Surpise the World by Suffering Well

Introduction

Who is this Kid? [Cover Art of Alexander’s No Good Day]

Alexander. He’s the kid who goes to sleep with gum in his mouth and wakes up with it in his hair, and trips on a skateboard getting out of bed. His brother gets a toy in the cereal box, but Alexander gets nothing. Scrunched in the back seat of the car, complaining without anyone to listen. His teacher criticizes him for singing too loud, his best friends pair up and leave him alone. At lunch he realizes his mother didn’t pack him dessert. After school, the dentist finds a cavity. After the dentist, he falls in the mud. He starts crying and his older brother calls him a crybaby. He punches his older brother, and his mother scolds him for being muddy and fighting. They go to the shoestore and his favorite shoes are sold out. Lima beans for dinner, another fight before bed. And that’s the end of the book!

Has anybody ever had a day like that? (Mine always involve driving).

Does anybody remember how Alexander responds to his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? (Move to Australia).

Does anybody remember his mom’s response? (Some days are just like that)

Alexander and his mom have two different approaches to suffering. His response is to “suffer less.” To run from his problems. Her response is to “suffer well.” Her strategy is basically to accept suffering, which is a Stoic perspective.

Transition

The Bible’s perspective on suffering is kind of a middle way between the mom and her son. Like her, we submit to suffering knowing that all pain has a purpose and that all pain points to Jesus. But like Alexander, we also look forward to the day that all pain passes. Tonight, we want to add to this picture from the Book of Psalms.

We’ve got three key points tonight inspired by a famous Western movie: (1) the good, (2) the bad, and (3) the… [let them fill in the blank, “ugly!”]. Nope! Actually, tonight, it’s the good, the bad, and the beautiful.

1) Suffering Well Starts When Life is Good

Read Psalm 104:14-15, 27-35

Psalm 104:14–15 CSB

He causes grass to grow for the livestock and provides crops for man to cultivate, producing food from the earth, wine that makes human hearts glad— making his face shine with oil— and bread that sustains human hearts.

Psalm 104:27–35 CSB

All of them wait for you to give them their food at the right time. When you give it to them, they gather it; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your breath, they are created, and you renew the surface of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works. He looks at the earth, and it trembles; he touches the mountains, and they pour out smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God while I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him; I will rejoice in the Lord. May sinners vanish from the earth and wicked people be no more. My soul, bless the Lord! Hallelujah!

Some people say that there are three kinds of psalms: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Basically, the first of these says that life is good, the second says that life is bad, and the third says it is broken but beautiful.

Psalm 104 is the first kind of psalm. The world appears appears well-ordered and reliable. Everything is going according to plan.

This teaches us that suffering well starts when life is good. Suffering well starts before you suffer. For some of you, maybe you can’t remember a time that life was good. If that’s you, the next two points are for you.

But for the person who wrote Psalm 104, life was good. Sure, there were seasons of need and seasons of plenty, but the seasons came and went on time.

Verse 34 teaches us how to respond to the good life. Psalm 104:34 “May my meditation be pleasing to him; I will rejoice in the Lord.” Basically, the psalmist says that it is during good times that we need to discipline our mind and heart.

Meditation: disciplining the mind. This is necessary, because it is so easy to forget God until bad things happen, and even to grow prideful (big-headed) thinking that the good things happening are because you are so smart

Rejoice: disciplining the mind. Again, we can sometimes be more attached to the gifts than the Giver.

A good verse warning us of the potential dangers of the good times is Deuteronomy 8:11–17 “Be careful that you don’t forget the Lord your God by failing to keep his commands, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today. When you eat and are full, and build beautiful houses to live in, and your herds and flocks grow large, and your silver and gold multiply, and everything else you have increases, be careful that your heart doesn’t become proud and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty land where there was no water. He brought water out of the flint rock for you. He fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had not known, in order to humble and test you, so that in the end he might cause you to prosper. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me,’”

2) Suffering Well Happens When Life is Bad

Our next psalm is a psalm of “disorientation.” This world is a hard place. Listen to Ephesians 2:1–3 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.”

Doesn’t this just sound like highschool?

Doesn’t this just sound like a painful life?

How do we live in this painful world?

Check out the ending of Psalm 88.

Psalm 88:13–18 CSB

But I call to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer meets you. Lord, why do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me? From my youth, I have been suffering and near death. I suffer your horrors; I am desperate. Your wrath sweeps over me; your terrors destroy me. They surround me like water all day long; they close in on me from every side. You have distanced loved one and neighbor from me; darkness is my only friend.

What do you think about these words?

Technically, these words are part of something called “a lament.” To lament is defined as: “to mourn; to grieve; to weep or wail; to express sorrow.” It is a form of communication especially fit for dealing with death, and truly all suffering involves a death of some kind: it could just be the death of Alexander’s expectation that he was going to have a good day. But all suffering involves either having something you don’t want, or wanting something you don’t have.

A lament strikes an interesting balance between honesty and hatred. The Psalmist is honest to God, he doesn’t hold back. At the same time, he complains without hating God. Honesty means that he truly opens his heart to God, a lack of hatred means that he keeps it open to God even when it hurts.

Here’s how one person, Elie Wiesel, a concentration camp survivors, puts it: “I go up against him, I shake my fist, I froth with rage, but it’s still a way of telling him he’s there, that he exists, that he’s never the same twice, that denial itself is an offering to his grandeur. The shout becomes a prayer in spite of me”

I was in high school when I learned that God is big enough to handle my emotions - even my anger. If you read through the Psalms, you will see that many inspired authors ask God the questions “How Long?” and “Why?”

Here’s another real life example of how this works: I know a person who lost someone close. A family member died. Everyone around this person kept saying, “Don’t Be Sad. Look to Jesus. Your family member is in heaven.” Guess what? Those people had never learned to lament. Think about Job, the godliest sufferer in the Bible besides Jesus. You read what he has to say—it doesn’t sound happy! Or, you want to look at Jesus, look at how he responds to death! When John the Baptist dies, he locks himself in a boat and wrestles all night with grief. When Lazarus dies, he doesn’t say “I’m glad his sickness is over now and he’s with God.” He cries! And he says, “You know what, Lazarus belongs here, and I am going to bring him back.”

Students, if you want to suffer well, learn to lament.

3) Suffering Well Outlasts the Pain

The last category of Psalms is “reorientation.” This is sort of a combination of the first two, it builds on life being bittersweet. These are times that we thank God for the grace that he gives us, whether that is deliverance from pain, or forgiveness for sins, or both.

Consider Psalm 40:1-10

Psalm 40:1–10 CSB

I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and heard my cry for help. He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay, and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and they will trust in the Lord. How happy is anyone who has put his trust in the Lord and has not turned to the proud or to those who run after lies! Lord my God, you have done many things— your wondrous works and your plans for us; none can compare with you. If I were to report and speak of them, they are more than can be told. You do not delight in sacrifice and offering; you open my ears to listen. You do not ask for a whole burnt offering or a sin offering. Then I said, “See, I have come; in the scroll it is written about me. I delight to do your will, my God, and your instruction is deep within me.” I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; see, I do not keep my mouth closed— as you know, Lord. I did not hide your righteousness in my heart; I spoke about your faithfulness and salvation; I did not conceal your constant love and truth from the great assembly.

If you remember, Alexander wanted to put his problems behind him and move to Australia. One day, all our suffering will be left behind. But for Christians, we suffer well even after the suffering is over, because we don’t just leave it behind, we also learn from it.

[Play Lion King Clip]

Let me give you another real life example, this of someone learning from pain. I think I told you about the time that I got fired from my seminary job? Seminary is a graduate school for people wanting to go into ministry. I worked at a hotel, and sometimes homeless people would come in. Once I paid for someone to stay the night, and when my boss found out, he said not to do it again. But then a couple months later, my own brother came in, and brought in a homeless man that I had seen earlier that day. So I did it again, and my boss said not to do it again. Later, though, he called me in and said the he was going to fire me after all. He was a great guy and it was kind of funny-not-funny how it happened. That caused me a lot of pain, mostly emotional pain because I was embarrassed. This was just a few days before I married Amanda, and I only had one or two shifts left at work, so it just seemed odd to me, and rather humiliating.

The thing is, sometimes you need to be humiliated in order to gain humility. I read some of the great Bible texts on humility and God’s discipline, and I realized something about myself: I have great intentions, but I am arrogant. I listen to my heart, and most of the time it’s a pretty good heart, but I don’t listen to people, and that shows my heart is maybe not as good as I’d like to imagine.

Are you learning from your mistakes?

Of course, suffering is not always our fault. Suffering happens to us, not because of us. Think about Jesus—people crucified him, that wasn’t his fault. Think of abuse. Think of bullying. We live in a hard world, and you can’t internalize all your suffering.

However, we can still learn from it. Sometimes suffering will teach you that when you have nothing else, you still have God. Even Jesus, it is said, “learned obedience through suffering.”