Charles Stanley writes on suffering
(Go to Charles Stanley's website)-
2 beautiful articles on suffering; on turning to Christ in our sufferings........
When We are Afflicted
Article by Charles Stanley
Many think this is a hard saying: "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus,"
but it will be much harder to hear those final words:
"Depart from me, (you) cursed, into everlasting fire."
When the Lord Jesus comes in judgement, all the servants of the cross who conformed themselves to Jesus crucified will approach Christ the judge with full confidence. Why do we then fear to carry the cross?
In the cross we have salvation; in the cross we have life; in the cross we have protection from our enemies. In the cross alone we find our eternal salvation and hope of everlasting life.
We take up our cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and we will pass into unending life. Everything is funded on the cross and everything depends on our taking up the cross. There is no other way to life and interior peace except the holy way of the cross and our daily dying to self.
Plan as we will and arrange everything as seems best to us, still we will find suffering in our lives.
Whether or not we wish it, we always will find that in the cross we will feel pain in our bodies or we will suffer affliction of spirit in our souls. Sometimes God may leave us to ourselves and sometimes our neighbors will trouble us; and often we will be wearisome to ourselves. God wants us to learn to endure affliction without relief, to submit ourselves wholly to Him and to become more humble by passing through adversity.
The cross, therefore, is always in readiness and everywhere awaits us.
Do we think that we can escape what no other mortal has ever been able to avoid? Do we know of any person who, during his or her life, was without some affliction? Even our Lord Jesus Christ, while He lived on this earth, was not for a single hour without the pain of His Passion. How is it that we seek a way that is different from that of the royal road, which alone is the road of the holy cross? Christ's entire life was a cross and a martyrdom, and we look for rest and pleasure for ourselves?
We are mistaken, oh, we are mistaken, if we seek everything other than affliction, for our whole mortal lie is full of misery and surrounded by crosses. The greater the height we reach in the spiritual life, the heavier we find our cross. We, though greatly afflicted in many ways, are still not without refreshing comfort for we recognize the great fruit that will be ours by enduring our crosses.
The more the flesh is worn away by affliction, so much the more is the spirit strengthened by inward grace. It is not according to our nature to bear the cross and to love it, to chastise the body and bring it into subjection, to avoid honors and be willing to suffer insults.
If we look at ourselves, we will realize that by ourselves we can do none of these, but if we put our trust in the Lord, He will send us strength from heaven empowering us, and the world and the flesh will be subject to our holy desires. We need to be determined then, and like good and faithful servants, carry the cross of our Lord Jesus who has crucified out of love for us. There is no escaping such sorrows and sufferings except by bearing them with patience. If we desire to be Christ's friends, then we drink lovingly of the chalice of the Lord.
Leave all consolations to God to dispose of as He wills, but be ready to bear afflictions and look upon them as the greatest consolations. When we have arrived at the point when we regard affliction as a pleasure for the sake of Christ, and affliction becomes something sweet, then all is well with us and we have found paradise here on earth. But so long as suffering is something that vexes us an we seek to avoid it, then things will go ill with us, for the very affliction that we are trying to escape will follow us wherever we go.
If we put our minds to doing what we have to do, that is suffering and dying, then everything will go better for us and we will find peace.
We still have to suffer if we wish to love Jesus and serve Him constantly.
Are we worthy to suffer something for Jesus' name? What glory would then be ours! How happy all the saints of God would be! How wonderfully we would nuture our neighbor's spiritual life!
With good reason, then, we should be willing to suffer a little for Christ when there are many who suffer far worse things to achieve worldly advancement. Know for certain that we must lead a life constantly dying to ourselves, and the more we will live to God.
Nothing is more acceptable to God nor is there anything more beneficial in this world, than being willing to suffer for Christ.
If we were given the choice, we ought to prefer to suffer adversity for Christ's sake rather than to be comforted by many consolations. In this way we would be more like Christ. If there were anything better suited for and more useful to our salvation than suffering, then Christ certainly would have shown us by His teaching and His example. Speaking to the disciples who followed Him and to those who desired to be his followers, Christ clearly urged them: "Whatsoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." The conclusion is that through many afflictions, we enter the Kingdom of God.
Can you thank me???
An interview with Helen Roseveare
by Tonya Stoneman
Helen Roseveare had just graduated from medical school when she moved to the Belgian Congo to serve as a doctor to local tribes. She built a hospital made of handcrafted bricks, stocked it with medicines, and for 12 years treated malnutrition, nursed lepers, delivered babies, and performed amputations.
Her work there ended tragically with the onset of a blood revolution. On August 8, 1964, the Republic of Congo was plunged into a civil war. That day marked the beginning of five terrible months of savage brutality during which 27 missionaries were killed, more than 200 Roman Catholic priests and nuns were murdered, and nearly a quarter of a million innocent African civilians were butchered.
Roseveare was rescued from the carnage, along with many others. She returned to her home in England to heal from her anguish and to share her story.
But when she spoke of her experiences in the Congo, a provocative question repeatedly surfaced: "Why did God let you suffer?"
The reality of a missionary, who laid out her life to serve God only to be rewarded with cruelty and suffering, seemed incongruous. Routinely people in search of answers unburdened their hearts to Roseveare: a young mother whose baby drowned, a girl who was raped --- people who lived in angst, unable to connect the dissonance of life's experiences to the God of the Bible. Her answer became simply to share with them how God had given her faith and strength to overcome her own heart-wrenching trials.
Independence was declared in the Belgian Congo on June 30, 1960. Mutiny broke out in the army, the white population fled, and interracial relations crumbled. "It nearly broke my heart," says Roseveare. "It wasn't only in the upper echelons of government, it wasn't even just in local government, it was in the church." A colleague once told her, "Well doctor, we don't blame you for being white. In fact, we're really rather sorry for you being white. But at the end of the day you are white." Her beloved friends no longer trusted her. She prayed and fasted fervently, seeking God's face for reconciliation.
Then came the rebellion and a terrible night that transformed her faith.
"It was a Saturday afternoon," recalls Roseveare. "A truck drove into the village where I lived, and I could hear the noise from house of rough, angry voices shouting. And then two men burst into my home. That was the first indication I had that we were at war. "[The men] inspected everything and smashed a lot of my property, and then I suddenly realized that they were intent on evil. I tried to run away and hide, and they came with powerful torches, and they found me. They struck me, they beat me. I lost my back teeth to the boot of a rebel soldier that night. They broke my glasses I can't focus on anything if I haven't got them on. That was most frightening. When you can see them, you can at least put an arm up to take the blow. When you can't see, you're so defenseless." During the course of the evening, Roseveare was badly violated by her perpetrators. "I don't think I was praying; I was numb with horror, dread, fear. If I had prayed, I think I would have prayed, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" I felt He'd left me. I didn't doubt God. I never doubted God. But I felt, for that moment, that He'd left me to handle the situation by myself.
As these thoughts poured into her mind, Roseveare became aware of a holy presence near her. "I knew with every fiber in my being that God, the almighty Creator, was there," she pronounces with quiet certainty, insisting that God never gives us evil, but takes what is intended for evil and makes it good.
During the pinnacle of her suffering, God spoke to Roseveare in a way that He knew she would understand and accept. "I believe the words that God spoke to me, although I didn't hear them as words, were,
"Can you thank Me for trusting you with this, even if I never tell you why?"
You know, that's shattering. You and I think of us trusting Him. But the thought that He wants to trust us, that was something very new to my thinking."
He gave her the strength to say yes and she prayed, "Yes, God. If somehow, somewhere this fits for purposes, I don't know how, but yes, thank You, God, for trusting me with this." God did not take away the wickedness, the cruelty, or the pain. It was still there. But He turned her fear into peace.
Roseveare and her fellow missionaries endured faithfully that long and dreadful weekend. The following Tuesday the rebels returned for her. She was taken away by herself in the middle of the night. As dawn broke, they came to a village. The rebel soldiers had gathered nearly 800 local men into the village square. They had been told they would attend a people's court in which Roseveare would be tried for the things that had occurred the previous week. At the given signal they were instructed to shout, "She's a liar! She's a liar!" They would then be asked, "What will we do with her?" The mandated response was, "Modecco! Modecco!" which meant "Crucify her! Crucify her!" The defendant knew she would die, although she did not know how.
The trial scene began.
"They wanted me to go through in detail in front of these 800 men what had happened the previous Thursday," Roseveare says, an audible quiver in her voice. "I wasn't going to speak up in front of all those men. They struck me over the face with the butt end of a gun; I couldn't stand the pain so I spoke up."
The moment of judgement came.
Roseveare couldn't see her jury; her eyes had nearly closed with the swellings of the beatings. But she could hear. "I heard a sound I had never heard before and will probably never hear again. I heard 800 strong farming men break down and cry.
They were weeping."
Now, instead of seeing her as the hated white foreigner, they saw her as their doctor.
"They have a word in Kibudu, which means "blood of our blood, bone of our bone," she says. "They rushed forward and said, "She's ours. She's ours."
They took me into their arms and pushed the rebel soldiers out of the way.
"In that moment the black/white division disappeared," she professes triumphantly.
"I can honestly say, right through till today, in that area there has never been a black/white division again. We're all one in Christ Jesus."
When she fervently sought the Lord so many years before, she had no idea that God would make her an instrument in bringing about racial harmony.
Why does a God of love allow suffering?
For Roseveare that question is, in itself, a contradiction. Love and suffering are inextricably linked.
"If you didn't love, you wouldn't hurt," she explains, pointing to her exemplar as evidence.
God loves us so much that He gave His own son to the Cross. Because He loves, He suffered, giving us an example to follow in His steps. (1 Peter 2:21)"
Image via charlesstanley.com
