Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Evolution of Suffering

In my new book, Surviving the Suffering, I try and delineate the different forms of suffering so that one may determine exactly which form is causing the difficulty.  So many times people think they are suffering for one reason when it is really another, and the mistake leads to much distress and doing the wrong things to correct it. 

Many people have read the book and taken it to heart, and for that I am grateful.  However, I am sure that all authors at one time or another have looked at their work and thought that it was imperfect and could be tweaked here or there.  Having spoken with several readers, I can tell that the book has made perfect sense to them and they are applying the lessons of the book to their lives with good result.  Now that I can see the actual impact the book is making, I am also beginning to see some trends.

If we look at the different types of suffering as I have categorized it, there is Punishment, which is reserved for the unbeliever, and it has no redemptive qualities.  It does not improve the individual's relationship with God because they do not have one.  Then there is Chastisement, which is when a believing Christian commits sin and God must correct them, often painfully, to get them to repent, be forgiven, and restore that relationship.  There is Pruning, which involves a Christian who may not be willfully disobedient, but needs to let God remove from them things which are not Christ-like in order that they may bear more fruit.  Other categories would include Spiritual Warfare, where the Christian is being attacked by Satan, and suffering for Christ, as in persecution.  

It is certainly possible to suffer more than one type of suffering over the course of one's lifetime, and I have seen this in my own life as well as that of others.  You can imagine an unbeliever, who first suffers Punishment as a non-Christian.  This same person may be converted  by receiving Christ, yet still slip and fall into old sinful habits and require Chastisement.  Later, as spiritual maturity and sanctification occur, the Christian undergoes Pruning as part of furthering the sanctification process. Then the Christian lives a life more pleasing to God, sinning less and being fruitful, yet suffering Spiritual Warfare attacks.  Finally, for a few Christians (and rarely in this country), they may be martyred for their faith.   There is an evolution of Christian behavior in the believer's life, and a resultant change in the forms of suffering as well.

So, some of this suffering is actually due to our own actions and sin, and we are indeed responsible for our misery.  Yet as Christians, as we become sanctified, we should become more and more like Christ and hopefully sin less and less.  Although many mature Christians still slip and sin, their lives are not characterized by sin.  It is the hallmark of the mature Christian that they are acutely aware of their sin nature and how they do not deserve the blessing of salvation that is bestowed upon them because of the atoning work of Christ on the cross.  Salvation is a gift of grace, giving to us that which we have not earned and do not deserve. 

The mature Christian has in his memory the sins he has committed and how he suffered as a result.  He also has an awareness of his fallen sin nature, and how he does not deserve to be saved based on his sinful life.  In Romans 3:23 we learn that, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The Christian has experience, therefore of being responsible for the suffering as a result of their prior sinful actions. 

What must happen next is that the Christian must realize that they are not responsible for all of the suffering that occurs in their life.  I think what I see in the unbeliever is a tendency to deny any responsibility for causing their own suffering as a result of sinful actions, and a tendency of the believer to believe that they are responsible for all their suffering.  This is not true.  In Surviving the Suffering I take great pains to show people how to avoid this trap.   Many are able to now recognize that they are saved Christians who are not being Punished, and that they are not commiting sin requiring Chastisement. 

What I am seeing, however, is that some people just can not let go of the notion that somehow they must still be responsible for the bad things that are occuring in their life, even if they are cognizant that they are not out of God's will.  They still believe it must be their fault in some way or the other.  So they assume that they are being Pruned of some undesirable quality.  This may be the case, but it could very well be that they are under Spiritual Warfare attacks or that they may just be suffering from the common maladies we all face as the result of living in a fallen world. 

The difference between all of these types of suffering is crucial, and the responses required are all quite different.  Surviving the Suffering, the book, helps sort all of this out.  I will try and explore some of these issues in upcoming posts.  When suffering, examine your life and look for sin, but do not let your "default" position be that it is always "my fault."

Upcoming Events/Speaking Engagements

MARCH 2, 2013

Raintree Books
432 N. Eustis Street
Eustis, Florida
10:00 am to 2:00 pm

MARCH 14, 2013

Leesburg Regional Medical Center Mended Hearts
LRMC North Campus
700 North Palmetto Street
Leesburg, Florida
10:30 am to 11:30 am

APRIL 13, 2013

Mount Dora Coffee House
342 Dora Drawdy Way
Mount Dora, Florida
10:00 am to 2:00 pm

APRIL 19-20, 2013

The Awakening 2013
First Baptist Church Oviedo
45 West Broadway Street
Oviedo, Florida

MAY 9, 2014

St. Thomas Episcopal Church
317 South Mary Street
Eustis, Florida
6:00 pm

Monday, February 11, 2013

New Televison Commercial

We will be away this week for my tenth anniversary and speaking engagements in South Florida. We will return in two weeks. There are several book signings and speaking events in the next several weeks and we will keep you posted. In the meantime, here is the new television commercial for Surviving the Suffering:
 


Monday, February 4, 2013

How Long in the Fish?

I find the story of Jonah full of surprises when I read it and try and see things as he saw them.  Most of you are familiar with the story as told in the eponymous book of the Bible.  He was called by the Lord to witness to the city of Ninevah.  Jonah refused, and ran away to Tarshish; he reveals later in Chapter 4, after his ordeal at sea, that it was because his heart was hardened towards the Ninevites, saying, "Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country?  Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm."  It takes a pretty hardened heart to desire the destruction and damnation of an entire city full of people.  It takes a pretty bold heart, or a foolish one, to willfully disobey God who has spoken to you.  Jonah went to, "flee...from the presence of the Lord" (1:3).  I am not sure where you could go to do that,  but he boarded a ship to get out of town.   

The climactic portion of the story is the tumultous storm that threatened to sink Jonah and his shipmates. The sailors apparently started the voyage as heathens, for as the tempest threatened to break apart the ship, "every man cried out to his own god" (1:5).  They determined that someone's individual sin had brought this calamity on the whole ship, and cast lots to find out just who that person was.  The lots implicated Jonah.  His response was twofold: he told them that he was a Hebrew, who feared the Lord (1:9), and that he was indeed the guilty party, for he had fled the Lord (1:10).  In verse 12, he says, "For I know that this great tempest is because of me."  It would seem that the other sailors reasoned that if indeed it was Jonah's God that was causing the storm, then their other gods were irrelevant.  They began praying to the Lord (verse 14) and they "...feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows" (verse 16).

After Jonah decided that it was his sin that was threatening to destroy them all, he came to the realization that he would need to sacrifice his life to save the others.  He may have understood that in such dire circumstances he would die no matter what; either they would all sink and drown, including himself, or he could be thrown overboard to save the others.  Certainly the penalty for sin is death, and that concept is reinforced throughout the Bible.  After Jonah established the causal link between his sin and the storm and sinking ship, he must have determined that his death would satisfy that penalty.  Again in verse 12 he states, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you."

Now here is where I am really curious about what goes through Jonah's mind.  He has committed himself to dying, and is thrown overboard, expecting to drown.  Then he is swallowed by a great fish.  He finds himself in a very large stomach.  God kept him alive at that point; there would be no air or oxygen to breathe.  The digestive juices that break down and dissolve food were kept inert.  And the mechanical churning that stomachs do to break up food must have been kept quiet.  We can surmise that Jonah did not pass out of the stomach into the intestinal tract, because he was vomited onto land, not passed in the other direction. 

And during this dark time in the fish, surrounded by stomach lining, Jonah prayed to God and gave thanks.  But there were several things he could not know at that point.  He did not know where he was going.  He did not know if he would ultimately survive; he may have presumed that God would not save him from drowning just to die in the fish.  However to me, the most excruciating part of this ordeal is that he did not know how long he would be there.  We know in retrospect that he was there for three days, but Jonah did not know that while he was in the fish.

Jonah would have had some difficulty in determining the passage of time; I doubt that the wristwatches back then were visible in the dark.  He must have had some idea that time was passing, but no knowledge of how long his ordeal would last.  Jonah must have known God was keeping him alive in the fish, but how much longer would this go on?  Would he be in there days, weeks, months, or years?

For many of us, suffering is more bearable if we know its parameters.  We ask, "How bad will it be?" and  "What is the worst that could happen?"  We also feel that we could endure almost anything if we knew the answer to the question, "How long will this last?"  Having no end in sight makes it all seem so much more gloomy.  We know that an all-powerful God could stop our suffering in an instant.  It is not always so clear as to why He chooses not to, and what his purposes are in allowing it to continue.  We do know that we will not suffer one more second that God has determined is necessary to accomplish those purposed.  He does not forget to set His timer.

We are not given a timetable for our sufferings.  We can learn from Jonah, with his many flaws and hardened heart, that God is due our thanks in seemingly impossible situations.  God hears our cries at all times, whether in a brightly lit church or in the dark inside of a fish at the bottom of the sea.  For the Christian, there is always a finite limit to how long we will suffer, for there each of us has a finite time on this earth before reaching eternal joy.  Only those who have rejected Christ will face the possibility of eternal suffering.  And as Christians, we know that "If we endure, we shall also reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12).