# Suffering Well with Joel Tiegreen | Behold Your God Podcast



## Semper Fidelis (Dec 22, 2020)

This is an amazing interview:

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## Contra_Mundum (Dec 23, 2020)

Thanks, Rich.


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## Pergamum (Dec 23, 2020)

I am friends with Joel. We've talked privately.

This video is convicting to me because I have not suffered well. I've rolled and writhed in pain for months (over 2 years now, in fact, of chronic misery) and then got very jaded and grumpy after receiving ill-founded advice or even demands from supporting pastors (pastors are not health experts, remember that, men). I've gotten 2nd and even 3rd opinions (spending many extra thousands of dollars) to appease some supporting pastors who insisted I try their doctor or their clinic or their treatment regimen.

My friend is showing me up, I've not done well with my health issues, and here he is dying and making it look easy and doing it with dignity.

He told me of the sorts of emails he gets from supporters, the same ignorant things I often receive. He merely replies thank you or does not reply. I've gotten various emails about my strange health problems suggesting I am demon possessed or I am "irresponsible" for wanting to return to the field despite pain. I have replied to a few of them harshly and defensively.

I have had at least a dozen church ladies try to wrangle me into their MLM supplement schemes (several giving me a hard sell..."Well...don't you WANT to get better? This product is the key!" I guess I looked like easy prey) and even a church try to sell me bleach-water to cure malaria. But Plexus doesn't cure multiple parasites. There is a LOT of QUACKERY to be found in the church. 

I have talked to a lot of people who suffered major long-lasting illnesses whose faith was shaken because of the treatment they received. We can do better.

So...I hope when I am ready to die God will give me the grace to stop lashing out perhaps and to follow my friend's example. But I confess I am still struggling with this aspect of illness. Joel's example is very good for me, though it is very disturbing to hear how much he is coughing. Perhaps he is leading the way ahead of us weaker brothers to be an example for us later when we follow.

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## KMK (Dec 24, 2020)

Perg, I deleted my post because it was not that funny and definitely not encouraging. 

I would like you to know that your testimony has greatly encouraged me over the last 13 years. Missionaries like you and Joel edify those of us at home as much as you bless God's lost sheep in the field (maybe more). Your particular personality fits you for your particular work, even though it may cause struggles in other areas. I am truly thankful for you and what you do. I will continue to pray for your health.


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## Pergamum (Dec 24, 2020)

KMK said:


> Perg, I deleted my post because it was not that funny and definitely not encouraging.
> 
> I would like you to know that your testimony has greatly encouraged me over the last 13 years. Missionaries like you and Joel edify those of us at home as much as you bless God's lost sheep in the field (maybe more). Your particular personality fits you for your particular work, even though it may cause struggles in other areas. I am truly thankful for you and what you do. I will continue to pray for your health.


Thanks. I own my weaknesses. God was merciful to me and allowed me to find a niche where I could find success, whereas I would fail utterly in many other ministry contexts. I belonged in a jungle maybe. I am thankful to have found a place where I could be useful. Now that I am older, God has removed me from that niche and has taken away that identity and I am left reminded of who I truly am and that we should only rejoice that our names are written in heaven. Although I do have an immigration lawyer working on my case even now so I can return to the jungle (some people never learn). My transparency and stubbornness has been both a strength and weakness. Telling a Charismatic lady that gives me a "word from the Lord" about my illness that she is a "crazy wild-haired zealot" is admittedly not the best long-term strategy for keeping friends. I am sure God intends to smooth me out with this illness and not merely flatten me like a semi-truck over the wandering neighborhood dog. But the short-term result has been that I am cynical and bitter and jaded at how people treat the sick. Folks bet money on a winning horse and admire them; but what do folks do to a lame horse besides pity them and then shoot them. I hate being an object of pity. So there is a pressure to sound triumphal in all of our trials (and we ARE triumphal objectively) and yet, we often feel beat-down and betrayed and misunderstood.

I did not take offence at your reply but thought it was funny and appropriate.

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## KMK (Dec 24, 2020)

One of the great things about getting older (me, not you) is fuller understanding of your strengths and weaknesses.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 25, 2020)

Pergamum said:


> Thanks. I own my weaknesses. God was merciful to me and allowed me to find a niche where I could find success, whereas I would fail utterly in many other ministry contexts. I belonged in a jungle maybe. I am thankful to have found a place where I could be useful. Now that I am older, God has removed me from that niche and has taken away that identity and I am left reminded of who I truly am and that we should only rejoice that our names are written in heaven. Although I do have an immigration lawyer working on my case even now so I can return to the jungle (some people never learn). My transparency and stubbornness has been both a strength and weakness. Telling a Charismatic lady that gives me a "word from the Lord" about my illness that she is a "crazy wild-haired zealot" is admittedly not the best long-term strategy for keeping friends. I am sure God intends to smooth me out with this illness and not merely flatten me like a semi-truck over the wandering neighborhood dog. But the short-term result has been that I am cynical and bitter and jaded at how people treat the sick. Folks bet money on a winning horse and admire them; but what do folks do to a lame horse besides pity them and then shoot them. I hate being an object of pity. So there is a pressure to sound triumphal in all of our trials (and we ARE triumphal objectively) and yet, we often feel beat-down and betrayed and misunderstood.
> 
> I did not take offence at your reply but thought it was funny and appropriate.


I wish I could find the podcast a number of years back where a Pastor facing terminal cancer ran into several people who would not accept that his cancer might kill him and encouraged him to have faith that he might overcome the illness.

He responded kindly exhorting them that they were the Christians who actually lacked faith and that his sickness was a kind of rebuke to their shallow and un-Godly form of Christianity.

I'm actually preaching on Romans 8:1-11 on Sunday. I was reflecting, as I was listening to Murray's exposition on the entire Chapter, how many Christians fail to read extant portions of Scripture to get a sense of the Word itself. Romans 8 deals with our groaning in this Cursed Creation. Creation was subjected to futility by our sin in Adam. The encouragement from the Apostle is not that we are now set free from either our battle with the flesh or our sorrows now, but that this present subjection is temporary.

I think most of us live with a sense that we are owed prosperity in terms of our health and our goods. Many Americans do not lose the latter as they age but they do lose the former. As much as we think we've mastered the Curse, our health reminds us of the opposite.

I think that since our prayers for others tend to focus on their physical well-being, we're sort of catechized in the idea that this is what we're supposed to pray for primarily. The Scriptures, however, do not focus on prayers for the health of the Saints as much as for the Kingdom. That doesn't mean that we don't pray for deliverance from sickness and sorrow but, when we understand God's purposes in the revealing of the Sons of God, we count even our health as something that will not stand in the way of God conquering all His and our foes.


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## Pergamum (Dec 25, 2020)

I had one pastor remind me that we never read a Pauline prayer asking God to make his physical health easier but only that the kingdom be expanded. That is sort of a jerk thing to say to somebody suffering intensely, though. And we read Paul's account of him praying for others who are sick and also him praying for his own affliction from Satan. And for some strange reason his 2 companions Epaphroditus and Trophimus were very sick and even unto death and left behind as well, but Paul asks no prayers for them nor heals them with his apostolic gifting. But it is safe to assume prayers were said for these.


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## Stephen L Smith (Dec 25, 2020)

Pergamum said:


> That is sort of a jerk thing to say to somebody suffering intensely, though.


Pergamum, I know you are rightly suspicious of 'self help' books. But one book I believe would be a blessing to you is Edith Schaeffer's "Affliction: a compassionate look at the reality of pain and suffering". I was personally blest by it. She counselled and supported countless numbers of people suffering at L'Abri, and helped a number of family members with serious illness. It has a tremendous blend of theology, compassion, practical wisdom, and genuine sympathy - if I may add the opposite of some of the responses in your own suffering. I loved this book.

Os Guinness said of Edith Schaeffer " Edith Schaeffer was one of the most remarkable women of her generation, the like of whom we will not see again in our time. I have never met such a great heart of love, and such indomitable faith, tireless prayer, boundless energy, passionate love for life and beauty, lavish hospitality, irrepressible laughter, and seemingly limitless time for people – all in a single person."

A woman of that caliber is worth reading.


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## Pergamum (Dec 26, 2020)

Stephen L Smith said:


> Pergamum, I know you are rightly suspicious of 'self help' books. But one book I believe would be a blessing to you is Edith Schaeffer's "Affliction: a compassionate look at the reality of pain and suffering". I was personally blest by it. She counselled and supported countless numbers of people suffering at L'Abri, and helped a number of family members with serious illness. It has a tremendous blend of theology, compassion, practical wisdom, and genuine sympathy - if I may add the opposite of some of the responses in your own suffering. I loved this book.
> 
> Os Guinness said of Edith Schaeffer " Edith Schaeffer was one of the most remarkable women of her generation, the like of whom we will not see again in our time. I have never met such a great heart of love, and such indomitable faith, tireless prayer, boundless energy, passionate love for life and beauty, lavish hospitality, irrepressible laughter, and seemingly limitless time for people – all in a single person."
> 
> A woman of that caliber is worth reading.


Thanks. I will buy it now. You are the second person to recommend this book to me. 

... If only I could read.

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## KMK (Dec 26, 2020)

Stephen L Smith said:


> Pergamum, I know you are rightly suspicious of 'self help' books. But one book I believe would be a blessing to you is Edith Schaeffer's "Affliction: a compassionate look at the reality of pain and suffering".



Thanks for this. It happens to be free on my kindle unlimited account.

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## KMK (Dec 26, 2020)

Semper Fidelis said:


> I'm actually preaching on Romans 8:1-11 on Sunday.



Rich, I would be interested in how you prepare with your eyesight the way it is.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 26, 2020)

Pergamum said:


> I had one pastor remind me that we never read a Pauline prayer asking God to make his physical health easier but only that the kingdom be expanded. That is sort of a jerk thing to say to somebody suffering intensely, though. And we read Paul's account of him praying for others who are sick and also him praying for his own affliction from Satan. And for some strange reason his 2 companions Epaphroditus and Trophimus were very sick and even unto death and left behind as well, but Paul asks no prayers for them nor heals them with his apostolic gifting. But it is safe to assume prayers were said for these.


I don't think I wrote that we ought not pray for healing or for the well-being of others. I've slowly lost my central vision over the last 13 years and now it's pretty much gone. I've always thanked people who tell me they are praying for me because it has been very frustrating and scary at times. I've only had a few people tell me they are going to look up whether there is some homeopathic cure to Stargardt's disease but I would smile and thank them for their concern.

My point in my post was not that we do not pray to God for relief from our suffering. I think Romans 8 can include groaning under all kinds of things and not merely our battle against the flesh. 

My only point is that I think that most people don't know how to pray for other people other than for their health and livelihood and when you hear about prayer requests it is typically for one of those two things. 

Thus, the main point is that our suffering is within a larger context. It doesn't make it unimportant. If a person is suffering then we grieve with him and pray to God for that person. Yet, our expectation for that person is no merely the physical deliverance through the ailment. In the case of the Charismatic or Pentecostal, the sense of what we're battling is such a thin slice of spiritual reality. They don't really teach or practice sanctification well and the very thing God may have ordained for us is the very thing they reject merely as something to be spoken out of existence or prayed over. The notion that God is working things together for our good and His glory is absent from their theology of the Kingdom. That was what I was trying to get across.

People still tell me they pray for my vision and I appreciate it but I have very title expectation of recovering my eyesight. As suffering goes there are people who have a much worse life than I do. It doesn't hurt but it does cause some sadness about the things I can no longer do or see well. So when they tell me they are paying for me, I always appreciate it but I think to myself that it's not really something that I need. I'd much rather them pray for my sanctification and battle with sin. That I feel more acutely than my blindness.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 26, 2020)

KMK said:


> Rich, I would be interested in how you prepare with your eyesight the way it is.


I typically copy the relevant text from Logos into a Word document for each commentary.

I use a program called Voce Dream to listen to all the commentaries that I copy to Word.

There was a note about Greek word order so I went back and looked at Logos on that point. I had to magnify the screen to see the text.

I also listened to a few Sinclair Ferguson sermons because he bleeds Puritan in his preaching.

I've preached the text before so I have sense of what I'm going to say but I've outlined it into a few main points.

I'll write out a few more guts of the outline today but I won't be able to read from it tomorrow.

I have a 12.9" iPad pro and that enables me to hold the iPad up to my eyes (about 3" away) and I can read text well enough to read out the Scripture text. It will also have the outline but I'll need to hold the Ipad up to my face to see that.

So, what I do is that I always apologize to people and tell them I can't see. I'm guest preaching at a local sister Church and they won't know why I'm doing that so I try to make sure they know.

But, at the end of the day, I'll just have a sense of what I'm going to be preaching. It's a good sense but I won't know exactly what I'll be preaching until I preach. I wish I could still use a manuscript or even more notes but I can't just glance at things anymore and keep going.

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## KMK (Dec 27, 2020)

That is a very encouraging testimony. I am sorry about your vision, but also *see* God using it for his glory. Thanks for all you do, Rich.


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## Wretched Man (Dec 27, 2020)

Pergamum said:


> Thanks. I will buy it now. You are the second person to recommend this book to me.
> 
> ... If only I could read.


You mentioned a few weeks ago about a traveling doctor who was able to somehow alleviate your nerve pain... and you seemed very encouraged by it. Any updates on this? Has it held up or regressed?


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## Pergamum (Dec 27, 2020)

Wretched Man said:


> You mentioned a few weeks ago about a traveling doctor who was able to somehow alleviate your nerve pain... and you seemed very encouraged by it. Any updates on this? Has it held up or regressed?


Yes, it is called an RFA (Radio-Frequency Ablation) of the shoulder and within 10 minutes about 95% of the pain vanished. This was 2 weeks ago and I have slowly started to sleep better, but my adrenals and Central Nervous System are still wrecked from parasites and the stress of the field, followed by severe agonizing pain this year for months on end (pain severe enough to make me black out). Now I have slowly started to sleep better, though the insomnia is still severe. At least I can think clearly most of the day now.

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