Triumph Through Tears

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again radio friends, how in the world are you? Yes, it’s your friend, Dr. Cook, and I’m so glad to be back with you once again and looking together now at Colossians the First Chapter. He said, “Christ died to reconcile you and to present you holy, unblameable and unreprovable in his sight, if you continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which you have heard.” The point I made yesterday was that the phrase, “If you continue,” relates back to Verse 21, “you were enemies, now you reconciled and you rejoice in the fact that Christ is presenting you holy, unblameable, unreprovable in his sight.” But that rejoicing and being reconciled is dependent upon the awareness of your reconciliation, in other words, is dependent upon your steadfastness in the Gospel. Not moved away from the hope of the Gospel.

Your dependence always must be on the Lord Jesus Christ and His work for you on Calvary’s cross. He’s faithful that promised, He’s not gonna drop you, He didn’t bring you this far to dump you now, I often say. But your awareness of Him and fellowship with Him depends on walking in the light and depending on what Paul here calls the hope of the Gospel. Christ died for me, He rose again for me, He represents me this minute before a holy God, and I need not fear. Amen.

Now, Paul says, “I made a minister and I now rejoice.” This is Colossians 1:24. “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is left behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body’s sake, which is the church where have I made a minister.” Now that is some passage. It is similar to Philippians 1:29, where we read this, “for unto you it is given…” Let me find it, I have to turn the pages here. “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”

You have the privilege of suffering for His sake. And Paul says, I fill up the leftovers, so to speak, of the afflictions of Christ in my own flesh, because, for the sake of the church. Now let’s see what the Lord will say to us about all of this. Number one, Paul said, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you.” What kind of double talk is this? How can you rejoice in sufferings? Huh? This was written now in prison, there wasn’t any air conditioning or inner spring mattresses in the place where he was imprisoned. And he was under indictment for treason. It was treasonous to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, because in those days Caesar was the supreme object of worship in the Roman Empire. And to proclaim that Jesus is Lord of all was treasonous, and that was the indictment under which he was then laboring. So that he had the old hurts of beatings and lacerations, and bruises and contusions and all the rest that he had had before, plus the discomfort of being shackled to a Roman guard day and night. No comfort no privacy, and no liberty, no nothing, there he was.

Now he said, “I rejoice in my sufferings for you.” Well, the simple fact is that anything we bear by a way of discomfort, suffering, inconvenience or pain has to relate to the cause for which it’s being done. Isn’t that true? Here’s a young boy, he’s just gotten his driver’s license and he’s wild, and he takes his father’s car out for a spin and goes too fast, loses the car and the curve, runs into a tree and they pick up his body with multiple compound fractures of bones here and there sticking out through the flesh, a pitiful object, a ruined body, and he is in great pain. There’s great doubt as to whether he’s gonna live. And you look at him and you say, “Oh, it’s so needless. So needless. Why did it have to be? He didn’t have to do that.” On the other hand, you look at a missionary who has gone out into some portion of the world where Christians are in great danger and he is arrested, he is imprisoned, he is beaten, he is tortured and comes home bearing the scars of all of that experience, but triumphant in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you say to him, “Well, was it worth it? Would you ever want to go through that again?” He said, “Well, I wouldn’t wanna go through it again, but thank God it was worth at all, because this one and that one and the other one found Christ because of what I went through.” So will I say, the inconvenience, the suffering, the pain, the agony, all that you go through in life has to be related to the reason for its being. And if in the process of winning somebody to Christ you are inconvenienced or hurt, or it costs you deeply in some way, or as Paul in Paul’s case, he was even imprisoned and under the sentence of death. If it costs you suffering and pain, inconvenience, heartache, heartbreak, tears, whatever it may be, you have to relate it to the reason for its being, were you being true to the Lord Jesus? Were you presenting the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? Did anybody find Christ through all of that? That is the thing that counts. A dear missionary lady came to visit Coreen and me a good many years ago now, while we were still on the campus of the college in a house the college provided for us.

And because we had an extra bedroom or two, she came and stayed with us. She came ostensibly to have some work done on her teeth, but during routine physical examinations it was discovered that she had cancer, and there was a preliminary series of treatments, and then she went back to the field, the foreign field for a while and then came back again. This time to undergo surgery, and then, ultimately to pass on into the presence of the Savior. There were 21 days that she spent in Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital there at 68th and York in New York City, 21 days of suffering, and each day growing a little weaker and finally slipping away into the presence of her Lord. And I must say it disturbed me, because here was a young woman adored by her family and her husband, greatly needed in the work, highly gifted, beautiful voice, beautiful personality, all of that, and now she’s so ill and now she’s going to die and did die.

And I wondered about it, and I didn’t feel good about it, you know? Well, it was some time later that I found out something that put the whole experience under a different light. Paul says, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you.” Do you know what happened during those 21 days, every day, every one of those 21 days, at least one person was led to Christ by this beautiful Christian lying there between those hospital sheets. Every one of those 21 days, at least one person, and sometimes more than one were led to know the Lord Jesus Christ through the ministry of this dear saint, so soon to slip into the presence of her Lord.

Sufferings, some of you are going through such terrible sufferings. Your body is wracked with pain, you’re anchored to a wheelchair because of arthritis or you were subjected to the awful spectre of a terminal disease of some sort, whether it be cancer or whatever, and you don’t really have too much to look forward to, except getting worse, and finally going on home to the Lord.

Suffering and pain and in some cases, the agony of heartbreak because of what has happened in your life, either because of your Christian faith or whatever it may be. I’m talking to folk who are hurting today. And I want you to realize, beloved, that when we are hurt and when our hearts are broken, and when the burden seems so heavy it’s gonna kill us, these are the times when we need to look up and say God help me minister to somebody so that I can rejoice over suffering, because it paid out for eternity.

A minister friend of mine went to see a lady who was very, very ill. She was in great pain, very ill, there was a good deal of doubt as to whether she would recover. And so, after his pastor visit was about to be concluded, he said, “Well now, I’m going to pray for you.” And she interrupted him and she said, “What are you going to pray?” Oh, he said I’m gonna ask the Lord to bless you and if it pleases Him to heal you and all of that. He hesitated a moment, she said, “No that isn’t what I want you to pray.” She said, “Pray that I won’t waste all this suffering.” Now that’s a different point of view, isn’t it? But it’s perfectly biblical.

He said, “I rejoice in my sufferings for you.” There is somebody beloved, listen my wheelchair friend, listen, my friend lying there in the hospital. Listen to my friends who carry such a heavy burden of heart break. There is somebody today whom you can bless and lead into the very presence of Jesus, not in spite of your hurts, but because of them. God is going to use you today to be a blessing to somebody. Believe Him for it, and expect Him to do it. Will you do that? God is going to use you today my suffering friend, my heart broken friend. God is going to use you today to bless somebody and encourage somebody and lead somebody to Jesus, perhaps, because of the very suffering through which you’re going. God makes your tears pay out.

He said, “I rejoice in my sufferings for you.” It’s not how much, but for whom. Go back to the story of Mary and the ointment of spikenard, very precious. She took that alabaster container, and broke it and poured the ointment upon our Lord Jesus Christ. Just lavishing a whole year’s wages on a person whom she now knew as her Lord and Savior. There was grumbling among the disciples, they said, “Why wasn’t this ointment sold and given to the poor?” A whole year’s wages. Jesus said, “Let her alone, she hath wrought a good work on me.” It’s not how much, it’s for whom. And so today, as you evaluate your own situation, remember that the Lord Jesus Christ wants to use you for the sake of a ministry to others who otherwise would not be reached. That’s good stuff, isn’t it? Apply it to your own heart. God can turn your tears into triumph. Yes he can.

Dear Father today, give us a ministry to people even through our hurts, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!