The Secret of Suffering

Series: The Gift of Suffering: An Interview With Bunny Wilson

Leslie Basham: Bunny Wilson knows a lot about physical suffering. Here's how she responds to it.

Bunny Wilson: I completely focus my attention upward to a sovereign, loving God who never stops thinking about me, who, the Bible says, "He sings over me; He knows how many hairs on my head. His thoughts are as the grain of sand." This is the God I serve and I will never question Him about my suffering.

Leslie Basham: It's Thursday, April 8; and this is Revive our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Here's Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: My friend Bunny Wilson is with us in the studio again today. We've been talking about her book, Seven Secrets Women Want to Know. Bunny, thanks for joining us again today on the broadcast.

Bunny Wilson: Thank you, Nancy, you are so refreshing. I always enjoy spending time with you.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, thank you. God has given you such a fresh and special life message as a result of something you've been experiencing over the past few years.

We started talking about that yesterday. But just to put it in context, one of those secrets that you say women want to know is God's perspective on suffering. We said that as the Lord Jesus suffered for us, sacrificially showing His love to us, submitting to the will of God even in the midst of suffering, that we are also called to suffer.

I think of that verse often in 1 Peter 2 [:21] where it says, "For this you were also called to suffer as Christ suffered for us." We think about being called to the mission field or called to join that ministry but we don't often think about suffering as a calling. You've learned something about that calling through what you call "Handy." Tell us, for those who weren't with us yesterday, a little bit about Handy.

Bunny Wilson: Well, Handy is my tremor that I've had in my right hand for three years. It tremors from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed. There is not a second that passes in a day where my hand is not tremoring.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And this came upon you a few years ago? You found it was something hereditary and something that apparently is common. You told us that a million Americans are afflicted with an Essential Tremor. This is obviously something that's affected you in the ministry that God has called you to.

Bunny Wilson: Yes, it has affected me in a very positive way. I guess in a way people really enjoy the fact that you suffer, and I don't mean that in a cruel way, but people are actually kind of relieved to know that somebody else is suffering and to see how suffering should be handled. Not only people, but I'm teaching my children how to suffer.

I have a nine-year-old daughter, her name is Gabrielle and Gabrielle loves Handy. Handy tickles her and Handy tells her stories. I give Handy another voice other than the voice that I have.

One day I was talking on the phone, I was getting a treatment for my tremor, and I was talking on the phone in the kitchen and I was telling a friend that there was a good chance that this treatment was going to cause my tremor to stop. Gabrielle came around the corner and she said, "You are only thinking of yourself. If your hand stops shaking, where's Handy going to go?"

I had to actually put the person on hold and take Gabrielle in my arms and say, "You know, Handy's been busy for three years. Handy just wants to take a nap." And I had to console her because when she introduces me to her friends she says, "This is my Mom and that's Handy."

Now just think, Nancy, if I had been ashamed of my tremor, she would have been ashamed. She doesn't realize it now but one day in the future when she has her own Handy, because everyone I think gets their fair share of suffering, she'll remember the Handy that I had and she'll know the attitude and the outlook she should have on her suffering. She doesn't realize it, but Handy is teaching her to suffer.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: No matter how we embrace suffering, we still have to deal with it day to day and I know that this tremor for you is an inconvenience. You're doing public speaking and doing TV programs. How does it affect you in those areas?

Bunny Wilson: Well, I have had to adjust. You know, it started out slightly and it has increasingly become worse. It's only recently that I lost my ability to write with my right hand or eat with my right hand, so the way I adjust is to sit on it, I make it be still.

When I am speaking in front of a group of people, you will remember I used to hold the microphone in my right hand and I used to walk up and down the platform. But now I have them pull up a chair, give me a stand-up mike right near my mouth and I sit down in that chair and I sit on my hand.

Now when I begin speaking I tell them about Handy. I tell them about my attitude toward Handy and then I sit on Handy to make it still while I'm speaking to the audience and you know, Nancy, the only way I can describe it is that it is supernatural, the additional anointing that the Lord has given me to communicate His truths.

I think that as the people sit and listen to me, they realize that I am sharing with them out of my suffering. Then they start thinking about how they're suffering and what their attitude is towards it and how much more they could be doing or things they pulled back on because they were suffering and went in a different direction because of what they were enduring.

And it gives them a different perspective and attitude. I'm grateful for Handy that during this season of my life that this is what is being accomplished in the lives of believers.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Bunny, is this something that conceivably you have to live with for the rest of your life or for a very long time?

Bunny Wilson: Yes! There is no cure. But you know what, Nancy? The way I see things as a believer is that I am a soldier that's been dropped behind enemy lines. Satan is the prince of this air; I am in God's army and soldiers are on a need-to-know basis.

When those planes hit the World Trade Towers and we sent our forces across the ocean, I will never forget that there was a captain being interviewed. He was about to take his war vessel across the ocean and the reporter said, "Where are you going?"

And he [the captain] said, "East."

He said, "What is your destination?"

He said "East."

The reporter said, "How are you going to know where to go?"

He said, "When I head East eventually I will get orders for where I am supposed to go."

God has us on a need-to-know basis. God has given me everything I need to know and you and I might bounce back some scriptures of encouragement to people that are listening. What scripture of encouragement comes to your mind, Nancy, when we say, "He's given us all we need to know?"

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I think of the passages that talk about the future hope we have, where Paul says in Romans 8:18 (NKJV), "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." Not now, but down the road.

And in 2 Corinthians 4, at the very end of that chapter where Paul says that our afflictions in this life are really only momentary and they are light. Now that's hard to believe when you are in the midst of affliction. It seems like it is very major and seems like maybe it will go on for years and it may!

But Paul says, "Think about it in the light of eternity, every affliction is momentary and it is light. And he tells us what the perspective is that helps us see it that way, that those afflictions are accomplishing something in us that could not be accomplished any other way. And when we get to the other side of the river, as you say, we get into the presence of God and eternity, we will look back and we will say, "What I have now is worth everything I had to endure there on earth in order to get to this eternal and exceeding weight of glory."

Bunny Wilson: When we think of eternity, the Bible says that one day with the Lord is like a thousand years on earth. Now it uses the word "like" because there'll be no ending to time; but if you were to break that equation down, Nancy, one day with the Lord is like a thousand years on earth, do you know that that means--that by the time we live to be 75 years old only 1 hour and 48 minutes have passed in heaven?

So no matter what we are going through in our life as a single, as a married person, with our husband, with our children, with our afflictions, we only have about 20 minutes left and we're going to be out of here. We can, you know, I can hang on for 20 minutes to celebrate God and eternity.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: That does give such a helpful perspective and yet what do you do right here and now, while you're in the midst of that? Do you ever pray and ask God to take this affliction away? Have you asked Him to remove it?

Bunny Wilson: Well, I don't just want it to go away. I mean that would be wonderful to just wake up one day and it just stopped, but I'd never know why I had it. You know, I don't have the benefit that Paul had when he was afflicted. He knew why he had his thorn in his flesh.

He said, "So that I would not become conceited because of my exceedingly great revelations" he said, "There was given me a thorn in my flesh. A messenger of Satan was sent to buffet me." He said, "I pleaded with God three times to remove it from me and God said, 'My grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness'" [2 Corinthians 12:7-9].

And, you know, isn't it interesting about God that the world cannot understand how strength is made perfect in weakness? It just sounds so paradoxical. Yet, that's the way God is. His thoughts are as far from our thoughts as heaven is from earth.

I'm not going to be like Job and defend myself. You know in Job 31 he was afflicted and his friends who condemned him couldn't prompt him to condemn himself, but they did provoke him to defend himself.

And in Job 31, the whole chapter is called Job's defense. He says things like, "If I had walked in falsehood, if my steps had been turned from the path, my heart had been lead by my eyes," he said, "If I had denied the desires of the poor," he says, "Oh that someone would hear me I sign now my defense. Let the almighty answer me."

And God didn't respond to him immediately, He waited seven chapters and in chapter 38 it says, "And God answered Job out of a storm. He said, 'Who is this that darkens my counsel by words without knowledge?'"

He questioned Job all of 38, all of 39 and at the beginning of chapter 40, Job says, "I am unworthy, how can I reply to you? I cover my hand over my mouth. I spoke once but I have no answer, twice but I will say no more."

Nancy, I thought that was a noble answer but the way God responded to Job He was very displeased. He said, "Brace yourself like a man for I will question you and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?"

And I looked at Job's answer and I realized when he said, "I am unworthy," Job didn't get it. Instead of being turned upward, he was turned inward and the reason Handy hasn't gotten me down is because I completely focus my attention upward to a sovereign, loving God who never stops thinking about me, who, the Bible says, "He sings over me, He knows how many hairs are on my head. His thoughts are as the grain of sand." This is the God I serve and I will never question Him about my suffering.

Leslie Basham: That's Bunny Wilson who has studied what God's Word has to say about suffering and has experienced it herself. Bunny has written on the way God can use suffering in our lives. She devotes a chapter to it in her book, Seven Secrets Women Want to Know. If you want to grow deeper in biblical womanhood, this would be a great book to read.

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We'll be bringing you a special dramatized story for Good Friday called The Ragman. It will help you take a fresh look at what Christ did on the cross. Please join us for Revive our Hearts.

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