February 8, 2022 Show with Joseph Jacowitz on “Why We Suffer”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, in downtown

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this eighth day of February, 2022.

I'm thrilled to have back on the program not only a returning guest, but a dear friend, and also a key brother in Christ behind the airing of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

This is Joe Jackowitz, founder of First Love Publications, First Love Radio, and First Love Missions, and one of two pastors at Christ Bible Church in Dublin, California.

Today we are going to be hearing a health update from Pastor Joe, a cancer survivor, and we're also going to be hearing

Joe speak on the theme, Why We Suffer, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend,

Pastor Joe Jackowitz. Thank you so much, Chris. What a blessing it is to be with you again. It's been many months, but the

Lord has indeed answered much prayer, and I'm happy to be back. Amen. Before we go into your health update and also your major theme on Why We Suffer, tell our listeners about First Love Publications, First Love Radio, and First Love Missions.

Well, the publications, radio, and missions are part of the overall ministry of First Love Ministries, and there are actually four separate organizations that function under that overall umbrella.

And the First Love Publications, we've been distributing books, booklets, and tracts for all since 2006, free of charge around the world.

Over 300 ,000 publications have been distributed free, and on many different subjects.

We have six different categories of books in terms of devotional, doctrinal, and pastoral, and so forth.

And then First Love Radio, we are online with a 24 -hour day, seven -day -a -week radio ministry, radio stream, online stream at firstloveradio .org,

and we have a lot of solid teaching, many teaching partners like Martin Lloyd -Jones,

Albert N. Martin, and Peter Masters, and R .C.

Sproul, and James Montgomery Boyce, and many others online besides other genres of programs like music, and Unshackled, and other types of programs 24 -7 at firstloveradio .org.

And then First Love Missions, we take short -term mission trips into different countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal, the

Philippines, and other countries, and I hold pastors' conferences and Bible conferences, and at those conferences we distribute usually thousands of books and pamphlets to educate, inform, and train believers, and also to preach the gospel.

And we do that. We've been, the last couple of years because of the pandemic, we haven't been doing as many conferences, but we've resumed it last

November. We went to Nigeria with two of our team members, and we're back in the swing of things in terms of holding conferences.

We also have two missionaries overseas in Nigeria that represent

First Love Missions. So we've been doing missions work since 1994. And then

Grace Bible University is the newest ministry that offers a

Bachelor of Theology degree through Bible study courses through the mail, and then we're working on an online version of that university.

It's not up yet, but we're working on it. So there's actually four ministries. Great. And you left something very important out of your description of these ministries.

What about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio? It crossed my mind, but I was trying to get to all of them.

Of course, your program is our bedrock program. It's our anchor program of First Love Radio on from 1 to 3 p .m.,

West Coast, 4 to 6 p .m., East Coast, Monday through Friday.

And we're thrilled to have you on and certainly probably our most well -known and popular program.

Well, I appreciate that very much. And so how long ago was it that you, in fact, if I'm not mistaken,

I think I was the first person you told this news to. It could even have been before you told your wife, but it was in your car,

I think, on your cell phone when you told me you were diagnosed with cancer. How long ago was that and what type of cancer were you diagnosed with?

And give us your health update on all that. Well, it was in August of 2019 that my doctor informed me that I had leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia is the version, which is cancer of the blood and the bone marrow.

I was treated with chemotherapy for five months and went into remission after that for 16 months.

So the Lord blessed me for those 16 months where the cancer went away.

But the leukemia returned strongly and I had a relapse and it came back and my doctors decided to treat me on the next level of severity and administer a bone marrow transplant.

And while recovering from the bone marrow transplant, I suffered a pulmonary embolism, which is blood clots in the lungs and also deep vein thrombosis, which is blood clots in the leg artery, which was my third pulmonary embolism in six years.

So 30 % of those who experience pulmonary embolisms die.

But this all happened over the last year, actually. So the bone marrow transplant took place on June 23rd, 2021, seven and a half months ago, where I received

T -cells or a donor's bone marrow and they replaced my bone marrow.

Your bone marrow makes or produces your blood. That's where you get your blood from.

So since the first treatment of chemotherapy didn't take hold and graft in permanently, they wanted to go deeper and address my bone marrow because there was cancer there, too.

So they replaced my bone marrow and that was seven and a half months ago.

And I've been cancer -free for the last probably five months, four to five months.

And so I'm recovering from that. It's about a two to three year process of recovering from the bone marrow transplant.

So I'm about seven and a half months there. But at least, thank God, there's no leukemia in my system and I'm cancer -free.

So I know, praise God, this donor is from Europe and they have to take his or her stem cells.

I don't know who the person is. And they have to fly it over here within 36 hours and give it to me while it's still fresh and active.

So, you know, I've suffered a great deal of physical pain and emotional and spiritual trauma that's really difficult to describe.

I feel as if my body, mind, and spirit has been torn down to their core and rebuilt from scratch.

It feels like I've been turned inside out and every part of my being has been intensely scrutinized by God, physically, spiritually, and everything.

Wow. Well, let's hear about some of that.

Was there ever any things that you care to discuss publicly that you were going through, such as a doubt of God's love for you, a doubt that you were truly regenerate?

Did you ever view yourself as being punished or even chastised?

You know, tell us about some of that. Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't be human if I didn't face those thoughts and have to deal with them.

But after hundreds of hours of prayer, meditation, tears, self -examination, trembling at the

Word of God, I've learned many, many spiritual truths about the purpose of suffering.

And some truths are already new in simple form. Many of those truths about suffering and pain

I've taught for years as a pastor for 38 years. Other truths have been expanded that I already knew.

And some I learned that I didn't know before. But I've come to the firm conviction that God's plan and purpose for the suffering of the saints is not as superficial or shallow that we realize.

Suffering is not some gadfly that you can just swat away and it won't come back again.

No, I'm of the firm conviction now that suffering is central in God's plan for the growth and sanctification and education of the

Church. I've concluded that most Christians don't understand the deeper purpose of suffering.

That's why when severe trials and pain occur, so many Christians don't know how to handle it. They fall apart.

Let alone understand suffering and benefit from it, which is

God's intention. At 66 years old, Chris, I didn't expect to return to certain fundamentals of the faith, like pain and suffering.

Oh yeah, I know all about that. Let's put that behind us. And when it comes, let's try to hold on for dear life until it passes and then move on.

But then learning in the school of Christ is a lifelong process. And I've learned too much in this journey over the last two years, dealing with the bone marrow transplant and leukemia, to share with you in one message about suffering.

But if you'll just indulge me, I'll share. The biggest thing God taught me, spiritually, emotionally and otherwise, through suffering, which is a two -fold principle, that is the linchpin upon which most other components of suffering are connected.

But before I go on with this, Chris, on behalf of my wife Sherry and I, I really want to express my deepest heartfelt thanks and gratitude to you and to your listeners for your prayers and intercessions and letters and cards and emails and many expressions of love and support that all of you have shown me, whoever you may be.

Thank you so much. God bless you. And he's answered your prayers. Amen. Amen.

It's such a relief and such a reason for celebration to hear this news, brother.

Yes, well, I'm just, it's God's will for me to still be here. And every morning when

I wake up, the first thing I do is spend several minutes in worship and thanksgiving just for the little things that I've taken for granted, like another day of life, like making it through the night without a lot of pain, like being able to get a good night's sleep, like having a coherent thought life, just and on and on and on.

So let me just briefly summarize what suffering is all about. It's a very broad subject, obviously, which has many components attached to it.

I don't want to oversimplify it because there are many paths we could travel down the suffering and pain road.

But in the Bible, dozens of truths and themes are related to suffering.

But I want to just focus on God's main design for suffering as a teaching tool and how it works out in the

Christian experience. We need to understand that suffering is an expected and normal part of the

Christian life. If a Christian is shocked by suffering and has a really hard time in getting over that shock, or a really long time, then that Christian is probably weak in the faith.

Because every Christian suffers. If you don't suffer, I think you're not a

Christian. Jesus told his followers, in this world you will have trouble, you will have tribulation, but take heart,

I have overcome the world. Christians suffer for a variety of reasons, including many of the same reasons non -Christians suffer.

Life on this broken planet can be difficult. And Christians may also suffer for some of the same reasons

Jesus did. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you,

Jesus said. So suffering of any kind was not part of God's original creation.

Everything he created was very good, but sin corrupted the world because of Adam's disobedience, and sin continues to corrupt the world to this day.

Sin has a rippling effect as well. Our sin harms others, and their sin harms us, even when we've done nothing wrong, ostensibly.

Becoming a Christian does not insulate us from the ugliness in our world, nor does it protect us from the natural, temporal consequences of sin.

So, there's a lot of reasons for suffering. One of them is as a form of discipline.

We all know that, you made reference to that, where Hebrews 12 talks about,

My sons, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you're rebuked by him, for whom the

Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening,

God deals with you as with sons. Suffering also can experience financial, be part of financial stress.

When you're under financial pressure, this may feel like suffering, but it could be intended to produce godly character in a person.

I don't know anything about that stress. No, you wouldn't know anything about that.

Some people, I'm not suggesting you are, but some people put importance on money, and God teaches them a lesson.

Obviously, suffering is used to refine Christian character. James tells us to consider it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and let perseverance finish its work, that you may be mature and complete.

That is, in your character lacking nothing. Suffering also enables Christians to identify with others who suffer.

The Lord says that the God of all comfort who comforts us in our troubles, so that we may comfort those who are in trouble with the comfort that we receive from God ourselves.

Suffering helps us draw closer to God. We often seem to grow most when we go through difficult times.

Some of our brethren, I'm sure, listening, have been crying out to God for many years,

Lord give me a closer walk with you, and may not realize that he's using suffering and long -term ongoing crosses that they must carry, connected with pain and suffering, to deepen their consistent walk with God.

Also, suffering reminds us that this world is not our home. Christians who live in more affluent parts of the world, like the

United States, may find it harder to long for heaven from their impoverished brothers and sisters overseas.

When life is comfortable, Chris, eternity is only a glimmer far in the future.

But when Christians suffer persecution or privation or poverty, eternity starts to become the brightest light in their lives.

And God always uses pain and suffering for our good and his glory. As we read about in the

Bible, all things work together for good to them that love God. And he says he does not afflict willingly, and that all of him and through him and by him are all things.

So, suffering, though in and of itself, is not God's goal.

Like I said, he does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

All God's purposes in suffering are constructive, formative, and positive.

But most believers don't see it that way or even understand this. I've counseled so many people who

I had to start from scratch in explaining to them and correct their misunderstanding about what suffering is and the purpose of suffering as taught in the

Bible. Have you ever noticed, Chris, the response of some believers when they suffer? For many, the first thing they say as a knee -jerk reaction without pausing or even thinking about it is,

Why? Lord, why is this happening to me? Now, that response speaks a lot to our perspective about suffering.

But setting aside the emotional reaction to the pain that we experience in suffering, our response becomes a huge statement on our understanding of suffering.

There's an enormous lack of sound teaching on suffering today in the churches. And it's causing confusion and frustration and even some believers blaming

God and impugning his motives and questioning his love for his people.

So, my question would be for your listeners, what is your perspective on suffering?

How do you respond to pain, deprivation, and unexpected changes that cause pain when they happen?

Or your plans when they are ruffled or overturned? Do you blame God as if he did something wrong by allowing pain and inconvenience and tragedy in your life?

You see, our response to suffering is a barometer on our perspective on suffering.

Now, let me ask you a question briefly if you don't mind me interrupting you. When you said that very often, if not most often, you see the first response of brothers and sisters in Christ who are going through a trial involving suffering, their first response is, why?

Now, isn't that a good thing unless somebody is saying, why me?

Like, they are so righteous they would never deserve anything like this.

That would be a wrong kind of why. But isn't wondering why a good thing?

Because as you said before, although we as Reformed Christians and even better yet as Biblical Christians, we abhor and reject as satanic heresy the lies of the

Word of Faith movement that says whenever anybody is sick or going through a financial trial or any kind of a trial, it is rooted in their weak faith, that they don't have a strong enough faith which would always result in nonstop pristine health and wealth and prosperity.

We reject that. But at the same time, as you mentioned earlier, God does chasten those whom he loves.

And isn't it good for us to use this as a time of reflection? What am

I perhaps doing that the Lord is getting my attention through this illness? Or have

I been deceiving myself to think that a certain kind of behavior, activity, thought process is really benign or acceptable when it really isn't?

We have to see and examine ourselves to see if we are deceiving ourselves. And on and on I could go.

Isn't it a healthy question why? Yeah, well, why me when trials and suffering happens can be a good response and a bad response.

It's a bad response if we never get over it and we don't adjust our perspective and trust in God and cast our care upon Him and commit the need and the burden to Him and make sure we don't blame

God. But it's a bad response if we become bitter and resentful toward God and never overcome the first few minutes or hours or even days of painful reactions emotionally, spiritually, and even physically to the trial and to the pain and suffering that we're going through.

We can become morbidly introspective, as they say. Yes, we could be so morbidly introspective that we're looking for comfort and consolation in other sources than in the peace and joy and contentment that the

Holy Spirit provides for us as the means of being able to bear the trial. Because some trials and suffering will be permanent in nature.

So what do you do then? For example, in the book of Hosea, the

Lord tells Israel to bring forth their strong reasons and come now, let us reason together, says the

Lord. In another, I think it's in Isaiah, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

The Lord says, take with you words in return to the Lord. Say to Him, take away all iniquity, receive us graciously.

So God wants us to wrestle with Him when we experience painful trials, but not be disrespectful, not blame

God, not assume the problem is with God for interrupting our plans and bringing pain into our life.

Nothing happens randomly in our lives. God is sovereign, and He even uses

Satan as a source of chastisement without being connected to any kind of sin or bad motives.

And so there's a deep, deep mystery connected with suffering. It's not an overly simplistic thought or teaching in the

Bible, and we need to be acquainted with the various aspects of suffering before we go off half -cocked blaming

God or becoming embittered. But eventually, as soon as possible, we need to make a huge adjustment in our perspective and understand that suffering is a normal part of life.

There's a reason and purpose for it that actually God brought into our life. This pain and suffering usually seeks us out and finds us where we're at, where we're living, interrupts our life, so to speak, and brings forth an education process and a teaching moment that trains us on a spiritual level that we have not been listening to or aware of for a very long time.

Now let me also clarify a couple of other things. You rightly say we shouldn't blame

God when we are suffering, but isn't there an enormous difference, a chasm of difference between blaming

God and acknowledging that our suffering is divinely ordained by him?

It comes from his hand. It has been predestined. It has been something that God didn't one day think,

I'm going to send some suffering Joe Jackowitz's way. I didn't think of this before, but I'm going to send suffering this year into his life.

This isn't something, a new thought to God. God is immutable. He never changes.

This is something that he even knew he was going to bring into your life before the foundations of the world.

So isn't there a difference between blaming God and acknowledging that all things come from his hand?

Yes, there's a big difference in one's attitude. If you're blaming God, you tend to get or grow in bitterness and begin to rail against God.

But to acknowledge he's sovereign in a humble and submissive and passive way is altogether.

And a good case study of that is Job in the book of Job. The book of Job was written for many different reasons.

One of those reasons was to teach the deeper theology of suffering and to look under the rug and examine the real heart and core of the purpose of suffering.

As you know, Chris, Job went through many aspects of suffering. His health was taken from him.

His body was filled with boils so that he rested eventually on an ash heap.

He put on sackcloth and ashes. His ten children were killed and taken from him.

And all of his possessions were stolen. And he had nothing left. God told

Satan, don't take his life. His life was the only thing he had left.

But emotionally, spiritually, and physically, he was barely alive.

But if you go to the end of the book of Job, towards chapters 38 to 41, after a long soliloquy in which

Job just pours out his heartache and his frustration and so forth, he never blames

God. And it says in all of this, that is, in all of Job's suffering, he did not blame

God or curse God or accuse God of anything. And he did not sin in his response to this.

In his response to this suffering. Yes. In fact, there was, when I worked for a major Christian radio station for 15 years, there was a married couple that were a husband and wife pastor team of a heretical

Word of Faith movement church, Clinton and Sarah Utterbach. And as my friend, now in heaven,

Nigel Stone from England, used to call them the Utterots. Utter, R -O -T -S.

But they were horribly heretical. And they actually accused

Job of sinning when he proclaimed, the

Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. And even though the scriptures, the God -breathed scriptures say that he did not, in all this, he did not sin, they still said he was sinning.

Because that doesn't jive with their Word of Faith heresy, that if you have a strong enough faith, these things wouldn't ever happen to you.

That's right. The theology and pervasiveness of the doctrine of suffering is so clear throughout the

Bible and so deep in its teaching. It's on a level of expansiveness and depth that to hold to a

Word of Faith position of God's will is health, wealth, and prosperity for everybody, that person is very shallow and superficial in their understanding of the theology of suffering.

And they also miss out on an enormous amount of growth, sanctification, and maturity in their

Christian life, because you cannot reach square one in terms of benefiting and profiting from the spiritual growth and lessons

God wants to teach you if you don't embrace suffering in a positive way and you see

God as a faithful, loving Father, using pain and suffering to bring you to a place of greater faith and love for God and peace with God through that suffering.

You don't reach those places of growth and maturity if you don't see suffering in a

Biblical light and in a formative, positive way as a tool and instrument in God's hand to help you grow.

In fact, we have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Joe Jackowitz on suffering especially, but since he is a pastor, we will allow other questions of a pastoral nature, theological nature, etc.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Joe Jackowitz on why we suffer right after these messages from our sponsors.

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If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Joe Jackowitz, founder of First Love Radio, First Love Publications, First Love Missions, and First Love Ministries.

And he's also one of the pastors at Christ Bible Church of Dublin, California. We are addressing why we suffer.

And our email address if you have a question for Pastor Jackowitz is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Pastor Joe, we were just speaking about the correct reason to approach

God in the midst of suffering and say why, not the why me as if we are so righteous that we don't deserve any harsh thing from God's hand, but a why just so we may be guided by the word of God and by his revealing to us throughout the activities in our lives and our thought processes, what we may be doing that warrants chastisement if indeed that's the case.

Because as we said earlier, we both abhor the vile and satanic teaching of the word of faith movement that says anybody who is sick or anybody who is going through a financial struggle, it's all because they don't have appropriate level of faith.

That is a lie from the pit of hell. But at the same time, sometimes even believers, even the most seasoned believers require chastisement and it is not always because of that either.

Isn't it true that the sicknesses and the suffering that we often go through in life as Christians may have nothing at all to do with chastisement?

Absolutely correct. Chastisement may not come from, or pain and suffering may not come from, something that we are actively doing to draw

God's wrath upon us. But suffering is very often a tool and an instrument in God's hand to draw attention to certain character or spiritual issues in a believer's life that he or she has no clue is going on.

They have been deceived, they have been blind, they've been oblivious to certain spiritual problems or blind to a spiritual area of sin or corruption or selfishness or covetousness that they are completely unaware of.

And sometimes God would be trying to get their attention and the believer's resisting or there could be some ignorance about what

God is trying to teach them and they just keep missing the point because they're basing their response on an assumption that pain and suffering is to be resisted and rejected as much as possible, as fast as possible.

Now nobody likes pain and suffering. I don't. Nobody does. But we have to look underneath at the dynamic that God is creating and driving in our lives to draw our attention and to ask the questions that we would not normally ask and to go very, very deep, deep into places of our spiritual man that we would normally not go to in terms of self -examination in our daily lives.

In fact, I think that you love the 19th century Reformed Anglican Bishop J .C.

Ryle. You love him as much as I do. And a profound statement, he said, amongst many profound statements, he makes in the excellent booklet

Sickness by J .C. Ryle, which you can get at chapellibrary .org,

chapellibrary .org, at a very inexpensive cost and other publishers have brought that back into print too.

But J .C. Ryle, in that booklet, the thing that is etched in my memory about that booklet is when

Ryle says, I just love that quote by Ryle.

Well, he's right, and I love what Spurgeon says. I think that health is the greatest blessing that God ever sends us except sickness, which is far better.

On the surface, your statement by Ryle and mine by Spurgeon seems crazy.

Why would someone or some people as universally admired and respected as Ryle and Spurgeon or anyone else value sickness more than health unless there's some underlying or other dynamic at work that we're not aware of and we don't see, we don't perceive this dynamic most of the time.

That's the case in a point with much of my counseling because any pastor who counsels will eventually be confronted with the reasons for suffering and the purpose for it in their lives.

It's natural for humans to want to be pain -free. So what could possibly benefit a person to be in constant pain and suffering, people think.

The Bible has a lot to say about the subject of suffering and provides the answers. And so there's a two -fold purpose of suffering.

The first purpose is to produce outward pain or emotional or spiritual pain that is experienced in the realm of chastisement or persecution or any form of pain physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

These are the effects of pain and the results of pain. And many just grin and bear it and bear the pain without learning anything spiritually from the process.

This is where most believers live. And many of these dear folks in seeking to understand why they suffer look in all the wrong places for answers.

The billion -dollar Christian publishing and media industry peddles its reasons and remedies for suffering while themselves being clueless.

One of their biggest selling themes on radio, in broadcasting, in print media, on social media is the topic of suffering because everybody suffers and people want answers but so few understand the purpose of it and have a biblical perspective on it in terms of the key, two -fold purpose of suffering.

But most people are not getting answers though when they seek answers by reading these how -to books on suffering.

And billions of dollars are spent on their books and their teachings, their CDs, their media.

But they should rather look to the scripture and the wisdom of God. But these other sources mostly, not all, but mostly offer psychology in how -to books.

Meanwhile, the poor Christian is left on the ash heap of confusion and pain with no answers.

People need to be turned to another frequency of spiritual learning.

They're locked into the one signal, the one frequency, and it is that of pain.

And when the pain goes away, they move on without benefiting because they weren't listening.

They weren't looking for any spiritual discovery. I call it inward discovery because it's not a truth learned by pain or any other outward process of learning such as intellectual, mental, or a cognitive process of learning and comprehension.

This is the first type of purpose of suffering, to cause pain, to get the believer's attention.

Now when I say inward, it's because it is this truth that is taught to the inner man, the heart, by the

Spirit of God. I say discovery because you can discover it.

It's something you discover. It's nothing you can learn in a classroom. It's something that you didn't know before, something you were oblivious to, something that was hidden to you.

It really is a spiritual epiphany revealed to your spiritual man by the

Spirit of God. Now Chris, before you ask the question, I'm not talking about a second level of grace or a super -Christian or a second work of sanctification where you're receiving direct revelation from God.

The first purpose is pain. The second purpose is inward discovery.

And the results of inward discovery are defined in the Bible as receiving the hidden wisdom of God.

And this hidden wisdom of God, which is a synonym for inward discovery, are, first of all, uniquely personal.

Like I said, you can't learn it in a classroom. The Spirit of God communicates in His own unique way to your spirit.

Not with audible words or any kind of esoteric mystical communication. That's not what I'm talking about.

But it's uniquely personal. This inward discovery is a radical change in your spiritual perspective.

It produces that. It prominently changes you. You never go back to doing some things.

There are permanent changes made in your life. In fact, let's return to those permanent changes, a part of the sanctification process, when we return from our midway break.

Please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break is a little longer than the other breaks. And that is because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break so that they can air their own public service announcements to localize

Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida. While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials.

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Also, send in your questions about suffering to Joe Jackiewicz to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Before I return to Joe Jackowitz and his discussion of why we suffer, I just have a couple of announcements.

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Well, it's our privilege to give to the work of the Lord. You know, when you give financially as an act of worship, when you give to a ministry as a partner with them, and you see yourself as part of the ministry, but your part is in the giving, that is a very biblical way to approach giving.

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So we encourage you to do so with that attitude and that perspective in mind.

Amen. Thank you very much, brother. And if you could pick up where you left off on your discussion on why we suffer and how we are to avoid the pitfalls of errors and heresies on both ends of the spectrum.

You have folks on one end of the spectrum, like the heretics and the charlatans of the

Word of Faith movement that we have mentioned a number of times, who say any time any believer is experiencing illness or misfortune when it comes to their financial status or any other trial, it is always because they have a weak faith.

That is a heresy from Satan's own lips. And then on the other end of the spectrum, there are people who totally remove

God from the equation. If somebody is dying of cancer, they have been told,

God had nothing to do with this at all, this is not from God, this is only from Satan. That is a lie just as well.

And I can remember Joel Osteen's father, years ago, from his pulpit, denouncing

Calvinism for daring to claim that when tragedy strikes, that it came from the hand of God, he viewed that as a monstrous heresy, but he was the one that was declaring monstrous heresy and denying the sovereignty of God in providence, both good and bad providence.

Absolutely. One of the things we are trying to do in teaching is to bring people into a positive perspective of suffering and pain.

And within the broad spectrum of Evangelical Christianity, and the other side of that would be the

Word of Faith movement, you have two ends, two bookends. You have on the conservative

Evangelical, including reform perspective, you have those who believe in the teaching and theology of the

Bible concerning the doctrine of suffering, but their personal response and the way they relate to suffering is to grin and bear it and wait until it goes away, and they derive no positive spiritual benefit from that suffering.

On the other side of that spectrum are the Word of Faith people who reject suffering as a teaching tool completely, or any kind of suffering.

They consign it to the devil only, and they don't see that the initial and altogether source of our suffering is

God himself. So within that negative side of the spectrum, you have conservative

Bible believers who do not profit from their sufferings, and then you have the other side of that, are the

Word of Faith people who completely deny suffering altogether as a doctrine in the

Bible, let alone not benefit from it. But then there's this other side, this other spectrum.

It is those who understand God's purpose of suffering and view it through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and the fiery furnace of affliction as a totally positive tool in God's hands to teach them spiritual lessons.

For many of us, it takes years and years and years for us to permanently change our perspective on that and to come over from the traditional evangelical position where we understand and believe in suffering and God's prerogative to use suffering in the life of a child of God through chastisement or whatever it would be.

But they derive absolutely or almost no benefit from it. And we mentioned earlier that it is through this second tier of training and equipping and understanding the purpose of suffering that we experience inward discovery.

Inward discovery is a synonym for the hidden wisdom of God where we cross over the line into viewing suffering from a negative, grin and bear it perspective into a positive perspective for the rest of our lives.

And I mentioned that this inward discovery is uniquely personal for everybody.

It's not a similar experience that everybody reads about in a book or takes a class in a classroom.

It's uniquely personal for your circumstances, your situation, your sickness or whatever it would be.

And when this inward discovery, this hidden wisdom is provided you, it produces a radical change in your spiritual perspective.

Many people who experience this go, Oh, I never saw that before. Oh, is that what

God was doing? Yes, I understand that. And you become like Job who said,

The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Job was able to worship even though everything in his life, short of the life itself was taken from him.

You could be like those three young men, a Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fire.

Fire was all around them, above, below and on the sides. And they were in there with the

Lord himself. And they were oblivious to the worst kind of pain and suffering because they were able to worship.

And so when we cross over that line into a positive understanding through the hidden wisdom of God of suffering, we can live the rest of our lives with a cross of suffering that God deliberately, intentionally, proactively and providentially brings into our life to so grow us spiritually that we can be content with that cross and with that suffering because God's grace is sufficient for us.

But there's a different way that once you cross over into this hidden wisdom, there's a different way you respond to trials and suffering compared to the way you used to.

Like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 where on the one hand he's praying that God would remove the thorn in the flesh.

He prayed three times and God said, No, my grace is sufficient for you. And then he experienced this inward discovery.

There was the hidden wisdom of God that Paul himself writes about in 1 Corinthians, 2

Corinthians and Ephesians concerning the spiritual understanding and enlightenment the

Holy Spirit gave him in a positive way. And then the very next verse he changes his attitude and perspective on a dime and says,

Therefore I will gladly boast in my infirmities and take pleasure in my infirmities.

How could you go just one verse from praying to remove the infirmities?

Some thought it was blindness. And now you're boasting in them and you're no longer praying for their removal.

You can live with them and you're praising God for them. This is the hidden wisdom I'm talking about.

Moses discovered this. Jonah discovered this when he didn't understand the love of God for sinners.

I can go on and on and on about different Bible characters who were caught in a trap of deception or ignorance until the hidden wisdom of God liberated them and gave them the ability to embrace their circumstances and their pain and their suffering and live like that with God's grace for the rest of their life.

We have an anonymous listener who has a question for you. How do we be open and honest with our brothers and sisters and friends when we are suffering and yet not be a constant source of depression for them, like being a perpetual downer in their lives when they come to visit us, we tell them the truth about what we are experiencing and perhaps are even a source of them not wanting to return because of the impact on their own enjoyment of life negatively?

Very good question. The way we respond to such people usually is not to say anything and to try to mask over your suffering.

Many of them will ask you in their attempt to be kind and compassionate, and they are.

I think they mean well in their intentions and motives are good when they see your face is disfigured or you're depressed or you're hurting when you try to move and you're in pain and they feel compelled because they can see you suffering.

I would just try to summarize everything in one sentence and move on because if you elaborate too much, if they have not experienced what you're going through in terms of an extreme level of pain, they try to relate to it, but many people can't and so the conversation like this writer says, it fills the atmosphere with a negative depressing situation and many of these folks don't know how to comfort people who are suffering because they haven't experienced it or they themselves haven't received the comfort in a painful situation themselves, a similar situation.

So as long as we're being comforted by the Lord, that's the main thing. When we receive his peace which passes all understanding, we receive the comfort of the

Holy Spirit in our hearts to be able to live with the pain and whether it be physical in terms of sickness or disease or emotional pain or spiritual pain, go into a situation and be a good example to them.

Say very little. Try not to show that you're hurting but put the focus and the attention on the other people in the room.

Minister to them and maybe the Holy Spirit will open up their hearts and their minds to the fact that, hey, here's a person in our fellowship who's hurting the most physically but he's ministering to other people.

He's focused on other people's needs and their concerns. He's asking about what prayer requests can he bring before the

Lord on their behalf and that will be a great example to them to follow in your footsteps.

An example of humility and an example of love.

And I'm assuming that you would agree that it is always good for Christians to seek out and cultivate friendships with people that they can really unload on.

Where you can bury your soul in a greater depth and to a greater degree than you would with a child in the room or just others that you might not know well or people that you don't want to unnecessarily bring added stress and fear into their lives.

To have those very close friendships where you can just sit with them for even hours and really unload on them.

Isn't that a good and healthy and right thing to have in your life? Absolutely. That would be the ideal person for someone in those circumstances that this person describes because most people don't know how to react to someone in an extreme situation of pain and suffering unless they've gone through it themselves.

But for the sake of the other people keep your comments limited to just a few.

People ask me all the time because I'm still going through my recovery. How are you doing? They mean well.

They pray for me. And their intentions are really good and their motives are good. They're acting according to the commandments of Scripture to pray for one another and to bear one another's burdens.

But they can only go so far. So to make it easy on them and yourself I just say the

Lord's grace is sustaining me and I praise him for his goodness and I just move on.

And if they continue to ask questions well how's your treatment going and where are you at now and I would just say well the

Lord has healed me of the cancer but I'm still getting treatments for the bone marrow problem.

But the Lord has answered a lot of prayer. I try to be as positive as possible. I'm growing.

There's improvements. And then I just keep it short to like 10 or 15 seconds. But yes

I would if you're in pain you're in a situation that you have cancer or disease like cancer or injury or a long term or even a short term debilitating injury or disease and you're really lonely and you need comfort from a lot of the situation and your stress and your pain.

And nobody seems to understand you on a level where you're really getting edified.

I would seek out someone in a situation. You can go online and Google Christian support groups with people who are in your situation or you can get or look for a person who is extremely spiritual like Anna the prophetess or some of the widows in the church who spend all their time day and night praying and worshipping the

Lord. Or you know somebody that's so filled with the love of God most of the time even though they have not experienced what you're going through yet they're so sympathetic that it's part of their ministry.

It's their gift to listen to you and pray with you and their hearts would really go out to you and you would be greatly comforted by them just listening to you.

And the best thing to do if you are someone who is listening to another person who is in these extreme painful suffering circumstances is to listen.

Not to do a whole lot of talking. Most people who are who have a lot of pain and suffering whether it be physically or emotionally the best thing to do is just listen to them and pray with them and give them sympathy in any genuine way that you can.

And even sing hymns to them and read scriptures as long as you're not throwing the scriptures at them like placards and trying to rebuke people with scripture.

And I'm assuming you would also think that we should never lie. There is a scene in a movie that you may be familiar with an old movie

Kings Row Ronald Reagan was in it and there's a scene after he had his legs amputated by a sadistic doctor who amputated his legs after he was involved in an accident.

I think it might have been a train accident or something. And he didn't need to have his legs amputated.

He was completely healthy. And this sadistic surgeon cut his legs off and there's a scene where Ronald Reagan is lying in the hospital bed and he starts to force himself to laugh and he's like,

I feel swell. It's so bizarre that I found it comical but that may be just because of my own warped mind.

But we have to be careful. Although we can say the Lord is giving me peace and joy to people in spite of what

I'm going through. We shouldn't be lying and candy coating things either, should we?

No, we shouldn't be lying or deceiving people or presenting a rosy picture that's not true.

One of the things that we need to keep in mind if you're trying to comfort somebody, you're trying to minister to them and show them love, is that they don't need a whole lot of teaching.

As a matter of fact, they don't need teaching. Most of them, all they do all day long anyway is think about and pray about their illness or their disease or their injury or their problem.

They've already thought through and maybe researched in the Bible or thought a lot about it, their injury or their disease or their pain or why things are happening.

And they're going through a very confusing, tumultuous process in their minds and in their hearts.

What they need is comfort, real comfort from the Scriptures. Especially focus them on Christ and how

Christ is their mediator, their high priest. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

He sympathizes with our weaknesses. He lifts up intercessions, prayers, supplications on our behalf.

We can come boldly before the throne of grace to find grace and mercy in the time of need. We need to get people to think outside of themselves, stop dwelling on themselves.

And you don't want to tell them this. You don't want to be harsh or cruel and say, you're so filled with self -pity.

You just want to talk about Christ and get their minds on Christ and His promises of mediation and promises of love and intercession and understanding our situation.

That's what you want to do. You don't need to do a whole lot of teaching. I've been a pastor almost 40 years and rarely have

I ministered to someone who is in a difficult situation with pain and suffering that I need to start from scratch and teach them about pain and suffering or I need to be an interrogator and say things like, have you ever thought why this happened in your life and start to move in a direction of interrogation, trying to pinpoint sin and begin to judge them and assume you know the reason why and usually it's a negative reason you put forward.

They ended up with this pain and suffering. That is cruel and that is terrible and that's not the way we approach comforting people who have pain and suffering in their life.

We have Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania who says,

I believe it was the 1980s when a rabbi became very popular on talk shows named

Rabbi Kushner who was teaching that God is all love and the reason why people suffer is because he is not omnipotent and not able to change certain circumstances in the world he has himself created.

He wrote a book called Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. As a pastor, have you witnessed this warped theology as a present danger in the evangelical church to any degree in 2022?

Oh, absolutely. In 2022 and the past. Evangelicals?

Yeah. Evangelicals are among the worst in terms of not having a sound and biblical foundation of theology, not only in the essential doctrines of the faith, the fundamental doctrines, but also in secondary areas like pain and suffering.

And pastors are not, evangelical pastors are moving in the direction of feelings and self -fulfillment and self -help and the sermons are getting shorter, the theology is being reduced to a thimble full, and they're not educating their congregation as to the deeper theological implications.

And that's why rabbis, that is religious leaders of different religions, need to write books that have become very popular with so -called

Christians, evangelical Christians, because there's this great vacuum of a lack of teaching in evangelical churches.

I have found this in my experience. And that's how... And so I think

I heard of Kushner, Rabbi Kushner, but... That was a very famous book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Yeah, that book, most of them. In fact, the great theologian George Carlin, the late stand -up comic known for his vile profanity, but not always, especially not in the days of Ed Sullivan stand -up.

But before he became an atheist, a rabid atheist, he was trying to defend

God in his stand -up comedy, just like Rabbi Kushner did. He was trying to convey the idea that God is subject to physical laws, even if he created the physical laws, he was subject to them.

And that's nonsense. That's making an impotent God...

I mean, who wants a God... In fact, that is not a God who is all love. To make himself powerless in any circumstance in somebody's life?

Yeah, well, that's true. That's absolutely correct. If he's sovereign, if he's God, if he's the

Lord of everything, both the micro and the macro, little things, big things, everything, he upholds everything by his mighty power.

All the thoughts of men are written down. And the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, beholding the good and the evil.

And he moves and directs and turns even the evil that people do to accomplish his purposes without him being tied to the evil.

And the same is true with suffering. You have bad things and the consequences of bad things happening in people's lives with the fruits of pain and suffering.

And just because there's pain and suffering in the lives of good people, if you don't respond properly with knowledge and with understanding to those situations, you can be greatly disturbed by it.

But when you understand the theology of suffering and you go deeper, you do a deeper study of the purpose of suffering and you look at the non -physical effects and purposes of God and suffering.

That is, you take the pain and the sickness and the disease and the treatments and all these things and you set them aside for a minute.

You free your mind from the cloudiness of seeing doctors and being in hospitals for long periods and nurses and getting caught up in the whole process and medication, prescriptions, and all of these things that are being thrown at you from every direction.

And you pause, get by yourself for hours at a time, which I had the privilege to do and still do.

And you set aside all the physical effects of the pain and suffering and you just look at the spiritual purpose of God and you begin with His sovereignty.

You begin with the Bible's teaching that this disease, this leukemia, this bone marrow transplant, this pulmonary embolism, all three life -threatening diseases that I experienced in the last one year did not happen randomly.

They came to me, they sought me out, they have my attention, and there's something more than the pain that God is trying to convey to me in this because the

Bible says that here is where good theology comes in that comforts you. All things work together for good to them that love

God, to them that are called according to His purpose. And you project Scripture and its doctrine into the matter and its underpinnings of the situation are interpreted by the fact that everything that God does in my life, including bringing pain and disease and suffering, is for my good and His glory.

You can start off with a smile on your face. Even when the pain is shaking you to your core, you can know deep down inside God ordered this,

God is perfect in omniscience, in knowledge, in wisdom, and this is the best way, this is the ideal way, this is the perfect way for me to learn a lesson.

My Jewish grandmother would have said, well couldn't have God sent you a letter in the mail and you know, told you, told you?

But... We had an electronic pop -up that blocked what you said.

Couldn't God have sent you a letter in the mail? Is that what you said? Yeah, you know, my Jewish side of the family would have said something sarcastic like that, but they don't understand, you know, you have to understand that when you start out with the goodness of God in everything for His people...

We have an anonymous listener who says, I'm remaining anonymous because I don't want to unnecessarily offend dear friends of mine in pastoral ministry who

I think are guilty of what I am about to say. Do you not think that the phrase

God allowed this to happen is overused and wrongly used?

It conveys an idea of a passive God that idly sits by and just watches things occurring without lifting a finger to be involved in any kind of personal way.

I am thinking primarily about when some disaster occurs, and it might be something like the attack on the

World Trade Center. It might be an earthquake, a flood, a volcano. And you'll have so -called

Christian leaders, even the late Billy Graham, who remove God from the equation. They may say that He allowed these things to happen, but they never talk about God being actively involved.

And I'm not saying that we are to guess at why God does these things, like, for instance, that a certain area may be overly populated by homosexuals or something like that.

But should we not always make it clear that God is involved in anything that occurs in earthly history?

Yes, well, there are certain teachings and doctrines in the Bible that are very painful for the flesh to embrace.

And the phrase, God allowed this to happen, really is trying to soften the blow to ears that are untrained and are not used to the theology of the

Bible. How God is God, and He can do whatever He wants at any time. And so, yeah, it's not really a biblical phrase.

God allowed this to happen. The Bible teaches that God is active in everything, although it's a great mystery as to how

He works it out through first causes and second causes, and He uses evil to glorify

Himself and to edify His church, even though He's not connected with sin or evil.

I don't understand those things, but the Bible itself teaches this, and that we can only ask questions so far before the

Bible just leaves the answer there for us to believe it without getting too deep into it.

And Jesus gave a lesson to one of His inquirers where He saw that someone was in sin, and I think

He was referring to the Pharisees or to somebody, and somebody came to Him, a lawyer, and said that, who sinned when the man who was born blind, he or his parents, as to why he was born blind, and Jesus said, you neither understand

God nor the power of God. In other words, he didn't understand sound doctrine as to why these things happened.

And then Jesus used the example of the Tower of Siloam who fell upon those 18 people and killed them, and He said, do you suppose that these 18 people were greater sinners than anybody else?

He said, no. He said, unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish. And so the bottom line is that understanding the doctrine that we're all sinners, the depravity of man, original sin that is passed on to everyone in this world, from conception we deserve death because we are sinners from conception, from birth, and we all deserve hell, but God in great mercy and great love saves some, and doesn't cast off all of them.

He elects some unto salvation. And therefore, with that knowledge and that correct theology, we will praise

Him and worship Him and thank Him and be in awe of His grace rather than condemn

God because He didn't save everybody because nobody deserves to be saved. And in fact, when you use the word save, even in a physical sense,

God doesn't always save in a physical sense. The elect, they are among those that perish in floods and hurricanes and fires.

And many times, it is the evil who are rescued in a physical sense. Yes. But we have to go to our final break.

It's going to be a lot briefer than the others. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Jo Jackowitz. Send in your questions now if you have them.

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Hope to see you there! Welcome back.

Pastor Joe Jakowicz, if you could summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about suffering before we go off the air.

I would say look past the physical pain of it as soon as you're able to.

Keep that in check, even if it doesn't go away. God is concerned about that and your attitude towards it.

And God will not give you more than His grace will enable you to bear on the physical pain side of it.

But look for the spiritual lessons and pray for the hidden wisdom of God.

This process of inward discovery where the Holy Spirit enables you to see the reasons and the purpose.

Even if you don't understand those reasons and purpose for the suffering, embrace it because you will be liberated.

You will be made free that you don't have to be a slave of worry and fear and confusion as to why this happened in your life.

You will embrace the pain and suffering by His grace and you will be able to live with it as long as His grace is able you to do so.

Pray for that wisdom of God, that hidden wisdom of God. And all of us, if we know of somebody who is suffering, we should be heaping the love of Christ on them and reminding ourselves not to be too verbose, but just ministering to them, visiting them, bringing them food, bringing them either good

Christian literature or if they are too weak to read good Christian DVDs, et cetera. And again, not to heap upon them placards to rebuke them or something like that, but just to minister to their souls.

And I know that I have been the recipient of that kind of love. And I want to make sure that our listeners do not think

I'm being glib or flippant when it comes to suffering that I have never experienced.

The only thing that I could accurately call suffering in my own life has been the suffering of mourning the death of precious loved ones like both my parents, my precious late wife, and my oldest brother,

John. I have not experienced intense physical agony or anything like that.

So please don't ever think I'm being flippant about that. And do you think there is a mantra of a lot of people that we have no business as Christians talking to people about something over which we have no personal experience.

But that's not true, is it? That's not true at all. Even if we don't have personal experience with the kind of suffering they're going through, it can open the door if you visit them, if you just read the

Bible to them, pray with them, encourage them. You don't have to address their specific diseases or sicknesses, but just be there as a source of edification.

If you think about it, every church, almost to a church, has somebody in it, an elderly person, someone who has serious diseases or illnesses where you can visit them.

And you don't have to be a theologian to go over there and be a source of consolation.

Just bring your Bible, just call them and say, I've been praying for you, thinking about you, I'd like to come over and just pray with you, and maybe read a chapter or read one of the

Psalms. And don't even bring up anything else. And usually a person will open up and reveal some of their pain to you.

But when they do that, just listen to them and pray for God's comfort upon them. And that will bring a great amount of edification to them.

Well, I want to make sure our listeners are reminded about your websites, FirstLoveMinistries .org

FirstLoveMinistries .org and also the website of Christ Bible Church in Dublin, California, ChristBibleChurch .org

ChristBibleChurch .org Pastor Joe Jakowicz, I rejoice with you that the Lord is bringing great healing and comfort and peace into your life.

I will continue to pray that that continues to be the case. I urge all of our listeners to do the same.

Bring Pastor Joe Jakowicz's name before the Lord's throne of grace and prayer on a regular basis, and his family.

Thanks for being such an excellent guest today, brother. Thank you, Brother Chris. I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater