My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Chapter ten
Suffering in God’s Will
Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their lives to the trustworthy Creator. You entrust yourself to him by continuing to do what’s good.
—1 Peter 4:19
This is what God wants: by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish people.
—1 Peter 2:15
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if this is God’s will, than to suffer for doing wrong.
—1 Peter 3:17
Part of the Mission
As Peter learned from following Jesus (see chap. 5), sometimes it can be God’s will that we suffer for a greater purpose. When Peter wrote his letter from Rome, Nero was emperor, and suffering lay on the horizon. Soon Nero would be burning Christians alive to light his imperial gardens at night. Both Peter and Paul would die in Rome—Paul the Roman citizen quickly, by beheading, but Peter slowly, by being crucified upside down. Yet Peter was ready.
In light of this, since Christ suffered in the flesh, get your own hearts ready to suffer! Do so because whoever has suffered in the flesh has given up sin. Thus they no longer live the rest of their lives for human passions; instead, they live it for God’s will. (1 Pet. 4:1–2)
As Peter suggested, those who have already proved their faithfulness through testing have no reason to fear failing further testing of the same kind; they have already counted the cost (Luke 14:28–32) and proved their loyalty. Like Peter and Jesus’s other disciples, Nagmeh Panahi had failed an earlier test of her faith;1 she determined not to let it happen again. Later, persecuted by the Iranian government for her witness, she was often afraid of being detained, raped, and possibly killed. But when faced with a decision the next time, she refused to deny Christ.2 “It was not until I was actually arrested and threatened with rape and death that I knew I could stand firm in my faith, through God’s grace, and proclaim that I was a Christian.”3
How can we prepare for tests harder than what we have already faced? By being faithful in the tests that now come our way, learning to depend on God there. Daniel and his three friends refused to compromise themselves with the king’s food (Dan. 1:8–16); they were thus ready for larger tests that led to a burning fiery furnace (3:8–27) and a lion’s den (6:5–23).
“Abba, Papa!” Jesus cried. “You’re able to do anything! Take away this cup from me! Nevertheless: don’t do what I want, but what you want.” (Mark 14:36)
Sometimes, when God says no to us, it is for our good (e.g., Mark 10:37–38), but sometimes it is for others’ good. Jesus’s Father would grant almost anything his beloved Son Jesus asked him, just as he loves to grant our prayers when our hearts are like Jesus’s heart, when we pray in his name. Not for Jesus’s sake, but for ours, God’s will was for Jesus to go to the cross.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. (Isa. 53:10 niv)
When Jesus sends disciples to share the good news, he comforts them not with the idea that human hostility will vanish, but with the assurance that God will be with them. He urges them not to “be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have nothing further to do to you.” Not a sparrow falls to the ground “without your Father,” but “you are more valuable than many sparrows”; God knows every hair on your head (Matt. 10:28–31; Luke 12:4–7). He sees the whole world but views his children in a special way (Pss. 33:13, 18; 138:6). In an ideal world, sharing Christ with others might not result in suffering, but in a world where many people are hostile to Christ, Christ may send us as lambs among wolves (Matt. 10:16; Luke 10:3).
When we forgive those who hurt us rather than taking vengeance into our own hands or hearts, we express our trust in the God who has our back (see Mark 11:25 with 11:22–24; Matt. 6:12; Luke 11:4). Throughout this book, I have noted many examples of Christians who experienced God’s grace by forgiving.4
God Works Things for Our Good
Scripture often speaks explicitly of suffering according to God’s will, but it also reveals hardship’s (frequent) short-term and (inevitable) long-term rewards.
God Still Has Everything Under Control
People who recognize that the Spirit helps our weakness (Rom. 8:26) can also recognize that God works all things for our good (Rom. 8:28).5 Scripture does not claim that all things feel good, look good, or actually are good in themselves. It does not suggest that everything people do to us they intend for good. But it does suggest that God arranges it all for our good, collectively and often individually, in accordance with his larger good purposes in history. (Even natural evils serve a purpose. For example, earthquakes are a necessary corollary of plate tectonics, which are necessary for advanced life on the earth’s surface.)6
This is not the place to get into a debate about whether God micromanages all events. Certainly I do not believe (and most Christians do not believe) that God directly causes people’s evil choices, including their rejection of him (compare 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9). God does hand them over to blindness that they have (individually or corporately) chosen (Rom. 1:18–28; 2 Thess. 2:10–12).7 But God gives space for humans to act while also watching over his plans for the world and, with the most caring attention, over even the hairs on the heads of his children. As Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate captured and held for six years by rebels, insisted, humans’ wrong choices rather than God’s direct activity causes most suffering.8 Some things make no sense to us as God’s direct action, although we can see God working around them, through them, and in response to them—and quite often in limiting them.
Still, I am confident that when we know as we are known, even these events will make sense within God’s larger plan, where he sovereignly allows some play for evil (rebellion against God) to reveal its horrible character while God nevertheless ultimately and exquisitely fulfills his ultimate purposes in history. That is, we may see them in terms of limited divine permission for free choices of human and extrahuman forces, without God allowing them to prevent his ultimate word from being fulfilled. What Romans 8:28 and other passages do affirm clearly is that God accomplishes his ultimate purposes, and we can entrust ourselves into his caring hands in the meantime no matter what else comes our way.
Robbers spent a night abusing the Beebes, a US Assemblies of God missionary family of four. “Where was God when they hurt us?” the eleven-year-old daughter asked, but then God gave her a vision of Jesus interceding for them, and she understood that Jesus had been with them. God may not give each of us visions to assure us, but he has already provided all of us that assurance in Scripture. Nevertheless, the doctor warned that the injured father, Darrell Beebe, needed brain surgery and that he probably wouldn’t survive. Yet the surgery soon proved unnecessary, and the family was able to continue ministry. Darrell even declared, “If [the robbers] had killed us, what the devil meant as a defeat would have been a victory, because God would have welcomed us into His kingdom. The enemy may win some battles, but he will never win the war.”9
Whether God delivers us in this life or not, we cannot betray our loyalty to our Creator and Savior:
God . . . is able to rescue us, . . . but even if he does not . . . (Dan. 3:17–18)
Compare also Caleb’s humble, qualified confidence:
Perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out just as the Lord has spoken. (Josh. 14:12 nasb)
Human Evil
Just as God does not force humans to accept his gospel, neither does he force them to welcome its agents. If the world hated me, Jesus warned, it will hate you (John 15:18). God will avenge the blood of his servants (Rev. 18:20, 24), but he does not always prevent its shedding. God can be glorified not only by blessing us (Ps. 67:1–2, 6–7) but also by our deaths for him (John 12:23–24; 21:19). Of course, we look to him to keep us and use us as long as there is more for us to do for him (Phil. 1:21–26). And we will not suffer harm without God allowing it (Matt. 10:29–30; Luke 12:6–7).
The nations and their rulers may plot against the Lord, but he laughs at them (Ps. 2:1–4). The earliest church applies this warning especially to rulers gathering against Jesus—thereby fulfilling God’s own plan.
For in this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28 nrsv)
In Exodus, Pharaoh’s abuse of Israelites (Exod. 1:8–22) led to their cries for deliverance (2:23), which God heard (2:24–25; 3:7–9). Yet God had already taken this all into account in his larger plan announced centuries before: God would bring his people back from Egypt with many goods (Gen. 15:13–16). The next Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, sometimes by himself (Exod. 8:15, 32; 9:34) and often (complementarily) explicitly by God (Exod. 4:21; 7:3, 22; 8:19; 9:12, 35; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 13:15; 14:4, 8). Yet God had a purpose in raising up such a hard-hearted Pharaoh:
This is why I raised you up:10 to show my power and to declare my name throughout the world. (Exod. 9:16)
God was acting so that even the Egyptians (and other gentiles) would discover that he was the Lord (Exod. 9:14); the legacy of this event would shape history (compare also 1 Sam. 4:8). (The later initial return from exile in Persia was voluntary and required little force, but it did not require wholesale relocation of the entire people.)
Without entering debates about the origins of particular sufferings, we can affirm that God uses them for our good. When Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, they meant it for evil—but God meant it for good (Gen. 50:20). God used the hardship to train Joseph in administration in Potiphar’s household and to begin learning a new language and culture. God then used the false accusation of Potiphar’s wife to bring him into administration in a prison where he would also meet the contact who would later introduce him to Pharaoh. God used the entire chain of circumstances, in his own time, to ultimately bring good for Joseph, for his brothers, for Egypt, and for an entire region afflicted by famine (Gen. 45:5, 7; 50:20). As he did for Joseph, God can also more than make up to us for our earlier days of affliction (Job 42:10–16; Ps. 90:15; Joel 2:25).
God may intervene for us in ways we initially resent. Lot resisted even some clearly angelic counsel, so that angels finally had to compel him and his family to leave Sodom (Gen. 19:16). Leaving one’s home under duress is unpleasant, but God acted here precisely because he was being “merciful” (niv, nrsv); the Lord’s “compassion” was on him (nasb).
Biblical examples show us that God often vindicates us in our lifetimes, as in the case of Joseph, because we hear the story past Joseph’s abuse to his exaltation. Our perspective shapes where we leave off in telling a story. For example, if we leave off with crowds following Jesus, we might finish with a “happy” ending. If we leave off with the cross, we might finish with a tragic ending. Yet as Christians, we look beyond the cross to Jesus’s resurrection, his present rule, and our future with him, all of which underline God’s gracious plan in the cross. God has told us the future outcome of our story, grounded in Jesus’s story.
As participants in the Dutch resistance against the Nazi occupation during World War II, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were sent to the death camp Ravensbrück for hiding Jewish fugitives. Betsie heard from God that they would be released by the end of the year, and that they could then testify that there was no pit so deep that God was not deeper still. Betsie noted that people would recognize the truth of their testimony because they had been in Ravensbrück. By the end of the year, Betsie was released by death, and Corrie by a clerical error. In the decades that followed, Corrie shared around the world Betsie’s message of hope: God is enough.11
Long-Range Perspective
My wife and I wrote a book together called Impossible Love. If the book had ended at many points in the story (e.g., in the midst of Congo’s civil war), it might have been considered tragic. As it is, we ended on a happy note with our wedding, reserving further items for a brief epilogue. Yet whatever else happens beyond that epilogue, including someday our deaths, we—along with all other followers of Jesus—belong to a larger story. Our ultimate future is happy, with and because of Jesus.
Romans 8 looks beyond even the good that God accomplishes in the stories of our current lifetimes. It declares that God works all things for the good of “those who love him,” who are “called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). The God who knew us before we existed has already planned our future glory with him—“conformed to the image of his Son” (8:29–30). That is what Paul means by the completion of our “adoption” when Jesus returns (8:23): Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, because we will all be fully conformed to his image, fully glorified. Even our bodies will be “conformed” to his glorious body (Phil. 3:21). That is the ultimate good toward which our present sufferings as birth pangs are leading us.
Meanwhile, he is already working in us to conform us to his image. Paul uses a related expression for being “transformed” by our minds being made new (Rom. 12:2).12 This comes partly as we get to know Christ better and better, being “transformed” into his image (2 Cor. 3:18). It also comes by being “conformed” to Christ’s death as we share his sufferings, preparing for our resurrection (Phil. 3:10–11).
If we can trust that God works sufferings for our benefit, we can take greater courage in the midst of them.
Working Matters for Good in This Age
“The blood of martyrs,” declared the North African theologian Tertullian, “is the seed of the church.”13 Nevertheless, in some regions massive persecution decimated the church,14 while God grew the church in other regions of the world. But our sacrifices count in God’s sight, and normally the harvest more than compensates for all the seed sown. Following is a series of vignettes that can illustrate the principle.
Often God works suffering and even martyrdom for good in ways visible to some already in this life. China Inland Mission, committed to principles of indigenous church autonomy and dependence on God, faced repeated challenges. But they also observed that “times of trial, as by a spiritual law, always led on to enlargement and blessing.”15
This process looks different at different times. Once the Soviet Jewish doctor Boris Kornfeld became a believer in Jesus, he refused to help authorities facilitate the deaths of prisoners in the Gulag. Thus he survived only long enough to share Christ with one patient before being killed himself. The impact of this one faithful testimony, however, proved incalculable: The patient, who soon became a Christian, was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.16
Pastor Pavel was planting churches in his central Asian nation, but one day robbers intercepted him to steal his vehicle. “Before you kill me,” Pavel announced, “I have a message from God for you.” He explained how God sent his Son for their salvation, whereupon all but one of the robbers committed their lives to Christ.17
Sometimes God miraculously protected some Palestinian believers from martyrdom; their would-be killers suddenly became distracted or simply left.18 But it does not always work that way. Pauline’s husband, Rami Ayyad, worked for the Palestinian Bible Society in Gaza, and she could not understand his willingness to die for Christ. She was in her second trimester with their third child when he was murdered, and Romans 8:28 made no sense to her. What good could come from his martyrdom? Following the lead of her oldest child, however, she forgave the murderer, and God used her witness to touch many hearts.19
In the 1940s, as bleeding scabs spread through Esther Ahn Kim’s cell, Korean prisoners under foreign occupation turned to the Lord in prayer; not only did the scabs depart, but more of the prisoners grew in reverence for God.20 A prisoner converted through Kim’s ministry became grateful for being a prisoner, because she thereby received the gospel.21 When Kim’s party later fled south during another invasion, a rainstorm drenched and temporarily blinded them; but they soon realized that it had also prevented hostile soldiers from seeing them as they escaped.22
Most of us usually face smaller trials, yet we often can see God’s hand in retrospect, even in delays that frustrate us Westerners. For example, one missionary was detained at the border of Communist Bulgaria, frustrated and concerned about whether he would be able to enter. Eventually the matter was resolved, but it was precisely because of the delay that he was able to share Christ with someone who had been seeking to understand the gospel.23 Similarly, when I was a fairly new Christian attending a summer journalism conference, one fellow Christian student I learned of there was a Lutheran who really wanted to be able to pray in tongues. When we were finally able to catch up, Marilyn had only a few minutes to pray with me for the gift because it was the end of the conference, and her parents were supposed to pick her up at any minute. We ran over by fifteen minutes, but she resolved to stay and pray no matter what happened, and she quickly burst into tongues. She ended up not being late at all; her parents were delayed by road construction, so the timing was perfect.
Some Hardships Have a Good Purpose
God works our hardships for good for the sake of his gospel and, when we cooperate, he often does so also for the sake of our own spiritual maturation, which is of eternal worth. This is not to suggest that we go around looking for trouble—enough comes without us looking for it (Matt. 6:34)! God does not endorse masochism, and he invites us to celebrate the gift of life. When leaders at Iris Ministries, now known as Iris Global, articulated its core values, they worded the fourth one prudently: “Suffer for Him, if necessary.”24
Because God is with the righteous, we need not fear bad news (Ps. 112:7). That might be hard for someone traumatized to grasp. Bad things may happen, but God is with us; although the righteous fall seven times, they will get up again (Prov. 24:16). “Though I walk in the midst of trouble,” the psalmist affirms, “you will make me live” (Ps. 138:7). The righteous have trouble, but in it the Lord is our strength (Pss. 37:39; 91:15). Usually, then, in ordinary circumstances we can expect God to deliver us in our affliction rather than leave us there permanently (Pss. 34:19; 41:1; 91:14–15), and God does hear the prayers of the righteous (Pss. 33:18; 34:15–18; James 5:16).
But trouble does come, and we should embrace it from the right—especially eternal—perspective.
The Gospel May Spread Through Persecution
A Romanian Christian about to be executed for his faith made his last request to his wife: His persecutors did not know what they were doing, so she should share his love and forgiveness for them. Richard Wurmbrand recounts, “These words impressed the officer of the secret police who attended the discussion between the two. He later told me the story in prison where he had been sent for becoming a Christian.”25 Persecuted Christians also won other persecutors to Christ, including Romania’s former prime minister.26
One Indonesian witness during the revival in West Timor reportedly worshiped God as some practitioners of indigenous religion cut off his arms before cutting off his head.27 Mel Tari shared with me that his “blood was not shed in vain”; “today there is a growing and vibrant church in that region.”28
In the book of Acts, God used persecution to spread his church all the more widely:
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. . . . Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. (Acts 8:1, 4 niv)
Luke then zeroes in on Philip as a key example of the point. After Stephen’s death, Philip ministered, ahead of the Jerusalem apostles, in Samaria and to a God-fearing gentile (Acts 8:5–40). The scattering did not stop with Philip’s mission, however; it led to an entire church movement among gentiles.
Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. (Acts 11:19–20 niv)
Paul recognizes this pattern also in his own ministry. In Roman custody, Paul could no longer travel to spread the gospel, but God was using his chains to spread the gospel in another way:
I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the things that have happened to me have brought about a greater advance of the gospel. Because of this, the whole imperial guard and everybody else know that my chains are for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord to speak the message much more boldly, without fear. (Phil. 1:12–14)
This pattern held true also as the Roman Empire martyred many Christians, prompting Tertullian’s earlier mentioned dictum about the martyrs’ potent blood. I don’t fully agree with the idea, often attributed to P. T. Barnum, that all publicity is good publicity; nevertheless, when a minority has little voice in society, bad publicity is sometimes the only way to get any exposure. As Christians suffered publicly for their faith, more people learned about this new faith that inspired readiness to die among its adherents.
At the turn of the twentieth century, word spread in China of the growing Boxer Rebellion. Stationed there, Australian missionary David Barratt appealed for more laborers for the harvest and wrote, “I am like the ox, ready for either the plough or the altar.” His own mission would lead to the altar. In another letter, he declared, “Our blood may be as a true center . . . and God’s kingdom will increase over this land. Extermination is but exaltation. . . . ‘Fear not them which kill’” the body. His martyrdom soon after these letters motivated more laborers as well as a massive turning to Christ where he had ministered.29
Protestants lost many missionaries and their families in the Boxer Rebellion—135 adults and 53 children—and far more local Christians. Yet indigenous Chinese Protestants more than doubled in number over the next six years.30 “Thousands upon thousands came to Christ as a direct result of the slaughter of Christians in 1900.”31 By the time of Communism’s triumph in China, the nation had three million Catholics and a million Protestants.32 Far more effectively than the Boxer Rebellion, Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution brutally suppressed the church,33 but afterward Christians again multiplied, this time into tens of millions. Protestants alone may have multiplied twenty times over.34 A church purified by suffering is always a stronger witness than a shallow church whose values are indistinguishable from those of the surrounding world.
Individual accounts could be multiplied. Pentecostal missionaries Frederick and Lulu Leader moved into a mud house in a largely unevangelized region of Congo in 1922. As local people began to follow Christ, the Leaders helped equip them to reach their own people, turning over most leadership to them directly. In 1930, however, Frederick contracted a fever that eventually exceeded their ability to measure, and despite Lulu’s fervent prayers, he died. Lulu and her three-year-old son Fred returned to the US. Six decades later, Fred began learning more about his father’s ministry and returned to see his father’s gravesite. There local Christians explained to him, “Because your father came, the gospel has spread throughout this entire region.”35
Missionaries Stan Dale and Phil Masters died trying to share Christ with an unreached people group. Within the year their successors baptized thirty-five new Christians there—including many of those who had earlier participated in killing the missionaries.36 More familiar to most is a similar story of transformation among the Waorani people in Ecuador after the killing of the first five missionaries who tried to reach them.37
When Dori saw a couple of kind Christian neighbors lynched naked in Damascus, it began her own journey to Christ, confirmed through many dreams from Jesus.38
God loves irony. A Christian prisoner named Sergei led another prisoner named Viktor to Christ. Years later, after Sergei was free and doing ministry, Muslim assassins killed him in his home. One of the assassins was imprisoned—and Viktor ended up leading him to Christ.39 Other cases of divine irony abound. Putting his arm around an Ethiopian evangelist, another minister, named Haji, explains, “I used to beat him.” Haji used to lead a radical Islamic group attacking Christians, but as this evangelist repaid Haji’s hatred with love, he eventually won over Haji. Now Haji faces persecution himself, but he responds with joyful love.40
Suffering Does Not Stop the Gospel
It is on account of this that I have to put up with suffering, even to being chained like a criminal. But God’s message cannot be chained up. (2 Tim. 2:9 NJB)
The church in Nepal began with twenty-nine baptized Christians in 1959, when the punishment for baptizing someone could include a six-year prison sentence. Despite such penalties (and atrocious prison conditions), by 1985 there were an estimated fifty thousand believers, with an estimated four hundred thousand by 2000.41
After working nine years and gaining just forty-eight converts, SIM missionaries to the Wallamo people in Ethiopia were expelled by new colonial authorities in 1937. Afterward, authorities persecuted the fledgling local church, lashing some members more than a hundred times. When missionaries were finally able to return in 1943, six years later, they discovered that the tiny church they had planted had grown to eighteen thousand in their absence. The indigenous Wallamo church was sending out its own missionaries to evangelize elsewhere.42
Ugandan believers sang to Christ while a young king, influenced by Muslim Arabs hostile to Christianity, was burning the believers alive. At roughly the same time, an approaching Anglican bishop, about to be speared to death, announced, “Tell your king that I have purchased the road to Buganda with my death.”43 The gospel long outlived the oppressive king, and Christianity became the majority religion in Uganda. Later, in 1971, Muslim dictator Idi Amin seized power and soon killed an estimated three hundred thousand people, with Christians among his chief targets. One martyr was Anglican archbishop Janani Luwum, who, summoned before Amin, whispered to Bishop Festo Kivengere, “They are going to kill me. I am not afraid.”44 He was reportedly praying for his captors when he was shot. Bishop Kivengere escaped but later returned to Uganda, preaching Christ’s forgiveness and reconciliation. Today, roughly 84 percent of Uganda professes faith in Christ, a higher proportion than in the US.
Communists came to power in Ethiopia in 1982. They confiscated church buildings and imprisoned many church leaders, forcing many churches underground. During the ensuing ten years of repression, the gospel spread; Mennonites, for example, multiplied tenfold.45 Most of the denominations, including the Lutheran (Mekane Yesus) church, also became effectively charismatic. My dear friends Melesse Woldetsadik and his brother Tadesse, charismatic Lutherans, were among the refugees in Kenyan camps. During that time, they led thousands of people to Christ. (They are so full of the Spirit and so prayerful that when I would reach the threshold of their apartment in North Carolina I would experience an unexpected, special sense of God’s presence.)
“Underground” church is still church. In the New Testament, the church normally met in homes, understanding that God’s church is his people, not a building. I am not opposed to large churches, having served in megachurches as well as in house churches. The one place in the Roman Empire that provided public access for worshiping the one God was the Jerusalem temple, so Jesus’s followers in Jerusalem were able to have megachurch meetings alongside small groups (Acts 2:46). But when persecution or fuel shortages make commuting impractical, the church remains a family. It has to do with relationality far more than venue.
Iran hanged Pastor Soodmand for following Christ. Members of his church, who had not always been cooperative with him before, concluded, “If he died for his faith, we are also ready for martyrdom.” His assistant succeeded him as pastor and was often interrogated. The assistant’s wife provided extra motivation for his perseverance, warning him, “If you ever deny Christ, then you can move out and return to” his parents. They stood firm in their faith.46
After years of Abdi’s witness and service among Somalis, he was gunned down on February 7, 2013. Seven years later, his wife learned that after Abdi’s death his witness had become even more well known among Somalis.47 Boko Haram murdered over fifty of Ishaku’s church members, yet some other Boko Haram members came to Christ, including one who was converted as he heard Christians praying for their persecutors.48
Suffering Can Make Us Better
In terms of God’s ideal for us, sometimes other matters take precedence over healing or other blessings. God can use various sorts of afflictions to draw us closer to him. And who in this life would protest that we are so perfectly close to him that we cannot be drawn closer (1 Cor. 13:10, 12)? Hear the psalmist:
Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I obey your word. . . .
It was good for me to be afflicted
so that I might learn your decrees. . . .
I know, Lord, that your laws are righteous,
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. (Ps. 119:67, 71, 75 NIV)
The psalmist mentions his persecutors and oppressors (e.g., 119:84, 86, 122, 139, 157, 161) but clings to God’s word in hope.
King Hezekiah speaks similarly about his life-threatening illness:
Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction. (Isa. 38:17 niv)
Part of God blessing us is God also allowing some hardships to make us better rather than letting us get spoiled (Heb. 12:4–12).
Maturing Our Character
If we respond rightly, suffering can build our character:
We celebrate in hope of the glory of God.
And not only this, but we also celebrate in our tribulations,
knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope. (Rom. 5:2–4 NASB modified)
Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you experience various kinds of testing. This is because you know that the testing of your trust in God brings about endurance! But let endurance have its ultimate impact, so you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2–4)
I mentioned earlier the fourth among Iris Global’s core values: suffering, when necessary. “We understand the value of suffering in the Christian life. Learning to love requires willingness to suffer for the sake of righteousness. Discipline and testing make saints out of us, and produce in us the holiness without which we will not see His face and share His glory.”49 This affirmation in part evokes Hebrews 12:7, 14 (nasb): “It is for discipline that you endure. . . . Pursue peace with all people, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
Many quote the saying that suffering makes you bitter or it makes you better, depending on how you respond. Helen Keller, who certainly earned the right to speak about hardship, said, “We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.”50 Or as Philip Yancey points out, “the deepest strength only comes through testing.”51
Imprisoned for nine years and often tortured, Iranian pastor Mehdi Dibaj celebrated his opportunity to devote more time to prayer. Sentenced to execution, he announced, “I . . . accept the court verdict with joy and peace.” Assemblies of God superintendent Haik Hovsepian, one of just two pastors in Iran who publicly refused to turn away Muslim converts, defended Dibaj’s cause and welcomed him into his home after his release. Two days later, on January 20, 1994, Hovsepian “disappeared” at the age of forty-nine. Ten days later his body was found near a police station, and authorities demanded an immediate funeral, which of course permitted no time to examine the corpse. On July 5 of the same year, Dibaj also “disappeared.” Hovsepian earlier insisted that the Islamic Revolution in Iran had proved “a great blessing for the church, because we have learned so many lessons that we otherwise wouldn’t have learned.”52 Dibaj had declared, “It is a terrible waste for a Christian to die a natural death.”53
Sometimes people respond to suffering by turning from God, but sometimes suffering turns people to him. When Air Florida Flight 90 slid into the icy Potomac River on January 13, 1982, seventy-four people died, but some survivors turned to God for the first time. One, flight attendant Kelly Duncan, confessed, “It’s the first time I had ever prayed.”54
Raju (a pseudonym), leader of a Hindu extremist group, sent men to dismember and kill a Pentecostal pastor who had ministered in the area for twenty years. But when, soon after the murder, Raju himself was injured and in the hospital, a Christian woman lovingly shared Christ with him. Raju became a Christian but then had to flee for his own life. A pastor took him in, after which Raju planned to return and take the place of the pastor he had killed.55
Egypt also has its share of martyrs.56 But God also has his plans for those who survive. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood ordered Yousef, with a nine-inch knife to his throat, to convert to Islam or die. “I will never bow to anyone other than my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ!” he answered.57 Yousef was ready to meet Jesus, but his antagonist stood frozen for a minute and finally simply walked off. Yousef could only reason that God still had work for him to do.58 An assailant shot Akhom three times in the head and once in the stomach; another assailant slashed his cousin Hassani’s face with a machete. Akhom and his cousin survived, and the attacks drew both closer to God. Jesus suffered, Akhom reasons, so “it is a privilege to us” to follow in his steps.59 Muslims in India detained and interrogated some Christian schoolgirls for six weeks, but the girls’ faith grew all the more because of their experience.60
Comforting Others
The Lord comforts us in our hardships (e.g., Pss. 86:17; 94:19), including as we think about his Word (Ps. 119:50, 52). Part of that comfort is knowing that we are not alone; others have shared such troubles (1 Cor. 10:13; 1 Pet. 5:9). The Lord also may call us to comfort others, as God used Isaiah to comfort Israel with the promise of future restoration (Isa. 40:1).61
Suffering also uniquely equips us with the ability to comfort those who face similar circumstances:
God comforts us in all our hardships so we can in turn comfort others facing hardships, using the same comfort God has given us. . . . If we suffer hardships, it’s for the sake of your comfort and salvation; if we’re comforted, it’s for the sake of your comfort, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer. (2 Cor. 1:4, 6)
Sharing the comfort we have received in our afflictions helps others to bear with the same kinds of afflictions.62 It gives them hope that God does give grace to endure. As just noted, this is true even if the afflictions are like those Paul and his apostolic colleagues suffered.
When Floyd reached back to grab his cowboy hat, the jeep veered toward a ditch. In his panic, he hit the accelerator instead of the brake. As the jeep exploded, Floyd’s friend Kc Kopaska rolled in the grass, trying to extinguish the flames burning his flesh. The emergency room doctor concluded that burns covered 70 to 80 percent of Kc’s body; the prognosis for his survival was grim. Unlike Floyd, however, Kc survived. Kc didn’t understand why, but several years later he met Jesus and began sharing his faith with others. I met Kc when we were in seminary together. Soon after seminary, Kc began ministering among Native Americans, and his scars and experience of suffering bonded him with this people who also had experienced tremendous suffering.63
The experience of abandonment helped me write more compassionately (and passionately) about divorce. Witnessing the hardships of some women friends motivated me to stand for justice for them. Having survived abuse in her first marriage, Médine is able to comfort those who experience such abuse. The pain of our miscarriages helps us minister more compassionately to those who have shared the same experience. We can let suffering harden us, or we can let it break our hearts with compassion for others experiencing brokenness.
Suffering Doesn’t Always Make Short-Term Sense
While we sometimes recognize positive by-products of suffering, we cannot necessarily reason from such by-products back to divine purposes in the suffering. Sometimes even the by-products seem obscure. Thousands were praying for God to heal my friend Nabeel Qureshi, and some ministers particularly well known for healing prayed for him. Even so, he died of cancer. He did leave a testimony: Despite some critics exhorting him to return to his previous religion, he proved the genuineness of his faith, remaining confident in the truth about Jesus to the end. As I have prayed, I have felt that we will someday understand the spiritual dynamics involved in such tragedies (perhaps like the insight readers get into Job’s suffering in Job 1–2—an insight Job himself does not get). But in natural terms, Nabeel’s death was certainly a great disappointment for us. More generally, suffering reveals the fallen world’s true colors; as Philip Yancey says, “The Cross exposed the world for what it is: a breeding ground of violence and injustice.”64
When God announces that he is sending Babylonians to judge Judah, Habakkuk protests. Why would God judge his people by those even more wicked than they are (Hab. 1:12–17)? God responds merely by promising also to judge the Babylonians in the right time (2:8–17). Likewise, when Assyria arrogantly conquered nations, God used them to judge Israel. Assyria did not recognize God’s hand in exalting them, however, and God would ultimately judge Assyria (Isa. 10:5–15).
If the righteous are repaid on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner! (Prov. 11:31 NRSV)
In the same way, God may choose to purify the church by allowing others to repress us, before he judges our oppressors.
But if any of you suffers for being a Christian, don’t be ashamed of that. Instead, give honor to God by this name. Be ready for such hardship, because it’s time for judgment to begin with God’s household. And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who disobey God’s good news? And “If it’s hard for the just to be saved, what can we expect for the irreverent and sinners?” Keeping this pattern in mind, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their lives to the trustworthy Creator. You entrust yourself to him by continuing to do what’s good. (1 Pet. 4:16–19)
My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Rational explanations of suffering (such as the best of all possible worlds) are valuable, but what matters to the broken more when they are hurting is an answer to the cries of their wounded hearts. That Jesus cried, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) shows, as in the psalm he quotes, that we are allowed to ask why. “Our whys,” noted one of my professors, “were answered by Jesus on the cross.”65
Sometimes we charismatics need to be reminded that our feelings do not determine God’s faithfulness. The psalmist, and Jesus who quotes him, felt abandoned by God—in Jesus’s case, even right before he died. Yet Scripture is explicit that Jesus died in the Father’s will (Mark 14:36). And when Jesus died, his Father vindicated him, rending the temple veil (15:38). This discovery encouraged me when I saw it, because sometimes I wondered, “What if I feel forsaken at the point of death?” Feelings are temporary; God’s faithfulness is eternal.
When Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” his cry of anguish reflects not unbelief but faith. Jesus is not denying God; he hails him as “my God”! Moreover, as the biblically literate people who regularly prayed psalms would know, the psalm that starts with, “Why have you forsaken me?” ends with God delivering the psalmist. Jesus already knew that he would rise from the dead (Mark 8:31; 9:9, 31; 10:34). As commentators sometimes point out, we may forgive a dying man for not bothering to recite all thirty-two verses of the psalm, but for Jews who knew Scripture, quoting part of a text could evoke the whole. In fact, it is surely no accident that the crucifixion scene echoes other verses from this same psalm (including Ps. 22:7 in Mark 15:29 and Ps. 22:18 in Mark 15:24)!
Even more obviously, those who recited psalms were familiar with the psalmist’s frequent protests that God had turned away his face and forgotten him (e.g., Pss. 10:1; 44:23–24; 88:13–18; 89:49–51), rejected his people (Pss. 60:1, 10; 108:11), hidden his face (Pss. 13:1; 30:7; 44:24), and the like. Yet nearly all these psalms also included continued prayers for and celebration of deliverance! The reality of a faithful God offers hope even when we feel forsaken.
To feel abandoned and to honestly express that feeling to God is not unbelief. It is trusting God enough to be real with him about what’s in our hearts. In the next chapter, we turn to a different kind of worshipful response that expresses trust in a different way. Psalm 22 begins with an expression of despair, but ultimately it gives way to trust and triumph.
1 Panahi, Didn’t Survive, 67–69.
2 Panahi, Didn’t Survive, 108–10.
3 Panahi, Didn’t Survive, 277.
4 E.g., Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (2023), 45; Ilibagiza, Left to Tell, 91–94, 107; Uwimana, From Red Earth, 123–25, 145, 193–98; Voice of Martyrs, Hearts of Fire 2, 55–56, 85–88, 301–5; Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 47, 220–21, 236–41, 244–45; Nettleton, When Faith Is Forbidden, 112.
5 Some early Greek manuscripts of Rom. 8:28 say simply that “all things work for good,” but even there the assumption is that God causes this, not that it simply happens by accident.
6 Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, cited in D’Souza, “Earthquakes.” Compare also D’Souza, God Forsaken, but with the qualifications in Groothuis, “Necessary Evil.”
7 I address Paul’s argument related to the corruption of human intellect in Keener, Mind, 1–29.
8 Johnston, “Betancourt.”
9 Cagle, “Where Was God?,” 12.
10 With ESV, NIV; also Rom. 9:17 (against the Septuagint); but some understand the phrase as “allowed to remain” (NASB, NRSV; compare Exod. 9:15–16).
11 See ten Boom, Hiding Place.
12 See discussion in Keener, Mind, 143–72.
13 Tertullian, Apology 50.13, in the late second century.
14 See examples in Galli, “Persecution”; Guthrie, “Other Side.”
15 Taylor and Taylor, Secret, 214.
16 Colson, Loving God, 27–34.
17 “The Car or the Cross,” Mountain Movers, March 1996, 14.
18 Doyle, Killing Christians, 192–95.
19 Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 236–41.
20 Kim, If I Perish, 184.
21 Kim, If I Perish, 189.
22 Kim, If I Perish, 271.
23 “Blank Space.”
24 Baker, Keeping the Fire, 83.
25 Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (2023), 45.
26 Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (2023), 73.
27 Tari, Mighty Wind, 164.
28 Mel Tari, personal correspondence, August 1, 2024.
29 Hattaway, China’s Martyrs, 248.
30 Hefley and Hefley, Blood, 43–45. While Catholics lost fewer foreign missionaries, they lost 15 times as many Chinese Christians as did Protestants (36). For far more details, see Hattaway, China’s Martyrs, 111–344.
31 Hefley and Hefley, Blood, 46.
32 Hefley and Hefley, Blood, 76.
33 Others also suffered. Some estimate that in the four years between 1958 and 1962, Mao’s regime cost forty-five million lives (Shortt, Christianophobia, 191).
34 Shaw, Global Awakening, 190.
35 Dalton, “Return.”
36 Richardson, Lords of the Earth, 361.
37 Elliot, Gates of Splendor; Saint, End of the Spear.
38 Doyle, Killing Christians, 53–54, 63, 69–70; compare 67.
39 Voice of Martyrs, Hearts of Fire 2, 197.
40 Nettleton, When Faith Is Forbidden, 24–25.
41 Johnstone and Mandryk, Operation World (2001), 470; Mandryk, Operation World (2010), 619.
42 Hefley and Hefley, Blood, 391–93.
43 Hefley and Hefley, Blood, 462–63.
44 On Luwum, see, e.g., Noll and Nystrom, Witnesses, 111–23, especially 121. For one vignette of suffering under Amin, see Amoafo, Stand Up, 41.
45 Moeller and Hegg, Privilege of Persecution, 58.
46 “Church Triumphant in Iran,” 7. Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 90–92, recounts the experience of Pastor Soodmand’s son Ramtin, who later had to flee Iran. For the story of his daughter, see Voice of Martyrs, Hearts of Fire 2, 169–72.
47 Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 36.
48 Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 136–37.
49 From Iris, “Core Values.”
50 Wholey, Miracle of Change, 158. This is quoted also in “Sun Creates a Desert.”
51 Yancey, “Memories.”
52 Bach, Jesus in Iran, 112. I also draw on other sources (e.g., Shortt, Christianophobia, 49–50). In October 1969, the Hovsepians lost their baby son, and US missionaries Mark and Gladys Bliss their only three children, in a car accident. The anguished but faithful prayer of the Blisses deeply impacted the church: “Lord, we plant three seeds for the sake of the Gospel in Iran” (Voice of Martyrs, “50 Years”). Hovsepian also praised God in the midst of that suffering (for further detail, see Gohr, “Week”; “Three Children”).
53 “Superintendent Martyred.”
54 “Tragedy Turns.”
55 “Overcome Evil.”
56 E.g., Doyle, Killing Christians, 165–66, focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood. See also Tulloch, “Feast,” regarding the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded by Isis in February 2015 (earlier, see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-31481797, from Feb. 15, 2015).
57 Doyle, Killing Christians, 167–69 (quote from 168).
58 Doyle, Killing Christians, 170.
59 Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 140–41.
60 Voice of Martyrs, I Am N, 106.
61 Compare, e.g., God comforting his people in Isa. 49:13; 51:3, 12; 52:9; 66:13; the mission of God’s anointed in Isa. 61:2.
62 Sometimes that comfort is just silent presence with those who are grieving (Smith, “Discerning”); Job’s friends were doing well (Job 2:13) until they opened their mouths (Job 4–25).
63 See more in Kopaska and Liston, Afterburn.
64 Yancey, “Saturday.”
65 Williams, “Not Mine.” Prof. Williams showed particularly great sensitivity and compassion during my crisis of abandonment narrated elsewhere in this book.