Rejoicing in Our Sufferings

Brothers and sisters in the Lord, I find it very interesting that when you look at the
scriptures, the Lord not only commands us to thank him for the good things that happened
to us in the course of life, the Lord also commands us to rejoice in the bad things that
happen. Verse 3 again of this particular chapter, Romans chapter 5, Paul's words, more than that,
he says, we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces
character, character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. We rejoice he says in
our sufferings. If you look at that verse in the context of the overall passage you will discover,
as I said earlier, that Paul here is elaborating on the benefits of being justified by faith.
He says, number one, we have peace with God. God's no longer angry with me. He says, number two,
we have access to this grace in which we stand. The door to God's blessings is no longer closed.
God's favor is upon me and everything that I need I can receive from God through faith in Jesus
Christ. Then he goes on to say we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God and we looked at
that some weeks ago and we saw that what God is preparing us for is to be conformed to his
image and to his likeness and we rejoice in the hope of sharing his glory. Not hard to be
thankful is it for peace with God. Not hard to be thankful for access to this grace in which we
stand. Not hard to be thankful for the hope of glory. God's promise that life will go on forever
and ever without tears and without heartbreak and without the anguish that so often grieves us in
the course of life. And if that's all that Paul said on this particular passage, we could well
understand what it is that he's talking about and why he is so excited about justification by faith.
But he doesn't stop there, does he? More than that he says. He says all of the other things
are important. All of the other things are cause for joy but he says you want to hear my greatest
cause for joy. More than that he says we rejoice in our sufferings. We rejoice he says in
our sufferings. One of the benefits of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ is that your
attitude towards pain begins to change. Whereas the natural man finds pain and abhorrent thing that
he wants to avoid with all of his heart, God's people begin to look upon pain not merely as an
enemy but as a friend. We rejoice he says in our sufferings. And when you look through the rest
of the New Testament you will find that same theme reappearing time and time again almost in
identical words. James chapter one a very familiar chapter. James here speaking to people that
have been exiled because of their faith. They've lost everything and he comes along and he says
how did all joy by brethren when you meet various trials? For you know that the testing of your
faith produces steadfastness and led steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and
complete lacking in nothing. Peter in one Peter chapter four the verses 12 and 13 reiterates that
same theme when he says beloved do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal or test which comes upon you
to prove you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice as you share
Christ suffering so that you may also rejoice when his glory is revealed. Rejoice he says as you share
Christ suffering we rejoices Paul in our sufferings. Now I ask you this morning how can any sane human
being who hates pain and loves comfort find joy in pain. How can we obey the scriptural injunction
to give thanks to God under all circumstances including the pains of our lives?
Well Paul goes on in this passage to tell us the key the key is to understand God's purposes
in pain. Notice he goes on to say we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces
endurance suffering produces endurance James same thing he says you know the testing of your faith
produces steadfastness and it's really the same word the word endurance means to be steadfast.
It means to be able to keep on going in the course that you've chosen regardless of all the
difficulties that come your way because there is an inner strength that keeps you focused on the
goal it's like an explorer setting out to find a new country or a mountain climber who wants to
plant the flag of his nation in the peak of the mountain he's made proper preparation he's kind of
the cost and he's pursuing the goal with everything that is within him or within her
sometimes there are said backs raging rivers will sweep his supplies away
freak winter storms will cause him to be blanketed in an unexpected blizzard
unfriendly natives may try to take his life and a thousand times a lesser man or a lesser woman
would have said it's not worth the price I'll go back home and live in comfort and inconvenience
and there are many who have started on the race of life and they've they've stopped short of their
goal but the people we admire today the people whose names are in the history books the people
that have made lasting contributions to the human race are people that have kind of the cost
and having kind of the cost they have remained steadfast until the very end suffering says poor
produces endurance it produces a steadfastness of spirit with which God is pleased
I often think that so many of God's people are like children their toss to and fro by every wind
and every wave we're full of joy and we're full of thanks and we're full of gratitude when things
are going well but when things don't go well there's something in our heart that says where's
God in all of this and we become angry and what God is looking for in your life and in my life
as a steadfastness that says even if there's no payoff even if all my friends forsake me even if
it costs me my life I want to be faithful to the Lord Jesus I want to obey him and I want his
principles to govern my life and to govern my relationships I want to be a man I want to be a
woman of character I want to be a man I want to be a woman that lives out his or her life before
the face of God no matter how many storms try to knock me off my course suffering produces
endurance how do you become a strong Christian how do you become the kind of Christian that
can go through anything and come out on top with a song in your heart and a shout a joy on your
lips because you know that God is on his throne and that he loves you with the everlasting love
Paul says the key is to learn how to suffer we rejoice in our suffering he says knowing that
suffering produces endurance suffering produces endurance the word suffering there literally means
pressure it means affliction and it can be anyone of a number of things that come into your life
and that come into my life that try to make our lives miserable for some people the pressure
is financial they can't meet their financial obligations they live in the danger of losing their
homes or having their cars repossessed for some people it's emotional they lose the ability
to make the most simple decisions in life and everything becomes too complicated and they wonder
if they're going to be able to hang on emotionally if you've ever been in that valley you will know
the pain of losing your sanity or the fear of losing your sanity for other people it's difficult
circumstances in which they find themselves an unhappy marriage a wandering child
people who for some reason or another have taken a dislike to you and and they're doing
everything they can to to prick your balloon and you wake up in the morning and you say I wish
it were night as Job said many years ago and you go to bed at night and you say I wish it
were morning for some people it's illness and we have a whole spade of that you will recall
in our congregation I think it's more than coincidental that when we as a church council go on record
and we say number one we believe God is at work in our congregation and number two we want to
try to discern what it is that God is doing in our congregation and number three as he gives us
grace we want to obey him I think it's more than coincidental that within weeks after that kind
of decision we find ourselves bogged down with illness and with struggles of a personal and
corporate nature that way is down within the heart and there are people without number they
come to church every Sunday morning or every Sunday night and they're weeping inside because of
the pressures of life and the pressures of the economy and the pressures of their marriages
and the brokenness of their heart if you can identify with that today if you know what it's
like to ride the roller coaster of ups and downs and struggles and seeming solutions and struggles
again then you'll know that one of the big questions in all of that is the question where is God
if God really loves me if God really cares for me then how come my prayers are it being heard
if God really loves me why doesn't he protect me from all of this stuff why does he why does he
allow billows and waves to sweep over me until there's nothing left of me a lot of people think
that if God loves you life will be without struggle but you see that kind of teaching you won't
find in scripture as a matter of fact you'll find the opposite in the scriptures Hebrews chapter 12
you will recall says that God the Lord disciplines those whom he loves and chastises every son
whom he receives and the mark of disciplines as the Bible becomes part of God's loving
favor towards me because he treats me as one of his own children the Lord disciplines
him whom he loves and chastises every son whom he receives that explains I believe why so many
times when God's children make a new commitment they find themselves being tested on every side
ever notice that in your own life you commit your finances to the Lord and you say Lord I'm finally
going to trust you with my finances I'm going to tie faithfully I'm going to seek first your kingdom
and your righteousness you think everything is going to go okay and before you know what you're
teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and you say Lord from now on I want to be obedient to you I
don't want to be influenced by my friends any longer I want to follow Jesus and before you know
it all your old friends come out of the woodwork and they all start pulling on you and making you
feel real good and you begin to waver and you wonder how can I remain standing in the battles
of life you make a commitment as a church to be a growing church in terms of worship and
in terms of corporate life and unfolding the unbelievers as they come in before you know it you've
got a projector that you can't say and you've got technical problems coming out of your ears
because things go wrong every which way you'll look and you say where's God and you say we've
got to be in the wrong track because if we were on the right track things would go smoothly every
which way the Lord disciplines those who be loves he chastises every son from here he sees
suffering produces endurance how do you become strong how do you learn to stand against all the
waves of life and how do you learn to resist temptation and how do you learn to be a man or a woman
of character God says it's being plunged into the fires of testing suffering produces endurance it's
the headwind that makes you strong so that you can keep on going and until you can arrive at the
other end strengthened by the experience and filled with God's grace you see what happens is this
we come to the Lord and he fills us with his joy
and we think we are just exactly where we want to be and we have an overconfidence in our own ability
to be the kind of Christians that God is calling us to be we say of course I love the Lord
of course I love all of humanity of course I'm a good husband or I'm a good wife
but then the storms begin to rage I say Lord I trust you with my finances but
but now my finances are becoming increasingly precarious and I don't know if I can hold on to my hole
I say Lord I love you for my marriage but I trust you for my marriage but my spouse has just
walked out on me Lord I trust you that you will give me the strength and the grace to overcome
temptation but temptation looms in front of me and it's getting bigger and bigger all the time
and the purpose of the trial is first of all to lay bare what really lives in my heart
and folks I know it's always a real surprise for us but what lives in your heart and what lives
in my heart in the natural is not good because as our catechism says we're prone to hate God
and we're prone to hate our neighbor you've heard me tell the story before of when I was in college
we felt the Lord calling us to to put on a chapel production and long before music videos were
popular or even known the Lord gave us a vision of going out and shooting a film sequence and
using it in the chapel service and conjunction with a piece of music that really had spoken to
us in that time friend of mine worked at the television station he got out his news camera
we went downtown Grand Rapids in a stormy November or October day and we shot a beautiful sequence
of black and white film that would have just offset that particular piece of music wonderfully
he took it to the television station for developing a paper clip got stuck in the machine they
had to open it up of the 200 feet of film that was exposed ours was 175 and I was angry before God
I was amazed at the anger that I found in my heart towards God because here we were we're
trying to do God a favor you know I mean there's this whole college campus of kids that need to know
the living reality of Jesus Christ we had this wonderful dream of how it ought to be done and we
had gone to all this effort and energy to do it and using God cooperated Noah stupid paper clip
or staple God in the way and ruined it all if you remember the story we weren't about to be
undone by that we rescheduled the shooting and then my camera man's grandmother died in Iowa
we decided that if God was going to kill off little old grand ladies we got the message loud
and cleared we gave it up but it was a revelation to discover what lived in my heart
if you've never been mad at God I doubt if God has ever crossed your will
because when God crosses your will you discover that you're not half as meek and mild as you might
think you are when everything goes well and a lot of us we look at ourselves when we see that
and we say oh whoa poor little old me I never knew I was that bad God said well I knew that all along
I just wanted you to know because you see once you know it then you can take it to Jesus
and you can confess it to Jesus and you can ask him to renew your heart and as he renews your heart
you become strengthened to walk before the face of God so that the next time the will of God
conflicts with your own will the spark has gone out of your fight and you learn to say Father
not my will but yours be done suffering produces endurance you cannot be a strong Christian
without having battled the adversities of life and in the adversities of life having come to the end
of your own resources and having had to reach out to the Lord Jesus who overcame everything
and to discover that by faith in him you could do a whole lot more than what you ever thought
you could because of God is for you who can be against you and the Christians that wipe out
when the storm begins to blow are Christians that have never learned to face the lesser blows of life
they have avoided the pain of God's discipline because they want to live superficially
they want to be happy all the time they don't want to be real people they live in a state of denial
and when the pressure is really on their faith is found to be wanting suffering says Paul
produces endurance don't know how many of you know the story of the emperor mob
but the emperor mob is a mob that lives in a flask like cocoon
and in order for that moth to emerge from the cocoon it's got to go through hours of intensive
struggles to push its body through a very narrow opening the story is told of a person who
happened to be present watching one of these moths emerge watch the struggle go on for a long time
and thought he'd do the moth a favor had a little scissors or jack knife in his pocket
and he cut the narrow opening of the cocoon so the moth could get out
congratulated himself on being the savior of the mob
was amazed to discover that the moth when it emerged from its cocoon
it could never learn to fly and instead of being able to spread its wings strong and powerful
and in broad strokes soaring to the air in the way it had been designed all it could do is walk
around and flap its wings and it could never learn to fly because you see the so-called savior of
the moth failed to remember that part of the process to make the wing strong of that particular
moth is that that moth had to be engaged in a struggle for hours and that the struggling that
moth went through produced a strength in its wings that would enable it to fly and fulfill its
destiny before the face of God there's a lot of people like that they don't want to go
through the narrow gate they don't want to experience the pain and they will do everything to
short circuit the pain in their own life and in the lives of other people and in that process
they never learn to develop their spiritual arms they never learn to develop all of the God-given
gifts that live within their lives you know where I learned faith in my own life
I didn't learn faith in the context of a nice cozy Christian community where we could all
support each other I didn't learn faith in times of God's presence and God's nearness in my life
wonderful as those times of being you know where I learned faith I learned faith in the darkest of
my hours when I wondered if God lived when I wondered if He cared for me and when everything
all around me was as dark as the night in which no moon shines and I remember very clearly
crying out in the midst of my pain seeing God where are you wanting God to break through the darkness
for God to answer my questions and to lead me on my way and the skies remained empty
and my prayers continued to bounce from the vaults of heaven
was in that hour
when everything that I valued dearly had been taken out of my life when all I had left was God
in the Word of God when I lifted His Word before His face and I said God by faith I choose to believe
your Word to be true and I want to live my life on its basis and if I come to the end of my life
having discovered it's all been in vain then that's the chance I will take because I don't want
to be a hypocritical Christian I don't want to say that I believe and then continue to live as if I
don't and it took a long time the only promise that I had left in the scriptures that I could
hold on to was a promise where God said I will not fail you nor forsake you and I began to go
through the scriptures and I began to lay hold of all of God's promises towards me and I pounded
the door of heaven and I said Lord your Word is truth and I choose to believe that
you cannot begin unless you've been there to know the agony of that experience
it was one of the darkest nights of my soul but it was in that battle that battle
this Jacob had many years ago when he fought with the angel of the Lord at the book of Jacob at the
broke that faith began to emerge within my heart and that by the sufferings God began to produce
some measure of endurance in my life and I trust some measure of endurance in your life
we rejoice as Paul and her sufferings because suffering produces endurance you cannot be
long suffering I often say unless you first learned to suffer long it's the pressures it's the
difficulties it's the pains of life the drive us to our knees and that make us reach out to God it
makes us test everything that we know everything that we believe and everything that we have ever
experienced it separates the chaff from the wheat and the beauty of it is the real gold cannot be
touched by the fire because it will emerge more brilliant and more glorious that ever before
suffering he says produces endurance once you understand that once you understand that the
flame has been designed not to destroy but to purify once you understand that God's intention
is to to change us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ and that for those who love God
and who are called according to his purpose all things work together for good
then and only then can you begin to understand what it is that Paul talks about here when he says
more than that we rejoice in our sufferings because suffering produces endurance
doesn't mean you have to like it I'm always glad that the book of Hebrews chapter 12 tells us that
for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant and there is nothing in God's
word that says you and I have to go through the battles of our lives with a silly plastic smile
pasted to our faces as if somehow or another we're not real there are people like that you know
they don't believe Christians should ever cry they don't believe Christians
ought ever to be depressed will I tell you anybody the things Christians ought never to be depressed
have never been depressed there are people who think that if you're a Christian you're on top of
things all the time and those kinds of people oftentimes become very artificial because the only
way that they can live up there is to deny the reality of their pain now for the moment all
discipline seems painful and there is nothing in the scriptures that says somehow or another
we ought to be so spiritual that the pain's alive don't hurt come on don't kid yourself
they hurt and they hurt a lot but the Christian knows there is purpose in the suffering
it's just not the action of some capricious God who doesn't love us
and certainly the sufferings aren't the product of the ills that other people are
wasting upon us behind it all is the hand of a loving God and loving Father who is shaping us
into the image of Jesus Christ and even though we may not understand it while we're going through
there comes a time says Hebrew he brews when we look back on it later it yields the peaceful fruit
of righteousness to those who have been trained by it and that's what gives joy in the heart of
the Christian knowing that God loves me it's a sign of God's love in my life he is disciplining
disciplining me as one of his children he's wanting to get rid of all the false values in my life
he wants to drive me closer to his breast he wants to teach me to love him and to trust him
with everything that is within me within me that's why Paul says we rejoice in our sufferings our
sufferings are preparing us for the glory that God has laid up for those who love him
let me ask you this morning since the day you've come to Christ have there been times when you've
gone through the valley have there been times when you've wondered God where are you
what have I gotten myself into why aren't you hearing my prayer how come my pain doesn't go away
how come my wandering son or daughter hasn't come back
why does it look as if every which way I turn I get blown over by the winds of lie
you ever wondered how you can can last and fulfill God's purpose for your life
the answer says Paul lies in knowing that suffering produces endurance one of my favorite
texts in the Old Testament tears me Terry for the night what joy comes in the morning
and the antidote to the pain and to the discouragements and the disappointments of life is not
to throw in the towel and not to deny God and curse him as Job's wife counseled many years ago
it's the lay out broken hearts of the feet of Jesus and to say Lord Jesus I don't understand
I don't know why you were allowing these things to take place in my life but your word says that I
mean Christ I have peace with you I have access to this grace in which I stand I have the hope of
glory I know I'm your child and I know that for those who love you everything works together for
good so Lord here's my heart here are my circumstances here are the pains of my life I may not see
it I may not understand it but somehow in some way you're going to make good come out
of the pain of my life the amazing thing of the scriptures and the amazing thing of the experience
of God's people is that when thus we give our brokenness and our wounds to the Lord Jesus he comes
along with his grace separates the wheat from the chaff the reel from the unreal fills me
with his life and fills me with his spirit and I can keep on going knowing that I'm all the
stronger for the troubles of life and I can then reach out to the other people that are struggling
and hurting and filled with pain and instead of having pious cliches and trying to preach them
in an irrelevant fashion into the kingdom of God I can reach out a hand of love and a hand of
compassion and I can walk with them in their hurts and in their disappointments as together we are
pilgrims and a journey into the wholeness that God has for his children you want to know God's
glory you want to know the power of his presence in your life then the pathway to power
the pathway to glory is by the valley of pain because it is in the pain that we learn to endure
with a steadfastness that gives glory to God we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering
produces endurance let us pray Father we don't like to suffer and a lot of us Lord we come to you
because we suffered enough because of our sin and because of our difficulties and we wanted to
get away from suffering and Lord when first we experience the taste of salvation and we know
your peace and we don't access to your grace and the hope of glory we feel so strong it's like we
can take on the whole world but pretty soon Lord old friends come back and old temptations resurface
and the pressure is put on individually and corporately and then Lord we don't know what's happening
and we wonder if maybe we've missed you somewhere and and the enemy comes along to try to persuade
us that it's useless to follow you help us to understand Lord that suffering for those who love
you is a normal part of life it's a time of testing it's a time of trial to lay bare what is really
within our soul so that we can can repent ever more deeply of our sin and lay hold ever more
closely of the grace of Jesus for bid Lord that we should ever be superficial Christians
and for bid Lord that when the storms of life wage all around us that we deny you and
and just go our own way help us instead to reach out to Jesus to know that in him we have the victory
and help us lord by faith in him to be overcomers until that day when we stand before your throne
without spot or ankle or any such thing filled with the glory of God a trophy of your redeeming grace
thank you lord for hearing us and heal us lord in any area where we need to be healed even now
in Jesus name amen
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