Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Hebrews 13:3 (NIV) Imagine being given a 48 hour ultimatum, because you were a Christian, to either leave your city with only the clothes on your back or face […]
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It is a mystery how God uses suffering in our lives to make us more hopeful. You would think the opposite would happen. But Paul tells us that “suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4 NIV) It’s obvious that suffering can produce perseverance, after all no pain, no gain. And if a person reacts properly to suffering it can also develop character. But what about hope? Ultimately how does suffering produce hope?
Two years ago this week, in the midst of stepping down from my role as a senior pastor and anticipating a new phase of life and livelihood I discovered a lump in my neck. That lump was like a squall appearing on the horizon that turned into a hurricane. It pummeled me for four months with visits to four physicians, two biopsies, a surgery to remove it, the discovery of thyroid cancer, another surgery to remove my thyroid, radioactive iodine treatment and a scar revision surgery.
Coinciding with all this income from a small business we run, which we were relying upon as part of my professional transition, totally disappeared as tornadic winds blew it away for five long months.
It was the perfect storm of trials in the area of career, health and finances. To be honest, I was so deluged by the winds and waves of life it felt like my little boat of faith was sinking and taking any life preserver of hope down with it.
I can vividly recall the sense of devastation as my plans and hope for the next chapter in my life were being swallowed up and the grip of the fear of death was threatening to drown everything I held dear.
The two year anniversary of the advent of the lump has given me pause. Several days ago, as I was contemplating the quality of my life and the depth of my hope before and after the storm, I could not help but give praise to God.
The Bible tells us that Abraham, in the midst of enduring a twenty five year trial, “even when there was no reason to hope, [he] kept hoping, believing that he would become the father of many nations.” (Romans 4:18) Another way of putting it is that “in hope against hope he believed.” This passage of scripture makes an important distinction between two kinds of hope – there is the hope that depends upon man and the hope that depends upon God. It is the difference between natural hope and super natural hope, temporal hope and eternal hope, human hope and God hope.
When the flame of human hope is extinguished as it was for Abraham (and category 4 and 5 storms have a way of doing that) there is an even greater more enduring hope from God that is available to sustain us. It is the kind of hope that is only produced and revealed through suffering.
This hope from God triumphs over despair because it is in God and His faithfulness, and not in ourselves or what we might dream of accomplishing.
That is a difficult and hard lesson to learn but 20/20 hindsight gives us God’s perspective on His hope-filled purposes for trials and suffering. My puny human hope and dreams sank during the perfect storm two years ago, but God supplanted it with His hope and my life is inexplicably better today because of it.
A condition I battled for years, pre thyroid cancer, was depression. It was something, only those closest to me were privy to. Most of the time it was like a dark, discouraging cloud hanging over my head, but there were a few times when it was debilitating.
One of the remarkable hope-filled things for which I praise God on this two year anniversary is that since having my thyroid removed, I have been free from depression. That marks a huge breakthrough in my life and makes all I went through more than worth it.
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Just yesterday I was talking to a person and we were commiserating about the fact that the longer we live the less we know. This observation was generated out of a mutual confession of perplexity with regard to recent painful disappointment he had suffered. Some things in life, especially painful circumstances beyond our control, the unfixable of life, eclipse our understanding. Like the moon passing before the sun, or cloudy skies blocking its warming rays, there are times when we do not comprehend the whys and wherefores of life. Such darkness can make it difficult to find our way.
It is necessary to be reminded that understanding the reasons for our lot in life is not necessarily the solution to our problems. While there is a tendency in all of us to grapple with the “why” question, sometimes it serves only to prolong our pain. One thing is certain, pain and suffering are an ever present part of the human condition. Not only does our experience testify to this, but an examination of the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God confirms it. Isaiah the prophet predicted hundreds of years before His birth that He would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3) And the writer of Hebrews tells us years after His death, burial and resurrection that He “learned obedience from the things He suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8)
If Jesus had to deal with pain and suffering in His life, how much more do we? In fact Paul the apostle tells us that our suffering in some mysterious way is meant to compliment and complete the sufferings of Christ. (Romans 8:17 & Colossians 1:25)
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Everybody wants a breakthrough because everybody has trials and difficulties in life. But you cannot schedule breakthroughs. They come on their own timetable. Suffering causes us to press in to God for them and invariably they come when we are most desperate for them. And when they come and the prison door opens of its
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