Suffering Little Children Part Two

Part Two: The End of Your Faith.

They say that the universal language of humanity is suffering. That the only shared emotion is NOT in fact love but loneliness. How fitting that we are born into a harsh world that does not love or appreciate our existence. A world that contains the possibility of death around every corner. The Bible says that we are all appointed once to die but many times before death we will reach the limit or the very end of our faith. We are all suffering as we are all dying. The problem is that, like the people of the Indian Caste system, we categorize our people according to our perception of their suffering, thereby creating support groups for different types of sin. One group for alcoholics, one for narcotics. We create places of habitation for others, bars and clubs for the pleasure seekers, churches for religious, and prisons for the criminals.

The reason that suffering persists no matter how much man tries to address and overcome it is because we are trying to overcome it through a broken system.

This is why so many people are depressed, suicidal. This is why so many Christians smile from a Sunday pew but secretly shake their fist at the sky on Monday morning.

We are guilty of living at the end of our faith! Holding on to the last few drops not because we believe it to work, because it is all that we have left. We separate suffering so that when the storm hits we can all retreat back into our individual sub-cultures and ideas that promote our worldview.

The church has been incorporated as a part of culture instead of creating culture itself. Our Christian culture has become isolated and shallow. The downright scary part is that our faith is born out of this culture, therefore it is subject to the same shallowness. It doesn’t take long to reach the end of our faith, a short trip before suffering overtakes us.

Because of sin, we are born to ask the question why. Some of us are only religious or spiritual because we want to find out that answer.

Why has God abandoned me? Why am I suffering? Why did I lose my job? Why is my family falling apart?

God hears the cries of the oppressed, all of them. He looks on us in the same way I looked the poor Indian beggars. He sees us as suffering little children. I cannot answer the question why but I can find what the Bible has to say about the question.

Why? Possible Answer 1 - It's the Devil's Fault that we live in a fallen world.

Romans 8:22-23
22.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
23.And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

Churches are guilty of blaming all our problems and situations on the devil. This is partly true but not complete. The Devil was instrumental in the whole sin riddled falling away process in the garden and he has surely been hard at work since, yet he can only work through the actions of men. It is men who have allowed him to lead and guide them. The result is that we live in a fallen world. We live in competition with the very people that we are called to reach and love. It is the devil's fault, the world's fault, and our fault. We make a destructive team.

If you wonder why there is so much suffering in life start in Genesis where it all began. Everything gets cursed… man, woman, the devil, the ground, yes even the ground. The whole of creation groans in pain because we are fallen and we can’t get back up.

We travail in pain of continuing existence… and the idea that we can live in a new world free of pain and joblessness and divorce just because we are Christians is asinine or ludicrous. Paul says, even we who are filled with the spirit and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit are stuck waiting on Christ's return and His changing of the way the world works. He later calls his flesh a body of death.

We are suffering because that is the waiting room between birth and redemption.

Why? Possible Answer 2- It's Jesus' Fault for the perfecting of the saints.

1 Peter 4: 12-14
12.Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:
13.But rejoice , inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy .
14.If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.

Here's where a lot of people get squeamish. The problem is: the other person to blame for the suffering in the world is Jesus. Not that He has ever one time caused it, but He often allows it to come upon his children for their perfecting. How else could you explain the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac in Genesis 22? Why else would the writer of Hebrews say that God is a consuming fire (12:29), Malachi prophesing that God will come nigh to his people in judgment like a fire, David singing that he was like silver purified 7 times in the furnace of fire?

The problem is we are so focused on our right now problems and God's ability to answer them all right now that we have lost sight of the end goal, the process of perfecting the saints!

Christ did not die so that you would never have problems or trials… He died so that you could overcome them!

We have become drunk on the religious idea that God will answer our prayers, we forget that it was possibly Him that allowed the storm. His goal is not for you to cake-walk frolic through this life. His purpose is that you emerge to glory by whatever means necessary.

I pray God blesses your business, but I hope He doesn’t if it starts to effect your eternal destination. When you realize that you are suffering… and you have examined your life and your spiritual condition and you still cant figure it out… it may be Jesus' fault.