Is Suffering...A Privilege?

Suffering as a Gift Granted for Christ’s Sake

Hello, dear ones, my name is Justin Peters. I hope that you and your family are doing well today. I want to thank you very much for watching this video. I thought for our devotional today, we would look at Philippians chapter one, verse 29.

Philippians chapter one, verse 29 says, "'For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, "'not only to believe in him, "'but also to suffer for his sake.'". You know, it's pretty easy, I think, for most of us, especially for those of us who are in the more soteriologically reformed camp, to understand that believing in Christ, faith in Christ, is something that is granted to us.

This is not something that we can do on our own. We don't just gin up faith in Christ on our own. And so faith in Christ, along with repentance from sin, both of those are, in and of themselves, granted to us by God.

And I think most of us are pretty comfortable with understanding that. But maybe not so much when we think of suffering. We rarely think of suffering as being something that is granted to us, a gift from God.

Praying for Relief and Praying with Thankfulness

I can remember growing up in a Southern Baptist church, we would go to Sunday morning, Sunday night services, and then Wednesday night, midweek service, was called prayer meeting. And so we would gather and we would have a meal and then towards the end of the meal, the pastor would get up and he would ask people, do you have any prayer requests?

Anybody have any prayer requests? And you've probably been to these services, or maybe even just a Sunday school class on Sunday morning, the teacher will usually start off by saying, does anybody have any prayer requests?

And what are 99 of the prayer requests for? Somebody's sick, right? Somebody's sick, somebody's in the hospital, somebody is having surgery, or maybe some other kind of trial, maybe somebody's going through some financial hardships, or maybe they've lost their job or something like that.

Almost all of the prayer requests are dealing with suffering and the desire for the alleviation of said suffering. And I'm not at all opposed to praying for things like that. If we have a friend or a family member who is going through some kind of a trial, some kind of suffering, I'm not at all opposed to praying that God would bring relief from that suffering.

I'm not at all opposed to praying that God would bring physical healing to someone who is sick. In fact, I've got a couple of people right now on my prayer list that I'm praying for, that God would, if it would be his kind providence to bring healing from cancer.

And there's nothing wrong with that. But maybe instead of spending all of our time praying that God would remove suffering, maybe we should spend a little bit more time praying prayers of thankfulness for our suffering.

When's the last time you said, Lord, thank you for this trial that I'm going through. Thank you for this suffering that is in my life right now. That's a little bit harder, isn't it? That's not so easy for us to pray.

Suffering for Christ’s Glory and Our Sanctification

And yet the Bible does tell us and teach us that suffering is in and of itself granted to us by God for Christ's sake. You see, dear friends, everything that God does, he does ultimately for his own glory.

Our salvation is, though we are the beneficiaries of it, our salvation ultimately is to the praise of the glory of his grace, a phrase that you see repeated three times in Ephesians chapter one. And so everything that God does is for his glory.

And sometimes God is most glorified in us, not when things are going well, not when there's plenty of money in the bank, not when we have complete job security, not when our bodies are healthy even. Sometimes God is most glorified in us when we are suffering, when we are sick, when we are being persecuted.

And yet through the suffering, through the sickness, through the persecution, we remain faithful to Christ and we carry his name well. And so maybe we should spend more time praying for things like this.

Lord, use this suffering in my life to conform me more into the image of Christ. Use this suffering in my life to bring me to the end of myself so that I would lean harder on you. Use this suffering in my life that I would grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Growth in Grace Through Pain

Charles Spurgeon said, quote, "'I am certain that I never did grow in grace "'one half so much anywhere "'as I have upon the bed of pain.'". And oftentimes God grants to us suffering to grow us in Christ, to grow us in our spiritual maturity.

And these are opportunities for us to carry the name of Christ well. I know in my own life, in my own ministry, so many people that I've met that suffer just in ways that I cannot even imagine, and yet they are full of joy.

They speak well of Christ. Does it mean that they always enjoy their suffering? No, but they can have joy in the midst of their suffering. And they carry the name of Christ well. They remain faithful to Christ.

They speak well of Christ all the time. And God is glorified in that, dear ones. And so when we go through suffering, maybe instead of always praying that God would remove it, we should pray, Lord, use this suffering in my life to sanctify me and help me to see this as an opportunity to suffer well, to suffer for Christ's sake, that I may carry His name well.

Maybe we should spend a little bit more time praying for that. I hope that this has encouraged you, dear ones. I wanna thank you for watching. Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit.

Be with you all.