Elisabeth Elliot: Malcolm Muggeridge said, "Suppose you eliminated suffering. What a dreadful place the world would be! He?s bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered."

Lisa Barry: Now there?s a spin on suffering I haven?t heard before?the fact that humans would go from bad to worse if it weren?t for suffering. Can tragedy really have a correcting influence? Today on Gateway to Joy, Elisabeth Elliot continues talking about the purpose of pain and the benefits it yields in this earthly life. Whether you?re suffering right now or are merely seeking to understand this issue better, there is food for thought for everyone today. We?ll pick up where we left off yesterday as we return now to "The Cove," where Elisabeth is talking about the sufferings of Christ. That?s coming up next on this Tuesday edition of Gateway to Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: Redemption is accomplished only through agony and death. You remember that when Jesus was hanging on the cross, He was taunted. He was shouted at. He was derided. One of the things that they said to Him was, "He saved others; Himself He could not save." It was a term of derision, but of course it was true. He could not have saved you and me and Himself. It had to be one or the other. He saved others; Himself He could not save.

You and I, when we find ourselves in trouble have the audacity to say, "Why me, Lord?" If we just quit thinking about ourselves and looking inside and feeling terribly sorry for ourselves and having a little pity party?if we would just look up to that "old rugged cross, so despised by the world, which has a wondrous attraction for me. For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above to bear it to dark Calvary."

I must give up my right to myself, take up the cross and follow. Follow means one step at a time from now until the Lord takes us home. There is no escape. There will be small sufferings at least for all of us. Some of us would certainly say, "Well, compared to so and so or compared to the things that I hear about, I?ve never suffered." I feel that way myself. I feel as though I am in kindergarten compared to the sufferings that I hear of that other people are enduring.

Well, Jeremiah has something to say about those smaller sufferings. He says in Jeremiah 12:5, "If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?"

Amy Carmichael, that great soldier of that cross, a missionary in India?she was there for 52 years. I think it was 52 years or 56 years, without a furlough. She never went back to Ireland. She wrote this poem, one that was very much loved by Jim Elliot and me. I remember Jim Elliot going to another college campus in order to take the message of overseas missionary work to college students. We were all college students, and I happened to be one of a group that went along. Jim did the preaching. I can still hear his voice ringing out these words that Amy Carmichael had written that he had memorized. You can imagine how impressed I was to find out that there was a man on that campus who actually knew about Amy Carmichael and memorized some of her poems. But this is it.

"Hast thou no scar? No hidden scar on foot or side or hand? I hear thee sung as mighty in the land. I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star. Hast thou no scar? No scar.

Hast thou no wound? Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent, leaned Me against a tree to die, and rent by ravening beasts that compassed Me. I swooned.

Hast thou no wound? No wound. No scar. Yet as the Master must the servant be, and pierced are the feet that follow Me. But thine are whole. Can he have followed far who has no wound or scar?"

Suffering is a gift. This is point two. How can we possibly call it a gift? Before we launch into that, let?s look at Isaiah 53 for a catalog of the sufferings of Christ. Verse 3: "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering." Verse 4: "Stricken by God, smitten by Him and afflicted, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, oppressed and afflicted, led like a lamb to the slaughter."

Verse 10 is the one that staggers me. "It was the Lord?s will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer." It was the Lord?s will to crush His pure, spotless Lamb. And we complain? Jesus said, "The cup that My Father has given Me." What was He referring to? What was in that cup? What were the contents? Suffering. Unimaginable suffering. Yet He said, "This is the cup that the Father has given Me."

So I can only conclude that it was a gift. If it was something given, it was a gift, wasn?t it? It was the Father?s gift, given to Jesus Christ through the hands of wicked men. So we have to balance both of these things. We?ve got the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man to choose wickedness.

Again, I have to quote from my second husband, because I?m not a theologian and I?m not a philosopher. But he had the same questions of course thrown at him every single year when he taught in the seminary. This was always the question: "What about the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man to choose?" He would say, "You drive in a stake over here on the sovereignty of God and you drive in another stake over here that man is free to choose. You?re not going to get these together. That?s all I can tell you."

It says in Acts 2:23, "This man"?referring to Jesus?"was handed over to you by God?s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to a cross." And there we have those two things?handed over by God?s set purpose into the hands of wicked men.

Acts 3:15 is another one. "You killed the author of life, but God raised Him from the dead." Paul said, "I am always being given over to death for Jesus? sake." Always being given over to death.

I think the further we walk with the Lord and the more keenly we tune our ears to what He is trying to say to us, the more we?re going to recognize the tiny ways in which He is asking us to suffer. Ways in which, as followers of Jesus, the Lamb that was slain, we ourselves are given over to death for Jesus? sake.

He says, "May I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." So that cross Paul recognized as a gift. Given over to death for Jesus? sake. Given, he said, not only to believe, but also to suffer. Paul wrote that in prison. Philippians 1:29: "Unto you it is given on the behalf of Christ not only to believe, but also to suffer."

Think of the love of our Heavenly Father, who gives us the privilege of suffering, in tiny ways, in infinitesimal ways, in some cases, where we would be just embarrassed to death to tell anybody that we would label that thing suffering. Yet God, with His exquisite understanding, knows that we do suffer things which we would not even want to admit to other people.

Paul also said?he certainly had the most powerful things to say about this subject. In Colossians 1:24, he said, "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ?s afflictions." Now I cannot begin to explain to you how in the world a human being can possibly fill up in his human flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ?s afflictions, but there is a deep mystery there. As long as people are suffering, that is proof that something is still lacking in Christ?s afflictions. He calls you and me to fill that up?to fill up in our own flesh, as Paul did.

Malcolm Muggeridge said, "Suppose you eliminated suffering. What a dreadful place the world would be! Because everything that corrects the tendency of man to feel overimportant and overpleased with himself would disappear. He?s bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered." Doesn?t that sound like Muggeridge? I love it.

Now you remember that the Apostle Paul went through all kinds of trials and tribulations of a very major sort. Floggings and imprisonment and shipwrecks and nakedness and peril and sword and actually being lowered over a wall in a basket, of all ignominy. I never heard anything worse than that. And he gives us several catalogs.

But then it was right after that long list, which is in 2 Corinthians 11, that Paul is given something very tiny that does bother him. It was called a thorn?a greater test and a much smaller thing than the floggings and the shipwrecks. So Paul did just what you and I would do, and prayed that God would take it away. He prayed three times that God would remove it. The Lord?s answer to him was "My grace is all you need." In other words, "You do not need the removal of the thorn. You need My grace, and that is all you need." You and I have got to learn to accept His wisdom.

Lisa Barry: I hope you?re getting as much out of this series as I am. But as always, there?s a lot packed into this 15-minute time slot, and it?s hard to remember everything. For that reason, this might be a great time to purchase the series for yourself. The title to ask for is CROWNED BECAUSE HE SUFFERED.

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We?ll go back to the Cove tomorrow, so make it a point to join us then for the next Gateway to Joy.