Suffering is Part of Life Lesson 2: September 10, 2015 attitude

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Kerrie Little
5 years ago
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1 Women & More Suffering is Part of Life Lesson 2: September 10, 2015 attitude A woman who d recently begun treatments for cancer woke up one morning and discovered that she had three hairs on her head. Oh my, she said excitedly, I think I will braid my hair today. She did that, and she had a wonderful day! The next morning she woke to find that she had two hairs on her head. And she declared, This is good, I ll just part my hair down the middle today. So she did that, and she had a glorious day. The following morning when she looked in the mirror, she had one hair. Oh this will be so easy, she said, today I ll wear a pony tail. And she did, and she experienced a splendid day. On the fourth morning she discovered that she was bald. Well, what do you know, she exclaimed, I don t have to fix my hair today! She didn t do a thing with her hair that day, and she had an especially blessed day. This fictitious woman is either very exceptional in her attitude, or she is in Egypt at denial (the Nile)! Our attitude toward suffering will make all the difference before the Lord and others. What a sweet aroma is the attitude of trustful acceptance of the situations and circumstances God allows in our lives. Because it s not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens! Dr. Charles Parkhurst reminds us: This is faith at its highest spiritual success at the crowning point. Great faith is exhibited not so much in ability to do as to suffer. Scripture will help us to discern the attitude we are to have in suffering. During a Wednesday evening Bible study in mid-april, 2010, a woman in our church shared her journey with cancer and her testimony gained through it. She began by rehearsing something that former President Richard Nixon quoted while touring the Grand Canyon, You can t appreciate the heights until you experience the depths. Cancer had been in Charlene s dad s line, and three girls in her family had it. Her twin sister, diagnosed with cancer at age 32, died at 34; and another sister suffered stage four ovarian cancer four years ago. Charlene had an understandable fear of cancer! April 2015, Charlene celebrated her six-year anniversary of her own breast cancer surgery. Every pain is redefined every headache is not just a headache anymore, she explains. You re not going to be the same, but that s a good thing. It gives you a certain calmness and empowerment life s too short.

2 2 While Charlene was sick, her sister mowed her lawn, her competent staff gave her flexibility at work, and she had good insurance. I m thankful I had people praying for me, she says. I ve come to trust that it s all in His hands anyway. She admits that there are twinges of fear that creep in now and again, but says, Getting cancer freed me from constant fear. And she agrees with one who said: the only way to get to the other side is to go through it whatever it is. God s plan for our lives will include suffering it is part of life! Sometimes we get to see the why example: when Joseph told his brothers in Genesis 50:20 (KJV), you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. But most times we will not know the exact why of suffering. God s exact purposes are His own! Even Jesus prayed in Gethsemane for relief, and called out from the cross when he endured the Father looking away: Father, why have you forsaken me? When we cannot see God s hand, we must trust His heart! God knows what He s about! We know what started all the suffering, don t we? Genesis 2:8-9 says, Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had planted two particular trees in the middle of the garden: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil presenting the way of life and the way of death. In verses 16-17: And the LORD God commanded the man, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. When Eve and then Adam chose to eat the fruit of that forbidden tree choosing to sin against God s command at that precise moment they began to suffer spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical death. Suffering is the dying of something! To the question about suffering: why is there suffering; why does God allow suffering in the world? The answer is God s own promise when you; then you to Adam and Eve! God takes full responsibility for suffering did we hear that? God allows and even plans for suffering. Robert Jeffress: If God is willing to accept the blame for creating deformed babies and for the horrific death of His own Son, don t you think His shoulders are broad enough to take responsibility for the hurt you have endured? Exodus 4:11 Who has made man s mouth? Or who makes him dumb or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Last week we looked at Agape s goodness and its justice and discovered that they are equally dispatched by our God goodness to the believing and severity to the unbelieving: If we choose to reject Agape s rescuing goodness, then we will incur Agape s justice and it is always severe!

3 3 We pointed out that the unbelieving world will not accept that God can exercise both goodness and justice in His love. We examined Revelation 18 which describes the destruction of that great satanic system of evil known as Babylon the Great and discovered that one of the sins in her interlocking web of sins including excessive luxury and pride is her desire to avoid suffering at all cost and to any degree. The world today will want to avoid suffering at all cost and to any degree: It will not accept that suffering is part of life and that God will allow it, much less plan for it. So human suffering is another area in which the world and even professing Christians will turn against God. Chuck Templeton professed to receive Christ back when Billy Graham was saved. The two became friends, and together they founded Youth For Christ in Canada. After traveling to places where he witnessed intense suffering, this evangelistic preacher renounced his faith in Christ saying that he could not believe in a God who claimed to be love and yet allowed suffering. Think about the shear and sinful arrogance involved here! Templeton will tell God Almighty what agape (God s love) is or what it should be: love without justice; love without judgment! The arrogant will say, Let those who reject You, God, and want You out of their lives and don t want to be in Your presence, let them not have to receive Christ s brutal bloody death on the cross as payment for their sin. And let them receive no punishment for their rejection. And God, You cannot allow suffering to punish sin, or to draw men to Yourself, or to discipline. You cannot allow suffering even though You warned the garden-dwellers in Eden that if they disobeyed that they would suffer death. C. S. Lewis: The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word love. At the height of Jesus suffering, his murderers offered him a soporific influence to ease his pain a morphine. Satan was using this to mock Jesus atoning work for sinners. But the Son of God had come from the highest throne to the cross of death and he would suffer it all for us. Scripture says that he put the cup of myrrh from His lips Jesus refused to ease his suffering! God did not plan for suffering to be part of life when he placed Adam in the Garden of Eden. But suffering was the consequences of our sin choosing not to heed God s command; to disobey to choose death. So the whole world suffers to various degrees because of sin and the sin factory within all of us. But what about the believer: What purpose would God have in allowing suffering in those who have chosen to receive His Son as Savior and Lord?

4 4 Again, God s purposes are His own! Since we are not often privy to the exact purposes for which God allows suffering in each situation, if we try and guess we will be guilty of judging. With that said, we do know from God s Word that he utilizes suffering in the believer: There was Job in the Old Testament and Paul in the New. Job was proven by God through suffering to be a righteous man who loved God with all of his heart not for what God did for him or provided for him, but because Job believed, trusted and loved God. God allowed Paul to be imprisoned on trumped up charges to begin to fulfill his witness: Paul was able to share the gospel with people particularly leaders because of his chains, so that the lost would have the opportunity to hear and call on the Lord to be saved! Rev. Charles Spurgeon if it shall come to pass that for Christ s sake and the gospel s you shall endure suffering in any shape, shrink not, but rejoice in the honor conferred upon you, that you are counted worthy to suffer with your Lord, and joy in this that your sufferings, your losses, and persecutions shall make you a platform from which the more vigorously and with greater power you shall witness for Christ Jesus. Several times we ve had such an example: YoYo Collins quadriplegic singer and evangelist and his wife, Sandi, shared in our church. Describing the plans he had dreamed for his life away from God Collins told how his diving accident, broken spine and changed life were all brought into line with God s very best plan for his life. He gave testimony for and glory to God! In his book about Growing Better Not Bitter Through Adversity, he says, I believe that what lies behind you, what lies ahead of you, and what circumstances surround you are not nearly as important as what lies within you. There s the intense suffering endured by God s chosen people: Israel. And because there s not one woman here who is not aware of the suffering of the Jewish people and Israel, we ll not go there today. We ll focus on the suffering of the Body of Christ, and be assured that the believer is called to suffer: I. The believer s suffering may be the Lord s discipline and training: Hebrews 12:5-7; And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: My son, do not make light of the Lord s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. 7Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? Jump to verse 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. 12Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13 Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

5 5 II. The believer s suffering may be for displaying God s power and glory: Mark 1:29-30 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30Sinom s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. 30So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. Charles Spurgeon: Into Simon s house sickness had entered, fever in a deadly form had prostrated his mother-inlaw, and as soon as Jesus came they told him of the sad affliction, and he hastened to the patient s bed. We may know that believing prayer for the sick is far more likely to be followed by restoration than anything else in the world. And when God chooses not to heal, we must bow to his grander will to whom both life and death must yield! Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers (sisters), about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. Charles Spurgeon: My Lord, if for other reasons I need not suffer, yet if I can honor thee more by suffering, and if the loss of my earthly all will bring thee glory, then so let it be. III. The believer s suffering is instrumental in her sanctification: Paul in Philippians 1:29-30 For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, 30since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have. 1 Peter 4:1 Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. IV. The believer s suffering will prepare her to sympathize with others: 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters. If we would be enlarged into human sympathy, we must be narrowed into limits of human suffering. F. W. Robertson: The sweetest joys in life are the fruits of sorrow. Human nature seems to need suffering to fit it for being a blessing to the world. Our attitude in our suffering should not be one of avoidance, or annoyance, but trusting acceptance that God is at work. Psalm 119:50 My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life, O LORD. Does God care that we suffer? Oh yes! We may see complacency in a world of suffering, but not from our God. And what God will do or will not do in and through our suffering may depend significantly on our attitude!

a study of 2 Corinthians

a study of 2 Corinthians Here are the songs we sang this Sunday. This shows the song name, the artist who performed the song, and the cd that contains the song. We Will Hold On Paul Baloche Glorious It