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What Does The Bible Say About Suffering?
These questions don’t seem to be as regular in church goers conversations as they used to be even ten years ago. At least this seems to be our experience. And I have been attending some form of church service since I was five or six years old. The West seems to be dominated by a culture of comfort. Not that comfort is wrong. I could tell you hundreds of people that I would love to see experience more comfort in life; mainly my entire village!
The point of this post being to share our own family challenges with comfort while following Jesus and hopefully encourage you to ask God about yours. And I do believe that comfort I mentioned at the start of the post has hindered or diluted at best the desire for believers, especially Western ones, to courageously, and obediently follow Christ anywhere! Even if that is just to the random stranger at the local grocery store.
When our family and team decided that it was God’s plan for us to expand from the Central part of Mozambique to the North, it was not an easy transition at all. This is important for me to emphasize here. Our lives had become settled for nearly two years, and we were beginning to see fruit and growing ministry where we were.
Our boys had entered into the community, culture, and Portuguese language. They had made friends even living as aliens from a foreign land. Over 80% of the kids around us had never seen anyone with our color skin and yet they accepted our sons.
To move from the comforts of America to Africa was difficult enough for us all. However, moving within our African countries can be just as difficult sometimes because of the great variety of languages and cultures that exist within different communities. Now we were aware of what the cost would be in taking the Gospel to a different part of the country. We would need to learn a new language, find other network supports, and a whole different pattern for practical things would have to be established, such as sourcing food and drinking water.
Just exploring the new land and moving our things across the country would include two trips with my oldest son through hours of military convoys.
There had been a lot of continued political unrest between both parties from war torn years before our arrival. He was twelve years old at the time. During the first two years, we were surrounded by a team helping us every step of the way from learning a new language and the culture to being guided where we would find our provisions. We had a team that taught us every detail we needed to know.
We even had help completing and handing in the foreign immigration documents. When we went North, we only had one family that would help us with the basics, the rest of the details we had to figure out on our own.
The road to the immigration office was a five-hour one-way nightmare, full of potholes the size of cars. The month-by-month needed food and resources were in our neighboring country over three hours away.
We would make that trip over the border every four to six weeks for a little over two years until the road to the Northern city was rebuilt. That meant vehicle fees, stamping the passport in and out for a fee, and hours of waiting for it to be done. Our first two years in the new land were extremely difficult and challenging.
It was literally as if we were starting over in the starting over! I don’t know how we survived it in those two years.
In the first 60 days in the North, there was a shift in our mission organization at that time. This forced us to make a decision that would possibly affect whether we would stay in the country or not.
It caused immense grief and feelings of being abandoned.
I was reminded that one of the key things Jesus said to His disciples at the end of the book of Matthew when he commissions them is,
“…And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age.”–MATTHEW 28:20
This was crucial for our family to remember because God was discipling us through our own call to make disciples. We held on to this promise that He would never leave us or forsake us, especially because He was the one who sent us. At one point, we realized that we might only have 30 days left before we had to leave. In this decision-making process, we continued to disciple our own children first.
We sat them down in our house that had no furniture in a strange village that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere and explained that we needed to look to the Father for direction and clarity about our call in the country.
Our family was suffering and it was time to enter into the suffering of Jesus together. They knew they had permission to listen for the Father’s will with us. We had taught them and depended on them getting to know His voice throughout their young lives already. With tears in their eyes, they listened with us.
We presented what we felt the opportunities were in front of us and confessed our grief and confusion to a caring Father. After a few moments of silence our second son, Jaidan, stopped us and said, “Dad, I heard the word YWAM loud and clear from God!” Carla and I paused and asked the other two brothers if they had peace with the word Jaidan received? They confirmed that they agreed. We gave thanks in prayer and waited.
Just twelve hours later, the leadership team from the YWAM base over 100 miles North of us called and said they really believe they are to adopt our family and make sure we stay in the country to keep up the Lord’s work that He has called us to do. They believed in what we were doing! Our son was nine-years-old when he heard that word in his spirit! We are still with YWAM today, and so grateful for the body of Christ and their ability to hear the Father’s will.
I wasn’t surprised that God’s greater plan was to connect us with YWAM because their mission across the world is about ‘Knowing God and Making Him Known.’ They are very focused on making disciples that make disciples. Another point I want to highlight here is that when I was only a little older than Jaidan, living in Alaska, I began to hear God’s voice more and more as I sought after Him.
During that time, I was drawn to a YWAM missionary couple who explained their vision, and although I always felt a deep pull toward that organization, I never really pursued or prayed through it. I believe God was preparing my heart way back then for this transition.
However, to reach that point I needed to learn to say yes to His voice and courageously obey Him along the way. As we learned in an earlier post, one of the essentials to disciple-making is trusting others to hear and obey God daily.
Related: https://whenlovecompels.com/how-to-lead-true-disciples-of-jesus-they-must-hear-god/
There were multiple times our family wanted to give up. The resistance felt too great to overcome. Father God reminded us of the promise Jesus made to His disciples. This brings us to a possible discussion question.
Could it be that comfort is often what keeps the body of Christ from fulfilling the discipleship process that Jesus commanded? In the book of Acts, shortly after Jesus’ commission, the disciples were making other disciples and sharing the gospel.
However, they were not going out very far right away. It took some time before they expanded and most of that was due to persecution! Persecution and discomfort are the main reasons the disciples continued the discipleship process.
An important key that is often not talked about across the greater church, and one I discovered in years of seeking the Lord, is understanding discomfort and suffering. I believe it is necessary and biblical to explain discomfort, persecution, and suffering to new believers desiring to truly follow Christ.
When a new disciple in our community is ready to be baptized, we take them into the water and share a few things. We ask them if they know how Jesus learned obedience? The Bible says it was through the things He suffered. “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence.
Although He was a son, he learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” Hebrews 5:7-9
We explain to the disciple that when they come out of the water all things are new. They will be given a new heart and will receive the Holy Spirit as we pray for them. It is made clear to them there will not be a change in their bank accounts.
The clouds are not going to open and rain down money and jewels on them. The hard things in the world around them will continue, and persecution from family and suffering might surely come for a season.
But they will not be alone! They will now be the light in those dark places. They will carry the One who brings redemption to those things. All of these things are explained and understood during their process of following Jesus.
He was the light of the world, so we could now be the lights of the world. It is important that they understand there is a cost! However, that cost comes with a promise: behold, the I Am will be with you!
I want to stop the post here and give you a chance to listen to Father God for yourself. Maybe, while reading this, you might have had a deep stirring in your spirit, like my wife and I did years ago.
(We actually listened to this song over and over at night in tears longing to go where God wanted us to go; Listen HERE)
You know in your heart that multiplication in the Kingdom of God is possible. There is a desire in you to see the discipleship process come to fruition in your communities. You have a fire in you burning and you want to shout, “I’ll go Father, but where do I go? Where do I start?”
Those are good questions! The right questions! This will take courage! Why? There might be a cost to consider. He might ask you to leave a comfort behind. The Holy Spirit is your comforter. Ask the Holy Spirit for courage now.
Let’s start here:
Pause for a few moments, find a quiet place, and with a grateful heart ask the Father these questions:
1. What areas of my life are causing fear or too much comfort to really hear You, Father?
2. Is there a cost You are asking me to pay that I have not heard or been unwilling to trust You with?
3. What do You want me to know about my comfort and the cost?
As always, if we can help encourage you in anyway please reach out or comment below.
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