Your Struggling Is Not Meaningless

Audio Transcript

Welcome again to a different week on the Ask Pastor John podcast. In our Bible studying this week, we’re within the thick of it, studying by Leviticus — a infamous guide that ends loads of well-intended Bible readers within the month of February — a guide that features exhausting texts like Leviticus 21:16–24, forcing Bible readers to ask, “Why did God shun the disabled within the Previous Testomony?” We checked out that query final time, on Thursday.

At the moment we speak about private struggling and the meaning-full-ness of Christian struggling. So usually struggling feels meaning-less, and we will get disheartened and really feel like giving up, resulting in at present’s query from Samuel. “Good day, Pastor John. The apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7–9 that he was ‘troubled in each approach, however not crushed; perplexed, however not pushed to despair; persecuted, however not forsaken.’ What does he imply that he was persecuted however not forsaken? After I think about the sufferings of Paul hitting my life, I might be instantly tempted to suppose that such harsh persecution would make me really feel fully crushed and deserted by God. A lot lesser ache in my life brings me to the brink of this already. So, how did Paul endure such ache with out feeling completely defeated? And what has religion regarded like in your life when your life was its hardest?”

Right here’s the textual content that we’re being requested to get within: 2 Corinthians 4:7–9:

We’ve this treasure [namely, this treasure of vital faith in Christ, who is the image of God] in jars of clay [that is, fragile bodies and minds], to indicate that the surpassing energy belongs to God and to not us. We’re troubled in each approach, however not crushed; perplexed, however not pushed to despair; persecuted, however not forsaken; struck down, however not destroyed.

And Samuel is asking, “How did Paul endure this — this being troubled, perplexed, persecuted, struck down? How did he endure this the best way he did?” And he has in thoughts the magnitude and frequency of Paul’s sufferings.

I doubt that almost all of our listeners have an instantaneous consciousness of how horrible that was for Paul. So, I’m going to learn it. This is likely one of the most stunning and staggering and appalling statements of Paul’s life within the Bible. He endured

far better labors, much more imprisonments, with numerous beatings, and sometimes close to dying. 5 occasions I acquired by the hands of the Jews the forty lashes much less one. Thrice I used to be overwhelmed with rods. As soon as I used to be stoned. Thrice I used to be shipwrecked; an evening and a day I used to be adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, at risk from rivers, hazard from robbers, hazard from my very own folks, hazard from Gentiles, hazard within the metropolis, hazard within the wilderness, hazard at sea, hazard from false brothers; in toil and hardship, by many a sleepless evening, in starvation and thirst, usually with out meals, in chilly and publicity. And, aside from different issues, there’s the day by day stress on me of my anxiousness for all of the church buildings. (2 Corinthians 11:23–28)

And we complain.

Samuel’s query is related due to how simply we grumble about our personal circumstances when actually none of us — I’m prepared to say this to all people listening to me — has endured what Paul did. So, Samuel asks, “How did Paul endure such ache with out feeling completely defeated — certainly, deserted by God?” That’s what he asks, and I feel Paul would give three solutions.

1. ‘I endured by God’s preserving.’

Primary, I feel he would say, “I used to be miraculously stored devoted by the Lord Jesus. It was a present; it was a miracle; it was a piece of God to maintain me. That’s why I didn’t give in.” His perseverance was a present. Right here’s what he says in 2 Timothy 4:16–17:

At my first protection nobody got here to face by me, however all abandoned me. Might it not be charged in opposition to them! However the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, in order that by me the message could be absolutely proclaimed and all of the Gentiles may hear it. So I used to be rescued from the lion’s mouth.

That’s his primary reply to how he endured. The residing, sovereign Lord Jesus Christ stood by Paul when no person else did. He didn’t infer that as a result of all people deserted him, God’s not actual. Since Christians are all a bunch of fakes, Jesus isn’t actual. He by no means went that route, which so many individuals do at present.

In 1 Corinthians 1:8–9, he stated that Christ sustains us “to the top, guiltless within the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is devoted, by whom [we] have been known as into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” So, Paul loved fellowship with Jesus. That’s the important thing: fellowship with Jesus. And God held on to Paul and sustained him and preserved his religion by the whole lot by giving him the enjoyment of fellowship with Jesus by all of it.

God started the work in Paul on the Damascus street. And in accordance with Philippians 1:6, he believes God will end the work. So, God calls, God retains, God establishes, God glorifies. That is God’s work. If any of us endures to the top as a believer by struggling, it’s God’s grace that we endure. It’s a present. It’s a supernatural work. So, that’s Paul’s first reply.

2. ‘I endured by sound instructing.’

As a second reply, I feel he would say, “God preserved me, Jesus saved me and stored me, by way of instructing me a real and sturdy theology of Christian struggling.” And in that theology of Christian struggling, which stored him, was the conviction of God’s absolute sovereignty over Paul’s struggling — and that God isn’t solely sovereign, however he’s good and he’s smart. Nothing befalls Paul however what God sends for his good functions. “If the Lord wills,” James says (and Paul agrees), “we are going to stay and do that or that” (James 4:15). If he doesn’t, we gained’t. We’re immortal until God’s work for us is completed. God is sovereign. That’s primary to Paul’s and our endurance.

Within the first days after his conversion, keep in mind that even earlier than his blindness was eliminated there in Damascus, Ananias was despatched to Paul, and he was despatched with this message: “I’ll present him,” Christ says, “how a lot he should undergo for the sake of my identify” (Acts 9:16). In different phrases, from the start, God made it clear to Paul, “To serve me is to undergo.” Struggling’s not a detour. It’s a part of the trail, a part of the calling.

God’s Loving Self-discipline

Paul knew that every one of God’s wrath had been absorbed by Jesus when he died. So now, there’s no condemnation for Paul (or for us) in Christ. None of those horrible issues which are taking place to Paul is owing to God’s wrath. What a reduction! They have been all a part of God’s fatherly, loving, disciplining, ministry-advancing functions for Paul, for the church, for the world.

“If any of us endures to the top as a believer by struggling, it’s God’s grace that we endure.”

A few of his sufferings, he says, have been the refining of his personal religion. Second Corinthians 1:8–9 is superb. He says, “We have been so totally burdened past our energy that we despaired of life itself. Certainly, we felt that we had acquired the sentence of dying. However that was to make us rely not on ourselves however on God who raises the useless.” That was God’s function: to assist Paul belief totally in God by knocking all of the props out from beneath his life in order that there was just one place to fall — on God who raises the useless. And he trusted God. He trusted this profound information of the position of struggling within the lifetime of the believer.

No Wasted Ache

One other a part of his theology of struggling was that no ache right here is wasted, as a result of it’s producing a weight of glory past all comparability. “This gentle momentary affliction is getting ready for us an everlasting weight of glory past all comparability” (2 Corinthians 4:17). In different phrases, even in these final horrible days and weeks of struggling earlier than dying — they appear so meaningless — even in these hours, nothing is wasted as a result of they really are producing a better weight of glory after dying.

I’ll point out yet one more facet of Paul’s theology of struggling that is sort of a ballast in his boat to maintain it from being tipped over by the sufferings. He says that his sufferings for the physique of Christ have been the filling up of what was missing within the afflictions of Christ. “I rejoice in my sufferings” — which is a tremendous assertion in itself —“to your sake, and in my flesh I’m filling up what’s missing in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his physique, that’s, the church” (Colossians 1:24).

This was not as a result of Christ’s afflictions have been missing in any atoning advantage. That’s not the difficulty; that’s not the issue. It was as a result of Christ’s afflictions have been missing in private presentation to these for whom he suffered. Paul was saying, “In my sufferings for you, I’m presenting to you Christ’s sufferings for you, as a way to see and really feel his love for you in my struggling for you.” And I feel that’s why many pastors are known as to undergo the best way they’re.

3. ‘I endured by God’s guarantees.’

So, Paul’s first reply to how he endured these crushing hardships was that Christ stored him, stood by him. And the second reply is that he stored him by way of a real and sturdy theology of Christian struggling. And at last, the third reply that Paul would give is that this: “I used to be stored by the valuable and really nice guarantees of God” — guarantees like these:

• “I’ll be with you to the top” (Matthew 28:20).
• “I’ll by no means depart you. I’ll by no means forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
• “I’ll work the whole lot collectively to your good” (Romans 8:28).
• “I’ll strengthen you; I’ll enable you to; I’ll uphold you” (Isaiah 41:10).
• “Within the Lord, none of your work is in useless” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
• “To stay is Christ; to die is acquire” (Philippians 1:21).
• “To be away from the physique is to be at residence with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).

So, these three solutions to how Paul endured are our solutions. I feel that’s our reply in addition to Paul’s reply. Paul lived his life for our sake. That’s why he endured this stuff — in order that we might see and study.

1. The Lord stored him and can maintain us.
2. We should always have a sturdy, biblical theology of Christian struggling.
3. We should always stay by all of it by the valuable guarantees of God.