Weird though this sounds, God suffers with us. God feels, understands and bears your pain too. And God knows what it is like to lose a child.
And God feels the pain of your anger against Him too.
If you can surrender yourself to the love of God.
I agree. God actually knows suffering through us. He knew it through His Son Jesus, and He knows it through us. He gave human beings feelings and emotions, so that He can experience Himself THROUGH us.
I can’t tell you about your suffering. I myself have had a great deal of mental anguish and verbal abuse, but not the physical abuse like you are describing. In fact, I started a forum for people who have mental illnesses and have been horribly abused in some cases and had caused them serious mental dissociative disorders such as multiple personality disorder.
God did not throw you out or turn His back on you, but people’s wrong ideas about God have led you to this conclusion. But you are like a snowflake and are unique in your story, including your suffering. So God gets to witness every flavor of rejoicing and suffering through His children.
The Good News is that there is more to God than just a bunch of rules and judgments and empty promises. It’s hard to see that because the images people have of God (and yes we all have images of God or we could simply not ponder Him at all) actually make him act like a human would act, and it makes no sense at all.
That said, your deep, dark suffering is often the prelude for a huge mystical victory for God, and He would be pleased to see it in you. I know I would, and God is better than I am. The deeper you go, the better it is on the day you are awakened to your new “consciousness” which is the [or “your”] kingdom whereby everything starts to make sense including the past. You will begin to see that God has prepared you for great things.
Rom 5:1-5
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace* with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access [by faith] to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions,
knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Rom 8
15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
16 The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,l
17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
18 I consider that the
sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.
19 For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God;
20 for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope
21 that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22 We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now;
23 and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees?
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.
2 Cor 1
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement,
4*** who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.
5 For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.
6 If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
7 Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the encouragement.***
Phil 3:7-11
7 [But] whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.
8 More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ,h the righteousness from God, depending on faith
10 to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Based on the verse 10, “to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death” I got the idea of a movie to offer…
Have you ever seen the movie “The Pasion of the Christ” by Mel Gibson? It starts with the agony (and temptations) in the garden, and depicts rather graphically all the cruelty Jesus endured and how He reacted to it.
It’s all over YouTube, Here’s one of the Part 1’s.
Alan
