We understand the value of suffering in the Christian life. Learning to love requires willingness to suffer for the sake of righteousness. Discipline and testing make saints out of us, and produce in us holiness, without which we will not see God’s face and share His glory. With Paul we rejoice in our weaknesses, for when we are weak we are strong.
-Roland and Heidi Baker-
Five Essential Core Values
What drove you to Jesus? Did you pray and accept Him into your heart? Or did you realize from the start that it was you who needed His acceptance, not the other way around? Were you raised in a Christian home and continued in it because it just worked and it was the only life you knew? Or did you come to Him broken and battered, desperate for relief and healing from the inevitable consequence of your sin? Was your sin even a consideration? Were you out of options and realized you were standing at the gates of hell? Was hell even a thought when you chose Jesus? Did you understand that surrendering to Jesus amounted to volunteering for war? Or did you believe you would be delivered from earthly suffering and step into a life of healing, prosperity, and personal significance according to your faith? What if you had been born in a militant Muslim nation like Yemen, Iran, Mozambique or Sudan, How about a poverty-stricken nation like Honduras where almost everyone affirms a belief in Jesus?
Have you ever considered the possibility that some of the prosperity, comfort, and ease we enjoy in the West, which while permitted by God, might not only be from God? Could it be that what WE CALL good gifts James 1:17 are not as good and perfect as we think? Isaiah 55:8-9 To paraphrase a former Iranian refugee who returned to Iran; could it be that we are being lulled to sleep by a Satanic lullaby?
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
1 Peter 4:12-19
Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.
Judgment is the noun kríma from krínō to damn or condemn. The verb form is krísis from which we get the English word Crisis. kríma is a condemnation of wrong, the decision (whether severe or mild) which one passes on the faults of others. Our take on Peter’s insertion of Judgment here is that we should carefully consider the reason(s) why we are suffering.
IRIS Global was born amidst a civil war and horrific poverty in Mozambique. The documented miracles, signs, and wonders that cessationists deny came at the cost of tremendous suffering and a willingness on the part of Hiedi and Rolland Baker to suffer with those they served. Suffering is the backdrop for IRIS core value #2 dependence on God and miracles. It seems rather unlikely that food would be divinely replicated on some restaurant row in America. In our experience miracles are more common in areas where the only choice is to
Depend on God or die.
“We think sometimes it is God’s will that we suffer according to His power and will, because it proves our faith, our perseverance, our love, the quality of our character, what we think of our God. We are not about to tell people that if they get into tough stuff that they are doing something wrong…The problem is, sometimes we make up our idea of what His way is. Of course, we want His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. But His purposes down here are what we want to know. And His purpose is for us to know, and learn by experience, what are the differences between good and evil; to develop His character and His quality, and to have something to celebrate…The Bible tells us that we will share Jesus’ glory to the extent that we share His suffering. And some people might teach that He suffered so that we won’t have to. But we in Iris don’t feel that way. We feel that He suffered so that He could save us from our sins and give us a heart like He has so that we can live the way He lived among evil opposition. And then we get our reward…”
-Roland and Heidi Baker-
Five Essential Core Values
As Roland and Heidi said, some believe Jesus suffered so that we don’t have to. This is true to the extent that we don’t have to suffer in hell for eternity. That is huge! But the Bible is clear. Suffering in this life which James calls a vapor James 4:14 is guaranteed for the disciples of Jesus. 2 Tim 2:10-12, 2 Tim 3:12, Rom 8:17, Luke 14:27, Phil 3:8-11, Rom 5:3-5, 1 Pet 2:19-21
If you’ve been following our 1 Peter study then you know we are continuing to arm ourselves with the same mind or resolve of Jesus. 1 Peter 4:1. Peter delves into other topics but he always comes back to suffering. As we stated in our previous post, he broaches the topic 12 times in 1 Peter alone. The topic of suffering occurs 96 times in the entire Bible 68 of which are in the New Testament. In contrast, Blessing occurs 76 times 21 of which are in the New Testament.
Typically, the American Bride of Christ does not appreciate posts like this. Through no direct, let alone intentional fault of her own, much of the American Bride is what Art Katz described as
a casual, conglomeration of saints, whose essential focus is on themselves, and whose spiritual egocentricity has never been broken. We can bring ego-centrism into the church as profoundly as we knew it in the world. All we have done is shift the object. In the world, it was carnal pleasure and delight and material things. In the church, it is still ego and self…
Apostolic Manifesto. (Apostolic Church In End Times)
He goes on to address the issue of suffering.
…That self-focus is an inveterate power that can only be broken when we ourselves are not the center of our own concern and preoccupation, but God and His purposes in the context that I am setting forth and calling apostolic. This is not a naïve body, because it knows that the church is a place of suffering before it is a place of glory. Suffering is intrinsic to this kind of relationship. It is not because we intend to molest each other or constitute a threat or an annoyance. It is the very nature of things, because the members of the body are in differing places of maturity and background. The thing that distinguishes the church I am describing is that it is willing for such a suffering. A body of this kind is eternity-conscious. Its conduct in this present moment is set in eternity, knowing that there is an issue of eternal judgment and eternal reward...
Apostolic Manifesto. (Apostolic Church In End Times)
In any case, I find it interesting, albeit disturbing that the problem of suffering causes so many Christians to stumble. Ironically the problem of suffering also underpins the worldview of a majority of atheists.
How could a loving God allow his children to suffer?
Such questions highlight the very egocentricity of which Art Katz speaks. We call it “I-denity” and find every possible rationalization to avoid the fact that our egocentrism stands in direct contradiction to Jesus’ command to deny self. Mat 16:24 Katz likens these believers to the Seven Sons of Sceva in Acts 19:11-20.
“Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?”
Given the utter, ever-increasing depravity of mankind since the fall, the more correct question for any Biblically-minded Christian apologist is to ask atheists why there isn’t more suffering in the world?
Still, not everyone has their head in the sand. Katz points out,
If we make a determination of the kind we have been suggesting, then we will most likely experience a stripping of one kind or another. We come into a heavenly reality that knows the rewards that make our present losses momentary and light. God will allow us to be tested in the area of possessions, reputation, and other ways in which we can find ourselves stripped.
Apostolic Manifesto. (Apostolic Church In End Times)
Our problem is our propensity for mistaking God’s stripping for an attack from the devil.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Gen 32:30
Preserved is natsal to snatch away, deliver, rescue, save, strip, plunder.
-Strongs Concordance-
A lot of us are wrestling with God in the name of improving and maintaining the quality of our lives. We live for the elusive American dream. The American dream means climbing a ladder of worldly success to achieve personal significance and material wealth. It means providing material comfort and entertainment for our children and ourselves. We preserve our comfort by monetizing at least a third of our God-given life on earth. We preserve the monetized result by purchasing insurance and compiling mamon in the hope of preserving our comfort in old age. Almost everything we do is in some way oriented to the avoidance of future suffering. Rarely do we consider that Satan comes as an angel of light. 2 Cor 11:14 Or that his plan might be to give us sweetness, comfort, and ease that produce physical, emotional, and spiritual atrophy. We assume we are wrestling with the devil. But could we actually be
wrestling with God?
“The problem is, sometimes we make up our idea of what His way is…” It’s been a collective human pattern since the fall. Jer 13:10, Isa 30:9-13, Rom 1:21-22
Chew on that.
Art Katz was a prophet, always calling the church back to her Hebraic roots and to the cross. Good post.