12/10/2022
We may have suffered much in our lives, but with that suffering comes the comfort of the Lord, and it often comes from the testimony and goodness of people who have endured what we are facing. Likewise, the hardships in our lives that produce great spiritual lessons and blessings, aren’t meant to cause us pain, but to give our Heavenly Father the opportunity to bring us relief, and to prepare us to pass that same relief on to others. We share the story of our grief and pain, then tenfold we share the joy and peace that follows. Do we use our moments of torturous trial to touch others? Do we use the relief and understanding from God that flows from those experiences to deliver that message of mercy to others who share our unpleasant experiences with us?
“If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.”
2 Corinthians 1:6 ESV
In this verse, Paul is saying that the affliction he is enduring is so that he can use that pain to pass onto us the salvation and comfort it brought him through his faith. This is a lesson of faith, and a life lesson as well.
I work for the largest healthcare company in the world, and knew one of its founding fathers, Dr. Frist Sr., personally. Many people only see the success this company has had over the years, but they are blind to the hard moments its founders endured along the way. We look at the victories Dr. Frist Sr. Celebrated at HCA, but we wouldn’t know the hardships and sleepless nights he endured unless he chose to share them.
During our first conversation he spoke to me of the importance of family above all else, but he learned this by experiencing the pain of being away from his own family on business trips, and during other painful times that his personal and business life had caused. These led him to a deep understanding of family, and to sharing that wisdom with others.
I listened as he openly told everyone who would hear that good people beget good people, and the importance of that in our company, but that knowledge came at a price, by his suffering through business experiences involving people of poor character.
These things are true of this man, and the company he founded, but it is especially true in his faith, and Dr. Frist, being a believer, learned and shared these lessons as well. Faith, shared properly in good times and bad by those who have learned the hard lessons that only suffering reveals, strengthens us all as we are brought together by them, and by our listening to the faithful stories of others who have suffered similar trials in their lives to those we face in our own. These shared testimonies all come at a price, but with that suffering and our relief we find that we have purchased priceless hope, and ease the burden we carry.
“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.”
2 Timothy 1:8-12 ESV
My spiritual mentor is an amazing man of God, but what has fueled his incredible faith and wisdom, and now enables him to share that with me, are years of hardship, trial, suffering, and yes… victory in Jesus. His strength of faith came from multiple bouts with cancer, through which he helped me through my own… facing a terrible accident in which his daughter was nearly killed so that I would have hope in the trauma center with my son… having a speeding car drive off the street and crash into his living room on the first night he was to pray as an elder at church, so that he could help me face my cancer diagnosis when I joined that same group. You see, our pain, suffering, and every trial, leads to an understanding, revelation, and an enlightenment in God’s Word, and or faith in Jesus Christ, if we will only accept it as such, and share it as testimony with others. So let me ask again…
“Do we use our moments of torturous trial to touch others? Do we use the relief and understanding from God that flows from those experiences to deliver that message of mercy to others who share our unpleasant experiences with us?”
Prayer:
Father, thank you for taking every challenge and hardship we encounter in life, and teaching us of yourself through it. Thank you for the pain and suffering we endure so that we can share the comfort you provided us, and use this as our testimony to those who suffer now. Help us Lord to look through the tribulation of this life as if through a dark glass so that we not only see you clearly, but recount your glory to all who will listen. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you our God in whom there is no trouble that is not overcome by your loving kindness. Praised be your name for the trials we face with you at our side, and Jesus abiding within us. Merciful are you who gives us the testimony of those saints who have faced the terrors and demons that confront us in our lives, and strengthen us by revealing your saving grace, and certain escape in every circumstance. Wash our wounds Father with the blood of Christ, and heal them. Let every sin, and every hardship be as man’s temptation with none being revealed as new, but all being common to man. Judge us worthy and pleasing to you. Let every lesson we have been taught be suitable for teaching to others through our personal testimony, and thus to be an ointment in treating their wounds and suffering in life. Great are you and greatly to be praised Father as you comfort us in all things.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28 ESV
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
1 Corinthians 10:13 KJV
Rich Forbes