Sunday, June 22, 2008

Sunday Morning Ruminations

It seems to me that God has called us--I speak of Christian believers--into the world and not out of it. This may be one reason he does not heal us all and keep us healthy and give us all peaceful and pain-free deaths at the end. We are called into, sent, not so that we could demonstrate God's glory by floating above the "worldlings" in a cloud of blessedness and ease, but so that we can walk with the suffering as sufferers with . . . even as we "hold out the word of life."

Sometimes I hear people pray for healing and then announce that they have complete confidence that this prayer will be answered, so that the emphasis is not on God but on their own confidence. They use such formulations as "I'm believing that . . ." or "I claim it in the name of Jesus." There is no humility in this approach, no remembering that God's ways are not our ways. It is mere Christian presumptuousness, and it makes faith into mere positive thinking.

This is decidedly not the apostle Paul's attitude. While he sat in a prison cell in Rome, did he announce that he was believing that God would deliver him from the executioner? No, he simply prayed that whether he lived or died Christ would be honored in his body. But if Paul was a modern-day type of Christian he would have said, "I'm trusting God for freedom from imprisonment. I'm believing he'll give many many more years of life. I claim it in the name of Jesus!"

As a corrective, we might perhaps simply and starkly say: God has a wonderful plan for our lives, and for each one of us that plan includes suffering and death!

In addition: Milton Stanley quotes Haddon Robinson to the same purpose:
How can a just and holy God declare sinners to be righteous? That is a key issue, but I don't find that being talked about much. I hear: "Jesus loves you, and he wants the best for you. He certainly doesn't want you to be sick, doesn't want you to be poor. It certainly isn't his will that you suffer." But you can't read the New Testament and make statements like that.
Good word!

4 comments:

Lois said...

Oswald Chambers wrote this in Baffled to Fight Better:

In his epistle Peter refers to those who have plenty of time for others. They are those who have been through suffering, but now seem full of joy. If a man has not been through suffering he will snub others unless they share his interests. He is no more concerned about them than the desert sand; but those who have been through things are not now taken up with their own sorrows. They have been made broken bread and poured out wine for others. You can always be sure of the man who has been through suffering, but never of the man who has not.

Bob Spencer said...

Man, that's perfect. I fell kind of like you came to my rescue with this quote from Chambers, Lois, because I was wondering if I'd put it a little too starkly. Great passage, and thanks for sharing it!

Anonymous said...

I think this passage ties in with what your saying :

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort." (2 Cor. 1:3-7)

I notice two things here. One is that Paul says God will comfort us in our affliction - not deliver us from it. Two is that we are to learn two pass on that comfort to others.

Bob Spencer said...

Excellent insight as usual, Brian. This matter has been much on my mind lately, with several people I know undergoing some serious suffering, and it just concerns me to see and hear people who talk as if the suffering was some sort of unexpected hitch in God's plan. I will always pray for healing and rest for the sufferer, but also that, whether the suffering ends or it continues, God may be glorified in the midst of it.