Hope Channel

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2019: Family Seasons

Sebastien Braxton

Justin Kim

Jonathan Walter

Callie Williams

01-The Rhythms of Life

Sikhu Daco

Israel Ramos

02-The Choices We Make

03-Preparing for Change

04-When Alone

05-Wise Words for Families

06-The Royal Love Song

07-Keys to Family Unity

08-Season of Parenting

09-Times of Loss

10-Little Times of Trouble

11-Families of Faith

12-What Have They Seen in Your House?

13-Turning Hearts in the End Time

Do Christians suffer less than unbelievers out there or do they suffer more?

Find out more on this episode of Inverse.

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

There's some questions that Christians often have to wrestle with.

Do believers have more benefits believing in God, or are there more suffering and more burdens as believers?

This is the question we're going to raise on this episode of Inverse Weed.

Father in heaven, thank you that in the Bible we find the truth about reality as we live it and we pray father that today as we suffer as we study this Topic of suffering and loss that you'd be with us in Jesus name.

Amen Sebastian we're gonna be in Philippians chapter 3, verse 8, and we're looking at this entire season on the concept of families, and families are often the environment and platform for suffering and for loss, and for a lot of these things.

What is a good verse we can start with in chapter 3?

So we'll start in verse 7 and we'll read 7 and 8.

But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Yet indeed I also counted all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord For whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ Kelly what's going on there?

I know I know immediate context seems a little bit weird, but help us flush that out.

Yes, I think a good way is to kind of break down the ending part of verse 8.

So it talks about, yeah, all these things, loss, excellence, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.

So these good things that he listed previously, I count them lost, that, meaning this is the purpose, that I may gain Christ.

And this idea that all these good things that he accomplished or accomplished in him, he doesn't count them as good anymore because he instead exchanges them for the knowledge and this closeness with Jesus Christ.

When you when you start reading the first part of chapter 3, Paul's gonna give us kind of an insight into what his family background is, what his pedigree is, and he's talking about the fact that he's a Jew, that he's like the Jew of the Jews, that he's like the best of the best of the best of the Jews and so he's actually you know we're getting a picture into his genealogy and who he is as an individual and sometimes you know you have this element of the family dynamic of where you come from and this defines you.

And Paul said that all these definitions that are attributed to me because of the family that I come from or the things that I've done, when you come face to face with who Jesus is, it's not only is it nothing, not only is it 0, but it's actually negative, you know, and so I think that's what it's saying.

And I think it's so profound what Paul is presenting to us is the idea that by contrast, the cherished value and preciousness of Jesus and knowing him as a person puts every single thing that we could possibly lose in its proper valuable place.

So it's like, yes, normally you remove Jesus from the equation and man losing my health and losing my life and losing my family is devastating but for the person who knows Jesus this is such a prized possession that I'm actually already considered these things as loss just so I could gain Jesus and as long as I have Jesus me suffering the loss of these things and my desire to serve and to submit my life to Christ helps me to understand that yes, it hurts, but it doesn't hurt as much because I have this precious thing.

And that through this precious thing, I can actually regain anything that I've lost.

So let me ask the question I asked in the opener, do Christians suffer more or do believers suffer less?

I think you know there's there's aspects of the Christian life that you suffer more right because also you're on the opposite side of the devil, devil hates you therefore the devil will do that thing to you, you're a target, so there's persecution, there's health loss, there's trust loss, there's all these other kinds of loss, but you gain Christ.

And so that's like, okay, well, someone who's on the same side as the devil, they don't suffer.

So I think sometimes the suffering looks the same, but it's experienced differently.

And sometimes it looks completely different because suffering as you're the target of the devil, but you can find purpose and you can find love and security in Christ, versus the devil's not directly attacking you, but all of the joy and all of the completion and beauty of life is sapped because you're not connected to God.

And I would even add to that, you know, that Christians and non-Christians or believers and non-believers pretty much suffer equally.

I mean, you could find a Christian family that has not been touched by cancer or disease, and then you could find 1 that has.

And you can find the same thing among non-believing families as well.

And I think that suffering doesn't have favorites, right?

I think the difference is for a Christian, when suffering does come to me, I know that it's because God has allowed it, because I'm in Christ, which gives it a completely different meaning, right?

Like Romans 8 28, that, you know, all things work together for good to them that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.

So because I love God and because I know Jesus, these things that come to me are the right problems, right?

Because God is only going to allow them for the purpose of our relationship to grow, for the purpose of my blessing, for the purpose of removing a hindrance or a sin in my life, versus for the unbeliever, their suffering is just at the mercy of the circumstance.

It's not necessarily gonna help you develop, you know, something.

It may be that in the judgment of the whole world and all the information is just revealed, that we'll actually be able to quantify who has suffered much.

But I think 1 thing that I'm extrapolating from your 2 comments is that 1 thing for sure is because you believe in God does not mean that all suffering is eliminated.

I would say that a Christian suffers more and the reason why I would say that is because a Christian by taking upon the title of a Christian you're essentially calling upon yourself to be tested.

You need to test that, that identity that you have, right?

If I say I'm a Christian, I have to test that.

And so the issue is that love has restrictions upon it, And that's just the bottom line.

So if you really have the love of Christ, or if you have love for someone, actually that love brings with it restrictions.

And if you consider these restrictions suffering, then it brings more suffering.

For example, If I were to give people things that I have to do because I'm married to my spouse, right?

People would think like I would never want to be married.

You know, I have to get up and I have to do certain things because my wife likes me to do them.

I have the garbage every Tuesday morning because she Monday's boy Monday.

Not just sure that she's not just taking out the trash.

But I'm talking about, I'm talking about dressing a certain way, right?

I'm talking about like, I have to get a haircut, I have to shave, I have to all these different things.

So now if we were to talk about the different things that I have to do to please my wife, then Someone that hasn't experienced love or someone that doesn't love my wife would see that as suffering Yeah, it would see that as they would see that as a restriction and so love by nature has restrictions, you know And so it's the same thing with Christ Christ is bound because of love He's bound and that he cannot do certain things that Satan or the devil would do.

He's restricted and so therefore he has to suffer and so I think that the Christian who takes upon them the name of Christ and Genuinely loves the way that Christ has called us to love is gonna suffer more than anyone else because they're being that call is being tested wouldn't you wouldn't you say that is like a perspective issue, right?

Because I feel like your point almost makes me think of it in a different light, which is the fact that what you're doing for your wife is not suffering, but I perceive it as suffering.

So for you, you're not saying, well, I do these things for my wife and you know, ho hum, I'm suffering more because I love my wife, but on the outside I'm saying like, man, that's suffering.

I think it's both because there are some things that you don't want to do, as far as your feelings go, but you still do anyway because of the principle of love.

Now, and then I think when you take that even a step further to our relationship with Christ, it's genuine suffering.

You know, you're going through, when you're testing the call of Christianity, you're genuinely suffering.

Well, this is a philosophical argument, I don't know, like I said, it may be at the judgment, we'll be able to quantify and be able to objectively say that, but there are different perspectives, different existential forms of suffering.

But let me get to the point of my question.

Is we're not here to debate who's suffering more.

But the point is there's many people who are suffering.

Going back to our original verse, I think whatever...

Yeah, whichever camp you're in, the Sebastian camp or the Israel camp...

Thank you so much for always providing nice...

Series

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2019: Family Seasons

09-Times of Loss

Transcript

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