Suffering comes in all phases, levels and extremities.
Look around the world, your loved ones and the daily news for the evidence.
It reaches beyond and touches every ethnicity, culture, gender and age.
It involves every one of our emotions.
It affects our mind, heart and soul.
It rocks our nerve system, offering shaking and shuttering.
And it will leave lasting scars for a lifetime of continual intense pulses of pain.
No one living on this earth will escape it.
We cannot hide from the violence it brings, carving away at our inward parts.
No matter what area of ministry I am involved with, one of the common denominators
of the people I meet are the various kinds of suffering endured in their life time.
Everyone has a story. Everyone has their battle wounds to show, whether visible or invisible.
There is no need to rank the areas of suffering.
We have all been through some type although each occurrence may be categorized in various measures.
Some people endure unbelievable circumstances that bring wonderment to those on the outskirts watching.
Other people endure the daily simplicities of life, hidden for all to see. Sacred and secret from outsiders eyes.
Both pain is equally intense.
Each fresh experience brings new elements of detail; however, the pain is still the same.
The healing of the wound is a lengthy ordeal, recovery time sluggish and full recovery lingers, teasing us along the way.
The question is not if we will suffer. The question is what is your response when you suffer?
Responses to suffering include:
1) Anger at God2) Absolute hopelessness
3) Praise God
Consequences of these responses:
1) Alienating the only One who can truly help
2) Failing in seeing the true Hope that brings deliverance
3) Joining with the angels (and all creation) in the glorious task of praise.
Which response and consequence will you select?
One of my Biblical hero’s includes Apostle Paul. As he shares his qualifications and evidence as an apostle with the saints at Corinth, he also shares his path of suffering. How is it that a man can endure five separate times of getting his back beaten 40 lashes each time (minus one) and come through those experiences closer to God than ever before?
So for a grand total, his back would have been lashed 195 to 200 times. He was stoned once and left for dead but did not die and shipwrecked three times. This is just a small portion of his resume of suffering for Christ. Towards the end of his life, he was put in prison. The thing that stands out the most about Paul, are the specific things he writes in the New Testament letters. To all the various saints and churches not once does he regurgitate his trials, share details of his wounds, or lamentations of each experiential woe, but instead, he heaps on encouragement after encouragement towards his audience and leads them to place of constant focus on Christ regardless of the circumstance.
This is amazing! How does one get to that place? Especially with all the things he endured.
That is my quest and one of my greatest desires, to train my heart, soul, mind and body in the fine art of focus and praise to a holy and majestic God.
So when I am in a place of suffering:
1) My focus will hopefully not be on the thoughts of pain that can reinjure over and over again. But instead, praises will be on my lips refreshing me over and over again on His goodness.
2) My focus will be on a holy task that drowns out the throbbing pulses and instead be replaced with repeated
gazes and glimpses upon the Triune God.
3) My focus will not be on me because this body will fade away but instead I want to focus on the glorious inheritance that awaits…not to mention the house I always wanted.
So I invite you to join me in ordering our flesh to do these very same things that we were created to do. Glorify the Lord in EVERYTHING.
Scripture Text: II Corinthians 11: 23-33
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