How to Suffer Like a Christian

In December, I had the privilege of going to Pakistan, you may remember. And along with all the regular sightseeing and the cultural experiences that you can go on and experience, we also did a lot of hiking and mountain climbing. It's another one of my passions to do hiking. And we had the opportunity to go and climb Mount Miranjani in Nathiagali in Pakistan. I think it's one of the highest peaks in Pakistan.

It's sort of the foothills of the Himalayas. So it's a pretty, pretty big deal. It's a great opportunity. And we took a photo and that's actually me up there at the peak, the precipice of this mountain. Now that looks pretty awesome, doesn't it?

10,000 feet from sea level. Probably the highest mountain I've climbed. Luckily I didn't have to climb it from sea level. Thank goodness, because that's about three kilometres. But, yeah, that's me standing on the edge overlooking the valley that we had come up from.

You see that ridge on the left there. We hiked up that and across that to get to this point, 10,000 feet from sea level. Now if you've ever climbed a large mountain, you'll know the feeling of what it's like trying to conquer this monumental thing with aching legs and a pounding heart and screaming lungs as you try to get up there. You know that feeling standing at the start, at the foot, at the base of the mountain, looking up at this thing and thinking to yourself, how on earth am I going to get up that thing? How on earth am I going to get up that thing?

But then you also know the feeling, that amazing feeling, once you're at the top looking down and seeing the way you came and thinking to yourself, how on earth did I do that? How on earth did I do that? It seems like you've climbed from the depths of the earth to an overwhelming vantage point. This morning, we're going to look at the process of climbing from the depths of despair to the point of overwhelming perspective, getting to that point where you can see the entire world almost, a place of exhilarating hope and confidence. As human beings living in this world, we know that we will experience pain and struggles in our life.

And we've heard all the clichés, those things that form nice posters and are nice to forward on in Facebook. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Heard that one. Or just keep on keeping on. But this morning we're going to deal with a topic, how to suffer like a Christian.

And I don't remember seeing that on a poster anywhere. How to suffer like a Christian. And it's particularly poignant, again as John prayed, in the face of some terrible persecution happening to our brothers and sisters in Iraq. How to suffer like a Christian. Some of us may be facing sickness in our bodies or aging parents who are not the best of health.

Perhaps the death of a loved one has overwhelmed us with grief. Others might be facing financial woes or job insecurity. The truth is that in this world, cars will crash, planes will plummet to the earth, houses burn down. Corporations downsize. Small businesses go belly up.

Personal pains like heartbreak, unwanted divorce, loneliness, abuse, it hits us hard. Christian parents can have wayward children, and too many children have uncaring, absent parents. The world in which we live, friends, we know so well is ravaged and broken by sin. You don't have to be a Christian to realise that this world is not ideal, and simply put, being a Christian does not give us immunity from physical pain or mental anguish. And sometimes, in fact, becoming a Christian makes it even harder.

Sometimes it's impossible to figure out why things are happening like they are happening, and then the question is, what is God doing in the midst of it all? That is the big question. A while ago, you might remember that I did preach on the aspect of suffering. And we have a church here, friends, that is going through some tough things. People in this congregation going through some hard things.

But this morning, I want us to not only look at the aspect of suffering, but how to suffer as Christians, as believers, and the shape of our response in the midst of it. In many ways, how we deal with suffering is climbing Mount Merajani. Our suffering and how we deal with it is like climbing Mount Merajani. It's a process. Now a great place for us to go as Christians when we have pain or joy and want to express that profoundly is in going to the Psalms, a place that people have been referring to for thousands and thousands of years.

So I want us to look this morning at a Psalm of suffering. Psalm 13 in your bibles. If you have that with you, let's turn to that. And hopefully we'll see this morning in this Psalm of lament, the Psalm of mourning, we'll see it as a source of encouragement and support and comfort in the shape of Christian suffering. Let's have a read of Psalms 13.

How long, O Lord? How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer me, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. My enemy will say, I have overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me. So far, our reading. Psalm 13, the psalm we've just read, has been traditionally attributed to David. We see him feeling restless and anxious, and he's not shy about it, is he? He's not shy about it.

He doesn't hide anything or hold anything back. Now psalms like this are by no means an obscure anomaly. It's not a strange thing, Psalm 13. In fact, about a third of our Psalms that we have, of the 150 Psalms that are there, about a third of them are Psalms of lament. Psalms of grieving, of mourning.

Psalms that the people of Israel used as their worship. The amazing thing for me to keep in mind as we read these Psalms is that they are inspired by God. These irreverent sounding, almost extreme sounding poems are inspired pieces by God. It means that He wants them in His word. It means that He's put it there for a reason.

He has included it for our benefit. Now what's clear in Psalm 13 is that the psalmist is honest about his feelings. So honest as to be bold, as to be brash, as to be nearly blasphemous. How long, Lord, have you forgotten me? Have you forgotten me?

Now we don't hear too many of those prayers in the church, do we? John and Trevor and Jason, as good as they are at praying, I don't remember ever hearing them say this. Is it because we don't want to question God's power or risk offending Him? I'm obviously not having a go at these guys because I'm not sure if they were to break down and cry in front of us all, whether that would necessarily be helpful, but I think that's how we view our faith in a sense or our relationship with God. We might speak politely to God, reserve a little bit of emotion.

We keep away from some of those raw feelings, and we might actually even come to the point where we'll give that over to a counselor or a psychologist or a close friend or a family member, but hide it from God. But this world isn't right. We all know this, and the psalmist knows it. There is some unidentified threat that is getting the better of the psalmist here. And David informs God directly that he is on the verge of despair.

He is in the valley looking up at this mountain, and his heart is sinking. And he doesn't know how he's going to get out of this. He cannot cope for much longer. He's run to the end of his line. The threat or the stress is, in fact, not so much the problem we see here.

It's the waiting. It's the not knowing. It's the wrestling. That's what's hardest to deal with. We notice it when we see in Psalm thirteen four times he says, how long?

He asks, how long? How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?

How long will my enemy triumph? Do you see the problem here? It's not so much that these things are happening. It's what is God doing? Where is my salvation? Where is my deliverance?

It's the waiting. Answer me, he says, before it's too late. I can't remain in the dark and bear this much longer. You have to come to my defence right now. Notice that there are three things that the psalmist refers to that are causing these things in his life.

Three areas where this distress is coming from. Firstly, it's in his relationship with God. Have you forgotten me? How long will you hide your face? The distress is coming in that broken relationship of not sensing God.

The second thing we see is that his distress also comes from within him. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? It's an incongruent. It's a discomfort that he has within himself. And then thirdly, we see that it comes from the outside as well.

In particular, an enemy. How long will I have my enemy triumph over me? But because David talks about it first, I believe, because he mentions it first, the real distressing thing, the thing that hurts him the most is his relationship with God and that distancing that he senses. He can deal with his own anxious thoughts. He can deal with his own fears.

He can deal with his enemies. But Lord, how long must I go with you forgetting me? With you not showing your face to me? The real pain is not being anxious, but it's the length of time that he doesn't sense God's nearness. In the Old Testament, when God forgets, that is the equivalent of hell.

When God forgets, it's the equivalent of hell. When God remembered His people, it was a significant thing. In Exodus 2:24, when Israel were captive in Egypt, were oppressed as slaves to Egypt and cried out, groaned out under this pressure. They didn't even cry out to God. They just cried out and groaned under this pressure.

It says that God remembered them. God remembered Israel. The feeling of being forgotten by God, in other words, is the feeling that He's not going to help them anymore. And that is the desperate situation that David is experiencing. And perhaps some of us can relate to experiencing something similar, either now or in the past.

But that is not where the psalm ends, and that's the great comfort for us. It's not a sad song that ends at the foot of this monumental mountain looking up. There is a process and a progress and a journey upwards here, and that's what we're going to focus on this morning. How this is shaped, how this journey to peace begins. Firstly, there's three things that we're going to see.

Firstly, it's who David cries out to. David addresses God. Now that is not a very revolutionary statement, is it? That's not like, wow, KJ, I can see you studied six years in theological college for that. But it's so simple, we sometimes forget it.

Who does David go to? David addresses God, but more specifically, he again uses God's personal name, Yahweh. We heard about that last week. Yahweh, the covenant name of God.

He doesn't just address an impersonal supreme being, a nice Zen statement out there of a holistic Mother Nature earth. He addresses a personal God, a God who has revealed Himself to David. What's more, in the name Yahweh, all the promises of the covenant are remembered. The promises that God made to David and to His people. I want to be your God, and I want you to be my people.

Yahweh. How long, O Lord, with capitals. How long, O Yahweh, will you forget me forever? Today, we don't refer to God as Yahweh. While the name is still precious and significant on so many levels, the deeper and more profound name we have been given is the fact that Jesus taught us how to pray to a Father.

To a Father. Now, again, at that time, God wasn't referred to as father. God wasn't referred to as a father. He was too holy and too majestic and too above us to be referred to as a father. It was a revolutionary thing.

And so when Jesus in the gospels taught His disciples to pray like this, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. It was huge. When Jesus came, He gave a revolutionary new teaching that we would call Yahweh the creator of the world, the breather of stars and milky ways, the crusher of the wicked and the defender of the widows, that we could call this God, Father. In the depths of our despair and loneliness, in the midst of great fear and stress, there is always this comfort that we have a Father who is willing to hear from us. Don't ever be fooled into thinking that you can handle it on your own, that your situation is bigger than God or beneath Him because He is our heavenly Father.

And like a good dad, He is always there to go to. So we have a Father to go to. This is the first thing. We have a Father, not just a god, not an impersonal being, not a nice, pleasant force that's out there that we can tap into from time to time. We have a personal, loving, relational God who is our Father.

The second thing that we see in the Psalm as it progresses from the depths of the valley. We see what David does to himself and for himself, that he reminds himself of the promises of God and His nature. The second thing to do when we are dealing with this suffering and this pain is to be diligent with our hearts, to be patient, and to remind our hearts of all the promises in scripture that exist about God. Your heart, friends, your heart needs to hear all the truths about this heavenly Father. Your heart needs to hear all these truths about your heavenly Father because that is where the real healing happens.

We may know all the good theology in our mind. We may know that God is sovereign. We may know that God is in control. We may know that God is good, but our hearts need to know it. And that is a process.

It needs to be reminded over and over again. There's a story of a piece of wood that once bitterly complained because it was being cut and sanded down and filled with holes. But the one who held the wood and whose knife was doing the cutting did not relent and did not give in to these complaints. The craftsman was too wise to stop because he knew what he was doing. He was making a flute out of this wood.

After many more groans and shouts of pain, the flute carver said to the wood, you silly piece of wood. Without these cuts and holes, you would only be a mere stick forever, a bit of hardwood with no power to be of any use. These cuts that I am making will change you into a flute, and your music will warm the hearts of men. My cutting is the forming of you. For when I'm done with you, you will be precious and valuable and a blessing to the world.

David could never write the psalms of praise and thanksgiving and jubilation, those sweet songs, if he hadn't been painfully afflicted. David could not write those sweet psalms if he didn't know what sorrow was, if he didn't know what it was like to be without God. His struggles made his life an instrument on which God could breathe the music of His love to provide comfort and hope, not only for him, but for millions and millions of people, for our friends in Iraq even today. It's not worth comparing ourselves to those selves. This is just an aside.

In our struggling, in our pain, we don't have to compare it to the Iraqi Christians because pain and suffering is very personal and very real. We have to accept it, we have to embrace that this is our pain and that we must wrestle with this. It's not honest to compare it to them and say that's way worse than mine, so I'm just going to stick it out. Our pain is real. God knows it.

And the only one objective with pain is God. And the only one that really knows where this is going and why we are in it is God. But we trust that we are in the hands of the craftsman that knows what He is doing. For David, while he can't explain God's role in his current circumstances, he still knows in his mind and he remembers God's powerful intervention in his life in the past, in history with His people. David knows from scriptures that God is good all the time.

He knows that God has a track record with people. He knows that God cares about them and takes care of them. And this is the crux to the climbing of that mountain of pain and suffering. You begin by knowing God with your mind, knowing about Him in your mind, but then you have to remind your heart what that means. Knowing with your mind, but reminding your heart what that means.

So we have to remind ourselves of the truth that God is concerned about us, that He will never abandon us or leave us. We have to remind ourselves that God does not let things happen to us without reason. Remind yourself that God is concerned not simply for your comfort, but for your character as well. And then the third thing we notice. So we are reminded to remind ourselves.

And then the third thing we see is that the climb is finished with the perspective of praise. Lastly, we see how the climb from the depths of the valley is finished. David asked a very honest thing from God in verse three. Give light to my eyes. Give light to my eyes.

In the fear and in the pain, we need to see what God is doing, what's going on. We need that perspective, don't we? Give light to my eyes. It is dark. I'm stumbling around here, God.

I do not know which way is up. I don't know where to grab or where to hold on in this journey up this mountain. Climbing that steep mountain, we can only see perhaps the rock face right in front of us or the area at our feet as we're climbing up. We don't know, and we don't have any perspective on how long the pain will last. We don't know what the result will be.

We don't know how it will get resolved or even what we should be doing in this time. It's the hardest thing of it all, not knowing. So the prayer to give light to my eyes is a request. Give me understanding, Lord. Give me perspective.

And it's something that we can and should be asking for. But while we may ask this question and wait for an answer, what we see David doing is reminding his heart of the character of God, and this is what we see. David goes on in verse five, but I trust in your unfailing love, and my heart rejoices in your salvation. Look at those words, or those verbs, really. Trust and rejoice.

I trust in your unfailing love, and I rejoice in your salvation. These aren't cognitive words. These aren't cognitive decisions, mind decisions. They are heart responses, aren't they? Trust goes so much deeper than knowing.

And rejoicing goes far deeper than to hold on and endure. To rejoice in His salvation is a deeply emotional response to a desperate situation, and this is the key, friends. As we keep praying how long, we start coming to a point of realising that nothing else can help. No one else can get us out of this. And we are thrown completely and ultimately on the grace and the mercy of God.

And that realisation coupled with what we already know about God and what is true about Him, knowing that there is nothing else except God and who He is, that is the antidote for our despair. It is the only thing. It is the only thing that will help. When we remind our hearts over and over again how God acts, who God is, it's like taking that step and then reminding ourselves again and it's taking another step and another step and another step. Each reminder is a step. And as we see this progress in the psalm, it starts in the valley of despair, but through this prayer, it rises and rises and rises until it finishes with these words in verse six.

I will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me. I will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me. How can it start with how long, Lord, have you forgotten me? Do you not even exist? Do you not even see me?

Have you turned your back towards me? To ending, you are good and I will sing praises to you. How is this possible? Well, David reminds himself to trust in God's unfailing love. And again, this word love is important.

It is that special word, Chesed. That love that is part of who God is. The special Hebrew word for God's unshakable covenantal love, the love that will not give up. That love is the one that's talked about here. Unfailing is its English translation.

Relentless. Never giving up. In the midst of our pain, our future can look bleak and we don't know how things will turn out. Even so, what God has done in the past on our behalf assures us that He hasn't forgotten us. He will not forget us.

And although He is under no obligation to explain this immediate course of action, the promises of the covenant remain in effect. That He is our God, and that we are His people. And God has sworn by no lesser authority than Himself to preserve and deliver His beloved people. He has sworn by Himself that that is what He'll do. There is no greater authority to swear this by.

This is why the apostle Paul could write in Romans 8:28 with such audacious confidence that we know in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purposes. How can we say that? We know in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. How can we say that? Because God has sworn by Himself the unchanging, immutable, majestic, divine God, He has sworn by Himself that He will be on our side.

If you struggle to see God's faithfulness and love to you in the past, in your life, even up till this point, if you struggle to see God acting, if you fail to find perspective to remind yourself about how He has come through for you in the past, remind yourself of this. When you were in a desperate and hopeless state, Jesus Christ came. Now, it is good to remind ourselves of how God has acted in our lifetime and been faithful to us. But if we can't even see that, remind yourself of this, that Jesus Christ has come, that He has died and He was raised again to conquer every enemy, every enemy, every bad thing that happens in our life, whether they be physical enemies, spiritual enemies, or even the enemy of our self, Jesus Christ has come to conquer that. And so this is why Paul can say in that same chapter in Romans 8, what then shall we say in response to this good news?

If God is for us, who can be against us? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Verse 37. Now, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, more than conquerors.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. How majestic, how wide, how all encompassing is God's love. No physical thing. No spiritual thing. No emotional thing.

No psychological thing. Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And therefore, Paul can say, we know, we know that God works for the good of those who love Him. Wherever we find ourselves this morning and tough times are going to come, and it's not worth comparing your struggles with anyone else's struggles because it is just as real for you.

As we climb from the valley of despair, remind yourself from your head to your heart of the love of God in your life. But don't ever forget that love was supremely shown in the coming of Jesus Christ for us. As we climb these mountains, remember these things. Remember these things. Remind yourself of these things.

And don't stop reminding yourself until you get to that top, to that precipice where you can say, I will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me. It is only at that moment that you will reach true salvation and deliverance from these things. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you. Some of us on this journey up this mountain.

Some of us having conquered some very recently. Lord, wherever we are, we ask this one thing, that through your Spirit given to us, that you will remind us of your grace, of your mercy, of your love for us that is unshakeable, that is relentless, that is unwavering despite any circumstance we may face ourselves in, that loves us despite ourselves. I love that while we were still sinners and rebels, Jesus Christ came for us. Father, give us the courage. Give us the knowledge of your word and these promises all throughout it that show us your character, that show us that you are trustworthy and faithful, that you are unchangeable, that you are steadfast and unfailing.

Remind us of these things, in our struggles, in our pain, and help us to get to that top and give you praise, Lord, even in the midst of the storm. Father, we do pray especially for our friends, for our brothers and sisters in Iraq, Lord, will you not see them? Will you not act swiftly, justly? It is hard for us to talk about evildoers and enemies and the wicked, Lord, as we see these psalms, Lord, but in the real life, in the life of ninety per cent of the world, there are some real enemies. There are some really, really wicked people.

Put an end to them, Lord. And as the psalmist often said, crush them under your feet. Father, may there be deliverance and salvation for our brothers and sisters, and not even just them, but for all those who are being oppressed by these people. May your deliverance come, Lord. And Father, I pray for Mandy and for her family.

I pray for the unfairness of cancer, the unfairness of illness, the unfairness of accidents. This world, Lord, is not right. This world is not fair. Lord, but in the shadow we know that there is sunshine. The shadow proves the sunshine.

So we know, Lord, that you are the sun, that you are the light, that you are good. And we appeal to that, Lord, and we hunger for that. We search for that with our eyes, Lord. Give light to our eyes so that we may see. We thank you, Lord, for your truth.

We thank you for your comfort again in your word this morning. We will, we will hold on to that. We will cling to it as our peace, as our strength. Father, we commit everything to you in Jesus' name. Amen.