deceased A.W. Tozer. It was Tozer’s expositions on the attributes of God and the workings of the Holy Spirit that finally gave rise to a compositional understanding of the role of suffering.
These “three wise men” arranged the intellectual building blocks that allowed my mind to grasp what the Spirit was revealing to my soul:
There is a connection between God’s expressions of His Love and the expressions of His Own Suffering.
[I should note here that my assertions and conclusions expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect those of these three men or any church or seminary.]
I have finally reached a conclusion about the “Abundant Life”.
The “Abundant Life” that was promised, “pressed down, shaken together and running over” is not made of the currency of this world, but rather the currency of heaven. And what is the ‘currency’ of heaven? It is the Holy Morality of God-- and that same divine morality is linked to His and our physical and spiritual suffering.
There is little separation between the Abundant Life and the command to take up your cross and follow Jesus. To “take up your cross“ is not a glib phrase. It is a mandate to engage in an intimate fellowship with the Creator.
INTRODUCTION
The question ‘why there is suffering’ is a universal-unknown to the whole of mankind.
This book will be short and to the point. There will be no lengthy, glib stories; or “God spoke to me” declarations of unique or special revelation. This book declares what is already known, but is seldom made knowable because our culture, our media, our pulpits, our intellects, and our constant pursuit in seeking relief from suffering prohibit it from joining its truth with our hearts.
Yes, this book is about my personal journey and the conclusions I had drawn from Scripture, so someone could say it’s all my opinion. But I have yet to find anyone who was able to counter my conclusions with either scriptural truths or observable facts.
This ‘truth’ that is seldom made knowable is a difficult juxtaposition of the obvious world of suffering in which we live and the notion that a ‘good’ God divinely wills this suffering to exist.
To the secular person, the coexistence of universal suffering and a ‘God who loves you’ is worthy of mockery. To the believer who cannot reconcile God and suffering, there can be nothing ahead except endless moral confusion, self-blame, grief, fear, quixotic purges of real or imagined vices, feelings of abandonment, trials of faith, and still more suffering.
Christ called upon each man to carry his own cross and follow Him. Luke 9:23. Paul in Romans praised the power of suffering to transform, Romans 5:1-5. Yet, few take these charges seriously. Most gloss over this Scripture and look for relief from the burden of a personal cross and seek another way to follow Christ.
The fact is that the desire for, and the pursuit of, the relief from suffering is the fundamental basis for cowardice, both in believers and non-believers alike. Not that the desire for relief from suffering always produces cowardice, but it illustrates the divide between the outcomes of Romans 5:1-5 and the path toward cowardice.
As much as a non-believer resists the notion of his own sinfulness before God, so do typical 21st century American Christian evangels resist the knowledge that God wills suffering to reach its fullest, divinely ordained measure in the life of a believer.
Carrying your own cross has wide and deep implications. It is not isolated to a God-ordained endurance race, though your life is an endurance race. It is not about self-sin recognition or self-repentance. [Escaping the power of sin is not a do-it-yourself exercise.] It is not about keeping yourself Holy. [You can’t.] It is not about making yourself pure. [You can’t do that either.]
Carrying your own cross is not an option. It is a mandate. But what is it? The way of the cross is the way of the suffering of God in your life. This is not double-talk or gibberish. To be more clear: The way of the cross, the suffering of God, is the inner, moral suffering a person experiences as he or she lives their lives in this fallen world. Physical suffering, and all its variants, are manifestations of the greater, more universal, moral suffering.
Without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, the ‘way of the cross’ cannot be easily recognized [discernment being a gift of the Holy Spirit]. This is because we ourselves are fallen and live in a fallen world; the combination of which dims the truth of our moral condition.
Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, which makes clear the purpose of the cross in our lives, our human hearts tend to seek easier paths.
The influence of the natural man nudges us away from the suffering cross, and our lives are spent looking for that ‘other way’. Even for the most devout believer, that ‘other way’ can be found masked in religious theology: Many wait for the Rapture as a way out. Many seek the Lord’s return as a hope of relief. Many find temporary distraction by the emotional entertainment in our church worship services. Many use prayer only as a petition platform. Many dream of the heavenly existence in a new body. In all these things, the desire for worldly relief from the heaviness of this present life takes the forefront. Few accept the inescapable reality of suffering. Few take on the cross as their own.
But relief from suffering in this life is not the Will of God. If it were, we would not suffer.
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
This book is for believing Christians who struggle to understand suffering and why God allows it. Indeed, more than that—why God, who is the Great Uncreated Eternal Omniscient Almighty Being, interactively perpetuates suffering across the spectrum of mankind, from the distant past, the present and long into the future.
There are many who hold fast the belief that God is Absolute Love, Who wants no harm to come to anyone, and is the God who Saves and Heals. And I concur, God surely is all of those things. But the adherence to that belief cannot explain the ubiquity of suffering, nor God’s role in allowing it on a grand universal scale. To hold to the belief that God is Love—a harmless kind of Love-- is to deny reality.
This book is not necessarily limited to believing Christians. But, for the unbeliever, the reader needs to know that the focus of this book’s content presupposes that the reader is “saved” in the traditional sense. Being “saved” means that a person has accepted Jesus’ atonement for their sins by His death on the cross and has provided the promise of eternal life. This book is written from this perspective and assumes that the reader has a referential background in God’s Word, yet struggles with the questions surrounding God’s Will as it pertains to suffering.
So, by focus of content and intent of design, this book is not for everyone. But it still may be for you.
In its pages you will find an explanation for the suffering of man, why the Almighty God divinely wills it to be so, and your role as a divinely connected co-sufferer.
‘Suffering’ has plagued kings and slaves alike. It lies at the heart of the reason for the creation of many false religions and political systems. Throughout the history of man, man has used the threat of suffering as a method of control over the weak by the strong. In contrast, the relief from suffering has propelled man from living in tents and caves to the creation of great civilizations. It has also been the same catalyst for bringing great civilizations to dust. Just in the last two centuries, the pursuit of the relief from suffering has led mankind to technological heights as well as created the most oppressive forms of governments ever to have existed.
