Sermons/Discussions

“Why Christians Suffer: Part 4”

Sermon: Advent II year A

The Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

This morning we return to our series on the purpose and place of suffering in the Christian life. We're on the third of four principles that apply to all Christian suffering. You'll see these principles listed in your sermon notes sheet I have included in your bulletin. Last time I preached I began describing the third principle: that God allows Christians to suffer either for the purpose of discipline or for discipleship. We spent most of our time discussing suffering as a form of discipline. If you check your sheet, you'll find that I gave three ways to know whether or not you're being disciplined. This morning we'll discuss the meaning of suffering when those three conditions are not present. If they aren't then you can rest assured that the pain you are experiencing is not divine discipline. Instead you're experiencing divine discipleship.

Between my ninth and tenth grade years I played on two high school basketball teams. The first was team was called the Incarnate Word Angels. The second was the Ray high school Texans. Coach Wenzel coached the Angels. My year as a player on his team was one of the most physically demanding I've ever experienced. Every weekday morning the team met at 6:00am for morning practice. Every day, after school we'd meet from 3:00 until 6:00. Five hours of basketball practice a day. And it wasn't just throwing the ball around. In the morning Coach Wenzel would send us off through the neighborhoods on extremely long runs. I remember these runs well. Coach would drive this big white van all along the route drinking diet coke. If he saw you slacking off he'd pull up and ask if you‘d like a ride. Nobody wanted a ride in that van. He knew all of the short-cuts and he patrolled them every morning. There was no use cheating. I hated that van. After the run it was time for weights and then showers and then off to class where I spent most of my time dreading the afternoon practice which was longer and harder. Every night I would come home exhausted and hungrier than I've ever been in my life. To this day, I remember in vividly a recurring dream I had that year: The hamburger dream. I would be standing in a room taken up almost entirely by a huge, towering, hamburger. A feeling of joy would rush through my body but just as I was about to eat, I'd wake up.

Anyway, that was a tough year. While I was in the thick of it I hated it and despised coach Wenzel and his big fat van and his diet coke and I wanted a break.

Well, I got one, after my freshman year I transferred to Ray high school. I tried out and made the basketball team but it was a completely different experience. Coach Rodriguez held practices every other day and only for two hours. No running. No weights, no 6:00am practices, no white vans, we just played basketball. All we did was scrimmage. I loved it. Coach Rodriguez told us that it would be a good idea to work out and run and all that but he never made us do it so nobody did. And we had a great time. There was only one problem. We were an awful team.

Out of all the high school teams in town, the Ray Texans consistently came in last or close to last. My year was no exception. On the other hand, the Angels, consistently came in close to the top. They went to state every year and the year after I left, they came in second statewide. They were consistently good. Coach Wenzel produced winning teams year after year and as hard as it was, looking back now, I learned more, grew more, I matured more that year with him than I did in any single year of my life up to that point.

For all his faults, Wenzel knew every players' potential. He saw that we could be better players than we thought we had the strength to be and he worked us until each of us realized that potential. He trained us to be the best we could be by daily putting us in situations that demanded our best efforts and as time went on our best got better and better. Through suffering he made us players. What Coach Wenzel did in the world of sports is called training. In the Christian world it's called discipleship.

If you're a believer, a similar process is taking place in your life and has been taking place since the day you gave yourself to Jesus Christ. On that day you became a disciple and God, the perfect coach, determined to bring you to your fullest potential. Listen to how the bible describes that potential: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son." (Rom 8:28-29)

The goal of discipleship is to produce believers conformed to the likeness, the image of Jesus Christ. We're not becoming Jesus, but we're being made like him. In doing this, God isn't warping or twisting you into something you‘re not. You and I were created in the image of God: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." (Genesis 2:27) God is restoring that image. He's clearing away the dross and rust, and dirt so that we can be who we were created to be. Over time you as a believer will become more and more yourself and as you do you'll be able to look back over your past and see that the person you were in the beginning of your discipleship was not really you, but you enslaved and entangled by sin, the world, and the devil.

God is freeing you of all that and bringing out your full potential. But it takes time and sometimes it takes pain.

Think about a muscle. People talk about weight-lifting as “body-building,” but if you know anything about the process, you know that lifting a heavy weight in itself doesn't build anything, it's what your body does afterwards that makes the difference. The weight itself breaks your muscle fibers down and, if you've never worked out before, it can be somewhat painful. But after you lift, your body begins to rebuild the muscle fiber stronger, harder, and bigger than it was before. This happens because your body is designed to conform itself to whatever task you engage in regularly. If you're lifting weights regularly your body shifts and rearranges it's resources to make that task possible. Your soul works much the same way. God uses the pains and sufferings in your life like weights. They break you down, but with each experience, God through the Holy Spirit rebuilds your spiritual muscles so that with time your spirit is restored stronger, firmer, more solid than before. God is slowly conforming you to the likeness of his Son.

So then, as a believer, when you're in the middle of a painful situation and you've determined that you're not being disciplined, the question to ask yourself is. “How is God using this painful experience to conform me to Christ? What Christ-like quality is he hoping to bring out?” Let me give you, three common types of pain that God might use in the process of your discipleship. These are not exhaustive. I only give them to help you get a practical grasp of how God uses suffering in the process of discipleship.

1. God sometimes uses suffering to break unhealthy attachments. You were created for a relationship with God. Think of Jesus' relationship to the Father, that's the model. An unhealthy attachment is any attachment that draws you away from that relationship. If you need something or someone in your life and that need becomes a neediness, of the kind believers should only have for God himself, then you can expect God to work on that. Sometimes that work will cause you pain.

2. God sometimes allows suffering in your life because he wants you to bear witness to his gospel. If, for example, you are experiencing a great deal of humiliation at work or school. It could be that God is working through that pain in your life to build perseverance for some future persecution through which you'll bring glory to Christ. There was no greater humiliation in the ancient world than crucifixion and yet nowhere do we see God‘s glory more clearly. In the midst of the pain of rejection God wants you to learn to model Christ on the cross, to answer insult with truth. kindness and patience and leave your vindication to God.

3. God sometimes allows suffering so that in the future you'll be able to come alongside someone else in similar circumstances. God, through heartbreaking illness or loss trains you to be his hands and his voice in somebody else's life. Again, think in terms of conformity to Jesus. Jesus bore all of our pain all the way to the cross. We don't have a distant savior who drives by in a white van, we have a God who has become human and borne a human's pain so that he can be a help to us in times of trouble. You and I are being made in his likeness. So we will have our crosses as well.

The bible speaks of Christian suffering in the context of joy. James says, "Consider it pure joy my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds." Now, when I am in the middle of a really painful trial and I read this passage I get put out with James. The last thing I want to do at times like that is rejoice. But read the rest of what he says, "Rejoice...because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Perseverance must finish the work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James is not giving a trite answer to Christian suffering. He's not saying, "turn that frown upside down, let a smile be your umbrella or put on a happy face.” No, he's saying, pain is real, it's deep and it's difficult, but rejoice because God's ultimate purpose behind the pain is to produce good things in you. It might hurt now, but that hurt is the kind of hurt that ultimately builds you up, not destroys you. It is a sore muscle pain. Not a broken back pain. God sees in you the glorious creature he created you to be and because he loves you he'll not rest until that vision has become reality.

Amen