Why a Book on Affliction?

I’m writing this book because affliction is part of God’s plan for your life. It is not a departure from that plan. Jesus Christ learned obedience through what he suffered and we, his disciples, are not above our master. Christians suffer.

It is not my goal to convince you that affliction is anything less than misery, bitterness, and fear. When Christians are afflicted, it hurts. The pain feels like real pain. Shame and fear feel like shame and fear.

For the Christian, affliction is not anything less than misery, bitterness, and fear. It is not less than that, it is more. God is at every moment working his good will in the events of our lives, good and bad. His good will is no mystery--it is written plainly in the Bible. God's will is to make us like his son, Jesus. Romans 8:28 and Romans 8:29 go together: "In all things, God is doing his good work, which is to make us like his son."

I'm writing this from the perspective of a suffering Christian. Compared to others, I have suffered little. But I have learned that almost no good comes from comparing myself to others. My suffering feels like suffering to me. It hurts, and sometimes fills me with fear or shame. I’m sure the same is true for you.

During a season of suffering that has been one of the worst of my life—one that has not yet ended—I found that I could help others by simply refusing to remain silent.

My daily experience had come to include pain, fears, feelings of shame, and doubts about my future and my relationship with God. As an elder in my church, a teacher, and a lay leader of an international missions organization, there was certainly an awkwardness in allowing others to know about my hardship. I’m supposed to be strong. I’m supposed to be a leader.

Although I was ashamed that my life had come to include so much fear and pain, I felt like I would be living a lie if I refused to tell others of my troubles. Much to my surprise, I found them encouraged by what I had to say.

You see, they were suffering, too, and they were glad to hear that they were not alone. I may have harbored some hope that others could help me if I confessed my weakness to them. I had never expected that my confession would help others.

But it did. My honesty about my own pain, doubts, and fears greatly encouraged others. This wasn’t the result of what the Germans call “schadenfreude,” a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of others. Instead, they found comfort in learning that their suffering didn't necessarily imply that there was some defect in them. The learned this by hearing about the suffering of someone they respected--someone who faced hardship, and who doubted, feared, and hurt as he did so.

When I saw this, I decided to write this book to share what I’m learning in my suffering.

“Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.”
We all know that things get distorted when we’re looking at them in the rear view mirror. That’s why I chose to begin this book during my time of affliction. Of course, I’ll be perfectly happy if the affliction ends before I complete the book. But I’m trying to capture as much of the grit and darkness of this place as I can. That way, others who find themselves in a dark, gritty place like this will know that someone else has been there before. Maybe they won’t feel so alone.

The hope that I offer in this book is found only in Christ. I am writing of the hope that is offered in scripture to those who have discovered the truth about themselves—that they are spiritually dead—and who have received fresh life from God himself. I am writing to the people in whom God has planted a seed that can never die (1 Peter 1:23). This book is written to the living.

If you are spiritually dead and you know it, this is evidence of God’s work in you. Dead people don’t come to such realizations on their own. If you have any desire to have this life, it is evidence of God’s willingness to give it to you. Jesus said, “No man can come to me unless my father, who sent me, draws him.” Note that he never said, “no man who comes to me will be received unless my father draws him…” but “no man CAN come to me unless my father draws him…” Your ability to come is evidence of God’s willingness to receive you. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…” The spiritual corpse that you have found yourself to be will come alive. The decay will stop. The stink will go away. The kingdom of heaven will come to you, not full-grown, but like a little bit of yeast that will work itself through the whole lump of your life until everything is leavened. It will be awesome.

The message of this book is to those with spiritual life, and the message is simple:
• when you suffer, you may feel alone, but you are not alone
• when you suffer, it feels like nothing makes sense, but God is still active as king over his universe (this includes the details of your life)
• when you suffer, you may feel hopeless, but God has promised relief from our sufferings (God is trustworthy)

When you suffer, you feel alone, but you are not alone. Everyone suffers, including Christians. When Christians suffer, it hurts. You may feel like God has abandoned you or is angry with you, but he is near to the brokenhearted. You may think, “But I’m different. You don’t know how angry I’ve been, or how afraid or guilty I feel.” You may feel like God isn’t near to brokenhearted people like you. That is not true. When strong Christians suffer, the pain feels like pain, it makes them afraid and ashamed, and sometimes they question God.

When you suffer, it feels like nothing makes sense. In a way, this may be true: your suffering will never make complete sense to you. But it makes perfect sense to the God who sees all things clearly, who is at every moment actively managing his universe to accomplish his great purpose of creating a new and holy nation to live with him forever. His plans are very detailed, including you and all the events of your life. Your suffering is a part of God’s plan for humanity. It is also part of his good plan for you, his unalterable plan to make you into the sort of person that is fit to live with him, “to conform you to the likeness of his son,” Jesus Christ.

God is in control of his universe and is present in every circumstance working for our good, showing everyone how glorious he really is.

Suffering improves us in many ways, improving our prayers, and the way we feel, think, and act. It helps us see what God is really like and produces solid evidence that God is at work in us. Suffering makes us like Christ by helping us to grow up as Christians and producing what may be the most reliable sign of Christian maturity—humility. Suffering makes us strong enough to help others who are suffering.

Finally, to those who suffer, God has promised relief. He has promised to be near to us, to help us, and to deliver us.

That’s the book in a nutshell.

About the author: Five years ago, I thought I’d coast through the last few years of my career with the federal government, retiring in the same year that the youngest of our five children went off to college. My wife and I planned to move overseas to help with church planting teams in Europe. Maybe teach in the same school, travel during the summers, and enjoy our lives.

Four years ago, I realized I was wrong about the coasting. Problems came into my life, big problems, one after another, from every direction. They didn’t stay for a day or a month or a year, but are still hanging around, unwelcome though they may be. Yes, I know that James wrote that we're to welcome trials as friends. I'm working on that.

Right now, though, all this has taken a toll on me psychologically and physically. I’ve been seeing my doctor over stress and anxiety related problems. I’ve been taking an anti-anxiety medication for more than two years.

For a long time, all I could see was this—bad things were happening to me and, no matter how much I prayed, they kept on happening. Period.

As this time of trouble has dragged on, I found that the Bible verses I’d turned to in the past, and that I’d taught others, began to seem a little thin. All those verses about God working good in all things and all those clever sayings like, “God doesn’t waste pain,” began to feel like clichéd slogans and cheap sound-bites.

Much of what I thought was faith began to fall away. I had faith that God would make things better when I prayed, but nothing got better for a long, long time. I had faith that God would help me to face my troubles confidently, but I became so afraid that I couldn’t eat or sleep. I lost almost 30 pounds in about 3 months. I was very sad. I was in a very dark place.

It was in this dark, sad place that I saw God. He didn’t remove me from the dark place or take away my sorrows and fears. Instead, he left me there so long that my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. It was then that I saw, at first vaguely and then ever more distinctly, what had always been true—my loving Father hadn’t forgotten me but was hard at work on my behalf, making me into the good man he’s called me to be, a man remade in the image of his own Son. He’s so far from finished, but the progress he’s making is encouraging.

I’m writing the book from a dark place for people who are in dark places, to share what I’m seeing. I know I’m running a risk when I tell you bad things about myself. You may not take me seriously. But my goal isn’t to have you take me seriously. My goal is to speak as truthfully as I can from my own perspective, because what I’m seeing there has helped me to take God very seriously. In my troubles, I’ve seen more of his glory and goodness that ever before.

I want to share this with those who are suffering because I know that God is near to the brokenhearted. I know this is true because God says this, and God is faithful and true. I know this is true because God has shown me its truth by being near to me in my own time of trouble. God is near to me. And to you.

I'll close this chapter with a word of encouragement that I shared last Christmas with brokenhearted men in a South Carolina prison. Most of these men will be in that prison for several more years. Many of them will be there the rest of their lives.

A large number have received new life through Christ while in prison. They are the church in this prison, living out their life of faith inside razor wired fences. The earthly consequences of their actions continue to bring suffering to their living victims, the families of their victims, their own families, and themselves. For these men, however, the eternal consequences of their crimes came to an end on a Roman cross with the death of God’s son, who also suffered the consequences of my own pride, envy, selfish ambition, sexual sins, and other sins too hard to confess in a book or too well camouflaged even to be seen by me.

When I received the invitation to speak at the prison, I had been struggling with severe anxiety and depression for almost six months. Immediately, I started praying that God would give me words of blessing for these men who are in very dark places.

My message had two points:
• The Christmas celebration is wonderful.
• The event being celebrated is infinitely more wonderful.

The music and food and decorations of the celebration make this “the most wonderful time of the year.” But for many people, Christmas is a time of sadness as they find themselves excluded from most of what makes this season special. They are separated by prison walls, conflict, or death from the people with whom they’d most like to share the joys of the season. They are out of work or, for other reasons, out of money and can’t buy the gifts they’d like to buy, they can’t afford the meal they’d like to serve to their family or a tree to decorate. For many, December is a time marked by depression. In the U.S., there are more suicides in December than in any month.

For these reasons and others, many people in prison and elsewhere find it hard to participate in the celebration of Christmas. They are not filled with joy, but are brokenhearted. They are not free to enjoy the lights, the music, or the food of Christmas celebrations, because they are poor, in prison, or in the bondage of debt, broken relationships, or sin.

When I finished with my first point, I looked across that crowd of men. A few were looking at me intently, nodding their heads in agreement and waiting to hear what would come next. Some of them were staring at the floor. Some were pretending not to care, but I think every man in that gymnasium knew from experience that I was telling the truth.

I had their attention. The second point of my message was this—the very things that make it hard for them and others to enjoy the celebration of Christmas make them the direct object of the event being celebrated—the coming of Christ to the poor and brokenhearted, to those in bondage, and to those who sit in darkness.

I reminded them that Christmas is more than the celebration of the birth of a baby into a poor family. Babies are born every day and the vast majority of them are at least as poor, materially, as that baby who was laid in a manger.

Christmas is about who this baby was, what he came to do, and who he came to do it for.

Jesus talked about this himself at the start of his earthly ministry. He had just been baptized by John, driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, and tempted by Satan. Luke writes about what happened next:

Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD. [Luke 16:14-19]

Jesus came to preach to unimportant people in unimportant places, with a special focus on the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. Matthew has this to say about the early ministry of Jesus:

Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtalim, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying:

The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtalim,
By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles:
The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death
Light has dawned." [Matthew 4: 12-16]

Jesus still comes as a bright light to those who sit in dark places, people who have lost hope and who are enslaved. Those who are least able to participate in the joy of the Christmas celebration are the special focus of the event being celebrated—the coming of Christ to the brokenhearted, the poor, the captive.

Christ came and still comes to the brokenhearted and poor, and to those in bondage. He is a bright light for those who sit in darkness.

I closed with a lesson from one of my favorite Christmas carols, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” which begins:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

The Bible doesn't really say what time of year it was when Christ was born. I do know that his coming was “amid the cold of winter,” in my soul. It doesn't tell us the time of day when he was born. But I do know that he came and still comes to the darkest hours of my soul—when half-spent was the night.