217 Sermon Illustrations on Suffering

How does Job’s story in the Bible help in answering the universal “Why?” What does his story have to say to those who suffer?

1. That God is not our enemy and that Satan is not our friend.

2. That God does at times permit us to suffer – whether as a result of Satan’s direct attacks, our own sinful choices, or simply because we live in a sin-filled world.

3. That we may not always know or understand the “Why?” does not give us an excuse to blame God for our troubles.

4. That when we know God well enough, we will have found Him to be so consistently wise and full of love in all His dealings with us, that our faith in that love and wisdom cannot be shaken, no matter what He permits to come into our lives. We will be utterly sure that – even if we don’t fully know the answer to our “Why?” – God has good reasons for permitting our trouble. And we will be unswerving in our belief that God’s reasons are the wisest and most loving reasons possible. We will be convinced that if we could know what He knows and love as He loves, we too would permit what He has permitted.

[This article is a larger version of illustration #12760]

An acquaintance had recently returned from a business trip through some Central American republics. As we met for dinner, I asked him, “What impressed you the most?”

He arched a smile, pursed his lips in thought, and answered, “Well, I can tell you in just two words: “cheap crosses.”

I stared in surprise. “Cheap crosses! What do you mean?” Then he related this incident.

“I had reached this place where they were having one of their important religious festivals,” he said. “Everywhere I turned, everywhere I looked, I saw crosses — crosses of all kinds, of all sizes, all the way from the very expensive down to the crudest of homemade affairs. Later I learned it was required of the people either to carry or display a cross on that special day.

“Well, I shall never forget turning onto a side street and coming upon that small cart with its drowsy donkey and its equally drowsy peddler. He had only one kind of product for sale, and the cart was loaded with them. They were crosses, made of wood, poorly put together.

“What struck me was the sign atop that pile. It read, ‘CHEAP CROSSES.’ Obviously here was a religion of convenience, and he was doing his bit in meeting it… “

“Cheap crosses.” I think that can be written over a good deal of what passes for religious observance in this day! Many people desire a belief which does not bind them to high cost or press too sharply where the pocketbook is concerned. But it is always well to remember that what is without cost is likewise without power, however attractive the purchase price may be.

Let us not be content to apply this principle to a lost world alone! The Holy Spirit would arouse the Christians with this same searching, uncomfortable, cutting truth. There is a personal price, a high cost connected with belief in Christ. In these last days it is more than necessary for each of His blood-bought own to enter more thoroughly into the heartfelt declaration of David, “Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). Perhaps it required a long and drastic exercise of heart, and much prompting of the Holy spirit before David reached that pinnacle.

This is a day of ease, comfort, and carnal carelessness. The desire of people to get “something for nothing” is cursing us, causing many to seek delightful detours and smooth side paths rather than the clear, high line of Christian duty.

We need to look long and lovingly at Calvary, time after time, to learn that there simply cannot be any cheap crosses. We must catch a glimpse of the infinite cost of “so great salvation.” Behold the blessed One in the fierce battle of Gethsemane, sweating “as it were great drops of blood,” crying out to the Father, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

We need to go back to the portrait of the Saviour which Paul presented: “Christ Jesus… made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

There at Calvary love reached its wonderful lift; there grace spanned the farthest extent of its glory; there mercy magnified itself beyond degree. When the Son submitted Himself to Calvary, He was demonstrating the fathomless cost of redemption. And even now the Holy Spirit presents the power of the Cross as a penetrating persuasion to win our complete and undivided allegiance.

We need to experience the power of the Cross in our lives continually. The privilege of walking with God must not be lightly esteemed. There is no natural desire in the heart of man to behold the agonies of the Cross or to take up one’s personal cross and follow the Saviour daily; but when we become overwhelmed with the price He paid to redeem us, we cry with Paul, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Spirit is continually dealing with us, cutting across the comfort and convenience and complacency of our lives, to make us willing to pay the price of carrying our cross. He Who spared not His own Son surely will not spare us the keenest sort of judgment if we spare ourselves in any way from making a full surrender.

There are no cheap crosses for those who would walk with God on the highway of holiness.

If I can endure for this minute

Whatever is happening to me,

No matter how heavy my heart is

Or how dark the moment may be …

If I can remain calm and quiet

With all the world crashing about me,

Secure in the knowledge God loves me

When everyone else seems to doubt me …

If I can but keep on believing

What I know in my heart to be true,

That darkness will fade with the morning

And that “this will pass away, too!” …

Then nothing in life can defeat me

For as long as this knowledge remains

I can suffer whatever is happening

For I know God will break all the chains

That are binding me tight in “the darkness”

And trying to fill me with fear ..

For there is “no night without dawning”

And I know that “my morning” is near.

The problem with suffering is the pain. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

But stop and think. Probably most believers would readily give verbal assent to the idea that suffering is used by God for good in our lives. We know enough verses to be cognizant of that fact. Often we find ourselves saying in the midst of deep trials that, though we don’t know why God is allowing this to happen, we do know that He has a purpose in it.

Somewhere deep in our storehouse of biblical knowledge we know that suffering is good for us. A few of the Scriptures we would point to would be:

1. Suffering points us to the glorious return of Christ. (1 Peter 4:13)

2. Suffering causes dependence on the grace of God. (2 Corinthians 12:8-9)

3. Suffering demonstrates the grace of God. (1 Peter 2:19)

4. Suffering produces endurance. (Romans 5:3; James 1:2-3)

5. Jesus was made perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10; 5:8-9)

6. Suffering perfects us, as it did Jesus (James 1:4)

7. Suffering brings the comfort of God. (2 Corinthians 1:5-7)

8. Suffering brings conformity to Christ. (Romans 8:28-29; Philippians 3:10)

9. Suffering causes us to long for heaven. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

10. Suffering gets us out of our comfort zone. (Acts 8:1)

If all these are true then why is it also true that we tend to dread suffering; we seek to avoid it in every way; we look at it, not as friend, but as a fearsome enemy? All too often we are like the kids in the old TV commercial who, when discussing a yucky, healthy food, said, “It tastes like it’s good for us.” We don’t like the taste of suffering. Why? The answer is the pain. Our focus is on the process and not the product.

What if suffering were a lollipop? What if, in God’s economy, He had foreordained that eating a lollipop would perfect the Lord Jesus Himself? What if God had decreed that licking a lollipop would lead us to the abundant grace that is all-sufficient? What if sucking on a delicious sticky lollipop would produce in us endurance and complete us in Christ-likeness? What if the tantalizing taste of a lollipop caused us to long for heaven with all our might?

Answer: we would be ecstatic. We would sing the praises of lollipops. We would longingly look for lollipops. We would encourage others to do the lollipop thing with great perseverance and diligence. We would have lollipop-licking colloquies designed to teach the techniques and joys of lollipop delights.

So the problem with suffering is the pain. Would that God would grant the ability to focus on the goal, the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and realize that God’s ways are perfect. Why does He bring suffering into our lives? Because He wants us to experience every aspect of His glory. His desire is for us to know His grace and comfort and power and peace. He wants us to taste and see that He is good. Look past the pain, past the process to the perfect suffering Savior!

Once he feels its flame, a child will never doubt the candle’s heat. Likewise, the English Reformer William Tyndale once wrote that those who “feel” their faith will stand firm in the truth of Scripture and the promises of God.

Tyndale, convinced that English men and women needed to hear God’s Word in their own language, published in 1526 the first English New Testament translated from the Greek text. Throughout the 10 years of ministry that followed, he often spoke of “feeling” -- a term he used in his earliest translation of Romans 5.

In this passage, the apostle Paul writes that we have peace with God because we are justified by faith. Moreover, by God’s grace we have hope. In fact, faith gives us hope even amid tribulation. For this reason, we should rejoice in suffering. After all, Paul writes, suffering produces perseverance, which produces “feeling.” At least, “feeling” is the term that Tyndale used to translate a Greek word, dokimen, rendered elsewhere as “experience,” “character” or “proven character” (Romans 5:1-4).

In a note, Tyndale referred the readers of his translation to James 1:2-3, where a related Greek word, dokimion, is used. Here, James calls believers to rejoice amid tribulation, since the “testing (dokimion) of your faith” produces perseverance, which itself leads to complete Christian maturity. But, whereas James emphasizes the testing of faith through suffering, Paul in Romans 5 emphasizes the result -- that is, the tested, refined and proven faith (or, perhaps, person of faith). He writes that such “feeling,” in turn, produces a hope that is assured by God’s love. And this love has been poured into the believer’s heart by the Holy Spirit and has been displayed by Christ’s death for sinners (Romans 5:4-11).

Christians feel their faith, therefore, when refined by the intense heat of suffering, pain and persecution.

Tyndale wrote in 1528 in his book, “The Obedience of a Christian Man”: “Mark this also, if God send thee to the sea and promise to go with thee and to bring thee safe to land, he will raise up a tempest against thee, to prove whether thou wilt abide by his word, and that thou mayest feel thy faith and perceive his goodness.”

Tyndale noted, “For if it were always fair weather and thou never brought into such jeopardy whence his mercy only delivered thee, thy faith should be but a presumption and thou shouldest be ever unthankful to God and merciless unto thy neighbor.”

He added, “Tribulation for righteousness is not a blessing only, but also a gift that God giveth unto none save his special friends. ... For Paul in the fifth chapter to the Romans saith, ‘Tribulation maketh feeling,’ that is, it maketh us feel the goodness of God and his help and the working of his Spirit. ... Lo Christ is never strong in us, till we be weak.”

Speakers at the Missouri Baptist Convention’s “Sowing in Tears” conference translated Tyndale’s message into 21st-century English. “You will suffer,” said international evangelist Sammy Tippit, who has trained pastors and proclaimed the Gospel in the hardest-to-reach regions of the world.

“This is the missing message in America. ... Suffering is part of the Christian life,” Tippit said. But hope only comes, he added, when we are hopeless, when our hope lies only in God.

Suffering strips from us the confidence that we may have in ourselves and in our own resources. It is at that point, when we have nothing to guide us but God’s promises, that we feel our faith. As Tyndale’s better-known contemporary, Martin Luther, once wrote, “But this is the glory of faith, simply not to know: not to know where you are going, not to know what you are doing, not to know what you must suffer, and ... to follow the naked voice of God.”

By the way, Tyndale ultimately felt his faith in 1536. Latched to a stake, he was strangled and burned because he wanted people to read Scripture for themselves, in their own languages. As we seek to follow God’s call in our lives, would we also risk feeling our faith to scatter God’s Word abroad and reach people with the Gospel?

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Benjamin Hawkins is associate editor of The Pathway (www.mbcpathway.com), newsjournal of the Missouri Baptist Convention.

Most of us quite naturally seek to avoid suffering at all costs. But it’s a fruitless task — literally and spiritually.

In Sunday school or at our small group Bible studies, when it’s time for prayer requests, what do we ask people to pray for? Well, often we ask people to pray that God would cure our sicknesses and diseases — or those of our loved ones; that He would give us a job, or that He would smooth out our relationships; to sum up, that He would make our lives easier — that He would take away our suffering.

Now, don’t get defensive! I’m not here to tell you today that praying for these things is wrong. I’ve certainly done it myself, and I do it myself, and will continue to do so. As Jesus said while facing the suffering of the cross, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”

Yet that’s not all He prayed, is it? Jesus added, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.”

During the night He was betrayed, God the Son knew that suffering can bring good to us and the world when it is God the Father’s will. This Holy Week is a great time to remind ourselves that suffering can not only do things to you, but it can do things for you. And it’s not just me saying this.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who was one of Chuck Colson’s favorite writers, has written a piece that highlights some of the benefits of suffering. Brooks has noticed that Americans take their “pursuit of happiness” very seriously indeed. “We live in a culture awash in talk about happiness,” Brooks writes. “In one three-month period last year, more than 1,000 books were released on Amazon on that subject.”

But happiness isn’t all we crack it up to be, Brooks says. While eschewing glib answers and clichés, Brooks nevertheless asserts that suffering sometimes ennobles us, makes us more empathetic to others, and provides a revealing measure of self-knowledge.

Brooks writes, “The agony involved in, say, composing a great piece of music or the grief of having lost a loved one smashes through what [people] thought was the bottom floor of their personality, revealing an area below, and then it smashes through that floor revealing another area.”

Another benefit of suffering, he writes, is that it forces us to face the fact that we cannot control every aspect of life; that we are limited and must depend on something else to get through it. “People in this circumstance,” Brooks notes, “often have the sense that they are swept up in some larger providence. Abraham Lincoln suffered through the pain of conducting a civil war, and he ... emerged with the sense that there were deep currents of agony and redemption sweeping not just through him but through the nation as a whole, and that he was just an instrument for transcendent tasks.”

It gets better. Brooks continues: “The right response to this sort of pain is not pleasure. It’s holiness. I don’t even mean that in a purely religious sense. It means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard experiences in a moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred.”

David Brooks, who is Jewish, has touched on something here that we Christians can contemplate with profit this Holy Week: how God the Father turned the ultimate bad circumstance, the death of His only Son on the cross, into the most sacred act imaginable, the restoration and redemption of sinners like you, and like me.

Yes, happiness is a good thing. But today, as we approach Good Friday, let’s not forget the holiness that God only offers us through suffering.

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Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Millions of people in the online world have watched livestream video for days on end for a 15-year-old named April to give birth to her baby. April, though, is not a teen mom. April is a giraffe who lives at Animal Adventure Park in New York.

People often are as emotionally attached to the lives of animals as they are of people. We see it now with “April the Giraffe,” as we saw it when many grieved over the deaths of “Harambe the Gorilla” and “Cecil the Lion” in recent years.

Why is that? First and foremost, animals are an important part of God’s creation, and they command our attention and, in many cases, our affection.

Beyond that, there is something in human nature that responds more acutely to a single life, than a bunch of lives. A quote attributed to the evil Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin says, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”

Think about it. According the latest data, some 58 million children have been aborted in America since the 1973 Roe V. Wade Supreme Court ruling. For many Americans, a number like that doesn’t seem real, but more of a statistic. As Christians, however, we know that each of these boys and girls deserved to live and is precious to God and to us.

To go one step further, it’s not only a single life that makes a birth or death seem more real; it’s knowing a name.

People know the names of April, Harambe and Cecil. When we do not know the names of these 58 million dead, it makes their lives seem more distant. As Christians, though, we know that God knows the names of these boys and girls.

In the Bible, we see that one of the first things God had Adam do was to name the animals. The Bible also promises us that God knows each of us by name. To borrow a well-worn phrase, what’s in a name? Turns out, there’s a lot.

We therefore ought to use this moment to understand what motivates people. It’s not our job to tell people celebrating a giraffe’s birth to stop. It’s our job to help them celebrate the unborn and each birth of a child in their family, neighborhood or church with the same (or hopefully even more) enthusiasm.

It’s not our primary job to tell people to get over the death of a gorilla or a lion. It’s our job to help them to grasp and to grieve over the real human suffering in our world, such as women and children being sold into human trafficking, people of faith being persecuted, kids stuck in the foster care system and, yes, the horrors of human abortion.

While animals’ lives and deaths do certainly matter, we cannot disproportionately elevate their importance. Socrates taught that you cannot elevate an animal’s rights to that of a person; you can only bring down a person to the level of an animal.

In the case of April the Giraffe, Harambe the Gorilla and Cecil the Lion, let’s note the moment. Then let’s move our gaze to even weightier matters, which certainly include getting the Gospel to our neighbors in need, people who are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).

After all, our primary job is to point people toward the One who came, not to save the whales, but to save the people.

On Aug. 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas. The wind and rain left behind devastating flooding that forced thousands to feel from their homes. But even after the water receded, the psychological impact on the survivors remained.

Four months later, a survey found that 18 percent of survivors regularly felt hopeless and nervous. For those whose homes sustained significant damage, it jumped to 48 percent.

One teacher listened to students and colleagues share their survival stories. But the challenges of rebuilding her own home and hearing the challenges of others led to increased anxiety and depression, and she was put on medical leave from work.

Heavy rainstorms continued to make many survivors nervous. But they encouraged each other to fight through the anxiety.

A neighborhood Facebook group in a hard-hit Houston neighborhood posted these words during a storm months later: “It’s just rain. Just a little rain.... Repeat until the rain stops!” The words reminded survivors that they weren’t alone in their struggle to heal after Harvey.(1)

The lasting impact of Hurricane Harvey should teach several lessons to all of us: 1) Adversity can come into our lives at any time. 2) Healing isn’t always easy. 3) Words can be both harmful and helpful. 4) “Getting over it” is easier said than done. 5) The best comforters are fellow sufferers who can empathize with us.

A lot to get over

On earth we’re surrounded by adversity and suffering, and the pain can sometimes be greater than we feel we can bear.

One of the most difficult subjects for me to talk about is suffering. I don’t like to discuss it. I don’t like to read about it. I wish we could all avoid it.

But adversity is inevitable for everyone on earth, and the Bible says we should not think it strange when it happens to us.

On one level, of course, we do have to try to eventually get over things and “accept the things we cannot change.” Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross once explained that in the face of loss or heartache, our emotions go through a “grief cycle,” which might include shock, denial, bargaining, anger, depression and eventual acceptance and adjustment.

The problem comes when we get “stuck” in that cycle. When someone tells us to “get over it,” they’re probably trying to nudge us on to a healthier stage of life.

In the Bible we read about the prophet Samuel who had chosen and mentored King Saul. When Saul fell into sin, Samuel was devastated. In 1 Samuel 16:1, the Lord asked him, “How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I have provided Myself a king among his sons.”

It wasn’t easy, but Samuel obeyed.

Yet we have to remember that the deeper the wound, the longer the recovery. If I stub my toe, it takes a few minutes for the pain to subside. But if there’s a car wreck with major injuries, it’ll take weeks, months or even years to recover.

The same is true for the soul. The deeper the hurt, the longer the healing.

Reckless words / healing words

Sometimes the pain just doesn’t seem to end, the tears don’t stop, the illness doesn’t subside, and the wounds just seem to get deeper. So we need to pray for wisdom to say the right words to those going through such times.

Remember Proverbs 12:18: “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

When a friend needs encouragement, learn to deliberately consult the Lord before opening your mouth. Then as you weep with those who weep, speak the words God gives and remember to prayerfully point them to Christ.

When you think you can’t get over some deep hurt or loss, remember how the Father of glory stood silently by as His Son suffered scourging and crucifixion, that by His stripes we can be healed. If you or someone you know can’t move on, take hold of His nail-scarred hands and let Him help.

Only Jesus can heal our deepest hurts, and He can help you and me. Move on over to Him.

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(1) Brittany Martin, “When Heavy Rain Falls, Anxiety Returns for Many Survivors of Hurricane Harvey,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2018, .

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Copyright (c) 2019 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.