Suffering, Part 2

When I was in college I spent a summer with a Christian organization called The Navigators in Indianapolis. The point was to learn, with about 50 – 75 other young adults how to walk the Christian life in everyday life. We had training sessions on everything from how to have a “Quiet Time” with God to how to develop conversations with other people about what Christianity is all about.

One week we had a guest speaker lead several workshops. This speaker, whose name I am unable to remember, centered his messages on the basic topic of using every situation in our lives as a platform for sharing about Christ. What was remarkable about his message is that he specifically mentioned how he was trying to use his ongoing fight against cancer to share as much and as often as he was able. His prognosis was not good. He expected to die within 6 months, but he was focused on other people and their needs. He talked to other patients, doctors, nurses, visitors, and anyone else he came in contact with about the hope he had because he was confident of where life’s end would bring him: into heaven and into the presence of his Savior, Jesus Christ.

This week as I read in the Bible, I came across a passage written by Paul where he is telling us that suffering should be the platform for sharing about our hope. Colossians 1:24 says,

I myself have been made a minister of this same Gospel, and though it is true at this moment that I am suffering on behalf of you who have heard the Gospel, yet I am far from sorry about it. Indeed, I am glad, because it gives me a chance to complete in my own sufferings something of the untold pains for which Christ suffers on behalf of his body, the Church. For I am a minister of the Church by divine commission, a commission granted to me for your benefit and for a special purpose: that I might fully declare God’s word –

Suffering gives us a chance to talk about how Christ suffered on our behalf in order that we might fully understand the Good News and come into a right relationship with Christ. That’s pretty remarkable in my opinion. Suffering exists to bring us into a relationship with Christ. Without it, would we even see the need for Christ? Would we even understand just how much Christ suffered for us? Would we be able to minister to other people who are suffering if we have not suffered ourselves? Would we be able to tell others about how Christ suffered to give us eternal life?

I think not. It is the role of suffering in our lives to bring ourselves, and others into an understanding of Christ in such a way that we live out our lives in a way that serves God. Suffering is not a burden to bear, so much as it is an excuse, a good excuse, to proclaim the forgiveness offered us by Christ. And, as Paul said, we should be “far from sorry about it.” We should indeed be glad that God can use us to proclaim His Good News.