A Different Perspective on Pain & Suffering

Have you ever wondered why God allows so much pain and suffering in our lives? In too many Christian circles today the doctrine of suffering is ignored. Many like to focus just on the latter half of John 10:10, Jesus came to give us abundant life!  They reason that can’t mean pain or suffering. After all God's will for me is happiness...right?!?! Well kind of. He wants more for us than happiness, according to the Sermon on the Mount, He wants us to have the Blessed Life. And that blessing; that abundance is multifaceted; to have fullness, you need the entire spectrum. When I was a little boy, I used to get so miserable by gray rainy days, and I remember my parents telling me without them you wouldn’t fully appreciate the beautiful sunny ones. I was processing this question of suffering with the Lord and I felt like He said what kind of relationship do you want with me? immediately I thought that one of the key ingredients of a good friendship is commonality. After all, it's difficult to be close friends with someone that you have nothing in common with; if they hated everything you enjoyed and vice versa the friendship wouldn’t last long. You could be friendly, but never really go deep. Could it be that God allows suffering in our lives so that we can go deep with Him? Remember, one of the titles of Jesus is “Man of Sorrows.” Jesus was well acquainted with grief, pain, and suffering. So our pain gives us something to have in common with Him. To see Him in a different light, ultimately knowing Him better. Instead of cursing the sorrowful seasons of life, use that as a time to draw nearer to Him. One of the fruit of the Spirit is Patience, the Greek translates, “Long Suffering.” There is an endurance that is produced through pain that allows us to go the distance. James 1 says when we face trials of many kinds to consider that a joy and to not try to get out of them prematurely but to allow them to do their work on us, maturing us, completing us. To all the ones who have told God, I want to be your friend, not friendly, but a true depth of fellowship; to be able to relate to Him on a heart level, to KNOW Him, the Lord provides the fellowship of suffering to partake in. I am convinced that so many people want to be just friendly with God, but to His true followers, His remnant bride we are not afforded that option. He plunges us into the deep, its painful at first, but you begin to see a new side of Him, you begin to see how multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, well...how AWESOME He really is! And in time, through suffering  a true friendship with God is cultivated. And friendship with God carries enormous benefits! The Bible teaches that God confides in His friends. He share His secrets, there is a depth of intimacy that comes with true friendship. Blessing, favor, yes, abundance. So we can’t just be fair weather friends with God, only knowing Him on the Sunny days of our lives. We need to experience Him in the down times too. Knowing that He knows what we are going through strengthen's us. The Bible says we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us (Hebrews 4:14). He knows. And it wasn’t just when He came the first time that He was the suffering servant, Patience is still one of His attributes today. He is a long suffering God. I think when He looks down at the earth, and sees the corruption, sees the pain, sees the injustice, He longs to return to finish this whole thing off…but the Bible says He is patient, He delays, so that none would perish but there would be more time to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). But its not just the lost to get found that He is patient for, its also for His children to wake up and understand their identity in Him; to not miss their Kingdom destiny and assignments settling for a life so far below what He has envisioned for us (Romans 8:19). One day in Heaven, all our wrongs will be made right and our questions will be answered, there will be no more pain, or sorrow or tears, but until that day we wait. That's tough but I have learned that we can endure far better when we are convinced that our pain has a purpose. Maybe just maybe the purpose of our pain is to know Him deeper and become even better friends with God.