You Were Not Made to Suffer Alone | Fellowship Community Church

I remember hearing someone say, “I just can’t go there. I just can’t go there. I can’t, I can’t go there with other people. I can’t even go there with myself.” To which I would say if you don’t, Christ will never get in there. A lot of the ways that Christ will get in is through his people and, and there is not a one of you that’s gone through suffering and shared, and that hasn’t been hurt.

But guess what? It did not change your very construction as a human. You were designed by God to be in community with one another. If you have been hurt, if you have been hurt 10 times, I don’t know anything kinder to say, try 11. And you might have to get to 16 or 19 too, but it is the way you have been made.

You are not made to suffer alone.

—

Pastor Ben Willey

Sermon Excerpt from “Even Here – Part 2”

Watch the Full sermon here: https://www.fellowshipsj.org/episode/even-here-part-2/

Video Transcript:

You are not made to suffer alone. for the care ministries here at fellowship. The Lord gave me a vision of what the care ministries would be, and it was simply this. Our care ministries exist so that no one would suffer alone. We are not here to end suffering. It is not going to happen. It’s not even something God designs to happen here on this place.

But we are here by God’s grace so that we may not suffer alone. I’m going to have you put down the word who. On your sheet of paper or in your phone

And for some of you that’s a painful word to write because you’re not sure what to write after I Want to just mention three things here if they can be a service to you at all in your story first Stephen ministry Is a one on one care ministry. It’s some of the most incredible people. I know because they are people who are trained to and desire to run towards needs.

And this is a one on one ministry. If you are interested in getting a Stephen Minister, a person to meet with you, once a week for an hour, it’s a person just come alongside. It’s not a therapist. It’s someone just to be there with you who has gone through suffering themselves and has by God’s grace made room for yours to in their life.

You can find out more information at the hub about that or online. Secondly, when I mention Celebrate Recovery, Celebrate Recovery, what we always say is for hurts, habits, and hang ups, so many people who come to Celebrate Recovery come for hurts. And I know that, there’s an idea out there, it’s like, Celebrate Recovery, isn’t that about alcohol?

Well, sure. That’s there. But so much of what Celebrate Recovery also is, is dealing with hurts. Our, our biggest groups in Celebrate Recovery we call life issues. And they’re dealing with people with, mental health. Dealing with people with, difficulty and going on in marriages. And issues in their life.

And that can be a place of, joined cross bearing. If that might be a place that serves you. Lastly, is anchored in hope. It’s a women’s group that meets for those physically suffering and some other ways of suffering. Holly McIntyre. Again, more information you can find out about it. And those might not make your who list.

But I really hope someone does. Because you’re not made to be an island. And some of you are just sitting there saying, you know what? I’m tough enough, and I would say if you believe you’re tough enough to not be in community,

you’re being a coward. True strength is reflected in Paul’s prayer, I therefore as a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing. with one another. That bearing sounds a whole lot like cross carrying, doesn’t it?

Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. One of the most amazing things about the journey of Christ, when He bore a cross, when He carried a cross, He Himself needed help. He did not carry it alone. Of course. The story could have been written that he carried the cross up to Golgotha.

But the story was intended to show that crosses were made to be carried together.

Number 11 and lastly,

our cross of suffering can only be carried one day at a time. For a lot of us that can feel like one moment at a time. Cause a day is too big of a timestamp to worry about. One of the chief things of, of, of being able to walk through daily suffering is to not carry tomorrow’s cross. Tomorrow’s cross is unnecessary suffering.

And honestly, tomorrow’s cross is too heavy. It’s too much. All we can do is get through today. Only today’s crosses are allowed. What did Jesus say in the passage? Take up your cross daily and come after me. There are days that are not made for strategy or deep process. There are days when the greatest thing you can do is simply keep going.

Simply make your next meeting, eat your next meal, parent the next need of your child, return in the next assignment. There are days that cannot contain the weight of all the processing of your feelings and thoughts about those, what you’re going through. Those days we need to simply take just the next step.

We know life is beautiful and it’s a gift, but it does not always feel that way. And sometimes the way we interpret what we’re going through can be extremely dark. And all that we can do is just keep going. There are times that God seems to be absent, lost in the gray of pain and confusion. Your prayers barely make it out of your mouth and you feel like you don’t even make it to the top of your bedroom ceiling.

On those days, all we can do is just today keep going. There are days when you wonder if you’re making up the fact that God could use this type of suffering. You don’t need to prove to yourself that he will, or convince all of your emotions that he’s coming soon to make sense of it all. All you can do is for this day, keep going.

And for those here, or for those who are loving someone close to them that are in the deepest throes of suffering, honestly the best thing a suffering series can do is maybe just let you know you’re not alone. But if you’re in the agony of the worst part of suffering, you’re not here to write down all the points and get all the finer details.

I just, we just want to tell you, we love you. We, we, we don’t understand what you’re going through. But we will not run from you.

I’m going to conclude by, anybody ever heard of Warren Wiersbe? He’s one of those guys that I’ve heard about for a long time, and then one day realized, Wiersbe is a weird last name. Warren Wiersbe was a pastor and an author, and he wrote a book, called Why Us? Why Do Bad Things Happen to God’s People?

I think it’s the title, and he reflected a story of, coming up to a lady, I think it was after a church service, and this lady’s, her husband had gone blind recently, and she had, and then he came down with a really difficult disease, and so she had basically become like a seeing eye wife, needing, she needed to leave her job, they did not have any children, and it was an incredibly difficult circumstance, and he walked up to this woman, and he just said, I just want you to know, I’m praying for you.

And I love this lady, spicy lady, and she comes up and she says, she says, what are you praying for? And like, Warren Rearsby got all his pastoral back on and said like, well, I’m praying God help me. You know, all that stuff, right? That you hear when pastors talk. and, she said, waved him off, said, this is what I want you to pray.

Pray that I won’t waste this time of suffering.

It sounds terrible to be up here and telling you all to do any work at all while you’re suffering unless there’s real treasure to be found in it. And I know sometimes when we think of like Surrendering ourselves to God. We usually mean that in terms of sin because we often have a lot of it. I want to surrender our sin And sometimes it’s surrendering our will both of those deeply biblical and meaningful But there’s also a sense of sometimes we need to surrender our suffering Say god i’ve spent all my energy trying to escape this I am dog tired of trying to endure it Teach me a new and living way.

The messy process of stewarding it, which takes identifying what am I carrying? What is left? What is not been worked through? To experience it, to join with God and Christ specifically in his story with it, to join with other people and to simply do it one step at a time.