Chapter 15: Thinking, Thanking, and Loving

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering

by Tim Keller

 

Chapter 15: Thinking, Thanking, and Loving

 

• Paul was one of the most prominent sufferers in the Bible.
• Paul endured a multitude of physical, emotional, and spiritual hardships.
• How did Paul handle all of this suffering?
• He relied on the peace, comfort, and contentment that comes from God.

 

The Peace that Passes Understanding

• Philippians 4 provides some of the most helpful advice about how to find peace in the midst of suffering.
• Paul says that we do not need to be anxious, but that through prayer and thanksgiving we can present our requests to God.
• We can experience a peace from God that surpasses our understanding. This peace will protect our hearts and our minds—even through intense times of suffering.
• What is the peace of God?
  • An inner calm and equilibrium—a contentment in all circumstances.
  • Not merely an absence, but a presence.
    • Not just an absence of fear or worry. It is the presence of God and the sense of being protected.
  • Modern self-help books speak of emptying our minds of negative thoughts; the Bible teaches us to fill our minds with godly and true thoughts.
  • It is not just positive thinking or willpower.
  • It is a sense that no matter what happens, everything will work out all right (even if it doesn’t seem that way now).
  • It is a living power that comes into our lives from God and enables us to face the realities of life.
  • How do we find this peace?
  • 3 disciplines revealed in Philippians 4.

 

The Discipline of Thinking

• Thinking on what is noble, right, and pure:
  • Not just lofty, exalted thoughts.
  • Paul is teaching us to think on biblical truths-especially God’s work of salvation for us in Christ.
• Christian peace comes by thinking more, not less.
• Romans 8:18—Paul “reckons” / “thinks” that the sufferings of this world can never compare with the glories of the next.
• Don’t separate sound biblical, gospel teaching from the peace and comfort that God grants to us.
• We find comfort and peace in the truths of God and what he has accomplished for us and promised to us.
• Paul is offering us a different vantage point from which to view our experiences.
• We can find peace by looking at the larger picture from God’s viewpoint.
• Jonathan Edwards on Christian happiness:
  • The “bad things” will work together for good (Rom 8:28).
  • The “good things”—adoption into God’s family, justification in his sight, union with him—cannot be taken away (Rom 8:1).
  • The “best things”—life in heaven, new heavens and new earth, resurrection—are yet to come (Rev 22:1ff).

 

The Discipline of Thanking

• Thanksgiving is put over against anxiety. It is hard to be anxious at the same time that you are being thankful.
• Paul instructs us to give God thanks as we bring our requests to him, even before he answers!
• Paul is calling on us to trust God’s sovereign rule of history and of our lives. He is telling us that we will never be content unless we acknowledge that our lives are in his hands and that he is wiser than we are.
• Romans 8:28 does not teach that every bad event has a “silver lining” or that every terrible thing is actually a good thing if you look at it properly.
• No, it teaches that all things (even bad things) will ultimately together be overruled by God in such a way that the intended evil will, in the end, only accomplish the opposite of its designs—a greater good and glory than would otherwise have come to pass.
• God is sovereign, so we should trust him.
• Paul goes a step further: God is sovereign, so we should thank
• We are to thank him for whatever he sends us, even if we don’t understand it.

 

The Discipline of Reordering Our Loves

• Think on things that are lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy.
• These are things that are not only true but also beautiful and attractive.
• Paul is urging us to not just order the thoughts of our minds but also to order the affections of our hearts.
• To maintain equilibrium in troublesome times, we need to not only think the right things; we need to love the right things.
• The Greek Stoics said that we should love our virtue/character the most because it is something we can control.
• The problem is that we really can’t rely on our own virtue or character, because we are frail, finite, sinful creatures.
• What we need for peace is to love that which is immutable—unchangeable.
• God is immutable and cannot change. He will never fail us. God’s presence and love cannot disappoint or fail or be lost—even through death.
• So, do we have to give up loving everything except for God?
• No, we must properly order our loves.
• Our problem is not that we love our career or family too much, but that we love God too little in proportion to them.
• To get the calm, tranquility, and peace that comes from God, we must love him supremely, as our first love.

 

Relocating Your Glory

• Our glory must not be in our own endeavors or abilities or in what other people may think of us.
• Our glory—our source of joy, meaning, purpose, worth, identity—should be God.
• Too often we elevate good things to supremely important things, and our suffering is intensified proportionately to the degree that our glory is located in the things that are affected by our suffering.

 

The Horrible, Beautiful Process

• Suffering is like a furnace—it is painful but creates purity and beauty and strength.
• How does it do this? Suffering puts its fingers on good things that have become too important to us.
• We respond to suffering not by throwing those things out, but by turning to God and loving him more.
• You can’t really understand your heart when things are going well.
• Suffering reveals the false gods.

 

The Secret of Peace

• How can we bring ourselves to love God more?
• It is not by trying to work on our emotions. That won’t work.
• We focus on God, but not in the abstract. We focus our attention specifically on God’s revelation to us in his Son, Jesus Christ.
• By looking to the person and work of Christ we will come to love the immutable and find tranquility.
• 2 Corinthians 5:21 – Jesus became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
• Christ endured ‘peacelessness’ so that we might receive eternal peace.
• Instead of thinking you are being punished—look to the cross.
• Instead of thinking that God doesn’t care—look to the cross.
• The incomprehensible peace of God comes to our hearts through Jesus Christ (Philippians 4:7).