the process of dying? Not a happy thought is it? If you're in one of your glorious high moments as a husband now buying flowers for your wife, it may be that you're trying to pay her off for being a jerk, but let's say you're not doing that. Let's just say you love her and you buy her flowers. You know what happens the minute you put those on the table? You just watch slow death. It's, "Honey, I brought you some death. I love you." This is our address and the Bible is quite specific and clear about the reasons we suffer. And it's so important for you to realize that God is honest about that so you wouldn't mistake who he is and you wouldn't mistake your experience. You'd be prepared for the things that everybody faces in this world that we live in. So many people are unprepared for suffering because they've been living with unbiblical, unrealistic expectations. Listen, you know this with your children, unrealistic expectations always lead to what? Somebody said it. Disappointment, because your disappointment is directly related to whatever expectations you were carrying. We need to have a good clear theology of suffering. So that when it comes, you don't fall into all of that wrong thinking and preach yourself a false gospel. That's why the verses that I read are so important. This is God preparing you, letting you know the world that you live in. Now, I want to be in this time we have even more specific than that. There are in the New Testament five clear reasons that God gives us why Christians suffer, and I'm going to give these to you. The first one is here in Romans 8. We suffer because we live in a broken groaning world. Universal. We suffer because we live in a broken groaning world. But there's a second reason that we suffer. We suffer for the purpose of our spiritual growth. I love the example that's given in 1 Peter 4. Actually it should be 1 Peter 1, but I don't know why that's up there. In 1 Peter 1, Peter used the example of metallurgy. You mine a metal and it's in an ore state. Now, ore is not very attractive and not very usable, so the metallurgist has to apply white-hot heat to liquefy that metal so it reaches its highest state of beauty and its highest state of usability. Now listen to me. When you come to Christ, you're an orific Christian. You're just like ore. Yes, you're in the kingdom, but you are a bit of a mess. And it would be unuseful and unloving for God to leave you in that ore state. So because he loves you, he will boil you. God will take you where you haven't intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. God will take you where you haven't planned or intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. You know what the Bible calls that? Grace. We need to teach and preach and comfort one another with a theology of uncomfortable grace, uncomfortable grace, because often God's grace comes to us in uncomfortable forms. I am around people all the time that are saying, "Where's the grace of God," and they're getting it. But it's not the grace of release and it's not the grace of relief. It's the grace of refinement, just the kind of grace we all need. You have never ever heard somebody say, "I've had three of the most pleasurable and comfortable years of my life and I learned so much." But you hear story after story after story of people who went through hardship and say, "I am so thankful I learned so much." Third reason, this is 2 Corinthians 1:3–9. You will suffer so that you can be one of God's messengers of comfort to every other sufferer. God says he meets us with his comfort in our time of suffering so we can take that same comfort to other sufferers. Isn't that beautiful? Even your suffering is not about you, it belongs to your Lord. And he wants to use your suffering so you can bring that comfort that that person needs. You know what the model is? God makes his invisible grace visible by sending people of grace to give grace to people who need grace. Let me say that again. God makes his invisible grace visible by sending people of grace to give grace to people who need grace. I could say it this way. God makes his invisible comfort visible by sending people of comfort to give comfort to people who need comfort. Fourth reason, you will suffer for the sake of the glory of God. See, life is not about our glory, the glory of my
Transcript: Session 2
GOSPEL HOPE
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