Suffering
The Loss Of All Things
By
Arthur J Licursi
“More
than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of
all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain
Christ, Philip. 3:8
“For
this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears
up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.” 1 Peter 2:19 (NASB)
I now realize that through the
years of my Christian walk I seem to be in a process of being stripped of
control of all things in my life on this earth.
§
The first loss recognized by me began in 1987 with the
progressive loss of control of my health. Yes, I do what I can do,
and what I know to do, to take care of myself; however my physical fate is
inevitably in the Father’s hands. It is He alone who provides the breath
of human, physical life, for each of us. At first, it was quite a blow to
see the decay of my body in process, by a heart attack, diabetes, asthma,
etc., and then admit that I needed medications to sustain my physical
life. Oh the vanity of thinking we are in control. However, He has most
effectively used all this to awaken me to the real need of my soul, for me
to be renewed in utter dependence, to trust Him who indwells me as my real
life. I say awaken, because I have not yet come to trust Him immediately
and completely as my overcoming inner life in the “all things” that I
encounter in my life. I am in the new life process that He has begun in
me, and that He will finish (Philip 1:6), but it is in the works.
§
For some, the loss of control of their finances is a
real blow. It can become totally out of our hands that, we lose all.
Again, this is to show us our need of utter dependence upon Him as our
all.
§
It is the loss of control of relationships that are
the most hurtful to our souls. Most of us had well learned how to
“manage” our relationships as we came of age, even as teens. It was
how we learned to navigate social situations. But, it was by my loss of
control to fix relationships in my life, often through my own ignorant and
determined self-asserted doings; and even now mostly at the hands
misunderstandings, even the slander and lies of others, that I
suffer and endure that I might gain trust in Christ, to apprehend Christ
in my soul. Oh, Christ has been in my spirit since 1968 but He has yet to
permeate my entire soul. So you see, even in this mess, the Father is able
to make our failings work for the good, that we might decrease and He
might increase as Lord (controller) of our self-soul.
Oh,
the hurt of desiring relationship and not being permitted to have it with
those who were once close to you, perhaps even family. The Father also
suffers such hurt with those of us, His family, who will not permit Him to
have intimate relationship with us.
Yet
still, we must come to see that in this as in all things,
which are used of God, we might gain Christ in our soul.
It is interesting that our God
and Father Himself has long suffered misunderstanding and even slander at
the hands of the very humans for whom He sent His Son to die (Rom 5:8), to
become the life-giving spirit in them, that He might have a true Father
relationship with them (John 1:12).
The truth is that our Father
suffers even now at the slander of men, who blame Him for the result of
their sin against God and mankind. He suffers when His own god-birthed
children make Him to be a tyrant, slandering Him before the world. They
are hurtful toward each other. He suffers when we would not permit Him to
have relationship with us, choosing rather to have our relationship with
the remnants of the world by our old, dead man of our old self-life, who
was crucified with Christ.
Man says about God, or implies
even by false religious teaching, that God is…
§
God is Unapproachable, when the truth is, God as
Father made a way for unholy mankind and His Holy Self to become “One
spirit” in Christ (1Cor 6:17). God in Christ bore the suffering of
sins ramifications and the just punishment for our sin. Nothing now
separates us from God.
§
God is Mean, meeting out according to the terms of
law.
§
God is as a judge of His children, waiting to pounce
upon them for wrongdoing. In fact He is a loving Father, who may correct
us as a parent for our good, but never as a judge by the law.
§
Always implying, God is not a loving God, Yet,
God is love. (1Jn 4:8, 16)
God is Responsible for the
suffering man endures, as a whole and individuals. Suffering actually
is the result of our own egocentric, self-rule, and selfish self-loving
decisions. Death comes by the outworking of sin and man’s agreement with
sin (1Cor 15:56a). ]
“there
is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death. Proverbs 16:25
Oh the pain our Father also
suffers, for loss of relationship with each of us, refusing to simply be
recipients of His love, as His children.
What does God our Father do
about all this slander toward and misunderstanding of Him?
He endures. He waits. Him who
is love and truth will win out to be seen as truth in the
end. In the end the books will be read, and every man’s works will be “revealed
by fire”(1Cor 3:13, 15), as to what sort they were; and in the very
end and the Book of Life will be opened and our name will be there (Philip.
4:3; Rev. 3:5; Rev. 13:8; Rev. 17:8; Rev. 20:12; Rev. 20:15; Rev. 21:27;
Rev. 22:19)
Enduring? As we read the
stories of the lives of the great characters we see in the Old Testament,
it was in God’s time that they grew to know, love and trust Him,
Abraham, David, Joseph and more. We also grow, from knowing Him not only
our savior from sin, but we grow to know Him in us as our innermost life,
we come to know the One who saves us from the fallen ways of our old,
crucified, self. We come to know the indwelling life of Christ as the new,
overcoming, heavenly seated, life (Rom 5:10) of our Father who loved us
from “before the world began” (Eph 1:4, 2:4).
It
is from God’s acceptance and work through enduring the passing of
“time”, that we see how it is that time works. Seeing this
consoles me. It is by this hope in Christ in us (Col 1:26-27), while we
endure or suffer “the loss of all things”, that we gain Christ
in our soul; then expressed as peace and rest within. I was recently with
a dear friend and sister in the Lord who told me stories of how her family
relationships had been restored by God’s working in the passage of time
in the lives of those by whom she had experienced hurt and unreciprocated
love for many years. <END>