"Seeing" God in Our Suffering

Good morning! Welcome to the Vineyard. If this is your first time, my name is Kevin and I’m the pastor here. Our vision at the Vineyard is simple - we want to embody Jesus to our neighbors. This happens by growing in three ways, through what we call our pillars.

First, is Presence. We want everyone to experience the presence of God. This is what transforms us to love him and others. God’s presence is where we become fully alive. We want you to know the Father.

Then, Formation. God doesn’t just love us; he is forming us to be his people who can carry his life and love to those around us. Formation is where we learn to embody the Jesus way of life. We want you to imitate the Son.

Finally, Mission. Being on mission is how we join God in the work he is doing to bring his reconciliation, justice, and mercy to earth. This is how he is bringing healing and renewal to the world. We want you to partner with the Spirit.

Presence. Formation. Mission. Be thinking about your next step. Where is God calling you to go deeper with him?

Pray...

Where is God in my suffering?

A blind man’s suffering

The story of a man born blind.

We don’t know any details about him other than his blindness. We can assume he was an adult as he lived independently of his parents.

How often did he wonder where God was? Why did this happen to him?

Who sinned? Common belief that there was a one-to-one relationship between sin and suffering. Very much like Job’s friends who came to “comfort” him in his suffering - just admit you did something wrong so God will remove his hand. This is certainly the assumption of the disciples.

One of the things Jesus confronts is this idea of a one-to-one relationship between individual sin and suffering.

All suffering is connected to sin in a general sense. The brokenness that is in the world because of sin causes suffering to which none of us are immune.

Some sins do carry a specific consequence. Drinking and driving may cause you to wreck. Smoking 4 packs a day may lead to cancer.

Sometimes God does bring correction into our lives in order to break sin’s hold on us. Yet my experience is that God gives lots of warnings before he takes action.

What Jesus confronts here is that suffering is necessarily a sign God’s displeasure or of his absence in our lives.

Our suffering

We carry this same assumption as the disciples: God is behind our suffering in some way. When I am suffering or facing struggle, often my first response is either “Where is God?” quickly followed by “What have I done wrong?” This actually came up in our last Building 412 class that several of us have this knee-jerk reaction to suffering.

Americans, in general, don’t think they should suffer. This was evident during the COVID pandemic when our favorite brands weren’t available on the shelves. As a nation we have not had to really suffer perhaps since WW2. For seventy years we have lived in a prosperity bubble, and we’ve come to think this is our right.

Unfortunately, the American church has not given us a theology of suffering. But all we have to do is take a cursory glance as the history of God’s people to know that suffering is the norm. In both testaments, God’s people often faced trials and struggles and suffering - while being exactly in the middle of God’s will!

What I felt the Lord really speaking to me in this passage. God feels most distant when we go through suffering. But what if our suffering is when God is most near?

The gospel for the blind man

We often want to race ahead in this story to find that the blind man was finally healed of his blindness. But this would miss an important point about God’s nearness in our suffering.

“As he walked along” could sound like Jesus came upon this man by pure chance. I don’t believe that is the case at all. God “saw” the blind man - he was never out of God’s sight during his blindness.

This man’s blindness was an opportunity to manifest the glory of God. We must be careful because the English translation can make it sound like God purposefully caused this man to suffer with blindness just so God could heal him one day and get kudos for it. I don’t believe God does this. Rather, God takes the suffering this broken world inflicts upon us and redeems it. God did not cause this man’s suffering - God was present with him in it and was his deliverer through it.

The healing was not effected until the man obeyed Jesus’ command: Go … wash in the Pool of Siloam (9:7). Why didn’t Jesus just heal him on the spot, as he did others? Why send a blind man, in particular, on such a journey? I believe there is a way that we approach suffering that contributes to revealing God’s work in it.

The gospel for us

There are some things that can only be learned in this broken world by struggling and suffering. Children must struggle if they are to learn to walk. Musicians must struggle with endless scales if they are ever to master their instrument. So many worthwhile things in our life can only be accomplished by our struggle. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, suffering was necessary even for Jesus. Hebrews 5:8 “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered;” This doesn’t mean Jesus learned not to sin, but that he was perfected for his role and Lord and Savior through suffering.

What the blind man teaches us that we are often “blind” to God’s presence with us in our suffering. That in our suffering he, though not causing it, is using it for our good. He is shaping and forming us for a greater purpose. The apostle Paul tells us, Romans 5:3-5 “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us [it won’t let us down], because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

A call

Suffering, barring God revealing a tie to a specific sin, should cause us to reflect. What is God doing in this moment? How does he want me to grow? What is he preparing me for? What grace does he want to give me through this? How is he teaching me to lean on him in faith and trust during this time? There are all better questions to ask God when we suffer.

The existence of human suffering and blindness is a call to work, not simply to reflect. In the midst of human blindness and suffering we are called by Jesus to enter into his work so that others may see that God is near. It may not result in the healing of their eyes, but it will result in the healing of their soul.

We hate to suffer. We resist it. But here is where God is most near to us.  Here he is shaping us in it and through it to become the people we want to be. He allows suffering so that we may have a faith that thrives. So that we may be able to stand strong against the evil one and against the powers and principalities. So that we can be the vessel of his kingdom to others.  Metal can't be forged without fire - and neither can you.  Perhaps a better question then, is not "Where is God in my suffering," but "What is God doing through my suffering?" In suffering God is forming you into a work of art.

Come near to God in your suffering. He is near to you. Amen.