Articles

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was no stranger to suffering. Known in his day as the “Prince of Preachers,” Spurgeon faced trials of various kinds throughout his life, some physical, some circumstantial, some internal and personal. Such a man—one so saturated with Scripture and seasoned through suffering—has much wisdom to offer us. This is wisdom for everyone, because the question of suffering is not a question of if we will face it, but when. Suffering is one of life’s certainties, as is the good which God produces through it. We would therefore do well to listen to the Spurgeon as he offers counsel to prepare us for the suffering we will face.

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Acts 2:41 “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

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Along life’s journey, it’s not uncommon to experience seasons during which everything seems to be winter in one’s soul—seasons defined by feelings of loneliness and desperation. Although life goes on, a deadening sense grips us. We often can’t explain it. The sun may be shining, the sky blue, and there may be nothing to worry us—but nonetheless, all seems bleak, and we are deeply unsettled and spiritually weighed down.

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In the book of Revelation, we find John, its author, banished to the small island of Patmos because of his faithfulness to the Gospel. As he addresses his readers in the book’s opening verses, he refers to himself as “your brother and partner in the tribulation” (1:9)—an acknowledgment that the people he was writing to were believers who, much like him, were trying to make sense of their troubled lives.

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Jesus often spoke about the kingdom of God, preaching and demonstrating that it had broken into the world in His coming. In His preaching He taught His disciples how to enter the kingdom and the kind of lifestyle to which this would lead, and through His miracles He gave visual, physical demonstrations of the kingdom’s restoring and transforming power.

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Matthew 6:34“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

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One of life’s toughest lessons is that hardship, trouble, and pain often only make sense in the rearview mirror, when they are behind us—and admittedly not always even then. Such seeming futility may cause us to end up uttering the same words as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2).

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Of the titles given to Jesus, “Priest” is the only one that has virtually an entire book of the New Testament devoted to explaining it—the letter to the Hebrews. The author of Hebrews is anonymous, but his message is clear: in the face of life’s difficulties, he encourages his readers, including us, to “consider Jesus” (3:1), to be “looking to Jesus” (12:2), and especially to see Him as our Great High Priest.

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The second half of the prophecy of Isaiah is set against the dark backcloth of God’s judgment on His people and their exile in Babylon. Slowly, out of the shadow lands, a figure appears. He is described by God as “my servant,” and his presence dominates a series of poetic passages known collectively as the “Servant Songs.”

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When we look at the life of Jesus, we may wonder at the great variety of ways in which He interacted with others. He conversed with them. He broke bread with them. He confronted them. He healed them. He even attended parties with them. In fact, it is a testament to Jesus’ very humanity that His comings and goings among everyday people seem, in both their breadth and their depth, to so closely resemble our own.

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