The Suffering of the Saints
Believers ought to expect to suffer as an inevitable part of their calling. To believe is not to evade suffering; it is to face it with new confidence and hope. Rightly approached, suffering develops the character of believers, equips them for more effective service, draws believers closer to Jesus Christ and prepares them for eternal life.
Believers must expect suffering
Research in England revealed that employers who unfairly treat their employees can actually make them sick. That’s according to a study in which 6,400 civil servants in London were asked questions such as, “Do you ever get criticized unfairly?” and “Do you ever get praised for your work?”
A follow-up study ten years later showed that men who reported low scores on their bosses’ fairness were 30 percent more likely to have coronary heart disease, which is the number-one killer in Western societies. Ongoing stress is a major contributor to this affliction.
Labor experts say the effect on employees’ health might be even greater in the United States than in Britain, since workers in the United States spend more time at their jobs than their overseas counterparts.
For two years, scientists sequestered themselves in an artificial environment called Biosphere 2. Inside their self-sustaining community, the Biospherians created a number of mini-environments, including a desert, rain forest, and ocean. Nearly every weather condition could be simulated except one: wind.
Over time, the effects of their windless environment became apparent. A number of acacia trees bent over and snapped. Without the stress of wind to strengthen the wood, the trunks grew weak and could not hold up their own weight.
Though our culture shuns hardship, we would do well to remember that God uses hardship “for our good, that we may share in his holiness”
A dog fell into a farmer’s well. After assessing the situation, the farmer decided that neither the dog nor the well was worth the bother of saving. He’d bury the old dog in the well and put him out of his misery.
When the farmer began shoveling dirt down the well, initially the old dog was hysterical. But as the dirt hit his back, the dog realized every time dirt landed on his back, he could shake it off and step up. “Shake it off and step up; shake it off and step up!” he repeated to himself.
No matter how painful the blows were, the old dog kept shaking the dirt off and stepping up. It wasn’t long before the dog, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well. What seemed as though it would bury him actually benefited him—all because of the way he handled his adversity.
The adversities that come along to bury us usually have within them the potential to bless us. Forgiveness, faith, prayer, praise, and hope are some of the biblical ways to shake it off and step up out of the wells in which we find ourselves.