prepared by George Toews

Friday, April 20, 2007

Coping With Suffering

I Peter 1:3-9

Introduction

This week has been a week of tragic news. The worst of all was the shooting of 33 people at Virginia Tech. Of course, it is not the only tragedy and this isn’t the only week in which tragedies have occurred. Tuesday of this week it was 36 years since my wife’s father died of a heart attack. She was 15 years old at the time. Since then we have experienced many difficult things – people we knew who died due to drug overdoses, a 12 year old who died in a farm accident, serious illness of family members, moral failures of close family. I suspect that there isn’t a single person here who does not have stories of difficulty and suffering.

What is our first response to these things? One of the most common questions asked is “Why did this happen?” A related question is “Why does God allow these things?” Many books have been written about these questions, including the book of Job and Rabbi Harold Kushner’s well known book “When Bad Things Happen To Good People.”

We have a girl in our church who is confined to a wheel chair. She is unable to move and is limited to a range of hand motion of about 1 foot. Other than that she is entirely dependent on others. Her name is Cristina and she is a student at CMU. This past winter in one of her courses she wrote an article on suffering. Since she has some knowledge of the subject from personal experience, I was quite interested in knowing what she would write. One thing she wrote is, “Many people commit their whole lives to seeking the reasons for suffering, but the answer is as elusive and mysterious as God Himself.” Instead of adding to that volume of writing, she chose to think about the question, “How do you cope with suffering?” I think she asks a very good question and so I would like to think with you about this question this morning. The ideas which will help us answer that question come from the Word of God in I Peter 1:3-9.

Acknowledge Suffering

One of the temptations I sometimes fall into when caring for people who are experiencing tough times is to tell them a story of my suffering which is similar to their story. Sometimes when I listen to people tell their stories of trial, I get the impression from them that they are the only ones who have ever suffered and their suffering is worse than anyone else’s. Peter talks about “suffering grief in all kinds of trials” in verse 6. When he says this, we need to understand several important things. One is that there are “all kinds” of trials. We may not understand why a person who had their wisdom teeth out is telling a person who is undergoing chemotherapy how terrible the experience was, but we do need to understand that there are many different kinds of suffering and each one is unique and each one is suffering to the person who is experiencing it. What Peter’s statement does is to help us value and understand that each person’s own suffering is their own and difficult to them.

I was once visiting a farmer. He was getting his seeder ready for planting. A shaft was sticking out at one end and he was replacing something inside the seeder. He asked me to push the shaft in and so I did, but somehow I got the timing wrong and his finger got jammed inside. At the time, I did not know I had done that. He did not let on that I had caused him injury and it was not until later that I found out from others what had happened. This is what he was like. He liked to do wood projects and sometimes injured his finger with a saw or a router. He would quietly go upstairs get some Kleenex and masking tape and make a band-aid and never tell his wife or others that he had nearly cut off his finger. Now we might see this silence as strength, but I think Peter’s statement leads us to a different conclusion. I Peter 1:6 says, “now…you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” This verse, and good psychology agree that we need to admit and recognize when we are having a hard time. Suffering is a part of life and denying it does not make it go away and is not a healthy way of coping with it. Cristina wrote, “The existence of suffering is an irrefutable fact given that every human being in this world has felt pain and disparity at one time or another.” She goes on to write, “In dealing with suffering, people must always be true to themselves and to God. God does not want our self-righteous attitude along with our pseudo-cheerful explanations. Our genuine feelings of grief and pain will lead us to a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with God.”

Both Job and Jesus recognize the importance of allowing people and allowing ourselves to wrestle with our grief in the presence of God. Job was not chastised for wrestling with his grief before God. Even Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, wrestled with the suffering which was to come upon Him in the presence of God and even asked that it should be removed from Him.

The first step in coping with suffering is to acknowledge it. That means admitting that it is difficult and understanding that although it is different from other people’s suffering, it is still our suffering and hard for us. It is also important in this to leave space to talk to God about it very honestly and wrestle in His presence about what is happening to us.

Rejoice In Hope

So on the one hand we have the reality of suffering, which we must acknowledge. On the other hand we have the glory of the gospel.

The Glory Of The Gospel

I Peter 1:3-5 is one of the Bible’s most wonderful scriptures that talk about the great gift we have received in the gospel. Please take note of what it says about this wonderful gift.

It is a gift which arises out of the mercy of God. John 3:16 reminds us that “God so loved…” Romans 5:8 also roots God’s gift in love when it says, “But God demonstrated His love…” This is the beginning of the gospel. It arises out of the fundamental nature of God, which is love. He has given us a gift of mercy.

That gift of mercy allows us to experience a new birth. That new birth is a birth into a totally new kind of existence in which sin is dealt with and we are made into newly born creatures with a whole new start apart from sin and apart from the ravishes of sins destruction. Being born again means that we are clean and we are set free.

What excitement we had in our church this past week when two babies were born to women who attend our church. The new parents rejoiced! The grandparents rejoiced! And the little baby boy and the little baby girl were gladly welcomed into these families. They were not a novelty to be noticed and forgotten, but a person who will become a part of their family. How wonderful when someone is born again and becomes a member of the family of God. When we are born again, it is not just a novelty to be noticed, but a relationship begun by which we become sons and daughters of God.

Because we have experienced God’s amazing mercy and are received as members of His family, we receive a living hope. This hope is assured because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He conquered sin and death by His death and resurrection. We participate in that victory when we receive Christ into our lives and it gives us not just a far off distant hope that someday things will get better, but a living hope which allows us to live in the victory of the resurrection today.

About a year and a half ago, my wife’s mother passed away at the age of 93. A few months later we received an inheritance from her estate. It wasn’t a huge amount, but enough that we could think about how we could use that money in a meaningful way to remember her. The things we have done and plan to do with that money are a blessing to us. As children of God, we also receive an inheritance. It is an inheritance which “can never perish, spoil or fade.” It is kept for us by God as we remain in Him through faith.

This is the glory of the gospel – God’s mercy, sins forgiven, a new birth into God’s family, a living hope and an inheritance which is eternal. It is ours by faith. What a glorious gospel!

Living In Hope

But notice the structure of this passage. Peter says, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief…” In other words, there is a connection between the glory of the gospel and the suffering we experience in this world.

What is that connection? How does the gospel help us to cope with suffering?

First of all, it helps us cope when we know that we are in relationship to a God who has mercy. Many times we have a hard time struggling with God’s goodness in the face of suffering. Yet a focus on the gospel of grace helps us know and understand that even when we suffer, we are always in the arms of a loving God. If we doubt God’s love, the gospel of Christ reminds us that we are loved. When we question, “God, how can this be your love?” The reminder of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross always helps us know that we are loved. That is not to say that we dismiss all struggle and questioning. We don’t always understand and sometimes it is very hard to understand why we are suffering. But always, when we are reminded of the gospel, we must come back to the understanding, “I am loved.”

The living hope of the gospel also gives us strength in facing suffering because we know that it is based on Christ who conquered sin and death and who is the living Christ who intercedes for those who are His own. Therefore we can always live in hope because Christ can heal! He has power over all the demonic forces. He is Lord over all the powers which exist on earth. Therefore, in any suffering we can always commit it to God and ask, “God, I pray for release, for healing, for victory in this situation.” We can ask these things and know that the living Christ hears and understands and will do what is best in His loving plan. Cristina wrote, “The very fact that Jesus conquered death, an unattainably impossible task for any other mere human, proves that Jesus can conquer and overcome anything.”

We also cope with our suffering because we know that we have an inheritance. Therefore, we know, as Peter actually says in verse 6, that this suffering is “for a little while.” Recently our daughter went through a tough time which made her feel depressed. She made some plans to change the situation and although the plans would not take effect immediately, but a few months later, the hope of change in a few months was enough to diminish the pain of the situation. That is the type hope with which we live because we have an inheritance. One day it will all be perfect because of our inheritance

So the gospel is a critical element in coping with suffering.

Live In Faith

In the mining of precious metals like gold or silver, there is a process by which the purity of gold or silver is tested. In the gold rush days, miners would bring their find to the assay office in order to have it tested for purity. Its value was determined in this way and they were paid accordingly. After the precious metals are mined, they are sent to the smelter. Here that same gold is subjected to a purifying process so that all impurities are removed and the result is pure gold.

Suffering functions in both of these ways in our life as the text demonstrates. In verse 7, we read, “so that your faith…may be proved genuine.” This is the process of seeing if we really believe in God. In suffering, faith is tested to see if it is true. There are also hints of the other process of purification when we read about gold being “refined by fire.” So also our faith is not only tested, but also purified in the crucible of suffering.

When Peter says in verse 7, “These have come so that…” we understand that a part of coping with suffering is recognizing that there is value in it for these two purposes. Now we need to be careful how we understand and speak about this. Sometimes we may think, “What is the lesson God wants me to learn in my suffering? I want to learn it quickly so that I don’t have to suffer any more.” Or at other times we may be tempted to feel, “Ok God, I’ve learned my lesson already, stop making me suffer.” The danger of that kind of thinking is that it may entice us to think that God has brought bad things into our life and is therefore the author of evil. James tells us that God is never the author of evil, therefore, I believe that it works in a different way. I believe that we live in a world where there is difficulty and trouble. It comes to us, just as it comes to others. The grace of God is seen in that although He allows it to come to us, He uses it for good in our life. He allows it to test our faith and He purifies our faith through it.

Whenever we suffer, we may question God. We may wonder what He is doing. Christina wrote, “Unfortunately, Christians who enter into a period of suffering also enter into a phase of doubt concerning God’s supreme power and authority over the world.” If our faith us true, then even though we wrestle and doubt and don’t understand, yet at the end of the day, we will make a choice to trust. In suffering, all of us come to the point in which we have to decide, “Will I trust God in this even though it is hard and I don’t understand it?” That is the point at which our faith is tested. When we are able to say, “I trust you God” then we are demonstrating that our faith is true.

It is also encouraging to understand that through this process, God is purifying our faith. I believe that each loss we experience in life is a means by which God invites us to loosen our grip on this world and the things of this world and to hold more tightly on to Him. We don’t always know how God is at work in us, but we do know that God is always drawing us to Himself, making us into the image of Jesus.

So coping with suffering means coming to the place of trust whenever we suffer and allowing the difficulty to draw us ever closer to God.

Conclusion

Cristina wrote, “Anyone who has encountered some level of turmoil must agree that it is easy to turn away from God during the time of suffering.” Part of the reason is because we have not seen Him and we do not see Him now. Where is God? Where is Jesus? We have never actually seen Jesus and we often go through suffering without seeing God or even the hand of God in the midst of our suffering.

So how do we cope with suffering?

I believe that in I Peter 1:8 the voice of faith speaks. There we read, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him…” What brings us to that place of love for Jesus? How do we live with such faith?

Cristina gives her answer, “For Christian believers, who affirm that the Messiah has indeed come in Jesus of Nazareth, the call to trust and hope remains at the heart of life.”

In The Martyr’s Mirror Jelis Bernaerts gives his answer. He was in prison in Antwerp and was put to death for the word of God in 1559. In writing to his wife, he quoted from this passage and others like it and then said, “Hence be of good cheer, my most beloved, even though still much more tribulation should come upon you; for we know that we must through much tribulation and suffering enter into the kingdom of God.”

When my wife’s father suddenly died of a heart attack, her mother immediately told my wife, “God makes no mistakes.” She was not just trying to shield her young teenaged daughter. She really believed it and very evidently lived in that hope for another 35 years.

This winter the wife of one of our members passed away. As I sat with him as he watched his wife slowly die, I could see the pain in his eyes, but I also heard him declare his hope in Christ and could see by his calmness and by what I knew of his life that he truly believed.

Do you love Jesus? Do you believe in Him? I believe that if we live in a daily relationship of love and trust with Jesus, then, even though we acknowledge with full understanding the depth of our suffering, we can, nevertheless face it with trust in God and hope in Him. Then we can even experience what Peter wrote about in I Peter 1:8,9, we can be “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

No comments: