Why do believers have to die? The wages of sin is death, and believers have sinned. However Christ has paid the full penalty for our sins. So why do believers have to die?

The simple answer is, "They don't."

Believers do not have to die, because Christ has died in their place. There is not an atom of penalty left to pay. Therefore, God could translate believers to heaven without them having to pass through death; just as he did with Enoch and Elijah, and as He will do with the believers who are living upon Christ's return.

So, believers do not have to die, as Christ has purchased deliverance from physical death and the redemption of our bodies. But, in most cases, the Lord has chosen to delay or postpone the application of these benefits until the general resurrection of all. The question remains, though, "Why?" If believers do not have to die, why do they die?

The answer is that God wisely allows the vast majority of believers to pass through death because of the immense spiritual benefits of the experience.

1. Dying brings us into communion with Christ's sufferings

Christ's death is different to the believer's "penalty-free" death, because Christ's death was a penalty for sin (our sin). However, dying reminds us of what Christ did for us. Like nothing else it helps us to understand the death Christ experienced for us, and so brings us into closer communion with Him and increases our love for Him (Phil.3:10).

2. Dying gives us a unique experience of Christ's all-sufficient grace

Bodily death is still a painful evil to the believer. He will fear it and feel it. As the last moments approach, there is often great physical pain and sometimes spiritual fear. There is also the emotional distress of seeing loved ones’ weeping. At such times the dying believer can experience tremendous help from Christ. His grace is found to be more than sufficient at this time of greatest need.

3. Dying transforms us into Christ's image

One of the blessings of dying is the rapid ripening of the believer’s character and the acceleration of his sanctification. The outer person is growing weaker, but the inner is growing stronger and stronger. Though death can take an ugly toll on the body of a believer, yet his soul is being swiftly beautified. I'm sure many pastors have seen how the approach of death can result in a believer "shining" in a way they never have before.

4. Dying is our last and perhaps greatest opportunity to witness for Christ’s glory

Death, in many ways, is the supreme test of faith. What an opportunity to speak of how faith in Christ helps us to die and gives victory over the greatest enemy. How many unbelievers have been converted by the dying words of godly fathers or mothers.

5. Dying brings us into Christ’s presence

Death hastens us into the presence of Christ and our coronation as His precious people. Death temporarily separates us from our bodies, but it unites our souls to Christ in a new and wonderful way.

In summary, believers do not have to die, but they do die: to have communion with Christ’s sufferings, to experience Christ’s grace, to be made like Christ’s image, to witness for Christ’s glory, and to bring them into Christ’s presence.

Living in this world means suffering. But for the believer suffering and glory belong together. In describing our suffering, Paul is holding a scale before us. Not a bathroom scale, but an ancient scale; one that balanced one weight against the other. On the one side, Paul places all the suffering that Christians will endure on this side of eternity. On the other side of the scale, Paul places our future glory. What does our suffering weigh? How does this compare with the weight of our future glory? 2 Corinthians 4:17 says, "For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” For believers, all present suffering is light and momentary. Our future glory is weighty and eternal.

Read the whole thing for your encouragement in the grace that carries us through suffering and into "an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison!"

Your suffering will show you that the timing of teaching and touching is crucial....When you walk through your own valley of darkness you learn these things. This is your lifelong seminary. If you are called to counsel others, I entreat you, do not begrudge the seminary of suffering. -John Piper

Many factors over the course of the past two months play into the unmistakable truth that I am in a semester in the seminary of suffering. Academically, I just finished an extensive study of 1 Peter in my Greek Exegesis class, where one major theme is suffering. I also recently took an intro to counseling course that exposed me, albeit briefly, to the reality of the vast suffering experienced throughout local churches all over the world. For work, I am helping to prepare a sermon series on suffering. Personally, I have heard several sermons as of late on the theme of suffering and I have begun to explore my life and the painful losses that occurred in my past. Finally, my time in the Word has opened up my eyes to the consistent message of suffering presented after Genesis 3.

However, I’m also learning that we in America balk at that word suffering. We want to avoid it at all cost. We medicate ourselves with all society offers as means for comfort, security, and safety. Even when we know it is okay to suffer--whether it be the loss of a loved one, experiencing rejection, being abused or neglected--we don’t want to embrace the pain and the hurt. Instead I know so many people who just suppress it all, burying it deep within their hearts. But it never actually goes away; it never heals. And if it never gets dealt with it destroys them. They either become violent and angry, bitter at everyone or, and maybe even more frightening, they become numb to life and to God. He or she is a shell of a human being, an illusion of who they once were.

As I journey through this semester in the seminary of suffering, I am realizing that I have sought too long to avoid suffering in my life. Furthermore, my eyes are opening to the plain truth that I know too many people--Christians--like me. We do not have a proper theology of suffering. We do not get trained in a proper theology of suffering that incorporates both the mind and the heart. As a result, we do not know how to minister to others in their suffering, providing trite, cliché, theologically and emotionally hollow answers to questions we're unwilling to wrestle with before the Living, Triune God.

My journey has brought me to several conclusions I wish to develop over the coming weeks and months. The two major ones that constantly come to the surface are here, but I believe there are many more.

1. Suffering in Light of Eternity

"But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed" (1 Pet 4:13). This verse sums up the tone of the entire letter (1:7, 11, 21; 4:11, 13, 14; 5:1; 5:10). Peter is writing specifically about suffering because of persecution, but the principle of rejoicing in the midst of suffering as we look to Jesus' return can be extended to all areas of life. Moreover, we must realize that each and every person in this world has experienced some level of suffering. Their experience is unique and valuable because they are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). C.S. Lewis states it poignantly:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But is is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

In light of eternity, how are we approaching suffering in our lives and the lives of others, both believer and unbeliever?

2. The Language of Lament

We do not need to be taught how to lament. What we need is simply the assurance that we can lament. -Michael Card

Put simply, our theology does not allow for the category of lamenting in our suffering. Somewhere we lost it and I, for one, grew up in a generation that knew little to nothing about it's place in the Christian's life. Yet we can look to Scripture--more specifically the lives of Job, David, Jeremiah and Jesus--not only to see that lament is possible for us, but that it even produces a stronger dependence on God than ever before.

Have you ever been taught about lamenting? If so, what did you learn? Have you ever seriously lamented? Is this a foreign concept to you?

I plan on expanding each of these ideas because we have to further probe how these categories inform a proper theology of suffering--and practice of it--as we and others in our lives will undoubtedly suffer.

For now I must ask, are you too walking through a semester in the seminary of suffering?

By His Grace.

We sang, “He gives and takes away, he gives and takes away, my heart will choose to say, ‘Lord, blessed be your name.’” To stand in a circle with twenty-four people who feel that God has taken away what is most precious to them and yet choose to bless his name is to stand on holy ground. Their tears evidence a breakthrough to trust.

Many of these couples, though they may have been in church their whole lives, come from traditions that do not embrace or celebrate the sovereignty of God. But the death of their child forces them to reckon with it if they want to come to peace with God.  In my own experience, and as I interact with grieving people, I find that the sovereignty of God can initially be a very hard truth to accept—because if he is in control of everything, we wonder why he has allowed this universe to be ordered in a way that causes us such significant pain. Yet when we begin to think that “the God I know would never allow this,” we have taken our first step toward discovering that God is not who we think he is. That is when we can begin to explore the wonder of his sovereignty seeking to know him as he is and not as we have reduced him to be.

Though God’s sovereignty can be initially hard to accept, ultimately it is the only solid ground to stand on in this broken world, and eventually we realize that it is really a soft place to land. His sovereign power to redeem the suffering we experience in this sin-sick world is our only true hope and comfort. Without confidence in God’s sovereign oversight of the universe, life becomes meaningless, hope for justice fades, and everything seems random. The truth is, if God is not sovereign, then we’re in trouble. The sovereignty of God is a rock underfoot when the winds blow in our lives. It confronts what seems absurd in our existence. God’s sovereignty is our greatest hope as we face an uncertain and unknown future.

1. The local church has to support culture-making. Most of the young evangelicals interested in integrating their faith with film-making, journalism, corporate finance, etc, are getting their support and mentoring from informal networks or para-church groups. Michael Lindsay's book Faith in the Halls of Power shows that many Christians in places of influence in the culture are alienated from the church, because they get, at best, no church support for living their faith out in the public spheres, and, at worst, opposition.

At the theological level, the church needs to gain more consensus on how the church and Christian faith relate to culture. There is still a lot of conflict between those who want to disciple Christians for public life, and those who think all "engagement of culture" ultimately leads to compromise and distraction from the preaching of the gospel. What makes this debate difficult is that both sides make good points and have good arguments.

At the practical level, even the churches that give lip-service to the importance of integrating faith and work do very little to actually equip people to do so. Seminary only trained us ministers to disciple people by pulling them more out of the world and inside the walls and ministries of the church. So how does a church actually help its members in this area? Leaders who want to get started should look at Redeemer's Center for Faith and Work.

2. We need a renewal of apologetics. There is a lot of resistance right now among younger evangelical leaders toward apologetics. We are told we don't need arguments any more because people aren't rational. We need loving community instead. But I think this is short-sighted for two reasons.

First, Christians in the West will finally be facing what missionaries around the world have faced for years -- how to communicate the gospel to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents of various folk religions. All young church leaders should take courses in and read the texts of the other major world religions. They should also study the gospel presentations written by missionaries engaging those religions. Loving community will be extremely important, as it always is, to reach out to neighbors of other faiths, but if they are going to come into the church, they will have many questions that church leaders today need to be able to answer.

Second, there a real vacuum in western secular thought. When Derrida died I was surprised how many of his former students admitted that High Theory (what evangelicals call 'post-modernism') is seen as a dead end, mainly because it is so relativistic that it provides no basis for political action. And a leading British intellectual like Terry Eagleton in recent lectures at Yale (published as Religion, Faith, and Revolution by Yale Press) savaged the older scientific atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens as equally bankrupt. Eagleton points out that the Enlightenment's optimism about science and human progress is dead. Serious western thought is not going back to that, no matter how popular Dawkins' books get. But postmodernism cannot produce a basis for human rights or justice either.

This is a real opening, apologetically, in reaching out to thoughtful non-Christians, especially the younger, socially conscious ones. We need to think of new ways to engage, asking people how they can justify their concerns for human rights and social justice. (For a great recent form of this approach, see Chris Smith's "Does Naturalism Warrant a Moral Belief in Universal Benevolence and Human Rights?" in The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (Oxford, 2009.)

Over the last twenty years my preaching and teaching has profited a great deal from doing the hard work of reading philosophy, especially the work of older Christian philosophers and scholars (Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Mavrodes, Alston) and the younger ones. Ministers need to be able to glean and put their arguments into easy to understand form, both in speaking and in evangelism.

I agree with the critics that say the old, rationalistic, 'evidence that demands a verdict' makes people's eyes glaze over today. But that doesn't mean that people don't still use reason and still make arguments. There is a big chink in the armor of western thought right now. People don't want to go back to religion, which still scares them, but they are not so sanguine about the implications and effects of non-belief.

3. We need a great variety of church-models. Avery Dulles' book Models of the Church does a good job of outlining the very different models of churches in the west over the centuries. After qualifying his analysis by saying these are seldom pure forms, he lays out five models. Each one stresses or emphasizes: a) Doctrine, teaching, and authority, or b) deep community and life together, or c) worship, sacraments, music and the arts, or d) evangelism, proclamation, and dynamic preaching, or e) social justice, service, and compassion.

Many evangelicals today have bought in to one or two of these models as the way to minister now in the post-Christendom west. So for example, those who believe in the 'incarnational' (vs. 'attractional' approach) emphasize being and serving out in the neighborhood, smaller house churches and intimate community (a combination of Dulles' b and e models.) Meanwhile, many evangelicals who are afraid of the 'liberal creep' of the emerging church, stress the traditional combination of a and d emphases. Each side is fairly moralistic about the rightness of its model and seeks to use it everywhere.

I feel that our cultural situation is too complex for such a sweeping way to look at things. There are too many kinds of 'never-churched-non-Christians'. There are Arabs in Detroit, Hmongs in Chicago, Chinese and Jews in New York City, Anglos in the Northwest and Northeast that were raised by secular parents --some are artists and creative types, some work in business. All of these are growing groups of never-churched, but they are very different from one another. No model can connect to them all -- every model can connect to some.

4. We must develop a far better theology of suffering. Members of churches in the west are caught absolutely flat-footed by suffering and difficulty. This is a major problem, especially if we are facing greater 'liminality'--social marginalization--and maybe more economic and social instability. There are a great number of books on 'why does God allow evil?' but they mainly are aimed at getting God off the hook with impatient western people who believe God's job is to give them a safe life. The church in the west must mount a great new project--of producing a people who are prepared to endure in the face of suffering and persecution.

Here, too, is one of the ways we in the west can connect to the new, growing world Christianity. We tend to think about 'what we can do for them.' But here's how we let them do something for us. Many or most of the church in the rest of the world is used to suffering and persecution. They have a kind of faith that does not wilt, but rather grows stronger under threat. We need to become students of theirs in this area.

5. We need a critical mass of churches in the biggest cities of the world. I know I'm always expected to say this! But this is not a mere tack-on to the other measures for addressing the Big Issues. In some ways, this is the 'Big Idea' that will help us move forward on all fronts.

If there were vital, fast-growing movements of churches -- orthodox in theology, wholistic in ministry, and committed to culture-making -- in the great global cities, so that 5-10% of the residents of the 50 most influential cities were gospel-believers, a) it would have a great impact on culture-making, b) it would help the church learn new ways of reaching the never-churched (since they concentrate in cities), c) it would connect western churches more readily to the new churches in the non-western world, d) it would unite churches across traditions and models.

In Part Two (God's Purpose in Suffering) D.A. Carson offers a chapter entitled, "Dying Well." Adapted from his helpful book How Long, O Lord: Reflections on Suffering and Evil, Cason takes up a topic that few want to face, namely, death.

Here's an excerpt from the chapter where Carson suggests that at least one purpose for our suffering in the hands of God is to make us homesick for heaven.

***

Is not some of the pain and sorrow in this life used in God’s providential hand to make us homesick for heaven, to detach us from this world, to prepare us for heaven, to draw our attention to himself, and away from the world of merely physical things?

In Psalm 90 we see that as Moses stares at death, he thinks through its relation to life, to sin, to God, and strives to understand what death means. And then he asks for wisdom to live his life in light of that death. He would have utterly scorned the modern mood that wants to live life as if death were not there waiting for us at the end. Moses wants us “to number our days,” that is, to recognize the limit that is imposed on us, and to live with that limit in full view. Only in this way can we “gain a heart of wisdom.”

Now let us suppose that your spouse comes home from a medical checkup with fearful news: there are signs that a vicious melanoma has taken hold. The hospital runs emergency tests during the next few days and the news comes back all bad: the prognosis is three months’ survival at best, and all that modern medicine can do is mitigate the pain.

I do not want to minimize the staggering blow such news can administer to any family. There are many forms of practical comfort and support that thoughtful people can show. But it must be said that if you are a Christian who has thought about these things in advance, you will recognize that this sentence of death is no different in kind from what you and your spouse have lived under all your life; that you have been preparing for this day since your conversion; that you have already laid up treasure in heaven, and your heart is there.

We are all under sentence of death; we are all terminal cases. The only additional factor is that in this case the sentence, barring a miracle, will certainly be carried out sooner than you had anticipated. I am not pretending that this bare truth is immensely comforting. Our comfort turns on other factors. But full acceptance of this truth can remove a fair bit of unnecessary shock and rebellion; for we will have escaped the modern Western mind-set that refuses to look at death, to plan for death, to live in the light of death, to expect death.

For the believer, the time of death becomes far less daunting a factor when seen in the light of eternity. Although death remains an enemy, an outrage, a sign of judgment, a reminder of sin, and a formidable opponent, it is, from another perspective, the portal through which we pass to consummated life. We pass through death, and death dies. And the more a Christian lives in the consciousness of God’s presence here, the easier it is to anticipate the unqualified delight that will be experienced in God’s presence there.

***

Read the whole chapter here.

Here is some writing to be commended:

Does a man know any gospel truth aright till he knows it by experience? Is not this the reason why God's servants are made to pass through so many trials, that they may really learn many truths not otherwise to be apprehended? Do we learn much in sunny weather? Do we not profit most in stormy times? Have you not found it so -- that your sick-bed -- your bereavement -- your depression of spirit, has instructed you in many matters which tranquility and delight have never whispered to you? I suppose we ought: to learn as much by joy as by sorrow, and I hope that many of my Lord's better servants do so; but, alas! others of us do not; affliction has to be called in to whip the lesson into us.

If you ever want to evaluate something that someone else writes or says to see if it’s worth believing, always start with their assumptions. Sometimes these assumptions are stated; other times they are implied. Spurgeon builds this discussion on suffering on top of the foundation of the gospel -- he means for us to believe that knowing gospel truth is our aim. This of course presupposes other things, which isn’t the focus of our commendation.

When Spurgeon talks about stormy times and depression of spirit, He is retelling a truth that people have known for centuries: that purity of spirit is formed by the presses of pain. This is worth retelling to every generation. But it’s not his focus.

His focus is on experiencing gospel truth—or knowing the truth of the gospel in our hearts and spirit as well as our heads. John Piper says faith is not merely intellectual assent to the truth of the gospel; it’s also the affectional embrace of the object of our faith—Jesus—being our greatest treasure. And this is the lesson Spurgeon means for us to see.

If knowing and treasuring Jesus is our life’s greatest goal, and joy and sorrow are means towards that end, then we welcome them both with open arms. We may still wince at the pain and rejoice when suffering passes us by, but we embrace them both as satisfactory ways to gain our greatest goal: Jesus.

So we seek to join Paul in saying, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).

***

If this is God’s world, how can it be filled with pain and suffering on such a massive scale? How can we connect the words of the angels about “peace on earth” with the reality of conflict and war?

At the inauguration of His public ministry, Jesus announced that He had come to preach good news to the poor, to release the oppressed and proclaim the year of Jubilee in which debts would be cancelled and slaves released. The response? “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this” (Luke 4:28).

On another occasion, Jesus healed a man whose hand was paralyzed. The response? [The Pharisees] “were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus” (Luke 6:11).

In the region of the Gerasenes, there was a man there who had terrorized the whole community with violence. Christ cast demons out of this man. People in the community saw the man who had plagued them dressed and in his right mind. You would think that these people would ask Jesus to stay and deal with other problems in their community, but Luke records, “All the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave” (Luke 8:37).

This pattern of rejection culminated in the crowd calling for Christ to be crucified. Pilate tried to intervene, but, “with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed” (Luke 23:23).

We live in a Christ-rejecting world. “He came to His own and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). That truth from the Bible helps me make sense of the news.

When natural disasters happen, people say, “Why doesn’t God do something about that?” But when He came and calmed the storm, we rejected Him. When gunmen are terrorizing schools, we say, “Why doesn’t God do something about that?” But when He came and cast out demons, we asked Him to leave. When we see cancer, we say, “Why doesn’t God do something about that?” But when He came and healed the sick, we rejected Him.

He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. But thank God it doesn’t end there. “Yet to all who received Him … He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11, 12).

Just reading that in the type in front of you probably has some of you angry. Let me help you see why that is, and, in so doing, why caring for those with AIDS is part of the gospel mandate given to us in the Great Commission.

The statement that Jesus has AIDS startles some of you because you know it not to be true. Jesus, after all, is the exalted son of the living God. He has defeated death in the garden tomb, and defeated it finally. Jesus isn’t weak or dying or infected; he’s triumphant and resurrected.

Yes.

Yes, but, what we’re often likely to miss is that Jesus has identified himself with the suffering of this world, an identification that continues on through his church. Yes, Jesus finishes his suffering at the cross, but he also speaks of himself as being “persecuted” by Saul of Tarsus, as Saul comes after his church in Damascus (Acts 9:4).

Through the Spirit of Christ, we “groan” with him at the suffering of a universe still under the curse (Rom. 8:23,26). This curse manifests itself, as in billions of other ways, in bodies turned against themselves by immune systems gone awry.

That’s why the church is to suffer, continually, with Christ as we take his presence into the darkness of a fallen creation. The Apostle Paul says, then, “I rejoice then in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24).

Some of Jesus’ church has AIDS. Some of them are languishing in hospitals right down the street from you. Some of them are orphaned by the disease in Africa. All of them are suffering with an intensity few of us can imagine.

Some of you are angered by the statement I typed above because you think somehow it implicates Jesus. After all, AIDS is a shameful disease, one most often spread through sexual promiscuity or illicit drug use.

Yes.

Yes, but those are the very kinds of people Jesus consistently identified himself with as he walked the hillsides of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, announcing the kingdom of God. Can one be more sexually promiscuous than the prostitutes Jesus ate with? Can one be more marginalized from society than a woman dripping with blood, blood that would have made anyone who touched her unclean (Luke 8:40-48)? Jesus touched her, and took her uncleanness on himself.

AIDS is scandalous, sure. But not nearly as scandalous as a cross.

At the crucifixion stake, Jesus identifies himself with a sinful world (including the scandal of my sin). He was seen to be cursed by God (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13). This is why it seemed so reasonable to the shouting crowds to curse him as a false Messiah, because only those rejected by God would ever be hanged on a tree. And that’s why the apostle Paul had to repeatedly insist that he was not “ashamed” of the cross. At Golgotha, Jesus became sin (though he never knew it himself) by bearing the sins of the world (2 Cor 5:21). Now that’s scandalous.

Moreover, some of you are angry because you believe that the statement I typed above is an affront to the dignity of the ruler of the universe. He doesn’t have some immune deficiency disease; he’s ruling from the right hand of God.

Yes.

Yes, but we cannot see Jesus only in his Head but also in his Body, also in his identification with those he calls “the least of these, my brothers” (Matt. 25:40). Jesus isn’t right now hungry, is he? He isn’t naked, is he? He isn’t thirsty, is he? He isn’t in jail, is he? Well, yes, he is…in the nakedness, hunger, thirstiness, and imprisonment of his suffering brothers and sisters around the world.

When we stand in judgment, we’ll stand, Jesus tells us, accountable for how we recognized him in the trauma of those who don’t seem to bear the glory of Christ at all right now. We see Jesus now, by faith, in the sufferings of the crack baby, the meth addict, the AIDS orphan, the hospitalized prodigal who sees his ruin in the wires running from his veins.

I wonder how many of us will hear the words from our Galilean emperor, “I had AIDS and you weren’t afraid to come near me.”

And so, if we love Jesus, our churches should be more aware of the cries of the curse, including the curse of AIDS, than the culture around us. Our congregations should welcome the AIDS-infected, and we shouldn’t be afraid to hug them as we would hug our Christ. Our congregations should be on the forefront of missions to AIDS-ravaged regions of the world. Our families should be willing to welcome those orphaned by this global scourge.

Through it all, we should be insistent in gospel proclamation. To those whose blood has become their own enemy, we should announce blood they know not of, the blood of One who can cleanse them of all unrighteousness, just as it cleansed us (1 Jn. 1:7); the blood of One who is forever immune to sin and death and hell (Jn. 6:53-56).

Jesus loves the world, and the world has AIDS. Jesus identifies himself with the least of these, and many of them have AIDS. Jesus calls us to recognize him in the depths of suffering, and there’s AIDS there too.

Jesus has AIDS.

For various reasons, this past year has been the most painful year of my life by far. As of late, God has graciously given me a mild reprieve, but I still spend a lot of time thinking about all that happened this year and the way God used trials and tribulations to remold and reshape me.

As crazy as this might sound, I have finally come to the place where I am genuinely thankful for all of the pain and difficulty and loss I experienced this year. As much as my family and I suffered, I look back on the way God used our desperation to make us more dependent on him and I am deeply grateful. In fact, I told a friend the other day that I wouldn’t trade one desperate, difficult day for all the dollars in the world. Seriously!

I’ve discovered that being thankful for pain is such a hard concept to grasp because many of us live in a country which has convinced us that the pursuit of happiness and comfort is our “inalienable right.” Therefore, when our comforts, conveniences, and cushions are threatened, we cry “foul.” This has deeply affected our understanding of what it means to give thanks and the types of things we are to be thankful for.

I love reading biographies. And one of the things I’ve discovered in reading them is that the greatest people in history have been just as thankful for their pains as they have been for their pleasures. They’ve given gratitude for their desperations as much as their deliverances; their grief as much as their glory.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Health is a gift from God, but sickness is a gift greater still.” Throughout his time in this world, Spurgeon suffered with various physical ailments that eventually took his life prematurely. He longed to be well but he recognized the supreme value of being sick and he thanked God for it because it was his pain that caused him to desperately draw near to God.

Similarly, David Brainerd was a young missionary to American Indians who died in 1747 at 29 years old from tuberculosis. Toward the end of his struggle, he was on his deathbed coughing up blood and coming in and out of consciousness saying out loud, “Oh for Holiness! Oh, for more of God in my soul! Oh, this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God.”

The Puritans used to say that this life was the gymnasium, the dressing room, for the life to come and if suffering here and now better prepared them for the next world then it was welcomed.

To be thankful for our comforts only is to make an idol of this life. “God-sent afflictions”, says Maurice Roberts, “have a health-giving effect upon the soul” because they are the medicine used to purge the soul of self-centeredness and this world’s vanities. Pain, in other words, sharpens us, matures us, and gives us clear “eye-sight.” Pain transforms us like nothing else can. It turns us into “solid” people. Roberts continues, “Those who have been in the crucible have lost more of their scum.” All of this should cause us to be deeply thankful.

It’s been said that pain is the second best thing because it leads us to the Best Thing (God). For, it is only when we come to the end of ourselves that we come to the beginning of God. And it is only when we come to the beginning of God that we come to the beginning of life.

The paradox of Christianity is that if you want to find your life, you must lose it (Matthew 10:39). In the world’s economy, life precedes death. In God’s economy, death precedes life -- the cross always precedes the crown. The good news, however -- the thing that should cause us to be supremely thankful -- is that when we lose our worldly comforts, we gain heavenly ones.

Thank God!