Suffering - To experience adverse effects of something unpleasant. To feel pain, grief or discomfort.
Illustration:Someone asked C.S. Lewis, "Why do the righteous suffer?" "Why not?" he replied. "They’re the only ones who can take it."
Unknown.
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller quoted in: Barbara Rowes, The book of Quotes, Dutton.
Illustration:THERE WERE MANY PEPERS...THE ONLY ONE CLEANSED WAS NAAMAN." ( LUKE 4:27TM)
EXCEPTIONAL AFFICTION
It’s easy to believe God for something you’ve already seen Him do. But Naaman’s circumstances were unique; not only did he have leprosy, nobody he knew had ever been healed of it. He’d no point of reference to look back on.
Are you being tested today because of a "unique" situation in your life? Your marriage? Your job? You’re arfraid to even talk about it because you don’t know anybody who’s ever beaten your particular problem? If so, stop focusing on the circumstances and start focusing on God! He doesn’t need anything to begin with in order to solve your problem. Remember, in Genesis He hung the earth on nothing-and it’s still turning every day!
Listen: "Naaman...was a great man" ( 2Ki 5:1 NIV). But God was about to make him an exceptional one! Whenever He does that, He permits us to get into predicaments without human solutions. When he wants us to have extraordinary influence, he often permits extraordinary affliction. It’s how He moves us from being impressive to being truly exceptional.
But when He does, be careful. Why? Because one of the first questions people will ask you will be, "How did you do it?" They’ll start admiring your status and your armor, when all the time it was your exceptional affliction that allowed God to make you into the person you’ve become. Before you can be exceptional, you must work to develop a faith that believes God for the impossible and trusts what He says, regardless of the pain or the odds.
Reasons Why God Allows Suffering -
1. The testing of our faith produces mature-well rounded godly character qualities. (James 1 :2,3)
2. Suffering is a privilege of identifying with Jesus Christ. (Phil. 1 :29)
Illustration:If we consider the greatness and the glory of the life we shall have when we have risen from the dead, it would not be difficult at all for us to bear the concerns of this world. If I believe the Word, I shall on the Last Day, after the sentence has been pronounced, not only gladly have suffered ordinary temptations, insults, and imprisonment, but I shall also say: "O, that I did not throw myself under the feet of all the godless for the sake of the great glory which I now see revealed and which has come to me through the merit of Christ!"
Martin Luther.
3. Suffering is proof that we are true children of God. (Heb. 12:8)
4. Suffering helps identify and eradicate impurities in the life of a believer. (Heb. 12:9,10)
5. Suffering helps us become more fruitful (Qualitatively and quantitatively) and wise. (Heb. 12: 11)
6. It is the proven path to Godliness. (2 Tim. 3: 12)It was the wise choice made by Moses to endure the affliction with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin in the courts of Pharaoh. (Heb. 11 :25)
Illustration:
Suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent, and of the Son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified, the penitent thief is crucified, and the Son of God is crucified. By these signs we know the widespread heritage of suffering.
Oswald Chambers in Christian Discipline.
7. Suffering can come through our efforts to discipline ourselves for the purpose of Godliness. (I Tim. 4:7,8)
8. Suffering helps us to intimately know more of the Lord’s attributes through a closer identification with His sufferings. (Phil. 3: 10)
9. Godly chastisement is profitable to make us better not bitter. (Heb. 12:10) We are commanded to endure suffering and deny ourselves as Jesus did. (Lk. 9:23,24)
10. Suffering has a way of sharpening us to make us more effective in our ministries. (Eccl. 10: 10)
11. Suffering allows us to teach others through our example how God can work all things together for good. (Rom. 8:28,29)
12. Godly sufferings produce godly blessings. (I Pet. 4: 13,14)
13. Some suffering comes as a result of our sins, mistakes or wrong assumptions. (I Pet. 2: 19-21)
14. We are able to learn to respond to suffering as Christ did - without vengeance or retaliations (I Pet. 2:23,24)
15. Our sufferings produce for us an everlasting weight of glory that surpasses all comparisons and calculation, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease. (2 Cor. 4: 17)
Illustration:At the Nicene Council, an important church meeting in the 4th century A.D., of the 318 delegates attending, fewer than 12 had not lost an eye or lost a hand or did not limp on a leg lamed by torture for their Christian faith.
Vance Havner.
In What Forms Does Suffering Come? -
1. The Lord may providentially allow suffering to come into your life for reasons of adding fertilizer for your spiritual growth thereby enabling you to bear greater fruit. (Heb. 12: 8- 12)
2. Suffering may come as a result of our own mistakes, immaturity or lack of spiritual wisdom. (Gal. 6:7)
3. Suffering may come through physical ailments that cause us to trust the Lord for our healing. (James 5: 16)
4. Suffering may come so that God’s greater purposes could be accomplished through our lives. (John 9: 1-4)
5. Suffering may come through the persecution of the ungodly or carnal believers. (I Cor. 10: 13)
6. Suffering may come through emotional disturbances that have not been given over to the Lord’s control. (Phil. 4:6-8)
7. Suffering may come through a social disturbance that may teach us how to improve in our Christ like love for others. (I Cor. 13:4-7)
8. Suffering may come through our attempts to accomplish all of God’s will. (2 Tim. 3: 12)
9. Suffering may come through economic hardships that bring everyone to a greater sense of dependence on the Lord for our provisions. (Matt. 6: 11)
10. Suffering may come as a result of a sin of omission that we are somehow overlooking in our responsibilities. (Matt. 7:7)
11. Suffering may come through our employers, supervisors or spiritual authorities for our correction and to create in us more of a humble attitude. (I Pet. 5:5,6)
Why Did God Allow Suffering to People in the Scriptures? -
1. God allowed suffering on the Israelites to humble them and let them know that they should only worship the Lord God and discard their pride. (Matt. 23:12)
2. Some sickness is allowed to come into our lives for God’s greater purposes, glory, and plan. (John 11 :4)
3. God sent leprosy to King Uziah because he over stepped his God given limits. (2 Chron 26: 12-23)
3. God sent leprosy to Miriam for the sin of criticizing Moses, the servant of the Lord. (Numb 12: 10)
4. God sent a foot disease to King Asa because in his youth he trusted in God, but in his old age he refused the leading of God. (2 Chron 16: 12)
5. The Lord allowed the woman to be bound by a demon for 18 years before Jesus used her case as an illustration of God’s sovereign will. God is even able to use the works of Satan for His greater purposes. Nothing happens to us that God does not allow if we are walking in His will. (Lk. 13: 16)
6. God allowed Jesus to die on the cross as a demonstration of His love for a sinful, hateful, and hopeless world. (Rom. 8:32)
7. Paul taught his disciples many things through his suffering - lessons that could not be learned any other way. (2 Tim. 3: 10)
8. God used the man who was born blind to demonstrate the greater works of God. (John 9: 1-4)
What Should Our Response to Suffering Be? -
1. Rejoice that we may participate in the sufferings of Christ and consequently be blessed. (I Pet. 4: 13,14)
2. Appreciate how God’s plan, purposes and procedures are worked out through His intricate use of suffering. (Jer. 29: 11)
3. We must make a choice to either become bitter, rebellious or defiant or better through suffering. (Heb. 12:9-11)
4. We should grow in wisdom through our suffering knowing that in some ways God’s will is being accomplished. (James 3: 13- 17)
5. Suffering can teach us how to be more discrete in our speech and less selfishly ambitious in our actions. (James 3: 1-14)
6. Suffering can teach us that God is the one who gives success and not through our fleshly efforts. (Rom. 8:3-6)
7. Suffering can teach us that we may have to realign our priorities, values and sense of what is essential vs. non-essentials. (James 4: 1-4)
8. Suffering can teach us to respond like Job after he endured all of his trials, "Lord, now I know you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42: 1,2)
Conclusion:A famous evangelist told the following incident: I have a friend who in a time of business recession lost his job, a sizable fortune, and his beautiful home. To add to his sorrow, his precious wife died; yet he tenaciously held to his faith -- the only thing he had left. One day when he was out walking in search of employment, he stopped to watch some men who were doing stonework on a large church. One of them was chiseling a triangular piece of rock. ’Where are you going to put that?’ he asked. The workman said, ’Do you see that little opening up there near the spire? Well, I’m shaping this stone down here so that it will fit in up there.’ Tears filled my friend’s eyes as he walked away, for the Lord had spoken to him through that laborer whose words gave new meaning to his troubled situation.
Our Daily Bread.
