Understanding Suffering: Embracing God's Grace in Trials

but i wonder how amazed we really are where we have so become so accustomed to the mercy of god the patience of god and the grace of god that we begin to take it for granted and to assume it and then pretty soon to demand it and so that when he is gracious to us we're hardly surprised [00:56:56]

and many times the presence of suffering in our life undoes us and brings us to a state of a spiritual crisis and i think part of the reason for that is that we hear in the culture these ministers who tell us that once you come to christ all your problems are over and that god doesn't ever will sickness or pain or affliction [01:32:92]

and jesus answered and said to them do you suppose that these galileans were worse sinners than all other galileans because they suffered such things i tell you no but unless you repent you will all likewise perish were those eighteen on whom the tower and siloam fell and killed them do you think that they were worse sinners than all the other men who dwelt in jerusalem [02:36:23]

and what we may be even more surprised at is jesus response he said if you think that these things happen to these people because they were worse sinners than anybody else i tell you no but unless you repent you will likewise perish now what's our lord doing here i think what he's saying to his inquirers is this you're asking me the wrong question [03:51:31]

and we need to understand the difference between a christian understanding of suffering and pagan views of suffering in the short time that we have today i'm going to mention four different varieties of views of suffering that have been popular at one time or another in the pagan world and the first one is what i'm going to call the docetic view [07:36:56]

the stoics believed that we live in a world that is controlled by material forces and these material forces operate according to fixed deterministic laws and we have absolutely no control over what happens to us in this environment what happens to us is our faith or our karma it is just the result of these impersonal forces out there and we have no freedom to determine our own destiny [10:47:83]

the hedonist or the hedonistic view is to find in this way hedonism historically is that philosophy of life that describes or defines the good in terms of the elimination of pain and the acquisition of pleasure now in the ancient world there were two different types of hedonists in their philosophical orientation [13:34:64]

the biblical view of suffering is on a collision course with these views because the one overarching principle of the biblical view of suffering is this that suffering for the christian is never an exercise in futility it is never an exercise in futility but that suffering is used by god for redemptive purposes among his people [20:22:48]

and christ himself promises his people in the world you will have tribulation you will have afflictions paul says that he fills up in his own body the afflictions that have not yet been completed in the body of christ his church that we all are called to participate in the sorrows of christ who was called a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief [21:30:48]

and then paul reminds us that the sufferings of this present time or but for a moment they are not the final answer and that the sufferings that we are called to endure in this world aren't worthy to be compared with the glorious things that god has stored up in heaven for those who love him so in one sense our suffering becomes a bridge to glory [25:07:12]

what we do rejoice in is the presence of god in the midst of our pain but again we have to understand lest we fall into being absolutely undone and astonished whenever affliction hits us that we are to expect it it's part of our call as christians that god has called us into a fallen world to minister into a world that is a veil of tears and it's a place of pain [26:21:48]

let me finish by reminding you that our god never promised any of us that we would never go into the valley of the shadow of death what he did promise us was that he would go with us yea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me [29:22:24]