How to Suffer // Guest Speaker Pastor Cody

And seriously, as a church, we're so blessed to have some of the best preaching around that God.

What could I possibly talk about?

What message could I possibly share that would be helpful?

And as I began praying and thinking about this, I've had several conversations with individuals in our church who are kind of just struggling right now, kind of suffering, honestly, going through some really difficult things, whether it's been critical health diagnosis that came upon them or financial struggles or mental health issues or just relational issues.

There's just a lot of people, I feel like, that have been going through some type of suffering, some type of struggle, and so God brought me to my devotions to Matthew, chapter 8, where we see Jesus.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

He brings healing to all of these people who have these physical ailments.

In other words, they're suffering from something and we see how Jesus provides hope, how he provides healing and how he provides purpose for them in their lives through this suffering.

Maybe you hear this morning you're going through one of the most difficult times in your life.

Maybe that's you.

You're hurting like you feel like your life is just crumbling around you and you don't know how to pick up the pieces.

Can I just tell you I'm sorry, so sorry, that you're going through that right now.

I'm so sorry that you're struggling, but I also want to remind you that you're not alone.

You have a church family who loves you, a church family who cares about you and, more importantly, you have a God who loves and cares for you.

And we're going to talk about hope and healing in your life today.

Now, maybe you're here this morning and things are going great.

You're like I don't know what you're talking about.

It's Christmas, I'm ready to go, I'm happy.

But you also know, life's not always going to be that way.

There's going to be times where, unfortunately, we have to struggle, we have to suffer, we're going to go through some difficulties in this sin-cursed world.

We're going to talk about what do we do when we go through them and how do we suffer in the proper way.

Title of this message this morning you guys see it, it's super helpful, it's super nice, right, how to suffer.

It's an exciting one for us to talk about?

Obviously it's not, but it's important for us to know we're going to have to suffer, we're going to have to go through it.

So how do we do it?

In a biblical way, let's jump into Matthew, chapter eight, a familiar chapter for many of us.

We're going to start in verse one.

It says when he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him Right away.

A man with leprosy came up and knelt before him saying Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Reaching out his hand, jesus touched him saying I am willing, be made clean.

And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Some context for this.

This is right after Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount.

It's like the most famous sermon that he preached.

And he comes down from this mountain and says there are these huge crowds gathered around him and this man with leprosy comes forward.

Now, if you're not familiar with leprosy, it's this flesh-eating disease that basically slowly ate away at your body and there was no cure for it, there was no prevention for it and it ate away at you to eventually you die.

If you got this disease, it was like the worst news you could possibly get.

There was no hope for you.

You were cast out of society because it was so contagious.

People didn't want to catch it.

You had to live on the outskirts.

And not only were you cast out of society.

In that culture they assumed if you were diagnosed with this condition, if you had this disease.

They thought it was because you sinned.

Maybe someone in your family has sinned and because of that God has cursed you.

They were a societal outcast.

They were a spiritual outcast.

They were considered uncleaning, hopeless.

Maybe you hear this morning and you can resonate with that.

Maybe you feel hopeless in that situation that you're in.

But we're going to see how this hopeless man found healing in Jesus.

We see, the first thing that he did is number one.

He used his trial to get closer to God.

We can use our trials to get closer to him.

Let's read verse one and two again.

It says this when he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him Right away.

A man with leprosy came up, knelt before him, saying Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

As we look at this, we can skip by.

Well, we have to ask ourselves how did a man with leprosy get to the front of the line?

Everyone wants to get to Jesus, everyone's trying to get close to him, everyone wants to hear what he has to say.

How did that man get to the front?

So another thing about if you had this disease if anyone ever came around you, you had to say a word you have to yell out the word unclean.

If you can picture in your mind this man sees Jesus.

He knows he has to get to him for healing.

As he approaches the crowd he would have to yell out unclean, unclean.

As everyone watched him, looked at him as he walked forward.

They would have parted away for him and he would have walked straight to Jesus, while everyone else viewed his suffering as a curse.

While everyone said that he was cursed, he was an outcast, he viewed his suffering as a way to get him closer to God.

It could be this morning that your suffering is not a curse, but rather it's an opportunity for you to grow closer to God.

It's an opportunity for you to trust in him and for your faith to grow in him as you continue to lean on him, as you continue to depend on him.

See this man with leprosy.

He could have done what everyone else did, everyone else in his life.

Everyone else in society told them God doesn't care about you.

See number two he did what it took to find healing.

See this man with leprosy.

He didn't just sit in his cave all sad and moped around and just waited to die.

No, he knew he had to take an action.

He knew if he wanted to find healing, there was something that he had to do.

He heard about this guy, jesus, and he's willing to despise the shame.

He didn't care what people thought about him.

He didn't care if people were looking at him.

He didn't care if he was tired and sore as this illness took place in his body.

He said I'm going to do what it takes to get the healing that I need to get.

I'm going to walk forward to get to Jesus.

You know, as a pastor I'll have many people and I'm so grateful for this.

They'll come and they'll say, hey, hey, cody, will you pray for me?

I don't want to be careful here.

I'm going to give some examples.

I know some of you may be going through this, but maybe they'll say something like hey, will you pray for me?

Right now I'm just struggling with.

I just got back from the doctors.

I've got some high cholesterol.

I'll say, yeah, I'm so sorry.

Absolutely, I'll pray for you.

But then some time goes on and maybe the doctor gave them some dietary restrictions to follow, gave them some exercises that they were supposed to do, and a couple weeks, a couple months pass on.

They don't do any of those things and then they go back to the doctor and, well, they still have high cholesterol.

Maybe it's that couple who who they've been fighting about something.

They have some marital issues and they say, hey, will you pray for us as we go through that?

I say absolutely, I'll pray for you guys.

But they never go to counseling, they don't communicate with each other, they don't talk things through, and then a year goes by, two years go by and they look back and they wonder why are we still fighting about the same thing?

We were last year?

See, just like this man did what it takes to find healing.

God calls us to do the same thing in our lives.

But this can be confusing as Christians, where we're taught like half-faith and we're supposed to just kind of pray and pray and trust God and wait on the Lord and God's going to do a work, and so we pray and we sit there and we don't do anything and healing doesn't come.

I think the problem for many Christians is that sometimes, sometimes we mistake laziness for faith and action as disbelief.

We say, hey, I prayed super, super hard.

We'll just sit there and we'll pray and we'll pray and nothing happens.

But maybe we're afraid to take action because, like, god is the one who's supposed to take care of this.

God is the one who's supposed to bring healing, and God can and he will do those things for you in your life.

But he also calls us at times to take some action.

Maybe their, their heart will change.

They sit though, pray and say God, I'm just waiting on you and waiting to do something.

And time goes on and nothing happens, and your heart might start to harden a little bit, some bitterness might begin to creep up.

You say, god, I've been praying, I've been waiting on you, yet Nothing is different.

So you know what I'm gonna do it myself.

God, you weren't there for me, so now I have to stand up and I have to be there for myself because God didn't provide for me.

It could be that there's a balance between the two.

2nd Timothy 3, 16 through 17, says this.

It says all scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

You see, scripture teaches us how to take action, teaches us what we need to do and how we need to do it.

Taking action isn't a lack of faith.

Rather, it's an act of faith, trusting that God is gonna help me as I walk through this situation.

It's trusting that God is gonna guide me as I take the steps that I need to take.

Now I don't say this point as like a repeat to you guys.

Okay, I'm not saying if you just worked harder, if you just toughened up, everything would be okay.

It's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is I know what it's like to suffer at times and when you're going through that struggle, that can be all you see.

We can get this tunnel vision of the issue and all we see is the issue that's before us.

When we need to just take a step back, maybe breathe in, we say, okay, I know there's a bunch of things over here that's happening and, and I can't control these things, but something I like to do is I write out a list.

So here's what I can't control.

But, but here are some things that I can't do.

Maybe there's some things in your trial right now, if you just step back and looked at it from the outside, that you would see, okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, and you'll find that you're not as hopeless as you once thought that you were.

What if you feel like you've done all you can?

You're like that.

I've done all those things, I prayed and I trusted God and I've taken action upon those things, but it's still not working out for me.

Maybe you still feel helpless.

Now we're gonna continue reading it up about a helpless man who could not do anything on his own, but he found healing in his suffering.

In verses 5 through 13 Says when he entered Capernaum, a Centurion came to him pleading with him Lord, my servant is lying at home, paralyzed in terrible agony.

He said to him am I to come and heal him, lord?

The Centurion replied I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed, for I too am a man under authority, having soldiers under my command.

I say to this one go, and he goes.

And to another one come and he comes into my servant.

Do this, and he does it.

Hearing this, jesus was amazed and he said to those following him Truly, I tell you I have not found anyone in Israel with so great a faith.

I tell you that many will come from east and west to share the banquet with Abraham, isaac, jacob and the kingdom of heavens, but the sons of man of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness when there be weeping and ashing of tea.

Then Jesus told the centurion Go as you have believed, let it be done for you.

And his servant was healed at that very moment.

I want us to notice something important about this passage.

As we see this sick man that was healed, see that Jesus didn't answer the prayer of the sick man.

He answered the prayer of his friend.

The sick man who was helpless, who was at home, paralyzed.

He wasn't the one that prayed the prayer of help to Jesus.

He had a friend who prayed for him and God answered that prayer.

What do we do when we feel helpless, when we can't find the answers on our own?

Number three we need to be willing to ask for help.

This paralyzed man could not get the Jesus.

He could not find healing on his own, but he had a friend who was willing to help us.

And the good news is we don't always have to find the solutions on our own.

We don't have to do everything on our own.

God created family.

God created friends.

God created the church body that exists to pair one another's burdens.

As we go through these, we have to be willing and vulnerable enough to open up and ask for help.

Now, maybe you're like me and this can be a difficult one for you.

For me, I'll tell you why it's difficult, because there are times where I've opened up to people and they've hurt me.

You've been honest with people, you've been vulnerable with them and what you got wasn't help.

You got hurt instead, and that often happens.

It's not because they're mean, it's not because they're out to get you.

They even be people that love you and care about you.

They just might not know how to handle that struggle that you're in.

So how do we identify those people?

How do we know who to reach out to help?

For when we look at this centurion, he was someone who loved his servant.

He cared so much about his servant that he was willing to travel a great distance to humble himself to ask Jesus for help.

He loved them, but, number two, he knew how to help his friend.

When we're looking for someone to ask for help, we need to make sure are they someone who can really help us?

Because if they can't, they could be someone that accidentally hurts us.

We got look, can they help us?

Do they love us, do they care about us, and do they have the means?

Do they have the wisdom?

Do they have the knowledge and expertise to actually help us in that situation?

And while asking for help Might be extremely difficult for you, it's also one of the most powerful ways that we can find healing.

I experienced this personally in my own life.

One of the most trying times for me in my life was the year after I graduated college.

A ton of stuff happened that year, so I graduated college and then, a week after I graduated college, kelsey and I got married.

Okay, that's not the trial, that's not the struggle.

Okay, don't even show, don't tell her.

That.

All right.

A week later we got married and this is the good news, that's a good part.

And then, a week after that, we're gonna move.

I'm in Hawaii, we're gonna move to the mainland and I got hired on to be a junior high youth pastor at a church.

This is a larger church, so they had like senior high youth, junior high youth, and so I'm super excited.

We pack all our stuff, we get out there and I'll take this job as a junior high youth pastor.

That's what I thought was gonna happen.

I Got there and I showed up, ready to work, ready to go, ready so teach some teenagers about Jesus.

They had to meet him up and they said, hey, the bathrooms need cleaning.

Go clean the bathrooms.

I Said, yeah, okay, no problem, like I get it.

This is a church, you know, everyone's got to do some work around here.

I don't have any problem cleaning the bathroom.

So I go and I clean the bathroom up, make it all nice.

I come back I say, hey, I clean the bathroom.

What do you want me to do?

They told me, go clean the rest of this building, so the big building, lots of classrooms.

I say, yeah, go clean the other classrooms.

They all need cleaning.

Go ahead, sweep them up them.

It's okay, I spend the whole day cleaning all that.

Then a week goes by, two weeks go by and I haven't done anything but clean.

At this point Now, a couple weeks after the guy who's over me, he sits me down and and we go through kind of my task list, he gives me hey, here's kind of what I want your day-to-day to look like.

And I looked at it and Everything on there was just cleaning.

Go clean this, go clean that, go fix this thing over here.

And also there's a little part where I was supposed to do like some soundboard stuff in the back.

It's like it's kind of a weird like job description for for a youth pastor.

No, it's kind of weird, but I was 21 at the time.

I didn't know, I didn't want to rock the boat, I didn't say anything so I just kept going on.

Then a month passed on and Got a couple paychecks at this point and I looked at them and I kind of noticed there's like a few hundred dollars missing from each of them.

I Thought that's kind of weird, you, but you know mistakes happen, understanding they must have missed something.

So finally I work up the courage.

Right, I'm like the scared kid fresh out of college.

I work up the courage.

I go to the guy who oversees me as like hey, I just kind of wondering, like as a youth pastor, I'm looking at the stuff you have me doing.

At this point I haven't even like gone into youth group yet.

I'm just kind of wondering, like what's going on with that?

Then I also noticed it's a little awkward, but you know, my paychecks has been a little short.

It's kind of hard to to pay the rent this month.

I'm just, you know something wrong with that, though I miss something up and he goes oh yeah, you know, we forgot to tell you.

We actually decided we're gonna wait a couple of years for the youth group to get bigger and then we'll split it between youth and junior IU.

So you said but but you can kind of work your way up to that.

If you just kind of stay in this role for the next couple Years, you can work your way there.

And because you don't, you don't have that youth past your title, you know, we kind of had to take a little bit of your pay and dock your pay.

We had readjusted the budget, so you're gonna have to get paid a little lower than we thought.

And at this point, like we had no money, I couldn't move back home if I wanted to.

Like we didn't have money for that, and it started one of the most stressful Years of our lives.

A Couple weeks in, I'll give you guys some examples.

A couple weeks in, they had me working in the sound booth in the back and they just threw me in there like I didn't, I didn't get any Training, I didn't know how to use this thing.

But they're like hey, you're gonna work the sound booth there, so okay.

So I go back there and the guitar is not working.

Like it's the middle of the service, the worship team is going and the guitar is playing and no sounds coming out.

I have no idea what to do, like I've never done this before, I've never messed with it.

And after the service One of the pastors comes back and he just chews me out, he's yelling and he's like this is your second week here, you're already messing up.

We might have to rethink your employment here.

Like how I get to prove yourself.

You're only two weeks in and you're already messing up this badly.

And like I broke down when I went home and I was crying.

I didn't understand what was going on.

There's another instance where I did something that one of the pastors didn't like I mean, slap me across the face.

I Didn't understand why God was putting me through this, why I was suffering in this way.

I felt like a failure as a husband.

I couldn't support my life.

I was so stressed out and, honestly, we didn't have enough money to eat at times that I lost over 20 pounds.

And we're trying to walk through this.

But then something changed that helped me.

This was a bigger church with a lot of staff members and I began getting to know some of them and I trusted a couple of them and I kind of opened up to what was happening to us.

Fortunately, they were kind of going through the same thing as I was.

They were a little older, a little wiser, so they were kind of teaching me hey, I know this is a tough situation, but here's kind of what we're doing to get through it right now.

And they walked with us and they prayed with us.

We would go to many of their houses like once a week and we would just talk together and pray for each other.

And we found healing in the midst of all of that hurt and all of that pain because there were some friends.

There were some people who loved us and were willing to come around us and help us in a time where we felt absolutely helpless, like there was nothing we could do.

In your life right now you might feel that way and you're scared to open up and be vulnerable because you don't think people will understand.

I promise you, at times I felt that way, but when I opened up it was so surprising to see how many people went through what we went through, how many people were struggling in the way we were struggling and we found help and we found grace when we were just willing to be open and vulnerable and ask for help.

Now, maybe you don't have a family member like that, maybe you don't have friends who you feel like you can be that vulnerable if you can't open up to you.

You're not alone here.

See, at First Christian Church, if you are a partner of our church, you have what we call a shepherd.

That person knows either pastor nate, myself, one of our elders and deacons and our shepherds are people who love you, who.

We have a list of your names and we're praying for you and we're there if you need to reach out, if you need help, if you need prayer for anything, we're there for you.

Guys, if you don't know who your shepherd is, you can ask Edgar in the lobby.

He can teach you, he can show you who your shepherd is that you can reach out to for help.

But having those relationships, having that help, can be a huge difference between whether you make it through that struggle or not.

So maybe you see this.

Okay, I get it.

My trial is not a curse.

It's an opportunity for me to go closer to God.

Okay, got it.

Okay, there are actions that I can take to find healing.

Alright, I got it, and I need to be willing and vulnerable enough to ask for help.

Okay, I got it.

I got it.

I mean, you're like me and you're like, but why do I really have to suffer in the first place?

I mean, god, you know you're a good God.

Why do I have to suffer?

I'd kind of rather, I'd rather just not suffer.

That'd be kind of nice, or at least.

Why do I have to suffer so much?

I feel like I'm just suffering all the time.

God, why do we have to suffer?

This is probably one of the most asked questions in the world, the most asked questions in Christianity.

Why is it that we have to suffer?

Let's read verses 16 through 17 together.

It says when evening came, they brought to him many who were demon possessed.

He drove out the spirits with the word and healed all who were sick, so that what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

He himself took our weaknesses and carried our burdens.

See those people.

At the time they couldn't see it, but God was using their suffering.

God was using their illness because he knew that Jesus was going to come to bring healing for them, and their healing was going to be something that proved that Jesus was God.

Their healing was going to be something that proved that Jesus was the Son of God come to save the world.

In other words, their suffering allowed God to be glorified.

The same is true in our life.

Our suffering is an opportunity to glorify God.

Maybe you're like me.

I mean, yeah, that sounds pretty, that sounds nice.

But like I worship God plenty, I give God plenty of glory.

I pray to him all the time I read the Bible.

Why does God need me to suffer to get all this glory?

I mean, it can kind of sound selfish.

Right, I have to suffer so that God can receive glory.

Why is that?

Well, here's the difference between God and us.

God doesn't need glory to feel good about himself.

God doesn't need us to talk about how good he is.

So God would be like oh, cody said, I'm a good God, I feel better today.

That's not what God needs from us.

He does it because when God gets glory, people get saved.

We allow God to be glorified in our life.

We point people to him and they can see the love and the hope and the healing that is found through Jesus.

The story that I just talked about, I remembered from a little while ago.

When we're in these struggles or in these trials, while we're in them, it can be so difficult to see what God could possibly be doing.

And even that year there we left and we had some time away from that and, honestly, it took a couple of years to see how God was moving and how God was using this.

And I just remember feeling why, god?

Why am I working at a church when I feel betrayed God?

Why am I trying to serve you and I feel lied to God?

I'm just trying to.

I'm just trying to be a pastor.

I want to dedicate my life to you.

Why am I going through this?

And I didn't have the answer to all of those questions, honestly, until recently.

And God brought us here and I have the privilege and opportunity to be one of pastors as our church.

But I can still remember the hurt that I felt when church leadership hurt me.

I Can still remember the pain that can be caused when you trust a pastor and you think that they're gonna be there for you and then they're not.

I remember that hurt, hurt.

I remember that pain and from that I can remember how not to treat people.

From that I learned the type of leader that I never want to be.

But God had to break me down and he had to do a work in me before he could do a work through me.

And he wants to work in and through you Right now in your life.

And I learned this lesson.

We say this all the time here, that we care more about how people are doing than what people are doing.

I would not have learned that that would not have been so true to me had I not gone gone through that trial and that suffering in my life.

I First had to go through that hurt of being mistreated to understand how we need to treat God's people.

Your trial might feel purposeless at the moment, but I promise that God is preparing something in you.

God is using that suffering.

He's trying to teach you many specific lessons.

I don't know all the specific lessons he's teaching you, but the overarching purpose is so that you can point to him.

You can tell people look what God did, look how he redeems my story, and he can do the same for you in your life.

This morning I want you to remember there is hope, there is healing, there is help, there is purpose in your suffering.

God wants to bring all those things true in your life.

He wants to use you.

We have to do like that man with leprosy did and run to him.

We have to be willing to say, god, I don't understand right now.

But I'm gonna humble myself.

I'm gonna continue to walk with you and trust you that you know what you're doing and you're gonna work this out for my good and for your glory.

I'll encourage you this morning.

Would you continue to walk and depend on God as he brings you through this suffering?

Let me pray for you.