Eight Helps for Coping with Affliction

December 13, 2012 By

Flower Crack SidewalkYesterday I underwent a second minor surgery in as many weeks for basal cell skin cancer on my face. This really is not serious and I’ve gone through this a half dozen times. Yesterday was more painful, however. Shots in the nose to numb the infected place don’t feel good! After the dermatologist takes off one layer, you go into a waiting room with a half dozen others who are similarly affected—all sporting large bandages across the nose or other facial parts. I would surmise that everyone is secretly praying while they wait that the doctor would have gotten all the cancer on the first round. Wait time between rounds averages forty-five minutes to an hour.

Well, suffice it to say, that yesterday half the people were sown up after round #1, and nearly another half after round #2—all except for me. The dermatologist was finally successful with me after round three. That means getting numbed up four times and lots of pokes in the nose and surrounding area throughout the day. We ended up being there six or seven hours.

To my shame, I was beginning to murmur when I was the only one left in the room. Two providential things helped, however. One was a sweet old Methodist lady who kept telling us that her life was in God’s hands so that it didn’t matter how many rounds she had to undergo. Her testimony was rather humbling.

But second, and more helpful, was the book I was editing throughout the waiting times—the first ever biography on the Puritan Arthur Hildersham, which Reformation Heritage Books hopes to publish next month. Just as my murmuring began to pick up, I came to a remarkable section of the book about the afflictions that Hildersham had to endure in his life, and how he then wrote about eight helps for coping with affliction. Here they are in shorthand:

1. Think about affliction, expect it, and prepare for it before it comes.

2. Wean your heart from loving earthly things so that when losses and crosses come, you will be able to bow under them in sweet submission.

3. Acquaint yourself thoroughly with the Scriptures, for they prepare people for affliction, and teach us patience and comfort in affliction, like no other book can.

4. Labor to realize how sinful you really are, so that you will understand that what you are enduring is nothing compared to what you deserve.

5. Before the trial comes, make sure you get a true and living faith, and a comfortable assurance of your reconciliation with God through Christ, for faith in Christ and assurance of your soul’s well-being in Him will enable you to drink “the bitterest potion from His hand.”

6. Remember that you possess the hope of eternal glory if and when you die.

7. Before affliction comes, be careful “to lead a godly life, and to get a good conscience.”

8. Let prayer strengthen you in every trial.

What a help these eight takeaways were for me yesterday! How can a believer murmur after meditating on a list like this? Truly, God is better to us in our worst trials than we are to Him in our best righteousness and most godly moments.

A Faithful Servant of the Persecuted Church

November 6, 2012 By

Probably my highlight of the NCFIC conference was that I finally got to meet Rev. Fikret from Turkey. Paul Washer has wanted me to meet him for a long time and is encouraging me to minister among the churches this brother serves in Turkey. Rev. Fikret tells his story in a low-key yet powerful way. Today he ministers in one of the cities of the seven churches of Asia. Here’s the story he told me at lunch and then later to the entire gathering:

 When I was 18, I became curious about God, Islam, and Christianity, even though I knew nothing about the Bible or Christianity. One day I met a tourist couple from America who explained the gospel to me and encouraged me to attend a small, underground Christian worship service in Turkey. I decided to take the risk, but not without precautions. The first time I went I took a large, muscle-bound Turkish wrestler with me; he was trying out for the Olympics and was also interested in learning the basics of Christianity. We were ushered into the middle of the church, which made us feel very uncomfortable, since a Christian could then easily attack us from behind. We moved to the back pew which had a wall directly behind us. We were amazed at how people stood up during the service, how they sang, and how friendly they were to each other after the service. We had never seen anything like that in Islam.

Eventually I got a small New Testament. I read it from cover to cover. Part of me wanted to become a Christian and the other part of me was very afraid. I feared that to become a Christian meant losing my job, denying my culture and country, and eventually facing imprisonment and possibly death for converting from Islam to Christianity. When fear got the better hand of me, I would return the Bible to the friend who gave it to me and make him promise that he would never give it back to me, even when I asked. But then, two or three days later, I would miss it so much, that I would go to him and beg to have it back—and he would give it to me!

I kept attending the underground church despite the risks involved. One day, a church “friend”—or so we thought, but he was really a police informant—asked our group of believers to come over to a friend’s house after the service. There all the Christians were arrested and dragged off to the police station. Initially, they were treated fairly well, though they were told that the government was convinced that they were “Christian terrorists,” and acted as if the Bible was their secret “weapon.” Our captors kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, if you only say the Islamic prayer, you will be set free.” The Islamic prayer means saying aloud: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet.” The first man—who we still did not know was the police informant—was the first to say it, so he was set free. Four others followed suit. Then came my wrestler friend, who feared no man. Boldly and freely, he said, “Jesus Christ is God’s Son and through His righteousness and obedience I am saved from all my sins.” They immediately attacked him, beat him up, and incarcerated him. Blood was everywhere.

My turn was next. I was trembling like a leaf. In fact, I was so afraid that it felt like my mind was turning numb. I felt like I had no choice—the torture that would come upon me for denying Islam would just be too great. Just as I was about to open my mouth and deny my new-found faith, I felt hands come from behind me and cover my mouth fully so that I couldn’t say a word. I turned around to see my friend, as I was sure it was one of my friends, but he was nowhere in sight. In all my numbing fear, I suddenly realized that God was holding my mouth so that I would not deny Him but profess Him. After I confessed Jesus, I too was beaten badly and put in a cell.

At that time I didn’t know that there were only 80 Christians in all of Turkey, and that all of them were being arrested the same day that I was. For the next ten days, we were beaten every day, given daily electrical shocks, and underwent coffin therapy. By coffin therapy, the Islamic Turks mean that they put your body in a coffin and fill it with water until you feel like you are drowning. At that point, they again ask you to say the Islamic prayer. This is hard for me to explain, but persecuted Christians around the world have often experienced this well—you are so overcome with numbness that the only thing in life you can remember is that Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died for your sins. In the midst of numbness, that provides peace that passes understanding.

After ten days, we were released suddenly by God’s kind providence. Apparently a European Union minister (Sir Fred Catherwood) came to Turkey to put pressure on Turkey’s Prime Minister to release us at once if he still wanted his country to be received into the European Union. A few hours later we were released.

 When I asked Brother Fikret if he was still being persecuted today, he said, “I have been arrested several more times after the first arrest, but it is no longer so severe. The authorities beat you and harass you, and then ask you to say the Islamic prayer, but by nightfall they give up and release you again. Things got a bit better for the Christians in the past four years.”

When I asked him how we should pray for the Turkish Christians, he said, “Don’t pray for or against persecution—for persecution keeps us close to God—but pray for perseverance under persecution.”

God is blessing Brother Fikret’s ministry in Turkey, as well as several other Turkish ministers. Today there are 4,200 Christians—a substantial increase from 80, but this is still a very small percentage for a land of approximately 75 million souls. Today, Turkey is still the largest unevangelized nation in the world.

Consider Christ in Affliction (VIII): The Plan of Christ

August 29, 2012 By

Finally, when you face affliction, consider the plan of Christ. Highly exalted, there is no name like His. At His name, every knee shall bow (Phil. 2:10). The eternal plan lying behind all His affliction was eternal glory.

Eternal glory—not only for Himself, but also for you. He returned to His Father differently than He came. He returned with His blood-bought bride, just as He planned in His eternal covenant with His Father. His church, figuratively speaking, ascended into glory with Him, accepted by the Father in the Beloved (Eph. 1:6). Oh, then think more of God’s eternal plan for you and your eternal end in glory if you would be more submissive under affliction and learn to praise God in trial!

Your trials in this life are but for “ten days” (Rev. 2:10). Your life-to-come glory is forever. The “ten days” here are preparation time for glory to come. Affliction elevates your soul to heaven (Heb. 11:10); it paves your way for glory: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Your rainy days on earth are nearly over. Don’t overestimate them. Think more of your coming crown and your eternal communion with God Triune, saints and angels. “He that rides to be crowned,” John Trapp wrote, “will not think much of a rainy day.”

Light after darkness;

Gain after loss;

Strength after weakness;

Crown after cross;

Sweet after bitter;

Hope after fears;

Home after wandering;

Praise after tears.

 

Sheaves after sowing;

Sun after rain;

Sight after mystery;

Peace after pain;

Joy after sorrow;

Calm after blast;

Rest after weariness;

Sweet rest at last.

 

Remember, you are but renting here; your personal mansion is reserved there. Expect no heaven on earth (apart from spiritual foretastes by means of sanctified affliction!), but trust that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

Be assured: the Shepherd’s rod does have honey at the end. Don’t despair. Your afflictions are imposed by a fatherly hand of love in the context of grace, not (as you are too prone to think) by a punitive hand of judgment in the context of works.

Keep your eye on Christ. Consider Christ—His passion, power, presence, perseverance, prayers, purposes, and plan. Seek grace to live Christianly today through and in your afflictions, and you will soon discover with the apostle, “For me to life is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord” (Ps. 27:14).

Consider Christ in Affliction (VII): The Purposes of Christ

August 23, 2012 By

When suffering affliction, consider the purposes of Christ. He lived to do His Father’s will, to be sanctified through suffering, to merit salvation for His own, to present His church without spot or wrinkle to His Father. In a word, His life was God-centered.

His God-centered goals are numerous for you, too, in sanctified affliction: Sanctified affliction humbles you (Deut. 8:2), teaches you what sin is (Zeph. 1:12), and causes you to seek God (Hos. 5:15). Affliction vacuums away the fuel that feeds your pride. Bell-like, the harder you are hit, the better you sound. You learn more under the rod that strikes you than through the staff that comforts you. You discover the truth of Robert Leighton’s words: “Affliction is the diamond dust that heaven polishes its jewels with.”

Sanctified affliction serves to keep you in Christ’s communion, close by His side—to conform you to Him, making you partaker of His suffering and image, righteousness and holiness (Heb. 12:10–11). Stephen-like, the stones that hit you only knock you closer to your chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ, opening heaven the wider for you. Affliction rubs the rust off your locked heart and opens your heart’s gates afresh to your King’s presence-chamber. Yes, the rod of affliction is God’s pencil for drawing Christ’s image more fully on you.

Sanctified affliction serves to wean you from the world and to cause you to walk by faith. A dog bites strangers, not homeowners. Perhaps affliction bites you so deeply because you are too little at home with the Word and ways of God, and too much at home with the world. “God,” says Thomas Watson, “would have the world hang as a loose tooth which, being twitched away, does not much trouble us.” In prosperity, you often talk of living by other-worldly faith, but in adversity, you live your talk.

Consider Christ in Affliction (VI): The Prayers of Christ

August 22, 2012 By

When we consider Christ in affliction, we can find peace by resting in His saving work, and by following His godly example.

Consider the prayers of Christ. How often He set time apart on earth to pray to His Father, especially in hours of need! How continually He prays in heaven for all His church! How effectual all His prayers are!

You, too, ought to make more use of prayer, especially in combating spiritual depression under afflictions. Bring all your needs steadily to your praying High Priest. Be assured He hears your every whisper.

And when you grow drowsy or sloppy in prayer, pray aloud. Or write down your prayers. Or find a quiet place to walk in the fresh air to pray. Just don’t stop praying. Conversation with God through Christ is the antidote that wards off spiritual depression in the thick of affliction.

A prayerless affliction is like an open sore, ripe for infection; a prayerful affliction is like an open sore, ripe for the balm of Gilead—the healing ointment of Jesus’ blood. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

Consider Christ in Affliction (V): The Patience and Perseverance of Christ

August 21, 2012 By

So far in this series, I have urged you to consider Christ in affliction (I), and given particular attention to His passion (II), His power (III), and His presence (IV).

Next, consider the patience and perseverance of Christ. As you know, the form of “Chinese torture” that drips one drop of water at regular intervals on the forehead of a prisoner strapped beneath a faucet gets all its power from the duration of the trial, not from the first one or two hundred drops. Insanity is usually the end result.

And so matters might end with you, were it not for Jesus. I know very well that what makes affliction so severe for you is its duration. You often wonder if there will ever be an end and, if so, how you will hang on to the end.

But it is Christ who provides you the strength to bear one more drop, take one more step, live one more day, in the severest of tortures and persecutions. He has earned that provision by enduring His sufferings to their end. Gethsemane, Gabbatha, Golgotha—in each place, He confirmed: “Jesus . . . having loved his own . . . he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). Blood drop by blood drop, for six long hours He poured out His life. And never flinched. Never answered His mockers a word. Never yielded to their taunts: “If thou be the Christ.”

It’s through Jesus’ strength that you too have endured. Look back at the heaviest of your afflictions. How did you bear them through those long nights, months, and years? How did you retain your silence when persecuted? How did you continue on when many challenged, “If you are a Christian”?

Must you not say: Only through the perseverance of Christ have I by grace persevered? Oh, the depth of Paul’s confession: “By the grace of God, I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10a)!

Despite your fears of perishing at the hands of “Sauls” through sixteen long years of persecutions as David did, you will not perish. Jesus has done too much, persevered too long (He is still persevering in intercession!) to let you slip through His fingers. “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

Look more to Christ. Trust more in His promise. Rest more in His perseverance, for your perseverance rests in His. Seek grace to imitate His patience under affliction. Your trials may alarm you, but they will not destroy you. Your crosses are God’s way to royal crowning (Rev. 7:14).

Consider Christ in Affliction (IV): The Presence of Christ

August 20, 2012 By

In our meditations on how considering Christ helps us in affliction, I have talked about the passion or sufferings of Christ and the power of Christ.

Third, consider the presence of Christ. He is at no time absent from you, even when your faith lacks active exercise to grasp Him. Even in your thickest hours of Egyptian darkness, He is close beside you. Only of Him can it be declared, “The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee” (Ps. 139:12).

How comforting this is! In all your dark afflictions, your High Priest retains you in His high-priestly eye, preserves you in His high-priestly heart, bears you on His high-priestly shoulders, does not remove you from the engravings on His high-priestly hands, and never ceases to remember you in His high-priestly intercessions. “He ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Oh, what tender love! You are never forgotten by Jesus Christ, despite your negligence toward Him. Your unbrotherliness to Christ never unbrothers this precious Elder Brother from you. From His perspective, He ever remains a friend that sticks “closer than a brother” (Prov. 18:24), even when you cannot see or feel it. Even then He is whispering to you in midnight seasons, “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter” (John 13:7).

Take heart. The Jesus who never failed you in yesterday’s afflictions (did He not rather give you extra tokens of His care!) is still present to give you today’s strength (Matt. 6:34). Just as waves are cut down to melodious whimpers at shore’s reality, so He will break down your waves of tomorrow’s impossibilities as (not before!) they break in on the beachheads of your life. Wait on your ever-present Savior. He will not let you down. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8).

Consider Christ in Affliction (III): The Power of Christ

August 16, 2012 By

In this series of posts I have been encouraging Christians to consider Christ in their afflictions. In the last installment, I pointed to the passion of Christ, His sufferings with us, for us, and beyond anything we will ever endure.

Second, consider the power of Christ. Being infinite God-man, Jesus received power on earth to bear infinite sufferings on your behalf. And through the merit of these sufferings, He now receives royal power in heaven from His Father to rule and strengthen you in your sufferings (Matt. 28:18). Translated practically relative to affliction, His heaven-earth power reads like this: If He desires to weigh you down with affliction—yes, heavy, seemingly staggering affliction—do not be alarmed, but look to Him for strength.

Nor should you be ashamed. When I worked for my father in early youth, I was advised to carry only half-bundles of shingles up the ladder to the roof, but I anticipated the day of greater maturity and strength when my shoulders could bear full, unsplit bundles as my older brothers could. Similarly, afflicted believer, Jesus Christ tailors your afflictions to you. He has promised to fit your afflictions to your shoulders (1 Cor. 10:13). Neither be proud of slender shoulders nor ask for more affliction, but beg for broader shoulders exercised in the weight-room of Jesus’ providential leadings.

As you and I realize by grace that the bearing of heavy burdens Christianly is testimony of spiritual maturity and honors the Christ whom we love, our groaning under affliction’s “heaviness” will be happily bruised. Isn’t this the encouragement that Puritan George Downame intended to convey when he aptly penned: “The Lord does not measure out our afflictions according to our faults, but according to our strength, and looks not at what we have deserved, but at what we are able to bear”?

Oh, how great it is when we may look to the strength of Jesus Christ in all our weakness and apprehend our strength in Him (2 Cor. 12:9)! Then the power of the humiliated and exalted Jesus enables us to sing at times in “inner prison” depths with Paul and Silas (Acts 16:25). Would to God that we did it more heartily and frequently! Yes, let us rejoice that we are counted worthy to suffer for the name and sake of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 6 and 12).

Consider Christ in Affliction (II): The Passion of Christ

August 14, 2012 By

In the midst of your sufferings—whether the heart-grinding pain of the worst of days, or the ordinary disappointments and sadness of everyday—through it all, consider Christ. He is the heartbeat of Christianity, and the strength of the sufferer.

First and foremost, consider the passion of Christ. What greater source of strength for living through and profiting from affliction can be had than frequent meditation on the sufferings of the Lord Jesus? Think much on these things: If Jesus suffered so much on behalf of His people, shouldn’t I be able to endure in His strength the daily afflictions I must bear? What are my afflictions compared to His? Besides, was He not the Sufferer par excellence while wholly innocent, and am I not, at best, a sufferer in His footsteps while wholly guilty?

Moreover (and this may be most encouraging), is there one affliction that I must endure that He has not already endured? Is He not the Breaker to go before His flock both in opening all our paths (Micah 2:13) and in being tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15)? All paths, all points. Jesus not only knows your affliction, He has identified himself with it. He has borne it. And He will sanctify it. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Consider Christ in Affliction (I)

August 13, 2012 By

Dear Christian, I desire to write you about something with which you are well acquainted: affliction. Much has been written on affliction by godly Christians of previous times. A good part of it you have known for a long time. For example, you may know that all affliction is ultimately traceable to our tragic fall in Adam. You know, too, the grievousness of affliction. After all, who enjoys suffering?

Yet you also may know that all affliction is sent by a wise, fatherly God. Perhaps you even know—as the whole book of Job and the Puritans never tire of teaching us—that the important thing is not the amount of affliction we receive, but how we respond to that affliction.

Isn’t it just here that your deepest questions about affliction and trial lie? For you want to respond to affliction in a God-glorifying manner, but you feel you often fall inexcusably short. You desire that your entire life may serve God’s praise (Isa. 43:21), but somehow when you enter the heat and heart of affliction you find yourself losing grip on your firm intention.

To respond rightly to affliction before it comes is hard; to look back on it gratefully after it is over is harder; but to live Christianly in affliction is hardest. Hence you ask yourself again and again: how may I live through affliction more Christianly—in a way that is more like Christ? How may I grow in grace while—yes, while—suffering affliction?

You are not alone in such wrestlings. Countless times God’s children have been there, begging to be made conformable to the image of Christ through the furnace of affliction. The prayer is simple (“Lord, grant me grace to live through this affliction Christianly”); the wrestlings, are often agonizing.

Through years of encountering affliction (including times of running from wrestling with, resolving against, and—by grace—submitting to and bowing under it), I have gleaned a few thoughts on how to live Christianly through affliction. These I wish to share with you.

But as you allow me to provide several practical hints on this eminently practical subject, please bear in mind that we are always dependent on the sanctification of the Holy Spirit at every juncture for real spiritual benefit under affliction. Without the Spirit’s gracious influences, affliction may readily lead us away from rather than toward God.

I wish to focus my suggestions to you around one major theme that, sad to say, took me many years to learn even in small measure: The most effective means for living Christianly in affliction is to consider Christ, the fountainhead of all vital Christianity (Heb. 3:1). To live Christianly in any sphere or aspect of life necessitates Spirit-worked faith to look to Him, to feast on Him, to depend on Him—yes, to find both our life in Him (on Calvary’s cross) and our death in Him (as exalted Lord, to whom we belong).

Consider Christ—that’s the crux of the whole matter of affliction. But how, you ask? I will attempt to answer that question in the next few posts.

Copyright © 2025 · Joel Beeke