For the last time, at least in human history, the mother and father kissed the little clubfeet of their infant child and caressed his blue-black lips and rubbed his cherub cheeks.
God’s time had come. Their son Gabriel had left them in the wee hours of the morning, on the day before he would have been 6 months old. They thought they would be ready.
In a way, they were. Because they had seen it before. In late 1998, doctors diagnosed Guthrie’s newborn daughter, Hope, with Zellweger syndrome, a rare congenital disorder, and gave Hope less than six months to live. After Hope’s death, Guthrie’s husband had a vasectomy to prevent future pregnancies. They said they just couldn’t endure this type of pain and suffering again. Thus they were shocked to learn, a year and a half later, that Nancy was pregnant again. Although there was only a 25% chance that the baby would carry the disease, they soon discovered that this child, a son, would also be a Zellweger baby. And like Hope before him, Gabriel went home to be with the Lord at the tender age of 6 months. In her book, Holding On to Hope, Nancy Guthrie tells about her tragic story and she asks a question that many of us would ask if we were in her shoes. The question: Why God? Why?
Have you been there? Perhaps you are among those who have struggled to comprehend a particular heartache and God’s reason for allowing it. A thousand unanswered questions have been recycling in your mind — most of them beginning with the word, "Why?"
You want desperately to trust the Father and believe in His grace and goodness. But deep inside, you’re held captive by a sense of betrayal and abandonment. The Lord obviously permitted your difficulties to occur. Why didn’t He prevent them — and why has He not attempted to explain or apologize for them? The inability to answer those fundamental questions has become a spiritual barrier a mile high, and you can’t seem to find a way around or over it.
C.S. Lewis in his book “The Problem of Pain” posed this dilemma. “If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were Almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” “This,” he says, “is the problem of pain.”
Why does God allow suffering in this world? I believe this is a question we all have asked at one time or another in our lives because we all have suffered at one point in our lives.
The bible makes it clear that suffering is a part of our existence. Job said, “Man is born to trouble just as surely as the sparks fly upward.” Jesus Himself said that “in this world you would have trouble.” From the beginning, suffering has been a part of our fallen, contaminated world. Just after Adam and Eve disobeyed God and had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God said to Eve, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.”
A man walked proudly into the delivery room after his wife had just gave birth to twins. He was proud and thought he had done something great, but when he saw her she spoke only two words, “Never again!” Everyone of us is here because someone else suffered to bring us into this world. Now we can reduce that suffering, but we can’t eliminate it.
Man was also told he would suffer. We are told that the ground would be cursed and in suffering we will toil. That means that every time we sit down to a meal, we do so because somebody else suffered to bring it to us.
Suffering is a part of our world, and it effects both Christians and non-Christians. God does not shelter us from every trouble that comes our way.
So suffering exist, and we are not sheltered from it, yet the question still remains, why do innocent people suffer? Let me say this…there is no pat answer for this. There is no one verse I could point you to that would say, this is why we suffer. As a whole the bible gives us insight to this question, but not one verse.
And in addition, we must acknowledge that there are reasons and actions that God does that is simply beyond our comprehension. When Job questioned God, God came back and answered basically by saying, “Where were you when I made the world, how is it kept together.” And Job had to sit back and awe and admit that he did not understand all that God does or why He does the things He does.
So with these qualifiers, let me address the
question, what is the source of our suffering? First let me say this, you can’t blame God for everything. Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do? Well God experiences it all the time. We blame God for everything. While stationed at A school in the service, there was an Airman who was the sweetest girl, he name was AN Bebe from Texas and you couldn’t ask for a nicer girl, but she was also an athiest, and when I asked her why she held that belief she said, because a loving God wouldn’t cause all this suffering in the world. Many are like her and the unfairly blame God for everything that goes wrong.
A certain preacher and an atheistic barber were walking through city slums. The barber said, "This is why I can’t believe in your God of love. If he was as kind as you say, he wouldn’t permit all this poverty, disease, and squalor. No, I cannot believe in a God who permits these things."
The minister was silent until they met a man who was especially unkempt. His hair was hanging down his neck, and he had a half-inch of stubble on his face. The preacher said to his friend: "You can’t be a good barber, or you wouldn’t permit a man like this to continue living here without a haircut and a shave."
Indignant, the barber answered: "Why blame me for that man’s condition? He has never come in my shop. If he had, I could’ve fixed him up and made him look like a gentleman!" The preacher said, "Then don’t blame God for allowing people to continue in their evil ways. He invites them to come and be saved."
So why do people suffer? Well essentially, all suffering is the result of sin. Remember that God created this world and it was good. But God gave us the gift of free-will and with free will came the ability to make choices, and with choices came the consequences of those choices. So when the disciples thought that sin was the cause of this man’s blindness they were partly right.
Now their first inclination was to think that this man’s blindness was the result of his own sin. Now this is tough because it says that he was born blind. But there was a belief that a child in the womb could still sin, I guess this would be for making the mother so miserable for 9 months. But in the final analysis, all physical problems are the result of our fall in Adam, for his disobedience brought sin and death into the world.
But afterward, to blame a specific disability on a specific sin committed by specific persons is certainly beyond any man’s ability or authority. Only God knows why babies are born with handicaps, and only God can turn those handicaps into something that will bring good to the people and glory to His name.
But in a sense, a lot of our suffering is caused by our own sin. There is a verse that holds true, Galatians says, “A man reaps what he sows.” And a lot of our misery is caused by sowing the wrong seeds. A person goes against God’s will and toys with illegal drugs, and when she is addicted she says, “Why is God doing this to me.” Well, God isn’t doing it to you, you did it yourself. A man reaps what he sows.
One of the saddest moments in my life came when I was out to sea on deployment. On our ship there was a man who I knew, but wasn’t well aquainted with. You know, we said hey, and that was about it. But about a week after we pulled out of Phuket Thailand, he approached me and said, “Barry, can I talk to you alone please.” I said sure so we went to a place where we were alone and he said, “ Barry, I did something bad.” He went on to explain how he had cheated with his wife with a number of prostitutes in Thailand, and I could tell that he was truly contrite, but then he laid the bombshell on me. He said, “Barry, I think I might have AIDS.” What could I say to him, but this was a direct result of his own behavior.
Many times, our suffering is the result of our own sins, but not always. Sometimes we suffer not because of something we’ve done, but because something somebody else has done. The disciples asked, “Is this because of his own sin, or the sin of his parents?” Now many times innocent children suffer because of the sins of their parents. A birth disorder known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is directly linked to a mother’s consumption of alcohol during pregnancy.
A while back, I saw on the Discovery channel one of those maternity shows, and a child was born addicted to crack cocaine because his mother had taken drugs while she was pregnant. Other times, kids suffer because of irresponsible parents. This past week at our men’s meeting we learned about the troubled youth of Wayne county, and the number of those who come from broken homes with absent fathers or mothers on drugs and it was so depressing.
And it’s not just parents, but perhaps we suffer because of another person’s greed, or envy. The sad reality is that our lives are all intertwined and one person’s sins do not remain with that person alone, but it affects others as well.
Another source of suffering is Satan himself. We see this in the story of Job, and also the number of demonic possessions in the New Testament, but most suffering we experience is the result of living in a fallen sinful world. Don’t blame God for cancer, diabetes, AIDS, malformed babies, or any other disease or malady that afflicts humankind. They weren’t a part of God’s created order. They came along with humankind’s fall. God hates them as much as we do. God works along with us to defeat them. On occasions he chose to reveal his power through a healing miracle but those were always the exception and never the rule, a ray of hope for the hopeless, a promise of healing to come for all people.
So we have looked at why we suffer, but can any good come from it. The answer is yes. God can use suffering to fulfill His purposes. He doesn’t necessarily cause them, but He can use it for His glory.
The first purpose is to discipline wayward children and get them back on the right track. Heb 12:5-7 says, “ . Now let me ask why do parents discipline their children? Because they love them. If they don’t then children become spoiled and nasty. This past week we went to Hudson’s and there was a child who looked to be about 4 years old throwing the biggest fit in the world. He was on the ground screaming and you could hear him clear across the whole store. The mother just stood there ignoring him, finally a lady walked up with a belt and said, “Do you need this?”
But you discipline a child not to make him happy, but holy. And by doing so you make him more lovable. And one of the most tender moments a person can have is after a parent has disciplined the child, and then holds and comforts the child and reaffirms that love.
Another purpose is that it builds our faith by building our dependence and trust in Him. God can use suffering to get our attention. C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to a deaf world.”
Max Lucado wrote how he believed the disciples would endure the storm on the sea of Galilee all over again if given the chance. We say that’s ridiculous, but listen to the reason he gives. He writes: “ After the storm, they worshiped him. They had never, as a group, done that before. Never. Check it out. Open your Bible. Search for a time when the disciples corporately praised him.
You won’t find it.
You won’t find them worshiping when he heals the leper. Forgives the adulteress. Preaches to the masses. They were willing to follow. Willing to leave family. Willing to cast out demons. Willing to be in the army.
But only after the incident on the sea did they worship him. Why?
Simple. This time, they were the ones who were saved
And from that moment on, he is not just a deity to admire, a teacher to observe, or a master to obey. He is the Savior. The Savior to be worshiped.
That’s why I’m convinced that the disciples would do it again. They’d endure the storm another night … a thousand other nights … if that’s what it took. And then he writes, “A season of suffering is a small price to pay for a clear view of God.”
Through suffering we often see God. When Job suffered it says that He saw the Lord. And it’s often through suffering and trials that God gets our attention and we get a glimpse of His glory. Consider the story of Michelle Akers.
By college, Michelle [Akers] had become an All-American soccer star, earning ESPN’s woman athlete of the year in 1985—the same year the United States formed its first women’s national team, with Michelle a starter.
In 1991 the U.S. team won the first-ever Women’s World Cup and Michelle scored 10 goals in five games, including the championship’s winner. She signed an endorsement deal and became the first woman soccer player to have a paid sponsor.
But just as her star was rising, Michelle’s health was declining. She suffered from Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), a debilitating disease affecting more than a million adult Americans.
For the first time, Michelle could no longer count on her old friends—strength and hard work. "I was so sick I couldn’t take a five-minute walk without needing two days on the couch to recover. I was forced to spend a lot of time thinking about who I was. I didn’t like what I saw."
Michelle had put her trust in Christ as a high-school student, but ignored God in college and after graduation. Now sick and alone, Michelle reluctantly accepted an invitation from a strength coach to attend his church, Northland Community Church in Longwood, Florida. Although she couldn’t articulate it at the time, in retrospect Michelle says she knew she "needed to get things right with God."
"Looking back," she explains, "I think God was gently, patiently tapping me on the shoulder and calling my name for years. But I continuously brushed him off, saying, ’Hey, I know what I am doing. I can make these decisions. Leave me alone.’ Then I think he finally said, ’Okay,’ crossed his arms and looked at me sadly—because he knew I was going to make a lot of mistakes by ignoring him. He knew I would be hurting in the future.
"It took total devastation before I would agree and say, ’Okay, God. You can have my life. Please, help me.’ "
We will finish up our talk tonight in our evening service but until then, realize that God is not behind all of our sufferings, but we can trust Him. We may not always understand, but we can always trust. His love never leaves, His care never diminishes. He cares for you.
James Dobson told the story of an unnamed pastor who was suffering from terminal cancer. When he and his wife were told he had only a few months to live, they revealed no panic.
In the months that followed, the pastor never lost his poise. Nor was he glib about his illness. He was not in denial, he simply had come to terms with the cancer and its probable outcome. He knew the Lord was in control, and he refused to be shaken in his faith.
On his final Sunday in his church. He preached the sermon that morning and talked openly about his impending death.
"Some of you have asked me if I’m mad at God for this disease that has taken over my body,” he said, “I’ll tell you honestly that I have nothing but love in my heart for my Lord. He didn’t do this to me. We live in a sinful world where sickness and death are the curse man has brought upon himself. And I’m going to a better place where there will be no more tears, no suffering and no heartache. So don’t feel bad for me."
"Besides," he continued, "our Lord suffered and died for our sins. Why should I not share in His suffering?" Then he began to sing, without accompaniment, in an old broken voice:
Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for everyone,
And there’s a cross for me.
How happy are the saints above,
Who once went sorr’wing here;
But now they taste unmingled love,
And joy without a tear.
The consecrated cross I’ll bear,
Till death shall set me free,
And then go home my crown to wear,
For there’s a crown for me.
