A Big View of God Pt. 5: God and Suffering

Reformed, Book Reading, Apple Loving, Beverage Snob, 23 Year-Old Husband, In Need of Grace.

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A Big View of God Pt. 5: God and Suffering

Many times in our lives we encounter pain, suffering, trials and the like. Often we think of these instances as God punishing us for our sins, which is sadly a lie that our society has bought into. Our suffering is not to be thought of in terms of karma; that only leads to a small, punitive view of who God is. Now I don’t want to deny that sometimes our actions have consequences, because they do, but that is because our own sinfulness has brought these things upon us not because of some cosmic force that is seeking to even out the balances.

What does suffering have to do with having a big view of who God is?

If we don’t have a big view of God, it is impossible for us to suffer well. Our pain, our trials, our cancer… all of it will be wasted if we fail to have a big view of God and apply that to how we view our circumstances in light of who He is. For almost everyone who read that last sentence (including myself), your world just got rocked.

Wasted?

Wasted!?!

Isn’t the goal of life to appease suffering and enjoy pleasure? To overcome it? To eliminate it?

If we are to be faithful to Christ, we must be able to suffer well. We cannot waste that opportunity to grow and to make much of Him. The Bible never says that following Christ includes a life of luxury and ease. We will face storms; we will suffer. And how we suffer will be determined by our view of God.

In order to suffer well we need to have a couple of basic beliefs (stolen from John Piper ):

-God is not surprised by our suffering and pain (aka, He is sovereign)

-God is good

-Our suffering is not a curse

-Our comfort is not in odds of survival, but in God

-Overcoming suffering is not survival, its cherishing Christ

-Suffering points us to Christ

-Suffering allows us to make much of Christ to those around us

Personally, I am not sure if I am ready to suffer well. I haven’t been thrown into that place yet, but I pray as I am being sanctified that I will be able to suffer well.

A couple of men that have suffered well over the past few years because of their large views of God are John Piper and Matt Chandler. John Piper is now cancer free and healthy, and Matt Chandler just finished up a round of chemo today (he will be our focus). Essentially, last Thanksgiving he had a seizure, woke up in the hospital and was told that he has a brain tumor that will most likely kill him in the next 3 years. Since then he has had a large part of the cancer removed and gone through radiation and a couple stages of chemo. He and his wife have chosen to keep his battle public so that Christ will be magnified in his suffering.

It’s easy to make much of God when life goes according to our plans, but if we lose faith when our world is seemingly torn apart, we deny God’s goodness, sovereignty and grace. After all, for believers, this world is our hell. It can only get better from here.

I would like to write more about Matt’s story, but I’ll fail to do it justice. Here is the first video he posted right before his surgery. He says it all better than I ever could.