In the last two articles, which can be found in archives under “Why do we suffer? Part One: Understanding the Causes of Suffering” and “Why do we suffer? Part Two: Continuing Understanding the Causes of Suffering” or under June and July 2008, we discussed the causes of suffering. Now that we understand the various causes of suffering, there is still a lingering question. God, being sovereign and all-knowing, does He make our suffering meaningful? Do we just suffer and that’s the end of it or does God give a purpose to it? Through Paul, God told us that He “causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purposes” (Romans 8:28). “All things” would include suffering. To the person who serves God, the Lord causes the suffering caused by various things to accomplish something meaningful. As long as you truly seek God in the midst of your suffering, He will produce good fruit from it. Now the fact that God takes advantage of the suffering does not mean that He initiated the suffering, as can be seen in the previous articles. Since there is suffering though, God would rather not allow it to be without purpose.

Sometimes God will make our suffering cause us to become godly or more firm in our pursuit of godliness (Romans 5:3-5; 1 Peter 1:6-9, 4:12-13). In these situations it is often our sin or our lack of passion for pursuing godliness that caused and created the need for suffering. Learn from these sufferings and allow them to motivate you to godly living. It is important to understand that “after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Peter 5:10). Through this kind of suffering you will become an even more effective servant of Christ. It is this reason that the disciples rejoiced when they suffered (Acts 5:41).

Which leads us to the next thought. At times God ordains that we suffer (1 Thessalonians 3:3 and 2 Timothy 1:11-12). The reason for this is for evangelistic purposes. How can suffering be beneficial to evangelism; that is to win people to Christ? First of all, the Scripture does declare that suffering helps us to win over the lost or advance the kingdom of God (2 Corinthians 1:5-7; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; 2 Timothy 2:8-10). One way that suffering leads people to Christ is that it makes the one suffering even bolder to proclaim the gospel (1 Thessalonians 2:1-4). Once you have suffered, the times that are less threatening are easy. You just think, “I’ve faced worse than this” and you do it. Also, this kind of suffering reveals trust in God (1 Peter 4:19). There could be various reasons this is needed. It could be that you doubted your faith and needed evidence that your faith was real. Perhaps others doubted your faith and struggled to accept what you were saying because of it and the suffering caused them to trust in you and eventually trust the Gospel you were sharing with them. Also, suffering can lead to the persecutor feeling ashamed and possibly repenting and turning to Christ (1 Peter 3:13-16). Remember this principle played out at the crucifixion. Some of the soldiers involved in crucifying Christ, after Jesus had suffered to the point of death, they responded the following way. “Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54).

There will always be a good that comes out of suffering, so long as you learn from it. Just because you pass a class in counseling or even receive a degree in counseling does not make you a competent counselor. You must actually understand the principles and practice them. It is the same way with lessons of faith learned by suffering. You can suffer a lot and not learn a thing. When suffering, you must grasp the opportunity to learn. You need to discover the cause and the lessons that can be learned. Seek understanding and put the principles you discover in practice. It is bad enough to experience suffering let alone experiencing it and getting nothing of value in return. However, even understanding the reasons for suffering, it can still be very difficult to endure suffering. Next month we will discuss how to do that.