Thoughts on Circumstances and Sufferings

The next chapter for our Ladies Study is Lies Women Believe About Circumstances. I came across some powerful quotes in this section that I felt led to share.

[When we say I wouldn't be...if he/she/they didn't/weren't....] we are saying someone or something made me the way I am. We feel that if our circumstance were different - our upbringing, our environment, the people around us - we would be different. We would be more patient, more loving, more content, easier to live with.

If our circumstances make us what we are, then we are all victims. And that's just what the Enemy wants us to believe. Because if we are victims, then we aren't responsible - we can't help the way we are. But God says we are responsible - not for the failures of others, but for our own responses and lives. The Truth is, our
circumstances do not make us what we are. They merely reveal what we are.

I just love how Nancy Leigh DeMoss sums this up. It is so true. And it is so easy to fall into the cycle of blame shifting. The culture seems to continually feed us lies about how victimized we are in all areas. I know there are true victims among us, but too often we (I) blame my sinful response on someone else's behavior (be it right or wrong). One example she gives in her book is the mother of twins who claims, in exasperation, that she was never an impatient person until she had twins. The truth is, that she was always an impatient person. She just didn't realize how impatient she was until God introduced the circumstances to show her what she was really like... and I love this part.... so He could change her.
Nancy goes on...

The Truth is, if we are not content within our present circumstances, we are not likely to be happy in any other set of circumstances.

Then she quotes Elizabeth Prentiss (I love her writing!) who wrote to a friend upon learning that she and her husband were leaving all they knew behind and moving from New York to Chicago in the midst of her own health concerns.

We want to know no will but God's in this question...The experience of the past winter would impress upon me the fact that place and position have next to nothing to do with happiness; that we can be wretched in a palace, radiant in a dungeon...perhaps this heartbreaking is exactly what we need to remind us... that we are pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

Then of course we can't forget Paul. In Philippians 4:11-12 he reminds us that "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances, I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want."
The next section goes into suffering. Does this sound like a dismal, depressing book? It really isn't, trust me! Arthur Mathews served as a missionary in China and was one of the last to leave in 1953. He wrote this powerful stuff:

We tend to look at the circumstances of life in terms of what they may do to our cherished hopes and convenience, and we shape our decisions and reactions accordingly. When a problem threatens, we rush to God, not to seek his perspective, but to ask him to deflect the trouble. Our self-concern takes priority over whatever it is that God might be trying to do through the trouble...
An escapist generation reads security, prosperity, and physical well-being as evidences of God's blessing. Thus when he puts suffering and affliction into our hands, we misread his signals and misinterpret his intentions.

Wow. That just blows me away because I see it is so true. It is all around us and even in me more often than I care to admit. Don't we read into suffering just as Job's friends did? Too often we rush to judgement against God for allowing such things, but how often do we (I) go to him seeking wisdom, perspective and instruction through the suffering?
Just a few more closing quotes from Nancy:

God is far more interested in our holiness than in our immediate, temporal happiness - He knows that apart from being holy, we can never be truly happy. The Truth is, it is impossible to be holy apart from suffering. Even Jesus Himself, during His years here on earth, was in some unexplainable way made "perfect through suffering" (Hebrews 2:10) and "although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8). We say we want to be like Jesus, and then we resist the very instrument God chooses to fulfill that desire.
...there is a redemptive, sanctifying fruit that cannot be produced in our lives apart from suffering. "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps" (I Peter 2:21)
True joy is not the absence of pain but the sanctifying, sustaining presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain. "The God of all Grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast." (I Peter 5:10)

I can't say why all this especially touched me as I studied this week. It isn't anything exactly new and unique to me, but it does seem to be a great reminder for me. I struggle quite often with seeing others in similar places that seem to have little if any suffering. I think it was Elizabeth Elliot that said suffering is any lack of something desired. I sometimes feel as though we are the only ones that go with unfulfilled desires. Perhaps the reminder for me is: rather than comparing my sufferings to other people, I ought to compare my sufferings to Christ's as I take up my own cross and follow Him (Matthew 10: 38).