What is the purpose of pain and suffering? Why is that throughout history God's primary means of sanctification is causing his church to go through various trials and tribulations and even crazier commanding those who follow him to rejoice that they are going through them (James 1:2; 1 Pet 1:6-7)? Quite simply there is nothing like trials and tribulations to loosen our grip on this world and cause us to desire Christ more than life itself. It is easy, especially in America, to say that we love Christ and depend on Him for everything and yet at the same time of an insatiable love for the world. This form of "Christianity" is found nowhere in scripture or history. God in his mercy and love allows us to suffer in this world so that we do not cling tightly to it. For there is nothing in this world that can satisfy that longing in our souls for peace than Jesus Christ.
We all know it. Every man and woman born on this earth knows deep down there is something broken. We turn on the news and see it. We see the headlines of war, rape, and exploitation and our soul cries out there is something wrong and we long for peace in our hearts. Yet most men don't think they are part of the problem. The problem lies outside of themselves. So men turn to things outside of themselves to try to remedy the problem, and the world is ready and waiting with a whole host of things to try to fill the longing for peace with. Money, sex, power, humanitarian assistance, philanthropy, you name it, men spend their lives seeking peace for their souls, never stopping to think that the reason they don't have peace is because they are at war with a holy, perfect God. And yet God, in his infinite mercy and grace, reaches into creation and saves men. He gives them new hearts, changing their desires from the things of this world to Himself. Giving them hearts that long for him above everything else. And then he makes their lives hard and often times down right miserable so that they will never again long for the things of this earth and rather yearn for the day when sin will be no more and they look on the face of Jesus Christ forever more. And through the trials and pain, there is an unmistakeable, and unexplainable, joy. Rooted deep in the nature and character of God. And through this process they are changed more and more into the likeness of Christ. It is not to say they never sin again, but the temptations of this earth, the desires of the flesh (materialism, sex, power, you name it) hold less and less appeal to them as they see the manifold beauty and perfection of Jesus Christ.
Is your heart's cry to see Jesus Christ because of who he is? Does our heart cry out with our Christian brothers and sisters throughout history in a love for God for who he is in himself and not for what he does for us? Do we rejoice in hardship because it loosens our grip on this world and fixes our eyes on Christ?
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