he wishes that he had never been
born. He struggles with why God should allow him to suffer so much – he thought
that he was a good man, a righteous man (and he was) so why should God allow
such suffering to come.
His friends sit with him and after seven days they start to give advice
– their theology says that if you suffer it is because you have disobeyed God.
Many today have this thinking as well, but it does not naturally follow.
Suffering may be because of sin or disobedience – some is – but much is not. “You must have done something wrong Job”
they say. But hard as he thinks he cannot see what sin that he has committed to
deserve such punishment.
The book ends with God speaking to Job – but God never gives Job an
answer; he does not tell him why this great suffering has happened but the fact
that God personally speaks to Job seems to be enough for Job. He is satisfied that
God has spoken to him personally. His faith in God is vindicated. He draws near
to God even through the suffering. Perhaps the main message of Job is this -
Knowing God was, and is, more important than knowing about him or having all
the answers. Someone has said that Job is 'the story of one man who held on to
his life in God with a faith that survived the torment of utter loss and
expanded into new realms of wonder and delight'
John Ortberg in his book God is Closer than you Think has a chapter on the hiddenness of God at such times. He says In a survey that asked thousands of people what had most contributed to
their spiritual growth the number one answer was pain.” Above
worship, above Bible reading, above service. Pain! This does not mean
that we should seek pain, we do not intentionally go
after pain. Ortberg continues “we do not say to someone in enormous pain well this is good news because
you are going to grow a lot through this. No pain is deeper and more mysterious
than that”.
But it is good to know that we can grow in the midst
of pain and that some good can come out of it. Although God did not give Job
all the answers he looked for he was reassuring Job that following Him is worth
it. The pain will not last forever. He is saying that despite the pain I am a
God who is worth knowing and getting close to.
Some will find this hard to accept, but in faith and in trust this is
what we are asked to accept hard as it is. We will never have all the answers
this side of eternity, there is much mystery here and that mystery humbles us
and should lead us to cling all the more to the one who has the answers.
When I use the phrase Going after God through Suffering,
the word through can be used in two
senses. Firstly it can be through in
the sense of despite, or in spite of, or in the midst of. eg someone could say “I am still going after God despite my arthritis, I am still going after
God in spite of the fact that I lost my husband in a fatal car crash”. In
the midst of the suffering, through all the suffering, they are still going
after God- they still seek him through the loss and the pain. It does not
deflect from a strong faith and trust in God. Paul says in Phil.4:12 “I know what it is to be in need, and I know
what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every
situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
Paul is saying he is content through, or in spite of, any circumstance.
But there is a second sense in which we use the word through as we say we are going after God
through suffering. In this sense the suffering itself
actually helps us to see God better and go after God better. These are the
people whom John Ortberg was referring to who
actually grew spiritually as a result of the pain or tragedy that hit them.
Through the pain they were brought to a deeper understanding and relationship
with God just as through reading the Bible, or through serving God we are
brought closer in our relationship to him.
We do not seek suffering the same way we seek to read the Bible, but
when the suffering comes it is used to glorify God by how we respond to it. 1
Peter 1:6f. Peter refers to trials that have hit the church. He says “for a little while you may have had to
suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that you faith can be
refined and may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” The suffering and the trial is a refining and
purifying process resulting in more glory to God and the maturing of the
individual person. “It is said that in
some countries trees will grow but will bear no fruit, because there is no
winter there.”
In Romans 5:3 Paul says that suffering can lead to rejoicing for the
Christian because “suffering produces
perseverance; perseverance, character; character, hope”. Pain, not the
pleasure beach tends to produce character. We learn more about ourselves and
about God through the hard times than the good. This is what enabled Alexander
Solzhenitsyn to say of his time in Stalin’s labour
camps which helped him to see the line of good and evil that passes through
each human heart and his own heart – “I
turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the
astonishment of those about me “Bless you prison. I nourished my soul there and
I say without hesitation “Bless you prison, for having been in my life.”
There is something mysterious here. I have met people who have come
through suffering and they have come to know themselves, and God, better
through it. This is strange but it is the way God has made us and the way life
is.
So can I attempt to bring all this together and leave you with seven
lessons or applications to help us to see how we can “go after God through suffering” – through in both senses – through
in the sense of keeping going in the midst of the suffering, despite it; and
through in the sense of using the suffering as a means of growing and maturing
spiritually in our souls; turning the painful experience into a channel for
going after God and getting to understand him better.
- We can see
suffering as a blessing if it enables us to be more dependent on God. The
essence of sin is us saying “God we do not need you”, the essence of salvation
is us saying God we need you. Paul says in 2 Cor.1:8 “we were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so
that we despaired even of life. But this happened that we might not rely
on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” Anything that drives us towards God in
dependence upon him can be a good thing and glorifies Him. (James 4:9)
- Suffering can
reveal the true state of our hearts. The ESV rendering of Luke 2:34 and 35
is interesting. Simeon says to Mary – “this
child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in
- It is alright
to be angry with God, to question God when the trial comes. God respects honesty, he prefers it as he sees into our hearts
anyway. God is big enough to take our anger. He understands. Remember
Jesus from the cross cried out why O
God have you forsaken me and it wasn’t a cry for show; it had real
feeling in it. He felt the darkness of the Father turning his face away.
The human side of Jesus did not understand what was happening.
- Suffering does
not leave us the same as people. It can drive us in two different
directions – but it can be positive. It has a way of producing character,
teaching patience and helps us to learn obedience to God. Even Jesus learnt obedience through what he
suffered according to Hebrews 5:8.
- We need to
recognize that at the centre of our faith there is a cross. The way of
salvation is by way of the calvary road. Jesus
calls us to take up our cross and living in the world as we do following
Jesus will be a hard road. Suffering for Christ comes with the package.
Many of our brothers and sisters overseas know more about this than we do,
but it can come at any time. There is a cost to being a disciple, but it
is rewarding. We are called according to Phil.3:10 to “the fellowship of sharing in his
sufferings”.
- Suffering
helps us to understand other people better. It helps us to be more patient
with others in their struggles and to minister better to them. 2 Cor.4f. says that as God
comforts us in our troubles so “we
can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have
received.” Those who have lost a child can better comfort others who
have lost a child; those who have experienced a suicide can help others
going through that trauma. We
cannot fully understand how a person feels if we have not gone through
that particular situation. What we go through can in time be a help to
someone else – it can be turned to good.
7. Like Job we must be able
to see God’s sovereign hand in all that happens. A God who does not allow
suffering is a God that is not in control of this world. A God who is not in
control is not the God that the Bible presents to us. We may not understand his
purposes but that is different from saying God does not know what is going on
either. God calls us to trust him and his sovereign purposes. George Mueller of
Like George Muller we pray for the faith that glorifies God through the
pain and can say The Lord has given, the
Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord; we pray for the faith
that sees that all that is here and can say this is not all there is; for the
faith that with Paul can say “we are more
than conquerors through him who loved us”; we pray for the faith which like
Job can say in the midst of the pain - “I
know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end I will stand upon the earth,
and after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God.”
Blessed be Your
name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name
Every blessing You
pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed
be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name
You give and take away
You
give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name.