True Apostolic Discipleship — Post 7 of 48
Section II: The Cross and the Covenant
Suffering does not automatically make a person spiritual. But when it is received beneath the faithful hand of God, it can become the place where endurance is formed, illusions are stripped away, and the life of Christ becomes more deeply rooted within us.
No disciple passes through life untouched by suffering.
Some wounds arrive suddenly. Others develop slowly through years of disappointment, loss, physical weakness, betrayal, misunderstanding, unanswered prayer, or responsibilities we never expected to carry.
At such times, believers often ask the same question:
What is this suffering doing to me?
The question is understandable. Pain can make us feel as though something precious is being taken away. We may fear that hardship is damaging our faith, diminishing our usefulness, or leaving us permanently weaker than we were before.
Sometimes real damage has been done. Scripture never asks us to pretend that cruelty is kindness, that abuse is discipline, or that evil becomes good merely because it happened to a Christian. Wounds should not be denied, sin should not be renamed, and those who have suffered should not be silenced with religious slogans.
Yet neither should we surrender suffering entirely to the enemy.
What men mean for evil, God is still able to take into His hands and weave into His purpose. What was intended to crush faith may become the place where faith is purified. What exposed our weakness may become the place where we discover the sufficiency of Christ.
Suffering does not automatically form Christ in us, but suffering surrendered to God can become a school of the Spirit.
We Often Misread the Painful Seasons
When life becomes difficult, we are tempted to interpret God through the pain. If the trial continues, we assume He has forgotten us. If prayer is not answered quickly, we wonder whether He is listening. If our strength fails, we fear that we have disappointed Him and If circumstances deteriorate, we conclude that the promise has failed.
That is why covenant had to come before suffering in this series.
A disciple must know the faithfulness of God before he can interpret the dealings of God correctly. Otherwise, every delay feels like abandonment, every correction like condemnation, and every weakness like proof that God has withdrawn.
But covenant gives the disciple a foundation beneath the trial. God has not changed because circumstances changed. His promise has not failed because the path became painful and His fatherhood has not been cancelled because His hand became difficult to understand.
The believer may not know what God is doing, but he knows who God is. That knowledge will not remove the pain but it will keep the pain from becoming lord.
Not All Suffering Comes From the Same Source
Here, we have to be careful.
Some suffering comes because we live in a fallen world. Bodies weaken. Accidents happen. Disease strikes. Creation groans beneath the bondage of corruption.
Some suffering comes through the sin of others. People betray, oppress, abuse, slander, deceive, and abandon.
Some suffering comes through our own choices. Foolishness has consequences. Pride closes doors. Bitterness poisons relationships. Neglect produces loss.
Some suffering comes through direct opposition to righteousness. Those who speak truth, resist compromise, and remain faithful to Christ will sometimes be rejected for it.
And some painful experiences are the chastening of a loving Father who refuses to leave His children immature.
These are not identical, and we should not speak as though they are. God is not the author of cruelty and He does not tempt men to sin. He never approves of injustice just as He never asks us to call darkness light.
Yet His sovereignty is greater than every source of suffering. Nothing enters the believer’s life beyond His knowledge, and nothing is so broken that He cannot work within it.
Joseph said to the brothers who sold him:
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.” Genesis 50:20
Joseph did not say their evil was good, he said God’s purpose was greater than their evil. That is quite significant because the disciple does not have to deny what happened in order to believe that God can redeem it.
The Grain Must Fall Into the Ground
Jesus spoke of His own death through the image of a grain of wheat:
“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” John 12:24
The grain disappears beneath the soil. To anyone watching from above, it may look as though the seed has been buried and lost, but beneath the surface, life is breaking open. The shell that once preserved the seed must yield so that the life within it may emerge.
Much of God’s formation happens in this hidden way. The disciple may feel buried. A season of usefulness may appear to end. Plans may collapse. Strength may diminish. Recognition may disappear. The future may become uncertain. From the outside, very little seems to be happening, but God is not always doing His deepest work where others can see it. There are times when He is not enlarging our platform. He is enlarging our capacity.
It is not God’s goal to make us more impressive, He is making us more true. He is also not interested in increasing what we can display, but what is more important is that He is deepening what we can carry.
The buried season may not be the end of fruitfulness, it may be its beginning.
Suffering Exposes What Prosperity Conceals
There are things we do not know about ourselves until pressure comes. We may believe we trust God until we lose control of the outcome. We may also think we are patient until the delay becomes personal. We may imagine we are free from the approval of men until we are misunderstood as well as considering ourselves forgiving until we are deeply wounded.
We may think our faith rests in Christ when much of our confidence has actually rested in health, money, reputation, relationships, giftedness, or predictable circumstances.
Suffering does not create every weakness it reveals. No, more often than not it exposes what prosperity allowed us to hide. And this exposure can feel destructive, but it may be one of the most merciful works of God.
The Father reveals the false supports before they collapse beneath a greater weight. He shows us where self-confidence still rules and brings hidden fears into the light. He uncovers the expectations we had quietly placed upon Him.
We assumed that obedience would guarantee ease and we thought faithfulness would protect us from misunderstanding. We even believed usefulness would preserve us from obscurity.
Then suffering comes, and our unspoken bargains with God are exposed. This is painful, but it is not pointless. God is delivering us from a faith built upon conditions.
Jesus Learned Obedience Through Suffering
Hebrews gives us a statement that must be handled reverently:
“Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” Hebrews 5:8
Jesus was never disobedient. There was no rebellion in Him to be corrected.
Yet as the incarnate Son, He walked obedience through the full cost of human experience. He did not obey the Father only where obedience was pleasant. He obeyed in hunger, rejection, misunderstanding, loneliness, Gethsemane, and the cross.
He learned obedience experientially and the will of God was not a theory to Him. He walked it to the uttermost.
This is part of the formation of every disciple. We may know that obedience is right, but suffering teaches us what obedience costs. It is easy to speak of trust before the diagnosis, forgiveness before betrayal, patience before long delay, and surrender before God touches the thing we most want to preserve.
Suffering brings doctrine into experience. It carries truth from the page into the life. It is where the “rubber meets the road.”
Tribulation Worketh Patience
Paul writes:
“And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.” Romans 5:3–4
Paul does not say that tribulation feels glorious, he says believers can glory in it because they know something about what God can produce through it.
Tribulation worketh patience.
Biblical patience is more than waiting quietly. It is steadfast endurance, the ability to remain beneath the hand of God without throwing away faith.
Patience then produces experience. The word carries the sense of proven character. Faith has passed through pressure and has not been found empty.
Then proven character produces hope.
This is not the optimism of someone who has never suffered. It is the hope of someone who has discovered that God remains faithful inside the furnace.
Before the trial, we believed God could keep us. After the trial, we know something of how He does. That knowledge cannot be gained merely through instruction, it must be lived.
The Difference Between Formation and Hardening
Suffering can soften a person, but it can also harden him.
One believer passes through pain and becomes gentler, more patient, and more compassionate. Another passes through similar pain and becomes suspicious, bitter, controlling, or withdrawn.
The difference is not simply the severity of the trial, it concerns what happens within the heart. Pain that is hidden can become resentment and pain that is worshipped can become identity. As well, pain that is used to justify sin can become bondage. But pain brought into the presence of God can become a place of transformation.
The Psalms show us that biblical faith does not suppress grief. David complained, questioned, wept, and poured out his confusion before the Lord.
He did not pretend, but neither did he make a permanent covenant with despair. Again and again, his lament turned toward remembrance:
“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” Lamentations 3:21
The suffering disciple must learn to speak honestly without allowing pain to become the final interpreter of God. He may say, “This hurts,” or “I do not understand,” or even “How long, O Lord?”
But he must also learn to say:
“Yet will I trust him.” Job 13:15
Formation does not mean we feel no grief, it means grief does not become our master.
God Does Not Waste Weakness
Paul prayed three times for the thorn in his flesh to depart. The answer was not the answer he initially wanted:
“My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
God did not tell Paul that weakness was imaginary, He gave Paul grace within it. The thorn remained, but it no longer had the same meaning.
Paul had seen it only as a hindrance. God revealed that it was also a safeguard. It kept him from being exalted above measure and made room for the power of Christ to rest upon him.
This does not mean every sickness must be accepted without prayer, treatment, or resistance. Paul prayed for removal and scripture contains many examples of healing and deliverance. But Paul learned that the power of God is not limited to removing weakness, sometimes it is revealed by sustaining us within it.
The flesh believes usefulness depends upon strength. God may choose to show that usefulness depends upon grace. The disciple who has learned this no longer despises every limitation. He asks a deeper question:
How can the life of Christ be manifested here?
Brokenness Is Not the Same as Destruction
The language of brokenness can be mishandled.
Some leaders have used it to justify control, humiliation, or the crushing of personality. They teach believers that any resistance to spiritual abuse proves they are unbroken.
That is not the cross. God does not destroy the person He created.
He does not erase personality, conscience, discernment, or legitimate boundaries. He does not form disciples by making them dependent upon controlling men. Divine brokenness is not the destruction of personhood, it is the breaking of self-rule.
God does not erase Peter’s boldness. He purifies it. He does not remove Paul’s strength of mind. He brings it under Christ. He does not destroy John’s passion. He transforms the son of thunder into an apostle of love.
Grace does not produce clones.
The cross removes what obstructs the life of Christ while redeeming what God Himself placed within the person.
A broken horse is useful because its strength has come under the rider’s hand, not because its legs have been crushed. So it is with the disciple, God does not seek to eliminate strength, He brings strength under His government.
Suffering Enlarges Compassion
Those who have never been deeply wounded can speak carelessly to those who are suffering. They offer quick answers, quote true verses without tenderness and assume every trial can be solved by a correction in attitude.
But the believer who has wept through a long night learns another language.
Paul writes:
“Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.” 2 Corinthians 1:4
God’s comfort is not given merely for our relief, it becomes part of our ministry to others. The person who has been comforted by God knows how to sit beside pain without immediately trying to explain it away. He knows that presence may speak before words and that tears are not unbelief. He also knows that hope can be real even when questions remain unanswered.
Suffering can enlarge the heart and it can make a disciple less impressed with appearances and more attentive to hidden burdens. Suffering can teach him to recognize pain beneath anger, fear beneath control, and loneliness beneath withdrawal.
Such compassion is not sentimental weakness, it is the life of Christ.
The Treasure in Earthen Vessels
Paul describes believers as earthen vessels carrying divine treasure:
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7
The vessel is fragile however the treasure is not.
Paul continues:
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8–9
Notice the honesty.
Troubled—but not crushed beyond hope.
Perplexed—but not surrendered to despair.
Persecuted—but not abandoned.
Cast down—but not destroyed.
Apostolic faith does not deny the first half of each sentence, it declares that the first half is not the whole sentence. The disciple may be cast down, but because Christ lives within him, cast down does not have to become destroyed.
This is suffering under covenant. The pressure is real but the keeping power of God is greater.
What the Trial Is Producing
During suffering, we usually ask when it will end and that is a legitimate prayer, but we should also ask what God desires to form through it.
Is He teaching us patience, or loosening our grip upon control? Is He exposing a false identity, teaching us to receive help, delivering us from the need to appear strong or is He forming endurance that will later steady others?
The answers may not come quickly.
We should not force an explanation for every sorrow. Some things will remain mysteries until we see the Lord. But even when we cannot explain the trial, we can yield ourselves to the Father within it.
Peter writes:
“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” 1 Peter 5:10
Suffering is “a while,” glory is eternal. And between suffering and glory, God is forming something. He is busy perfecting, establishing, strengthening and settling.
The disciple may enter the trial asking only for escape but he may also leave it with roots he did not possess before.
Scarred, but Not Ruined
The risen Christ still bore wounds, the scars did not testify that death had won, they testified that death had been conquered.
There are experiences that leave marks upon us and we may never become exactly as we were before. But perhaps returning to what we were is not always God’s highest purpose. Perhaps He intends to bring us through as someone deeper, gentler, less self-reliant, more discerning, and more fully dependent upon Christ.
The scar may remain, but the scar does not have to speak only of the wound. In Christ, it can also speak of healing.
It can say:
I was struck, but not abandoned.
I was shaken, but not uprooted.
I was cast down, but not destroyed.
I walked through fire, and God met me there.
That is not damage having the final word, that is redemption.
Under the Faithful Hand of God
Suffering is not good merely because it hurts and pain does not sanctify automatically. Likewise, hardship does not make every person wise. But beneath the faithful hand of God, suffering can become formation.
It can expose what is false, deepen what is true, break the rule of self without destroying the person, produce patience, proven character, compassion, discernment, and hope. It can teach the disciple that Christ is sufficient when every lesser support gives way.
The Father does not promise that His children will never be wounded, He promises that nothing can separate them from His love. And even though He does not promise that they will understand every path, He does promise that He will never leave them. He never once promised that the vessel will never be pressed and in fact what He is doing is placing treasure within that pressure cannot destroy.
The disciple may suffer, but in Christ, suffering need not have the last word.
“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
Affliction is real, but the word tells us that it is working an eternal weight of glory, and the glory God is forming will outlast the pain.
Coming Next
Post 8 — Obedience: The First Mark of Love
True obedience is not the fearful effort of a servant trying to earn acceptance. It is the response of a heart that has encountered the faithfulness of God, passed beneath the cross, and learned to love the will of the Father.