I came to Christ with many expectations based on the fact that I was indoctrinated to believe that God will solve all my problems and that suffering is not my portion. Unfortunately, what I expected was not in conformity with the reality on the ground. I enrolled in Bible school in one of the mega-churches in Nigeria and all I was taught was that serving God guarantees success, healing, deliverance, and prosperity.
When I graduated from the Bible school, I served as a branch pastor and taught my followers how to remain free from suffering and how they can pay their tithes and sow seeds to receive deliverance, healing, and prosperity. After some years of pastoring, I discovered that I had lost my peace, I watched my followers go through hardship and some of them suffered while I was casting and binding the demons attacking them.
I got more frustrated as the days went by and I doubted if I was called by God in the first place. I felt that something was fundamentally wrong with me and my calling, I developed animosity against God and became a very toxic pastor. I got a sigh of relief when I had a heavenly vision to leave the church and go into missionary work. I obeyed immediately, resigned from the church, and made inquiries on how I could reach those who had not heard about Christ.
Someone took me to a remote village in the northern part of Nigeria where no one had preached or heard about Christ. I embarked on this journey with lots of joy, thinking that my act of obedience would touch God to help me out of hardship and suffering. How wrong I was as what I went through when I was in the church became a child's play when compared to what I witnessed as a missionary.
My discovery of the reality of the Christian faith with biblical evidence and support opened my eyes and I realized that I had been deceived into believing in unscriptural doctrines which were made by men who had gone into covenant with the devil. I came to realize that we are not only called to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him (Philippians 1:29). I discovered through the scripture that suffering is a prerequisite to access the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22).
When I saw in the scripture that Christians are not only saved to experience the power of Christ's resurrection but also to have a realistic and empirical knowledge of his suffering (Philippians 3:10). I became joyful that I was counted worthy to be a partaker in Christ's suffering. This understanding was a game-changer in my Christian faith. I repented from my lust to live a suffering-free life and embraced the cross.
The doctrine of Christian suffering has been thrown to the dustbin by the majority of the Pentecostal churches. Many Christians today are starved by their pastors who handpicked only rosy promises in the Bible and abandoned the hard sayings of Christ. The lexicon "You are not born again to suffer again" which is becoming popular today is an ideology from the pit of hell. This is the reason for discouragement and apostasy among today's Christians.
I give God thanks every day for opening my eyes to understanding and for counting me worthy to pass through deprivation, lack, persecution, shame, and reproach for His name's sake. I had severally asked God to forgive me for the sin of grumbling. I had on many occasions spoken against God, asking Him questions and doubting His ability to save. I remembered giving God an ultimatum to get me out of suffering or I stop serving Him.
I now understand that God allowed me to go through suffering because He was preparing me to reign with Christ when He returns (2 Timothy 2:12). This understanding has strengthened me so immensely that fear of being killed in the course of reaching the unreached in Nigeria has become a thing of the past. According to John Piper, "Any Christian who runs away from suffering is on his way to hellfire." Every Christian needs to embrace suffering (James 1:2).
It is obvious that many Christians have been deceived to follow the broad way, otherwise, how can anyone explain the doctrine of Christ without the cross which has become very popular in many churches today? Pastors are now teaching Christians to love Christ but hate his cross. This is an error that if not corrected will take millions of Christians to hellfire.
Christians are not expected to suffer as evildoers, murderers, and sinners. Yet it is important for us to understand that God has ordained suffering for every Christian. We should as a matter of urgent importance shun the doctrine of prosperity which is another gospel programed by the devil to undermine the doctrine of the cross. We should not be oblivious to the fact that Christ was not joking when he told His disciples "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Mathew 16:24).
Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, let us strive to be like the Bereans Christians who searched the scriptures always to ascertain the veracity of what the apostles taught them. Lack of knowledge is responsible for all the perversions experienced in our churches today. In all our getting let understanding of the doctrine of Christian suffering be given a priority. It is important to note that even Christ learned obedience by what He suffered (Hebrews 5:8).
Cross-carrying is not negotiable in Christianity, it is not an option to be considered, it is a command that must be obeyed. As Christians all over the world are observing the lent, let us use this opportunity to embrace the cross of Jesus Christ and be ready to be condemned because we are called by His name. Suffering for the sake of Christ and His gospel is a privilege, not a curse. "Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2)
Through suffering, Christians learn to rely on God's strength and develop doggedness and maturity in their faith. What makes suffering in Christ joyful is the understanding that God is working out something of eternal value in our lives through the circumstances that brought suffering to us. God uses suffering to refine, redirect, and shape Christians, He breaks and remolds us through suffering, draws us closer to Himself, and equips us to fulfill His purpose for us here on earth.
"But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name". (1 Peter 4:16) Instead of complaining and murmuring because of the challenges of life, Christians should be willing to pass through difficulties for the sake of Christ. Sharing in Christ's suffering is a sign of God's favor and honor because the suffering of this present time is not anything to be compared with the glory that will be revealed when Christ returns (Romans 8:18). This experience is only reserved for God's elect and I rejoice that Christ has found me worthy to suffer for his name's sake!
Taking the gospel to areas where Christ has not been preached attracts lots of suffering. The first time that I wanted to reach an unreached remote community in Northern Nigeria, we rode on a bike for six hours across the desert before we could access the community. As I wanted to come down from the bike, I fell down and fainted because I was absolutely dehydrated. Two men with my bike rider poured water on me and when I opened my eyes, they handed me a bowl of dirty water with mucus and spirogyra swimming inside it. I had no option and I drank the water because I needed to stay alive.
I garnered strength after I finished drinking a bowl of dirty water and requested to meet with the villagers to share the gospel with them. As the women and children were coming out of their huts, I couldn't hold my breath as I saw malnourished and sick children and naked women coming out of their huts. The children had not worn clothes since they were born and the women had parches of rags covering only their pubic region. It was a pathetic situation seeing suffering written all over the faces of my target persons. They were impoverished to the extent that they could not afford food and clothes. As I wanted to preach the gospel to them, I opened the Bible to the book of John 3:16 to tell them about the love of God. But my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth as I didn't see any correlation between the love of God and the pathetic situation of these people. I noticed tears coming down from my eyes to my cheek and I wondered why God sent me to these dejected and abandoned people.
I closed the Bible and I just noticed my mouth moved and I said to them that I would come back to give them food, clothes, and drugs. When I returned from the missionary journey, I was hospitalized and was diagnosed with Typhoid fever and gastrointestinal disease. I spent about two weeks in the hospital and when I was discharged, I mobilized resources and went back to the remote community. Immediately we got to the village with our bags of food, clothes, and drugs, the villagers rushed out of the village square to meet with my team and as soon as they saw the bags that we brought for them, the vacant-hopeless look on their faces disappeared and I saw them smiling. We are presently reaching them with humanitarian aid to cushion the effects of suffering which is orchestrated by poverty and human degradation.
We preached Christ to them and all of the inhabitants surrendered to the saving power of Christ. We shared food, clothes, and drugs with them and there was wild jubilation in all the community. Reaching the unreached involves suffering to access the unreached and unengaged people groups, struggling to process how to help them in their suffering and pathetic situations, suffering to get resources to help them, and taking risks to continue to visit and disciple them. The call to missionary work is the call to suffering and any other concept is an ideology from the pit of hell.
Oscar Amaechina is the president of Afri-Mission and Evangelism Network, Abuja, Nigeria. His calling is to take the gospel to where no one has neither preached nor heard about Jesus. He is the author of the book Mystery of the Cross Revealed.
