The Blessings of Suffering
Driving through our suburb yesterday, I saw some posters advertising the fact that this Saturday people will be able to sign up for the local Baseball Team. With football and cricket the current king and queen of Australian sports, sports such as baseball don't get much of a look in. Which is rather surprising, especially when you remember that as kids and teenagers, backyard and school baseball was quite popular.
The sign reminded me of an article by Pete Rose - one of the great US (and possibly the world) baseball hitters of our time. In the article he wrote for Sports Illustrated - by the way it was called "Good Wood" - he said that he liked a heat-treated bat. Now, I didn't realize this, but he said that when you put the bat through an intense heat, the heat would seal the pores and it actually made the bat hit harder. Well, it worked for him! I guess it's true, heat-treated bats hit harder and score more runs. Well, you know something? So do heat-treated people.
In the Bible, Romans 5:3-4 also talks about a heat treatment process: "We, also, rejoice in our sufferings because we know suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope." For most this would be an unusual concept - "We rejoice in our suffering"? Paul who wrote the book of Romans doesn't mean that Christian suffering feels any better than non-Christian suffering. Suffering feels the same, whether you're a Christian or not - pain is just as painful, unemployment is just as demoralizing, and pressure is just as stressful - for everyone.
But what allows the Apostle Paul to say that "Christians can rejoice" in suffering. You see, suffering can only make sense to the Christian, because Christians alone believe in Jesus Christ who in the words of a hymn: "...died to pay the penalty for our sin, and opened heaven’s gates to let us in." And in this act of dying on the Cross, God Himself has entered into our suffering in order to undo the mess that sin’s entrance into the world through Adam has created and continues to create - separation from God, death, diseases, disasters etc. God does not stand apart from our suffering and pain and struggle, He saves us by taking part in that struggle. God's great work of redemption in Christ is the reason that Christians have hope. By God’s grace, suffering has a redemptive and creative purpose. For that very reason Christians can rejoice in their suffering.
Not because it feels better, but because in Christ, pain has a point. A minus can be made into a plus. Suffering can be made into perseverance, character and hope. Just ask Pete Rose's bat. Pete said that heat heals up the holes in the bat and makes it more solid - a better bat, able to withstand the force of hitting the ball, and making the ball go further and faster. Well, could it be that God is using the pain, pressures, illness, disappointments that you're undergoing right now to heat-treat you - to heal the holes (weaknesses) in your life? Is He using these to make you a stronger person? Remember the heat you're feeling is not to burn you up, even though it feels as if you are, but to make you strong; to build you into a person who has learned and is learning perseverance, character and hope - in other words to reflect the nature of Christ more in your life. To help you trust God more. To rely on Him all the time, instead of only now and then. And perhaps to prepare you for even greater suffering in the future. There are no negatives with God, only positives.
Right now yes, there may be pain and stress. Like Job, you may even be feeling that God has deserted you, that He is punishing you unjustly, that He is expecting you to carry a load for which you are not built. It is hard to trust. But as you cry out for help and strength and mercy, our gracious Father will give the strength, the perseverance, the character, the hope - sufficient for this time! Is this not His promise: "No temptation (or suffering, or pain, or failure etc) has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. But when you are being tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."?
In your suffering, God is giving you the blessing of learning to know His resources, power, and His grace more deeply than you perhaps have ever known. Perhaps you're being forced to close up some of the holes in your life - weaknesses, un-confessed sin, broken relationships, disobedience to His Word - that God is calling to your attention at this hard time. So, rejoice as you see what you are becoming or can become through God’s heat-treatment. You are becoming a heavy hitter in the hands of Almighty God - a far more spiritually mature person. Be encouraged! You're becoming good wood! Grace and peace...