Published almost twenty years ago, “Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To” by Anthony DeStefano changed how I pray and how I experience God’s answers to my prayer. I’ll be spending the next few weeks talking about what I got from his book, and how applying the principles in this book to my own life changed me.
Paul, a Man of Suffering
“… we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
- We are afflicted in every way but not crushed,
- perplexed but not driven to despair,
- persecuted but not forsaken,
- struck down but not destroyed,
“always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
2 Corinthians 2:7–10 NRSVUE, modifications added
Paul wrote this letter from a place of great suffering, terrible pressure, unfair criticism, weighed down with discouragement.
Back during Paul’s second missionary journey he brought the gospel to Corinth where he met Prisca and Aquila, and stayed with them for about a year and a half, preaching and teaching. After Paul left for Ephesus, some serious problems arose among the Corinthian churched, so Paul sent Timothy back to Corinth to deal with those issues.
Timothy must have brought a letter from Paul with him, because when Timothy returned to Ephesus with his report, Paul sent them another letter, the one we call 1st Corinthians, referring to his earlier letter, answering their new questions, and taking care of other continuing problems in the church.
Unfortunately, matters grew worse, so Paul had to make a painful visit to Corinth himself, during his third missionary journey, which he mentions in 2nd Corinthians, to confront the troublemakers. After he left, matters continued to deteriorate, so Paul wrote what he referred to as a “severe letter” and sent it back with Titus.
After much longer than Paul anticipated, Titus finally returned to Macedonia where Paul was staying, with a good report from Corinth. The problems had been solved. It was then that Paul wrote the letter containing the excerpt above.
“God, Please Get Me Through This Suffering.”
Unfortunately, there is no short and tidy answer for why you and I are suffering. There is also no formula for feeling better. Sometimes the ready-made phrases we say to each other, when we mean well, actually make things seem worse.
“I know just what you’re going through.” Every person’s experience is unique, and though I may think my own life circumstances make me able to know what you are going through, this phrase can sound pretty empty sometimes, when what you are going through is devastating.
“Don’t worry, it’s all for the best.” When it is the worst thing that has ever happened to you, this phrase simply does not help.
“It’s God’s will” makes you and me want to feel angry and bitter towards God. Really? It is God’s will to hurt and harm me? What kind of theology is that?
“You’ve got to stop crying and start living again” does not sound encouraging, it sounds kind of heartless, like there is a statute of limitations on hurting.
So often, people bring out these stock phrases not so much because they think it will bring comfort, but because our suffering makes them feel unhappy and anxious.
God Understands
Whether or not any of the phrases above may be true, they do not help when you and I are experiencing emotional agony. As DesStefano points out, when someone has been in a car accident, they do not need the doctor to explain to them why they are bleeding everywhere, or to assure them that they will not miss that arm, or leg, after a while. What someone in a car crash needs is for the doctor to stop the bleeding, sew them up and help them heal.
God understands. Very often the last thing God will do when you and I are suffering is to explain the reasons why we are suffering. That is something the Lord saves for later, sometimes much later. What God will always do, however, is help you and me endure the terrible pain, and make it through in one piece.
Suffering that reveals Christ ministers to the hearts and lives of those around us
The author leans into a crucial truth about God’s ways. The Lord says yes to all who come to God for help and comfort, when they are in the middle of something hard. Jesus may not stop the suffering, or prevent it from happening in the first place, or alleviate the situation in any way. This maybe is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to faith there is, but you and I need to face it head on. God allows a lot of terrible things to happen.
Sometimes Suffering is Unavoidable
It is here DeSefano brings out the most beautiful and terrible truth of the whole Bible. Jesus knew very well the pain He was about to suffer, and prayed with tears and loud cries, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken away from Me.” At the eleventh hour, the Son pleaded with the Father. But He also added “Yet not as I will, but as You will.”
No matter what kind of suffering you and I have to endure, God will give us a way through it. Not a way out of suffering itself, but out of the hopelessness that suffering often leads us to.
The apostle Paul said God will not let you or me be tested beyond our strength. With our trial, God will also provide us with a means of escape, so that we will be able to endure it.
The Father sent the Son an angel to help Jesus. God will also help you and me, and provide for us, to console us, help us, and fortify us through whatever we are going through right now.
As the author explains, death and suffering are not a normal part of life. They may be facts of life, but they are not “good” or “normal” in any way. Life was never meant to be this way, but because something went terribly wrong at the beginning of human history.
God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, suffered, too. He knows, intimately, what it is like to experience what you and I are experiencing, and because of the cross, He can make His power available to you, and to me. When we say “God, please get me through this suffering” Jesus will actually walk with us through the pain and get us to the other side.
The Eternal Weight of Glory
Paul had more to say about the great suffering he had endured with God’s help. He wrote,
“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16–17 NRSVUE boldface added
If anyone deserved to have abandonment issues it was Paul. But he never felt abandoned, because God was always there with him, through thick and thin. So often things happened, and it made no sense to Paul, he was perplexed about what God was doing. But he never despaired because he always saw the transcendent story in what was going on in his life.
Paul was confident that God would always come through. If the Lord Jesus has conquered death itself, then why be afraid of anything else?
Paul was certain that God would be glorified. He felt that whatever happened would be to a believer’s benefit
“Indeed, everything is for your sake, so that grace, when it has extended to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”
2 Corinthians 4:15 NRSVUE
Good Can Come From It
God is not the one authoring the harm. That is on the broken world, all the broken people (including you and me) in the world with our sharp edges, and the powers of evil that hate God and all that is good and lovely. But God does not leave it there. God insists on finding a way to turn even these horrible things into good.
Later, Paul would say it another way, in his letter to the Romans,
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. … We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
Romans 8:18, 28–30 NRSVUE
Paul was convinced that his trials, as terrible as they were, as painful as they were, even to the point of death so many times, were working for him, not against him. God can, and does, turn suffering into glory.
It is not the suffering that does the transforming work. You and I know people who have suffered much and all it has done is wreck their lives, turning them into bitter, angry people, or terribly depressed and miserable people, or empty, listless people. It is only as you and I yield to the Lord, turn to God’s word, trust the Lord to work into us God’s comfort, and then faithfully apply God’s word to our lives that this transforming work is accomplished.
Paul always kept in the front of his mind that God was at work in the circumstances, with a cosmic purpose that elevated Paul’s destiny to the level of eternity. The same is true for you and me. Every single person who has the Spirit of Christ is involved in something huge the Lord is doing.
“God, please get me through this suffering”
[Cover image: Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash]
