This Suffering

 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us”. Romans 8:18

Music has always been a big part of my life, I would say it was my first love (sorry hubby!). I remember from a young age finding comfort in music, as it allowed me to shut off from the chaotic world around me. I remember music always being played in our house. My music relationship started with reggae being played especially on Sundays. While my mom was cooking I would hear the likes of Garnett Silk, Buju Banton, Sanchez and Beres Hammond. 

Then when I was in primary school I became a pop fanatic who was obsessed with the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Five. Actually last week, I saw on breakfast TV that all members of Five are reuniting for a tour and the 9 year old me suddenly popped up all excited… my son looked at me all confused haha! 

My older cousin was into The fugees and Aaliyah and would play them when looking after me, this was having an affect on me in the background because when I heard TLC’s No Scrubs came out when I was 11 years old I was mesmerised and suddenly I was so over the pop bands. It was all about TLC, Aaliyah, Usher and Brandy.

Then when I was about 13 years old I discovered Hip Hop and I was hooked. The rappers were angry like me, they rapped about the struggle and suffering of living in “the hood” which I could relate to having being brought up on a rough council estate and they rapped about having money, cars and big houses, which I wanted! Plus the beats were so good. From this point and during my teenage years I was listening to Eminem, Ludacris, DMX, Nas, Ja Rule, 50 Cent, Dipset and a bunch of other rappers. 

My love of Hip Hop was the start of me loving anything extreme. The music I liked had to be extreme in lyrics. Whatever it was about it had to be extreme and shocking. When I reached late teens this taste for extreme music stayed with hip hop but also moved over to rock music because it was loud and heavy. Emo music had lyrics about feeling like not fitting in and at times about dying. I was drawn to this because I was drawn to anything dark. 

Since I’ve found Christ, I made the conscious decision to listen to Christian music, be it Christian hip hop which I love, Christian RnB or CCM. Everyone has triggers that they have to stay away from, things that could make this revert back to their old ways before they met Christ. For some, it’s alcohol, being around people smoking weed, partying or being around certain people. For me it is the power of lyrics in songs, especially because I’m naturally attracted to the genres of music that can produce extreme, violent or dark lyrics. Also music became my Idol, I used to say music was my religion. Therefore, because I have it within me for music to be an idol, I have to make sure that the music I listen to is worshipping the true idol… God. 

Anyway back to when I was in my late teens- early twenties, my favourite band was a rock band called Billy Talent. I’ve seen them in concert 3 times and have all their albums. I used to say that Billy Talent saved my life and I still believe that, it’s just now as a believer in Christ I know that God can use His common grace through anything and anyone to save someone who isn’t a believer, like I was then. 

One of my favourite songs of theirs is called This Suffering. What I loved about this song as I was blasting it in my first car, a tiny Ford KA in 2008, was that I could relate to the suffering described and how suffering can really affect you emotionally. Here are some of the lyrics:

“I need a friend to find

My broken mind before it falls to pieces”

I also craved the resilience of overcoming suffering like the song describes:

“You'll never close (this suffering) my eyes

You'll never close my eyes and watch me die”

…

“Misery won't get the best of me”.

At this point, I should tell you that this car caught on fire the first time I drove it! However, in my head when I was blasting this song it felt like I was driving a fully functioning BMW! 

Suffering

Like me, you have most likely experienced suffering in your life and if you are a believer you may have thought the suffering might finally end once you got serious with God- The Father, through Christ. The intense feeling of euphoria of God’s presence might quickly wear off when you are hit with your next wave of suffering. However it is important to remember that Jesus promised us that as believers in Him we would have suffering in our lives:

“Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.” John 16:33.

Reasons

Some of the reasons why we as believers go through suffering:

1. The world hates Jesus

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you”. John 15:18-19

It’s a hard fact, Jesus is not liked. In fact, He is hated by the world and because you are a believer- a follower of Jesus, you will be hated too and because of this you will endure suffering in your life as a Christian. 

Jesus is continuously mocked by the world. When people are angry, they shout out “Jesus Christ” and in many cases they add a swear word in between “Jesus” and “Christ”, pure blasphemy.

Time and time again you see that people are generally fine if you mention the vague word god, or the universe or Buddha etc but as soon as someone mentions Jesus as Lord, people from all walks of life get really angry at just the mention of His name!

Hollywood mocks Jesus. In other religions, Jesus is regularly reduced to merely being a prophet or just a good man. 

“You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror” James 2:19

Why does all this happen? Because there is power in the name of Jesus. Jesus has been given authority over demons, they tremble at His name and have to leave when He tells them to. As believers of Christ, we can use this authority over the devil and his demons. When we ruin their plans in our prayers by commending them to stop “in the name of Jesus”, Jesus' blood gives protection to his followers in the spiritual realm against the devil’s schemes and demonic activity. The devil knows the power that Jesus has over him and his demons, so he has to convince the rest of the world that Jesus is bad, weird or just not the Son of God. 

“He turned and said to the demon within her, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And instantly it left her”. Acts 16:18

2. God sometimes gives his toughest battles to his most faithful

“Have you noticed my servant Job?” Job 1:8.

If we look at the book of Job. Job, the business man with a family, who loved each other, didn’t know why he went through so much suffering. However we as the reader know. We know that Satan was roaming the earth bored and then decided to join the members of the heavenly court when they presented themselves to God. We know that Job was blameless, had integrity, feared God and stayed away from evil. We know this because God Himself said so. Finally we know that God introduced Job to Satan as God’s most faithful servant. Satan tried to rationalise that Job was only faithful to God because God gave him a good life. This led to God letting Satan basically destroy Job’s life without hurting Job. God knew that after everything Satan did to Job, that he would stay faithful to God. 

We know Satan and we know that he gladly did exactly that. Job's children died, his animals died, he lost his business, his health declined and to top it off his wife told him to die. However, as always God was right and Job remained faithful, resulting in God restoring Job with what he had and more, including having more children.

This can sometimes happen to God’s most faithful in the present day. A lot of times people misunderstand 1 Corinthians 10:13 and say God won’t give us more than we can handle. This isn’t what 1 Corinthians is saying, the scripture is talking about temptation not suffering: “And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure”. It also isn’t true that God won’t give us more than what we can handle. God certainly gives his faithful more than they can handle. He does this because we can’t handle it but He can. Therefore we have no choice but to lean in to God, surrender to Him and rely on God to get us through the suffering. Just like Job did.

3. It’s endurance

Imagine you train for a marathon, you run for miles daily and you change your diet so you are all prepared for the 26 mile run. When you finally do the marathon it’s hard and tiring but once you finish you feel a sense of achievement and relief. You have developed a healthier body because of all the training and your new diet. Also you have learnt that when you run another marathon it will be a bit easier because you know what to expect and your body and mindset has developed to endure the race.

The Bible says a similar thing happens when you, as a follower of Christ, run into problems and suffering. The Bible says having problems and trials in your lives helps you to develop endurance. This endurance allows you to develop strength, especially strength of character, in particular around fully surrendering to Christ. Your character strengthened through the suffering, gives you a stronger connection to God. It also gives you a stronger hope that God really has given you the Holy Spirit, eternal life with Him and you know He loves you.

"We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love”. Romans 5:3-5 

4. It’s spiritual warfare 

“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are”. 1 Peter 5:8-9

Sometimes our suffering is a spiritual battle. The Bible says believers are in a spiritual war with God’s enemies who are Satan and his demons. Satan’s plan is to separate you from God and all the love and protection God gives you. 

Satan can inflict spiritual warfare on you though external battles, this suffering and pain is inflicted on you by others. Satan can do this by influencing the actions of people he has access to because they haven’t fully surrendered to Christ or they have rejected Christ altogether. As a result these people bring suffering into your life. 

Another way Satan brings spiritual warfare into your life is through internal battles. These are the thoughts he plants into your mind, the lies. All the devil knows what to do is lie. So the devil tells you lies about yourself through your thoughts, this is when the self-doubt and self-hatred creeps in. The devil will slip in the thoughts of not reading your Bible or not praying because it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s boring or you're not good enough to be reading or praying. If you are not careful you could let these thoughts take over, allowing the thoughts to make you stop surrendering to God or never try to surrender to God in the first place! 

Overcome suffering

“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments”. 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

We overcome suffering by staying connected and fully surrendering to God the Father, through Christ and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us through the struggles. We do this through prayer and reading the Bible, the Old and the New Testaments both details suffering and how God walked various people through it.

“Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you". James 4:7

For spiritual warfare it is also essential that you stay protected with the “armour of God” “so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil”. - Ephesians 6:13:

“Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness.  For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”. Ephesians 6:14-17

Finally as a believer in Christ, you need to remind yourself daily that “you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world”. - 1 John 4:4

Finding God in suffering

Suffering is a part of the walk of a Christian, however along with the promise of suffering, throughout the Bible there is a promise of God helping you overcome it. So going back to the song This suffering by Billy Talent. Seventeen years ago when I was shouting out these lyrics while driving to work, I was really crying out for a friend to find me before I truly fell apart. Years later I found that “friend” in God- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He really did find my broken mind, saved it and healed it before it fell to pieces. 

I found God in the middle of suffering and He has got me through many more trials and suffering in life because “He’ll never watch me die” because through Christ and only Christ I won’t truly die. Through my faith in Christ, I will defeat the final second death and spend eternity with God. With this knowledge and assurance, as the song says, “misery won't get the best of me”.

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