Lesson 11: God's Sovereignty and Christian Suffering, Part 4

I learned about Christian suffering the hard way, back when I was in Bible College. I was working full-time at a day job while I was going to school at night, but I was having a very hard time with my job. Part of it was because I was the former skeptic who had now become a Christian – the very thing I was totally against before. Because of this, the people there were making fun of me, trying to get me to sin and crack, just to do anything wrong just so they could point a finger at me and say, "You hypocrite!" That was the pressure every single day. It got so bad that I would literally go to work with a knot in my stomach. As I opened the door I would say, "Okay, here we go again." I fought this for a long time. I hated it. I tried everything I could do to get a different job, but God would not allow it. This happened for about a year while I kept asking God, "Why am I suffering? Why is this happening?" Then the scene flashed through my mind from the movie "Conan the Barbarian." I am not recommending that movie, but I believe God used a scene that was stored away in my brain from the "Pre-Jesus" days to show me what He was doing with my pain today. Conan was a young boy whose family was murdered; he was then hauled off into slavery and strapped like a mule to a turnstile. He went round and round, day after day, year after year, season after season, on this seemingly monotonous, repetitive, no rhyme or reason painful journey, in circles. One day, the seemingly monotonous repetitive painful journey did something incredible to him. He turned into one big massive man. This is the scene that flashed through my mind to show me what God was doing with my pain at my workplace! He was making me, over time, whether I realized it or not, into a stronger mightier Christian!


It is the same thing with all of us! All of our seemingly monotonous repetitive pain journeys are designed by God to make us into mighty warriors. It builds our spiritual muscles! This is what Paul said!

Romans 5:3.4 - "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."

He uses our pain to transform us from a run-away “Jonah Believer" into a mighty strong "Samson the Strong-Christian!" Why? He loves us! You see it is only the "Samson-Christian" that can say with the Apostles and the Early Church when they are faced with imminent death, "Why delay? I belong to Jesus Christ the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!" It is only a "Samson-Christian" who can have their eye blown out and face smashed in and still say, "Jesus loves you!" It is only a "Samson-Christian" who can triumphantly state with the Apostle Paul:

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 - “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed!"

Why? God has used our pain to make us into mighty warriors for Jesus, the very thing we have been praying for! That is awesome! That is exactly why I call God the Ultimate Recycler. He takes all of our pain, all of our difficulties, and He turns it all around for good.

* Memorize Romans 8:28 - “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”