The longer we walk with Yahweh and experience everyday life, the more we understand He allows unimaginable things to happen to us and our world. It’s hard to accept this when we know He could change everything by a single word. The Bible devotes much space to the subject of human suffering, showing that whether we understand it or not, we will certainly experience it for ourselves.
Yahshua understood that suffering shadows human lives – and experienced it Himself, learning obedience through the things He suffered [Hebrews 5:8]. One of the big questions is whether Yahweh sends suffering or allows it. I believe scripture supports both options, but trying to work out which is applicable to our personal circumstances can create a minefield of problems.
There are multiple areas of suffering common to everyone; loss, heartache, bereavement, betrayal, disappointment and grief, to mention a few. “But there is such a thing as consecrated griefs,” writes A.W. Tozer, “sorrows that may be common to everyone but which take on a special character when accepted intelligently and offered to [Yahweh] in loving submission.” I am arrested by this thought! Sorrows taking on a ‘special character’? How do we ‘accept intelligently’ and offer them to Yahweh in ‘loving submission’?
How do we consecrate grief to Him? King David prayed for his sick son openly, with crying, anguish and fasting – but when told the child had died, he rose from prayer, washed and ate. His staff was astonished and asked why he stopped mourning when the child died. David explained, “Can I bring him back again? I will go to him…but he cannot return to me” [2 Samuel 12:23, New Living Translation]. Is this an example of consecrated grief? Of course, we are expected to grieve and mourn, but there must be a way to ‘accept intelligently’ what we cannot change and offer our pain to Yahweh ‘in loving submission’.
In Gethsemane, an agonised yet submissive Yahshua begged Yahweh, “…please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” [Luke 22:42]. A beautiful example of consecrated grief.
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