Coming To Grips With Suffering...Continued from page 1
George R. Cannon, Jr.
There is this sense in which many of us operate with a faulty assumption that as long as I am a Christian or as long as 1 am faithfully serving God, I should be exempt from suffering. But notice, here is the apostle, a man that you and I cannot even hold a candle to in terms of spiritual maturity and ministry, yet God allows suffering to be a part of his life just as anyone else. The reality is that God doesn't make special deals with his people.
The apostle responded to the suffering in his life like we would. He asked God to take it away. And he just didn't do it once. The text tells us that Paul on three different occasions cried out to God. The implication is that Paul pleaded with God to remove the source of his suffering. I think this is significant because many North American believers are operating under a lie that no matter the intensity of pain we are experiencing, we are to keep a "stiff upper lip." We are told that our response to suffering is supposed to be a "testimony" to others. That is a lie and it is totally unrealistic. We damage ourselves and others by such thinking. The apostle did what any other human being would have done. He cried out to God. It's okay to cry out.
Paul continues in his testimony by revealing the response of God to his request. It is in God's response that we find the next two realities.
God's response is not what Paul had requested. Paul asked for the removal of the problem. The issue with God was not the taking away of pain but rather the endurance of it. We have to correct our thinking and come to realization that God at no time ever promises to remove suffering from our lives. On the contrary, throughout the scripture, we have testimonies and exhortations that suffering is an expected part of our lives. It is out of this reality that Paul reveals to us the next reality
Again the issue with God was not the taking away of pain but rather the endurance of it. The Lord tells Paul that His grace is sufficient for Him. His strength is made perfect in weakness. Must of us need to change the way we pray. We need to stop asking God to take it away the problem and begin to ask him for the grace to endure it.
Paul's final conclusion to his suffering brings us to the sixth and final reality. Paul states
"Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities.." It is not that Paul has a warp sense of reality where he enjoys pain, but rather Paul has arrive at a point where he recognized that it is in the midst of his suffering that he experiences God in a new way, "For when I am weak, then I am strong."