Embrace the Suffering

I was born and raised in a large Roman Catholic family. As Jim Gaffigan says, we were “Shi’ite Catholic” to the extent we never missed church on Sundays, never ate meat on Fridays in Lent, were quiet on the three hours between noon and 3:00 PM on Good Friday, and went through rigorous religious training growing up. As far as I can remember, until I left home when I was 19 years old, we only missed church twice while growing up. Both times I think we were camping somewhere and the car was broken down.

Camping was one of my dad’s favorite hobbies. He learned about it from the Boy Scouts and really enjoyed it so he thought it would be a great adventure, and an inexpensive one to boot, for our family of eight kids. In the summer time, it was nothing for my dad to come home on Friday afternoon and shout out to us kids, “Load up the trailer”. Another camping trip was about to begin.

Our vacations were always camping trips. And we always found a church to attend on Sundays. Some of my best memories are of an outdoor church at Canyon Dam National Park in Texas, where church service was in an outdoor amphitheater with the birds chirping and the squirrels chattering while the priest said the mass.

I attribute my own relationship with God to the fact that my parents made sure we were always in church on Sunday. When I first went into the US Air Force, I slept in on Sundays, but something always gnawed at me telling me that there was someplace I was supposed to be.

When I started my journey to become a devoted follower of Christ, I was in Austin, Texas. I remember finding an announcement for a Baptist Church and thought, “It’s time to go back to church”. The only thing that was certain was that it would no longer be a Catholic Church.

I finally bowed my knee and asked for forgiveness in September, 1982, at RAF Mildenhall in England and I never let go. I attended at least two church services a week, and later three, for the 3 ½ years I was stationed at RAF Mildenhall. When I left the Air Force in December, 1985, to attend college at East Coast Bible College in North Carolina, that number went to around five services a week. I was hearing the Bible preached continually, including lectures from my professors every day. Suffice it to say that since I asked Christ into my Life, I’ve heard literally hundreds, if not thousands, of sermons on every topic under the sun.

In all that time, I heard some inspiring sermons, some funny sermons, some downright boring sermons (better than Levitra), and some sermons that made me think, “That’s 45 minutes I’ll never get back”. I only remember about two of them over the years. I don’t really remember what the topic of most of them was. But I do remember what the topic was NOT about. No sermon I have ever heard ever talked about embracing the suffering. I heard about ENDURING the suffering. I heard about AVOIDING the suffering. I even heard about what our attitude about the suffering should be.

Unless I read a book by one of the “mystic” writers, embracing the suffering was never a topic of discussion. And that only happened after I became a devoted follower of Christ to the extent that nothing else mattered except what God wanted. The most difficult words that ever came out of my mouth were, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” I would rather eat a thousand pounds of crow (and I’ve eaten my share) than to say those words.

Embracing the suffering is, however, a topic that is throughout the New Testament. Paul speaks of knowing Christ and knowing the “fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3-10, 11) This is a difficult thing to understand. It is a longing for what God want in your life the Way He wants it to happen. James says to consider it Pure Joy when you face trials of many kinds.

Embracing the suffering is more than that. It is allowing that God did NOT make a mistake when He took Jody from me. It was not a slip when He allowed me to have my stroke in 2005. That was no accident when He allowed me to lose my ability to play music or my ability to fly for a living. Losing my house because I could no longer keep up the payments and losing all my dreams and ambitions was NOT a mistake on His part. Embracing the suffering means that God DELIBERATELY took those things from me and it is a good thing.

When God takes one thing from you, it means He has something much better for you somewhere down the road. Maybe not right away. Maybe not for a long time. But somewhere down the road, His plan will work better. Someone once said, “To God, Good is the enemy of the Best.” It means that you’re finally trying to get on the same page with Him, not the other way around.

I wish I could say that if you do this once, it’s a settled deal. Sorry. Think of any trial you’ve only gone through once. Not very often, huh? This one is worse. Why? Because we as human beings are so prone to seek the comfort zone. And the Cross was not a place of comfort. Yet Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”This was such an important part of His message that he stated in Luke 14:27, “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

For some people who are a little older, there was a television show called “Father Knows Best”. In real life, there is a Father in Heaven and he really does know best. This is just the beginning of what Embracing the Suffering means.