None of us are born loving God’s Sovereignty. We are all born loving our own sovereignty! God uses afflictions/suffering to heal both sinner and saint, and if we don’t take hold of and really understand that all of our steps are ordered from the Lord, we will become bitter Christians and our faith will become shipwrecked! Take a moment and meditate on these words…
“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your Word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. I know, O Lord, that your judgments are right, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.” Psalm 119: 67, 71, 75
Believe me when I say I yelled and screamed at God and at everyone else while I was being torn away from the only world I knew. Every crutch and every comfort I was holding onto for my livelihood was suddenly taken away. My family, my friends, my job, all the “stuff” I had placed value in seemed like they grew wings and flew away.
This was God’s appointed time to bring me to Himself. In my time of deepest despair and misery, His mercy knocked on my door! I answered the door and accepted His invitation. From the very beginning of my journey with Him, He has planted some strong and unshakeable things; He has brought suffering people into my life, whether through personal testimonies, sermons, books, etc. These precious vessels were used to speak into my life and they showed me God’s truth about suffering. I know that the seeds I have so graciously received must now be sown to others…
“What I tell you now in the darkness, shout abroad when daybreak comes. What I whisper in your ear, shout from the housetops for all to hear!” Matthew 10: 27
It’s never easy learning about God’s Sovereignty. His Sovereignty is sometimes very scary and the knowledge of it is usually born out of a crisis. If I had to summarize in a few words what I have learned on this journey it would be… “God allows what He hates in order to accomplish what He loves.” The topic of suffering is something we should all know more about. The book of Job gives us the most clues about suffering…
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD.” Job 1:21
Job never questions the Sovereignty of God, but we in the church do. The book of Job makes it clear that the one thing that cannot be questioned is the sovereignty of God. In Job we learn that God speaks to us through afflictions. We see that afflictions aren’t always here to punish us. God uses afflictions to turn us from evil; to turn us around, to save and heal us…
“And if they are bound in fetters, held in chords of affliction, then He tells them their work and their transgressions–that they have acted defiantly. He also opens their ear to instruction, And commands that they turn from iniquity.” Job 36:8-10
“He delivers the poor in their affliction, and opens their ears in oppression.” Job 36:15
Check out this short nine-minute powerful clip about Joseph…
So what does tried mean? God is always seeking to teach us the way of faith; the discipline of faith, the patience of faith, and the courage of faith are areas and stages we pass through before the victory in our situation comes. Our character is what develops by enduring the discipline of faith. The words God spoke into Joseph’s heart in his earlier years, concerning his elevated place of honor above his brothers, were the words that were always before him. Joseph held onto God’s Words, despite all of the chaos and disarray of what looked like an impossible situation. And all the while, God was training Him for the throne of Egypt. These were times that tried his soul. They were also times that resulted in increased faith and spiritual toughness.
So how can we say we know Jesus – the Man of Sorrows, if we don’t experience some of that sorrow? God desires our intimacy and it’s worth anything to be His friend, but He shares that intimacy and friendship on His terms. And those terms require us to in some way suffer as His Son suffered. The next time you get hit broadside with a bruising disappointment, remember the example of Jesus Christ. God is asking you to follow in His steps. We may not be able to wrap our heads around things or understand His reasons. But seriously, we are insane to fight Him on this issue! Our suffering-even the anguish in our hearts, not only identifies with God’s pain over sin, but also identifies with the pain of others. Our own suffering lifts us out of shallowness and into humility.
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28
Let me suggest that these words in the above scripture won’t fully resonate in your soul until you truly value God above all. You will know that your eyes have been opened when you have that value change (I want Him more than life). When we embrace the Sovereignty of God, and trust He has a purpose for our suffering, something pretty incredible happens. We will have an authorative voice in the sense of being bold and strong in the center of our weakness – and God is glorified! I beg you to think about this… unless we experience the same afflictions, how can we genuinely minister to a suffering, lost, broken, despairing, hopeless, confused, depressed, sick, poor, trapped, and hurting humanity?
God’s purpose in our lives is to bring us to the position of absolute nothingness, so that we recognize that all we have in this life is God and God alone. Unless we are totally at God’s mercy for a breakthrough, we will never truly know anything about His faithfulness. You’ve heard it before, “we need to see things the way God sees them.” That’s a tall order – it’s so easier said than done. But I believe that in the midst of suffering, seeing things from His perspective is what will guard us against discouragement. Those who thus humble themselves, and comply with God when he humbles them, shall be thus exalted…
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3
Those who are weary, spent, and heavy laden are the poor in spirit Becoming poor in spirit is certainly a byproduct of brokenness. We discover how to put to death all confidence in our own righteousness and strength; we learn to depend only upon the merit of Christ for our support and identity. Through our brokenness we come to realize that we are poor, always in want of God’s grace, always begging at God’s door, always hanging on in his house.
Self-denial and humility are always the first lessons taught in the school of affliction.
These words seem to echo to me over and over… the Lord cannot fully bless a man until He has first conquered him. We see that over and over in the Bible. We looked at Joseph before, but now let’s look at Jacob. He wrestled relentlessly with God. The Bible tells us…
“Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him.” (Genesis 32:25)
In His kindness, God won the victory over Jacob. His kindness? It was only after Jacob’s humiliating defeat that he began to feel the joy of release from his own evil strength and the delight of God’s conquest over him. In the midst of the struggle, Jacob cried aloud for God’s blessing and refused to let go until God gave it. It had been a long fight but for reasons known only to God, Jacob had been worth the effort. Now he became another man; the stubborn and self-willed rebel was turned into a meek and dignified friend of God. To save him from self-trust it was necessary for God to conquer him, to wrestle control away from him, to take His great power and rule with a rod of love.
So through Jacob, we learn that we prevail through weakness, not strength. Also, we discover the degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completedness of God’s victory over him. Does that make sense? It’s difficult to wrap our heads around the way God uses suffering/affliction, but I know that there are hidden potentials which will be realized in our lives only when we lay down our foolish pride and solely depend on our Creator. I now can say with certainty that true victory can only come to us by the defeat of our old life. God comes to our rescue by breaking us, and wiping away our self-reliance. When we are emptied of ourselves is when He imparts His treasures of knowledge, and we are then able to draw closer to Him.
Please don’t allow suffering to make you wallow in self-pity. Stop you’re complaining, because the only thing complaining does is give a foothold to the devil. When we complain, we start to worry; worry opens itself up to fear, and before we know it we’re speaking words of death instead of words that bring life!
Our problems cannot always be fixed, but they can be accepted as the will of God for us now, and later be turned into something beautiful. Contentment in life happens when you know you are where you belong. If only we would respond with faith and praise, we will find our needs supplied even in the most barren desert. And for those who believe in the love and wisdom of a Sovereign God, even a terrible confinement can be a place of building trust.
“Thank you God for showing us how much we need you.”