As I mentioned in my second post on suffering, for us to triumph in suffering we need to know what God is seeking to accomplish in and through us by our suffering. If we don’t know why we’re suffering, then suffering will be insufferable. But it’s amazing what people can endure if they think suffering has an eternally valuable purpose. I mentioned in my first post on suffering the young mother of two children who was married to the youth minister. She endured immense suffering through chemo and radiation, but she could endure those things because she knew why she was enduring them—she was trying to live a little longer for her husband and for the sake of her children.
Similarly, Christians can easily endure suffering when we understand how God is using that suffering for our good, and one of the ways God uses suffering for our good is to protect us. Now I wonder if some readers won’t think, “God uses suffering to protect us!? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Suffering is exactly, precisely what I want God to protect me from!”
All Good Parents Inflict Suffering
But every good parent uses suffering to protect their children from worse sufferings. A parent might slap away a toddler’s hand and yell “hot!” to keep her from touching a stovetop. We wouldn’t respect a parent who never forced their children to do homework or chores. Why? Because by forcing our children to do certain things (and thus causing a certain amounts of suffering—I remember the suffering of being forced to study and do chores!), we prevent them from the harm of becoming lazy good-for-nothings! When I’d received my license just a week or two after my 16th birthday, I asked if I could use the car to take Jean to a distant restaurant for dinner that night. My parents said I wasn’t ready and I was upset. But looking back, I know they were right. They caused suffering, but they may have prevented much greater suffering if I’d gotten into an accident.
The Lord Uses Suffering to Protect Us
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul tells about all the revelations that God had given him—even taking him up to heaven! But then in v. 7 Paul says, “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.” Notice that Paul didn’t say that he had become conceited and that the Lord humbled him by giving him a thorn in the flesh. He said this was to “keep me from becoming conceited.” It was protecting him from becoming conceited.
What We Most Need Protection From
Jean E. and I have a Red Barron peach tree and about fifteen years ago it got diseased. I went to Home Depot and read the warning label on a fungicide. It warned that it might be fatal if swallowed or inhaled, warned not to get it on your skin, and warned that it can cause “permanent, irreversible eye damage.” I thought, “I don’t need peaches that bad!! I’m not going to wear a hazmat suit!”
Well, the Bible gives us a warning about loving this present world. First John 2:15-17 warns:
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
“Do not love the world or anything in the world,” writes John, because if you love the world, you won’t love the Father! As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 16:22: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.” In short, if you love the world you will not love the Lord and this will result in your spiritual death. Loving the world is far worse than “permanent, irreversible eye damage”!
Thankfully, if we’re really His kids, the Father loves us and He’s not going to let His kids love with this world! I’ll give you an example for Jean E. and me. About ten years ago Jean E. began to often start sneezing after dinner and in time that progressed into asthma that she had non-stop. That finally led her to allergy testing. Well, it turns out that Jean is allergic to shrimp, clams, tomatoes, and citrus (lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, etc.). The trouble is that Jean and I really enjoy eating out, but that has now been hindered. Now we never go to Mexican restaurants and we love Mexican! The really difficult allergy is citrus as citrus is in so many more foods than we ever imagined. Some seafood restaurants use lemon in every dish (and we love seafood). One restaurant wouldn’t give Jean any vegetables with her dinner because they put all of them in lemon water. Also, most mayonnaises have lemon in them so Jean E. can’t eat many sauces. To help bear Jean’s burden, I’m the one the calls restaurants on an off hour to talk to managers and/or chefs to find out if there is a dish that Jean can eat. Even then, sometimes we’ll go to the restaurant only to be told “we’re sorry but that dish has lemon in it after all.” Obviously this is harder on Jean than on me, but it makes me sad for her and there are many things I rarely eat because of her allergies. Coincidentally, in the last two years I’ve also developed some sort of food allergy because sometimes I have quite the sneezing fit after some meals.
Then there are the aches and pains of just getting older. Jean has back problems (chiropractic helps), I’ve just had knee surgery, both of us find it harder to sleep, and so on!
But I’m not complaining and neither is Jean!! In fact, we’re thankful! Why? Because these worldly hardships protect us from loving this world and this increases our love for the Father. Heaven is ever more appealing! The Lord has designed us such that as we continue to age that we will find our bodies getting weaker but for those who really are His children, that has a huge benefit of making us love this world less and causing us to further focus on eternal life in Jesus. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” There it is, our outer self is wasting away and this world is passing away. But if we see our sufferings as preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, then we will triumph in suffering.
In my next post, I’ll explain another way God uses suffering for our good.
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