Building Faith in the Face of Suffering

In the past week the following news has come across the screen of my life. 

• An old friend that of ours lost his wife this week after a long battle with brain cancer. 
• A dear friend and former member of our church recently found out she has breast cancer and had surgery this week.  
• A 21 year old kid from the youth group I used to pastor has been battling cystic fibrosis for most of his life and is now in ICU. 
• This morning I found out that a pastor friend's wife has cancer and has just had surgery.   

All of this is in addition to several in my church who have either lost jobs, are battling illness, facing family breakdown or worrying about loved ones overseas in the military. 

Indeed, the world we live in is a fallen world.  So, how does one retain their faith in the midst of such things?  

I just finished reading "Why Johnny Can't Preach" by T. David Gordon, a book I recommend highly to preachers and anyone concerned with the state of preaching in the church.  In a section on how to build faith in one's hearers, Gordon offers the following anecdote from the life of Robert Lewis Dabney: 

. . . Faith is built by careful, thorough exposition of the person, character and work of Christ. 

One of the great articulations of this reality in the history of Christian literature occurs in a letter written by Clement Read Vaughan to the renowned Southern Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney.  Dabney moved from Virginia to Austin, Texas, almost twenty years after the Civil War and lived there for another fifteen years.  In his latter years, he became blind and weak and knew his death was near.  He wrote to his old friend Vaughan, wondering whether he would have strong enough faith to face his impending death, and Vaughan's reply was as theologically trenchant as it was pastorally lovely.  He wrote back to Dabeny and asked Dabney what a traveler would do if he came to a chasm over which a bridge was spanned: 

What does he doe to breed confidence in the bridge?  He looks at the bridge; he gets down and examines it.  He don't [sic] stand at the bridge-head and turn his thoughts curiously in on his own mind to see if he has confidence in the bridge.  If his examination of the bridge gives him a certain amount of confidence, and yet he wants more, how does he make his faith grow?  Why, in the same way; he still continues to examine the bridge.  Now, my dear old man, let your faith take care of itself for awhile, and you just think of what you are allowed to trust in.  Think of the Master's power, think of his love; think how he is interested in the soul that searches for him, and will not be comforted until he finds him.  Think of what he has done, his work.  That blood of his is mightier than all the sins of of all the sinners that ever lived.  Don't you think it will master yours? . . . 

Now, dear old friend, I have done to you just what I would want you to do to me if I were lying in your place.  The great theologian, after all, is just like any other one of God's children, and the simple gospel talked to him is just like any other one of God's children, and the simple gospel talked to him is just as essential to his comfort as it is to a milk-maid or to a plow-boy.  May God give you grace, not to lay too much stress on your own faith, but to grasp the great ground of confidence, Christ, and all his work and all his personal fitness to be a sinners refuge.  Faith is only an eye to see him.  I have been praying that God would quiet your pains as you advance, and enable you to see the gladness of the gospel at every step.  Good-bye.  God be with you as he will.  Think of the Bridge!

Your brother, 
C. R. V. 

We all wonder how we are going to face the most difficult situations of life and if we will be able to cope.  We all wonder how we will face the most difficult situation - our own death.  Like Dabney, I have had fresh occasion to consider that like never before.  

These words brought great comfort to me as I hope they did to Dabney. In asking if I would have the faith to face my own death I have been asking if I have the resources to do so within me.  My eye was on me and my experience of faith.  But C. R. V. rightly reminds us all that we are not to look to our faith, for faith by definition is a look to Christ. 

This is all any of us has to offer those who are facing situations like the ones I described above - we need not worry ourselves as to whether we have the inner strength to face these things - we don't and we shouldn't look within for strength to face them.  Christ alone has "the personal fitness to be a sinners refuge."  This is the key to faith in the midst of suffering.