고통이 나에게 하나님의 주권을 가르쳐줬습니다("Suffering Taught Me the Sovereignty of God" )

"Suffering Taught Me the Sovereignty of God"

(고통이 나에게 하나님의 주권을 가르쳐줬습니다)

이 월요일 아침, 하나님의 말씀을 묵상하면서 말씀 묵상을 나누다가 옆에 있던 사랑하는 아내가 부엌에 가서 빵하고 오랜지 쥬스를 갔다 줘서 먹고 마시면서 이 밑에 글을 읽게 되었습니다. "Suffering Taught Me the Sovereignty of God"(고통이 나에게 하나님의 주권을 가르쳐줬습니다)란 제목이 제 관심을 끌었습니다. 이 글을 읽어 내려가면서 저는 이 글을 쓴 Bobby Scott이란 목사님의 마음을 저는 조금이나마 이해하며 공감할 수가 있었습니다. 그 이유는 Scott 목사님은 아버지로서 자신의 딸 한명이 암 말기의 병으로 고통당하는 모습을 보면서의 그 심정을 저 또한 첫째 아기 Charis(주영)가 병원 중환자실(ICU)에서 천천히 죽어가는 아기의 모습을 보았기 때문입니다. 감사한 것은 Scott 목사님의 딸은 하나님께서 기적적으로 고쳐주셔서 살았고, 그래서 나중에 성장해서 결혼식을 올렸을 때 아버지 Scott 목사님이 따님과 함께 팔짱을 끼고 걸어들어갔다고 합니다. 그러나 저는 아기의 뼛가루가 들어있는 작은 상자를 들고 아내와 함께 배타고 나가서 물에 뿌렸습니다. 비록 이 차이는 한 딸은 살았고, 한 딸은 제 품안에서 죽었다는 사실이지만, 공통점은 "하나님"이라는 사실입니다. Scott 목사님은 사랑하는 딸의 고통을 통해 하나님의 주권을 배웠고, James 목사는 사랑하는 딸의 죽음을 통해 나의 구원자 하나님의 사랑(My Savior's Love)이 얼마나 굉장하고 놀라운지(His marvelous and wonderful love)를 조금이나마 경험했습니다["주의 인자하심이 생명보다 나으므로 내 입술이 주를 찬양할 것이라"(시편 63:3)].

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"Jesus saved me thirty-seven years ago. A janitor at my college used his breaks to preach the gospel. I eventually repented and believed, and Jesus rescued me from the tragedy of not knowing God.

God gave me a ravishing hunger to know him. So I read and reread my Bible, I prayed, and I prayed more, and I plunged headfirst into the church. As I grew, I was exposed to Reformed teaching about the sovereignty of God and learned that he works his purposes in my life and in all things for his glory and for the good of those who love him. Pursuing God became the passion of my life.

I spent most of my time in college in campus ministry, and then pursued training in seminary. When I finished, God blessed me with a wonderful wife. Then he called me to pastor a church one city block north of the epicenter of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. God was moving. And while he was rescuing sinners and maturing them as his followers, he also was growing my family with children, one every two years until we had six.

I could see God sovereignly working in me and through me. My life could not have been happier. But God wanted to deepen my relationship with him, so he brought suffering.

Our Girl Has Cancer

One day my 8-year-old daughter came home from a friend’s sleepover with a stiff neck. The problem progressively grew worse over three weeks, and each week we took her to the doctor, but nothing took her pain away. Then one evening my wife came home without her.

Our daughter had said she wasn’t feeling well during a visit to Grandma’s house, so my wife let her stay there overnight. My concern grew. I had prayed earlier that day, “God, please show us what’s wrong with our daughter.” God answered my prayer. Our phone rang at two o’clock in the morning. It was Grandma. She said our daughter had tried to go to the bathroom but couldn’t stand up. So we rushed her to the emergency room, and I carried her in my arms into the hospital.

My wife and I waited for hours in a cold, dim room. Then our doctor came and told us that our daughter had cancer. After they ran more tests the next day, her oncologist told us that she had a potentially terminal form of cancer. He said our lives might not ever be the same. Because of our daughter’s age, my wife and I alternated days and nights living in the pediatric ICU and isolation rooms while my daughter underwent treatment.

ICU and Unanswered Prayer

Every day I saw children suffering excruciating pain, and at night I heard their unanswered cries for help. My wife and I bonded with and ministered to four other families who were hoping against hope that their loved ones would be healed. We prayed for each of them, and four times God said no. The harsh reality that death doesn’t spare beautiful bald-headed little girls crashed down upon us. I felt like I was living in a nightmare, and I was terrified of how it might end.

I cried every day, but not in front of anyone — not in front of my wife, not in front of my daughter. I didn’t want to discourage anyone from clinging to hope.

When our doctors told us they had done all that they could, but our daughter’s condition continued to get worse, I called my mom. My parents lived in Virginia. I told her that she and my dad should come soon because it didn’t appear that our little girl had much more time left. As I spoke with my mom, standing in a hospital overpass, I broke down and wept uncontrollably.

Then I had a conversation with my daughter that I pray you will never have to have with yours. I told her, “Honey, you might die soon and go to see Jesus, so make sure you are trusting in him.”

Not My Will

The excruciating pain I felt drove me closer and closer to God. I prayed more fervently than I have ever prayed. One day I was convicted that I didn’t pray like my Lord, who in his passion prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane. And each time he surrendered to the Father, “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:32–42).

“God pried my hand open so that I would release my daughter into his infinitely stronger and loving hands.”

As God convicted me, a massive struggle began in my heart. I found myself refusing to pray for anything but my will, which was for God to heal my daughter. So with his fatherly hand, God pried my hand open so that I would release my daughter into his infinitely stronger and loving hands. In seminary, I was taught that when you see two IV stands during hospital visits, it normally indicates that the person is very sick. My daughter had three and an additional direct line into her arm.

To remove the excessive fluids in her body, they had to perform a procedure that required me to hold my daughter down. As I did, she looked at me and screamed, “Daddy, help me! Daddy, help me!” I held on until the doctors were done. Then I staggered into the hallway and surrendered my daughter to God. I wrestled with God and he won.

With tears streaming down my face, I prayed, “Not my will, but your will, be done. She was always yours and never mine. You always loved her more and are her best protector.”

God Does All He Pleases

In the end, God taught me by experience what he had taught me theologically a long time before. God always does what he pleases, and what he pleases is best.

“God always does what he pleases, and what he pleases is best.”

Space won’t permit me to share how God miraculously healed my daughter. What God did was so amazing that if Hollywood made our story into a movie, viewers would call it cheesy and unrealistic. People prayed for us from all over the world and rejoiced with us when my daughter walked out of the hospital cancer free (2 Corinthians 1:10–11). My God-fearing wife says if she could, she would choose to go through this all over again because of what she learned about God. I learned the peace and joy that comes from knowing that God is good even when we suffer — that it is good that he always does as he pleases.

In April of this year, God gave me the pleasure of walking my now-grown miracle down the aisle to give her away a second time, this time in marriage.

God Shouts in Our Pain

C.S. Lewis once wrote of suffering in The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (91). God directed his megaphone at me seventeen years ago, and nothing I’ve experienced has so profoundly affected my life and ministry.

Through suffering, God teaches us to be persistent in prayer. He reveals to us that he is way too big for our finite minds to comprehend, and yet his mercies are far too great for him not to hear our cries for help. He invites us to wrestle with him because he wants us to know that the outcome he brings is best. We can rest then, knowing that he has heard, that he cares, and that he will use his answer for our ultimate good and his glory, even if he doesn’t remove the trial but answers instead, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

This article would be misleading if I didn’t confess that as a husband, a father, and a pastor, I still waver in the face of suffering. But I am so thankful that God reteaches me from his word, his past work in my life, and the testimonies of the saints, that what he ordains is best.

In fact, I can hear Mother Simmons now, a dear saint in our church who has suffered as much like Job as anyone I know. I can hear her say, “Pastor, where God puts a period, we can’t change it to a comma,” and then quote, “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.” Yes, all the time — even during our darkest trials.

Bobby Scott (@pastorbscott) pastors Community of Faith Bible Church in the Los Angeles area. He cherishes his devoted wife, Naomi, and his six children. It is his consuming desire to be used by God to strengthen the urban church, and he believes this objective will be best met by building families and developing a ministry upon the teaching of the word of God."

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/suffering-taught-me-the-sovereignty-of-god