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Why Are You Suffering – Part 1
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 549 aired on February 28, 2016
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I’d like to ask you to stay with me. We’re going to have a small bit of time of motivation,
some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and we will do this without any type of manipulation.
We don’t manipulate people. We don’t hustle people. We’re not going to ask you for money.
We’re not going to ask you to join up. We’re not going to ask you to fess up, give up, nothing
like this. We are going to ask you to listen up, that’s all. Listen as I try to explain to you the most
amazing life in this world. It’s called the Christian life, it’s an amazing thing. It’s the most
powerful life that anyone could live because we have some operating assets that people have no
clue what they are. And when you live this life, when you orient and adjust to this sort of life, if I
can verify it and identify it here on this radio show, if you can orient and adjust to it, you will not
believe the way that you will be able to live. You’ll be able to stop the outside pressures of
adversity before they ever even become the inside sources of stress and it’s an amazing life. Jesus
Christ, the anointed Son of God, our Lord and Savior demonstrated this life when He walked on
this earth. He became a man and walked among us. And the unique thing about Him was He was
undiminished deity and still true humanity, the God-man, one body forever. Theologians call it
the hypostatic union, the God-man, one body forever and He’s in heaven today in a body, a
resurrection body. The amazing thing is we are going to get a resurrection body also if we are
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ because you know the Bible says,
“It is appointed unto man
once to die, and then after that the judgment.”
I don’t think any of us here can escape death. It’s
inevitable, it’s going to happen and so after this happens, what will you do? Where will you be?
That’s a good question to answer. Hopefully you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and
received Him as your Savior. You can’t work your way to heaven, that’s impossible. That’s called
a works salvation and it’s amazing to me how many people think that God will judge them based
on how good they are because the Bible says,
“Not by works of righteousness which we have
done,”
it’s not possible. The Bible says,
“For by grace are we saved through faith. It’s a gift
from God.”
So if God is absolutely perfect, let’s look at it this way. If God is absolutely
righteous, 100% righteous and we, what do we have? Well, the Bible says,
“There are none that
are righteous, no, not even one.”
We are 100% minus righteousness. How could we ever, if we
are minus any righteousness whatsoever, how could we ever gain God’s favor by giving money
or taking a mission trip or being faithful to our spouse or not cheating on our taxes? Why would
you think this could earn you a trip to heaven? If this was possible, there wouldn’t have been any
need for Jesus Christ to come and give His life as a ransom for us. But the Bible clearly says,
“He who knew no sin was made sin for us.”
He paid the penalty and when we receive Christ as
our Savior, it is the simplest thing in the world. Paul told the Roman jailer in Acts 16,
“Believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house also.”
In other words, your house
also should believe in Christ and be saved as well. It is the most amazing thing. When I entered
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into the Christian life I had no idea, not a clue what awaited me. I had no idea that God had given
me a spiritual gift. I had no idea about the filling of the Holy Spirit. I knew nothing about the
Bible. I mean I did go to Bible college and I was fresh off of being converted, straight out of
college and had been out of college for a few years and became a Christian and enrolled in Bible
college and they asked us questions, 100 questions to see what you knew about the Bible. I think
I got one answer right, “What color is the Bible?” and I said black. That’s about it. I knew
nothing and yet God in His wonderful grace gave me a phenomenal pastor, a mentor who taught
me and fed me. As I sat and listened to him and others that fed me God’s Word, I grew. I learned
what it meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I learned what it meant to become a mature
Christian and how to grow in grace and the knowledge of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and I
still grow today. I have not arrived. I still study every day and I study under a qualified pastor. I
am not a pastor, I’m an evangelist and so I sit under a pastor that is well-qualified to teach me.
And as I listen and take notes and learn and make the application into my life, I continue to grow
in grace, that’s my objective. This phenomenal life that I’m talking to you about, you have two
things that are unequaled anywhere, you can have the filling of God the Holy Spirit and you can
have the dynamics of the living Word of God. If you use these you have an advantage over other
people that are unbelievers, I call them disadvantaged people, they don’t have these assets. They
don’t have the insight the Holy Spirit can give you. They don’t have the motivation the Holy
Spirit can put in you. They don’t have the 7,000 promises God gave you found in the Bible.
When you add the ministry of God the Holy Spirit to your life and you add the ministry of God’s
Word to your life, you have unequaled privileges. The assets are phenomenal and that’s why you
can live the most unique life in the world. It’s called the Christian life, a life where you don’t ever
have to worry or ever have to be afraid, a life where you never have to be bitter and angry, a life
where you never get into vindictive revenge, a life where you’re never implacable, it’s an
amazing life. You can even love the worst person in the world. I mean, didn’t God love you? Oh,
well you weren’t the worst person in the world were you? Yes, God loved everybody and how do
I know this? The Bible says,
“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that
whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
He even loves the people
that you don’t want to vote for, He loves them. Christ died for them as He died for everybody. He
paid for the sins of everybody and it’s possible for me, even though I might not like somebody, to
have this unique power in my life called impersonal love. It is one of our problem-solving
devices on the FLOT line of our soul and if we have impersonal love, we can love even a jerk,
even a weirdo the same way God loves you. I know you’re not a weirdo, right? Perhaps a jerk but
God loves you, God loves me. I’m a jerk, I’ll admit it. If it wasn’t for God’s sense of humor,
would we not already be a greasy spot somewhere? Sure He loves us and sure He gives us
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord and then once we accept Christ as our Savior, we take
off on this fantastic journey. We are called sojourners that are moving through time. Our home is
not here, it’s in heaven,
ouranos
is the Greek word, heaven. We don’t belong here. We are headed
that way to heaven, wide open and before you know it you’re going to look back and you’re
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going to say, “Where did the last 50 years go?” It will just be a memory. You’ll look back and
say, “Wow, I’m 70,” and “Wow,” if you make it, “I’m 80,” and then you’ll know you’re closing in
on the finish lap. You’re about to run the last lap of the race, aren’t you? There’s no need to be
afraid and no need to worry because the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be face-to-
face with the Lord where there is,
“No more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain. The old things
are passed away.”
It is amazing, you and I will see sights we’ve never seen. We will hear things
we’ve never heard. We’ve always been confined to this earth. We’ve seen planets of this earth but
you haven’t seen the rest of the universe. You only know the colors that are here but you don’t
know the rest of the colors and the rest of the sounds and you’ll know all of this in heaven. You’ll
have a chance to be reunited with the ones that you love, the ones that loved you and prayed for
you and have gone on before you and you will see them. Maybe, if you learn God’s Word, if you
operate under God’s plan, maybe you might hear the Lord Jesus Christ Himself say these words,
“Well done My good and My faithful servant.”
Today I want to talk to about something that’s
critical, I want to talk to you about something called suffering. The Bible says in Job 14:1 that,
“Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble,”
and there’s no doubt about this.
The Hebrew word for trouble is
rogez
and it means full of agitation, turmoil, and rage. Yes, that’s
us, that’s you, that’s me. We all came from a woman. None of us came out of the twilight zone
and we don’t have a whole lot of days and they are days of trouble. The Bible says in Job 5:7,
“Yet man is born into trouble as sparks fly upward.”
That’s called thermodynamics. The heat of
the night on the campfire, the sparks fly upwards and we are destined for trouble in our life. Do
you know the reason for this? Do you know the reason that each person has trouble? Because we
are infected with Adam’s original sin, we have a genetically formed sin nature. It’s passed down
through the man, there’s no doubt about this. That’s why it’s important that you understand Jesus
Christ the anointed Son of God had no man involved in His conception. It was a miracle
conception. Had He had a man involved in His conception, then He would have received Adam’s
original sin also, but He didn’t. He was virgin born and thus He came, called the Second Adam,
never having sinned,
“The Lamb of God without spot and without blemish that takes away the
sin of the world.”
You and I, we have a sin nature because you and I have an earthly father and
earthly mother and we came through the normal process of birth. Now Paul talks about this sin
nature deal in Romans 7:15 where he says,
“For that which I do, I allow not. For what I would,
that do I not, but what I hate, that do I.”
Does it ever seem like you were two different people,
that you want to do what’s right and inevitably you do what’s wrong? Do you ever get frustrated
at yourself? This is why, you have in you a sin nature. If you don’t believe me, let me ask you
this question. When you were born, who sat you down and told you how to tell a lie? Who sat
you down and taught you how to be jealous? Who sat you down and taught you how to take
something that wasn’t yours? It’s inherent. You know it and if you don’t believe me, ask a parent
that raises children and they will tell you this. They didn’t teach them to do this, it’s that sin
nature. Romans 5:12 says,
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world and death by
sin and now death has passed upon all, for all have sinned.”
Uh-huh, you and I, we are born
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physically alive but spiritually dead. That’s why we are told that we need to be born again. Born
again physically? No, born again spiritually. When we are born again God the Holy Spirit comes
to live in our human spirit and we are born again. Our human spirit that was dead is reactivated.
We now have a body, soul, and spirit and Romans 5:15 says this
, “Not as the offense, so also the
free gift. For through the offense of one man, many are dead, then much more the grace of God
and the gift by grace which is by one Man, Jesus Christ has abounded into many.”
So one man,
Adam, brought the world into sin and one God-man, Jesus, brought salvation and eternal life to
those who would receive Him. Now if you are a believer in Jesus Christ and if you have accepted
Him as your Savior, your suffering and my suffering can be divided into two separate categories.
First there is suffering for blessing, I know this sounds a little weird but it’s true.
All suffering is
designed for blessing, but there’s also something called suffering for discipline.
If you are
suffering in your life, if you’re currently suffering financial burdens or if you’re currently
suffering physical burdens or whatever, let’s try to determine why you’re going through this.
Let’s look first at suffering for discipline, Hebrews 12:6 the Bible says,
“For whom the Lord
loves, He chastens,”
paideuo,
the Greek word, we get an English word paddle,
“and scourgeth.”
Scourgeth is an interesting word,
mastigoo,
and this means He scourges with a whip. I’ll give
you the insight on this one,
“He scourges every son that He receives.”
If I read this out of the
new American Standard Bible it goes like this,
“For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines
and He scourges every son that He receives.”
Scourging is described in the Mishnah, the
addendum to the Law as the use of three thongs of leather. The offender that was scourged
received 13 stripes on the bare breast and then 13 on each of his shoulders for a total of 39
lashes. I don’t know if you remember this but Paul the apostle said he received 39 lashes five
different times. In 2 Corinthians 11:24,
“Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes.”
They
were not exactly fond of Paul and they sought to kill him as they did our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 6:4 speaks of a parent disciplining their child. Here’s what it says,
“Fathers, do not
provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the
Lord.”
This word discipline is
paideia,
it’s our same word that we have where it says,
“The Lord
disciplines those that He loves.”
You know,
paideia
or paddle means to put something on their
rear end. When you have a child and this child directly violates authority, if you tell this child,
“Do not go across that street,” and the child goes across the street and sticks his tongue out at
you, what do you do? Are you going to say, “Oh, little Johnny, I’m going to put you in timeout,”
or do you go get little Johnny, bring him home, shut the door and paddle him? I hope you do this
because that’s how you break his arrogance. Not abuse him, no I’m not saying you abuse him but
he must understand. No pain, no gain, I promise you. I mean generations of Americans have been
paddled for years and they were amazing Americans. I got paddled in school all the time. It
didn’t make me a weirdo or a pervert because my principal paddled me or my boys’ advisor
paddled me or my coach paddled me. It made me show up, shut up, and obey. This is how we
teach authority orientation, God put it in the Bible, it’s right here.
“Raise them up in the
discipline
[Ephesians 6:4]
and the instruction.”
This is a different word, it’s not paddle, it’s not
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paideia,
it’s
nouthesia
from the word
nous,
N.O.U.S.,
mind. So it means to put something in their
mind. The way that children learn, sometimes you have to put it on their fanny and sometimes
you have to put it in their head, and the difference is this. When a child directly violates authority
and then won’t obey in any shape or form whatsoever, that’s when the paddle comes but if the
child makes a mistake, a bona fide genuine goofy mistake as children will do, then you teach
them. You don’t paddle them, then you teach them. Many parents that get angry and upset over
mistakes that children make and lash out in anger to paddle them, are abusing these children.
There’s a better way to teach them. So there are times to paddle and there are times to sit down
and train and that’s when you say, “You need to go in your room and think about what you did
because what you did was not good.” Listen, this is what God does to you. You think God won’t
paddle you? You think God won’t take you to the woodshed? He will. “Bauer’s Lexicon”
concerning this word
paideia
says, “This relates to the cultivation of the mind and the morals
that God employs for this purpose. He now commands and admonishes re-proof and
punishment.” Yes, God does reprove us and God does punish us. You see, just as a parent
administers discipline in order to teach authority orientation, our Heavenly Father does exactly
the same thing to each one of us when we break fellowship with Him by disobeying His Word.
You see, without discipline we would all self-destruct. Why? We have an arrogant sin nature and
our arrogant sin nature always wants to justify why we’re right and God’s wrong. You might
have done this in your life. You might have said, “I know God said, ‘Don’t do this,’ but He’s
wrong. There’s nothing wrong with this.” I hear it every day, I hear it in the lives of people who
want to marry the wrong person, who want to seek the wrong career, who want to do the wrong
thing. They justify why it’s okay. They may say, “Well you know, we love each other. Why can’t
we do whatever?” That’s self-justification and without discipline you will self-destruct. I am
telling you, if you are a child of God and you have believed in Jesus Christ, part of the suffering
you’re going through may be divine discipline in your life. You will have to figure this out. For
the believer, this discipline will come in three stages. The first stage is warning and there’s no
pain associated with this. The second stage is intense and that’s where God can really get your
attention, and the third stage is dying discipline, yes death. Warning discipline can be you going
to church and in hearing your pastor it sounds like, “Who told him about me?” Nobody, it’s just
the Holy Spirit working in your life, convincing you you’re wrong. But if you walk out of that
church, or you walk away from that message, or you walk away from that Scripture and you are
not willing to obey, then this is when the Lord takes you to the woodshed. He has to, to get your
attention. If He didn’t, you will self-destruct.
When God takes you to the woodshed, you can
respond by being obedient or you can react by being angry.
You can even blame God for
your problems, a lot of people do this. Listen to what the Bible says Hebrews 12:9
“Furthermore, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not
much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live?”
Proverbs 15:10,
“Grievous punishment
is for him who forsakes the way. he who hates reproof shall die.”
Proverbs 5:12,
“And you say,
‘How I hated instruction and my heart spurned reproof,’”
Proverbs 5:13, “I have not listened to
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the voice of my teachers, nor did I incline my ear to my instructors?” That’s the arrogant believer,
he is bent on destroying his own life because he won’t listen and he won’t ever learn. See
arrogant people can’t learn anything because they don’t have enough humility. Because God the
Holy Spirit instructs us through God’s infallible Word, if we ignore this instruction, I assure you
the justice of God will administer discipline, warning discipline, intense discipline, and yes
sometimes God takes you home way too soon. Maybe you should have stuck around to be 80 but
He had to take you out at 25 because you were too dumb to learn anything and you might have
self-destructed your own life and self-destructed the lives of others. There is nothing more fearful
for a parent than to have their child get in a car with a dumb kid who’s drinking and driving or
doing dope and driving or doing something stupid and driving. Arrogance won’t listen, won’t
learn, many of them never made it home that night. The point of discipline is authority
orientation and teaching humility. The way you do this is responding to authority, not reacting to
authority, because arrogance can’t handle it and thus arrogance is never teachable.
There’s an
attitude adjustment God gives to each one of us and it comes in the form of discipline.
Thus
the suffering that we go through for discipline is to remind us to resist temptation in the
future and to be quick to rebound our sin, to confess our sin immediately.
Because the Bible
says,
“If we confess our sin then He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness,”
1 John 1:9. Now there is suffering for blessing.
Suffering for blessing in the
spiritual life falls into several categories.
Number one, providential preventative suffering and
this is when a young growing believer goes through suffering that stops something else from
happening that could be much worse. Momentum testing, this is where God checks out believers
who are advancing and growing. Then there is even evidence testing and this is for the mature
believer when Satan calls him to the witness stand, i.e. Peter, when Jesus said, “Satan wants to
cross-examine you tonight and I pray for you that you don’t fail.” Remember this, and Peter
failed.
All suffering for blessing is designed by God for you to advance into spiritual
maturity and eventually glorify God because it will put muscle on your spiritual life.
And I
promise you,
God will never give you more testing than you can stand.
1 Corinthians 10:13,
“No testing has overtaken you but such as is common to man. Moreover, God is faithful. He will
not permit you to be tested beyond what you’re able to endure and will, with the testing, provide
a way out so that you can withstand it.”
If your suffering is more than you can bear then the
origin is from your own volition, not the sovereignty of God because God would not put more on
you than you can bear.
I remind you that 90% of the suffering we experience is self-induced.
We mismanage our money, mismanage our health and mismanage our relationships.
Remember the law of volitional responsibility, Galatians 6:7,
“Don’t be deceived, God will
not be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he’s going to reap.”
In Hosea 8:7,
“If they sow to the
wind, they will reap the whirlwind.”
Each one of us has to take the responsibility for our own
decisions and we can’t blame other people for our own unhappiness and our suffering. We have
to take the responsibility ourselves based on our own bad decisions and it can be in the field of
who you associate with, what your motives are, or whatever your functions in life are.
Don’t
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ever pray for the suffering to be removed.
Paul tells us this in 2 Corinthians 12:7-8. He had a
thorn in the flesh. He asked God to remove it three times and God kept saying, “No, no, no. I’m
not, I’m not, I’m not.” God said,
“‘My grace is sufficient for you for power is perfected in
weakness.’ ‘Most gladly, Therefore I would rather boast about my weakness so that the power of
Christ may dwell in me.’”
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:9.
There’s always a reason for your
suffering. Suffering for blessing can cause you to depend on the Lord, in His divine
provisions and promises, especially the faith-rest drill and impersonal love.
There’s a lot
more to say. You can go to the school of hard knocks or you can go to the school of Bible
doctrine, it’s up to you, but what I’m telling you is true. Here’s the final question, why are you
suffering? Until next week this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for being with me on
the FLOT Line.
