“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
C.S. Lewis, the man sometimes described as the “apostle to the skeptic,” wrote that pain is God’s megaphone, meaning that God gets our attention in profound ways when we are lying on our backs in a hospital bed or trying to adjust the ice packs on an aching limb. Having ignored your humanity, you suddenly become acutely aware that you are not Superman and you will not live forever.
Even so, when suffering strikes, you have to turn down the volume of a host of other voices—some well-meaning but incriminating—which bring little solace or comfort. Like Job’s friends who surrounded him with uninvited counsel, you will get plenty of advice as to why you are where you are and what you need to do to get straightened out. When suffering or pain strikes at the threshold of your life, I recommend you make the following resolutions:
Resolution #1: I refuse to listen to my emotions! Why? Well, attacks come from without and within. Your emotions may well tell you that if you had been more spiritual or had taken better care of yourself, this would not have happened. At the same time pain becomes a veritable battleground for Satan to hit you while you are down. When you begin thinking, “God can’t much care about me to let this happen,” be sure your megaphone is picking up the voice of Satan who has been a liar from the day he invaded the Garden of Eden to the present.
Resolution #2: I will rest in the promises of God’s Word, the Bible. When I need to regain God’s perspective on pain, I reread the book of Job in the Old Testament. Then I go to 1 and 2 Peter in the New. I go back and remind myself of what I already know: that suffering is not God’s rebuke nor is prosperity the sign of His blessing. I remind myself that God is not indifferent to my pain and that Jesus Christ knows what I feel and experience because He, too, suffered. I tell myself that God brought me to this point in my life, that I am not here because He forgot who I am or what my name is, that He will be with me during the trial, and that in His own time He will take me through the dark valley.
Resolution #3: I will listen to the voice of God’s servants who have suffered. Read something of the life of Amy Carmichael, Fanny Crosby, C. S. Lewis, Dr. Paul Brandt, Charles Cowman, Hudson Taylor and a host of others.
Resolution #4: I will ignore the well-intentioned but empty counsel of my friends who all have the answers but don’t understand the question. Vance Havner did that, following the agonizing death of his wife. After her death, he said, “I don’t understand some of the things we went through. There were a lot of things that I don’t have any clever answers for. When I meet some brother who has smug and quick answers for some of these problems, I say, ‘Brother, bless your heart; you’re not for me; you know too much.’“ (Vance Havner, “Things I’ve Learned in the Night,” Moody Monthly, June, 1974, p. 28).
Resolution #5: I will not waste the suffering. So, what does that mean? Suffering never leaves you where it finds you. Some people face suffering and they become bitter, hard, and cynical. Others face it and become tender, compassionate, and caring. They see life through different eyes. Their values change. One businessman told me that as he lay on a hospital bed recovering from a heart attack, he began to realize how foolish he had been ignoring God, punishing his family with his long hours on the pretext of providing for them, and living as though he would never die.
Don’t waste the suffering. Spend it well with the currency of wisdom, knowledge, and growth.
Resource reading: Hebrews 11.
