Thankfulness

“Thankful for Suffering”

Hebrews 4:14-16 “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

I. Intro

I know you thought that you may have misread the title to today’s message. Thankful for Suffering. But yes, you read it correctly. In today’s message we will talk about sufferings, how to get through them, and look at how Jesus got through them. Each and everyone of you here can testify that you, at some point in your life has been through some type of suffering. Some of us, more severe than others. Going through the sufferings is the not fun part of growing as a Christian. To mature as a Christian, we must go through these valleys to reach the mountaintop. And at the times we are in the middle of the valleys, it may seem like our sufferings will never end. There are so many examples throughout the Bible of men and women who went through sufferings. Some of those sufferings were to test their faith. Other examples of those sufferings were to grow them in their faith.

The year 1527 was the most trying year of Martin Luther’s life. On April 22 he was preaching in Wittenberg when he became dizzy and fainted. Over the next several months he dealt with debilitating depression and sickness. It had been 10 years since he had published his 95 theses. He had battled long and hard against the church and government, even against other reformers. Now he was broken and beaten. He wrote a friend about his illness, "I spent more than a week in death and hell. My entire body was in pain, and I still tremble. Completely abandoned by Christ, I labored under the vacillations and storms of desperation and blasphemy against God. But through the prayers of the saints, God began to have mercy on me and pulled my soul from the inferno below." Eventually with the help of doctors he regained his strength and health. Just as he was recovering a plague struck Wittenberg. Even though his wife was pregnant, Luther’s house was transformed into a hospital, and he watched many friends die. Then his son became ill and it looked as if he to would die. In the midst of all this he wrote his most famous hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." You could say that Martin Luther had been dealing with many thorns in his life when he wrote that beautiful and majestic hymn. Sometimes in life we encounter thorns. We try to avoid them, but they are everywhere. Even something as beautiful as a rose has thorns on its stem. I believe that when Paul writes and says something like: in order to keep me from being arrogant, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me,” he is talking about some sin that he struggled with. Paul asked the Lord three times to take it away. Three is a significant number in the Gospels. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked the Father three times to take away the cup He was about to drink, Peter denied Jesus three times, and Jesus asked Peter three times if Peter loved him after his resurrection. So, when Paul writes that, he asked the Lord three times to take away his thorn, he is connecting his story with the story of Jesus. Jesus responded to Paul by saying “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Jesus offered Paul grace for his thorn. Why do we need the grace of God? it is because we have sinned against God. I love Paul’s response to Jesus’ answer. “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, for insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

II. How to Overcome Suffering

Walk By Faith

2 Corinthians 5:7 “(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)”

Too many peope these days are living by sight, or what they can physically see or do.

Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Walking by Faith is the foundation of the Christian Life.

Walk by the Word

Whatever we feed our hearts will come out of our mouths.

Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Jesus overcame suffering by using the Word.

Matthew 4:3-4 “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Remember that Satan knows the Bible better than you or I, and he will use it against you like he did Jesus when He was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days.

When Jesus used the Word to combat His suffering or Satan, he went away.

Walk Worthy

Colossians 1:10 “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;”

This is illustrated in the life of the famous author Mark Twain. Church leaders were largely to blame for his becoming hostile to the Bible and the Christian faith. As he grew up, he knew elders and deacons who owned slaves and abused them. He heard men using foul language and saw them practice dishonesty during the week after speaking piously in church on Sunday. He listened to ministers use the Bible to justify slavery. Although he saw genuine love for the Lord Jesus in some people, including his mother and his wife, he was so disturbed by the bad teaching and poor example of church leaders that he became bitter toward the things of God, someone once joked that the difference between the Baptist and the Methodists in the liquor store was that the Methodists would speak to you, I would be rich if I had a dollar for every time I had to try to clean up someone else’s mess when they offended someone else, tell about the Law and Order the other night about the born-again Christian, and the black church staff member who testified that he would embrace a Christian brother who was on trial for a racially motivated murder, and Jack expecting an opposite answer.

ii. How do we increase in the knowledge of God?

We look to our previous point and Walk by the Word. We engulf ourselves in the Word. We live by the Word. We share the Word.

iii. As we are fruitful in every good work, our sufferings will come to pass.

iv. As we are faithful to God in walking worthy, He will be faithful to us in leading us out of sufferings.

Matthew 11:28 “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

d. Walk by Prayer

As we look back to our passage for today in Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

We are not only invited, but invited to come boldly to His throne room of grace to obtain mercy in our sufferings.

Prayer is a cornerstone of the Christian faith

Psalms 64:1 “Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer: Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.”

Psalms 66:19 “But verily God hath heard me; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer.”

Philippians 4:6 “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

Pray for one another’s suffering

James 5:15-16 “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

III. Conclusion

Stephen Hawking is an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and perhaps the most intelligent man on earth. He has advanced the general theory of relativity farther than any person since Albert Einstein. Unfortunately, Hawking is afflicted with ALS Syndrome (Lou Gehrig's disease). It will eventually take his life. He has been confined to a wheelchair for years, where he can do little more than sit and think. Hawking has lost the ability even to speak, and now he communicates by means of a computer that is operated from the tiniest movement of his fingertips.

Quoting from an Omni magazine article: "He is too weak to write, feed himself, comb his hair, fix his classes--all this must be done for him. Yet this most dependent of all men has escaped invalid status. His personality shines through the messy details of his existence."

Hawking said that before he became ill, he had very little interest in life. He called it a "pointless existence" resulting from sheer boredom. He drank too much and did very little work. Then he learned he had ALS Syndrome and was not expected to live more than two years. The ultimate effect of that diagnosis, beyond its initial shock, was extremely positive. He claimed to have been happier after he was afflicted than before. How can that be understood? Hawking provided the answer.

"When one's expectations are reduced to zero," he said, "one really appreciates everything that one does have." Stated another way: contentment in life is determined in part by what a person anticipates from it. To a man like Hawking who thought he would soon die quickly, everything takes on meaning--a sunrise or a walk in a park or the laughter of children. Suddenly, each small pleasure becomes precious. By contrast, those who believe life owes them a free ride are often discontent with its finest gifts.