Suffering
God's Goal For Tough Times: Learning to Trust God When Life Hurts
Adversities will come - things that you cannot control, that are overwhelming, that hurt, that are unfair, or that you don't agree with or understand. Trouble and sorrow are a part of living in a broken world.
God does not cause pain, but allows it to come for a reason.
Someone has said, "Everything that enters into your life is Father-filtered." This means you are in God's care and that he allows you to experience adversity only as he will use it to accomplish his plan for you. (This means, also, that he is mostly protecting you from trouble. In fact, in Heaven when you will understand more fully than you do now, you will know how truly faithful God has been in this life to watch over you and to protect you from hurt numerous times every day, even when you were not at all aware of it.)
Your pain is not because God is punishing you.
Some pain that you experience may be the result of the wrong and unwise choices you have made for your life. God does not always circumvent these consequences, but allows them for the purpose of discipline (training leading to growth).
But he is not punishing you. All of God's judgment against you was taken care of at Calvary by Christ's death on the cross. There is no outstanding judgment against you to be punished.
"There is therefore now no condemnation remaining for those who are in Christ Jesus." - Romans 8:1
God's purpose for allowing troublesome times in your life is ultimately for your benefit:
1. They give you an opportunity to recognize your weakness and desperate need for God's intervention into your life to guide and strengthen you;
2. They give you an opportunity to surrender your concerns to God and to practice trusting that whatever the outcome, it will be according to his will and for your good; and
3. They give you an opportunity to experience his care and faithfulness to always meet your needs.
Counseling for faith-based guidance and support during difficult times is beneficial to healing and recovery.
Faith-based counseling will help renew your confidence concerning God's unfailing love and passionate care for every detail of your life. It will also help guide and support you through the growth process as you are learning God's purpose for the difficult circumstances you are experiencing.
Christian counseling is faith-based and from a grace perspective - and is different.
The Christian counseling format is unique in that it supports a step-by-step spiritual journey that begins with trusting Jesus Christ as Savior, is sustained by vital union with him through his Word, and leads to renewed responsiveness to the strength he provides for increased health and happiness.
Don Loy Whisnant/The Grace Perspective #502
Brokenness: A Grace Perspective on Pain
Pain was not God's plan.
God created the human race to experience him. He had no plan or purpose for pain. But Adam and Eve made a choice to be independent from God and to have their health and happiness needs met in a way other than how he had provided for. As a result, they lost what he wanted for them, and began to die.
Pain is part of living in a broken world with broken people, and is unavoidable.
Since that tragic event in the Garden of Eden, every member of the human race has been born into a broken world filled with broken people. Pain is a pervading and unavoidable part of life.
Pain is also the result of personal choices.
Sometimes pain is the result of unwise choices. God does not always circumvent these consequences, but lovingly allows them for the purpose of discipline (training that leads to growth).
But God is not punishing you.
Your pain is not because God is punishing you. All of God's judgment against the human race (because of Adam's disobedience) was paid for in full by Christ's death on the cross (Romans 5:15-19). There is no outstanding judgment remaining for those who are trusting in the payment Christ has already paid.
"There is therefore now no condemnation remaining for those who are in Christ Jesus." - Romans 8:1
Pain is the result of unmet needs.
From a grace counseling perspective, pain is not really the result of the adverse circumstances (or people) that are present in your life, but of the essential needs you have that are missing. These needs are multidimensional: physical, psychological, and spiritual. They are also inborn. And there is no "getting over" them. Either they are met or the result is pain.
Grace counseling during difficult times is helpful for healing.
Faith-based counseling from a grace perspective is unique in that it traces the pain to the unmet needs, then seeks to identify the resources God has appointed (in creation, in community, and in Christ) for the flow of his provisions to meet those needs.
The focus and message of grace counseling is God's unfailing love and passionate care for every detail of your life. Its ministry is to provide long-term guidance and support for the healing process as you are learning God's purpose for the hurt and difficulty your are experiencing.
"We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope." - 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 (The Apostle Paul)
Don Loy Whisnant/The Grace Perspective #512
Adversity and Broken Behavior: Why We Suffer
There are two aspects of suffering, particularly as it relates to grace counseling. The first is our experience of suffering that we are subject to because we live in a fallen world filled with broken people. A large number of words represent this experience, including pressure, exhaustion, grief, sorrow, and even pain (Recognize any of these?). I call this experience of suffering, adversity.
Included in this first aspect of suffering are the pains of childbirth and the necessity to toil the ground for food - also the loss of life and possessions we are subject to by our exposure to the elements of adversity (adverse people and circumstances) that exists in a broken, dangerous world, including those perpetrated against us by Satan. This is the experience of suffering in which we are called to have participation or fellowship (koinonia) with Christ.
To help illustrate, think of this first aspect of suffering as (let's say) a fifty pound weight that God in the Garden of Eden placed upon all creation in judgment of Adam's disobedience. This suffering or adversity is illustrated by the normal, expected experience of living under a fifty pound weight. (The second law of thermodynamics explains some of this.)
But we do not need to consider this weight or experience of adversity apart from the resources God has provided (including the one blessing after another in John 1:16) that enables us to bear up under it and to endure.
Which leads us to consider the second aspect of suffering. This suffering is the experience of broken health and pain that is the result of the unwise choices we make in our attempts to deal inappropriately with the pressure, exhaustion, grief, etc. of living under this fifty pound weight - choices that are made with disregard to the resources God has provided in creation, community, and through Christ to support us. Fifty pounds is heavy, but it does not need to be too heavy (in that we are broken) except if we do not have the strength to bear up under it. I call this experience of suffering, brokenness.
The first aspect of suffering is inevitable in that we are exposed to adverse people and circumstances subsequent to living in a fallen world. But suffering in the sense of broken health and unhappiness is not our fate.
I was taught in seminary that "pain is God's number one tool for molding us into his image." It was supported by the Old Testament concept of the potter and the clay. I lived a long time with the notion that God mainly uses pain and pressure to mode and make us to be like Christ. It is a conclusion that fits nicely with the authoritarian view of God's relationship to us (explaining, by the way, why parents who live out of this mis-notion pound on their children as a first line of discipline), but it doesn't hold up considered in the light of our understanding of grace theology. (Holding on to Old Testament concepts with disregard to New Testament grace is legalism and is deadly.)
Suffering is certainly a part of life, but we are not left without divine resources to support us in and through this suffering. God has made provisions of grace sufficient so that we are enabled not only to endure our inevitable experiences of living under the weight of a fallen world, but also to make the appropriate, essential choices for establishing us in health and happiness.
Don Loy Whisnant, DCC, LCPC/The Grace Perspective #712
God's Purpose for Allowing Brokenness: Rethinking "Can't Miss" Choices
Peter had no business trying to walk on the water. Yet when he was impulsive to try it, rather than stopping him, Christ allowed it. (The word “come” which Christ used in Matthew 14:29 was not an invitation or command to Peter to leave the safety of the boat, but was an expression of permission.) The outcome was not good, except that Peter learned a lesson about himself and his need for Christ. We do not read in Scripture that Peter tried the same stunt again.
The lesson taught is that God does not always stop us from making the impulsive choices we make for ministry which we think are “can’t miss” ideas. For some of us, experiencing the outcome of a wrong choice is the only way we would learn. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit would explain it to us, or send an elder to warn us, and simple as that, we would know not to make that decision.
It is for this reason that God allows sickness, financial burdens, and failed vocational or ministry efforts. During such times we have opportunity to review and analyze the choices that brought us to our brokenness. When we look to God, as Peter did, he is faithful to instruct us and gently guide us in a different direction.
“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word… It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees... I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.” - Psalm 119:67, 71, 75
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.” – Psalm 32:8
Don Loy Whisnant/The Grace Perspective 10C30
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