Congratulations—You Will Suffer!

Shift Your Focus… Now there’s a great recruitment campaign for Christianity, wouldn’t you say! “Just accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, and after you go through a bunch of trials and tribulations, then you can enter the kingdom of God!”

You sure don’t hear that dose of reality theology preached much these days—unfortunately. Far too often, spiritual leaders feel like they have to sugarcoat the gospel to get people’s buy-in. Converts are led to believe that if they just give their lives to Jesus, he will most certainly make them healthy, wealthy and wise. In modern day Christianity, following Christ is equated with happiness, success and comfort. It is now quite common for America’s most popular pulpiteers to spout a message of easy believism while their high profile churches traffic in what amounts to nothing more than cheap grace.

Make no mistake—nothing is further from the theology of the New Testament. The Gospel makes no such claims to an easy Christianity. In fact, what the Bible does claim is that following Christ will be costly, painful, and difficult. However, it also promises that whatever pain our faith leads us into now will be miniscule by comparison to the deep satisfaction of intimately walking with Jesus, the enduring significance of being used by God, and the incomparable satisfaction of possessing eternal life.

In no way is Paul trying to minimize suffering. He is not saying that pain is no big deal. He is not suggesting that when we go through a trial, we should just buck up and get over it. Paul himself understood like few others the high cost of what it meant to suffer for Christ. Don’t forget that just a few verses prior to this one, we read that Paul was stoned and left for dead for ministering in Christ’s name. He is speaking here with the authority of one who has humbly suffered for Jesus.

What Paul and Barnabas, as well as Peter, John and the other New Testament writers want us to know is that when we accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we become strangers and pilgrims in a world hostile to the kingdom values by which we live. That hostility will at times produce great tribulation for us. But when such tribulation strikes, we must allow it to remind us that a better kingdom awaits. As Paul would later say to the Christians in Corinth,

“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 on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (II Corinthians 4:17-19)

So get ready. Some tribulation is coming—if it hasn’t already. But that tribulation is just a holy reminder that far better things are ahead.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” ~C.S. Lewis

Prayer… Lord, toughen me for the battles I must fight before I enter your eternal kingdom. Let them remind me that I was made for a better world.