今天我们要思考第三个关于处理难以承担的苦难的步骤──不要浪费太多时间寻找苦难的原因，而是聚焦于如何去面对它。圣经让我们看到耶稣花很少时间去解释人类的苦难，更没有解释如何消除苦难。如果耶稣尝试解释苦难，那么祂的福音便会变成哲学，这样就不是福音了。哲学尝试解释一切，可惜一切依旧不变。耶稣没有怎么样去作解释，但祂却改变所触及的一切。耶稣来不是要带来一种哲学，而是一个事实。

那个事实是甚么？事实是耶稣自己经历了苦难，并将它转化为更高层次的东西。从这事实，我们领悟出我们的哲学，那就是我们借以活出生命的原则和步骤。请留意是先有事实，然后才有关于事实的哲学。这个不单是一个「好消息」，更是战胜罪恶和苦难，从中产生出一种生命之道。

第四个步骤是，要提醒自己，在神的宇宙中，祂只容许那些祂能使用的东西出现。我们在今天的经文看到耶稣提出苦难临到我们的九个来源：混乱的宗教人士（假基督）、社会的战争和冲突、自然灾难等等。然后耶稣说：「但这些事终必为你们的见证。」换句话说，你不能逃避麻烦，也不能只当它是神的旨意来忍受，你需要好好地利用它。

We look now at the third step in the process of dealing with unmerited suffering: don't spend too much time trying to understand the reason for suffering - focus rather on how you can deal with it. Notice, Jesus spent very little time trying to explain human suffering, much less explain it away. Had He undertaken to explain it, then His gospel would have become a philosophy - in which case it would not have been a gospel. A philosophy undertakes to explain everything, and then leaves everything as it was. Jesus undertook to explain little, but He changed everything He touched. He did not come to bring a philosophy, but a fact.

What was that fact? The fact was His own method of meeting suffering and transforming it into something higher. Out of this fact, we put together our philosophy - a system of principles and procedures by which we live out our life in this world. Notice that fact comes first, and then the philosophy about the fact. The good news is not merely "good news"; it is the fact of sin and suffering being met and overcome, and a way of life blazed out through them.

The fourth step is this: remind yourself that in God's universe, He allows only what He can use. In the passage before us today, Jesus gives the nine sources from which suffering comes upon us: confused religionists (false Christs), wars and conflicts in society, calamities in nature, and so on. Then He says this: "It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony." In other words, you are not to escape trouble, nor merely bear it as the will of God - you are to use it.