The virtue of suffering
Dr. Roberto Miranda
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: In this sermon about emotional and spiritual health, the pastor discusses the importance of understanding that trials, tribulations, and suffering are a normal part of the Christian experience. He explains that the world is fallen and populated by dark forces, and that internal struggles like depression and anxiety can also be used by God to draw us closer to Him. The pastor emphasizes the need to face pain and suffering head-on, rather than resigning oneself to it fatalistically. He cites various biblical passages to support his message, and uses examples from his own life to illustrate his points. Ultimately, he argues that pain and suffering can serve as God's mortar, breaking down our pride and self-sufficiency and allowing the life of God within us to emerge and bear fruit.
Pain and trials directed by God are essential for our spiritual and emotional growth. They break down our pride, self-sufficiency, and vanity, and allow the life of God to sprout through us, making us more loving, humble, and deep. Christians need to rejoice spiritually in the midst of pain, knowing that something good will come out of it. We have to replace superficial meanings of words like peace and joy with deeper meanings that come from our relationship with God. When we go through sufferings permitted and directed by God, we enter into a mysterious and sublime intimacy with the experience of Jesus Christ, becoming co-partakers of His very essence. If we are reproached by the name of Christ, we are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon us. It is important to recognize the role of suffering in our path towards emotional and spiritual health. Pain and trials directed by God are His preferred instruments to heal us and create depth, wisdom, and power in us.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us to get rid of the weight and sin that besieges us in order to run the race of life with lightness. God uses tests and trials to break, purify, and polish us, making us more like Christ. Suffering is an essential part of the Christian life, and we must interpret all events of life as God's way of making us freer, healthier, and happier. We are in fellowship with a great cloud of witnesses and must bear fruit for God's glory, which requires pruning from things we don't like.
God prunes us in order to bear fruit, which may be uncomfortable and make us look ugly. We may go through trials and suffering, but we should submit to God's will and ask for wisdom and strength to understand His purpose. Our crucifixion can bring life and defeat the devil. We should not become bitter, but instead trust in God and His good purposes for our lives. We are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus and nothing can separate us from God's love.
Pain and trials directed by God are essential for our spiritual and emotional growth. They break down our pride, self-sufficiency, and vanity, and allow the life of God to sprout through us, making us more loving, humble, and deep. Christians need to rejoice spiritually in the midst of pain, knowing that something good will come out of it. We have to replace superficial meanings of words like peace and joy with deeper meanings that come from our relationship with God. When we go through sufferings permitted and directed by God, we enter into a mysterious and sublime intimacy with the experience of Jesus Christ, becoming co-partakers of His very essence. If we are reproached by the name of Christ, we are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon us. It is important to recognize the role of suffering in our path towards emotional and spiritual health. Pain and trials directed by God are His preferred instruments to heal us and create depth, wisdom, and power in us.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us to get rid of the weight and sin that besieges us in order to run the race of life with lightness. God uses tests and trials to break, purify, and polish us, making us more like Christ. Suffering is an essential part of the Christian life, and we must interpret all events of life as God's way of making us freer, healthier, and happier. We are in fellowship with a great cloud of witnesses and must bear fruit for God's glory, which requires pruning from things we don't like.
God prunes us in order to bear fruit, which may be uncomfortable and make us look ugly. We may go through trials and suffering, but we should submit to God's will and ask for wisdom and strength to understand His purpose. Our crucifixion can bring life and defeat the devil. We should not become bitter, but instead trust in God and His good purposes for our lives. We are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus and nothing can separate us from God's love.
Let me give you a little bit of background about what we're talking about here and that's about the trials, the tribulations, the suffering in life. Remember that all of this that we are saying today and last Sunday is in the context of a series that we are preaching about emotional and spiritual health, how to live healthy lives, right? how to be healthy people who reflect the joy of our salvation. Emotionally balanced people, people healed by the Spirit of God, people sanctified and cleansed of all those things that cause us to stumble in our lives and that sometimes make us a source of pain for others also because of those defects that we have in our own lives. Those things not dealt with by God often affect our marriages, affect our human relationships, affect our work life, and affect us within ourselves through internal suffering.
All those areas, all those things that go against the joy that God and the abundant life that God has declared over our lives. All these things such as: anxiety, sense of helplessness and loneliness, inferiority complexes, phobias and fears of all kinds, dissatisfaction in life, anger, resentment, an excessive sense of fragility or sensitivity towards criticism from others that can be good and positive, a mouth that sometimes does not bless others, mental ties of different kinds, things that contradict the holiness to which God has not called. The sufferings of life, the losses of life. All these things that often prevent us from being happy or making others happy too.
And we have said that the Word of the Lord has something to say about all those negative things, the Word of the Lord is medicine for all those things. The Word of the Lord is designed to be therapeutic, to be a healer of all those things, to teach us how to get rid of all those things that make us drag in life. God's purpose as we well know is what? that we have life and have it in abundance, right? and that we have happiness, but many times there are things in our life that contradict that purpose of God.
And this series of messages is designed to divide and separate all that series of things. As you can see, it's something systemic, right? which tells us that God's purpose is to bless our lives but we also live in a fallen world, a world where there is tribulation, anguish, a world formed by sin, a world deformed and by the Edenic fall, and ourselves we are in a fight with ourselves. We are not what God originally designed us to be in the Garden of Eden, creation is not the same as God designed.
We know that in Genesis we see a perfect world, a perfect creation. The cosmos, the entire planetary system, everything, the galaxies, God created them in a beautiful, harmonious way, the parts well coordinated with each other, but sin kind of tore away the beauty that God had established and then we entered a world that he is in a fight with himself.
The Bible says that creation itself groans with unspeakable groans waiting for the day of its liberation and Paul says that we ourselves also groan within ourselves waiting for our own redemption as well, everything that exists in the world. So we move in a fallen world, a hostile world, a world full of dangers. Also a world that is populated by demonic and evil spirits, by dark and terrible forces who want to steal, kill and destroy, and who take pleasure in keeping the children of God crawling, and who put us in fight with each other, and we they fill us with undue appetites, and exploit the weaknesses that exist in us to lead us to do things that are not convenient as the Word of the Lord says, and that then we fall into tribulations and difficulties. I mean, it's a complex world.
But the wonderful thing is that within that complexity, God is there working so that we go from glory to glory, from growth to growth, from blessing to blessing, that everything that comes to life is from the devil, from the fallen creation or of ourselves we can turn it into blessing and glory, into steps to ascend more and more and appear more like Christ. That is why we can say that everything that happens in our life is raw material for Christ to be formed more and more within us.
And so we've been working on all that, right? You will remember different topics that we have discussed. And I say all this because I want you to keep the framework of what I am saying very clear, because it is very easy to lose the thread, but it is good to maintain the system, the relationship between the different topics and see how they all strengthen one another. for with the others.
So I got into this discussion about how one of the things we have to, I say, normalize pain, normalize trials and suffering. Not seeing it as something foreign, something strange, foreign to our experience as children of God, but seeing it as an inherent part of the experience of every believer.
I think that one of the problems, as we have said before, right? of a segment of the Church of Christ at this time that only preaches prosperity and blessing, and joy, and triumph, and good things, one danger is that it does not prepare people for when times of affliction and trial come, and it does not it strengthens them in that sense. And I believe that by denying pain, by denying suffering as a legitimate part of the believer's experience, we are not serving God's people well.
And so we have said that it is important to know that in life, we are all going to go through trials and difficulties, all of us. Difficult situations are going to come into our lives: there are going to be illnesses and we are going to have to take our little pill from time to time even if we don't want to, we are going to have to go to the doctor and they look for us and search for us there, humbly submit to that process, we are going to lose a job or have to look for another job, they are going to close the factory and we are going to have to go through a time of fear and uncertainty, we are going to have marital and family situations that are going to be difficult in our lives. There are going to be moments, there are going to be times of difficulties, that is part of human life.
Every human being has their share of pain, listen to me. And when you are going through that trial and difficulty remember, tell yourself: no, this is part of the experience of a child of God, God is using all these things for His purposes and to carry out what He wants. in my life.
Even brothers, those internal struggles that we have, sometimes those struggles with depression, anxiety, inferiority complex, loneliness, sadness that comes to us, and that we have tried to fight with it for many years of our lives and we have not been able to completely get rid of it. Do you know that even those things are allowed by God to work in us, to draw us closer to Him, to force us to pray more, to make us more humble?
God uses everything in life because what if everything was good in our life and only blessing and joy and enjoyment? Know what? we would spoil ourselves What about a child who you just give him everything he asks for, when he opens his mouth you go and buy him the 300 dollar sneakers, the latest computer game, the latest sweater with the little logo on it or whatever, you spoil him, you raise a spoiled little boy who has no depth, who has no discipline.
"No" is one of the best words that have been invented in the human vocabulary because "no" sometimes stops us and forces us to react, God's no is sometimes a great blessing for us, and many times God uses the pain to work in our life, to form brothers, we cannot forget this, and then it is important.
I told them that we were going to meditate for a little while, we were going to stop for a while meditating on suffering and pain because this is a very important part of our journey. We can go to a passage, for example First Peter chapter 4 verses 12 to 19 where Peter, sorry Peter, First Peter 4:12, says: "Beloved" who is he referring to beloved? to the children of God, the Christians, the believers, he is writing to believers, "Beloved, do not be surprised."
Very important: do not be surprised when the test comes to your life. Sometimes we're surprised by the test because we're like, wow, how dare God let the test come into my life? Why is this happening to me serving the Lord, tithing, singing in choir, serving on the usher team, selling cupcakes on Sunday after service, how can pain come into my life? and the suffering?
And the Bible is insistent on that fact: Do not be surprised, but when suffering comes into your life, suffering, for whatever reason, look at it and then enter into relationship with it. It's not that, I'm not here, by the way, advising an attitude of resignation like: oh Lord! Excuse me with all due respect, sometimes that "Catholic" attitude, excuse me for saying that word like that in that way because I love my Catholic brothers, but Catholicism sometimes has this idea of resignation, right? to resign ourselves, to the pain, to the suffering Christ on the cross there always bleeding.
I am not referring to an attitude of resignation as well as fatalistic, no. I am referring to the fact that when pain comes into our lives we have to face the pain, know that it is a reality, and then proceed to process it and work on it until we tame it, tame it, and put it in our bag of experiences, and then let's continue with joy the race of faith, that's what I mean, okay? because that's what happens.
I can tell you about our experience right now in this time that we are going through as a family with Abigail's premature birth and all the uncertainty that this brings to one's life, you can imagine so many things; Right now that creature is still in an incubator and it will be there for almost four months, all the change that this presupposes for a family, for our daughter and her husband, and our grandson, and for all of us too, and to see that little body so fragile and so uncertain to some degree, and still not totally sure that everything will work out perfectly, even though we believe it is and affirm it in faith, and pray for it, amen? but the truth is that all those things bring a measure of tribulation to our life.
And when these things come into our lives, what we have to do: ok, this is a reality, that creature is there prematurely, there are things that have happened. Now we fight, we strengthen ourselves, we are going to work on it and we are going to get ahead in the Name of the Lord. And knowing that God has a purpose in that, and then beginning to process what's happening and asking ourselves: what is God up to through this? what is he doing through the life of Abigail or Miguel, or my life, my wife's life in our family economy, how is he working to build character in us, to give us certain lessons, to smooth us out a little more like garlic to get all the flavor that's locked in to come out?
By the way, it's true: why do you mash garlic? it occurs to me now. Because when you mash it, it releases the essence, right? release the flavor Do you know that there are many things that have to be crushed in order to release their essence? flowers, other things like that, grapes have to be trampled to release their juice, it's true. The world relies heavily on violence to bring beautiful things out of a substance.
Christ said: "Unless the grain of earth falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone." That's one of my formative passages through the years. Let's say a grain of beans, or of corn, if it stays whole, it does not bear fruit, brothers, it has to enter the earth and begin to rot the outer crust, the shell, and when that outer crust of the bean grain, for example, or of grain , of wheat, you throw the seed into the earth, and when that seed begins to act with the chemical substances of the earth, the humidity, the heat, that crust begins to break and open, and that allows the life that is Genetically enclosed within that grain, it begins to emerge in a weak clump that later becomes a bush that bears much fruit, and that grain multiplies by a hundred or a thousand, but it has to be broken first.
That is why Christ said: "If the grain of wheat does not fall to the ground and die before it does not bear fruit, it remains alone, but if it dies, then it can bear much fruit." And I have discovered that pain is God's mortar, it is what breaks our pride, our self-sufficiency, our excessive manliness, our vanity and all these things that keep us protected, keep a shell around us. When God takes the pestle through pain, suffering, struggle, adversity, something that confronts us in our self-sufficiency, then what is inside, the life of God begins to come out and sprout through us. Words of blessing to others, advice, humility, good example, depth, love, all these things.
My theory is that sometimes, for example, a child can come into the life of a family with problems, let's say this, down syndrome, problems, what is it called in Spanish? Down syndrome they call it, right? mental retardation etc Sometimes those families are so blessed because they learn to love in a very different way, very sacrificial, and they are a blessing to those families. Studies have been done of families that have had children with down syndrome and it happens that they are more blessed now that they have that child than before, although I imagine that going through that process, wow, how terrible would it have been, right?
Because it is that when you are forced to love in a heroic and different way, that makes your love more noble, because everyone can love a beautiful creature, symmetrical, harmonious in its body, with beautiful hair and beautiful eyes, and great intelligence, wow but to love a creature that perhaps is not so developed that is agape love, that is truly God's love.
So I believe that sometimes those things that come into the life of a family are a mysterious gift that God is giving them to bless them, although I know it is difficult to see it that way, understand me, but they are the mysteries of God, right?
Then Peter says: "Do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you as if something strange were happening to you" as if it were something strange, foreign to the Christian experience, "do not be surprised, but rather" listen to me: how many are willing to accept what Peter says? "But enjoy." Are you willing to find a reason to rejoice in the midst of pain?
Now the joy that I think Pedro advises is not a joy of: wow, how good that happened to me, let's go to a restaurant to celebrate! oh so good that I lost my job and now I don't know how I'm going to pay the rent, glory to God! let's dance here!
I believe that the joy of which the apostle Peter speaks is a joy of the spirit, it is an objective joy, it is a joy that says: well, God is glorifying himself in my life. It is like the joy that says that Christ rejoiced on the cross anticipating all the good that would result from His cross, "For the joy set before Him" says the Word. Sometimes one can like that in the midst of trials, difficulties, rejoice internally, spiritually because one knows that something good is going to come out of this, not because our flesh rejoices, but because our spirit rejoices because by faith we believe that this going to have a good result at the end of it all.
I believe that Christians have to replace words that normally have a superficial meaning in the world with a much deeper meaning, such as: peace, the peace of the Son of God is not the peace that the world gives. It is not peace because you are paying all the bills and because you have a 65-inch television that occupies the entire wall of your living room, no. It is the peace of God that dwells within your heart because you already know that you already have your passport signed and that you are not an undocumented immigrant to go to the Kingdom of Heaven because your destiny is already prepared, and you have already defeated the world . Everything the world throws at you you hit home run and what the devil throws at you you take off the field because, for the Brazilians or the South Americans they score a goal or whatever then.
We have to rejoice spiritually and this is very interesting, it says: "Because you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." Wow. There is something and the Word repeats it several times, Paul above all talks about knowing Christ, he says: "In His Power and in His sufferings." Look for that word suffering in your concordances, you will see that it appears many times, there is something mysterious.
Christ was said to be perfected by His sufferings because the life of Christ was the life of a soldier, and the Word tells us that we suffer difficulties like a good soldier. How is a soldier formed? You don't train up there having a margarita while looking at a golf course, you train up there on the battlefield exercising and having bad nights, preparing for the whistle of bullets and loss of life and all these kinds of things, we are soldiers also in Christ Jesus and God forms us.
How is God going to form a man who can give advice to others, a woman who can bless lost girls, a preacher who is going to preach the Word of the Lord, a servant capable of resisting the devil's attacks, how is he going to form him? if not by first preparing him through suffering and difficulties, and strengthening, and tempering his character?
No one reaches the depth that God wants and needs except through suffering and suffering. A person who only knows a very comfortable crib can never be a proper servant of God, we have to go through trials and difficulties.
Then Peter says that "we rejoice because we are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." In other words, the Bible suggests that when we go through sufferings permitted and directed by God, we are entering into a mysterious and sublime intimacy with the experience of Jesus Christ. In a sense you are becoming a co-partaker of the very essence of the life of Jesus Christ. You are being part of a God process.
No one can know Christ unless they also know Him in His sufferings, not only in His Power, and it is one of the problems of so many superficial Churches today, who only want to know Christ in His Power but do not want to know Him in His sufferings. They want to meet him on Easter Sunday, but what about the day of the crucifixion? What about the night before there in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the high priest, being interrogated and going through a process of terrible psychological agony, huh?
What of the cross? without the cross there is no salvation, not only the resurrection. If we remove the cross, if we remove suffering, we are cutting off, cutting off at least half of the redemptive experience. And we have to say: Lord, I don't know how.
I only ask God that if He decides to put me through the crucible of testing, and He has done on several occasions throughout my life, that I have enough wisdom and faith to come out shining like gold despite everything, that is the only thing we have to ask the Lord for.
I say: Father if you have to test me test me but take it easy, don't squeeze me too much ok? squeeze me gently but don't choke me as we Dominicans say, ok?
The Bible says that God does not allow us to be tested beyond what we can bear. There is someone paraphrasing: there is no evil that lasts a hundred years or a body that resists it. God does not put us through a hundred year sickness, thank God, but He does test us and we have to tell Him: Lord, whatever You have there I know I have to be tested, I know I have to be treated, I know I have to be disciplined but Please let my faith not fail.
That was what the Lord said to the disciples: "Satan has chosen you to test you as wheat, but I have prayed that your faith does not fail" He told Peter because Peter was going to be tested, I ask him: Lord that our faith does not fail.
When difficulties come, but leave me brother: when I say that I always insist that the majority of the Christian life is glorious, it is good, it is happy, it is to laugh out loud, it is to celebrate, it is to eat well, it is to enjoy ourselves in life is to celebrate good times, but there are moments when he tells you: ok now come for a while, let me tighten your brackets a little more so that your teeth are nice and aligned, that is part of the training of a servant of God.
Then he says: "Because you are participants in the sufferings of Christ so that you may rejoice with joy at the revelation of his glory" in other words, both, right? first go through some suffering from time to time so that then you can rejoice in blessed times too, right? And something very interesting: "If you are reproached by the name of Christ, you are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you."
If you are going through the test let me tell you that God sends His Spirit in a more powerful way than ever. If you are prepared to receive it and discern it, and enter into a deal with God, and embrace what God is throwing at you, the Power of God rests upon your life in a way that you cannot understand, God sends angels to minister to you. just as he sent angels to minister to Jesus Christ in His own suffering, God sends His Spirit. Your mind is sharper, your spirit is more discerning.
But what happens is that many of us are yelling so much that we don't have a chance to think about what God is doing in our lives. We are cursing, we are wincing, kicking on the floor like spoiled children, He says: Hey, take it easy, listen to what I'm saying, learn, pray, get into the hidden place of meditation and ask me what am I doing? and I am going to answer you. But if you are there denying God and rebelling against Him because He allowed this to come into your life, the lesson will happen to you at a hundred miles an hour. What's more, you're going to stay longer stuck there in the discipline then.
I have learned that the faster I receive God's tests the faster they go away, heh. But the more you kick and the more it hurts, the longer God has put you there in the crucible of the test, receive it and let it pass through you smooth as a knife, a bullet that passed through pure flesh and did not touch any vital organ , think about that later a little bit more.
Did you know? The more you resist the pain, the more it hurts. When pain comes into your life relax and it will hurt less. Pray more, fast more, cry softly, calmly and let the pain pass, and then you will see that He does His perfect Work within you and makes His blessing.
That is why it is important, brothers, that we do not deny pain. That is why we have to make an ally of pain, remember that I will be preaching about. Next Sunday I hope if God helps me talk about Elijah, I have preached this passage before I think but now I want to preach it in light of what I have been preaching about how Elijah through his test he had, the great prophet Elijah, God used that test to show Elijah an aspect of His personality, both Elijah and God that Elijah did not know, and how Elijah came out of his test blessed, because I want to apply that in specific cases, right?
But what I want you to take in your heart, my brother, my sister, is that it is important to recognize the role of suffering, not only because we have learned to cope with it and normalize it, but also because it is an essential part of the path towards emotional and spiritual health. Pain is God's preferred instrument to heal us and create depth, wisdom and power in us.
We have said that God wants us to be a light-hearted, light-hearted people who can bounce back from any situation and get ahead, who people are happy to be around, who can laugh out loud, who can run life lightly, neatly. How do we get to that attitude of overflowing emotional health that allows us to process any trial, any difficulty or overcome any ties and any defect, and come out better and better every day, and be stronger, bigger, more powerful, more agile each day? , lighter? through pain, through trial led by God like a surgeon cutting dead and petrified things out of a being to make it healthier.
Pain and trials directed by God, managed by God, micro-directed and arranged by God, that is what relieves you and allows you to be a healthier and happier person.
Paradoxically. How interesting that what allows us to be happier is pain and trials directed by God. I want to tell you: it is not that you are going to live a life of trials and pains and sufferings, but from time to time God is going to tell you: Come, go to the operating table, I want to get something out of you and I love you. try a little more.
Take for example Hebrews chapter 12 because all of these things connect with each other, don't they? Hebrews chapter 12 verse 1. He just talked about the heroes of the faith who suffered a lot of trials and difficulties and still God blessed them, we touched on that a little while ago.
But in chapter 12 the writer of Hebrews says: "Therefore we also, having such a great cloud of witnesses around us" look here what he says: "let us throw off all weight and the sin that besieges us, and run with patience the race ahead of us." Let's get rid of all weight and sin that besieges us.
When you come to the Christian life you generally come with a series of defects and deficiencies in your character and your personality, and since you come to the Christian life the Divine Trainer forges a treatment plan specifically oriented for you, listen to me this. There is a treatment plan up there in heaven for each one of you and for me that has your name on it, and there is a page that the Holy Spirit goes from time to time and opens the divine cabinet: Ah, here is Luis Campos, yes, I have to deal with him. Wow, I have to hit it hard, no lie.
God directs the angels, directs the Holy Spirit, directs circumstances, directs events to break, to purify, to polish, so that we can lightly run the race of faith. Because the truth is that many of us have so many flaws and so many things in our character that we are dragging in the race of faith and God wants us to run, he wants us to jump.
How does he do that? getting rid of excessive weight. What is the excessive weight? greed, vanity, pride, violence, grudges, criticism, intolerance, sensuality, all those things that are the weight that falls on us prevents us from running life lightly.
People who are full of money, that four-bedroom house and the BMW and that I'm getting old, and they get depressed and commit suicide, or go around, put on a miniskirt at seventy because they want to grab the youth that they left what do they do? it's just suffering brothers, that's agony and God wants you, hey, relax, well yes, there are a few little wrinkles there, what does that matter, that's part of life. Up there in heaven I'm not going to have a single wrinkle, I'm going to have fat legs and I'm going to look pretty, and I'm going to lose 50 pounds or whatever, more hair on my head or whatever.
What we have to do is, brothers, again: all these are the things that cause us anxiety, cause us agony, cause us suffering, cause us sadness, frustration, and then make it impossible for those around us and for ourselves. .
The writer of Hebrews says that we have to get rid of all that weight and that sin that besieges us in order to run the race of life with lightness, and what is it that takes those things away from us? it is the tests, they make us more realistic, more humble, more simple at heart. God treating us and weakening us makes us like Christ then. That is why if we do not go through this bleeding we cannot become what God wants us to be.
And I believe that we have to interpret all the events of life in that way, that will help us to be freer and healthier, happier, to be able to laugh more, to be able to face anything; whatever life throws at me I know that if God is with me I am more than a winner, that he who is in me is more powerful than he who is in the world, that I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me says the Word of the Lord .
The Bible says that: "Many are the afflictions of the just but Jehovah will deliver him from all of them" hallelujah. Read Psalm 34 is a Psalm that in these months has been a great blessing for my life when I was already meditating on the question of construction, that Psalm is precious. It talks about what, it says that God will deliver the righteous, it says: "Not one of his bones will be broken" glory to the Lord. There is power in Christ Jesus and when tribulations come you know that you can get ahead because you have already gone through others and you are going to go through this one too.
So this is all part of that process. Suffering is not just something we have to endure like a bitter medicine but it is essential to our life.
Paul suggests in Colossians 3:3 and 4 that this is why we exist as believers, suffering persecution of some kind. Read there Colossians chapter 3 if you want a moment. It is that this is on all the pages of Scripture.
Whoever omits this aspect of the Christian life is doing violence to the Word of God and is hacking it, because you read the life of the Apostle Paul, this powerful and anointed man, and full of joy, and you continually see the marks of the cross, so he said: I have the marks of the cross in my life. I have not met a powerful Christian that I want to be by his or her side who has not gone through tribulations and afflictions in his life but has emerged victorious from all of them.
Colossians 3:3 and 4 says, let me see, that's not the passage I want, but it's not bad either, it's not that but don't worry, it just occurs to me. But the important thing is that Paul says that this is what we have been for, if you find it there while I am speaking, look it up in Colossians, but Paul says that this is what we have been placed for, to go through these test situations in our lives. And this idea that this is what we have been placed for, that we are going through these situations is something completely surprising that this is such an inherent part of the believer's life.
This is connected to our enmity with the world that hates us because our values are contrary to theirs. The world is never going to love us, it is never going to support us because the values that we represent are not values that the world appreciates, and that is why we are always going to be in struggle and at enmity with the world, and that is going to be another source also of difficulty in our life.
In Hebrews chapter 10 verse 32 it says: "But remember the days of the past in which, after being enlightened, you fought a great battle of sufferings. On the one hand, with reproaches and tribulations, you were made a spectacle, and on the other hand, you became companions of those who were in a similar situation."
Do you know that there is something else here too? that many times when we go through trials and difficulties we are not only in intimate fellowship with Christ who went through so many trials but we are in fellowship with a host of Christians in all parts of the world who are also going through affliction and trials and difficulties. Right now for example in the English service, and he's going to be briefly greeting the Church in the 12 o'clock service, there's Peter Noonan who's a missionary in Iraq with his family, and he's preaching over there about that persecution that Christians in the Middle East are suffering right now.
There is terrible persecution right now in the Muslim world, everywhere. In Iraq with Isis, Isil, in Afghanistan, even in Israel, in parts like Palestine and in Bethlehem itself, Muslim groups are completely expelling Christian families, and Bethlehem, the place where Christ was born, has almost no Christians anymore because they are being persecuted and exiled, taken outside under great pressure.
In Africa right now there is a great persecution of Christians, North Korea, Christians are persecuted and killed, and imprisoned. In Communist China alike, in many countries of the world. This has been a decade, the last ten, fifteen, twenty years have been times of terrible persecution of Christians in all parts of the world, they are suffering persecution and death. How do you tell those Christians: oh that everything is good, that everything is going to work out for you? These people must be strengthened as Peter did when he wrote to the Christians who were being persecuted about: resist the test, go to the Lord in the midst of your test.
So when we suffer at a certain level, here in the United States there is persecution of Christianity right now, you know that? In many places here, governmentally, there is persecution of people who are trying to live Christianity, of Christian institutions that are trying to remain firm in their biblical positions, there is persecution, and we once and for all shout out anything, and what about What about those Christians who are killing and suffering in other parts of the world?
As we suffer a certain degree of suffering and persecution, we are entering into a sublime fellowship with those brothers throughout the Earth who are also suffering difficulties and suffering, then we are in community with that great community, with that great cloud of witnesses, and it is wonderful.
Philippians chapter 3 verse 8 to 10, says: "And certainly I still count all things as loss because of the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything and count it as rubbish to win Christ, and to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith from Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the participation his sufferings, becoming like him in his death."
So in all these passages we see this same idea, right? that God is going to use pain, suffering to fulfill many different purposes in your life, he is going to use it to bleed you a little and take away that carnal force that prevents you from entering into communion and in that posture of receptivity that is required to be able to know the deepest areas of the Christian life.
God bleeds us to make us stronger. God allows us to go through the test to force us sometimes to seek more of Him in prayer and to set our sights on things above, and wean ourselves from things below. The executive who wants to reach the pinnacle of his profession and earn a lot of money, and have a bigger house and two more expensive cars loses his job one day and that forces him to really ask himself, what does he live for and what for? does he exist? if you pass the test correctly many times, that can help you wean yourself away from the love of money and things, and understand when your friends leave you and stop calling you, you no longer have money to go to parties and all the things, and you he realizes that they are not looking for him, that makes him think and reconsider about what is true in life, and he becomes more humble and then perhaps he begins to look for more from his wife and children, and God uses those tests for that, to wean ourselves from the world and to look higher up.
God sometimes uses the test preventively as well, as in the case of Paul, he used it to humiliate Paul because God had given him so much knowledge and so much revelation, that he says that so that those revelations would not make him excessively proud, he allowed it to come into his life a sting, a messenger of the devil to slap him, about which he asked the Lord three times to deliver him and three times God said to him: My Grace is enough for you because My Power is perfected in weakness.
Then God mercifully used the test in Paul's life to prevent the pride that would come in him if God did not deal with him and that would destroy his ministry, and he put that opponent with whom Paul continually struggled, and then he had to refer to the grace of Christ Jesus, and taught him that: You are a mere man, you need the grace of Christ as much as those who have not received all the things that you have received in your ministry.
And God also tests us so that we bear more fruit, and with this I end, if the musicians can come here, so that we bear more fruit, listen. If you want to bear fruit in the Christian life, how many would like God to use them to bring lives to the knowledge of Jesus, amen? How many would like God to use them so that the Word of God could flow more freely through their mouths? How many would like God to use them to give advice to people who are disoriented in life? How many would like God to use them to understand more of the Word of the Lord so that they can share the Gospel with others in a more effective way?
Well you know what? If you want that, God is going to use the test to train you and so that you bear more fruit for His glory. Because what does the Word say in John, I believe, chapter 12? look for it there, it says there that the one that bears fruit God prunes it so that it bears more fruit, he says he will clean it, that in the original Greek the word is: he will prune it, so that it bears more fruit, John 12:23 to 26.
It is the 15th chapter of John: "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away" verse 2, John 15:2 "and every branch that bears fruit he prunes" in other words he prunes it "so that it bears more fruit."
God says: You have to bear fruit, but in order for you to be able to bear fruit, God has to prune you from many things that you don't like, and you're going to look a bit ugly when God prunes you, you know? how you kill them Have you seen a pruned bush? sometimes what remains are the stumps sticking out like this, all the excessive leaves are removed, why? because all those leaves steal sap from the fruits that need to be concentrated in less area, surface. That is why all those excessive twigs that a tree has are cut so that only the essence of the tree remains, and when you look at a recently pruned tree it looks like it has been sheared, like a sheep without skin, right?
And that's how we see ourselves sometimes. When God treats us we come out as dizzy like this, we have been hit by the divine mortar, but that is God's plan. When you recover and heal, you are beautiful, you are more beautiful than before because God has dealt with you. So let's not resist the pain. See pain as part of God's process for you to bear fruit and for you to be the man, the woman he wants you to be. And for you to be the man or woman that you want to be too, amen?
Many times we are frustrated because neither our wife can put up with us nor our children love us. When they get home and see that the car is there, they say: oh no, I'm going to go somewhere else instead of saying: wow, it's good that daddy is there or that mommy is there! So sometimes we have to be.
It is a mystery brothers, it is a mystery. I don't want to go through the test. As I tell you, these days have been difficult times for my wife, for me, for my whole family, but hey, preaching often has to start from the head.
And at this time I am saying: Lord, what are you doing? I think I know what He is doing, I have a more or less idea of what He is doing in our case, but instead of denying God, I am asking myself: Lord, what are you doing with this, what message? you are sending, what purpose do you have? How are we going to benefit from this? How can we give a good testimony of faith and trust in You? How can we be a little more humble at the end of this trial and be more like Christ? that is what I advise you.
If you are going through a situation in your life right now, lower your head for a moment, what are the areas of dissatisfaction in your life right now? What are the things that cause you discomfort? Where is the area of suffering in your life that if you put your hand it hurts a little there in that area, in your heart, in your emotions, in your spirit?
I know that there are areas that hurt us. Submit it to the Lord, recognize that there is something that God is fulfilling there in that purpose, receive it, thank God even if tears come out of the corners of your eyes and say: Father, give me wisdom to understand what You are wanting to do with this and what mysteries are being processed and unfolded at this time in my life, and then invite the Power of God into that area. In the midst of your pain, your brokenness, your humiliation tell him: Father, use this pain for Your glory.
And if it hurts for a loved one who is going through something, send your sweetness and your resignation, and your acceptance of the test to that person and bless them, and use that crucifixion so that the Grace of God enters that life and breaks the walls of the devil because the cross always destroys Satan and his evil intentions.
Your cross, your crucifixion is what can give life to that person, it is what can give life to that situation, it is what can give life in that place where you are hurting right now. Your crucifixion like the crucifixion of Jesus is going to release life and defeat the devil. Give thanks to God for that crucifixion and that the cross of Christ was fulfilled in your life, and ask the Lord to give you a lot of grace, a lot of strength, a lot of discernment to see God's treatment and God's mercy in that space, that place of pain in your life.
God loves you, God remembers you, God has good purposes for your life, God is fulfilling His Will in your life, God is leading you towards a better future, God has not neglected you, God is by your side, His mighty Spirit rests on you right now and is strengthening you in a way that you don't realize, He is working in you to bring you to a higher level of life in Christ Jesus. Receive it. Let the cross rest on your back, and while that cross remains on your back, suffer as a child of God.
Do not deny, do not become bitter, do not harden and tell him: Lord, fulfill Your Purpose, Your Will be done and not mine, and get me out of this test graceful, victorious, better than ever, more like Christ. I bless your life, I bless the life of your family, I bless your pilgrimage, your walk, your journey in faith, mysterious and complex as it is, and I declare the Grace of the Lord for this sublime Word over your life.
Thank you Father, thank you that Your Purpose is fulfilled in me, in us because You are in control, You are on Your Throne doing beautiful and powerful things, just as You are doing in this world and in this creation You are doing in my life too , and in the life of my brothers, and I beg you that those of us who are in trials and difficulties may be strengthened this morning, receive new strength, new joy, new hope, comfort from You Lord Jesus. Perch on this town this morning and help us to rest our head on Your chest, Lord, and receive new strength from You.
Thank you because what awaits us ahead is wonderful and we will be happy and we will thank you Lord. In Christ Jesus we are more than conquerors, neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor hunger, nor nakedness, nor danger, nor the sword, nor high, nor low, nor the future, nor the past will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thank you Lord we adore you in Jesus Name amen and amen. I bless you my brothers, may the Grace of the Lord be with you, be blessed this morning.
All those areas, all those things that go against the joy that God and the abundant life that God has declared over our lives. All these things such as: anxiety, sense of helplessness and loneliness, inferiority complexes, phobias and fears of all kinds, dissatisfaction in life, anger, resentment, an excessive sense of fragility or sensitivity towards criticism from others that can be good and positive, a mouth that sometimes does not bless others, mental ties of different kinds, things that contradict the holiness to which God has not called. The sufferings of life, the losses of life. All these things that often prevent us from being happy or making others happy too.
And we have said that the Word of the Lord has something to say about all those negative things, the Word of the Lord is medicine for all those things. The Word of the Lord is designed to be therapeutic, to be a healer of all those things, to teach us how to get rid of all those things that make us drag in life. God's purpose as we well know is what? that we have life and have it in abundance, right? and that we have happiness, but many times there are things in our life that contradict that purpose of God.
And this series of messages is designed to divide and separate all that series of things. As you can see, it's something systemic, right? which tells us that God's purpose is to bless our lives but we also live in a fallen world, a world where there is tribulation, anguish, a world formed by sin, a world deformed and by the Edenic fall, and ourselves we are in a fight with ourselves. We are not what God originally designed us to be in the Garden of Eden, creation is not the same as God designed.
We know that in Genesis we see a perfect world, a perfect creation. The cosmos, the entire planetary system, everything, the galaxies, God created them in a beautiful, harmonious way, the parts well coordinated with each other, but sin kind of tore away the beauty that God had established and then we entered a world that he is in a fight with himself.
The Bible says that creation itself groans with unspeakable groans waiting for the day of its liberation and Paul says that we ourselves also groan within ourselves waiting for our own redemption as well, everything that exists in the world. So we move in a fallen world, a hostile world, a world full of dangers. Also a world that is populated by demonic and evil spirits, by dark and terrible forces who want to steal, kill and destroy, and who take pleasure in keeping the children of God crawling, and who put us in fight with each other, and we they fill us with undue appetites, and exploit the weaknesses that exist in us to lead us to do things that are not convenient as the Word of the Lord says, and that then we fall into tribulations and difficulties. I mean, it's a complex world.
But the wonderful thing is that within that complexity, God is there working so that we go from glory to glory, from growth to growth, from blessing to blessing, that everything that comes to life is from the devil, from the fallen creation or of ourselves we can turn it into blessing and glory, into steps to ascend more and more and appear more like Christ. That is why we can say that everything that happens in our life is raw material for Christ to be formed more and more within us.
And so we've been working on all that, right? You will remember different topics that we have discussed. And I say all this because I want you to keep the framework of what I am saying very clear, because it is very easy to lose the thread, but it is good to maintain the system, the relationship between the different topics and see how they all strengthen one another. for with the others.
So I got into this discussion about how one of the things we have to, I say, normalize pain, normalize trials and suffering. Not seeing it as something foreign, something strange, foreign to our experience as children of God, but seeing it as an inherent part of the experience of every believer.
I think that one of the problems, as we have said before, right? of a segment of the Church of Christ at this time that only preaches prosperity and blessing, and joy, and triumph, and good things, one danger is that it does not prepare people for when times of affliction and trial come, and it does not it strengthens them in that sense. And I believe that by denying pain, by denying suffering as a legitimate part of the believer's experience, we are not serving God's people well.
And so we have said that it is important to know that in life, we are all going to go through trials and difficulties, all of us. Difficult situations are going to come into our lives: there are going to be illnesses and we are going to have to take our little pill from time to time even if we don't want to, we are going to have to go to the doctor and they look for us and search for us there, humbly submit to that process, we are going to lose a job or have to look for another job, they are going to close the factory and we are going to have to go through a time of fear and uncertainty, we are going to have marital and family situations that are going to be difficult in our lives. There are going to be moments, there are going to be times of difficulties, that is part of human life.
Every human being has their share of pain, listen to me. And when you are going through that trial and difficulty remember, tell yourself: no, this is part of the experience of a child of God, God is using all these things for His purposes and to carry out what He wants. in my life.
Even brothers, those internal struggles that we have, sometimes those struggles with depression, anxiety, inferiority complex, loneliness, sadness that comes to us, and that we have tried to fight with it for many years of our lives and we have not been able to completely get rid of it. Do you know that even those things are allowed by God to work in us, to draw us closer to Him, to force us to pray more, to make us more humble?
God uses everything in life because what if everything was good in our life and only blessing and joy and enjoyment? Know what? we would spoil ourselves What about a child who you just give him everything he asks for, when he opens his mouth you go and buy him the 300 dollar sneakers, the latest computer game, the latest sweater with the little logo on it or whatever, you spoil him, you raise a spoiled little boy who has no depth, who has no discipline.
"No" is one of the best words that have been invented in the human vocabulary because "no" sometimes stops us and forces us to react, God's no is sometimes a great blessing for us, and many times God uses the pain to work in our life, to form brothers, we cannot forget this, and then it is important.
I told them that we were going to meditate for a little while, we were going to stop for a while meditating on suffering and pain because this is a very important part of our journey. We can go to a passage, for example First Peter chapter 4 verses 12 to 19 where Peter, sorry Peter, First Peter 4:12, says: "Beloved" who is he referring to beloved? to the children of God, the Christians, the believers, he is writing to believers, "Beloved, do not be surprised."
Very important: do not be surprised when the test comes to your life. Sometimes we're surprised by the test because we're like, wow, how dare God let the test come into my life? Why is this happening to me serving the Lord, tithing, singing in choir, serving on the usher team, selling cupcakes on Sunday after service, how can pain come into my life? and the suffering?
And the Bible is insistent on that fact: Do not be surprised, but when suffering comes into your life, suffering, for whatever reason, look at it and then enter into relationship with it. It's not that, I'm not here, by the way, advising an attitude of resignation like: oh Lord! Excuse me with all due respect, sometimes that "Catholic" attitude, excuse me for saying that word like that in that way because I love my Catholic brothers, but Catholicism sometimes has this idea of resignation, right? to resign ourselves, to the pain, to the suffering Christ on the cross there always bleeding.
I am not referring to an attitude of resignation as well as fatalistic, no. I am referring to the fact that when pain comes into our lives we have to face the pain, know that it is a reality, and then proceed to process it and work on it until we tame it, tame it, and put it in our bag of experiences, and then let's continue with joy the race of faith, that's what I mean, okay? because that's what happens.
I can tell you about our experience right now in this time that we are going through as a family with Abigail's premature birth and all the uncertainty that this brings to one's life, you can imagine so many things; Right now that creature is still in an incubator and it will be there for almost four months, all the change that this presupposes for a family, for our daughter and her husband, and our grandson, and for all of us too, and to see that little body so fragile and so uncertain to some degree, and still not totally sure that everything will work out perfectly, even though we believe it is and affirm it in faith, and pray for it, amen? but the truth is that all those things bring a measure of tribulation to our life.
And when these things come into our lives, what we have to do: ok, this is a reality, that creature is there prematurely, there are things that have happened. Now we fight, we strengthen ourselves, we are going to work on it and we are going to get ahead in the Name of the Lord. And knowing that God has a purpose in that, and then beginning to process what's happening and asking ourselves: what is God up to through this? what is he doing through the life of Abigail or Miguel, or my life, my wife's life in our family economy, how is he working to build character in us, to give us certain lessons, to smooth us out a little more like garlic to get all the flavor that's locked in to come out?
By the way, it's true: why do you mash garlic? it occurs to me now. Because when you mash it, it releases the essence, right? release the flavor Do you know that there are many things that have to be crushed in order to release their essence? flowers, other things like that, grapes have to be trampled to release their juice, it's true. The world relies heavily on violence to bring beautiful things out of a substance.
Christ said: "Unless the grain of earth falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone." That's one of my formative passages through the years. Let's say a grain of beans, or of corn, if it stays whole, it does not bear fruit, brothers, it has to enter the earth and begin to rot the outer crust, the shell, and when that outer crust of the bean grain, for example, or of grain , of wheat, you throw the seed into the earth, and when that seed begins to act with the chemical substances of the earth, the humidity, the heat, that crust begins to break and open, and that allows the life that is Genetically enclosed within that grain, it begins to emerge in a weak clump that later becomes a bush that bears much fruit, and that grain multiplies by a hundred or a thousand, but it has to be broken first.
That is why Christ said: "If the grain of wheat does not fall to the ground and die before it does not bear fruit, it remains alone, but if it dies, then it can bear much fruit." And I have discovered that pain is God's mortar, it is what breaks our pride, our self-sufficiency, our excessive manliness, our vanity and all these things that keep us protected, keep a shell around us. When God takes the pestle through pain, suffering, struggle, adversity, something that confronts us in our self-sufficiency, then what is inside, the life of God begins to come out and sprout through us. Words of blessing to others, advice, humility, good example, depth, love, all these things.
My theory is that sometimes, for example, a child can come into the life of a family with problems, let's say this, down syndrome, problems, what is it called in Spanish? Down syndrome they call it, right? mental retardation etc Sometimes those families are so blessed because they learn to love in a very different way, very sacrificial, and they are a blessing to those families. Studies have been done of families that have had children with down syndrome and it happens that they are more blessed now that they have that child than before, although I imagine that going through that process, wow, how terrible would it have been, right?
Because it is that when you are forced to love in a heroic and different way, that makes your love more noble, because everyone can love a beautiful creature, symmetrical, harmonious in its body, with beautiful hair and beautiful eyes, and great intelligence, wow but to love a creature that perhaps is not so developed that is agape love, that is truly God's love.
So I believe that sometimes those things that come into the life of a family are a mysterious gift that God is giving them to bless them, although I know it is difficult to see it that way, understand me, but they are the mysteries of God, right?
Then Peter says: "Do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you as if something strange were happening to you" as if it were something strange, foreign to the Christian experience, "do not be surprised, but rather" listen to me: how many are willing to accept what Peter says? "But enjoy." Are you willing to find a reason to rejoice in the midst of pain?
Now the joy that I think Pedro advises is not a joy of: wow, how good that happened to me, let's go to a restaurant to celebrate! oh so good that I lost my job and now I don't know how I'm going to pay the rent, glory to God! let's dance here!
I believe that the joy of which the apostle Peter speaks is a joy of the spirit, it is an objective joy, it is a joy that says: well, God is glorifying himself in my life. It is like the joy that says that Christ rejoiced on the cross anticipating all the good that would result from His cross, "For the joy set before Him" says the Word. Sometimes one can like that in the midst of trials, difficulties, rejoice internally, spiritually because one knows that something good is going to come out of this, not because our flesh rejoices, but because our spirit rejoices because by faith we believe that this going to have a good result at the end of it all.
I believe that Christians have to replace words that normally have a superficial meaning in the world with a much deeper meaning, such as: peace, the peace of the Son of God is not the peace that the world gives. It is not peace because you are paying all the bills and because you have a 65-inch television that occupies the entire wall of your living room, no. It is the peace of God that dwells within your heart because you already know that you already have your passport signed and that you are not an undocumented immigrant to go to the Kingdom of Heaven because your destiny is already prepared, and you have already defeated the world . Everything the world throws at you you hit home run and what the devil throws at you you take off the field because, for the Brazilians or the South Americans they score a goal or whatever then.
We have to rejoice spiritually and this is very interesting, it says: "Because you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." Wow. There is something and the Word repeats it several times, Paul above all talks about knowing Christ, he says: "In His Power and in His sufferings." Look for that word suffering in your concordances, you will see that it appears many times, there is something mysterious.
Christ was said to be perfected by His sufferings because the life of Christ was the life of a soldier, and the Word tells us that we suffer difficulties like a good soldier. How is a soldier formed? You don't train up there having a margarita while looking at a golf course, you train up there on the battlefield exercising and having bad nights, preparing for the whistle of bullets and loss of life and all these kinds of things, we are soldiers also in Christ Jesus and God forms us.
How is God going to form a man who can give advice to others, a woman who can bless lost girls, a preacher who is going to preach the Word of the Lord, a servant capable of resisting the devil's attacks, how is he going to form him? if not by first preparing him through suffering and difficulties, and strengthening, and tempering his character?
No one reaches the depth that God wants and needs except through suffering and suffering. A person who only knows a very comfortable crib can never be a proper servant of God, we have to go through trials and difficulties.
Then Peter says that "we rejoice because we are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." In other words, the Bible suggests that when we go through sufferings permitted and directed by God, we are entering into a mysterious and sublime intimacy with the experience of Jesus Christ. In a sense you are becoming a co-partaker of the very essence of the life of Jesus Christ. You are being part of a God process.
No one can know Christ unless they also know Him in His sufferings, not only in His Power, and it is one of the problems of so many superficial Churches today, who only want to know Christ in His Power but do not want to know Him in His sufferings. They want to meet him on Easter Sunday, but what about the day of the crucifixion? What about the night before there in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the high priest, being interrogated and going through a process of terrible psychological agony, huh?
What of the cross? without the cross there is no salvation, not only the resurrection. If we remove the cross, if we remove suffering, we are cutting off, cutting off at least half of the redemptive experience. And we have to say: Lord, I don't know how.
I only ask God that if He decides to put me through the crucible of testing, and He has done on several occasions throughout my life, that I have enough wisdom and faith to come out shining like gold despite everything, that is the only thing we have to ask the Lord for.
I say: Father if you have to test me test me but take it easy, don't squeeze me too much ok? squeeze me gently but don't choke me as we Dominicans say, ok?
The Bible says that God does not allow us to be tested beyond what we can bear. There is someone paraphrasing: there is no evil that lasts a hundred years or a body that resists it. God does not put us through a hundred year sickness, thank God, but He does test us and we have to tell Him: Lord, whatever You have there I know I have to be tested, I know I have to be treated, I know I have to be disciplined but Please let my faith not fail.
That was what the Lord said to the disciples: "Satan has chosen you to test you as wheat, but I have prayed that your faith does not fail" He told Peter because Peter was going to be tested, I ask him: Lord that our faith does not fail.
When difficulties come, but leave me brother: when I say that I always insist that the majority of the Christian life is glorious, it is good, it is happy, it is to laugh out loud, it is to celebrate, it is to eat well, it is to enjoy ourselves in life is to celebrate good times, but there are moments when he tells you: ok now come for a while, let me tighten your brackets a little more so that your teeth are nice and aligned, that is part of the training of a servant of God.
Then he says: "Because you are participants in the sufferings of Christ so that you may rejoice with joy at the revelation of his glory" in other words, both, right? first go through some suffering from time to time so that then you can rejoice in blessed times too, right? And something very interesting: "If you are reproached by the name of Christ, you are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you."
If you are going through the test let me tell you that God sends His Spirit in a more powerful way than ever. If you are prepared to receive it and discern it, and enter into a deal with God, and embrace what God is throwing at you, the Power of God rests upon your life in a way that you cannot understand, God sends angels to minister to you. just as he sent angels to minister to Jesus Christ in His own suffering, God sends His Spirit. Your mind is sharper, your spirit is more discerning.
But what happens is that many of us are yelling so much that we don't have a chance to think about what God is doing in our lives. We are cursing, we are wincing, kicking on the floor like spoiled children, He says: Hey, take it easy, listen to what I'm saying, learn, pray, get into the hidden place of meditation and ask me what am I doing? and I am going to answer you. But if you are there denying God and rebelling against Him because He allowed this to come into your life, the lesson will happen to you at a hundred miles an hour. What's more, you're going to stay longer stuck there in the discipline then.
I have learned that the faster I receive God's tests the faster they go away, heh. But the more you kick and the more it hurts, the longer God has put you there in the crucible of the test, receive it and let it pass through you smooth as a knife, a bullet that passed through pure flesh and did not touch any vital organ , think about that later a little bit more.
Did you know? The more you resist the pain, the more it hurts. When pain comes into your life relax and it will hurt less. Pray more, fast more, cry softly, calmly and let the pain pass, and then you will see that He does His perfect Work within you and makes His blessing.
That is why it is important, brothers, that we do not deny pain. That is why we have to make an ally of pain, remember that I will be preaching about. Next Sunday I hope if God helps me talk about Elijah, I have preached this passage before I think but now I want to preach it in light of what I have been preaching about how Elijah through his test he had, the great prophet Elijah, God used that test to show Elijah an aspect of His personality, both Elijah and God that Elijah did not know, and how Elijah came out of his test blessed, because I want to apply that in specific cases, right?
But what I want you to take in your heart, my brother, my sister, is that it is important to recognize the role of suffering, not only because we have learned to cope with it and normalize it, but also because it is an essential part of the path towards emotional and spiritual health. Pain is God's preferred instrument to heal us and create depth, wisdom and power in us.
We have said that God wants us to be a light-hearted, light-hearted people who can bounce back from any situation and get ahead, who people are happy to be around, who can laugh out loud, who can run life lightly, neatly. How do we get to that attitude of overflowing emotional health that allows us to process any trial, any difficulty or overcome any ties and any defect, and come out better and better every day, and be stronger, bigger, more powerful, more agile each day? , lighter? through pain, through trial led by God like a surgeon cutting dead and petrified things out of a being to make it healthier.
Pain and trials directed by God, managed by God, micro-directed and arranged by God, that is what relieves you and allows you to be a healthier and happier person.
Paradoxically. How interesting that what allows us to be happier is pain and trials directed by God. I want to tell you: it is not that you are going to live a life of trials and pains and sufferings, but from time to time God is going to tell you: Come, go to the operating table, I want to get something out of you and I love you. try a little more.
Take for example Hebrews chapter 12 because all of these things connect with each other, don't they? Hebrews chapter 12 verse 1. He just talked about the heroes of the faith who suffered a lot of trials and difficulties and still God blessed them, we touched on that a little while ago.
But in chapter 12 the writer of Hebrews says: "Therefore we also, having such a great cloud of witnesses around us" look here what he says: "let us throw off all weight and the sin that besieges us, and run with patience the race ahead of us." Let's get rid of all weight and sin that besieges us.
When you come to the Christian life you generally come with a series of defects and deficiencies in your character and your personality, and since you come to the Christian life the Divine Trainer forges a treatment plan specifically oriented for you, listen to me this. There is a treatment plan up there in heaven for each one of you and for me that has your name on it, and there is a page that the Holy Spirit goes from time to time and opens the divine cabinet: Ah, here is Luis Campos, yes, I have to deal with him. Wow, I have to hit it hard, no lie.
God directs the angels, directs the Holy Spirit, directs circumstances, directs events to break, to purify, to polish, so that we can lightly run the race of faith. Because the truth is that many of us have so many flaws and so many things in our character that we are dragging in the race of faith and God wants us to run, he wants us to jump.
How does he do that? getting rid of excessive weight. What is the excessive weight? greed, vanity, pride, violence, grudges, criticism, intolerance, sensuality, all those things that are the weight that falls on us prevents us from running life lightly.
People who are full of money, that four-bedroom house and the BMW and that I'm getting old, and they get depressed and commit suicide, or go around, put on a miniskirt at seventy because they want to grab the youth that they left what do they do? it's just suffering brothers, that's agony and God wants you, hey, relax, well yes, there are a few little wrinkles there, what does that matter, that's part of life. Up there in heaven I'm not going to have a single wrinkle, I'm going to have fat legs and I'm going to look pretty, and I'm going to lose 50 pounds or whatever, more hair on my head or whatever.
What we have to do is, brothers, again: all these are the things that cause us anxiety, cause us agony, cause us suffering, cause us sadness, frustration, and then make it impossible for those around us and for ourselves. .
The writer of Hebrews says that we have to get rid of all that weight and that sin that besieges us in order to run the race of life with lightness, and what is it that takes those things away from us? it is the tests, they make us more realistic, more humble, more simple at heart. God treating us and weakening us makes us like Christ then. That is why if we do not go through this bleeding we cannot become what God wants us to be.
And I believe that we have to interpret all the events of life in that way, that will help us to be freer and healthier, happier, to be able to laugh more, to be able to face anything; whatever life throws at me I know that if God is with me I am more than a winner, that he who is in me is more powerful than he who is in the world, that I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me says the Word of the Lord .
The Bible says that: "Many are the afflictions of the just but Jehovah will deliver him from all of them" hallelujah. Read Psalm 34 is a Psalm that in these months has been a great blessing for my life when I was already meditating on the question of construction, that Psalm is precious. It talks about what, it says that God will deliver the righteous, it says: "Not one of his bones will be broken" glory to the Lord. There is power in Christ Jesus and when tribulations come you know that you can get ahead because you have already gone through others and you are going to go through this one too.
So this is all part of that process. Suffering is not just something we have to endure like a bitter medicine but it is essential to our life.
Paul suggests in Colossians 3:3 and 4 that this is why we exist as believers, suffering persecution of some kind. Read there Colossians chapter 3 if you want a moment. It is that this is on all the pages of Scripture.
Whoever omits this aspect of the Christian life is doing violence to the Word of God and is hacking it, because you read the life of the Apostle Paul, this powerful and anointed man, and full of joy, and you continually see the marks of the cross, so he said: I have the marks of the cross in my life. I have not met a powerful Christian that I want to be by his or her side who has not gone through tribulations and afflictions in his life but has emerged victorious from all of them.
Colossians 3:3 and 4 says, let me see, that's not the passage I want, but it's not bad either, it's not that but don't worry, it just occurs to me. But the important thing is that Paul says that this is what we have been for, if you find it there while I am speaking, look it up in Colossians, but Paul says that this is what we have been placed for, to go through these test situations in our lives. And this idea that this is what we have been placed for, that we are going through these situations is something completely surprising that this is such an inherent part of the believer's life.
This is connected to our enmity with the world that hates us because our values are contrary to theirs. The world is never going to love us, it is never going to support us because the values that we represent are not values that the world appreciates, and that is why we are always going to be in struggle and at enmity with the world, and that is going to be another source also of difficulty in our life.
In Hebrews chapter 10 verse 32 it says: "But remember the days of the past in which, after being enlightened, you fought a great battle of sufferings. On the one hand, with reproaches and tribulations, you were made a spectacle, and on the other hand, you became companions of those who were in a similar situation."
Do you know that there is something else here too? that many times when we go through trials and difficulties we are not only in intimate fellowship with Christ who went through so many trials but we are in fellowship with a host of Christians in all parts of the world who are also going through affliction and trials and difficulties. Right now for example in the English service, and he's going to be briefly greeting the Church in the 12 o'clock service, there's Peter Noonan who's a missionary in Iraq with his family, and he's preaching over there about that persecution that Christians in the Middle East are suffering right now.
There is terrible persecution right now in the Muslim world, everywhere. In Iraq with Isis, Isil, in Afghanistan, even in Israel, in parts like Palestine and in Bethlehem itself, Muslim groups are completely expelling Christian families, and Bethlehem, the place where Christ was born, has almost no Christians anymore because they are being persecuted and exiled, taken outside under great pressure.
In Africa right now there is a great persecution of Christians, North Korea, Christians are persecuted and killed, and imprisoned. In Communist China alike, in many countries of the world. This has been a decade, the last ten, fifteen, twenty years have been times of terrible persecution of Christians in all parts of the world, they are suffering persecution and death. How do you tell those Christians: oh that everything is good, that everything is going to work out for you? These people must be strengthened as Peter did when he wrote to the Christians who were being persecuted about: resist the test, go to the Lord in the midst of your test.
So when we suffer at a certain level, here in the United States there is persecution of Christianity right now, you know that? In many places here, governmentally, there is persecution of people who are trying to live Christianity, of Christian institutions that are trying to remain firm in their biblical positions, there is persecution, and we once and for all shout out anything, and what about What about those Christians who are killing and suffering in other parts of the world?
As we suffer a certain degree of suffering and persecution, we are entering into a sublime fellowship with those brothers throughout the Earth who are also suffering difficulties and suffering, then we are in community with that great community, with that great cloud of witnesses, and it is wonderful.
Philippians chapter 3 verse 8 to 10, says: "And certainly I still count all things as loss because of the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything and count it as rubbish to win Christ, and to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith from Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the participation his sufferings, becoming like him in his death."
So in all these passages we see this same idea, right? that God is going to use pain, suffering to fulfill many different purposes in your life, he is going to use it to bleed you a little and take away that carnal force that prevents you from entering into communion and in that posture of receptivity that is required to be able to know the deepest areas of the Christian life.
God bleeds us to make us stronger. God allows us to go through the test to force us sometimes to seek more of Him in prayer and to set our sights on things above, and wean ourselves from things below. The executive who wants to reach the pinnacle of his profession and earn a lot of money, and have a bigger house and two more expensive cars loses his job one day and that forces him to really ask himself, what does he live for and what for? does he exist? if you pass the test correctly many times, that can help you wean yourself away from the love of money and things, and understand when your friends leave you and stop calling you, you no longer have money to go to parties and all the things, and you he realizes that they are not looking for him, that makes him think and reconsider about what is true in life, and he becomes more humble and then perhaps he begins to look for more from his wife and children, and God uses those tests for that, to wean ourselves from the world and to look higher up.
God sometimes uses the test preventively as well, as in the case of Paul, he used it to humiliate Paul because God had given him so much knowledge and so much revelation, that he says that so that those revelations would not make him excessively proud, he allowed it to come into his life a sting, a messenger of the devil to slap him, about which he asked the Lord three times to deliver him and three times God said to him: My Grace is enough for you because My Power is perfected in weakness.
Then God mercifully used the test in Paul's life to prevent the pride that would come in him if God did not deal with him and that would destroy his ministry, and he put that opponent with whom Paul continually struggled, and then he had to refer to the grace of Christ Jesus, and taught him that: You are a mere man, you need the grace of Christ as much as those who have not received all the things that you have received in your ministry.
And God also tests us so that we bear more fruit, and with this I end, if the musicians can come here, so that we bear more fruit, listen. If you want to bear fruit in the Christian life, how many would like God to use them to bring lives to the knowledge of Jesus, amen? How many would like God to use them so that the Word of God could flow more freely through their mouths? How many would like God to use them to give advice to people who are disoriented in life? How many would like God to use them to understand more of the Word of the Lord so that they can share the Gospel with others in a more effective way?
Well you know what? If you want that, God is going to use the test to train you and so that you bear more fruit for His glory. Because what does the Word say in John, I believe, chapter 12? look for it there, it says there that the one that bears fruit God prunes it so that it bears more fruit, he says he will clean it, that in the original Greek the word is: he will prune it, so that it bears more fruit, John 12:23 to 26.
It is the 15th chapter of John: "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away" verse 2, John 15:2 "and every branch that bears fruit he prunes" in other words he prunes it "so that it bears more fruit."
God says: You have to bear fruit, but in order for you to be able to bear fruit, God has to prune you from many things that you don't like, and you're going to look a bit ugly when God prunes you, you know? how you kill them Have you seen a pruned bush? sometimes what remains are the stumps sticking out like this, all the excessive leaves are removed, why? because all those leaves steal sap from the fruits that need to be concentrated in less area, surface. That is why all those excessive twigs that a tree has are cut so that only the essence of the tree remains, and when you look at a recently pruned tree it looks like it has been sheared, like a sheep without skin, right?
And that's how we see ourselves sometimes. When God treats us we come out as dizzy like this, we have been hit by the divine mortar, but that is God's plan. When you recover and heal, you are beautiful, you are more beautiful than before because God has dealt with you. So let's not resist the pain. See pain as part of God's process for you to bear fruit and for you to be the man, the woman he wants you to be. And for you to be the man or woman that you want to be too, amen?
Many times we are frustrated because neither our wife can put up with us nor our children love us. When they get home and see that the car is there, they say: oh no, I'm going to go somewhere else instead of saying: wow, it's good that daddy is there or that mommy is there! So sometimes we have to be.
It is a mystery brothers, it is a mystery. I don't want to go through the test. As I tell you, these days have been difficult times for my wife, for me, for my whole family, but hey, preaching often has to start from the head.
And at this time I am saying: Lord, what are you doing? I think I know what He is doing, I have a more or less idea of what He is doing in our case, but instead of denying God, I am asking myself: Lord, what are you doing with this, what message? you are sending, what purpose do you have? How are we going to benefit from this? How can we give a good testimony of faith and trust in You? How can we be a little more humble at the end of this trial and be more like Christ? that is what I advise you.
If you are going through a situation in your life right now, lower your head for a moment, what are the areas of dissatisfaction in your life right now? What are the things that cause you discomfort? Where is the area of suffering in your life that if you put your hand it hurts a little there in that area, in your heart, in your emotions, in your spirit?
I know that there are areas that hurt us. Submit it to the Lord, recognize that there is something that God is fulfilling there in that purpose, receive it, thank God even if tears come out of the corners of your eyes and say: Father, give me wisdom to understand what You are wanting to do with this and what mysteries are being processed and unfolded at this time in my life, and then invite the Power of God into that area. In the midst of your pain, your brokenness, your humiliation tell him: Father, use this pain for Your glory.
And if it hurts for a loved one who is going through something, send your sweetness and your resignation, and your acceptance of the test to that person and bless them, and use that crucifixion so that the Grace of God enters that life and breaks the walls of the devil because the cross always destroys Satan and his evil intentions.
Your cross, your crucifixion is what can give life to that person, it is what can give life to that situation, it is what can give life in that place where you are hurting right now. Your crucifixion like the crucifixion of Jesus is going to release life and defeat the devil. Give thanks to God for that crucifixion and that the cross of Christ was fulfilled in your life, and ask the Lord to give you a lot of grace, a lot of strength, a lot of discernment to see God's treatment and God's mercy in that space, that place of pain in your life.
God loves you, God remembers you, God has good purposes for your life, God is fulfilling His Will in your life, God is leading you towards a better future, God has not neglected you, God is by your side, His mighty Spirit rests on you right now and is strengthening you in a way that you don't realize, He is working in you to bring you to a higher level of life in Christ Jesus. Receive it. Let the cross rest on your back, and while that cross remains on your back, suffer as a child of God.
Do not deny, do not become bitter, do not harden and tell him: Lord, fulfill Your Purpose, Your Will be done and not mine, and get me out of this test graceful, victorious, better than ever, more like Christ. I bless your life, I bless the life of your family, I bless your pilgrimage, your walk, your journey in faith, mysterious and complex as it is, and I declare the Grace of the Lord for this sublime Word over your life.
Thank you Father, thank you that Your Purpose is fulfilled in me, in us because You are in control, You are on Your Throne doing beautiful and powerful things, just as You are doing in this world and in this creation You are doing in my life too , and in the life of my brothers, and I beg you that those of us who are in trials and difficulties may be strengthened this morning, receive new strength, new joy, new hope, comfort from You Lord Jesus. Perch on this town this morning and help us to rest our head on Your chest, Lord, and receive new strength from You.
Thank you because what awaits us ahead is wonderful and we will be happy and we will thank you Lord. In Christ Jesus we are more than conquerors, neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor hunger, nor nakedness, nor danger, nor the sword, nor high, nor low, nor the future, nor the past will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thank you Lord we adore you in Jesus Name amen and amen. I bless you my brothers, may the Grace of the Lord be with you, be blessed this morning.
