The Blessing in Suffering

COVID -19 has brought along with it any measure of difficulty for us as the Church.  From shut-downs to technical and video difficulties, to fearful church members—and subsequently angry church members—to racially motivated riots (our church is located right across the street from the La Mesa Police station and was basically at ground zero.  You could stand on our property and throw a rock at the police station and hit it…I know because we watched people do it!) … political tensions, social media fallout, half a million Americans dead, vaccines, and even an insurrection…

It has become all too clear that there is no manual for how to operate a church in the midst of a global pandemic.  This has probably been the toughest year in the last century to lead a church, especially if you are a recent church plant.

And yet, God found it fit to place you in the position of Pastor.  Right here. Right now. 

While there is nothing intrinsically good about a global pandemic, with full respect to all of those who have succumbed to the virus, whether with their lives or their finances, I want to talk to you about the blessing of COVID.  At the very least, the blessing of COVID on the Church.

In 2 Kings 23, after King Josiah had been presented with the Book of the Law which had been lost in a back room—can you imagine?  The Bible wasn’t present anywhere in the temple in any regular usage…it was tucked away in a broom closet - Josiah set himself to clearing out the temple to set things right.  They began removing all of the articles from the Temple that were for worshipping Baal and Asherah and the starry hosts.  The removed an Asherah pole.  They tore down the quarters of the shrine prostitutes — male and female, mind you.  They removed horses and chariots dedicated to the sun.  They removed altars set up around the courtyard and on the roof.  Like clowns from a clown car, idolatrous things kept getting removed from God’s dwelling place.

At the beginning of the shutdown, as with the last pandemic 100 years ago, churches shut down as well.  It was as though God was asking his people: “If you have to meet online, are you still my people?  If you have to seek me and follow me outside of the congregation, will you?”

And as we began to congregate again, as we stripped down our services to the essentials, and we shut down programs and children’s ministries, it was as though God was asking his people, “Why are you coming?  Is it for me?  For my Word?  Or for programs and sideshows?”

And as we moved outside to enable singing and folks got up in arms, it was as though God was asking his people, “Do you have to sing to worship?  Can you worship me in heart, in spirit, with my Word, with praise?  If you had to strip it all down to the most basics, can you still worship me?”

One of our greatest worship services yet, which people still talk about, came the week we could no longer sing inside.  We weren’t prepared to move outside yet.  So leaders in the church came forward one by one and shared from the heart those passages of Scripture God had put on their heart, expounding upon what God was teaching them.  Some folks realized for the first time that they didn’t need to sing to worship.  One woman walked out, upset, and never came back.

It’s a blessing when God’s people are forced to remove from their lives those things that, though they seem good at first, have become idolatry in their lives.  They have become the thing, the focus of praise, more than having the sheer breath to praise God with our lips.

But for one rainy day, we have remained outside since June.  And those that have chosen to remain, both in person and online, I have seen grow monumentally in their faith.

The last book I taught before COVID came was 1 Peter—we wrapped it up in January of 2020.  And 1 Peter is all about…suffering.  Little did we know how much God was preparing us for the events to come.

We all go through trials.  We all undergo suffering.  These struggles range from annoying to painful, petty to personal, traumatizing to terrifying.  

But while suffering in life is inevitable, it will never seem like anything other than suffering until we examine it from a heavenly perspective, an eternal perspective, outside the realm of the right here and the right now. Its effect on our life radically changes when we understand that suffering has a purpose.  It holds value.  It brings maturity.  It provides humility.  It generates compassion.  It inspires holiness.  It keeps you from sin.  But only when you see it as God sees it.  And only when you see yourself as God sees you. And how does God see you?  

“…You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 
1 Peter 2:9

 A Holy Nation, literally a spiritual ethnicity.  And we are also called his children:

“Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called the sons and daughters of God, and that is what you are”
1 John 3:1

But Peter tells us that because you are saved, you WILL go through trials—but that these trials come in order that your faith might be proved genuine, and result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed at the last day (1 Peter 1:7).  Like Abraham displayed Genuine Faith when he showed himself willing to sacrifice Isaac, believing that because of God’s earlier promise to make Isaac into a nation, God would raise him from the dead, we are also called to willingly undergo these difficulties.  Not that God doesn’t know our hearts.  But WE don’t know our hearts half as much as we think we do.

As Jesus suffered, we are blessed when we stand firm in our suffering.  1 Peter 2:21 says that Jesus gave this as an example for us to follow in his steps.  That, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

Our suffering teaches us to place our own trust in a God who judges justly.

And for us, and for those we teach and lead, it pushes us toward, and strengthens hope.

Hope:  What is hope?  Hope is where it all begins.  Hope is understanding that there is, as a point of fact, eternal life for me when I put my trust in the work of Jesus at the cross.  It is holding a conviction of, having confidence in, my salvation.  Based on God’s promises, hope becomes my anchor, my tether, to heaven.

When we talk about hope, we do not mean “I hope I might,” or “I wish,” or “maybe if I really try hard.”  The dictionary offers all of these meanings.  In our vernacular it means all of these things.  But years back, when the word was originally selected for the English translation in the Bible, it meant something else.  As you scroll down through the various definitions of “hope” in the dictionary, you will finally come to the ninth and last entry.  It reads: 

Archaic. To place trust; rely. 

It’s no wonder we get confused when we talk about hope and salvation together.  I say on one hand, “I hope I get that job,” or “I hope everything turns out okay.”  And then when we talk about having hope in Christ—it’s no wonder we lack assurance!

Colossians 1:5 tells us that faith and love spring from, or have their origination in, the hope that we have that is stored up for us in heaven.  Our confidence in our eternal security, our hope, literally gives birth to faith and love.

Faith, because when I am confident in what is eternal, I can live out my life in faith and in trusting God.  Love, because when I am filled with the love that God has shown me by providing me eternal life, what else can I do but direct that love out onto others?

Many of us will talk about our faith, but our faith—living out life trusting in God, especially in the midst of suffering or persecution—will be severely compromised if we do not understand hope, if we lack the confidence and conviction of our eternal destination. 

My friends, my brothers (and my sisters), I admonish you and encourage you, walk in HOPE. Walk in the understanding that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Through the blessing of COVID, God is revealing hearts.  He is applying pressure to his people, helping them find the genuineness of their own faith, preparing us to walk in UNITY in whatever is to come next.

And when, already being raised with Christ, we set our hearts and minds on things above, where Christ is seated at the right had of God, walking in the hope of eternal life, we can embrace the blessing of suffering, and embrace the cross itself, and confidently lead our people forward, with grace and empathy, into a genuine faith.