Interestingly enough, this is not at all what I had planned to write about this week. I had originally intended to write something a bit more uplifting, however, everything I tried to write did not seem good enough. It was after retreating away from my computer for 48 hours that I finally realized the perfect thing to talk about—suffering. Suffering is probably one of my favorite things to talk about because it has been extremely prevalent in my walk with Christ. In the past two years of my Christian walk everything was flipped upside down in more ways than one. Yet the one thing that got me through even the darkest times was my relationship with Christ. For many people, there is a belief that if you do good things then good things will happen to you. This belief has even found its way into Christian circles and is referred to as the Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel says that if you devote your life to God, He will bless you abundantly. Somehow all your hard work will earn you the perfect relationship, an amazing/ well-paying job, a wonderful family, and good health. As I Christian I can tell you that a relationship with God will bless you abundantly, however, it is not necessarily always with the things of this world. So if you are reading this and you have believed that the people who love God and love people the way God intended are guaranteed nice things please remove that preconceived notion. In fact, I would argue that those who are walking in true fellowship with God will experience suffering quite a bit. Don’t believe me? Check out what Jesus says in His Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:10-12). Christ certainly did not sugar-coat the fact that with following Him would come suffering.
Let me clarify what suffering looks like because we live in a world with a lot of it. Suffering by dictionary definition means, “to experience pain or something unpleasant such as; illness, injury, defeat, loss or damage”. This means that the person sitting in the Oncology department receiving chemotherapy is suffering. It means that the person who is grieving the loss of a parent is suffering. It includes the person who sits alone at lunch because he or she is not cool enough to sit with others. We see it when a small kitchen fire turns into the loss of every memory we have ever known. Suffering exists in the heartbreak and shame of boys and girls who are told by their first love that they are just not good enough. We see suffering in the headlines about murder, rape, persecution and segregation. Suffering is in the eyes of the poor and the marginalized and in the broken and the bruised. It is in the cries of a six-year-old who clings to her father as he walks out of their family for good. It is in the late night sobs of a woman who has discovered her husband has been cheating on her. So while our initial response to the thought of suffering might be to think of those who die for their faith we must also remember the people who are suffering around us every day.
Unfortunately, the reality is that suffering does hit, and man does it hit hard. I cannot tell you exactly what that will look like in your life but I can tell you what Christ has done in my life to get me through it. Some of you may already know this, but recently I tragically lost my dad. Prior to his death, my family experienced extreme changes and I was left questioning why? Many questioned why I still believed in God in the face of everything surrounding me. It seemed foolish because I knew that despite my suffering God had not forsaken me. Perhaps God had called me into a season of grieving but He was and is still walking alongside me, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). In fact, the truth was things would probably not get better and the circumstance was not going to change. Yet I knew that if all else failed me in this life God had sealed my salvation through Jesus. Even if I lost everything I had, I still got God forever. This completely humbled me and filled me with incredible joy.
Not only did God reveal in this season that He would not leave me, but He showed me that He knows more than anyone else what it means to suffer. The book of Isaiah reminded me of this simple truth, “I will not forget you. Behold I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16). For the Christian we do not have a tyrant God who rules over us and strikes lightning upon our heads. We have a God who got off His throne and walked among His creation. He took off His crown to serve the broken. He was humbly born in a manger to die on a cross. He was scorned, rejected, forsaken, and despised. Yet He suffered those things for the people who did them to Him. Though the one true king, He wore a crown of thorns. Yet worse than all the earthly sufferings He experienced in His life nothing could compare to being separated from God the Father when He took the weight of every sin of the world upon His shoulders. For everyone suffering is inevitable. For the Christian, however, we have the joy of knowing that in our suffering we experience the smallest taste of the greatest love ever displayed. We have a loving God who will never leave or forsake us. A God who works all things together for the good of His children. So I urge you to not settle for a faith that only rejoices in the blessings of this world but to find joy in suffering alongside the One True King.
