Will I Suffer More If I Follow Jesus?
Chapters
0:02:14 Following Jesus Involves Taking Up a Cross
8:42 Five Purposes for Suffering
12:39 How Much Media Is Too Much Media in the Digital Age
00:00:00.000 | Well, why will God allow us to suffer as Christians if that suffering will harm our faith?
00:00:12.160 | It's a question that comes in from an international listener.
00:00:15.000 | Pastor John, hello, my name is Bernice, I'm 21 years old and live in Kenya, East Africa.
00:00:20.920 | My question stems from doubt in God's good nature that crept in while talking to my friend
00:00:25.980 | about trusting God with her life and choosing to follow Jesus above all else.
00:00:30.460 | She won't.
00:00:31.460 | And she won't because she says following God will simply mean additional suffering and
00:00:36.300 | going through more trials that he causes or allows to happen before we can enjoy his goodness.
00:00:46.120 | I wonder if she's right.
00:00:48.040 | Her point of view has made me question God's goodness.
00:00:51.960 | Why would he cause pain to someone who trusted in him completely?
00:00:56.200 | Why would he allow them to suffer in ways that may injure their faith in him?
00:01:01.840 | Why believe if it just opens us up to more suffering?
00:01:06.120 | Bernice's friend understands something almost correctly.
00:01:13.520 | Sometimes "almost" is really good, and sometimes "almost" is a total loss.
00:01:21.680 | If you're playing baseball and you hit a long drive over the outfielder's head and
00:01:28.520 | you almost get a triple but have to settle for a double, everybody's happy.
00:01:35.680 | In baseball, a double is great, so almost a triple is great.
00:01:42.000 | But if you're at bat and you've got two strikes and you swing at the next pitch and you almost
00:01:49.040 | hit the ball, you're out, totally, whether you missed it by a sixteenth of an inch or
00:01:55.160 | by ten inches.
00:01:57.440 | What Bernice's friend sees is that when Jesus calls us to himself, he says, "If anyone would
00:02:06.640 | come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," Mark 8:34.
00:02:14.160 | In other words, following Jesus involves taking up a cross, which is an instrument of suffering
00:02:21.200 | and death.
00:02:22.280 | So she knows that it will be costly to follow Jesus, and this is keeping her away, and that's
00:02:30.400 | tragic.
00:02:31.840 | And I would like to see if I can change her mind and in the process keep Bernice from
00:02:39.760 | going down that dead-end street.
00:02:43.640 | Two things need to be addressed here.
00:02:48.320 | Here's the first one.
00:02:49.320 | She says, "Following God will simply mean additional suffering and going through more
00:02:57.240 | trials than he causes or allows to happen before we can enjoy his goodness.
00:03:04.720 | Why believe if it just opens us up to more suffering?"
00:03:11.240 | Now there are two mistakes in that sentence.
00:03:14.320 | One is quantitative and the other is chronological.
00:03:19.680 | Here's the quantitative problem.
00:03:21.920 | She says, "Following God will simply mean additional suffering.
00:03:27.320 | Why believe if it just opens us to more suffering?"
00:03:33.560 | But twice she says that following Christ is going to result in additional or more suffering.
00:03:44.120 | Now that is quantitatively absolutely not true.
00:03:50.000 | The only reason it sounds true is that it treats the vapor's breath, which we call this
00:03:57.440 | life, as though it were the totality of life, when in fact our life between birth and death
00:04:06.960 | is an infinitesimal fraction of life, which in fact lasts forever.
00:04:14.440 | When you come into existence at the conception in your mother's womb, you begin a life that
00:04:21.800 | never ends.
00:04:24.200 | It goes on forever.
00:04:26.720 | First in this tiny, tiny fraction of life in this world and then forever, either with
00:04:34.320 | joy in the kingdom of God or with misery in hell.
00:04:41.140 | In Matthew 25, 46, Jesus said that the unrighteous will go away into eternal punishment, but
00:04:51.200 | the righteous into eternal life.
00:04:56.640 | Since human existence is eternal, either in the joyful presence of God or the absence
00:05:05.240 | of God under his wrath.
00:05:06.920 | Jesus said in John 3, 36, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
00:05:15.200 | Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."
00:05:23.880 | So back to the sentence that is quantitatively wrong.
00:05:28.360 | It is simply wrong to say that believing in Jesus brings more suffering.
00:05:36.840 | It doesn't.
00:05:38.400 | It brings infinitely less suffering because it rescues from eternal suffering.
00:05:45.840 | Let me say that again.
00:05:48.280 | Believing in Jesus brings infinitely less suffering because it rescues from eternal
00:05:56.240 | suffering.
00:05:57.920 | So the sentence that says following God will simply mean additional suffering is quantitatively
00:06:04.920 | wrong.
00:06:06.320 | It is infinitely wrong.
00:06:08.800 | It is also wrong chronologically to say that becoming a Christian brings more trials before
00:06:17.800 | we can enjoy his goodness.
00:06:19.680 | That's not true.
00:06:21.480 | The very moment that we are born again, that we become Christians, that very moment, the
00:06:29.640 | blindness of Satan is taken away and we see the beauty of Christ.
00:06:37.000 | The burden of guilt in that very moment is lifted from our conscience with every sin
00:06:44.120 | forgiven.
00:06:45.120 | The wrath of God in that moment is taken away from us, removed.
00:06:49.840 | The Holy Spirit is poured into our lives, shedding abroad in our heart the love of God.
00:06:55.840 | The friendship of the King of the universe is ours.
00:07:00.960 | Intimate fellowship with Christ begins.
00:07:04.040 | Bold communication in prayer is open.
00:07:07.600 | Joy that is inexpressible and full of glory is tasted.
00:07:12.560 | All bondages of sin are broken.
00:07:15.720 | Invincible hope is awakened.
00:07:18.920 | The omnipotence of God shifts from being against us to working everything together for our
00:07:25.240 | eternal good.
00:07:27.680 | All of this and more begins the instant we are born again.
00:07:34.020 | It is simply not true to say that becoming a Christian brings more trials before we can
00:07:44.260 | enjoy God's goodness.
00:07:47.140 | It's precisely all this instantaneous goodness that we experience that enables us to bear
00:07:54.420 | the trials.
00:07:55.420 | I said there are two things that needed to be addressed.
00:07:59.300 | That was the first one, the quantitative and chronological mistake of saying that becoming
00:08:04.400 | a Christian means more suffering and that the goodness of God must wait until after
00:08:10.120 | the hardships before it comes.
00:08:12.660 | The second thing that needs to be addressed is the question that Bernice raises.
00:08:17.420 | Why would God cause pain to someone who trusted him completely?
00:08:24.340 | Why would he allow them to suffer in ways that may injure their faith in him?
00:08:30.420 | Now there are at least six biblical, broad, trustworthy, satisfying answers to that question.
00:08:41.180 | I wrote an article at Desiring God called "Five Purposes for Suffering," and just a
00:08:45.860 | few weeks ago I decided I got to add a sixth.
00:08:49.380 | So now I'm thinking in terms of the six broad reasons for Christian suffering.
00:08:56.220 | So you can go to Desiring God and look that up.
00:09:00.620 | And I'm not going to rehearse those now.
00:09:03.540 | What I want to do instead is suggest for Bernice a reorientation of the way she sees the suffering
00:09:13.880 | of believers.
00:09:15.860 | What if instead of seeing Christian suffering as something added to our lives because we
00:09:22.580 | become Christians, we see our suffering as something that up till now was certain and
00:09:30.980 | deserved, but now by the grace of God has become suffering that is made to serve our
00:09:41.060 | salvation?
00:09:43.020 | That is a radical reorientation of the way you see your suffering.
00:09:48.820 | In other words, instead of seeing suffering as something that God randomly adds to your
00:09:54.180 | life, you see suffering as something that you deserved and that was coming for sure
00:10:01.660 | and that would eventually destroy you, but now God as the all-wise, all-powerful, all-compassionate
00:10:10.180 | physician miraculously causes all that suffering to serve us and not destroy us.
00:10:17.740 | For example, 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says he's got this thorn in the flesh that God has given
00:10:25.380 | him.
00:10:26.740 | Without Jesus Christ, that thorn would be entirely destructive.
00:10:32.220 | But because of Christ, even though that thorn is a messenger of Satan, verse 7, God makes
00:10:41.020 | it into an instrument of Paul's sanctification and joy.
00:10:46.820 | When Paul asks that the thorn be taken away, Christ answers, "My grace is sufficient
00:10:54.220 | for you.
00:10:55.660 | My power is made perfect in weakness."
00:10:58.980 | And so Paul responds like this, "Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly"—mark
00:11:07.380 | that word—"I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ
00:11:15.580 | may rest upon me."
00:11:17.740 | In other words, the very suffering that is designed by Satan for our misery and would
00:11:24.780 | result in eternal misery without Christ, that very suffering is turned by God into a means
00:11:33.740 | of our salvation.
00:11:35.900 | So Bernice, I plead with you and your friend, first, when you consider the sufferings of
00:11:43.380 | life, remember that life lasts forever, not just 80 years.
00:11:50.980 | And God gave his Son to restrict your suffering to a tiny fraction of that life and then give
00:11:59.780 | you everlasting joy.
00:12:02.060 | And second, reorient the way you see your sufferings so that you see God turning deserved
00:12:11.900 | and inevitable sufferings into the kind of divine therapy that leads to everlasting health
00:12:21.900 | and joy.
00:12:22.900 | Yeah, radical reorientation is right.
00:12:25.780 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you, Bernice.
00:12:27.840 | You can ask a question of your own, search through our growing archive, or subscribe
00:12:32.740 | to the podcast.
00:12:33.740 | You can do all that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:12:39.620 | But how much media is too much media?
00:12:43.380 | In the digital age, this is a question we all face all the time, and it's the dilemma
00:12:47.300 | faced by a young woman who listens to the podcast and writes in.
00:12:50.500 | The friends and family around her have a very high tolerance for media, lots of TV, lots
00:12:56.120 | of gaming, but she doesn't have a high tolerance for lots of TV and video games, and it's raising
00:13:01.140 | relationship tensions.
00:13:02.460 | We're going to talk about those tensions next time.
00:13:05.180 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you back here on Monday.
00:13:08.500 | [end]
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