Jesus is asking us to step into His world and we’re asking Him to step into ours. When He did step into ours (during the incarnation) He instantly healed nearly everyone who came to Him. The apostles did the same thing; at first. Then in the epistles we see a different view to suffering introduced – patience during suffering rather than deliverance from it. Why the switch? For one thing the alleviation of suffering did nothing to make the crowds affected by the Lord’s healing better people. They went from “thanks for the healing” to “crucify Him!” Not a huge step forward spiritually. On the other hand, you have Paul rejoicing in “infirmities and distresses” and James telling everyone to “count it all joy” when suffering hits.
We all know the standard answer to this question of suffering - ‘suffering produces character’. Suffering in patience glorifies God because all creation sees us remaining faithful to Him instead of turning against Him; the test Job faced and passed. But I think there’s more to it than that. In the New Covenant we are being asked to step into a new paradigm in regard to pressure and trials.
Jesus is in heaven. He’s not on earth, and that means that everything in this dispensation from the Divine standpoint is heavenly in its essence and nature. Our Lord’s primary focus now is not the temporal, earthly situations we find ourselves in. Until we get this settled, we are going to be confused and frustrated a lot. Why doesn’t the Lord fix what needs fixing? Why does the Lord allow these things, the things Paul calls "our light affliction..." in 2 Corinthians 4:17? Look at all the suffering there is in the New Testament when you get past the Lord's days on the earth, the suffering among the Lord's people. Why doesn’t the Lord intervene more often in these things? We still, today, want to bring Him down to earth again, into this world, but He’s not coming down (at least not yet). We can know Him by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But we can’t know Him as He was known in the days of His flesh.
Paul tells us this also. In 2 Corinthians 5:16 he writes, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer". He is known, and only known, through the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit, which means that this dispensation is pre-eminently spiritual in the mind of the Lord. From God's standpoint, this age we are living in is governed by this -
Christ bringing us to the place He is, to spiritual fullness and completeness; not us bringing Him to the place we are.
The Lord is committed to that goal and deals with everything in the light of it. We need to understand that all of what God is doing is related to a way of life, a way of living. And that He is the only One who can get us there.
This is where affliction and adversity have their place. When the story of our lives is fully written, we will discover that it was the pressure that was the means of making us spiritually mature. We will say that by the grace of God we owe our spiritual measure to the suffering through which the Lord allowed us to go. Again,
Our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).
God is working into us eternal values which are not seen, but can only be grasped by the eyes of faith. Are we not all the time pushing to get the Lord back to earth so He can be with us like He was with those first century disciples? We want Him doing what He did then from earth, not what He wants to do now from heaven.
It’s ironic – we want Him on earth in the flesh and He wants us in heaven in the spirit.
Why would there have to be any adversity, why have any suffering? Why have an enemy at all, why have a devil? Why should we have these things if the Lord is almighty, all-powerful, all-gracious, and concerned for His people? If the Lord really is with us and on our side, then the devil ought to be swept out of the way, and all hindrances and frustrations ought to be overcome. We should be walking on water and riding triumphantly on without any of this stuff, which is a weight upon us, and is only interrupting and frustrating our progress. It seems that the devil is hindering us and the Lord is allowing it.
Paul, the one man who has more of the knowledge of things spiritual than anyone else in the New Testament has experienced more of these things than any other man. “Three times I was shipwrecked” (2 Corinthians 9:25). Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that? – the Lord letting one of His great apostles be shipwrecked over and over; thrashed with rods; suffering hunger, cold, and nakedness. We don’t know when these things happened. Paul simply tells us that they did happen. Then in 2 Thessalonians 2:18 Paul says, “I once and again would have come to you, but Satan hindered us.” There is something wrong with that too. Satan hindered Paul? Paul doesn’t explain it, he doesn’t say that it is wrong, he just runs with it.
We so desperately want to bring the Lord again onto a temporal basis, to clear up all these difficulties, to get hindrances out of the way, to lift us out of adversity, suffering, affliction, weakness, and very often we are tempted to make that the criteria as to whether the Lord is with us and for us.
Here’s what we need to get settled in our minds: are we going to expect anything different from what the Lord Himself went through? Are we going to expect anything different from what Paul and the believers of his day experienced? The New Testament letters are full of references to these trials of the saints. Do they mean that Satan is triumphant and the Lord is defeated, or that the Lord is not with us? Of course not. So, what is the meaning of this?
It is by these experiences that we are being made like Christ in heaven.
You have probably noticed that the people who live on the basis of earthly things, and who will not trust the Lord unless He gives them empirical proof of His being with them, are not spiritually helpful people. They are not people you can go to in the darkest hours of your life. People who can really help are those who know the deepest tests of faith; those who have gone through and survived even when the Lord has not shown His hand for their deliverance. We want everything down here, we want the good life in the temporal realm, things seen, things that we can bring up as proof, all the evidences. But that’s not the way it works. Unless you and I are faced with things beyond our ability, we will never be conformed to Christ as He is in heaven.
As T.A. Sparks put it,
It has got to be wrought into us on the anvil of experience, and that experience is going to be, in a certain sense, tragic experience. It is going to be something of a real question of life and death. Anyone who has really walked with God knows that I am telling the truth, that what they have come really to know of God, what they have come to possess of real spiritual value and strength, has come out of some dark and terribly grim and awful experience in their own life. They were taken into the depths where their faith was shaken. They did not know but what this was the end of everything. That is how they have grown and become spiritual and heavenly. They have not come there because the Lord has pandered to every childish demand for satisfaction and gratification and answered prayer in everything temporal. They have been tested, and if the Lord has subsequently come in to do things to answer prayer, He has only come in when He has done the spiritual thing inside and prepared and made it safe to do that. He has done it after travail. This is the nature of the age we live in. It is heavenly, it is spiritual and God is governing the life of His true children with this fact.
If Christ were here, all our focus would be on the temporal not the spiritual. But because He is in heaven and operating from there; and because He has brought us to Himself in the Spirit, the focus for Him (and hopefully for us) is first on the spiritual, then on the temporal. Our challenge is to trust Him, to give the Lord the freedom to do what He must do to bring us into fullness of life regardless of how mysterious and often frustrating His ways may seem to us.
He will open doors and He will change hearts; He also may close doors and harden hearts. He will still do miracles and then sometimes He will "disappear". But all that He does is related to His ultimate goal - the conforming of a race of people to the image of Christ. Until we see everything in the light of that goal, we will miss the meaning of most of what happens around us and to us. There is a definite plan in all this and understanding the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ can give us hope and confidence to move forward with anticipation of what God will do.
Our tendency is to view things like the disciples of Christ did when He was here. In other words we think about our lives and then factor God in as (hopefully) a present Helper. Most of our thoughts are related to this world, to what’s happening around us. We’re centered mostly in the world as we know it, as we see it. But Christ wants us to live as though we aren’t of this world, walking by faith not by sight; faith in God Himself.
We can’t help but be influenced to some degree by this world, but what do we think about? Where is our mind? Do we think Scripture? Or do we think mostly of the things of the world with some Scripture thrown in “as needed”?
This is what I meant when I recommended stepping into His world, so we can see life as He sees it from His current perspective, looking down from above it. That’s the world we’re really in and that’s the position we need to be viewing things from, as “more than conquerors”. Not because suffering has been alleviated, but because “all things” are being worked together for a greater goal than temporal relief.
If our minds get saturated with enough truth, we will eventually think truth. And truth brings freedom. Not always freedom from suffering, though that may happen too, but mainly freedom to live above this world in our souls. Paul learned “to be abased and to abound”. If you look at any of the lives of the post-resurrection disciples you’ll see a mixture of blessing and suffering. It’s like God moves us through phases. The timing and length of each phase is unpredictable, but all of them end and new ones begin. Whatever you’re going through now will end. Then something new will happen. Suffering gives way to relief, relief to rejoicing, rejoicing to a new test, etc. All of it is designed in a very personal way.
This is why we can’t compare our experiences to others. Nobody gets exactly the same thing; nobody responds the same way or needs the same training. For example, I may not look like I’ve grown much (maybe I haven’t) but if you consider where I’ve come from, which actually only God and I know, God has made significant headway in my “post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation”. It’s all relative and personal. It’s a soul issue not a circumstances or production issue. There’s only one Potter, but there’s billions of clay vessels. All are being treated slightly differently, but all are being treated with love and purpose.
Some people may think that one person’s suffering is “light” and another’s “intense”. But it’s what’s happening in the soul that measures true pressure. What’s light for one may be intense for another and visa versa. It’s not the visible suffering itself that determines the real intensity of things – it’s the inward pressure on the soul. For example, if a person is raised in a stable family and learns self-discipline, courage, self-esteem, patience, etc. then that person can handle some pretty intense things as an adult and not react. They don’t even have to be a Christian. Another person raised differently might meltdown under almost no pressure at all because their souls are so trashed they have little capacity and few defenses. What person A could shake off without blinking can crush person B.
Nobody knows for sure what’s happening inside another person, which is why Paul tells us to wait till God sorts this out and not to evaluate others or compare ourselves to others.
It’s very possible that what you’re going through is, and has been for quite some time, very intense; both externally and in your soul. The fact that you are still seeking God’s will and answers to your confusion, as apposed to taking Job’s wife’s advice and cursing God, is a testimony to significant strength even if all you feel is failure and weakness. If you felt strong it wouldn’t be pressure. Pressure is only pressure when its pressure; when what you feel is weakness, that’s soul pressure. If you were totally at peace inside in the midst of incredible storms outside, you’d be one of those believers who has “arrived”. Abraham arrived at 99. Moses at 80. Paul after approximately 16 years into his ministry. Jacob in his 80’s. We’re not sure about Peter other than that it took a long time.
We’re getting what we need; no more, no less. A perfect God cannot have anything but a perfect plan. We have the option of allowing Him to complete what He’s begun with our full cooperation or He can finish the job dragging us by our hair (which, in my case, is a challenge even for God). Either way we get there. So, it seems foolish to “kick against the goads” because the goads are a given. Outside adversity is inevitable; stress in the soul is optional. God has a goal for us that is even greater than our goal, but it’s found in His world. This is why staying in the Bible is so important. The Bible is His world, His thinking: Paul calls it “the mind of Christ”
(1 Corinthians 3:16b).
Thinking with the mind of Christ is the top of the spiritual growth ladder. Those who see life though His eyes see life as it really is.
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