We’ve come to the end of a difficult but important journey. Suffering is one of the most contentious topics of our time. Yet we do everything to seek only comfort but suffering is avoided like a plague in spite of the fact that we need to come to grips with it, because we live in a world full of suffering, and as Christians it will knock on our door.
Last post we started considering how we should respond to disaster, looking at the need to worship, and to weep. Let’s pick it up with some further direction from God’s Word, starting with the need for prayer in the wake of calamity.
According to James 5:13, we should pray if anyone among us is suffering. But what should we pray for?
First, we should pray for salvation for those who are caught up in the calamity but are outside of Christ, so that in him people can be more than conquerors in every calamity of life (Romans 8:37)! Eternal suffering is infinitely more terrible than anything we can experience in this life. Praying for temporal relief means far less if this relief is not combined with salvation. Remember, God uses calamity to draw people’s attention to Him and their need for Him – they are helpless and must fly to Christ who alone delivers from the final and ultimate calamity of God’s wrath (1 Thessalonians 1:10).
Similarly, we pray for those unaffected but who are witnesses to the disaster, that they would see their destiny without God and repent from the adultery of treasuring anything more than Christ (James 4:4).
Many would say that the second priority should be to pray for relief from suffering for those affected. However, in respect of believers Paul for example in 2nd Thessalonians 1 did not pray for this. Instead he prayed for steadfastness in suffering (v 3-4) which results in spiritual growth, and to this end He prays God would continue to use the trials which He has sent to achieve His purposes. In calamity, believers need to be still and know that God is God (Psalm 46:10) and remember that they are to keep their eyes on things unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18) since this life is not of primary importance. They need to see and live the supreme worth of Christ in the calamity.
Then, we pray for relief from suffering for all those affected, and we pray that God would meet our needs as help and give to those in need…
4 Do
Disasters like these are an opportunity to show the difference Christ makes in your life and in the world, by being ready to go and help those affected, so we help in any way we can and we give generously.
This applies even more to those of us affected ourselves, because Christ wants you to reach out to others when you are suffering yourself, because “those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” (1 Pet 4:19)
The glory of the gospel shines through how we respond to calamity – “as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (2 Corinthians 6:4-5)
5 Hope
In “doing” when we are suffering we display hope…” we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self [3] 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.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-18)
We are to endure suffering for righteousness' sake, so that people will “ask you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15)
6 Rejoice
Finally, where there is hope, we can rejoice – “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” (Romans 12:12)
Joy is the apex of suffering which magnifies Christ, which is why Jesus said in Luke 14:33 that anyone who does not renounce all that he has cannot be His disciple. If everything you have is taken away from you, but you still have Christ, you rejoice! Scripture is filled with this pattern. Habakkuk 3:17-18 says “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
In Philippians 3:8, Paul says “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”, and earlier in the epistle before one of the most jarring passages in Scripture he says “Yes, and I will rejoice …… For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:18-21)
The Psalms especially resound with the rejoicing of saints in the midst of their suffering. Psalm 63:3 offers God joyful praise because His “steadfast love is better than life”. Psalm 73:25-26 is a perfect example of how our lives should look when we suffer - “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Matthew 5 makes this relationship between joy and suffering clear. Our “saltiness” is the joy others see in us in the midst of suffering which other people cannot explain. That is why the imperative to be salt and light in verses 13 to 16 follows directly after verse 11 and 12 which instructs us to rejoice when we suffer.
The passage, which many would say is the crescendo of the most glorious chapter in all of Scripture, is an appropriate way to illustrate the basis for our joy...
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Before we leave this series on suffering in the face of calamity, I’d like to make a confession. Through this series of posts starting 11 weeks ago, the Lord has spoken most clearly to me, about my response to my own suffering. Especially recently, I faced a series of trials which arose partly because of my own sin (as usual), but no doubt also because of the purposes the Lord had in them for me.
I humbly acknowledge that my response to the suffering which God has granted me for His glory and for my ultimate joy is far from what it should be. As is so often the case, Romans 7:15 comes to mind – “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” That’s what is so wonderful about grace!
I leave you with a passage of Scripture which the Lord gave a dear friend to send me in the midst of my sinful disillusioned despair…
“Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust—there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.” (Lam 3:19-33)
