Learning to Suffer

Last year in a post entitled, "Are You Blessed or Cursed? Suffering at the Margin,," I discussed the notion that many people consider themselves to be suffering when they are not blessed as much as others.  Not being blessed as much as you would like does not mean that you are "cursed", and one of the most difficult challenges we face in life, and certainly one of mine, is dealing with the disappointments we encounter.  People of our time today are so used to having their needs met and their wishes fulfilled that when each and every desire is not granted, we feel disappointed. 

We may have abundance to eat and comfort in our shelter, but we expect more, and are used to getting it.  As someone once joked, a millionaire is quite happy with the money he has unless you put him in a room with billionaires. Some are faced with true hardships, and others with inconveniences.  Sometimes the desires of our hearts are prideful and covetous in nature.  I would not begin to try and tell you that a difficulty you are facing is not bona fide suffering; only you can determine where that line is.  I would only caution you that not making the varsity cheerleading squad might not be suffering to the same degree as compared to not making it out of the operating room after a ruptured aneurysm.  "They didn't make it" can mean a lot of different things.

The Apostle Paul lived a brutal life after his conversion. "From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils of the the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,--" (II Cor 11:24-27).  These were not mere disappointments. 

But see what Paul says in Philippians 4:11-12: "Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned whatever state I am, to be content.  I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.  Everywhere and in all things, I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."  As one of my favorite Christian writers, Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones noticed, Paul was a sensitive man, proud by nature, and an intensely active person.  What could be worse for him than to be imprisoned?  Yet he was content.

So how do we become content? How are we to be contented not only in sufferings but in lesser disappointments?  Look again at verse eleven above: "I have learned...to be content."  We do not magically become content.  Even receiving Christ as our savior and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit does not instantaneously make us content.  We must learn to be content.  In all circumstances.

Now stop and think about that for a minute.  Suppose we were never disappointed.  God can give us everything we want, or everything we need, or some amount in between.  (We will leave aside the question of differentiating between a want and a need.)  There is no guarantee that receiving everything we want would make us happy; most statistics show that only about half of lottery winners are happier than before.  And few of us are blessed with receiving every single thing that we want.  As for suffering, what if you never experienced any?  Could God, in His infinite power, grant these things?  Of course He could.  But He chooses not to in order to teach us contentment.  We cannot learn to be content in all circumstances, the desired ones and the undesired ones, unless some of those circumstances are undesired.  And God, who allows the disappointments, provides us the means to be content.  In Philippians 4:12 we are told by Paul, who has now demonstrated his complete authority in this matter, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

We must not pity ourselves in our disappointments.  We must not become bitter in our ungranted supplications.  We do not receive all of the grapes for which we leap as did Aesop's fox, and we must not assume they are sour; they may be perfectly wonderful grapes that God did not desire us to have.  There are many lessons to be learned in our disappointments and sufferings (as I hope my forthcoming book will soon illumine).  I believe that when we learn to be content in our disappointments that God will find it less necessary to allow them; I know that we will continue to encounter them until we reach the realm of complete fulfillment, where we will be eternally contented.