Purposeful Suffering - Audio
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You know, Matt Bowne's story today was awesome. Yeah, he's not here now in the service because he's teaching the kids. We were toying with the idea of dismissing the kids before his testimony, but then the kids would have no teacher to go to. And so we said, hey, we're going to keep the kids in for this. And it was good that we did because I don't know about you, but I was really encouraged by Matt and Deborah's testimony about Matt's brother Tyler. I know many of you have been praying for Tyler. He's been in our bulletin for a long time now. And to just see what God is doing in that young man's life, to take him through a time of suffering and pain, dealing with drug addiction, dealing with just tremendous difficulty and hardship through those addictions, and also to see him now beginning to not only come through that time of addiction, but now to be questioning his own religious roots, having been brought up in Mormonism. Matt was brought up as a Mormon as well in his family. And Matt, in his latter teenage years, early 20s, started to question that faith. And today, his brother is doing the same. Amen? Purposeful suffering. That is the title of today's message. Purposeful suffering. We look at these things, the drug addiction, the dealing with a cult, the Mormon church, trying to go through these difficulties of life. We look at these things, and we say, God, why would you send us through this time of hardship? I'm sure Matt and Deborah were often asking God, why don't you just help Tyler, Lord? Why don't you just rip him out of this? Why does he have to go through this, about with drugs? Why does he have to go through this, about with pain and with deception in his church? And yet God responds, the suffering that you go through is always purposeful. It is always purposeful. Open up in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1, we're going to begin in verse 24 today. We're going to spend most of our time in verse 24. And then for the rest of the chapter, it will go rather quickly. But you'll recall last week that we said that God, that Christ has high hopes for us. He has high hopes for Christians.
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Pastor Neil discusses suffering in the lives of believers and suggests godly responses.