Rise from the Dust: Faith, Hope and Healing in Difficult Times

By Philip Friday

One of the most inevitable things about life is suffering. In one of his final admonitions to his disciples before he ascended into heaven, Jesus warned his disciples that in this world, they will suffer! You may be having the best time of your life with everything going according to plan when suddenly the dark dreadful clouds gather, slowly caving in on you and suddenly, the bright sunny day has given way to crumbling walls, pain and suffering. Rise From the Dust is written to encourage you in the darkest days and usher you into a place of endurance and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984566621

Philip Friday

Philip Friday is a pastor, author and a humanitarian who has traveled to several countries preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and seeking to contribute positively to the lives of others. He served for 8 years as the Senior Pastor at Risen Lamb International Church of the Nazarene in Kansas City, Kansas. He currently resides with his wife in Boston, Massachusetts where he continues his passion for the Gospel and humanitarian work.

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Copyright © 2020 by PHILIP FRIDAY.

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version 111227.png , NIV 111223.png . Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.TM

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Rev. date: 10/21/2020

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CONTENTS

Introduction

PART I

SUFFERING

1

A Journey

Suffering

Suffering Knows No One

Stuff Happens

2

I Cannot Believe This is Happening to Me

3

I Don’t Like What’s Going On

Gnawing Pains

4

If Only I Could Get Some Help

It’s Too Much to Bear

5

I Give Up

Cries of Anguish

6

It Is What It Is

7

Loneliness and Suffering

8

Purpose and Meaning in Suffering

God, Discipline, and Suffering

God’s Presence in Suffering

Relying on God’s Presence & Comfort

God’s Love in Suffering

The Sovereignty and Grace of God in Suffering

Renewal in Suffering

9

Faith in Suffering

The Journey Must Continue

PART II

ENDURANCE

10

Fighting Till the End

Endurance

11

Endurance and Perseverance

12

Imitating Jesus Christ

Jesus Forgave in spite of His Suffering

Jesus Showed Patience in His Suffering

13

Enduring Alongside Others

Dos and Don’ts of Loss

Support Groups

14

Jesus Endures With Us

Jesus Wept

Carrying the Cross

PART III

CHARACTER

15

Character

Character Formation

God Refines Us Through Trials

16

Here Are Several Things That Character Does

Empathy

Alertness

Humility

Dependence on God

Compassion

Gentleness

Focus

Courage

Resilience

Attentiveness to God’s Voice

17

I love to sing that song!

Gratefulness in Character Formation

PART IV

HOPE

18

Hope

Hope is like a Lens

Ebenezer

19

God is Fighting for Us

A Star in a Dark Night

20

Hope Leads to Growth in Suffering

Hope Leads Us to a Deeper Understanding of Love

Hope Builds Us

Hope Reassures

Hope Leads to Renewal

21

It Is Well With My Soul

Hope in the Winter

Faith, Hope, and Love

22

Finishing the Race

Acknowledgments

About The Author

For my dear mother,

who has borne suffering with grace

Rise from the dust…Sit in a place of honor.

~ Isaiah 52:2

But your dead will live, LORD;

their bodies will rise –

let those who dwell in the dust

wake up and shout for joy –

your dew is like the dew of the morning;

the earth will give birth to her dead.

~ Isaiah 26:19

INTRODUCTION

S UFFERING IS A PECULIAR THING. The great German theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, A Christian is someone who shares the sufferings of God in the world. Many good books have been written on the subject of suffering. Many of them attempt to help us understand suffering, and some, which I have referenced in this book do a great job at that. Whether we are currently wrestling with the concept of suffering itself, or trying to understand why the world is inundated with so much grief, each one us has faced a situation that caused us to pause and ponder the meaning of suffering. It could be the pain of losing a loved one, or the shock of losing a job and livelihood, or even the bad news from the doctor, but in all unfortunate situations we encounter, each one of us is seeking to understand suffering and the most obvious question we often ask ourselves is, why?

Why is an age-old question that runs deep into the very heart of the human experience. My immediate attempt to address this conundrum of why even early in this book would be, I do not know. As a minister, I have visited a hospital and held a dying baby in the presence of her inconsolable mother. I have stood by the graveside of grief-stricken parents who just lost their teenage son to a tragic motor accident. I have held a browbeaten young woman widowed because of war as she received the flag-draped casket containing her husband’s remains. I have shed tears over the phone with my despondent relative as she grieved her teenage son, who committed suicide at the local school. Each of these encounters left me shaken, drained, and wondering why. I found myself struggling to find even a single word that could offer comfort and healing to these people. I was left looking up purposelessly, wondering if God was listening to those who are suffering.

Suffering causes us to ask all sorts of questions. Why me? Why my family? Why my friends and loved ones? Why now? What did I do to deserve this? What wrong have I committed? Where is God in all of this?¹ Is there something I need to correct? Is it because of sin in my life? In a fallen world, grief and pain always catch us unawares. We know we are not immune, but there is a suppressed hope that pretends we are. And when our child dies, or our spouse; when we see a loved one wasting away from a painful disease, or observe a brilliant and courteous mind disintegrating before our eyes; when we ourselves suddenly face the most appalling pain or incapacity, with no prospect of relief, then our pretensions rush forward in another form: Why is God doing this?² I have witnessed many friends and family members ask these questions and many times fail to find any meaningful answers. Many people end up in a cyclic loop of despair and desperation, wondering if anything they could ever do would make any difference.

After his toddler son was diagnosed with cancer, William walked away from anything related to the church. He promised never to be lied to again by any preacher that God loved him or his family. When I met William at a drug rehabilitation center, I listened to his story for hours and never uttered a single word, because I did not have any words left in me to say to him. His story was quite sobering and left me emptied. His son’s cancer diagnosis tore him apart, leading him to indulge in a life of alcohol and drug use to the point that his wife sectioned him to a mandatory rehabilitation program. Such are the stories we encounter each day - stories of hopelessness and brokenness, pain and suffering, stories that make us question God’s presence in our lives, stories that ask more questions than provide any answers.

However, what has inspired me over the last 15 years of ministry is the steadfast fight, the quiet resilience, and the ardent hope of those who suffer. I have watched with great faith as people battled some of the highest forms of suffering bravely and came out stronger and lived to tell their stories and encourage others. I have witnessed those who were laying in a dusty heap rise and shake off their dust and live with renewed hope and confidence.

I have watched with hope and anticipation as a newly divorced mother of four packed up her belongings and set off on a journey to a new town to begin a new life far away from her troubles and misery. I have watched even those who have been written off by society, left marginalized, and abandoned in despair, fight with dignity, and eventually rise from the dust. Each of their uplifting stories of resilience and hope has inspired the writing of this book. Even moments when I have walked into hospitals to offer words of encouragement to friends coming out of surgeries, I have found myself being encouraged beyond words and walking out feeling more confident not just for those whom I went to visit but also for myself. Their stories and their faith with the help of the Lord is what we should aim for every day in a turbulent and unpredictable world that is full of trouble.

I have to admit, though, that some people ominously lose the battle and, unfortunately, succumb to pain and despair of suffering. It can be overwhelming and just too much to bear for many of us. Many people end up with depression and, on occasion, find themselves hooked onto alcohol and drugs to mitigate the pain. Unfortunately, this is the inexorable reality of suffering and evil in the world. It tends to wear us down and tear us apart sometimes even as others look helplessly. Most of us can attest to the fact that we have encountered people who never really became the same again after a tragic occurrence.

Furthermore, the reality of life is that we may never be the same again after we have faced suffering. Suffering is not a problem to be solved or a riddle to be explained, it is a reality to be confronted in cooperation with God’s own expressed intentions in the world.³ There are so many painful lessons that we learn while we are down and out. There are so many circumstances that drastically change while we are on the verge of depression that it increasingly becomes quite challenging to come back. When we finally rise, we carry visible scars of our battle, some of which remain painful reminders of the past for the rest of our lives. The question that I will attempt to answer then is how do we cope with the new changes in our lives that come as a result of suffering? How do we live with the reality of a terminal illness? How do we accept the inevitability of pain and suffering?

Thus, this book is not going to outline a ten-point plan on how to avoid suffering, but it will attempt to encourage us to fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12) and hold fast and stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near (Luke 21:28). Jesus Christ’s clear admonition to his disciples in John 16:33 was that "here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows." This scripture is one of the most explicit indications that suffering is very much a normal yet tender part of our lives.

I will not attempt to elegiacally explain why we are going through what we are going through, nor will I try to figure out the origins of suffering and why it is a perpetual part of the human experience. But what I will attempt to do is to help us navigate through our sufferings and with the help of God and the testimony of others, rise from the dust, dust ourselves off, and continue on with our journeys. Paul writes to the Romans that "we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."⁴ There is more to suffering than suffering itself. The scars caused by suffering are real, glaring, and conspicuous. Some scars are real painful reminders of a dark, battle-filled past, that still shakes our faith — others, a reminder that the future is likely to be just as uncertain as the past. But along the way, God provides help, sometimes in the most unusual ways, and we find ourselves, I pray, journeying on with hope.

Endnotes

¹ Phil C. Zylla, The Roots of Sorrow: A Pastoral Theology of Suffering (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012), 71.

² D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990), 109.

³ Phil C. Zylla, The Roots of Sorrow: A Pastoral Theology of Suffering (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012), 6.

⁴ Romans 5:4.

PART I

SUFFERING

Experience is a fine word for suffering

~ Hannah More

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in

the pains of childbirth right up to the present time

~ Romans 8:22

1

A Journey

J ULIE WALKED INTO MY OFFICE downhearted, hopeless, beaten, and wholly convinced that her life was not turning around. After a lengthy battle with cancer that left her bankrupt and a weary divorce from her husband that stretched her to her limits, she became convinced that she had seen it all, the worst that life could offer, and that nothing would work for her. For a long time, she fought a losing battle, and her struggles convinced her nothing on earth or in heaven was coming to her rescue. Inside of her, she had a little fight left, but just a little. She felt alone, abandoned, and by herself, in a world where trouble seemed to pile up, and relief was not coming soon enough. Her options had entirely run out.

Pastor Philip, Julie muttered, tears rolling down from her eyes, her face enflamed from perceptibly difficult experience. She was barely holding herself, having cried many nights, and hid from the public for many days; it had become evident that her life was now synonymous with suffering. She had kept a lot to herself and did not entertain even her own family and friends as guests. What do I need to do now? She asked with a shaking voice, her face bowed in indignity.

I leaned into my squeaking office chair, lost for words, wondering what I would say to her. It was a rare moment for me when I knew that even opening scriptural words of encouragement would be hard to do. I was utterly lost for words. No words of comfort would mirror her level of suffering. No words, no matter how uplifting, would offer her hope, at least I thought. She had heard enough of inspirational and religious clichés, and none in my extensive library would mollify her difficult situation. I had seen a bit of suffering in others. I had watched my mother go through a botched surgery that left her with months of excruciating pain. I had watched my relative die at childbirth, leaving her twin children to grow up on their own. I had witnessed the ravages of war in a country of dictatorship, the pain of torn families, the agony of physical separation, yet it all was just abstract, out there in others and not on me. I knew no suffering, only having watched it from a distance. And with tears lingering in my eyes, I leaned forward and tremblingly said to Julie, God is with you, and is fighting for you.

With my hands folded across the table, tears freely rolled down my eyes. Not another word came out of my mouth for a drawn-out moment. I then gathered myself up and began to pray with Julie. I found it hard to say the right words and quickly ended my prayer by asking God to show Julie his presence. I had heard her stories multiple times for the past several months, and every time, something new and out of the blue came up. It was extremely frustrating and painful for her. Furthermore, at every one of our encounters, my words became less and less. I was hurting deeply for her, and I felt like I did not have any more meaningful words left to tell her.

It has been a long, long journey, Julie muttered as she stepped out of my office in dejection.

Suffering is bound to happen. It is a fact of life. We are going to face some difficulties in this life; a lot of difficulties. Some people will face more severe challenges than others. Some will have manageable situations as others drown completely in suffering even for a lifetime. Sadly, even God’s unconditional love for us will not prevent suffering from befalling us. Ironically, the Father’s love doesn’t shield his children from all pain but instead guarantees that we will face it.⁵ We do not have to look very far today to realize that we might be just a little bit better off than the neighbor down the street. Sorrow, pain, grief, sadness, distress, and mourning are fixtures in our lives and do not choose when to come. All of life is a testing ground from start to finish. There are constant battles raging all around us.⁶

Suffering

Suffering is the central element in the curse that befell humanity in Genesis chapter three. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were in a perfect relationship with God and freely exercised their freedom and relationship with him in the garden that God had provided for them. Their lives were complete. But, things took a different turn on a very ordinary day when they decided to disobey God and eat from the forbidden fruit.⁷ In disobeying God, they went against God’s known law, violating the command that God had given them and altering their relationship with him and, in so doing, invited suffering into the world. The first human rebellion marks the onset of suffering, toil, pain, and death. A mere two chapters later, we read the endlessly repeated and hauntingly painful refrain, ‘then he died…then he died…then he died…then he died.’⁸ Mankind’s most common, most persistent, and most puzzling problem is suffering. Death, wars, famine, pestilence, violence, oppression, imprisonment, poverty, sickness, loneliness, headaches, and heartaches are all particular parts of this puzzle.⁹

John Ferguson writes that this world has often been called a vale of tears. It is more than that, much more. Gladness and sorrow mingle together.¹⁰ Every time our TVs or Radios interrupt our day and turn to breaking news or every time the notifications of our smartphones from different news sources come in a barrage, it is rarely a beautiful thing that has happened in some corner of the world. It is most likely a tragic occurrence that has left a trail of devastation and suffering. A tsunami, a hurricane, a war, a wildfire, a mass shooting, a bomb, and so forth. For all the gladness, there is sorrow, there is suffering, nature is red in tooth and claw, the whole creation is groaning and travailing.¹¹ We yearn for good news, we clamor for positive stories, but we end up inundated with stories of suffering and despair. Suffering is so prevalent that whole websites are dedicated to the most depressing news of the day.¹²

Suffering is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.¹³ In suffering, one forcibly puts up with the inevitable or the unavoidable. The original etymology of the word in Latin means "to submit to or to endure, acts which suggest that we are no longer in control of the situation we face. During such times, our lives are not fully under our own powers and control."¹⁴ We mostly get to a point where our actions may not do much positively to alter the situation that we face; hence the only thing left is to capitulate helplessly to the situation. The degree of suffering may vary, and different people view different situations of suffering differently. Nevertheless, the underlying premise is that we are at a stage where we are no longer in control of our situation and that the situation or the circumstances surrounding it is controlling us. It would be quite easy to evade suffering and live lives that are free from it if maintained an element of control.

In suffering, we also cannot just wish the difficulty away even though I wish we could. If we could do so, then none of us would face any uncontrollable situations. C. S Lewis said, there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it.¹⁵ If we could control suffering, we would be fully in charge of our lives. Instead, we are truly tested, sometimes beyond what we are capable of bearing. It is one thing to have a mild headache that can be quickly mitigated by swallowing a small aspirin tablet, and it is another thing if we have constant, debilitating migraines that completely alter our way of life. Sorrow and affliction are part of our everyday life.

Nathan Kollar writes, Each of us is a singer. A blink of an eye, a tap of a toe, a handshake, a shout of despair can be the notes that make up our song. We sing from the first cry of life to its last breath. Between the cry of birth and the silence of death are laughs and arguments, curses, exclamations of joy, quiet whispers of love, and loud protestations against injustice. With each of these, we search for an appreciative audience to respond to our song as we sing it.¹⁶ When we are suffering, the pain is amplified, and the shouts of despair, even when brief, seem quite long, and no one seems to hear us. However, as we shall see in a later chapter on hope, there are moments in between when a little spurt of joy, a fleeting moment of laughter, or a temporary bout of hope whelms us albeit momentarily but with all the reasons to hold on.

I remember several years ago when a severe hip injury halted my running career. I was beginning my 11th mile on a half-marathon run when I suddenly felt a painful twitch accompanied by a sharp piercing pain on my right hip. I did not think much of it at that particular moment, and I continued running to finish the race. But then the pain increased and seemed to cover my entire right leg. I found myself struggling to lift my leg. It did not help that I had read all the stories of never giving up, so I continued to run until I got to