Embracing Hope Amidst Pain and Suffering

Pain "is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." And maybe that's your story. You were goin' along, kinda minding your own business, you hadn't given God a thought in maybe many years, or maybe ever, and then you got that call, you felt that pain, you got that bad news, you realized your life would never be the same again. And you found yourself looking up and then you found yourself face to face with a God you'd never believed in before, that perhaps you had abandoned in childhood and you'd been believing ever since that pain was in fact the megaphone that got your attention. [00:19:19]

He said, "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose." You can never afford to lose that you are gonna prevail in the end. But you can't confuse that kind of confidence in faith with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever that might be." Now, this statement is sometimes referred to as the Stockdale Paradox. And you know what a paradox is, a paradox is a statement that, on the surface, doesn't seem to make any sense and then you explore it further and it actually proves to be true. [00:25:25]

There is a cause and effect relationship between sin and suffering. And we know this on a personal level because all of us have done things that we consider bad and we suffered because of it. We have all experienced the pain that is associated with certain behaviors. If you're a Jesus follower and you use the word "sin," you know that you have experienced the consequences, the personal consequences, of personal sin. So we all get that. But the brute fact, the fact that is so difficult for many people to get their mind and hearts around, is this. That the relationship, the cause-and-effect relationship, between sin and suffering, goes beyond personal behavior. It is a global reality. [00:48:04]

Jesus said, "The purpose for this blindness, that was caused by the global effects of sin, is gonna turn into an illustration of the fact that I, the son of God, have power over the global consequences of sin." Which infers that "I have power over sin." That "I am the solution to the world's greatest problem." The problem that plagues every single one of us every single day. That God would use His power over the global consequences of sin to draw attention to Himself. [00:52:71]

He said if death reigned through the one man Adam who brought sin into the world, how much more will those of us who have the ability to endure, and a relationship with our heavenly father that is secure, how much more then will we "reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ." But we reign in life, this is huge, we reign in life by embracing this paradox. Embrace the paradox that sin will have its way today but not forever. [01:20:82]

He writes, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, that we may," here it is, "receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." The New Testament authors had their feet firmly planted on the soil of suffering. They understood the world we live in. And the author of Hebrews says this: when you're going through the suffering and the pain, when you realize, "I'm caught in the messy middle, there is a hope but there is a brute fact that I cannot get around," he says you can come to your Heavenly Father with confidence and here is God's promise to you. You will receive mercy and you will receive grace. [01:31:31]

He says, "I consider that our present sufferings," no one avoids this, no one escapes this. "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that," future tense, "will be revealed in us." Because we know that, we have confidence that, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." Then he continues, he writes this: "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit," in other words, even those of us who are Jesus followers, "we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies." [01:38:21]

But in the ultimate hope that Jesus came to Earth not only to die for our sins but to demonstrate He has the power over the global consequences of sin. And we live in the tension, we live in the messy middle, of a future hope that we can have confidence in, while at the same time embracing and acknowledging the type of world that we live in. We don't like this. But it's true. When sin entered the world, death was right on its heels. And this is the age when the consequences of sin run their course. [01:45:49]

He will use it as a wake-up call to rouse this world, to get us to look up and regain, or find for the first time, our hope. It's a wake-up call for anyone who has ears to hear. And one day, one day, the world will be as we know it should be. One day, the world will be as we know it should be. One day, there will be no more sin, no more sorrow, no more death. But not yet. Not you. And not me. [01:50:00]

Our present sufferings, our present sufferings are nothing to be compared with our future hope. Our present sufferings, they're just another reminder of the global consequences of sin. They're just another reminder of our need for a savior, of the world's need for a savior. Our current circumstances are just another reminder that one day God will, in fact, make all things new. [02:23:52]

If I find within myself a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. [02:49:58]