Comeback Road Philosophy Relating To Pain, Suffering, Adversity, And God

COMEBACK ROAD PHILOSOPHY RELATING TO PAIN, SUFFERING, ADVERSITY, AND GOD

In your Comeback Road meetings, our major focus is upon equipping every person with the tools, techniques, methods, and philosophies to deal with adversity. We guarantee to deliver success strategies because our approach is to deal head-on with adversity. None of us escapes adversity. All of us are caught in this eternal tug of war between the powers of God (or good) and the powers of Satan (or evil).

In my writing, I often deal with the issues of pain and suffering from a faith perspective. In a recent article posted on the founder's Christian web site, he tried to deal with the issues one of the founder's reader's brought forward in regard to pain, suffering, adversity, and misfortune. Some of the founder's material is adapted and presented below.

The reader wrote to the founder with questions about God's role in pain, suffering, adversity, and misfortune. God's role is a topic for which we have some answers from our faith in God.

As we grow older and grow in wisdom, we usually see the ways of God in a clearer light. As we grow in wisdom, it is easier to more clearly understand God's role in pain, suffering, and tragedy. Our purpose in Comeback Road is to give everyone the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the aged to see past the adversity of life.

In previewing some of our positions on God and adversity in Comeback Road, we must remember hardship sometimes happens in the hand of God. We do not always understand why hardship happens at the time the hardship happens. We may never truly understand the "why's" of our hardship until after we die and God explains it all.

Just as many of us are tied down and become enslaved to many kinds of adversities in our life, the Israelites were also tied down and bound in the adversity of slavery. The children of God were freed from slavery and crossed the Red Sea into freedom. It is the purpose of Comeback Road to free each person from the slavery of whatever adversity they face each day. Having just been freed from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, the children of God were ill-equipped to take on the responsibilities of freedom. As a group, these former slaves had little self-control and little self-discipline. When Moses left them to go to the top of Mt. Sinai, the group immediately fell into sin and debauchery. Adversity takes a toll on every person by trying to get each person to relinquish all self-control and self-discipline. The children of God, immediately after being freed from slavery, did not have the hardness and toughness of mind to take control of themselves, let alone the hardness and toughness of mind to take control of their Promised Land. To come back against defeat, to come back against adversity, to come back against the power of darkness seeking to destroy us, requires from each of us a hardness and toughness of mind to control ourselves. Hardness and toughness of mind are brought to the attention of our members in Comeback Road. To get the children of God ready for nationhood and the responsibilities nationhood entails, God made His people wander in the desert for forty years. God made His children wander in the desert for forty years to give them a mindset permitting them be a nation of His people. In your life and in the life of every person, there may be times of wandering in the desert or times of testing. During these times of testing, to be all God designed you to be, remember your time of testing can be a time of building up your strength, your endurance, your personal power, and your ability to follow the leading of God in all matters.

To give you an overview of our Comeback Road philosophy in regard to adversity and God, issues and questions in the form of questions and answers are presented below.

Question: God and control. What does God control? Does God control everything that happens in our life?

Answer: Remember we are in a war in which all of us will die. Remember in this soup of good and evil in which we live, Satan is attacking us and attacking the work of God in us and through us. We are at the center of this tug of war between God and Satan. We can control how we respond in this war. We are the ones who control what we say, think, and do when Satan attacks us. In this respect, God does not control us as if we were unthinking robots. God gave us a will and He expects us to point our will in His direction when darkness falls upon us. It is the most glorious of responses on our part to give our life over to God when we are attacked by evil. Satan's greatest victory is our turning away from God when the bad times come or the going gets tough. Satan's greatest defeat and God's greatest victory is when we turn to God in the times of our greatest darkness.

Question: Doesn't God control anything He wishes to control?

Answer: It is true God has the power to control anything He wishes to control. However, God does not control or He chooses not to control anything He wishes to control because God wants victory from us in our illness, in our hardship, and in our despair. In addition, the onus or responsibility of our life and faith is not to be put upon God. The responsibility for our life and faith is to be shouldered by us, not God. God will help us carry these responsibilities but our responsibility is to be strong and carry the responsibilities as much as we are able. To say God can control anything He wishes to control is almost like saying He pulls levers and twists dials in Heaven to arrange everything in our life for us. We desperately want to believe this false truth. We want to desperately believe God controls everything in our life. We want to desperately believe God controls our life because if we can give God the responsibility for controlling our life, then we do not have to shoulder the responsibility of our life ourselves.

Question: Since prayer to God can result in cures of illness, showing His control over that illness, then it must follow that God can prevent the illness to begin with.

Answer: There used to be a book popular among entrepreneurs called "Lazy Man's Way To Riches". The author's name is believed to be Joe Carbo. For some people, prayer is thought of as "Lazy Man's Way To Cures, Fixes, Or Whatever Else You Want And Need." The facts are that prayer does not always bring a cure. Prayer has never kept anyone alive forever in the body that we know of. Prayer has never been a cure-all for old age and the infirmity old age brings. If we think prayer brings cures and fixes then the longer we are alive the greater our power of prayer would be to offset our getting older and dying. However, prayer is not about getting a fix for what ails us. I am not saying God does not cure illnesses or answer prayer as a result of prayer because He does cure illnesses and gives answers as a result of prayer. However, to say God can stop illness can often be a slight of hand way of trying to deny the power of satanic evil bringing the illness in the first place. It is Satan who is the enemy, not God. It is Satan who brings the curses of cancer, heart attack, stroke, and aging leading to death. We must remember, as much as we want to blame God for the darkness of life because He did not prevent the darkness, God has provided us a victory over the darkness. God has provided us a victory over every illness, every misfortune, and every pain we can ever experience.

Question: Doesn't God, pardon the phrase, stand idly by and let illness happen? Why should I not be angry with Him for letting the illness happen?

Answer: God does not stand idly by and let illness happen. God stands with open arms of love, forgiveness, and the fullness of life if you are willing to walk the road in God's direction in your life. Realistically, God can be more glorified by a person who receives no healing who keeps the faith than by a person who receives healing because they expected God to heal them. God's work can be more glorified by maintaining our faith in hardship than He is by our glibly saying "Thank you" when He gives us what we think we want and need as we then move on to other issues. The road of faith in God is a tough road. It separates the adults from the children. The children in the faith want God to deliver the goods when the child prays for it (demands it) or the child walks away pouting. The adults in the faith know better.

Question: In a work environment as a supervisor, if we take credit for the good happening under our responsibilities we also must take credit for the bad happening in that work environment. Isn't God willing to take credit for both the good and the bad happening to us in this life?

Answer: In your workplace, if your emphasis is upon taking the credit, good or bad, your emphasis is upon yourself instead of your subordinates. In any kind of supervisory role, the most effective supervisor is one who effectively delegates the responsibility downward in the organization without any regard for getting credit in return. Management studies have shown the best and most effective supervisors are those persons who get others to be as responsible as is the supervisor. This behavior of the supervisor is the opposite of getting the employees to be dependent upon the supervisory chain of command. For thousands of years, God has been trying to get us to be responsible and live according to His will. Obviously, Satan has another agenda. Satan's agenda for our life is the total disregard for God's laws and His will.

Question: God, glory, and responsibility. How can I give God all the glory when he refuses to take any of the responsibility? "

Answer: You have things twisted around here. God is given glory only when YOU take responsibility. When you try to give the responsibility over to God for your adversity you can then blame God for all kinds of things gone wrong, done wrong, thought wrong, invented wrong, or things not done by God you want done. However, God is not the one responsible in life. You are the one responsible in this life. We are in a battle in which all of us are going to die. If we blame God for the pain, suffering, and adversity of our life, or the lack of healing we want in our life, then we will never glorify God. God gave laws for you to follow for your benefit and your good. God gave truth for your benefit and your good. God continues to give His presence in your life for your benefit and your good. It is your responsibility to observe, use, implement, believe, trust, obey, and remain faithful in spite of every hardship…even the hardship of sickness, disease, and death. As far as God is concerned, He could care less about the glory given by your mouth. God wants glory from you by the kind of person you are and by the kind of acts you do for Him in spite of illness, death, and disease. When you pull yourself up out of your adversity with His help and you truly become more, do more, and achieve more, God is glorified without your having to say a word.

We know you want an easier truth. We all want an easier way than the way of pain we are on, but the tougher way of God leads to peace in your heart. The tougher way of God leads to moments of joy. The tougher way of God leads to our living with His love and tenderness in our heart. His way is the way our spirit can soar.

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