Your Suffering Is Working for You — Suffering with Purpose

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Suffering with Purpose

One more thing that is so relevant for so many suffering people and so precious to me: this word in verse 17, preparing. Not only is all your affliction momentary, not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity and the glory there, but all of it is totally meaningful.

Now that is a very controversial statement because of how much insane suffering there is in the world. Every time something horrific happens an interviewer will say: meaningless. And that is what it looks like. It is everywhere. Now, we have got the internet, so we have no excuse for not crying every day. “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

This text says that our light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. It doesn’t say “will be followed by” an eternal weight of glory. That would be good enough. That is not what it says. The Greek word (katergazomai) means “produce, prepare, cause to bring about.”

Every Millisecond Made Meaningful

I will venture this: every millisecond of your pain from fallen nature or fallen man — every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience — is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that.

That is a very controversial statement, and I believe it. If anybody says to me that a believer’s suffering was meaningless, I will be quiet, probably, because they are probably hurting really bad right now. I am going to wait and see when the right time is. But I am going to come back eventually and say: It wasn’t meaningless. I don’t care if it was cancer or criticism. I don’t care if it was slander or sickness. It wasn’t meaningless because verse 17 says that my light, momentary, lifelong, total affliction is doing something. It is doing something. It is not meaningless.

Of course, you can’t see what it is doing. This is the main unseen thing verse 18 is talking about. What is the unseen you are supposed to look at? You are supposed to look at the promise of God in verse 17 that says your pain is doing something for you. You can’t see it. You can’t feel it. Either you see it with the eyes of faith, believe it, because the text says it, or you lose heart.

J.P.