Son of Suffering
We sang a worship song at church that stuck in my head for weeks. The compelling words resounded in my heart and put me to sleep at night and rose with me in the morning.
Blood and tears
How can it be?
There’s a God who weeps.
There’s a God who bleeds.
Oh, praise the One
Who would reach for me
Hallelujah to the Son of suffering!
It became a much-needed attitude adjustment to my outlook. Sadly, it’s usually during Passion Week that this truth becomes more imbedded in our hearts. And then we quickly forget the price that was paid for us, especially when weighed down by one of life’s many trials.
I am on my church’s prayer chain, so I receive emails almost daily of some of the hardest circumstances I can imagine. The gamut covers from the youngest to the elderly and from physical, emotional, and mental trials. It can be wearying to the soul and make you feel more pressed in an ever-increasing pressurized world.
Suffering can drown us in significant ways if we give in to its emotional pull, then we will ultimately lose perspective and try to carry the burden on our own, which we were never meant to do. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11: 28-29). Nothing can drain a person of their energy quicker than that which pierces the heart. That is why Christ beckons us to Himself.
I have found one never-changing fact that helps me amid tough circumstances. And that is realigning my heart with an eternal perspective and to remind myself that my God was known as a “man of suffering,” Jesus Christ paid my debt on the cross to insure me eternal life in heaven.
Isaiah 53:12 says, “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
He makes clear in this verse that He will be “delivered into the hands of men and they will kill Him”(Mark 9:31). This action of being “delivered into the “hands of men” displays that Jesus perfectly exemplified the Suffering Servant from the book of Isaiah.
Jesus wants us to understand that while He suffered to save us, He also uses suffering to teach us. You will not be the same after suffering–if you understand your personal suffering serves a purpose, which opens heaven’s window to learn more of God’s character and provision. What a privilege that is if you can hold on long enough to see it.
It may be hard to hear at this moment, especially if you are currently confronted with debilitating circumstances. The truth of the matter is that He takes part in our suffering with us. He is with you; He is acquainted with our sorrows — lean into that principle and discover His matchless support.
He allows the pain to perfect us into going deeper in our relationship with Him. God has special revelations of his glory for his suffering children.
Job says it best when he says to God, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee” (Job 42:5). While Job had been a godly upright man, pleasing to God in every way, he knew the difference in his relationship with God in prosperity and suffering was between hearing and seeing Him.
He’s a God who weeps; He’s a God who bleeds. Can you see Him?
