Suffering

Friends ask me to write about suffering, and how to overcome even in trials and tribulations.

I am no expert on the subject. I am not suffering very greatly over loss of eyesight, but maybe what some of you want is the secret of how to accept a condition that seems to make some absolutely desperate while others take it more lightly or even victoriously.

I have used the phrase, "What is that compared to Eternity?" when asked why I did not feel despair at going blind! It comes to mind the Bible gives the same thought and puts it better, "That the sufferings of this life are as nothing compared to the glories of those who love Him, and are awaiting His coming."

A person who at first falls under some serious illness or trials, is tempted to feel desperate at first, asking God, even as Job did, the whys of it all and especially asking "Why me?"

Vegetables don't suffer. People in a coma are said not to suffer. Some babies are born with no mental faculties, the parents are desolated, suffering deeply, but the doctors say, "Those infants do not suffer, they are happier than normal children." In other words, God has raised us up from the birds and the flowers and made man in His own image, with the responsibility to choose, to exercise his free will. He experiences joy and he experiences sorrow. He sees light and differentiates from the darkness, and then he must come to see that it is necessary that "through Great Tribulation ye enter into the Life Eternal."

Even for one as spiritual and consecrated as Christ Himself, HE HAD TO LEARN OR PROVE HIS OBEDIENCE THROUGH THE THINGS HE SUFFERED, and if it was necessary for even Jesus, how much more for us lowly vessels of earth and clay. So let us pass that portal and step up one step that suffering is for all and for our good."

Now as to the question, "Why me?" Well, "Why not?" Who wants to be a vegetable?

So let us gird up the loins of our mind in self control and self discipline as the Bible commands us, and rejoice that we are true sons, not let alone to wander like wild street urchins without either love or discipline. We like the love, but the discipline is part of true love. Right?

Don't let the devil fight you and worry excessively. If a part of the suffering comes from past sins or error, repent, and confess. Go on learning and bettering and profiting from it all, knowing that God let things happen only for OUR GOOD. Take care not to dwell overly long as that element of suffering for our sins, for another element of suffering in God's plans is not for past sins at all, but for the glory of God, for our future testimony, for our growth and sanctification. Many times people have testified that they were far more deeply moved and influenced by the life of some saint who showed joy and victory through suffering, than they had been by any miracles of physical healing.

Let us remember that much of the suffering is in the attitude of the mind, not in actual physical pain. Right? Think of the mental tortures of the three Hebrew children not bowing before the threat of the evil world about them, then being bound and hauled up to the fiery furnace. They suffered, but they stood it, and stood true. They did NOT say, "We have the assurance that our God is going to keep you, oh King, from throwing us into that furnace." They did say, "Our God CAN deliver us, but if He does not will to do so in this case, we will burn, but we will not bow." THEN God was glorified in delivering them. Similarly there were prayers for Daniel that he be not cast into the den of lions. He was cast in. He had to go through the suspense, the temptation and the mental suffering, but them was delivered from the physical suffering and from the lions.

So much of the suffering is due to the devil and his fears. While God stands a little apart for a time and does NOT calm the storm right off, but only says, "Fear not." Then, later on in His time, He controls the tempest.