For a seminary class I am currently taking entitled, Sickness and Suffering, we are required to read D. A. Carson's book, "How Long O Lord - Reflections on Suffering and Evil". If you have not read it I strongly encourage you to purchase it and spend some focused time absorbing it's content. One of his initial points is that we are far better suited to endure in our darkest days when we are prepared theologically, than when the Lord's hand is heavy upon us and we scarcely can recall what the Bible says about suffering and evil.
One of the most striking sections for me to read was from chapter 5, entitled, The Suffering People of God. Toward the end, he turns to address the unique call of suffering upon the Christian leader. As I have recently stepped back into a position of leadership in the local church, his thought here were particularly sobering. I'll quote him at length as it is so rich:
What we find is that there is a theological tie between suffering and Christian leadership. In fact at least three connections are discernible. The first is not peculiar to the New Testament, but is common to both Testaments. It is simply a particular manifestation of what was discussed in the first section of this chapter: suffering tempers believers and is part of God's discipline. Whether we think of Moses' banishment for forty years to the back side of the desrt, or of Paul's exhortation to Timothy to endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, the assumption is the same: if God disciplines all his children, then the leaders of those children must not expect any less, and can frequently count on a litle more. Many a great preacher has suffered prolonged affliction, doubltess part of the Lord's merciful tempering of character. C. H. Spurgeon, for instance, in addition to various chronic ailments, fought deep bouts of depression all his life.
The second link turns on the fact that agggressive witness in an opposing world is likely to bring down peculiar pressures on those who lead the church in such witness. Under dictatorial regimes, pastors and evalngelists are the ones most frequently incarcerated and killed. To read Paul's list of suffering in 2 Cor. 11:23 reminds us of this point. According to tradition, eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred. Genuine Christian leaders do not lead from the rear.
The third link is more remarkable yet. The most mature Christian leaders want to absorb an additional share of sufferings so that their flocks may correspondingly be spared some suffering. In this, they imitate Christ. "I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's affliction, for the sake of his body, which is the church" (Col 1:24). Elsewhere Paul writes: "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abondoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for the Jesus' sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you"(2 Cor. 4:8-12).
Now the connections are clearer. The more the leaders are afflicted with weakness, suffering, perplexity, and persecution, the more it is eveident that their vitality is nothing other than the life of Jesus. This has enormously positive spiritual effects on the rest of the church. The leader 's death means the church's life. This is why the best Christian leadership cannot simply be appointed. It is forged by God himself in the fires of suffering, taught in the school of tears. There are not shortcuts. (pages 80,81)
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