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Episode 13: When Suffering Takes You by Surprise
70 Plays5 years ago
Today’s Key Idea: Suffering in and of itself doesn't change us; it is who we turn to in the midst of suffering that has the power to change us.
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Transcript
Introduction to Root Like Faith podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Hi, we are Patrick and Ruth Schwank and we are so thrilled you are listening in with us at Root Like Faith. It is our deepest desire to encourage and equip men and women to be rooted in God's word, transformed by the love of Jesus and moved by his mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more important.
Facing Unexpected Suffering
00:00:27
Speaker
Today we are talking about suffering. We're going to share a little bit of our personal story, how suffering can really take us by surprise and where we can go from here. So we're excited to share today's episode with you. Let's get started.
00:00:45
Speaker
On today's episode of Root Like Faith we are talking about suffering and really how it can come out of nowhere and where to turn when it seems impossible. We're also sharing a new project that we hope will be a blessing to you in the midst of your own
Personal Stories of Struggle
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Speaker
storm.
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Speaker
Suffering is something we all experience in our lives. Although topics like this can seem hard and heavy at times, the truth is we can't escape the trials that will inevitably come. So we need to learn how we can walk through them with wisdom.
00:01:19
Speaker
Really there's different points in all of our lives where we experience suffering and there's some things that really stick out to me. The things that I've been through or that we've been through that just seemed overwhelming. Some of them just too great to even handle. I can honestly remember as early as when we were not even married that long
00:01:42
Speaker
And we had about a six month period where we were in between jobs and we had people helping us pay our bills. We couldn't even make ends meet without the help of others and that really feels
00:01:57
Speaker
When I think back to that, that feels like a really dark time in our lives, and then fast forward not that long past that, and we started having miscarriages. Some of you know this already, but I had five miscarriages in the span of about probably 10 years.
00:02:15
Speaker
Nine pregnancies, so we do have four kids that are alive and with us And we have five others that are in heaven and some of those miscarriages were as late as you know 16 weeks 20 weeks And I just there was never any answers for me No doctor could tell us why and I just remember I mean that that was almost a decade of feeling Anxiety-ridden and fearful when I was pregnant and I can just tell you that that was a really really difficult
00:02:45
Speaker
time in my life and in our life as a family and like I said we all experience suffering in different ways.
Understanding Diverse Suffering
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah I think it's so I mean we probably ought to just sort of pause for a minute and just admit up front like we're not experts on suffering and so as you're saying everybody suffers you know uniquely and differently and we never you know want to compare our suffering with somebody else or say we've suffered worse and so I just feel like we're
00:03:11
Speaker
We're all kind of fellow companions, limping along after Jesus. And by His grace, sometimes it feels like just one breath after another, one step after another, that He supplies what we need. And it is. Life is challenging. There are folks that are listening to this that have probably suffered far worse than we have. And I remember
00:03:32
Speaker
In 2010, when my dad passed away, I remember exactly where I was, what car I was driving, what block, you know, on Main Street in Sylvania, Ohio, I was driving down when my sister called. And that was incredibly, I mean, that just sort of turned my world upside down when he was killed in that car accident.
00:03:49
Speaker
was with my mom two years later, um, almost to the date, um, when she passed away with my sisters and I were with her in the hospital. Um, and then of course, um, back in January of 2018, uh, when I was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer. And so, um, as you think back over there, just our marriage,
00:04:09
Speaker
We've walked through a lot of different things and experienced different sources of suffering. And yet I can also think about just like how incredible God has been. You were telling that story about how, you know, when I was without a job and we were struggling financially, I remember, I don't know if you remember this story, we were at our house in Sylvania and we were in a small group and we were actually expressing that need to our small group.
00:04:32
Speaker
and asking for people to pray. And we got done praying and somebody basically came up to us right afterwards and said, hey, I want to write a check for you. And it was like a $1,200 check, which when you're newly married and making next to nothing, it was like somebody gave us a million dollars. Yeah, it was amazing. All that to say is we talk about suffering, as we talk about just the different ways, different seasons, storms we find ourselves in.
00:04:56
Speaker
We've also just experienced God's goodness and His grace and experienced His presence in, I think, really profound ways. And so we're just so grateful for what we've walked through and the way God has been present with us in the midst of our suffering.
00:05:10
Speaker
Right. And like Pat mentioned, we all suffer, and we all suffer in different ways. And this is why we feel like this is something that we need to talk about.
Biblical Insights on Suffering
00:05:20
Speaker
Because I think we can either try to run away from our suffering, which all of us have. Sometimes we want to do that. I mean, all the time, don't we, right? But the truth is, how are we going to grow through that suffering? And that's, I feel, why we need to talk about this.
00:05:39
Speaker
and help other people through it. So when we read the Bible, we really see all different types of suffering. So I feel like that would be a really good place to start here. Just talking about all the different ways in the Bible that we see that people suffer and then why it's even important. So I mean, I can think of the first way is just we see just being a Christian how people suffered.
00:06:08
Speaker
2 Timothy 3, 12 says, in fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Matthew 5, 10 through 12 says, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And so some of us don't understand, most of us, I should say, don't fully understand persecution because there are places in this world where people are experiencing that on a far greater level than we are. But I do know,
00:06:37
Speaker
You know, I've heard from people who are maybe it's in the workplace or a family member that is, you know, speaking against them or, you know, ridiculing them for following Christ. So there is suffering that comes just from following Christ and going against the world's standards. Yeah. I mean, I think when you, you know, as we're talking about, you know, suffering is there's so many different layers to suffering. And as you read the scriptures, you realize there's not just
00:07:05
Speaker
one single way that we suffer. And so what you're talking about is one layer of suffering is that we suffer because we have allegiance to King Jesus, that He is our Savior, He's our Lord, that we orient our life around Him, we root our life in Him. And oftentimes our belief in Him and our allegiance to Him will put us at odds with the culture around us. And therefore,
00:07:28
Speaker
create resistance or opposition or persecution. And you know, I'm a nerd, I love to read and I especially love church history. I'm not an expert in church history. He loves big church history books and I'm like, what are you reading? Like huge, thick.
00:07:47
Speaker
Well, it's large print, but I do. And one of the interesting things to me, and I've read multiple books on church history just over the last couple of years. And one of the things that I have noticed is that one of the most common reasons why the early church was persecuted was because of their lifestyle. There was something different about their morality, their ethic, their virtue, who they profess to bow a knee to,
00:08:16
Speaker
or not bow and eat you, and so you're exactly right. Those passages of Scripture are just a couple examples of ways that we suffer.
Exploring Unexplainable Suffering
00:08:23
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Another way I can think of that the Bible talks about is what we'll call mysterious suffering, and I think the classic example of this is the book of Job in the Old Testament, and this story of this man who loves God, and it's a peculiar story, and likely a lot of our listeners have read the book,
00:08:42
Speaker
But I think the point of the book of Job is that Job never really fully gets an understanding or an explanation for his suffering. And I think that's one sort of another layer of suffering that we experience, that there is this mysterious type of suffering that we experience. We don't know why it doesn't make sense. We don't ever get a good answer for it.
00:09:02
Speaker
there doesn't seem to be a point to it. And yet, like Job, we come face to face with God and go, God, you know more, you see more, we surrender to you, like you're God and we're not. And so there's that layer of suffering, mysterious suffering, the kind of suffering you talked about. And then a third type, I would say, which
00:09:25
Speaker
I've experienced this a lot in my life is the consequence of sin. And that's just sort of the suffering we bring upon ourselves. That kind of suffering is sort of self-imposed suffering. And so I think of as a pastor,
00:09:40
Speaker
how many times over the last 20 years we've done counseling and somebody comes and they're going through difficult things. And sometimes those things are outside of their control, but sometimes people come and they're expressing something they're going through. And it's because of lifestyle choices they've made, decisions they've made, and now they're kind of reaping the seeds that they've sown. And I think that in the New Testament, Hebrews 12,
00:10:05
Speaker
is a good example of that, where God disciplines those that He loves, that God actually corrects us, trains us, or disciplines us because of our sin. And that actually, what the writer of Hebrews says, is for our own good, so that we might share in the holiness of God, it might produce in us
00:10:23
Speaker
a harvest of righteousness, Hebrews 12 says. And so some suffering is just because of our own sinfulness, our own sinful desires, the decisions
Suffering, Sin, and Divine Discipline
00:10:33
Speaker
we make. But even in that, God is good. He loves us as a father, trains and disciplines his son or daughter. That's what God does for us. And he wants to root out that sin so that he might give us more and more of his life.
00:10:46
Speaker
Right. And so that's a kind of suffering we don't like to talk about, you know, oftentimes, but that's another layer that the New Testament talks about. Yeah, and I think that's the kind of suffering that we feel like is really hard and frustrating, but then at the same time we're recognizing, okay, you know, it comes to surrender and being humble and
00:11:06
Speaker
fearing God and saying, you're greater than me, Lord. And I brought this upon myself. I surrender. I ask you to forgive me and then note and recognize that God is going to use that in your life. It's hard as you're going through it, but he's going to use that, like you said, to make you better.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, verse 11 in Hebrews 12 says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Right. That's exactly what I was trying to say. And I can think of different things that we've walked through in the past or difficult seasons, whether that was a year or six months, and I can identify that some of those seasons were, I believe, God's correction, God training us, and they were hard, they were difficult, but I go, boy, there's nobody to blame but myself. This is part of God just maturing me, growing me up,
00:11:55
Speaker
And so I love that. Verse 11, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. But then the writer goes on, later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. And I think there's the choice. Just because you go through something difficult, just because God's disciplining you, doesn't mean you're necessarily trained by it. There's a choice in that to cooperate with what God's spirit is doing. And like you said, to surrender, to repent at times.
00:12:22
Speaker
And so as we go through that type of suffering, we need to cooperate with what God is doing so that he might continue to mature us and grow us and again, fill us with more and more of his life.
Fallen World and Universal Suffering
00:12:33
Speaker
Right, yeah, that's so good. And another type of suffering that I can think of is what we've been talking about really since the beginning. And that is just the fact that we will experience sickness, we'll experience pain because we live in a fallen world.
00:12:48
Speaker
And a lot of times those things don't make sense to us. We don't understand why it happened to us. We don't understand, you know, why it happened to that person. But the truth is we live in a fallen world.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that this is very similar to that second layer that we talked about, mysterious suffering. Right. Yeah, that's true. This part of it is just going, oh, I need to remember what the biblical narrative is. And I think that overarching storyline of the Bible, which is creation, fall, redemption, and then restoration or renewal. And so I think
00:13:29
Speaker
Sometimes just having good theology or good understanding of where we're at in God's story is helpful for us enduring and persevering with faith in suffering because
00:13:41
Speaker
We do live in a fallen world, and what we mean by that is that the world is not what it was once created to be. Genesis 1, Genesis 2 is that story of perfect creation. We've talked about that in previous episodes of God creating the world, that it was good, there's this shalom, there's perfect wholeness or harmony between
00:14:00
Speaker
God and his creation between Adam and Eve and between humanity itself and then between humanity and creation. And yet sin disrupts that and disorients that and begins to destroy that. And so we live under really the consequence of that fall. And so everybody
00:14:17
Speaker
the righteous and the unrighteous, those who believe in God and those who don't, we all experience in various degrees that the consequence of being in a broken world, and yet it's in the midst of that broken world that God sends Jesus to come and to save us and to redeem us and to bring us back into a relationship with Him, that that kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim and to demonstrate is a kingdom that is already, it's present, but it's not
00:14:46
Speaker
full yet. And so when he returns again, he's going to renew and restore all things. And so we really live in that in between of what Jesus has done, but also what he's going to do. And so as we suffer, it's so important for us to remember where we're at in God's story, where we're at in that biblical narrative that Jesus has come
00:15:07
Speaker
that sin has been defeated, death has been defeated and yet there is a day that's coming when Jesus is gonna restore and renew all things and he's gonna wipe away every tear and so we look forward to that day with great hope and expectation but we live in a fallen world and so we experience just the consequence of, like you said, of brokenness and sometimes disease and sinful choices by other people
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. And then, you know, part of that, I think, when we think of that spiritually living in a fallen world is that we have an enemy who is real. And I don't think that we can
Spiritual Adversaries in Suffering
00:15:46
Speaker
discount that. I think that's something that we need to pay attention to.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think we've talked about that. I think I can't remember what episode it was, but early on, those three barriers to spiritual growth. And as we've talked about just rooting our lives in Christ and pursuing Him being with Jesus so that we can be like Him, we said that there are these different barriers. There's things that work against us.
00:16:09
Speaker
And one of those is our enemy, the devil, that we have a spiritual adversary who wants to destroy and disrupt the work that God is doing. And so one of the things that the New Testament is very clear about, you know, Ephesians 6 is a great example, is that we have, you know, we encounter spiritual attack and we come up against our enemy who wants to tempt us or divide us or discourage us. And there's all sorts of ways that we can suffer
00:16:38
Speaker
physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually because of our spiritual enemy. Yeah, and I think that, again, like I said, it's real. And I think if we can recognize that and be intentional about praying against spiritual attack, I mean, I don't know about you, but I know spiritually when things feel heavy and thick,
00:17:01
Speaker
is when I am in prayer for God to protect us from the enemy. Because again, it's real, and I think it's the tendency here in our culture, in America, is to, we don't see maybe the enemy as real as he really is. I was just thinking about, you know, back in March when we went to North Carolina for a couple days, and you were meeting with a friend,
00:17:31
Speaker
And of course, we had our oldest daughter, Bella, with us. And so Bella and I went for a walk. We decided we were going to walk to downtown Charlotte. And so while you were finishing up your meeting, we figured we'd take a walk. And it was maybe a couple miles to downtown Charlotte. And so we started walking. And as we began walking, we realized that, I mean, it was late at night. It was probably 9 o'clock. Yes. By the way, I told them they should not just go for a walk, but OK.
00:17:54
Speaker
Anyways. I don't think we've told this story before, but if you've heard this before. No, we haven't. Just smile and nod. But I remember us taking off and as we were walking around the corner, we got a couple blocks in, we just realized that we didn't know where we're at. And we were probably in a neighborhood that we were at greater risk than we thought. And so I just remember the next day as we were having dinner with a friend that lived in that area, when we told her the route that we took, she couldn't believe
00:18:22
Speaker
where we had walked. And so it just reminded me that I think oftentimes what you're saying that oftentimes in the spiritual life, like we don't recognize, we don't fully appreciate the real spiritual danger that we're in. I didn't recognize really what kind of danger we were in. Yeah. They are literally walking through one of the worst areas at nighttime and they had no idea what that danger was all around them.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, and so I think you're so right that when we think about the Christian life, in particular when we think about our spiritual enemy, we just have to be so aware that there really is a spiritual enemy that would love to disrupt and destroy.
00:19:06
Speaker
all that God is doing, all that God wants to do. And so I think it's what Peter talks about in 1 Peter 5, verse 8, where he says, be alert. It's not that we're afraid or fearful, but we ought to be wise and alert to the different ways that the enemy is trying to come against us.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, so we see in the Bible a variety of different ways that we suffer everything from being a Christian to mysterious suffering that there's like no explanation for the consequences of our sin where God is disciplining us for our good and
Sharing Stories and Support
00:19:42
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then
00:19:42
Speaker
living in a fallen world where there will be sickness and pain and having an enemy who is very real. So suffering, it's inevitable. And we will all experience suffering in all different ways throughout our life. And we've shared a bit of our story with you. We'll continue to share more. But also over the next several weeks, we are going to invite some of our friends to share their stories as well as we go deeper into this topic of suffering
00:20:12
Speaker
and what to do when we find ourselves in the middle of the storm. And like we said earlier, we are really, really excited to share with you something that we pray will be a lifeline for you as you navigate the waves in the midst of your pain. So I'm gonna let my husband tell you about that. So honey, will you tell them a little bit about that?
Book Announcement: Personal Journey with Cancer
00:20:34
Speaker
Yes, we have a brand new book coming out on September 8th, 2020 called In a Boat in the Middle of a Lake, trusting the God who meets us in our storm. And in a nutshell, it's really a story about what we walked through over the last couple of years with my cancer diagnosis.
00:20:49
Speaker
full of stories of just the last 20 years of ministry and how God has given us the privilege of walking alongside other people who have suffered. And so it's really just the story of how God chooses to change us and use chaos and not a classroom to transform us.
00:21:06
Speaker
And it's based on Mark chapter four, where Jesus takes his disciples out into the middle of a lake. And of course, that storm swirls around them and they begin to discover who they are, but more importantly, they discover who Jesus is in the midst of their storm.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, and he's teaching them. He begins in Mark four teaching them next to the lake. And then he moves them out into the middle of the lake. And that's what we really love is that picture that there's some things that God can only teach us that he can't teach us next when we're standing on the shore next to the lake. He's got to take us in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the storm to teach us the things that we need to learn. So in a boat in the middle of a lake isn't here until September 8th, but today, today.
00:21:49
Speaker
They open pre-orders open which means if you pre-order the book today, you will get the first three chapters You'll get a scripture memorization guide that we have put together for you and with you in mind and also an exclusive access code to a private Facebook group with Pat and I
00:22:09
Speaker
where we will be giving you a peek into our lives and sharing more resources with you over the next few months. It's a way for us to walk alongside you in whatever suffering that you have experienced. So you can head to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or anywhere books are sold to pre-order your copy and we will be sure to leave the link to the pre-order goodies in the show notes.
00:22:32
Speaker
Well, what a great conversation today to begin our journey walking alongside you in your suffering. And as you know, if you have been joining us every week, each week we walk away with a key
Concluding Thoughts on Suffering
00:22:45
Speaker
idea. It's that main takeaway summing up what we've talked about. So today's key idea is suffering in and of itself doesn't change us. It is who we turn to in the midst of suffering that has the power to change us.
00:23:00
Speaker
We'll also be sure to put that key idea in the show notes as well as anything else we referenced at rootlikefaith.com forward slash podcast. You can also follow us on Instagram at Patrick W. Schwank and at Ruth Schwank or on Facebook. And as if I didn't say it enough already or as if we don't say it all the time, we are thrilled you're joining us and we welcome you into our family here at Root Like Faith.
00:23:23
Speaker
If you enjoyed the show today, would you be so kind to leave us a review or a rating and be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts so you don't miss an episode.