Are We Called to Thank God for Our Severest Suffering?

00:00:00.000 | A podcast listener named Kathy writes in, "Pastor John, I just finished listening to

00:00:08.840 | the recent APJ episode titled 'Glorifying God in Unshakable Grief.'

00:00:13.480 | Before I ask my question, may I first say thank you, Pastor John, to you and to Pastor

00:00:17.280 | Tom Steller for the years I spent at Bethlehem Baptist Church in the 1980s and early 1990s,

00:00:23.720 | during which time I was well taught by you both and grounded in the sovereignty of God.

00:00:29.120 | That foundation has been crucial for my coping in recent years.

00:00:32.840 | My youngest son, Josiah, was diagnosed with bone cancer in July 2013 at the age of 12,

00:00:38.840 | and the period of his treatment was really hard, full of intense pain and sickness for

00:00:43.440 | him and anxiety for us all.

00:00:46.440 | By the end of his treatment in September 2014, we thought he had come through it.

00:00:49.960 | However, at his first post-treatment check, we were told that his cancer had returned,

00:00:55.200 | riddled his lungs, and he died in April 2015 at the age of 14.

00:01:01.640 | I am thankful that the Lord had given Josiah a faith that enabled him to face death without

00:01:07.120 | fear and I have confidence that Josiah is now with Jesus.

00:01:11.040 | And I hold onto the truth that in some way this is part of a plan that makes sense.

00:01:15.360 | But the grief has frequently felt unbearable and now, just over two years later, it still

00:01:19.800 | comes crashing in waves that at times feel impossible to withstand.

00:01:25.060 | My question comes from something I read recently in your book, Future Grace.

00:01:28.680 | At the end of chapter 2, you write, "When faith in God's future grace is strong, the

00:01:33.040 | message is sent that this kind of God makes no mistakes, so that everything he has done

00:01:38.640 | in the past is part of a good plan and can be remembered with gratitude.

00:01:45.400 | Only if we trust God to turn past calamities into future comfort can we look back with

00:01:49.920 | gratitude for all things."

00:01:54.920 | Gratitude for all things is my question.

00:01:57.140 | I can say thank you Lord for being with us during Josiah's suffering, but it is difficult

00:02:01.540 | for me to say thank you Lord for Josiah's suffering.

00:02:05.400 | I can't get there, certainly not on an emotional level.

00:02:09.380 | Can you help me see what it looks like or feels like to be able to say thank you God

00:02:14.240 | for this deep suffering?

00:02:17.860 | I will try.

00:02:19.080 | But first, let me overflow with praise.

00:02:25.380 | And this praise really is part of the answer.

00:02:29.980 | First, my heart, Kathy, is rising up in praise to God for your words.

00:02:40.360 | I am thankful that the Lord had given Josiah a face that enabled him to face death without

00:02:49.860 | fear.

00:02:51.280 | That is a staggering miracle.

00:02:54.940 | There are millions of professing Christians who claim to have walked with God for years

00:03:01.820 | who don't come close to that kind of faith.

00:03:06.280 | Few things, if any, cause me to stand in awe of the grace of God more than a 14-year-old

00:03:14.980 | with genuine faith, real, authentic faith that gives him the peace in the hour of death.

00:03:26.300 | That is glory upon glory upon glory, and I say it not oblivious of the horror upon horror

00:03:35.540 | upon horror of the process of dying, and perhaps a worse experience for a mom watching a child

00:03:45.540 | die.

00:03:46.540 | In fact, it's the horror of it that makes the faith so unspeakably amazing.

00:03:55.000 | That's my first overflow of praise.

00:03:58.220 | And my second one is for your words, Kathy, I hold on to the truth that in some way this

00:04:06.180 | is part of a plan that makes sense.

00:04:09.060 | Well, that holding on to God's Word is another amazing miracle of God's grace, which I suppose

00:04:19.740 | in a mother's heart is only a little less marvelous than her son's own faith.

00:04:26.580 | So Kathy, let it sink in right now that what you have been through and what Josiah went

00:04:34.260 | through is right now in my heart here in Minneapolis in 2017, in my mouth of praise and on this

00:04:44.660 | podcast reverberating out to thousands around the world, what is here is the reason the

00:04:52.660 | universe exists, namely praise to the glory of the grace of God in and through your family.

00:05:01.420 | Realize that.

00:05:02.940 | And then, Kathy, let me draw out an implication from something the Apostle Paul said that

00:05:11.980 | you are very familiar with but maybe haven't thought of in quite this way.

00:05:17.380 | You remember that he reminded the Thessalonians about deceased believers and the second coming.

00:05:25.940 | He said it was a glorious thing, namely the second coming and their resurrection, and

00:05:33.220 | it is so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

00:05:39.140 | First Thessalonians 4.13.

00:05:40.900 | Now, we sometimes cite this at funerals to give permission to believers to grieve, and

00:05:48.260 | that's exactly right.

00:05:49.820 | We should.

00:05:51.100 | But what is not as often noticed, I think, is that the word "grieve" in the Greek is

00:05:57.140 | a present tense which implies that grieving is not a moment.

00:06:01.900 | It is not an event.

00:06:04.480 | It is ongoing experience.

00:06:08.420 | That's the implication, a continuing activity, which I think means that when you say the

00:06:15.980 | grief has frequently felt unbearable and now, just over two years later, it still comes

00:06:23.700 | crashing in waves that at times feel impossible to withstand, Paul would know exactly what

00:06:33.180 | you mean, just as I know what you mean, and he would say, "I spoke these words for that

00:06:40.580 | grief as well."

00:06:42.820 | You will be grieving Josiah's death the rest of your life because his loss to you and all

00:06:54.180 | the potentialities of his life which were lost will be real and lost for the rest of

00:07:03.300 | your life.

00:07:05.540 | Grief is not a moment.

00:07:07.780 | Grief is an emotional experience of painful loss, and that loss never ceases to be lost

00:07:15.100 | in this world.

00:07:18.380 | So Kathy, we're already deep into answering your all-important question, namely, can you

00:07:25.180 | help me see what it looks like or feels like to be able to say thank you for this kind

00:07:36.260 | of suffering?

00:07:38.860 | Saying thank you for Josiah's loss, God's strange timing in taking your precious son,

00:07:48.540 | does not mean that this was not a massive loss.

00:07:53.900 | That's the first part of the answer that we've already seen.

00:07:56.620 | It is a loss worthy of being grieved until the day you die, and it is possible.

00:08:03.500 | This is the mystery.

00:08:04.500 | It is possible, emotionally possible by the work of the Holy Spirit, the kind, powerful,

00:08:10.700 | gentle Holy Spirit.

00:08:12.220 | It is possible to feel thankful for something painful while being almost emotionally overwhelmed

00:08:19.260 | by the pain.

00:08:20.260 | Yes, it is.

00:08:21.260 | Now, there are two more things I want to say about that, but before I say them, my guess

00:08:27.820 | is there are some listeners, Kathy, who heard your question, and they're saying, "Oh, whoa,

00:08:33.300 | whoa, whoa, she misquoted the Bible when she asked about being thankful for this horrible

00:08:39.740 | thing instead of being thankful in it."

00:08:43.540 | But of course, you know and I know that you are right.

00:08:47.660 | It is both.

00:08:49.780 | First Thessalonians 5.18, "Give thanks in all circumstances."

00:08:57.580 | Ephesians 5.20, "Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name

00:09:06.420 | of the Lord Jesus."

00:09:07.820 | You know what you're talking about.

00:09:09.400 | It's a real question, and you're right to ask it.

00:09:12.540 | So here are my two last things that are on my heart to say.

00:09:19.060 | First, God knows what it is like to give His Son in horrible suffering and death.

00:09:26.820 | Romans 8.32 says, "He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all."

00:09:33.540 | And in those words, "He did not spare," we are supposed to hear something of God's heart

00:09:40.420 | in the giving and the loss of His Son in suffering and death.

00:09:45.940 | And then we read in verse 8 of chapter 5, God shows His love for us in that while we

00:09:52.540 | were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

00:09:55.660 | Now, when we put those two passages together, the love of God for us is magnified both by

00:10:04.020 | the immeasurable cost in God's losing His Son in death and by the fact that He embraced

00:10:12.100 | this loss for people who didn't deserve it.

00:10:16.100 | Few things make my blood boil more than hearing leaders of God's people describe this greatest

00:10:28.620 | act of love for us as cosmic Chaldebes.

00:10:34.860 | We live in a horrible, horrible, horrible world.

00:10:48.820 | And I say that even as this very moment, I am looking out my window on a gorgeous, bright,

00:10:59.660 | beautiful summer day with a magnificent green shining maple tree in my front yard and through

00:11:09.660 | it a beautiful cityscape of Minneapolis just beyond.

00:11:14.940 | And in this room, air conditioning in my own home, and as I sit here, believe it or not,

00:11:22.020 | at age 71, not one pain in my body as I record this.

00:11:28.860 | But when I look at the cross, I conclude either this world is horrible, horrible, horrible

00:11:39.580 | in the bondage of eternally damning sin, or the death of the Son of God was a wild overreaction

00:11:49.460 | or a myth.

00:11:51.540 | Well, God be praised.

00:11:54.960 | It was not an overreaction.

00:11:58.660 | And it is not a myth.

00:12:01.580 | God really does have an infinitely precious Son.

00:12:05.660 | He really does love Him beyond all imagining, and He really did give Him up, did not spare

00:12:15.100 | Him in death for undeserving sinners.

00:12:20.140 | And He, in the loss of His Son, knows what you feel.

00:12:27.220 | One more thing.

00:12:28.460 | What does it feel like to be thankful for a painful loss?

00:12:33.060 | And the last thing I want to say is it changes, Kathy, over time what it feels like.

00:12:39.740 | I'm talking about the feeling of thankfulness now, not the unchangeable, objective reality

00:12:45.840 | of God's good and wise purposes, which you are holding fast to.

00:12:52.180 | Consider the analogy of chemotherapy for a fatal and malignant tumor that you have.

00:12:59.980 | Suppose the doctor can assure you, and I know this is imaginary, but let's do it.

00:13:07.100 | Suppose the doctor can assure you that if you endure these treatments, you will be cancer-free.

00:13:15.340 | And as you begin, the tumor is the size of a baseball.

00:13:20.780 | You lose your hair.

00:13:23.220 | You break out in horrible rashes.

00:13:26.440 | You experience nausea most of the day, week after week.

00:13:31.740 | Your mind is confused.

00:13:33.900 | You are so weak you can scarcely drag yourself through the day.

00:13:37.760 | Your face changes color and you look like you're almost dead already, and you're supposed

00:13:43.060 | to be thankful for this treatment.

00:13:46.660 | Now at first, that feeling of thankfulness is simply the emotional confidence you have

00:13:56.940 | in the doctor's promise, not much more.

00:14:00.940 | But three months later, after a CAT scan, he says the tumor has shrunk to the size of

00:14:08.460 | a walnut and something happens to your feeling of gratitude in the midst of all that pain.

00:14:16.400 | It takes on a new emotional possibility.

00:14:19.140 | And when you go in three months later and he says, "No trace of cancer," your feelings

00:14:25.620 | about those horrible treatments are very different.

00:14:31.280 | And all I'm saying by that analogy, don't press every point of it, all I'm saying is

00:14:39.140 | that the feeling of gratitude for something horrible changes over time with greater and

00:14:49.760 | greater closeness of God and the revelation of what he's doing.

00:14:54.940 | Two years after the loss of your son is a very short time.

00:15:02.720 | Hold fast to the doctor's promise.

00:15:06.560 | He will show you little by little, though not entirely in this life, what he's doing.

00:15:12.320 | Thank you, Pastor John, for those God-centered words, pastorally applied with care and with

00:15:18.120 | tenderness.

00:15:19.120 | And Kathy, thanks for the well-articulated question, really painful but good and helpful.

00:15:24.120 | Thank you for putting your story and your struggle into words for all of us.

00:15:27.600 | And thank you for joining us.

00:15:29.400 | Thanks for listening.

00:15:30.400 | Three times a week, we publish this podcast.

00:15:31.840 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our episode archive.

00:15:34.640 | And reach us by email with a question you may be facing as you process personal suffering

00:15:38.200 | and all of its pain and mess and complexity in your own life.

00:15:42.200 | Do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:15:44.840 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:15:48.600 | We will see you back here on Wednesday.

00:15:50.680 | [END]

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Are We Called to Thank God for Our Severest Suffering?

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