Christ’s Ambassador

There are many apostles of ‘goody-goody’, ‘no-pain’ Christianity today, but despite their claims, pains of suffering remains a method by which God disciplines and trains Christians. You can know the goody-goody guys by their language: “It is well“; “I am a peculiar person.“; “I am the head and not tail“, “I am too defended to be a victim“; and so on. A few days ago I told a colleague I had catarrh and he rebuked me sternly. “It is not your portion, bro, it is well with you, don’t say that again”.  But that did not clear my nasal cavity. They take it to such ridiculous level. I wonder what they tell Doctors in the consulting room. “Hi Doctor, it is well with me. I am very strong. Kindly give me some drugs to make me feel better ?” Positive confession is good and recommended. I do it too but I still believe that no confession can over-ride the Biblical standpoint on suffering. I believe that it is appropriate to express our legitimate and honest feelings before God rather than express a faith we do not have. Habakkuk (Hab 1:2-4), Jeremiah and Job (Job 1:22) expressed their true feelings to God. God did not count it as sin but He graciously guided them to a more matured faith level. Why? Because they did not stop seeking God for more understanding, with patience and endurance, despite the pains of suffering. They did not complain and nag and lapse to self pity like some of us like to do, but they took their cases to God. They pour their hearts to God, and this we must also do when we are undergoing sufferings for righteousness sake. Let no one suffer for doing wrong, the Bible warns

The body we inherited from Adam is not a perfect one, so it can go weary, get infected and fall sick. If one is sick, saying it to get help is not a defeat. Bartimeaus cried to Jesus for help. Positive confession cannot heal sickness, but faith and prayers can. Jabez did not just say it is well, he prayed with faith. Believers still suffer for righteousness sake. In fact, suffering is part of the calling of believers despite the goody-goody Christianity that is being preached widely these days. Let’s read together what God said in 1Peter 2:20b -21 “But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps”. If you stuff your stomach with sweet things only, you would soon run into trouble with bad health. We need a good combination of sweet, sour, bitter and peppery ingredients in our diet to stay healthy. As it is in the physical so it is also in the spiritual.

Man is created to have a consciousness of God but instead of seeking to worship the true God in Spirit and in truth, men have always been guilty of making their own gods who would satisfy their human requirements. A god at their beck and call. A god they can control, god with human motives.  When the going is good, man interprets the scriptures clearly especially those portions of scripture that describes the blessings of God. But when time of painful trials come, man starts to think that God has shifted focus from him. So he is ready to adjust the nature of  God. This process starts when man thinks God is not ruling his life justly. When one starts to say;  “Why me?” Why is God allowing all these in my life?” He is in other words saying: “If I were God, these would not be happening.” Then he would start to think of actualizing his human concepts of how God should have been managing the situation and this leads him to sin.  It erodes his resilience and capacity to endure suffering.  For instance, a couple’ expectation of a baby is not forthcoming and they start to look for fettish priests who would help them to identify the witch that is causing their problem. God is no longer in control. A man cannot get a job  he was sure he qualified for, so he resorts to bribery and bootlicking to ensure he gets the position of the authority reversed for he (unconsciously) thinks that God was unjust towards him in not ensuring he got the job. A lady accepts to offer her body in exchange for a position, or they seek help from the occult to tilt the scale. The motivating thought behind all such actions is that “God is not truly in charge” “I deserve a better deal” Man is always guilty of condemning God to prove his own righteousness.

Several disasters and afflictions cascaded on Job in his days and yet God himself had testified that Job was a righteous man and “that [there is] none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one who fears God, and avoids evil? Job 1:8 Suffering is not a necessary indicator of sin or defeat. When Job and his friends were talking about God, a lot of postulations were made which just amounted to “If I were God……..I would do this and that” Many of what they said about God’s character and nature were true but they used that to judge the situation wrongly. All they said about Job as concerned his relationship with God were wrong. They inserted human natures and concepts into their perceived judgment of God upon Job. But when God spoke up, Job himself had to repent again and he confessed that he had uttered things he did not fully understood. The truth is that Job and his friends were only conscious of their immediate environments and what was happening right there and they were bound to the linear time frame but God is outside of  any time frame. God is not bound by time and space. A thousand years is like a day in the sight of God. God sees everything in the present. Man’s past and future, beginning and end, physical and spiritual existence are all here and now with God. God has no past or future, HE is and He sees all things clearly. Job and company were not aware of what was happening in the heavenly realm so they could not have known the purpose of God in allowing all those afflictions. But in judging wrongly, they have despised the grace and love of God and with their wrong understanding, they have created their own god with human motives.

What then made Job to have a listening ear when God enumerated the many wonders of nature, some of which we often overlook and the secrets of most of which we have not yet discovered?  What brought him to that state that God spoke to him and he heard? Pains, of course. God knows man more than he knows himself. God knows your strengths and weaknesses. God knows how much heat is needed to melt the hardness of your heart. Pains enhance man’s concentration and sensitivity to spiritual nudge. God sees the stumbling blocks ahead of you. Just as you would remove what you consider an obstacle in front of an infant learning to walk but she would yell in protest because she’s attracted to the object she considered beautiful, so God helps remove stumbling blocks from our way as we take the race of life. HE has a plan to give you a good future and he only knows how that plan can be accomplished. You are traversing an uncharted course but God has the compass. You are only concerned with today and tomorrow but God has your eternity in mind. We are often like kids who do not know how dangerous a knife is but the thought of playing with it, cutting things with knife thrills them. The parents however know the danger of their playing with knife and so sternly, they warn their kids and at times slap the tiny hands to stop them from playing with knives. The kids at their levels see that as cruel but the parents do it with love. God is love. So all the deprivations and afflictions the righteous suffer are brought about because God who knows better deem it right for their welfare. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing Ps 34:10. Nothing good will God deny you. Simple. The sufferings of the righteous becomes more painful when they see the wicked prospering but biblical knowledge tells us not to fret, for the wicked shall soon be cut off.

Perhaps a more wonderful consolation is the fact that the present suffering cannot be compared with the glory that is going to be revealed in us when Jesus comes to take us to be with him. This is recorded in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (2Cor 4:17) Since God is committed to your salvation, and has indeed chosen you in Christ, then he works to bring to fulfillment what he has started in you. In all his dealings with you he has your eternity in mind, that you may be with him forever. So anything, no matter how good they are to you now, if they would constitute a stumbling block to you and drive you down to hell, and if you would willingly not surrender them, God would take those things because he loves you. We cannot always explain the suffering of the righteous. The righteous are afflicted with sickness. The righteous die young. The righteous have failures in business. The righteous suffer disasters even when wicked people escape these things. The wicked still oppress the righteous. We may not have explanations but we know we can trust God. He disciplines the righteous with love. He trains the righteous to handle spiritual resources that would be allocated to them in the future. He arms the righteous for battle. He prunes a fruitful branch of the vine so that it can become more fruitful. Joseph’s story is a good case study here. On the other hand is the case of Hezekiah, king of Judah. Hezekiah was sick and God told him to prepare to die. But the king did not want to die (probably because he was yet to have an heir to the throne). He wept bitterly and recounted all the good things he did to restore pure worship in Judah. We are told in 2Chr 32:24-25 that: ”In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. He prayed to the LORD, who answered him and gave him a miraculous sign. But Hezekiah’s heart was proud and he did not respond to the kindness shown him; therefore the LORD’s wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.” He committed foolish acts that took Judah to captivity. Also he had a son called Manasseh during this time who became one of the worst kings of Judah. All because he did not trust God absolutely, even to death. This is instructive.

When trials are not taken with joy as James warned,  (Jas 1: 2-3) then man is prone to loose the consciousness of God. God is omnipresent and omniscient. HE cannot learn anything because all things that have been, are,  and would be, are already known to him. This is why he said that his thoughts are diverse from man’s thoughts and his ways are not man’s ways.

The hope of the Christian is the second coming of Jesus when all the faithful will hear the trumpet call and be caught up in the clouds to be with Him, for ever and ever where there is no pain, sorrow hunger thirst or want. How ready are you for that hour? It will surely come just as the Angels told the Apostles while they gazed at the disappearing form of Jesus on Mount Olives on ascension day. “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” Acts 1:11.  Every day you live is an opportunity to get closer to God. To live is to serve Christ. Are you making the best use of that opportunity? Perhaps you have sought other Gods because of suffering, now is the time to wake up and come back home to the waiting arms of Jesus. Maybe you have never been born again, come to Jesus now just as you are. A contrite Spirit and broken heart he will in no way despise. Praise God.