Finding Meaning and Purpose in Suffering

The problem of suffering is something that immediately takes us out of the realm of the abstract and touches us at the point where we are human. And whenever I encounter this question of suffering either as a philosophical question or as a cry of pain from somebody who's in the midst of that suffering when they're asking it, the question that I hear in my profession inevitably is the question, "Where is God in all of this?" [00:01:44]

It's one thing to experience pain, but it's another thing to anticipate that my suffering and my pain is worthless. If I'm going to have to go through pain; if I'm going to have to go through suffering, I have to know inside of myself that there's some kind of reason for this, that it's not just an exercise in futility. [00:03:28]

I had no idea what to say to her. And she looked at me, and the tears started to just roll down over her cheeks and she said, "R.C., I don't think I can take it anymore." I didn't know what to say. I mean, what do you say? Do you say, "Don't talk like that"? Or do you say, "You have to keep hanging in there, you have to keep it…" [00:13:08]

I said, "I didn't do anything. All I did was sit there and hold her hand for forty-five minutes." And she said, "But that's all she wanted. And that's all she needed. She's heard all the sermons, and she's heard all the platitudes. But she just wanted somebody to show her that they cared." [00:15:02]

Martin Luther once made. He said, "It's the duty of every Christian to be Christ to his neighbor." Now Luther was too fine of a theologian to mean that statement in a literal word. Martin Luther understood that no one of us can ever fill the shoes of Christ. But to be a Christian means to represent Him, to bring His comfort, His peace, His understanding, and not His judgment to people who are in pain. [00:15:42]

The God of Judaism, the God of Christianity is a God who majors in suffering. The whole history of Israel is the history of the sorrow and the pain of a people who were in special relationship to God. In fact, how did the Jewish nation begin? Do you remember your history? It began when a group of semi-nomadic people were pressed into slavery, and you've all heard of the exodus out of which a nation was formed under the authority of God. [00:19:21]

So far from the idea that God doesn't have anything to do with death or God doesn't have anything to do with suffering is the Scripture is that God is the Lord of life; He's the Lord of death; He's the Lord of pain; He's the Lord of suffering. And rather than that being bad news to me, that's good news because the simplest of all theological lessons that we could learn from this is that if there is a God who is sovereign over all of life over all of death and over all pain and over all disease and over all illness and over all sorrow that what that means is that it is flat out impossible that any pain could ever be without purpose. [00:21:31]

I don't know what the individual suffering means or why a particular person is called to suffer in a particular way at a particular time. I don't know. I cannot read the mind of God, the secret counsel of God; but I do know something about the character of God. And I know that He is sovereign. And it's when pain comes and when disease comes that sovereignty suddenly becomes more than an abstraction, doesn't it? Because that's where the struggle is. Can I trust God in this or not? [00:22:44]

There's anger, there's fear, but one of the stronger emotions is surprise, because we like to think that these kinds of diseases and this kind of suffering can never or will never come into our lives. And that surprise becomes all the more accentuated when we hear ministers out there telling us that, you know, if you believe in God and you believe in Christ you never have to worry about pain and suffering. That's just not true. [00:23:38]

Think it not strange. That's because by this point in his life Peter understood that God was intimately involved with suffering. And that for a person to be called upon to suffer is not surprising once we understand who God is. Now in our next segment what I want to explore with you is this—an idea that maybe you've never thought of maybe you have. I want to explore the idea that not only God is involved in our suffering and that God may be with us in our suffering, but there may be times when God actually calls us to suffer, that suffering and at times death can be the vocation of a human being. [00:28:25]

In the New Testament Jesus promises us that He will send into our midst the Holy Spirit who is our comforter. Now, of course, the original intent of that statement of Jesus was to send one who would stand with us in the time of trial and the time of tribulation to be our defender but also, He tells us that there is a comfort that God promises to give people in this world. Now sometimes the way in which God brings comfort to His people is through us. [00:31:50]

If you can imagine yourself in a situation of serious pain and suffering, and one of your friends or your minister came to visit you what would you want them to do or to say. I mean I can imagine some of you may say to yourself well, gee, R.C., if you came to see me and I was dying of cancer, and you said nothing, but just simply sat there and held my hand and listened to me, I would be disappointed. I would be let down because I would be looking to you to say something more to give me some kind of hope or encouragement with your words. [00:34:09]