My personal Bible study tells me that suffering will happen. My life experiences back support that. Suffering should not catch us off guard, but a spot check of any church’s prayer request list shows that it usually does. When the news is good? Praise God. When the news is bad? Keep praying for a miracle.
Yes, we are to present our requests to God and to pray believing, but Scripture explicitly shows us two things we need to focus on to show God that we get it with regard to suffering: His presence in the now; our presence in the future.
The Word
The verses below may be familiar. Take a fresh pass by, paying particular attention to eras of time represented or places referrenced. Also, notice promises or instructions related to the eras of time or places.
“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-3).
“Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12).
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-18).
Think About It
According to these verses, the present looks pretty bleak—trouble, trials, testing, wasting away—but in these present troubles, we are given specific promises: Jesus has overcome it all; the Spirit of truth is with us; the trials will mature us. These promises seldom are the point of our prayers when trials come. We tend to focus on the removal of the trials. At best, this implies the promises are not enough. At worst, it implies we don’t trust the promises.
This brings us to the future. The verses from James 1 and 2 Corinthians 4 give us the perspective of our present trouble in light of our future reward. You can hear James and Paul screaming to us through their experiences and divine inspiration, “It will be worth it!”
Apply It
We’ve been conditioned to think deep faith is best exhibited when we expect God to move miraculously: to make the tumor go away, to make the dream job appear, to make the car start. This may be a misappropriation of faith resources.
Our faith resources may be used best by trusting these two promises: God is with us in the present, and we will be with God in the future. So, as we endure suffering in the present, can we allow our actions, reactions and attitudes to reflect our trust in these promises? Helping our teens develop a theology of suffering, starting with trust in these promises, may be our best gift to them for launching a lifelong pursuit of God.
Barry Shafer has been in youth ministry for more than 25 years and is the author of Unleashing God’s Word in Youth Ministry (Youth Specialties/Zondervan). Having lost his first wife to cancer, Barry has experienced God’s presence in the suffering of the present era. Remarried, he lives in Middletown, Ohio, with his newborn son, Reade, and his wife, Jessica, a Grammy-winning opera soprano. You can peek into her opera world at JessicaRivera.com.
