Surprised by Suffering?

If you’re not drafted into God’s army, don’t volunteer without first
counting the cost. You may find the “suffering clause” a bit too much
to bear.

When Paul wrote his letters to young Timothy about three decades after
Jesus’ resurrection, he was Paul the aged. He had been imprisoned by
Rome once before, he had been beaten with rods, lashed with
cat-o-nine-tails, jailed in a cold dungeon with his feet in wooden
stocks, been shipwrecked, often driven out of town, and was continually
hounded by Judaizers who wanted to stone him to death to protect their
religious traditions. (The spirit of murder is quite happy in a
religious disguise.)

As he wrote, Paul was under house arrest in Rome awaiting trial before
Caesar, as we see in the setting at the end of the Book of Acts. By now
all the other apostles among the Twelve, except for John, had already
been killed for their faith. The church had been persecuted by the Jews
but now the pressure had started coming from Nero as the followers of
Jesus refused to worship the Emperor. (Malcolm Muggeridge, the famous
British atheist philosopher, now deceased, was converted to Christ as
he studied history and found that thousands of Christians died with joy
in the Roman arena, having believed that a Man named Jesus had really
come back from the dead.)

Reading Timothy, especially the second letter, you get the poignant
sense that Paul is passing the baton to Timothy. It is very personal
and has eternity in view. He obviously loves Timothy like a father
loves a son, yet he encourages Timothy to keep the faith and be bold
despite great personal risk. Paul says to him, “Suffer hardship with
me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 2:3) At the end of
his letter, he repeats it again: “…endure hardship, do the work of an
evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (4:5)

This expectation of suffering for a young apostle trying to fulfill his
vocation is in stark contrast to the fame or ease or fortune being
glamorously promoted by some ministries today. You would think the mark
of success is measured in budgets or buildings or billboards… or ads in
Charisma Magazine.

Listen, the Spirit of Jesus wants me to warn you-- this is a terrible
time to volunteer for the ministry. It is an especially tough job
market if you are hearing a call to apostleship. If you can get out of
it, run!

I mean, I thought being a prophet was tough: hearing voices, seeing
visions, having dreams, discerning things, always being out of step
with the present and pointing to things not yet, never seeming to fit
in with the status quo. But a little misunderstanding isn’t bad
compared to what apostles have already suffered and will yet endure.

The job description of most of the early apostles included being killed
on the job! Apostles were KIA, “Killed In Action,” which meant being
martyred for the sake of the gospel. How would you like to apply for a
job which included the probability of death?

Yet Jesus says to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send forth (an
apostolic term) laborers into the fields (Matt. 9:37-38). The call from
Jesus to become an apostle (one able to be sent; able to be dispatched,
or able to be deployed under Christ’s authority) has fine print in the
contract. Are you willing to die?

Don’t think you can escape this clause, for every real apostle’s
calling and commissioning includes this hidden feature. Without a
willingness to die doing the will of God for Jesus’ sake, there is no
genuine apostleship.

Some modern apostles have already sacrificed in a similar way. Don’t be
surprised by their suffering. You can’t have the true grace of
apostleship without something of our humanity suffering. History has
overlooked many of the apostles of China, India, Africa, Latin America,
and other non-western people groups where the darkness has been driven
back by servants of God who died on the battle field. In America and
Europe, we have better records.

For example, John Wesley, the apostle who founded Methodism, said that
every Methodist preacher should always be ready to preach, ready to
pray, and ready to die. Pioneers always pay a dear price, a price which
those who follow later may not be able to fully appreciate. Methodists
in America once paid dearly to be Christians who lived a sanctified
life.

Years ago, I prayed with fellow pastors in an old Methodist church in
south Texas that was founded by a circuit riding preacher who rode
himself into the ground and died young bringing the gospel to America’s
frontier. (Most such Methodist preachers never married and died early
by age thirty.) I spoke in another old but splendidly well-preserved
Methodist church in Florida where I experienced the Holy Spirit’s power
coming upon me (and surprising me!) as I stepped behind the pulpit to
speak. Suddenly, I was aware that people had been praying for whoever
should happen to stand behind that pulpit for many, many decades.

My burden for the Methodists has often led me to travail in prayer. My
ancestors on my mother’s side—the Christenberry clan—are famous for
being Methodist pioneers in North Carolina. North of Charlotte and east
of Lake Norman, my family and I once visited an old cemetery behind
Asbury Methodist Church and looked at headstones honoring my ancestors.
The old Bible in the pastor’s office, preserved under glass,
commemorated the Christenberry man who gave the church its first land.
In those days, if you were converted to Christ in that county, they
mocked you and said, “You must be a Christenberry!”

Christians were ridiculed for believing you could be saved and know it,
and for practicing their faith by following Wesley’s methods which
included weekly gatherings in one another’s homes to pray, to study the
Bible, and to confess their sins.

Besides believers being misunderstood, those called as leaders of the
church often faced major opposition in sharing God’s word and pointing
people toward Christ. In the Bible, the decision to follow Jesus for
the Twelve meant they left their nets—their vocational security—and
they also left their reputations behind and risked their future
welfare. They should have been concerned: all but one of the first
Twelve died a terrible death because they preached the kingdom of God
without compromise.

The good news is that on the other side of suffering, if we handle it
right, is maturity and glory.

Jesus suffered more than any of us ever can or ever will. For this, He
was crowned with glory. “…we do see Him… crowned with glory and
honor….” (Hebrews 2:9) I once heard the Lord say to me, “Every crown
in its first appearing is a crown of thorns.”

Your suffering in serving Christ is the gateway to experiencing God’s
glory in your life and ministry. Why? Because when you keep your faith
despite it all, God gives more grace as reward. Grace precedes glory.
This is the promise made in 1 Peter 4:13-14. Notice, glory is
commensurate and it is proportional: to the same degree. God is precise
in His measurement of glory upon His saints. It exactly fits the degree
of faithful endurance displayed before angels and men. More suffering
equals more glory. So, rejoice!

This past weekend, I heard the Spirit say this phrase to me,
“…eyewitnesses of His majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16) I knew what God meant
by that word. For weeks, I have also been intrigued by the imagery of
the Book of Revelation as it describes the Appearing of the Lord Jesus
upon His return. He will arrive in His resurrection glory! Another
scripture has kept reverberating in my mind also, “the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” It is as
though we, while in our fleshly existence as humans, can not fully take
in the true extent of the brightness of the glory of God, so God keeps
“stepping it down” so we can receive some of it, be blessed and
transformed, yet without being killed.

From the face of Jesus Christ, God steps the revelation down by degrees
to mere glory. From glory, God steps it down to mere knowledge. From
knowledge, God steps it down again to mere light. Too much too soon,
and we would be raptured!

We get the light of understanding on some of God’s truth, and from that
we rise to knowing the Lord. From knowing the Lord (which is more than
just information about God), we taste the transforming glory of God by
means of the Spirit of God displaying His majesty and holy presence to
us. From touching the manifest glory, we go to the highest and greatest
manifestation of God on earth, which is the face of Jesus Christ. He
is the express image of God and the brightness of His very presence.

I believe God is going to give many faithful soldiers of the gospel,
men and women, an opportunity to be a eye-witnesses of Jesus’ majesty,
His post-resurrection glory, not only in heaven, but even now, in the
present day, here in the flesh while we are on the earth.

This past weekend at the church where my wife and I make our home base
in North Carolina, we were blessed by the home-going of a beloved man.
He was 82 years old, had been a banker for thirty-eight years, and was
a pastor on staff at The Rock of Wilmington for the last twelve years
of his life. Aubrey Johnston was survived by his wife, Eva, who is
also a minister of God’s power and truth like her husband was.

Aubrey died as he lived, in quiet confidence in the faithfulness of
God. He had seen God’s power manifested in delivering people from
demons, in healing people of diseases, and in filling many Christians
with the gift of the Holy Spirit. He and Eva would often mentor people
into a steady walk with Jesus based on God’s Word and into ministering
the gifts of the Holy Spirit for themselves.

Aubrey’s humor never left him even while he died. Oh, how God’s grace
makes even our redeemed humanity to be cherished! He told one nurse,
“I’ve never had such a good time dying before in my life!” His death
was marked by the testimony of God’s manifest grace and glory.

On his last night on earth, as he lay dying in a hospice bed last
Friday with only his wife and adult children around his bedside, the
ceiling lights began to dim and flicker. Outside in the hall, all the
other lights were bright with no power problems. A mist began to rise
from the floor until it enveloped the bed and his frail body. A light
appeared over his head. For forty minutes, everyone stood speechless
and silent in the manifest glory of God. Then, Aubrey, who hadn’t
spoken for two days and had hardly moved, turned his palms upward from
the bed and worshipped, and his spirit peacefully left his body. Then
the lights came back up and the mist disappeared.

I tell you, to endure the sufferings of this present world which will
surely be inflicted upon God’s holy apostles, to manifest the life of
Jesus in our mortal bodies, to be finally rid of all the fear of death,
we must touch the glory of God. This is why, I believe, apostles have
to have seen their risen Savior in order to be truly fearless in the
face of opposition or death.

How can you be afraid when you’ve seen the One who has eternal life and
gives it freely to those who believe in Him? How can death intimidate
anyone who has seen the Risen Lord? What of the grave is there to fear?

Suffering pales in the light of God’s glory. Everyone who has been
brought back from the dead after seeing Jesus and the beauty of heaven
is eager to go back to be with Jesus and ready to depart the drabness
of this material world.

This is the hope of the church and the secret ingredient of the
perseverance of the saints. The reality of the resurrection and our
privilege to partake of Jesus’ eternal life is the armor of apostles
who face death without fear and defy God’s angelic enemies or human
rebels without backing down.

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“Surprised by Suffering” ©2004 by Ronald Wood, Touched By Grace
Ministries Inc. Write us at: P.O. Box 12749, Wilmington, NC 28405.
Permission to copy hereby granted as long as byline remains intact. For
resources, visit www.touchedbygrace.org. We are touched by grace to
touch the world!