Chapter 9: Learning to Walk

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering

by Tim Keller

 

Chapter 9: Learning to Walk

 

What about Our Glory?

• Suffering glorifies If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.
• Suffering also prepares a glory for us.
• The glory that suffering prepares for us is not the same as the modern concept of self-improvement or happiness.
• Ironically, happiness does not come by seeking happiness, but by seeking God and his kingdom. Loving God and loving others honors God and produces happiness in us as a byproduct.

 

• We should trust God, not because it will get us something, but because God is worthy of our trust and worship.
• If we don’t seek to find ourselves but to find God, we will eventually find both God and ourselves.
• If we seek not our own benefit but God’s glory, it will lead paradoxically to a development of our own glory, that is, of our character, humility, hope, love, joy, and peace.
• So, we must not waste our sorrows, but grow through them into grace and glory.

 

Productive Suffering

• Contrary to Western secular culture that sees no purpose in suffering, the Bible presents a productive and valuable purpose in suffering.
• Suffering can reveal flaws in our character that we might not otherwise see, such as lack of courage, selfishness, or self-love.
• Going through sorrow, even depression, can cause us to appraise our own limitations and flaws more accurately, and help us to realize how little control we may have over our circumstances.

 

• Suffering does not automatically improve your life.
• Suffering will change you one way or another. It will leave you a much better person or a much worse one than you were before.
• “Avoidance coping and denial” leads to avoidance strategies like drinking, drugs, etc. and ultimately to self-destruction.
• “Active coping and reappraisal” leads to doing the hard inner work of evaluation, learning, changing, and growing.

 

How God Uses Suffering

• God uses suffering to remove our weaknesses and build us up in primarily four ways:
  • Suffering transforms our attitude toward ourselves.
    • Humbles us
    • Removes unrealistic self-regard and pride
    • Reminds us of how fragile we are
    • Leads us to examine ourselves and see weaknesses, because it often brings out the worst in us.

 

• Suffering will profoundly change our relationship to the good things in our lives.
  • Realize that some things have become too important to us (idols).
  • Often, the magnitude of our suffering is in direct proportion to the excessive weight we put on the things we have lost or are in jeopardy.
  • Suffering provides an opportunity to invest more of our hope and meaning in God and others.

 

• Suffering can strengthen our relationship to God as nothing else can.
  • Lewis: “In prosperity God whispers to us, but in adversity he shouts to us.”
  • When times are good how do you know that you really love God and are trusting God?
  • Only suffering can reveal the impurities or falseness of our faith in God.
  • Suffering drives us to prayer.

 

• Suffering is almost a prerequisite if we are going to be of much use to other people.
  • Adversity makes us much more compassionate than we would have been otherwise.
  • Having received comfort from God in our suffering, we are in a better place to minister God’s comfort to others who are suffering.  (2 Cor 1:3-7)

 

God’s Gymnasium

• The Bible speaks of suffering using the metaphor of a gymnasium.
• Heb 12: suffering is painful, but later on it produces righteousness and peace for those who are being trained (exercised) by it.
• In the gym, our weaknesses are exposed for what they are, and then they are purposefully exercised to strengthen them.
• In the gym, you feel you are getting weaker, but later on this results in strength and endurance.

 

• In suffering, like in the gym, we need the right application of pressure and discomfort in order to be strengthened.
• So, the suffering that God brings into our lives has a limit and has a purpose.
• So, our response to suffering should not be to despise it or to faint under it; we should move forward through the exercises.
• Our motivation and hope is to look to Jesus who also endured suffering on the way to glory.

 

Preparing the Mind for Suffering

• Suffering will come, and we have a responsibility to walk through suffering in the right way for it to achieve its intended effects.
• So, we need to prepare our minds for suffering before the suffering arrives.
• The more deeply you know and grasp the Bible’s teachings before the adversity comes, the more comfort they will be.
• A growing understanding of the Bible and a vital prayer life are the greatest preparation for affliction.

 

 

 

 

Preparing the Heart for Suffering

• Suffering is not just an intellectual issue, but a personal problem. So, we must prepare the heart as well as the mind to properly walk through suffering.
• Developing a consistent, vibrant, theologically deep, and relationally real prayer life is the best way to prepare the heart for suffering.
• If our understanding and experience of God’s love are strong before the affliction comes, they can serve as anchors that keep us from being overwhelmed by the adversity.

 

• When suffering first hits you, the gap between what you know with the mind and what you can use out of your store of knowledge in the heart can be surprisingly large.
• When troubles come, you will need God’s help to find the particular insights, consoling thoughts, and wisdom you will need to get through.
• Biblical truths previously known in the mind will have to be revisited in the heart and applied to the current real life experience.

 

• It is one thing to have biblical truths stored in the warehouse of the mind. It is quite another to know how to apply them to your own heart, life, and experience in such a way that they produce wisdom, endurance, joy, self-knowledge, courage, and humility.
• It is one thing to believe in God but it is quite another thing to trust
• Walking through suffering requires not just knowing about God, but knowing God.