Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Learning Through Suffering

Learning Through Suffering

For a few days we are going to pitch our tent on the subject of suffering -in and through- trials and tribulations.
I'll begin by sharing a phrase I read today. The author is encouraging us to learn from our trials and writes, "Don't waste your pain." The idea conveyed is to invest it rather than waste it. Hmm? Not a new lesson, but a way of saying it that I'd never heard before. "Don't waste your pain. The encouragement is for us to invest our pain in personal/spiritual growth and then, moving beyond ourselves, help someone else who may be struggling through suffering in their own life.
I had the privilege, recently of gathering with a group of people to pray. Some of us were indeed suffering in spirit over circumstances occurring in our lives that were having a significant impact, spiritually, emotionally and physically.
The question on my mind is "what is God up to?

Elizabeth Elliot calls suffering a gift.
Paul says, "Unto us it is given, not only to believe, but to suffer."
In my little brain, suffering is one of those words that I am not all that comfortable with. That might be true for most of us. For sure, we don't want to experience it on any level -especially not the kind that strips away all our defenses, all our arguments, all our self-righteous thinking, all our comfort and ease.
Suffering forces us to the only place we can or will grow from -The Cross. Suffering like this is not really on the register of our conscious thinking. Who imagines or dwells on that kind of suffering?

As believers we all encounter it at least once at the moment of salvation. In that moment we saw ourselves as sinners deserving of death, deserving eternal separation from a Holy God and we catch a glimpse of the suffering sinless Savior.

The movie released last year, "The Passion of the Christ", was as close as most of us have ever come to viewing a fraction of His true suffering.
What was the point of all that suffering? The simple point was and is to restore us to right relationship with a Sovereign Holy God; relationship which He designed for us from the beginning.
So again, I ask the question, "What is God up to?" He's up to the same thing He always is. It is in our suffering that God gets our attention. It is in our suffering that we cry out to Him with fervor and passion. "Lord, rescue us! Lord save us; deliver us!" Lord, release us from this trial and restore us to our former days when everything felt so much better and all was right in our world."
Sisters, are any among you suffering? You can be sure that God has something He wants to say to you. Something, that is for your good. As I shared in a previous Victory Call, God showed me through a recent season of suffering that it was time to let go of my hopes and dreams for my children and let Him be God in their lives. Big Mama had to decrease wanting to be all and everything and trust God to be Father.
Slow down, stop and listen. Don't waste your pain!
Stephanie

No comments: