No suffering?

Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame? (Jeremiah 20:18)

Jeremiah knew of the stern warnings that God issues to those of His elect who continue in sin and rebellion against God. He lived to see the end result of ignoring those warnings. If Jeremiah were alive on earth today he would tell us to pay attention to the words of the Apostle Paul. He would not claim that God loves us so much Paul could not possibly be speaking to God's own people!

Another unscriptural myth:

The concept that the Christian must never suffer. Christ did all the suffering for us. This idea is so obviously unscriptural that it is amazing intelligent believers would accept it as truth. But it is a part of the understanding that to be a Christian requires only that we make the right profession of belief. Once we do that we are saved by grace and no other action is necessary.

Jeremiah indeed would wonder at the notion that God's people are not supposed to suffer. Jeremiah suffered at the hands of his own people because he continually rebuked them for their ungodliness.

Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me. (Jeremiah 15:10)

Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail? (Jeremiah 15:18)

Suffering plays an important role in the development of God's rulers. If we suffer we will rule, Paul stresses.

The Apostle Peter claims that suffering is part of the process of making us holy.

Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. (I Peter 4:1,2)

To attain the first resurrection from the dead we must share the sufferings of Christ.

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; (Philippians 3:10)

It is through our suffering that the resurrection life of Christ is brought to other people.

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. (II Corinthians 4:10)

Tribulation creates patience in us and teaches us obedience to God. Christ Himself learned obedience through the things He suffered. Paul learned that God's power is perfected as we are weak.

The teaching that Christians are not to suffer but are to be raptured to Heaven before they face Antichrist or the great tribulation is unscriptural. God's way, according to the Scriptures, is to enable us to go through the fire without being burned—like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (I Timothy 6:9,10)

Another incorrect teaching:

A modern doctrine is that Christians are to be rich in this world and they can use "faith" as a tool to acquire riches. But the Lord Jesus refused to turn stone into bread by the word of faith, teaching us we are not to attempt to use miracle-working faith apart from the express will and directions of the Lord. There are higher issues in the Kingdom than our personal desires.

"No person can serve both God and money," the Lord Jesus said. The Scriptures tell of Balaam, Gehazi, Judas, and Ananias and Sapphira. We have been clearly warned by the Apostle Paul to avoid the pursuit of riches.

The Scriptures could not be more clear on this topic, yet the love of money has kept many people from the Kingdom of God, just as it did the rich young ruler.

The new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah has as its goal the creating of righteous people. It says nothing about making them wealthy in the present world.

Christians are to imagine what they want and then speak the creative word that will bring their imagined object or situation into physical existence. The word of the Christian is totally different from the Word of God. God speaks worlds into existence. The believer cannot speak a grain of dust into existence.

But there has been teaching to the contrary!

The current faith-prosperity doctrine in some instances may be framed in harmless exhortations to maintain a positive, cheerful attitude toward God. But in other cases it may result in attempts to manipulate the physical environment by supernatural power. But it is not the supernatural power of God.

It is not God's will that man at his discretion speak words of power, not yet at least. This would put man in control of the physical universe while he still is under bondage to an adamic soul and body. Imaging and speaking creative words are too close to the occult!

We are not to attempt to exercise supernatural faith in this manner. We are to call on the Lord. True faith is demonstrated when we place our trust in the Lord Jesus and ask Him to move on our behalf. There could be instances when the Lord then directs us to act in faith in some manner. But this is true faith, faith in the Lord Jesus, not faith in faith itself. There is a world of difference in these two approaches to miracles.

No part of the new covenant announced by the Prophet Jeremiah includes the idea that people are to have power to get what they desire by speaking creative words.

Bro. Thompson - excerpt from GRACE AND THE NEW COVENANT