A Love Tap From Our Heavenly Father
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
2 Corinthians 4:17
Christ is the answer to suffering.
Sickness, sorrow, and sin all are the result of the fall of man in the Garden. Sickness is a by-product of transgression; but that does not mean that Christians—while forgiven—are never afflicted. The Bible says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).
Job was afflicted; Paul had an infirmity; Lazarus was sick; and good people throughout history have been promised no immunity from disease and infirmity. Scores of people write every month and ask me, “Why do Christians suffer?” Rest assured that there is a reason for Christian people being afflicted. One reason why God’s people suffer, according to the Bible, is that it is a disciplinary, chastening, and molding process.
The Bible says, “Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee” (Deuteronomy 8:5).
Again the Scripture says, “Blessed is the man whom thou chasteneth, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law” (Psalm 94:12).
Again the Bible says, “For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Proverbs 3:12).
From these Scriptures we learn that the chastening of affliction is a step in the process of our full and complete development. It can sometimes be a love tap from our Heavenly Father to show us that we have wandered from the pathway of duty.
In the last essay he wrote before he died, great Christian apologist C. S. Lewis said, “We have no right to happiness; only an obligation to do our duty.” Of course it is in our duty that happiness comes. Try it.
Our Father and our God, I accept Your discipline and correction with gratitude. You are my eternal Father, and I am Your loving child. Help me to grow spiritually with wisdom and grace to be like Jesus, Your Son and my brother, in whom I pray. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).