Lessons from suffering - Charles R. Swindoll

well I'm fresh out of hype today and I know probably that might disappoint some this is the beginning of a semester it seems like a right time to really cheerlead on top of life and encouraging all of you that you have nothing but great things ahead of you however I remember when I was first thinking of coming to the seminary and I've fell into sort of a mentality of great excitement and anticipation then I came across people who heard I was making plans to come to the school I heard all kinds of responses as many of you have heard and some of you more recently than others and I'm sure all of our faculty have their own stories the one most common in my experience most familiar and most often repeated was why in the world do you want to do that and then they would add something like it's an unrealistic environment it's a place where you're removed from the real world it's like you're living in a bubble at a seminary course understand these people all said that having never once been on a seminary campus but they knew all about it and there you're going to be insulated from the real world which was their approach to the whole thing by real world I'm sure they had in mind the world of pain and hardship and disappointment and suffering and certainly even death matter of fact those naysayers could not have been more wrong as a matter of fact I found shortly after arriving and during my four years here and even in my return a number of years ago to join the leadership team at the school I found that this seemed to be a place where real-world things were very common where suffering was a part of the family of the seminary in the last 24 48 hours I've put together a little card that describes not only things in general but some names in particular that illustrate the fact that this is certainly not a bubble of bliss this is a place of frequent disappointments hardship financial struggles even personality conflicts at the seminary those who have babies often have babies with birth defects many miscarry and don't have their babies but lose them we lost one while we were students here through a miscarriage extremely serious diseases recurring illnesses some time exotic illnesses that can't even be diagnosed domestic conflicts malignant tumors emotional upheaval feelings of crushing discouragement and loneliness and displacement battles with dark forces in the supernatural realm temptations and even what I have sometime called premature and most unfortunate deaths I decided to put some names into these places and I think by doing so it will add the right dimension to what I want to talk about in the final few moments I have with you dr. Ron Allen led us in prayer I knew Ron before he suffered his fall from a sport that he enjoyed and did so well for so many years and the result was a brain surgery and recurring pain sometime to the point of almost blinding him dr. Daniel Wallace I'll never forget he is going through such times in his life this series of illnesses I remember seeing him in a wheelchair unable to push himself to his own office unable to hardly to fold the chair up and put it in the back of his van dr. Holly Hendrix not only loss of his daughter but lost now of his eye and just recently a terrible fall he suffered as a result of lack of depth perception the challenge Greg Hatteberg lives with with his wife Lisa and her continuing battle with multiple sclerosis the recurring illnesses at least while I was a part of the leadership of Darrell Bach's wife Sally that may have been resolved it may not Stephan brainers recent heartache regarding his son the nightmare experiences of of Oscar and Peggy Lopez as they were on a long international trip the lengthy illness of Timothy Warren just before I returned to the campus and some wondered if he would ever recover from that then there are always those moral Falls and failures of not only students but graduates and even a few faculty members through the years the death of Karen holders husband Gary which broke our hearts in years past Keith will heights battle with more than one brain surgery and finally it's taking his life David Edwards departure as a result of a fall in the shower one morning at the zenith of his career the height of his role of significance in his role here at the school and as a theologian Luci Mabry Foster's death don't know that some of us will ever get really over that the shock of it Jerry Reeves wife John reads loss of his daughter the recent Rick Taylor father lost that you've heard about dr. Pentecost wife his beloved wife Dorothy and her passing into the Lord's presence dr. Walvoord himself and and and on and on that that list could go that's far from an exhaustible list now how's this for encouraging you as we get into the semester but you know I'm going to just be really honest with you and tell you what I was a student rarely were things like this ever addressed they happened it's almost as if they were kept from everybody and if they occurred they were they were not spoken of I don't know that I heard six messages in my four years where anybody came right out and talked directly about the assault that hits you as a student as far as I know some of you right this moment are going through the deepest tests of your life you're not sure your marriage is going to hold together you have no clue how you're going to make it financially you may have a son or daughter who's giving you fits and I need to mention our own dark passage with our older daughter by the way has wonderfully returned and I thought said to Cynthia one time I don't know that we'll ever laugh again but we have and God saw us through those twenty two long silent months where we never slept fully through one night now our food rarely digested well and life went on ministry went on it's almost as if there's a concentration of attack and I don't want you to I don't want you to give up I don't want you to quit my mentioning this is perhaps the first time there's ever been a litany set forth from this pulpit publicly in a chapel service and some of these things surprise you because you rarely if ever hear a single complaint from any of these individuals remarkable stability through incredible suffering now my heart turned quickly when I was thinking about this to second Corinthians chapter one this is the most autobiographical letter Paul wrote if this is the constitution of his life then the first 11 verses represent the preamble not surprisingly the focus is on suffering someone said if you wanted to track the life of Paul it would be like tracking a wounded rabbit through the snow there's a trail of blood virtually from start to finish to the point where he finally is beheaded at the end of his glorious ministry his head rolls off into the dust of Roman soil so when he writes of suffering he doesn't write of it as any one of these faculty members would ever speak of it theoretically we would not do that and he does not write like that and interestingly the focus isn't on how hard life is it's on how great God is ten times in these few verses three four five six and seven the word comfort appears piraka Leto to call alongside and it conveys the idea of personal attention commitment one who is called alongside to assist and to help us through and to comfort us in the midst of these things I've named and all the things I didn't name not surprisingly the Lord Jesus when John records his teaching refers to the Holy Spirit is paralysis the one called alongside to help same route you'll see it over and over again verse 3 blessed be God what opening lines for the preamble huh blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus look at the two titles given in a position to the name father of mercies God of comfort first of the ten right there at the end of verse three father of mercies God of comfort blessed be our God he stands alongside he is with us in the midst of all our wise why me why now and of all things why this my life has been turned in the direction of studies at the school I am focused Lord I am committed to my studies I want to serve you with all my heart now this Glenn chambers a number of years ago was on his way to serve in the voice of the Andes ministry down in Ecuador just before boarding his flight to get on that Avianca airline flight which would take him to his place of service he was sitting in the Miami Airport and thought for a moment I have a few moments here to write my mom and say goodbye but he didn't have any stationery so he looked around he saw a discarded old one ad section of a newspaper and he pulled it any tore from a section where there was a little space and this half page of the paper right in the middle of the space was the little word why he paid no attention he just needed blank space and in his own handwriting he scratched out words of love and and joy and anticipation as he was moving to his first place of ministry after years of training and anticipation in prayer the Avianca dc4 struck el Tov Mazal on its flight into Quito and it crashed clumsily to the bottom of the mountain and claiming all its prey Chambers had mailed the letter and before it ever reached his mother she had gotten news of the death of her son along with all the others in that flight and then the letter comes in the mail and she opens it can you imagine as she reads his words in his own writing and right in the middle of all of it is why why my son why now why this one woman wrote Lord I'm drowning in a sea of perplexity waves of confusion crash over me I'm too weak to shop for help either quiet the waves or lift me above them it's too late to learn to swim you're going to feel at times that the waves will never stop coming you'll feel the undertow of discouragement and distress and disappointment and shattered dreams and you'll be convinced because the enemy want you to think this you're in the wrong place certainly you're here at the wrong time you're the wrong one to be here bail out don't the father of mercies and the God of all comfort comforts us in all our affliction love the word all that covers the things I haven't mentioned it covers your particular detail issue your struggle now why does it happen let's attempt to answer briefly according to these verses I suggest three reasons are found here each introduced with that little particle of that verse four so that verse my that verse eleven that I have them circled in my Testament to suggest you do the same you're going to need this if not now soon first reason is that we might be prepared to comfort others see the verse this God of all comfort comforts us in all our affliction first that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God who best knows how to understand the loss of a wife than one who's lost a wife who best knows how to comfort a couple who's lost a baby then another couple who's lost a baby who understands the malignant brain tumor better than the victim and his partner of his Mary of the one with the brain tumor who understands financial stress better than someone who has gone through or is going through it it's like dominoes bumping up against each other God comforts us in our reflection we in turn comfort another in his or her or their affliction a major reason we go through such times is to prepare us for a ministry and help to others had I not gone through that synth I'd not gone through what we did in our family I have to tell you there would have been a measure of if we hadn't guarded it there would have been a little smugness there would have been a little pride that we got four kids and and they turned out to do it great all in ministry and then we go through what we went through first of all it levels us and second when I hear a fella is going through a struggle with a daughter or a lady's going through a battle with one of her kids I understand without anybody telling me what that's like how could I do that verse four God has comfort me in my afflictions so that I may be able to comfort him or her in their affliction Paul doesn't lose hope verse seven he says in fact our hope for you is firmly grounded knowing that as you are sharers of our suffering so also your sharers of our comfort who could understand better than this great man who had been in such a difficult place now in verse eight and down through verse 10 there's something revealed here that is not revealed elsewhere in the scriptures Paul lets the truth be known regarding his own depression let's let him say what he says verse eight we do not want you to be unaware brethren of our affliction which came to us in Asia watch closely we were burdened excessively beyond our strength so that we despaired even of life indeed we had the sentence of death within ourselves very fine and reputable commentator Alfred Plummer writes of this we were utterly without a way of escape utterly at a loss quite in despair even of life st. Paul had many moods he has no wish to conceal from the Corinthians how profoundly great trouble had depressed him it may have come on the heels of Athens when no church was founded and nothing all that great was accomplished just before he moved over into Corinth it may it may have come as a result of of an onslaught of hatred against him may have been related to the thorn that wouldn't go away and never left whatever the reason he says we despaired Murray Harris writes of this the word means total unavailability of an exit from oppressive circumstances I couldn't get away you've seen the you've seen the ad of Southwest Airlines haven't you where all kinds of strange things happen to the person and you're all of a sudden in the middle of the most embarrassing situation in the world and on comes this voice that says want to get away we fly take you to wherever Paul says here there was no getting away there was no flight I could catch there was no net that would hold me I was in a freefall despairing even of life why finish the verse we had the death the sentence of death in ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves isn't that great if you learn nothing else in the free fall you learn you can't trust in yourself you don't have the strength you're forced to look up you have to surrender and the beauty of it when we do God wonderfully comforts us he doesn't speak audibly he doesn't necessarily remove the test quickly but he comes in like a flood and he holds us close to himself and he reminds us in a half-dozen different ways I'm right here I never met I never left just lean on me just stay near let me comfort you I think one of the reasons the psalmist mentions the importance of stopping everything and learning a new that he is God is because in the midst of a hectic kind of non-stop schedule there isn't much room for quietness solitude I urge you as you go through these years to build into your schedules of time to be quiet to be still to be alone and to learn that God is God I urge you to form the habit here you'll find in your life many times it will be there in the future when you're alone with him that your tank is refilled your hope is renewed you realize because of the test that you don't have the answers in yourself but in God who raises the did that what a great example of the power of God in the Old Testament the greatest example of power was the Exodus in the New Testament the greatest example is the resurrection and this God who can pull off resurrection has come to your aid he will hold you close you'll see you through you won't bring back your baby who died but he'll bring back your soul your hope that's been dashed he's called the God of all comfort the father of mercies there's the third reason and it's in the verse that follows verse 11 you also joining and helping us through your prayers that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf or the favor bestowed upon us through the prayers of many first that we may be able to comfort others we go through these kinds of trials second that we may learn not to trust in ourselves we go through such times and third that we may learn to give thanks in everything in the midst of everything it took me months to give thanks months no one could say anything to bring thanks out of my mouth or out of my heart at our lowest point finally God brought it out I can't describe what prompted it I can only tell you it occurred it occurred on a day that I would not have expected the silence had lingered then for 18 months not a word with no clue where her daughter was seasons had come and gone to different Christmases absence at the table was eloquent as our family gathered vacations weren't the same one day it was like a light broke into my life and I was able to say thank you thank you for what you have taught me in the middle of all of this I would never have learned I would never have gotten so deep with you Laurie suffering comes that we may be prepared to comfort others that we may learn not to trust in ourselves that we may learn to give thanks in everything in John Bunyan's immortal work the pilgrims progress there are so many analogies that tie in to life one that has come to my mind often has been the time when Christian the main characters stumbled into the slough of despond recall that I read from it Christian was left to tumble in the slough of despond alone still he endeavoured to struggle to that side of the slough that was still further from his own house and next to the wicked gate that which he did but could not get out because of the burden that was upon his back there's a line in Bunyan's words and such a place it was such a place as cannot be mended the slough of despond which is what Paul fell into for whatever reason had not been mended and it's still there in every life to this day my hope is that somehow in the absence of all the hype and in the presence of such realistic words as you have heard and set through so patiently there will be that feeling of purpose and hope because men and women a part of that which you glean from your years at seminary not to be found in the textbook is depth depth and I don't know that any of us would ever grow deeper if it were not for those trials that bring us to our face before God let it be maybe bail together my prayer earlier with dr. Bailey before we came in was that the Lord would bring just even if it's one person who needs to hear this into this room today and if you're that person you're an answer to that prayer now our Father we do give you our praise we're in the mystery of your well of your will it's not only what you give us but what you take that is a vital part of the plan you sovereignly rule over us shaping us into the image of your son all our struggles and resistance notwithstanding thank you for not giving up thank you for your comfort thank you for your mercies thank you for taking us through and then out of the slough of despond through the presence of your spirit bring encouragement and fresh hope to some who have already begun to lose touch with both though this semester is only hours bold encourage faculty alike and staff and lift our hearts our Father here the promise that you are the God of all comfort in the name of Jesus all of us pray everybody said

Channel: Dallas Theological Seminary

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Keywords: sovereignty, persecution, encouragement, suffering, trust, hope, trials, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Charles Swindoll

Id: N9zd9VSpTlM

Length: 32min 35sec (1955 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2012