What Do You Believe About Suffering?, Pt 1

Recently, a trusted prayer partner in our ministry had a vision that warned of some difficult times ahead  involving corporate grieving and suffering, but that it would also be a time of great increase and growth for Believers/The Church.

One thing I have learned about how God speaks, is that He always follows the bad news with the good news. He is literally the God of Good News and that there is a redemptive purpose in everything He does. Jesus demonstrates this for us in His prophetic word to Peter. First, Peter gets the bad news -satan wants to sift you like wheat-  immediately followed by the good news -you will strengthen others when you turn back.-

The Litmus Test 

This pattern of reporting the bad news, predictive suffering, and the good news, the Father’s redemptive purposes, is literally the litmus test for identifying that a warning message is from God. Over the years, I have had many conversations with gifted, prophetic people who brought warnings of spiritual attacks or predictions of personal and/or widespread suffering without the good news. I’ve encouraged them to go back to their prayer closet and wait for the rest of the message! I have also worked with intercessors who, despite dedicated and committed prayer time, only get the bad news. So, we have learned to hold the bad news until The Message is complete. With the Body being “fitly joined together,” the good news portion inevitably comes from someone else which reminds us that we, often, only have pieces of a picture, and that we need each other to get the full picture of what the Lord is doing or saying. Learning to hear from God is more than just listening and delivering a message. It also involves developing our skills with interpretation, application, and growing in the knowledge of His nature. The ability to bring what we are hearing from God to proven, prophetic people gives us accountability so that we can more accurately discern these nuances and mature in our gifting. In my experience, accurately hearing and reporting messages from the Lord is a team sport!

I became a Christian in the season when many people taught and believed that because of the atoning work of Jesus on the cross, we were given the authority and power to basically avoid every painful, negative, or difficult experience that one might encounter in this life because they were all caused by the devil. (unless, of course, those same negative experiences were happening to people you didn’t like, or people who didn’t go to your church, or people who had hurt your feelings, in those cases the suffering was probably deserved!) At its worst, this distorted belief system leaves us completely unprepared and ill-equipped for when we do encounter significant loss and suffering in this life.

There are numerous theological and practical problems associated with this type of thinking, but there are a few patterns that I have seen repeat themselves over and over again in the lives of Christians who have been influenced by this belief system. We can become victims of polarized or dichotomous thinking in which everything happening is either caused by God or the Devil. This leads to us blaming the Devil and/or the fallen spiritual creation for the suffering in our relationships, our health, our faith, our work, our ministries, etc. This black and white thinking excludes all other possible causes for the suffering and pain we are experiencing. Most notably, it eliminates personal responsibility literally preventing us from properly identifying how our actions or inactions have contributed to our painful outcomes.

Life’s reproofs, are negative/painful consequences designed to encourage us to choose a better way; they have a redemptive purpose. Much like getting a speeding ticket which can result in court costs and increased insurance rates, they are designed by God to encourage us to make better, Biblical, and healthier decisions. If you go to the beach for the whole day and you don’t wear sunscreen chances are your going to get a sunburn. You can blame that on the devil or decide that it was God’s will for you to have a sunburn, or, ideally, you can accurately identify that you neglected to wear sunscreen. In a perfect world, the wisdom gained from the the speeding ticket is to slow down or from the sunburn is to wear sunscreen. Since we do not live in a perfect world, some of us require multiple “life reproofs” to learn that there is a better way. I would be embarrassed to tell you how many sunburns I had to endure before I made a positive change! We call this productive suffering.

I think its important to note that although evil forces may not be the source of the pain we cause ourselves they are certainly adept at exploiting our pain and using it to harass and torment us, much like vultures prey on roadkill. Vultures are both scavengers and opportunistic predators willing to feed on dead, and almost dead things. The spiritual messages that originate from dead things are filled with anxiety, shame, depression, accusation, and condemnation. This kind of harassment is what we call unproductive suffering and as Believers we do not have to tolerate it! Unproductive suffering is designed to wear you out, but productive suffering has a redemptive purpose!

Holy Disruptions and Changing Landscapes

Sometimes we encounter another kind of suffering that has nothing to do with our wise and/or foolish choices. This is the kind of suffering you didn’t sign-up for, and you have no control over its onset or its ending. This kind of suffering is more like a volcano exploding in your front yard pouring out burning lava, and permanently altering the landscape of your life. The loss of a child or a spouse, a devastating diagnosis, being the victim of a vicious crime, divorce, murder or suicide, living in a region ravaged by storms and natural disasters, the destruction of your home, becoming disabled in an accident, acts of terrorism, or wars, etc. These kinds of events bring waves of suffering and pain that go far beyond what we could have ever imagined for our lives.

When pain is this intense, we come face to face with what we really believe about suffering. We want to try to understand, or make sense of the suffering, we want to know who or what to blame for our great distress! If we have been influenced by the distorted Biblical teaching I mentioned earlier, we can mistakenly fall into the mindset of presuming that being a Christian gives us immunity from pain and suffering to include all of life’s potential tragedies. This false belief can even develop into a sense of entitlement; that we are deserving of special treatment and that its God’s job to make sure we get it. This faulty logic spawns a whole new set of lies and false beliefs that we then have to navigate. Did God fail us, is the Devil attacking us, did we do something wrong that caused this, did the people we see suffering do something wrong and so it’s their fault? Is the Devil winning and God is losing, is God even real? 

Suffering is a part of the human experience. The Bible teaches us how to live wisely so that we can avoid self-induced suffering, but nobody is immune to suffering in this life. It's what we believe about suffering that determines how well we navigate, overcome, and triumph in face of suffering. All throughout the bible and in the life of Jesus we are reminded that in the midst of great suffering we can also experience great redemption!

Part 2 of What Do You Believe About Suffering will be available next week!