February 20, 2023 — “Finding Joy in Suffering”

“Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:7-11

“Can you remember facing a disruptive moment as a child? Perhaps you fell from your bicycle and skinned your knee. What was your first impulse? To call for help, of course. And perhaps when you did that, your mother or father called out, “Stay right where you are—I’m coming to help you!” That’s precisely what God says to us: Stay where you are. I’ll be there with you. When life wounds us and we’re in deep pain, we instinctively cry out to God. And it is then that we hear Him and feel His presence so clearly. In the midst of tragic circumstances, we can have the richest fellowship with Christ afforded to us. That’s when our faith becomes fully real, and we experience the assurance of things we’ve hoped for.” (David Jeremiah – The Purpose of the Disruptive Moment “God deals with you as sons”)

Paul spends some time talking about his “thorn in the flesh” in his second letter to the church in Corinth. He says, “to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:6-7)

Dare I say we all have some thorn in the flesh that has been a source of suffering – and perhaps a source of strength. Paul was not afraid to ask the Lord to take his thorn away, like we all would do in a similar situation. Even Jesus asks that his “cup be removed so he did not need to endure it” – but in the end he says that if it be G-d’s will to endure, then he would endure. Perhaps this is where we begin when it comes to looking at our own sufferings. In one of the readings I encountered in the book “The Tibetan Book of the Living and the Dead” the author writes that when we are suffering, we should pray that the Lord allow us to endure the sufferings of others as well, while we endure our own. It is a higher level of enduring and “pain management”, but perhaps it will help take our minds off our own suffering.

There may not always be joy in suffering, but there can be redemptive suffering, if not some satisfaction in suffering for the sake of others. Again, this is nothing we can do on our own – it takes a relationship with Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit to help us achieve such a level of endurance.

Let us pray: Dear G-d, help me to endure all things today. Your Spirit is always sufficient for me. Amen.

Pastor Dave