Confrontation and Suffering: Realities that Believers Face

The Gospel and the Cosmic War and Experienced Sufferings.

Two words most Americans despise: confrontation and suffering. Neither confrontation or suffering are two things people like to experience. People intentionally avoid confrontation and cringe at the thought of suffering. Many believers fail to realize the gospel brings about both confrontation and suffering. Following Jesus magnetically attracts confrontation and suffering.

The gospel may bring peace in the inner life. The gospel may bring peace to a family struggling for marital survival. The gospel will bring peace in the afterlife. However, here and now the gospel brings division, war, confrontation, finger pointing, and strife. One cannot escape this reality. Many times these points of confrontation come from both inside and outside the church. Nominal believers, from a guilty conscience, will rail against and murmur negativity towards those who strive to live out the gospel in a radical posture. Those outside the church, like Bill Maher, will many times attack radical believers and paint them as Jesus freaks, close-minded, spiritual buffoons, who use religion as a crutch.

There are also three more primary sources of confrontation believers will experience: Satan, the world, and flesh. Do not think for a second that once someone believes in Christ and commits their life to follow him that Satan will not have anything to say about it. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy any work of God. He desires to thwart, stop, and detour God's plan. Also the world and the flesh are antagonists against the children of God. The world and the flesh live contrary to the laws and ways of God. Every single day we are in direct confrontation with both these powers confronting us to live contrary to the will of God.

Not only does the gospel breed confrontation, it also brings about suffering. The bible explicitly tells believers that the cost of following Christ will lead to suffering. The ultimate experience of suffering is martyrdom. While believers living in the Western world, particular America, have not been subject to this type of suffering, they must realize living out the gospel, in its entirety, can lead to other forms of suffering. Such as: family estrangement, loss of job, loss of friends, giving up certain things out of priority for Christ and the gospel (lifestyle, friends, substances, extra-circular activities, etc.), and mischaracterizations. In any case, suffering exists in life, but also manifests itself to those who live out the gospel in the pursuit of following Christ.



What can we conclude from this two areas of distaste for many believers today?

The gospel is not for wimps or sissies. If you want to follow Christ you must man up, woman up, and pony up. Many Americans are simply accustomed to other people fighting their battles whether it be the military, government, mommy or daddy. Comfort, security, and ease defines many modern Americans. This makes it difficult to adapt to suffering when it comes in any form. Believers are caught up in a cosmic battle for the souls of men and women, but most importantly for the glory of God. Confrontation is a reality that we must deal with in a Christocentric gospel-centered way. And suffering is a reality we must accept and with God's grace and power deal with it.