Saturday, 10 January 2009
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"Maybe You Haven't Suffered Enough Yet"
Guest post from gabrielpeter
Dawson McAllister Live has long been one of my favorite radio programs. I haven't heard a better call-in show that reaches out to teenagers and young adults like DM Live. Sunday night, I was listening in as I was coming back across Kansas from my Christmas vacation. This guy called in and was struggling with a gambling addiction. His girlfriend was making him choose -- either he had to quit gambling, or she was going to leave him. Dawson talked to the young man about getting him into rehab. The guy said he couldn't afford it, but Dawson had the name of a place that would help treat his addiction for free.
To that, the guy said, "You know, I love my girlfriend, and I'd hate to lose her, but I'm not so sure I really want to lose gambling either."
Dawson replied, "Then maybe you haven't suffered enough yet."
That was such a profound answer. When he said that, I mentally tuned out of the radio show and started thinking about the friends of mine I've witnessed to that haven't accepted Christ. I started thinking about the friends who have had every opportunity to see God's hand at work and still don't believe. I thought about those who have never had a solid argument to stand on and still refuse to accept Jesus. Why don't they believe? Perhaps it could be, like Dawson said to this young man, that they haven't suffered enough yet.
Did you know that the oldest book of the Bible is Job? What is known to be the first book of the Bible ever written is about a man who lost everything and suffered tremendously. I always admired that God singled Job out to Satan when He said to him, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." At the same time, the concept is a little bit scary. Because Job was such an upright man of God, he got singled out for some hard stuff! His servants were killed, his possessions seized or destroyed, and his children died in a storm. Then Job suffered painful disease and worse!
Amazingly, the first chapter concludes by mentioning that Job fell to the ground in worship! It is in this state that he spoke that famous quote, "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away." The last verse of that chapter says, "In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing." What faith! Read these words from Job 36: "But those who suffer He delivers in their suffering; He speaks to them in their affliction. He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice foods."
However, regardless of how much or how little one person suffers, whether or not they call out to God is still an issue of pride. Most may never break and accept the Lord, no matter what they see, endure, or what is revealed to them. You might recall that Exodus talks about Pharaoh's heart being hardened the more God showed His power, even to the point of losing his own son. As Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."
Some find God having endured no suffering. I was one of those. I just knew and accepted Him. At the same time, I have spent success not speaking a word to God and then crying out to him -- literally -- when I felt myself hit rock bottom. I pray that I don't have to endure some great suffering in order to give up my pride and find myself broken. Yet, I'd rather be broken at the feet of God than have it all together and be far from Him.
There was a song written by Wayne Watson almost twenty years ago that went, "I'd rather walk through the dark with Jesus than to walk in the light on my own. I'd rather walk through the valley of the shadow with Him than to dance on the mountains alone." That's the kind of faith I want to have. Until we can suffer to the point that we desire the Lord over our desire for pain-free living, we will never truly know relief from our afflictions.
Romans 10:13 "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
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Comments (104)
I saw the post title and feared the worst.
But this is a great post. Great job.
Excellent Post!
Great post. This is why I am grateful for Crohn's Disease and for painful emotional issues. My desperation has made me long for God and led me to accept His comfort.
@sirnickdon - Likewise
Good post!
@sirnickdon - I had the same thoughts.
So you have to suffer until you do what your god wants (i.e., worship him)?
What a bully.
Our soul has an incredibly strong appetite. Unfortunately this appetite gets focused most easily through the human, physical being, not our true spiritual nature.
As the years pass the soul's appetite focuses on pride, lust, gluttony, ascedia, anger, greed and envy (the seven deadly sins) as a means of satiating its hunger. This applies to our practice of religion too, since it may also be dominated by sin.
Suffering is the means by which the soul's appetite is redirected from sinful endeavors to true satisfaction in God. Since Jesus, Son of God, suffered, all suffering is blessed. So though one may be in such excruciating pain that awareness of God is no longer possible (like Jesus on the Cross crying out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Psalm 22), there is the promise of great blessing.
@sirnickdon - Same here. I got a little worried when I saw the title but this is a great post.
@LoBornlite@xanga - I really like what you had to say. Thanks for sharing
@LadyLibellule@xanga - well for the most part, people reject his love, grace and compassion.... what does that make them?
Great post......
Interesting... I can relate to this. I'm a drug addict who been in treatment trying to recover, but at times I don't think I have suffered enough like the pull of the drugs are strong but I have to choice between the drugs and school , I can't do both. I had to choose between prostituting myself vrs. not but in order to do that I have to stay off drugs. Like it's weird because I say I haven't suffered enough I haven't hit bottom. I'm not on the streets, yet I have been raped because of drugs, had sex for drugs, been in violant situations. Yet the pull of the drugs are still strong. I have been clean for 5 and half weeks and it's brutal as hell but I am way less depressed and I can do more. It's hard to choose recovery vrs. an addiction. Though having said this a big part of NA is spirituality and turning to God, the third step is We turned out lives over to our higher power. I'm still working on that one. Ok I'm still working on step one. We admitted that we were powerless and our lives have become unmanageable. First one has to admit they are powerless before God can take over. doesn't matter whether it's gambling, drugs, alchohol, eating disorder, or anything else we have to relinquish control in order to relinquish suffering and let God take control.
@mrsviolet - A being can't be loving, graceful, and compassionate (in the true senses of those words) if there are conditions attached. And with Christianity, there always are.
It's the ultimate dysfunctional parent/child relationship, except the "parent" in this case never gets brought up on child cruelty charges. If humans caused the suffering that your god supposedly did, they'd be in jail.
I loved his response..."Dawson replied, "Then maybe you haven't suffered enough yet."
It was the same when I was married to my first husband. My father kept telling me "when you get enough, you will leave." Finally, for fear of my life, amongst other things, I got to that point." I think it's that way with God for a lot of people...I believe He always stands ready to receive them yet sometimes, unfortunately, it takes hitting rock bottom til they come to that point, :)
Excellent thought-provoking post, :)
Great post!
@edpinkgurl@xanga - Wow. Congrats that you're even trying, and have managed for 5 weeks. :) Praise God for helping you through something like this! May you have strength and motivation to continue. You'll be in my prayers.
"Until we can suffer to the point that we desire the Lord over our desire for pain-free living, we will never truly know relief from our afflictions"....??????...... It is this type of logic that gives "reason" to actions (or lack there of) similar to Mother Teresa's. This type of logic says; "I don't care to help them, I just want them to believe in my God"
@Strangebrain@xanga - "Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work." ~ Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was very compassionate. But she understood that without Jesus any "help" was futile. After doing a miracle Jesus would say, "Your sins are forgiven." That did not mean he lacked compassion. Quite the contrary in fact. The same with Mother Teresa.
Wow, amazing.
@LoBornlite@xanga - Futile to who? To those whose death was the result of ineffectual "action"? Compassion, by definition, is sympathy, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate suffering. Mother Teresa's lack of action when resources were available is incompassionate by definition of the word!!!
@Strangebrain@xanga - What are you referring to with regard to Mother Teresa not acting when resources were available?
This sounds like a lie.
@LadyLibellule@xanga - I am not really sure what it is you are accusing God of.
Grace = unmerited favor.
That is what Jesus dying was all about. Providing us the way back to God, that WE don't deserve.
@LoBornlite@xanga - This is a pretty well known fact. Mother Theresa was more concerned with establishing an order rather than actually helping people. Because of her philosophy, suffering is good, like the one in the post, she didn't think that it was prudent to help people with issues like AIDS prevention (why do you think AIDS is so prevalent in 3rd world countries? Missionaries go around condemning contraception even as the red cross provides them) or trying to help relieve poverty in any way, when she had massive resources at her disposal. When she got sick, do you think she went to the same "hospitals" as in Calcutta? No, she went to a California hospital. Her order gave barely anyone food or shelter besides cots for the dying, so I ask, where did all those donations go?
@LoBornlite@xanga - What I am referring to is the inadequate conditions and health care practices (as reported by the BJM)used by the Missionaries of Charity. Rather then pooring their resources into providing true medical care to those they were suppose to be helping, they felt it more pertinent to open more financially vacuous missionaries. I suspect that Mother Teresa's intentions were good. But to accept the premise that suffering is something that will bring them closer to god, will heed little productive action. I'm not insinuating that Mother Teresa's intentions were incompassionate but the actions that follow from this logic ( this logic being that suffering brings you closer to God) are incompassionate.
@tvPUFF@xanga - Well put, thank you!!!