To Encourage You

2 Thessalonians 1:4-5 “Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.  This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering.”

Suffering: a recent definition I heard for this word “when we have what we don’t want and want what we don’t have.”  That sums up this term as well as anything I’ve ever heard.  Take cancer, for example. No one really wants it, but many people have it.  And inevitably with cancer comes pain, impacts on our activities, costs associated with medical care, and inner conflict because of the unknown.  Who in their right mind would want any of these things?  But many people have them – including Christians, people who love a God Who has the power to take the affliction away, but for some reason only known to Him, He doesn’t. Then there are Christians who are suffering persecution just because they follow Christ.  If we could talk to a believer suffering in the brutal conditions of a prison in North Korea or  Eritrea, it’s almost certain they would say that they were in a condition that they didn’t want and that they would rather be free of that place. Yet,t this is a desire that they, at the moment, don’t have – for they are suffering. 

The fact that someone weathers such afflictions and persecutions with a faith that endures is an evidence that their faith is indeed genuine.  In the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 Jesus spoke about how sometimes seed (i.e., His Word) falls on rocky ground. He explains this metaphor in this way:  “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.”  You see, the “rocky ground” is a person that at first shows that they are really excited about the truth of the Word of God, but their excitement is short-lived. Unlike the faith of the Thessalonian believers described in the verse above, in the face of affliction or persecution that arises in their lives, they fall away and turn their back on the truth they have heard. 

But for the true believer, they realize that any hardship that comes into their lives is being used by God to prove them, to demonstrate that their faith is genuine. More than that, it is the hardship, whatever it is, that God has allowed to affect their lives as a means of discipline, to train and strengthen them in the faith.  They have heeded the command that believers are to “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father” (Hebrews 12:7).  Although it may be hard to understand the hardship at the moment, God is always using it for good.  The believer can say, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Endurance of hardship with an eye that is always looking toward Jesus with faith in the midst of it gives proof that one is considered by God Himself as “worthy of the kingdom of God.”

May God give us that heart of faith that sees His hand at work in our lives no matter the nature of the affliction or persecution that comes our way.  God is treating us as sons and daughters by using hardships – including the evil brought into our lives by the hand of Satan himself or those He influences   – for our good.  May God give us attitudes like that of Jacob’s son Joseph, who endured the hatred of his own brothers and all the affliction that eventually came about in a prison in Egypt despite his love for God.  In the end Joseph had these words for those who had brought him affliction: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).   And many times the “good” God intends for us is to make us more and more useful in His service.  It is in the trial to that we are to be witnesses of the gospel and bring the message of eternal life to those who may look like they have it better than we do at the moment, yet who are prisoners of their own sin.