Three Truths
“For I consider that the present sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18
Three Truths:
1. I experience suffering.
2. God is Love.
3. God is sovereign in all things.
While I was in highschool, a American author published a book and in one of his characters said, “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” I agreed with him. Pain is painful, and painful things get felt. Whether be it physical, emotional, mental, spiritual or any other sort of pain, we suffer because of it. It’s a truth of the broken world we live in.
So Truth 1 is true because I can testify to it. It’s an internal truth. One that I experience and feel in my inmost being. As an observer, you can see the affects of my suffering but you do not feel it. But, if you are human, then you suffer too. Christian or not, you can testify that suffering and pain happens.
The thing is if either truth 2 or 3 aren’t true, then I believe in a false and lying God. But I believe in both of these truths with all of my being. I believe in a God that is love and that He is sovereign in all things.
1 John 4:8-10 reads: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
I know that God is love because He has shown me through the death and resurrection of Christ. Jesus bore the wrath of the Father for me so that I can know Him. So Truth 2 is clearly seen to be true.
Truth 3 is so much harder to reconcile in this day and age. Our society and culture, especially in Sydney, is one that says we are in control of our own destinies. We live in an age in which personal freedom is so highly valued, we compromise on acknowledging the sovereignty of God in all things. From Genesis to Hosea to Romans to Revelation, the power and absolute supremacy of the Creator of all things is seen. But more than this, I have experienced the sovereignty of God in my life. I have suffered my fair share in the 20 years that I have been alive. In all these, I have seen God’s goodness and grace keep me as His child. By His Spirit’s work in me, I am writing this. By the crimson drops that flowed from my Saviour’s side and the glory of the resurrection, I am alive. I can cry out nothing but all glory be to Christ!
Because of all this, I can only conclude that there is a purpose to my sufferings that I do not know yet. I may never know it’s purpose but does that really matter? Most people would say yes. But I am not most people.
Soli Deo Gloria
Amen.