As we come close to the Passion Week of Lord Jesus, I am reflecting on suffering. For example, Acts 14:22 says that Paul told all his young churches, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom.” In suffering we come to hope more fully in God and put less confidence in the things of the world. We come to know Christ better when we share his sufferings. For example, Jerry Bridges’s book, Trusting God, Even When Life Hurts, is a deep and helpful book about suffering and going deep with God through affliction. It’s not surprising from this title to learn that when he was 14 years old, he heard his mother call out in the next room, totally unexpectedly, and arrived to see her take her last breath. He also has physical conditions that keep him from normal sports. Just a few years ago his wife died of cancer. Serving God with the Navigators has not spared him pain. He writes with depth about suffering because he has gone deep with Christ in suffering.
One of my favorite Scottish theologians and Hymn writers is Horatius Bonar, who wrote a little book called Night of Weeping, or, When God’s Children Suffer. In it he said his goal was, “to minister to the saints . . . to seek to bear their burdens, to bind up their wounds, and to dry up at least some of their many tears.” It is a tender and deep and wise book. It’s not surprising to hear him say,
It is written by one who is seeking himself to profit by trial, and trembles lest it should pass by as the wind over the rock, leaving it as hard as ever; by one who would in every sorrow draw near to God that he may know Him more, and who is not unwilling to confess that as yet he knows but little.
Bonar shows us that suffering is a path deep into the heart of God. God has special revelations of his glory for his suffering children.
After months of suffering, Job finally said to God, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 42:5). Job had been a godly and upright man, pleasing to God, but the difference between what he knew of God in prosperity and what he knew of him through adversity was the difference between hearing about and seeing.
When Stephen was arrested and put on trial for his faith and given a chance to preach, the result was that the religious leaders were enraged and ground their teeth at him. They were just about to drag him out of the city and kill him when, as Luke tells us, “Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). There is a special revelation, a special intimacy, prepared for those who suffer with Christ.
Paul met Christ, the Son of the living God, on the Damascus road. Christ told him how much he would have to suffer (Acts 9:16), and Paul prepared himself. The way he prepared himself is described, “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” “Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss.”
May the Lord open our eyes to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ!
In Christ,
Brown.
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