WHEN GOD TEACHES HOW TO SUFFER

What is your theology of suffering? Have you ever wrestled through what you believe on this subject of suffering? That is an odd question if you have never given it much thought. How do you suffer? How do you grieve? How do you honor God in your suffering? Has the Lord taught you how to suffer? Are you able to embrace others in their suffering or do you awkwardly turn from them not feeling comfortable because you do not know how to deal with suffering in others? Worse, do you make comments such as, “Look on the bright side…”, “Just think of the people who will come to faith because of this,” “The Lord must know He can trust you with this,” . . . Please, do not speak if you do not know what to say. People do mean well; I know this. But the reality is this: Most believers do not know how to deal with pain. This is evidenced by Job’s friends who would have been better off keeping their mouths shut—just sitting there in silence by their “friend” who was suffering beyond any measure they could have imagined.

On the other hand, it is always refreshing after you have gone through some hard trial to find out that the Lord took you through it teaching you every step of the way. How do you know? (1) You begin to see the same principles throughout Scripture. As your theology is developed on an issue such as suffering, you realize that it lines up perfectly with Scripture. And, (2) You hear about or read other accounts from people who have experienced similar lessons from God’s hand. Now, I am enthralled with biblically sound books on suffering, where once I would have passed them by on the bookstore shelf every time.

What I found in my trials is that the modern church, in many ways, has lost the understanding of this grace of lament. Most Christians whose lives are marked by suffering come to learn what it means to lament when they turn to the book of Psalms, the book of Job, and Lamentations. You see it other places in Scripture, but in large, these books are saturated with this theme. The Psalms were Israel’s hymnal, if you will. And their songbook is filled with songs of lament. Mark Vroegop, in his book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy says a third of these psalms wrestle with pain. In comparison to the songs that belong to the modern church, it would appear we shy away from biblically dealing with pain. “Could it be that our prosperity, comfort, and love of triumphalism are reflected in what we sing? Is it possible that our unfamiliarity with lament is a by-product of a subtle misunderstanding of Christian suffering?” Has your heart ever learned how to sing a biblical song of sorrow in a minor key?

When my daughter, Melissa, died I would have had to answer, ‘No’, to all the above questions. I thought I had to be strong for those around me. I thought I needed to dig deep and put on a painted smile for the world so that they would be drawn to Jesus in me. As I say in my upcoming book, “Painted smiles are for clowns.” I had heard it said of me months after her death, “She’s going to break; people just don’t grieve like that.” While it is true that believers do not grieve as unbelievers, it was also true that I was going to break…three years later to the day.

I had not been walking right when Missy died. Not knowing how prone to wander I really was, I was drifting away from the Lord. I spend a great deal of time addressing this in my book, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice it to say, I was not in a good place. Immediately, following her death, I turned to the Psalms. And I lived there for years. To this day, I always include a psalm or a portion of a psalm in my devotional time. It is where my heart makes its connection with the heart of God most consistently.

Lament can be considered a loud cry, howl, or a passionate expression of grief. As soon as Melissa died, I had a period of lament, but very much in private. I just did not know where to take my grief other than to the Lord. Who would understand? Who could help? I didn’t know how to share my grief with others. When I did find someone who I believed was there to help me deal with my pain, they would respond to something I said as if they had all the answers and that I was wrong in what I was feeling or questioning. This made me stuff my grief even further down into my soul.

So, what happened three years later? On the third-year anniversary of her death, my family was together getting ready to go out to lunch together. Some trivial dispute arose (I cannot even recall its genesis), and a huge fight ensued which ended with me taking one son in my car and Greg taking the other two boys to our home. My son and I drove around crying and yelling for some time before arriving home. Greg had called members of the church we were attempting to plant to our home. It got ugly. At one point, my husband had to be removed from the home after he picked up one of the men and literally threw him across the room to keep him from restraining him. This man remarkably got up and led Greg, who was sobbing, outdoors into the large field by our home. You could hear Greg’s wailing from inside our home. Looking out the window, he was down on his knees with this man holding him. Inside the house, I was inconsolable as well. What began as a fight about something trivial, eventually turned to focusing on our grief—largely undealt with three years earlier. The deluge of emotions that had finally burst through the dam in our hearts lasted for many hours into the night as one couple stayed to listen, to offer mercy, and comfort. They didn’t have answers. They simply offered themselves. I will never forget their kindness to us; the fact that I am unsure where they are spiritually today grieves my heart to no end. My only hope is that He does know.

When Greg was indicted five short years later, I turned to God immediately in prayers of lament. I cried out loudly (in my spirit) in long hours of prayer, “Lord, help us!” “Lord, I don’t understand this!” “Lord, where are You?” I had learned how to cry out in pain for help from others who came to my aid. And my heart encamped in the Psalms. I have never left. From the start, Psalm 35 became my Psalm. In the next several blog posts, I want to start unpacking a portion of Psalm 34 and all of Psalm 35. It is hard to find any real commentaries on the imprecatory Psalms (those Psalms that express a strong desire for justice) which is sad. I pray that it will be a blessing for those who have struggled with how to use these Psalms in times when they, as believers, just do not know how to deal with their enemies. Let’s begin in the last portion of Psalm 34.

Psalm 34:15-22—The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and His ears are open to their cry. The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. The righteous cry, and the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.

34:15 - The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and His ears are open to their cry.

Peter ties this verse together with the verses preceding it in Psalm 34. These verses lay down some practical instruction regarding what constitutes true fear of the Lord. The three things the psalmist points to are a controlled tongue, a separated walk, and a peaceable disposition. What is interesting to me as I look back at what I wrote in my book, these are all areas the Lord focused on in my own life while teaching me how to suffer. Peter couches this verse quoted from Psalm 34 in between what it looks like for a godly wife to submit to her husband and then this:

1 Peter 3:13-18 – Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. AND DO NOT FEAR THEIR INTIMIDATION, AND DO NOT BE TROUBLED, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit…

Just this one verse spoke volumes to my heart and recalled to mind so many other Scriptures. The precept: Do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, is taken from a passage in Isaiah 8. It would be helpful to read Isaiah 8:11-13 now. It also brought me back to a day sitting at my dining room table reading Jeremiah 1 decades earlier. Jeremiah’s call to faithfully follow the Lord was going to involve going wherever the Lord would call him to go, speaking whatever He called him to speak, and then verse 8: “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,” declares the LORD.

Whenever I saw this phrase, the eyes of the LORD, I would immediately go to my favorite verse in all of Scripture. 2 Chronicles 16:9 – For the eyes of the LORD move to and from throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. These same eyes were watching over me. In other words, the Lord was in control of every single minute detail of my life. Even more so than my earthly father keeping his eyes on me when I was a small child, the dependent child of God can know that her Father is watching over her at all times. There is no cry that leaves my heart that my Father does not hear and respond to. He never turns a deaf ear to me, even when all that I can see with my physical eyes try to deceive me otherwise. In these times, I must learn to walk by faith and not by sight. His eyes see things as they really are. He sees the whole picture.

It was with this foundation of truth I was going to enter unchartered territory. Throughout the prison trial, I would need to remember that the eyes of the Lord were toward me, and His ears open to my cry. This is a foundation of truth we must always stand with both feet firmly planted upon in any trial or time of suffering.

I will pick this up on Monday, Lord willing. Have a blessed Lord’s Day and rest-filled weekend!