Ephesians 4:29-5:2 Luke 9:51-56

Imagine for a moment that you are in a strange city and you are walking along enjoying the sights when all of a sudden, a heavy backpack is put on your back. A voice commands you to turn right at the next street, left at the following street, right again. At some point, you get fed up with this heavy burden and say to this voice that is commanding you, “What is this all about? Why am I carrying this backpack?” Then the voice says, “In this backpack is your child who has been injured. I am giving you the shortest route to the nearest emergency room.” Do you see the change that would occur? You are going from anger to determination. Your step would pick up. The adrenaline would rush through your veins so that you would walk faster with even more determination to get to that emergency room. Suffering is like that. When Christ came to this earth, He came to create a relationship and that relationship was based on Him carrying us because we are God's children. Jesus carries us to heaven. We are His heavy load. In His carrying us, there is purpose to suffering and in our joining Him, we find that purpose.

As I was in the hospital, I did what probably a lot of you and many other people have done at times, that is, when there is some kind of a loss or some kind of suffering or pain that comes along, I asked, “Why?” “Why me?” “Why now?” “Why this?” Rarely do we have satisfactory answers to the question, “Why?” But there are Biblical answers to that question that help.

One of the most unique and unusual answers I found in Colossians. Listen to this. Paul was suffering. And he said, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you (speaking to the Colossians). And I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body which is the church.” Most of us think that on the cross, the suffering of Christ was finished. He said, “It is finished.” But in this passage, we get a different perspective. The body of Christ continues His redemptive work when it suffers. So when any of us suffer, we can be united to Christ somehow in that sacrificial suffering. He died on the cross and makes up for any suffering that was lacking as the body of Christ continues to suffer. This gives us reason and purpose in the suffering. I found that comforting when I reflected on this. By uniting with Christ's suffering, then the suffering that I did didn't seem so bad. Somehow when we suffer and it is put in the context of a relationship, it changes its purpose. It changes its meaning. Union with Christ is the best relationship there is. Apparently as His body (the church) suffers, His redemptive work continues. It is on-going and we can become a part of it in our individual suffering.

There are other reasons why we suffer. Maybe, just maybe, we get a little taste of hell as a motivator. When we feel pain, we feel a loss, we feel discouragement, no matter what it might be in life's circumstances& for example, today is Memorial Sunday. We thought about the eleven people who passed from this life. That touched eleven families in our church&it is painful. All of us have had these experiences, so maybe through them we understand a little bit what hell might be like because hell is the loss of Christ, the loss of God, the greatest loss of all. It is eternal. So it can become a great motivator to us. You might think, “Hey, I don't want any part of that.” As I suffered with my physical wounds and injuries and four surgeries, there was a part of me that said, “Whew, this is tremendous suffering. If hell is anything like this and it is eternal, I don't want any part of that. Thank God. I am sorry for all my sins. Get me to heaven. Take me there as soon as possible.” So one of the things that we can learn from suffering is what a little bit of hell may be like. It can become a powerful motivator to never sin and go there.

Another thing that comes from suffering that I thought about is that it almost always turns a person to prayer. And what is prayer? Conversation with God. When any of us suffer, we want to talk to God about it. “God, is there any way that you can help me with this? Can you take it away from me? Will you make it go away?” Even Jesus did that the night before He died. In the Garden, He prayed, “If it is possible, Father, take this cup from me. But not my will, yours be done.” So it turns us to prayer. It turns us to conversation with God. That is something good that can come from this. God wants this kind of relationship where we turn to Him and converse about it with Him.

A fourth thing is that suffering enables us to identify with others who have suffered. And in that sense, we can be helpful to others as they go through suffering. If you've gone through anything and you meet someone else who has gone through that, and you compare notes and you talk about it, it lifts the burden of the other person and yourself. When people talk to me about what they have gone through and what I was going through, it helped. It made it just a little more tolerable, a little easier to understand and accept. I didn't feel alone in my suffering. I felt their care and empathy. They had been there. They knew what I was going through. That helped. Now I can do that with others.

Then if we go through suffering well, and if we don't become bitter about the suffering that we have, we become better. We can grow through the suffering no matter what it is. Whether it is conflict in our lives, whether it is loss in our life, whether it is physical pain, whatever it is, it is an opportunity to grow physically, if it is a physical problem, to grow emotionally and/or to grow spiritually. So it is an opportunity to get better. You've probably met people who when they suffer, blame God. As far as I can tell, God is not responsible for our suffering. When we suffer, it is almost 80% of the time because of human weakness or human error or human sin. A lot of suffering we bring upon ourselves in some way. If it is an act of nature or an accident, it is something where God does not suspend the rules of the universe. He allows things just to flow as they do and He doesn't want this horrible suffering, but He says, “This won't be corrected until the final Kingdom is established, until the New Jerusalem is here, until all is finished in the work of Christ in His second coming.” So He allows it to occur. And for all the reasons given above we can become better for it.

So rather than become bitter with any of this, our challenge is to become better because of it, to help us to grow. In the Old Testament, we have the example of Job. Job went through more suffering than most people could even imagine. He lost his family. He lost his health. He lost his wealth. He lost literally everything. Three friends came to help him. I suspect that their presence was a comfort to him but their advice wasn't very helpful. He wrote a poem about it, a forty chapter poem. Then even God didn't give him a real satisfactory answer  why it happened. God just said, “This is my wisdom. Who are you to challenge God?” But the amazing thing about Job is that he became better. He stayed in relationship with God through it all. That is what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to connect in relationship with God through it all. What makes all suffering tolerable is the relationship with God and the relationship with each other. Corporately, we are the body of Christ and so we can love one another through suffering. When we support one another, we help each other bear the suffering and that is what we are all challenged to do through the message of the Bible.

I am aware of a person who died and I assume but don't know for sure they probably didn't go to a happy place. Some of you may remember Kurt Cobain, the musician. In the 1980's, he was the lead singer for the music group called Nirvana. He was an atheist, totally without purpose, totally without reason. Though he had every material thing, he killed himself. We are not in that situation. Throughout our whole life, if we suffer, we suffer with purpose. We suffer while connecting with God. We suffer with certain hope of the future that there is an end to our suffering. We will get new bodies. As the book of Revelation says, there will be a time and a place where there are no more tears, no more suffering. Everything will be wonderful when Christ returns and His kingdom is finally established. So ultimately, we don't focus on the darkness and bleakness of our suffering. Ultimately, what we focus on is hope in Jesus Christ.

We always have a choice when something bad happens in our life. The choice is&do we become bitter or do we become better?