How Does Chronic Pain Glorify God?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | We have a heavy question today
00:00:06.300 | about unalleviated chronic pain.
00:00:09.940 | And it comes from an anonymous man
00:00:11.800 | who listens to the podcast.
00:00:13.560 | Pastor John, hello, thank you for this podcast
00:00:15.320 | and thank you for taking my question.
00:00:17.160 | My mother, a believer, struggles with debilitating,
00:00:21.160 | very debilitating nerve pain
00:00:24.740 | and can get no medical relief
00:00:26.040 | from anything doctors have tried.
00:00:27.380 | She suffers endlessly.
00:00:30.160 | How does such unalleviated suffering glorify God
00:00:33.760 | when it seems that God refuses to answer
00:00:37.700 | any of our prayers for mercy?
00:00:40.120 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:00:41.720 | On the night before Jesus' crucifixion,
00:00:47.000 | after Judas had gone out,
00:00:49.760 | Peter said to Jesus,
00:00:51.340 | "Lord, where are you going?"
00:00:55.600 | And Jesus answered him, "Where I am going,
00:00:58.760 | you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward."
00:01:01.600 | Peter said, "Lord, why can I not follow you now?
00:01:07.880 | I will lay down my life for you."
00:01:10.400 | And Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me?
00:01:13.200 | Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow
00:01:17.660 | till you have denied me three times."
00:01:19.520 | And that is in fact what happened.
00:01:22.840 | Peter denied three times that he knew Jesus
00:01:25.280 | and he wept bitterly as he realized the horror
00:01:28.440 | of what he had done.
00:01:30.080 | Now, it's several weeks later.
00:01:33.240 | Jesus has risen from the dead.
00:01:35.040 | He's on the beach at Sea of Galilee with his apostles
00:01:39.400 | and he focuses attention on Peter
00:01:41.360 | who had failed so badly three times.
00:01:44.200 | And he draws out of Peter
00:01:47.840 | three corresponding affirmations of love
00:01:51.260 | that rectify his three denials.
00:01:55.620 | Here's the way John described it.
00:01:57.260 | Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John,
00:01:59.620 | do you love me more than these?"
00:02:01.900 | He said, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
00:02:05.460 | He said, "Feed my lambs."
00:02:07.620 | He said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John,
00:02:09.820 | do you love me?"
00:02:11.580 | He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
00:02:14.780 | He said to him, "Shepherd my sheep."
00:02:17.580 | He said to him a third time, "Simon, son of John,
00:02:19.740 | do you love me?"
00:02:21.580 | Peter was grieved because he said to him a third time,
00:02:24.020 | "Do you love me?"
00:02:25.020 | And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything.
00:02:28.140 | You know that I love you."
00:02:29.620 | Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep."
00:02:32.180 | And remember now, before Peter denied Jesus three times,
00:02:36.900 | Jesus had said, "You cannot follow me now.
00:02:40.700 | You can't go with me where I'm going,
00:02:42.820 | but you will follow me afterward."
00:02:45.780 | And now we can see why Peter could not yet follow Jesus.
00:02:50.780 | He didn't love him the way he should,
00:02:53.740 | but now Jesus has drawn out of Peter new,
00:02:58.060 | deeper, unshakable love.
00:03:01.020 | He who has forgiven much loves much.
00:03:04.900 | And then he says these ominous words.
00:03:06.980 | And if you wonder, how does this relate to the question?
00:03:09.900 | Maybe you'll start to hear it.
00:03:12.260 | When you were young, you used to dress yourself, Peter,
00:03:16.300 | walk wherever you wanted.
00:03:18.300 | And when you are old, you're gonna stretch out your hands
00:03:21.940 | and another will dress you,
00:03:23.660 | carry you where you do not want to go.
00:03:26.700 | Now he's speaking of his crucifixion,
00:03:28.420 | and so it adds this, verse 19, John 21, 19.
00:03:33.420 | This he said to show by what kind of death
00:03:39.220 | he was to glorify God.
00:03:41.540 | And after saying this, he said, "Follow me."
00:03:47.260 | In other words, Peter, now you're ready.
00:03:51.020 | You are going to be crucified.
00:03:53.420 | You're gonna follow me all the way, all the way down.
00:03:57.820 | Once I said, "You cannot follow me now,"
00:04:00.460 | you couldn't because your love was defective.
00:04:03.420 | But now you have said three times, and you are right.
00:04:07.460 | I affirm it, you love me, your love is great for me.
00:04:11.260 | Therefore, you will follow me all the way to your cross.
00:04:14.900 | And then he added, "By this death, you will glorify God."
00:04:20.860 | Now this must have been incredibly sobering for Peter.
00:04:25.720 | So, Jesus, I have proven myself
00:04:31.140 | that I am genuinely repentant,
00:04:35.800 | and you have accepted me.
00:04:38.620 | You say that my love for you is real and deep,
00:04:42.060 | and what I get is the promise of an excruciating death,
00:04:45.980 | all to the glory of God?
00:04:48.820 | And I ask, me, John Piper, ask,
00:04:54.200 | what if Jesus had said, "When you were young, Peter,
00:04:58.820 | you walked about with a pain-free life,
00:05:03.300 | but now that you have proven your love for me
00:05:07.100 | and that your repentance is real,
00:05:10.500 | and you are ready to serve me,
00:05:13.680 | now you're gonna spend the last 20 years of your life
00:05:17.400 | in unremitting pain, to the glory of God."
00:05:21.060 | That is, in fact, what Jesus says to many Christians.
00:05:27.160 | Think of it, Christians all over the world,
00:05:31.000 | authentic Christians, real Christians, loving Christians,
00:05:33.940 | penitent Christians, millions of them,
00:05:36.440 | suffering every imaginable kind of sorrow and loss
00:05:40.340 | and oppression and persecution and pain and disease.
00:05:44.260 | Remember how Paul said,
00:05:46.540 | "What can separate us from the love of Christ?"
00:05:49.060 | And then he listed all the threats to our faith,
00:05:51.620 | tribulation, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword,
00:05:55.980 | and he could have added, or long drawn out, pain.
00:06:00.980 | And if Peter's final torture by crucifixion
00:06:04.940 | could be described by Jesus in advance
00:06:09.260 | as for the glory of God,
00:06:12.500 | then all of our suffering can and should be endured
00:06:16.780 | for the glory of God.
00:06:19.320 | And so we ask, how can that be?
00:06:21.860 | And the Bible gives many pointers,
00:06:25.640 | but I'll just mention two.
00:06:28.060 | And believe me, I know that mentioning them
00:06:32.040 | is a thousand times easier
00:06:33.740 | than living them through suffering,
00:06:36.000 | but I'm called to say what the Bible says.
00:06:39.340 | And so here it is.
00:06:41.520 | Number one, first, when we suffer without cursing God,
00:06:46.520 | without forsaking Christ,
00:06:51.260 | declaring ourselves to be his friend and servant
00:06:55.460 | and disciple and follower and a great lover
00:06:59.820 | of his glory and faithfulness,
00:07:03.140 | we make plain to others that having Christ
00:07:08.060 | is more precious to us than having freedom from pain.
00:07:12.180 | The pain, in fact, becomes a suffering with Christ
00:07:17.180 | because we are walking with him,
00:07:20.020 | we are holding fast to him in the midst of our suffering
00:07:24.740 | rather than throwing him away because of our pain.
00:07:29.500 | In this way, the trustworthiness and the value
00:07:33.500 | and the goodness and the wisdom and the power of Christ
00:07:36.420 | is affirmed and made clear simply by our faithful endurance
00:07:41.420 | in reliance upon his inscrutable grace.
00:07:47.100 | This is the way Paul fought his own battle.
00:07:52.500 | He said in Philippians 1,
00:07:55.400 | "My aim is that Christ will be magnified in my body by death,
00:08:00.400 | for to me to die is gain."
00:08:05.940 | In other words, not throwing away Christ
00:08:09.460 | in the sorrows and pain of dying,
00:08:12.620 | even long-drawn-out dying,
00:08:15.620 | magnifies Christ as greater gain than life.
00:08:22.260 | And the second way our suffering can glorify God
00:08:26.340 | is when we endure it by trusting the promise
00:08:30.140 | of 2 Corinthians 4:17, which is even more amazing
00:08:35.140 | than the one we've already seen from Philippians 1:20
00:08:39.400 | about honoring God in our death by counting death gain.
00:08:42.820 | Paul looked at his whole life of suffering
00:08:48.460 | and it was remarkable.
00:08:49.820 | Just read 2 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 4.
00:08:54.820 | He said, "This light momentary affliction
00:08:59.220 | is preparing for us, that is producing for us
00:09:04.140 | an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."
00:09:08.020 | In other words, when we can see no benefit
00:09:12.620 | coming from our suffering on earth,
00:09:15.960 | the Bible directs our attention away from earth
00:09:18.780 | and says, "These many years of suffering
00:09:22.620 | are not meaningless, they are not pointless,
00:09:26.620 | they are not in vain, they are actually producing."
00:09:31.620 | That's the actual meaning of the Greek word preparing.
00:09:36.540 | They are producing, they are bringing about,
00:09:40.260 | they are producing a greater and greater weight of glory.
00:09:45.140 | That's more than saying to die is gain.
00:09:48.980 | That's saying the long drawn out pain of dying
00:09:54.860 | is producing greater gain.
00:09:57.980 | With every bolt of pain, we can say,
00:10:01.940 | if we have the consciousness to do it,
00:10:04.860 | "God will make it up to us, he will make it up to me,
00:10:08.980 | it will not be wasted in heaven,
00:10:11.060 | we will look back on all those years
00:10:13.460 | of seemingly meaningless sorrows and pains
00:10:16.700 | and say, it was worth it, he has made it worth it."
00:10:21.700 | So I pray for the dear mother of our anonymous friend,
00:10:26.940 | Father, would you give her relief?
00:10:33.940 | Yes, would you give her relief in the name of Jesus?
00:10:40.900 | And until then, keep her faith from wavering
00:10:45.900 | because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.
00:10:50.700 | - Thank you, Pastor John, it's very sobering.
00:10:53.540 | Thank you for listening today.
00:10:55.420 | You can ask a question of your own,
00:10:57.020 | you can search through or browse all 1,600
00:10:59.420 | of our past episodes, or you can subscribe to the podcast,
00:11:01.820 | you can do all that online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:06.820 | On Monday, we take on another sobering email.
00:11:10.580 | It's a question from a young man who grew up
00:11:12.820 | in an abusive and dysfunctional family.
00:11:17.340 | How will this affect his relationship with God
00:11:19.620 | and what hope does he have for future healing
00:11:22.780 | and for future success?
00:11:24.460 | It's a really important topic.
00:11:26.420 | Up next time on Monday, I'm your host, Tony Rehnke.
00:11:29.260 | Have a great weekend and we'll see you then.
00:11:31.300 | (upbeat music)
00:11:33.900 | (upbeat music)
00:11:36.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]