Word & Deed: Suffering

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Word & Deed: We are Witnesses: Suffering
with Glenn Power

This sermon explores how suffering can be a pathway to witnessing for Christ. The message begins by acknowledging our society's aversion to suffering compared to historical and other contemporary cultures. The speaker argues that a lack of a robust theology of suffering contributes to this weakness. The sermon contrasts a secular worldview focused on material comfort and happiness with a biblical perspective that finds meaning and purpose in hardship. Key scripture: 1 Peter 4:12-13.

The sermon outlines five ways God can transform suffering into powerful witness:

1. Tools for Reaching Others: Suffering allows us to comfort others with the same comfort we receive from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). It fosters empathy and provides practical wisdom to share.
2. Weakness and Humility: Suffering reveals our weakness, pointing people to God's all-surpassing power (2 Corinthians 4:7). It counters self-reliance and allows God's power to be made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12).
3. Integrity: Enduring suffering well demonstrates God's goodness, justice, grace, and love to a watching world. It creates a compelling testimony that prompts questions about our hope (1 Peter 3:15).
4. Circumstances for the Gospel: Suffering can open doors for the gospel to be shared, even through limitations (Philippians 1). God's word is not chained.
5. Prologue to Breakthroughs: Suffering often precedes major redemptive acts, culminating in Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection, which offers salvation to all.

The sermon concludes with a call to receive prayer and embrace hope and redemption through hardship.

Transcript

We've been doing, the last year, we've been doing an every member series. So every month is a different We Are statement, and it has to do with this, this, this member series we're in last month was We Are Gifted, and we talked about the gifts of God. 

And this month is We Are Witnesses. So the, the specific angle that we're going to go at it this morning is that we are witnesses through our suffering. So because of that, I am going to pray. Father I do ask that you would just, you would just help us, that you would give us wisdom and revelation of what you're like, of your plan. Would you just give us ears to hear, and would you just make this, this clear Lord? 

We pray this in your name, Jesus. Okay, so we're just going to jump right into it, but before we, we're going to get into the scriptures. We're going to talk about what the scriptures say about being witnesses through our suffering. But before we do that, I want to just take a step back and talk about the subject suffering, kind of from the perspective of our society, and even comparing it to other societies in history. When it comes to suffering, we as a society are incredibly thin, skinned, and weak. 

That may sound harsh. I don't, I don't mean that to be condemning or harsh because I am a part of our society. So I'm a, I'm a part of this. But this is just a fact. Here's an example statistic. In medieval Europe, only half of all children survived until the age of 10. In ancient cultures, people were just more acquainted with death and suffering. 

They just saw it on a regular basis. Whereas we in our society today, we do everything we can to shield ourselves from it, which again is very understandable. I am not going out and seeking death and suffering for myself. After citing some statistics, like I just said, Tim Keller writes this. He says, life for our ancestors was filled with far more suffering than ours is. And yet we have innumerable diaries, journals, and historical documents that reveal how they took that hardship and grief and far better stride than do we. One scholar of ancient Northern European history observed how unnerving it is for modern readers to see how much more unafraid people 1500 years ago were in the face of loss, violence, suffering, and death. 

C.S. Lewis said that while we are taken aback by the cruelty we see in our ancestors, they would, if they could see us, be equally shocked by our softness, worldliness, and timidity. So but it's not just the people that hundreds of years ago were more resilient to pain and suffering than we are. 

It's actually people in other cultures and nations today that are more resilient to suffering than we are. So this is a quote from Dr. Paul Brand. Dr. Paul Brand was a pioneer in treating leprosy in the nations of the earth. He wrote a book with Philip Yancey and he spent the first half of his scientific ministry in the nation of India and then the second half in the United States. 

And after all of that he wrote this. In the United States I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs. Again, so far so good. I seek to avoid pain at all costs. 

Very empathetic to this. Patients lived at a greater comfort level than any I had previously treated but they seemed far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it. I think we know this is true. I mean in some areas we're used to this. 

For some of us this quote alone probably traumatized us reading that quote. And we make jokes about it too. We make jokes about the man cold. 

This is an example of this. If you guys heard of the man cold. Man flu. Yeah. 

So if you're not acquainted with it I have some pictures, some memes. So you can know about the man flu. So man flu definition. An illness that causes the male of the species to be helpless and sicker than any other family member. And females a cold. So here's some more. This is men after they cough once. 

Oh this is my favorite. During labor the pain is so great that a woman can almost imagine what a man feels like when he has a fever. Almost. They can almost imagine. And then finally if you've bravely endured a man flu they even have a shirt. You can be a man flu survivor. So after I showed these to Forest he informed me that there's scientific evidence that men suffer more when they have a cold. So that's according to Forest. He also when he first saw these he said oh are these for the youth group? I said no. 

This is for Sunday morning. I don't know why you're surprised at that. So the question is why though. Why are we so much more sensitive to pain and suffering? Part of it's like I already said we shield ourselves from it whenever we can. 

I think another aspect of it is that we have more medications available than ever before. And so we can numb ourselves to pain and suffering like no other culture in all of history. So this makes us less resilient and weak in the face of it. But I think the biggest reason, the most important reason is that we don't have an adequate theology for suffering that helps us endure it. That helps us assign meaning to it when we are facing it. So we are probably more affected by a western secular worldview than we realize. 

Even in the church. We say that we're informed by the Bible and the Bible alone but we underestimate how much the culture informs our mindset, our worldview. In the western secular view of life there are basically two pillars. The material world is all there is and so that's why everything is so now focused. How can I get the most out of life now? 

Your best life now. And again this seeps into the church but this is informed by our culture. And the second pillar of a western secular worldview is that the goal of our life is to be happy. 

Some of us are like, yeah, what's the problem? That is the goal, right? God wants our happiness eventually and through his will and purposes. God's main purpose for our life is not happiness and comfort now. It's happiness for all of eternity. And what that means is often suffering and hardship in the short term. 

So here's the problem. The problem is that if our philosophy is the material world is all there is and happiness is my main goal and purpose now. Suffering has no meaning. Suffering is just a, we have to get through it as soon as possible so then we can get back to our life goal of being happy and comfortable. And it's especially a problem if your suffering goes on and on and on because then it seems like your life is completely a waste. And then that results in despair, depression, and worse. We have to find a better story for our lives than just a western secular worldview. 

We have to find something that is happiness a good goal, yes, but we have to find something higher than happiness and comfort now or our pain and suffering will completely derail us. And this is what the Bible does. The Bible gives us a better story to live in where everything we go through potentially has meaning and purpose. And that gives resilience to our souls. And resilience is the need of the hour. 

In a thin skinned culture resilience is the need of the hour. So let's go to the Bible. Let's go to the Bible and begin to just renew our minds with what God says about when we go through pain and suffering. So 1 Peter 4 verses 12 and 13 says, Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. 

This is totally us, right? Like when something bad happens we're shocked like, what in the world? Peter goes on after warning us that suffering will happen. It's not if, it's when, when it happens. 

So do not be surprised because it's part of a fallen broken world. He goes on to begin to give us these seeds of meaning and purpose and he says, but rejoice in as much as you participate in the sufferings of Christ so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. When I look at that phrase, the sufferings of Christ, to me it's more than, than just persecution. 

Persecution is, is noble when, when we suffer for overtly preaching the gospel or living out our faith. But I believe the sufferings of Christ are any time that we're in obedience to God's will and we encounter pain and suffering. And that's, and that's important to me and hopefully to all of us because we go through a lot of hardship and pain that's not overt persecution. And so it's included in this category of the sufferings of Christ when we're living for God, when we're obeying God. What's not included in the sufferings of Christ is when we suffer for disobedience, when we suffer for our sin. And that actually Peter addresses this specifically, I just don't have time to put all the verses up, but in 1 Peter he goes back to that again and again. He says, don't suffer for being a thief or a murderer or a meddler. He makes this list of sins and he says, because it's not, it's not as noble. 

It's, it's shameful. Now once we are suffering for our sin, is it possible for God to then use it as a wake-up call to redeem it? Of course, absolutely. God uses all things for good for those who love him. But there is a noble kind of suffering that's when we are in obedience to God and living his will for our life and we still encounter pain, trials, tragedy. Again, what we need is a vision. 

We need a vision to make this meaningful so we can live with hope, so we can rejoice. This is what a good coach or a physical trainer does. They tell you like Peter that pain is coming, this is going to hurt, but then they motivate you and inspire you. They give you vision for it. 

This is what we're working towards. Whether it's a, you know, you're in sports, you're going to win the game, or it's a body weight for a physical trainer, whatever, you know. In high school, I played water polo. We had Hell Week and Hell Week included us treading water with big old jugs of water over our head. We would swim laps with sweatshirts and sweatpants on. And then our coach would make us run in the stadium, you know that redwood stadium. We'd run with all of our wet clothes on and then the football players would make fun of us. 

That we'd be running with our wet clothes. All of this was for a purpose and we had a vision for it. It hurt so bad, but we loved it. We rejoiced in it because we knew we were getting stronger. 

We knew that it was strengthening us and we knew it was going to contribute to more wins, hopefully, not in our case. So the Bible gives us, this is part of the vision, it gives us many benefits to suffering in the will of God. It can strengthen our intimacy with God. It can refine our character. It can remind us of what is really important and it can increase our hope and endurance. 

So each of these categories would be worth a whole sermon and more. But I want to focus on something specific that suffering can do for us. God can use our trials to make us better witnesses to a watching world. This is one purpose that God can give us through our pain. So we're going to end. The second half of the message is going to be all focused on that five ways that God can transform our pain into us being more powerful and effective witnesses to a watching world. 

Okay, number one, suffering provides us with the tools we need to better reach people. Second Corinthians chapter one and Second Corinthians is another book I would recommend for this entire subject. First Peter, Second Corinthians. Paul writes, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles. So does God not care about our comfort? 

No, he does. He wants to be our primary comfort more than a pill, more even than a friend is vital and important as that is. God wants to be our comfort. So he's the great comforter. He comforts us in our troubles and then here's the witness part. So we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 

So how does this happen? How does God transform our pain into us reaching people more effectively? Well, first he comforts us. 

He encourages us. We have a personal encounter with God and by that I don't mean some like wild out of body, third heaven experience. I just mean like we're praying or we read the word and we feel that gentle real comfort of the Holy Spirit and it changes us and then we can go out and we can begin to minister to people who have those same kind of pain or trials. So experience in God and pain can give you more empathy for others and I'm sure you guys know exactly what I mean where you've gone through something hard and then you see somebody else who's going through that exact same thing and it's just totally different. 

Like you look at that person, you get it. So when I was 23 years old, my dad committed suicide and I've talked about that more at length at other times but I remember in the weeks that we're following one of my best friends growing up, his dad committed suicide when he was really young and because I was so young and self-absorbed, I mean I never even thought about it. Like it didn't even dawn on me that his dad was gone first of all and then second of all how his dad had died and I just remember when I was 23 years old, somebody brought it up and I was like, are you joking? Like this happened to my friend and I connected with him later and it was totally different. It was like we had this, we understood each other more and I remember in the weeks following my dad's death, my friend's mom came over and I remember vividly she knocks on the door, my mom opens the door and they just look at each other and fall into each other's arms and start to weep and it was like they got it. 

Like she got it, you know? Her husband had committed suicide, my mom, her husband had committed suicide. They just, they didn't even say anything, they just held each other and wept and it was like this understanding and I know it was a comfort to my mom. So it gives you more empathy for others. Secondly, experiencing God in pain, it gives you more practical wisdom to share with other people. 

You can share your tips and tricks that God taught you in the midst of that specific trial. It's really helpful. This is how we comfort and minister to others who are in pain. Okay, here's a second way that God redeems our suffering. 

He uses it for our witness. Number two, suffering provides us with the weakness and humility needed to point people to God and not ourselves. Okay, here's the passage. And this is the jars of clay passage. 

I just wanna apologize if the 90s band ruined this passage for you, because it did me, all right? So, but the NIV is what I'm using, all right? NKJV, earth and vessels. 

I wanna recommend that one. But Paul writes, we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. To show, this is part of the purpose in us being weak, in us going through pain, and us just looking generally unimpressive is so we can better point to God. Because people look at the hot mess that we are and they see us following Jesus and they go, man, that must be God. Wow, dang, like that must be God because that guy is like, not that cool, not that impressive, not that smart. That must be God. 

Amen. The reality is that the stronger and the more competent we are, the more tempted we are to take glory for ourselves. God knows this, and so it's not that God delights in our pain and weakness, it's that he knows that he will get more glory and more people will be reached the weaker we are. In fact, this is why in 2nd Corinthians 12, God actually directly adds to Paul's suffering. 

I mean, the guy had already been through a lot. You know, like, you would get through chapter, if you read the chapter 11, it's like, lost out at sea, beatings, whippings, near-death experience, you know, it's like, it's just crazy what he went through, but God was still like, ah, he needs a little bit more pain because he's still full of himself. And so in 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul talks about a time when God gave him a thorn in the flesh so that he wouldn't take credit for himself, for all of the tremendous revelations he was getting. And Jesus' word to him was that, my power is made perfect in weakness. So here's the equation, if you can call it that, is that our pain can lead to poorness of spirit which leads to more power. This is good news. It's good news that when we go through something hard, we can fall on our knees and turn to God. He turns it into this poorness of spirit, this spiritual currency, and then that results in more power to reach people with the word. 

It's amazing. But this is not what we want. We all have our Christian fantasies of how we're gonna reach God. It's like we all wanna be the Christian football player who scores the touchdown and then is like, and points at the sky. 

You know? That's such an awesome way to give glory to God. It's like you just scored the touchdown, everyone's just like, it's all God. It's all God. There's a story of a man who went up to a preacher and he said, man, that sermon was really good. And the preacher said, it was all God. 

And the guy said, it wasn't that good. We all have our Christian fantasies and I wanted to be a Christian rock star drummer, but often God's plan is for us to become really weak and then our life points to God rather than just a finger at a football game. Number three, suffering well provides us with the integrity needed to be a more effective witness to a watching world. 

This is a big one. Larry Waters says on this, he says, how the believer deals with undeserved suffering may be the primary witness of God's goodness, justice, grace, and love, not only to the sufferer, but to a non-believing world. It's really hard to argue with a quote from Joni Erickson-Totta. 

You know what I mean? Like if you know her life and story, quadriplegia, like when she says something, everyone's like, okay, all right. Like, okay, Joni said it. Tony Ranky, does that mean he says it? Ranky? Tony Ranky says it even more vividly. 

I love this quote. He says, some Christians are called to endure a disproportionate amount of suffering. Such Christians are a spectacle of grace to the church, like flaming bushes, unconsumed, and cause us to ask like Moses, why is this bush not burned up? The strength and stability of these believers can be explained only by the miracle of God's sustaining grace. The God who sustains Christians in unceasing pain is the same God with the same grace who sustains me in my smaller sufferings. 

I love that picture of the bush that's not burned up. It's a miracle to the watching eye. First Peter says, and first Peter, he says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. 

I like Jon Eldridge's commentary on this verse. He says, you know what's strange? Is that nobody ever asks us. 

That's the sad truth about this verse, is that not often do people ask us. And I think a lot of it is because a lot of times we are living in comfort, safety, money's flowing, things are going fine. So nobody's wondering when they see us with hope, they go, oh yeah, they have a good life. 

Why wouldn't they be helpful? But when somebody sees somebody whose spouse just died, when somebody sees somebody who is in chronic pain and they're worshiping God, it causes us to wonder. And we ask the question, we say, why is this bush not consumed? We say, wait, where is your hope coming from? 

Why do you have this hope? And it causes people to wonder. Number four, suffering provides the circumstances for more people to know the gospel. In Philippians one, Paul writes, now I want you to know brothers and sisters that what has happened to me, he's talking about him being in prison, has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace garden to everyone else that I'm in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear. What's amazing is that something supernatural happens in our pain when we're living for God, when we're living for God's mission, that new doors for the gospel begin to miraculously open up. It's a work of grace that God uses through our pain. If you read the book of Acts, Jesus tells the apostles to witness to the whole world starting in Jerusalem, going in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, eight chapters go by and nobody's gone anywhere. 

It's after eight chapters that Stephen gets martyred and a quote unquote great persecution breaks out that suddenly they start moving to Judea and Samaria. So this is my second equation for us is that suffering, again this is in the will of God, suffering leads to scattering, which leads to more salvations. So we can ask ourselves, if you are going through something right now, small or big, how is this suffering? How can it lead me to a scattering? How can it lead me to reach somebody that I wouldn't have reached otherwise? 

We hear lots of stories of people who are, a family member is experiencing cancer and they're able to witness people, witness to people in the cancer ward. I went to a doctor in Arizona a few years back for these IV treatments. My Lyme symptoms had gotten a whole lot worse. And this doctor, I guess for the sake of time is just sort of an outrageous guy, is like super wealthy by his own testimony. And he would always tell us about his boats and houses as he would go in as we were literally getting IV treatments. And he would walk around and talk to us about all of his cool stuff. 

We're like, oh man, this is real rich here. But I've gotten all these conversations with this doctor like about the reason for God, all these apologetic arguments. And I never would have gotten the chance to do that if I hadn't been in that circumstance. The paradox is that suffering does limit us physically. It limits us financially, it limits us emotionally, it limits us, it's real, and it really stinks. The limits of suffering are really painful. The other reality is that God's gospel in his word is not limited by our pain and suffering. And in fact, in some ways, it's even more unleashed in power through our pain and suffering. Paul says it this way, he says, in 2 Timothy, this is my gospel for which I'm suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal, but God's word is not chained. That's so powerful. 

God's word is not limited, is not chained. How many of you have heard the story of Eric Liddell, the chariot's a fire guy? So, and super inspiring story, he's a runner and he made it to the Olympics, but he refused to participate in the qualifying race for the 100 meter dash because it was on a Sunday, which to him was his Sabbath. So he refused to participate, which ended up disqualifying him, so he was not able to run his best race. 

He was though able to run in the 400, which was not his best event, and he ended up winning the event and getting a world record. This is, I mean, this is fantastic, and did God use it for sure? Does God use these kind of things for sure? He uses the Christian football player, he uses Eric Liddell. But what I love more about Eric Liddell's story is what happened next in his life. He became a missionary to China for years, and he brought his family there. There was a, the war was starting and there was a Japanese invasion to China, and so Eric got his whole family out, and he was just gonna stay for a few more weeks, but before Eric could get out, he was in prison, he was put in a prison camp. Eric Liddell spent the last few years of his life in a prison camp, and then he got brain cancer and died at the age of 43. 

Just seems like a waste. The chariot's a fire guy, dies at 43, brain cancer, weeks before the war ended, and he would have been released from this prison camp. Just sounds like a disappointing tragedy. 

But there's another side of the story. Randy Alcorn in his book, If God is Good, he tells the story of meeting a woman named Margaret Holder. Margaret Holder, her parents were missionaries in China, and their whole family was put in prison camps as well during the war. They were all separated from each other, so Margaret was separated from her parents and put in a prison camp, and she was telling the Alcorns that there was one guy in the prison camp that everyone looked up to, Uncle Eric. All the kids in the prison camp looked up to Uncle Eric. He organized sporting events for all the kids. He taught them the Bible, he told them about Jesus. 

All of these kids loved him, and they all mourned when he died weeks before the war ended. What bears more fruit for the kingdom? What's gonna be rewarded more at the judgment seat? Eric Liddell winning a gold medal, or him laying his life down for a few dozen kids in a prison camp? 

I don't know the answer to that question, but I know which one meant more to Margaret. Her life was forever changed by him in that prison camp, and I think that's a picture of what God does. The last one is that suffering has always provided the necessary prologue to the biggest breakthroughs in all of redemptive history. We see this in Joseph's life. He goes to prison, he ends up saving the Jewish people. We see this in Moses's life. We see this again and again that suffering has to precede the breakthrough in the redemptive story. And the climax of this is the story of Jesus, the sufferings of Jesus. No one deserves suffering less than Jesus. Talking about his own cross and sufferings that were about to happen in a few days, Jesus said, very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. 

But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Jesus, the undeserved sufferer, he took all of the suffering upon himself on the cross, and he turned it into the biggest turnaround in all of human history. He turned it into salvation for anyone who would call on his name. Finding purpose through our suffering is the centerpiece of the gospel story, that Jesus went through this pain and this tragedy so all of us could be forgiven, so all of us could be free forever. 

This is the good news. Because of the resurrection that happened a few days later, God put a stamp of approval on Jesus' sufferings, and now again, suffering led to scattering, which leads to more and more salivations. We're gonna have prayer up here if anyone wants to, yeah, just receive ministry. Worship team, if you guys could come up. And Hannah had a word too during worship that seems to fit with all of this. 

While we were worshiping, I just had a picture in my head of likes someone being in complete darkness, and you know when you're in those dreams where you're just like falling? So the person was like in complete darkness, there was no light that they could see, and they just felt like they were falling. And then a hand reached in and grabbed that person to rescue them, and the other piece of that picture was like, you know when a mother cat picks up a kitten, and the kitten just goes limp, kind of in submission to wherever she's gonna take him. So I had this picture of God reaching into complete darkness, grabbing onto multiple people in this congregation in an act of rescue. And so just encourage you to like go limp in the hand of the rescuing father. 

All right, I'll pray and yeah, please come up and get prayer from our prayer team. If you just need hope and redemption through something hard that you're going through. We thank you Jesus, we thank you for the, just the good news that we do have purpose no matter what we go through, that you redeem it all. We thank you for your character this morning Lord, that it's always good, it's always just, it's always loving. Yeah, even with this church, God, even as we move in our gifts, would you also move through our pain at Radiant Church? That's right. In your name, Jesus. In your name, Jesus.

*Transcripts are generated using AI. Please notify us if you find any errors.