CONSIDER IT PURE CRAZY part 2

In yesterday's introduction, we established the "afflictions" is a biblical term that refers to pain of various degrees and kinds that are caused by external circumstances that are beyond our control. We further illustrated how afflictions significantly marked the lives of God's people through the pages of the Bible, and we acknowledged that no degree of righteousness or maturity in Christ can insulate you from the reality of afflictions in a fallen world. In other words, nobody escapes afflictions in this life. My hope is to help biblically orient our perspective of pain so that we might find hope amid our afflictions and offer hope to others we influence. Here are 10 truths to form your understanding of pain and transform how you endure pain.

1) God is Sovereign

You are not in control and that in no way means that things are out of control. God is sovereign over all things, even over your affliction. Hosea 6:1-3 goes so far as to say that God has “torn” and “struck down” his people. There is some debate about weather God actively causes or passively allows affliction, but that God is neither surprised nor overwhelmed by our afflictions is certain. Weather it is a physiological condition, relational conflict, financial difficulty, emotional turmoil, or spiritual oppression your particular form of affliction is not above God’s pay grade. You are not in control. God is absolutely in control. And that’s good news.

2) God's Aim is His Own Glory

Jesus speaks in John 9 about a blind man whose blindness came neither from his own sin nor from the sin of his parents. Instead, Jesus says blindness afflicted this man in order that the glory of God might be displayed in him. Similarly, we see Jesus delay going to minister to a dying Lazarus and interrupted en route to healing a dying little girl. In both cases Jesus was motivated by His love and the desire for those he loved to see the glory of God.

John the Baptist is another example of someone who endured great hardship, yet his affliction ended in execution rather than resurrection. Having prepared the way for Jesus' ministry, he was so confounded by his imprisonment and impending death that he began to question if Jesus was the Messiah like he had thought. Jesus confirmed his identity to John as the Messiah but rather than freeing him or saving him, he told him "Blessed is the one who is not offended by me." While John's head ended up ingloriously on a platter, his life and testimony bear witness to this day to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And Jesus' testimony about his cousin is that he is the greatest man to ever live this side of Jesus himself (Matt. 11:11). There is no indication that John understood God would be glorified by his affliction and death. He struggled, as we do, to make sense of how God can gain glory through his affliction. But on the other side of eternity, John knows it is far better to endure affliction and bask in the glory of God than to be spared pain and remain ignorant of God’s glory.

3) God Has Compassion on the Afflicted

While God’s aim is His own glory and not your comfort, he is still a God of compassion who comforts us in our affliction. Exodus 2 tells of a people who cried out to God for rescue from their slavery. And we are told that, “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant... God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (Ex. 2:23-25). When you cry out to God in your affliction, He hears you. He knows you and every detail of your situation. He knows your pains and your fears. He knows what has caused them and what will alleviate them. He loves you and his own heart is afflicted by your affliction. Hebrews 4:15 says, "we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with ourweaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." God's compassion runs so deep that he entered human history and endured affliction at the hands of sinful men. He identified with us and our afflictions so that, through his affliction, we could be identified with him.

4) Affliction is Always the Result of Sin 

Don’t get mad. I don’t mean that your affliction has been caused by your sin. What I am saying is that sin entered the world through Adam and it effected everything. All pain, suffering, fear, sickness, tragedy, pain and death itself are caused by sin. Most Christians are familiar with 1 Corinthians 15:55 which says “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Many use this Scripture as a sort of taunt toward death as if it does not sting at all. But it’s not as if the sting of death can’t be felt. The sting of death is all around us. The odds are you have been stung by sin and death this week. In Christ and through his resurrection, death is definitively defeated but it has not been done away with just yet. Jesus will destroy death finally and fully upon his return but for now, even though we have eternal life in Christ, we live with the effects of sin and death all around us and until Christ's triumphant return the effects of sin will remain. Furthermore, we have each personally contributed to the brokenness in this world through our own sin. None of us are innocent and all of us are effected.

5) Your Understanding of Affliction is Distorted by Sin

Because sin has corrupted everything, we must recognize that how we see our own affliction is distorted and corrupted. You may see it as unfair and undeserved. You may see it as punishment for something you have done. You may not see how anything good could possibly come from your situation. You may think you have a right to revenge, unforgiveness, bitterness or a better reward. It’s important to understand in the midst of adversity that your perspective is limited and God’s is limitless. You see things only for how they are affecting you in the moment while God sees them for what they are producing in you personally and in others through you (Rom. 8:18, 28, 2 Cor. 1:3-12). God does not promise that we will fully understand HOW our afflictions will result in His glory, he only promises THAT they will. The question is will trust your affliction and pain to make sense of God or will you trust God - His word, character, power and promises - to make sense of your affliction? Will you trust that God is good only when life is good? V. Raymond Edmond wisely says, "Don't question in the dark what God showed you in the light."

We will conclude with 5 more important truths to form how we think about afflictions and transform how we walk through them.