The Power of Suffering

 

I always found it hard to grasp passages like Colossians 1:24, where Paul says that he rejoices in his sufferings.  It feels as though we are going against our very nature to be happy about being uncomfortable.  It seems hard to imagine that any person could rejoice in sufferings.  How could anyone delight in being beaten, molested, fired, robbed or any other act that produces suffering?  What about deaths and divorces?  Why would anyone want to celebrate these things?  Paul, through the Holy Spirit, said it’s possible to rejoice and be glad in these things.  I’m not saying that as soon as these bad events happen we are going to rejoice in them, but we have the potential to change the way we think.

People with positive attitudes do not look at what they don’t like about a particular situation involving pain.  Rather, these people look at what they learned from the event and the opportunities that the event presented.  Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, wrote, “Every adversity carries with it the seed of equivalent or greater benefit.” With everything bad that happens, there is always something of greater value that will come from it.  Looking at events like deaths, divorces and abuse, it seems hard, if not impossible, to find something of equal or greater value, but it can be done.  Think about this for a minute.  Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, was sick and about to die (John 11).  Jesus was not in the same town, so Lazarus’ family came to Jesus, asking Jesus to heal Lazarus before he died.  They knew Jesus was capable of doing this because they had seen him work miracles that appeared harder than this so many times before.  However, Jesus waited and Lazarus died.  It’s easy to understand how his friends and family must have felt about Jesus.  They might have been very angry or even stunned by Jesus’ action, asking themselves, “Why wouldn’t Jesus do something? We know he could have healed him.”  I’m sure emotions were high, because by the time Jesus came, four days after Lazarus’ death, friends and family were so distraught that even Jesus wept.  How could any benefit, equal or greater, come from something like this?

If Jesus had gone right away to heal Lazarus, it wouldn’t have been any new kind of miracle.  Everyone already knew Jesus could do that, but they didn’t know what else he could do.  Lazarus had been dead for four days. The evidence of this was astounding.  Everyone knew because Martha, Lazarus’ sister, said, “there will be an odor”.  How shocked must the people have been when he raised Lazarus from the dead!  This was something so awesome that no one could deny that Jesus was who he claimed to be, the Son of God.  He was able to perform an astonishing miracle which could never have been accomplished without the suffering that took place.

This historical event teaches us a valuable lesson today.  We have to go through bad things in order to grow and learn.  Suffering is not necessarily evil; it is to be used as a learning tool, something that produces character (Rom 5:3-5).  Without it, we as people, and Christians, would be pretty useless.  So far there has not been a pain event in my life that I would have changed given the chance.  Every single pain event made me who I am today and I am indebted to God for that.  So begin looking at all the positive things that come from pain events, and I promise, in time, we will begin thanking God for our sufferings.

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