Prayer for the afflicted continued

Other than a few weird and annoying side effects I am feeling pretty good right now.  I've been able to work today without interruption for which I am grateful.  Last time this was when I began feeling bad and tomorrow would be the day I was really sick.  I am so grateful for all who have communicated with me that they are praying for me and my family.  I am hopeful that the Lord will be pleased to restrain the most difficult side effects.  But again, his will, not mine be done.

After my post yesterday I have been thinking about a number of other passages in which God shares his purposes for our suffering and his will for us in it and through it.  As I said yesterday, one of the chief things that all Christians desire and pray for earnestly is "May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  Thus, whenever we find a clear statement of God's will in the Bible then we can safely and confidently ask God to enable us to do that which he wants.

2 Corinthians 1:3-11 describes several purposes God has in our afflictions.  First, Paul, after praising God for being the Father of mercies and God of all comfort says this about God: "who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we can comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."  So you can pray for me and for my family and for every other believer that you know who is in the midst of any affliction that God would enable us to not only know his comfort but comfort those around us who are also suffering.  I have seen God do this through us during the past 10 years we have lived with our brain injured son.  I can also see ways he can do this through us now as we are coming in contact with many people who are suffering the ravages of cancer and cancer treatment.

Later in this same passage Paul writes of his current afflictions: "For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.  Indeed we felt we had received the sentence of death.  But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."  So here is God's will for all his suffering children, the reason he sends to us: "that we will not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."  So here is something you can ask our heavenly with confidence to do for every suffering Christian: God would enable us to stop relying our ourselves but that we would rely upon him alone because he alone is the one who raises the dead.  It is God's will that we look beyond the suffering to that resurrection which is guaranteed to all who trust in Christ.  Whether or not he delivers us from our present distress we live in hope and joy because we know that he is going to raise us one day beyond the power of death and sin and sickness and accidents and broken relationships and the attacks of wicked people.

In 1 Peter 1:6-7 Peter writes, "in this (coming salvation) you rejoice though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief of various kinds.  These have come so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, may be proved genuine and may result in praise and glory and honor on the day Christ Jesus is revealed."  So it is God's purpose, his will that through the various trials which he sends to us that our faith is proved genuine.  He uses the metaphor of refining gold.  The heat is applied to the gold and all the impurities rise to the surface and are burned off by the heat so that you only have pure gold left.  So we can ask God for every suffering Christian that he would perform that purifying work through the "heat" of the suffering so that our faith would be pure.  What does that mean?  We would be trusting that our many sins are surely forgiven because of Christ and that Christ and his salvation is infinitely superior to a trouble free life.  Our trust would not rest upon ourselves or our bank accounts or our health or our families or our success in this world but upon Christ alone.  He alone will be our treasure.  This is something you can pray with confidence for all Christian who suffer.

Finally, in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Paul writes, "Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though our outer man is wasting away, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."  So we should ask God to renew each day the inner man of all those whose outer man is wasting away.  It is what God wants to do for all of his sick and suffering people.  You can pray that all who are afflicted recognize all this trouble as light and momentary in comparison to the eternal glory that will one day be ours.  You can pray that God would enable us to fix our eyes not on this temporary trouble but on the unseen, eternal reality which awaits us.