Leverage suffering for greater good

In today’s article, we’ll discuss the fifth and final of the steps in this series intended to help us better understand how to embrace hope in the midst of all the dangers and uncertainties that today’s world has to offer. To this point, we’ve looked at how to trust what you don’t understand, admitting our need for God’s help, learning to partner with God in the work he’s called us to do, and preparing today for the trials tomorrow might bring. The final step is embracing God’s ability to leverage suffering for a greater good. 

Harvard professor Arthur Brooks is a sociologist specializing in the science of human happiness. In his latest book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, he encourages us to reframe suffering as a path to greater meaning and significance. For example, he writes, “When people are asked how they learned their life’s meaning, they usually refer to painful periods.”

By contrast, he cites studies showing that attempts to eliminate physical, emotional, and mental distress usually make them worse. We avoid physical pain through disuse, which makes our body weaker and leads to more pain. We medicate emotional and mental pain in ways that compound depression.

A key is to view suffering as an inevitable part of life and to look for the good we can embrace if we experience it intentionally and positively. Dr. Brooks points to his son who became a US Marine Sniper through a terribly arduous process but welcomed the suffering as a necessary means to achieving his goal.

Let’s consider three biblical dimensions to such an approach.

God uses suffering to expose our need for his transforming grace.

When I get to heaven one day, if we are permitted to ask questions, one of my first will be directed to the Apostle Paul. Like legions of others, I want to know the nature of his “thorn in the flesh,” which he described as “a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7).

Some conjecture that this was physical illness, persistent temptation, or stultifying persecution and opposition. My thought is that if we needed to know in this life, we would know.

But what we do need to know is how to respond when we face such challenges ourselves. Rather than remove the “thorn,” despite Paul’s persistent pleas (v. 8), the Lord taught him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (v. 9a). As a result, the apostle testified:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (vv. 9b–10).

His story is in Scripture as a model for us. Let’s put it into practice now:

• Name a problem or temptation you are facing today, whatever it is.
• Ask yourself what it tells you about your need for God’s help and strength.
• Use it to submit to his Spirit as you seek his power.
• Trust him to redeem your struggle by drawing you closer to himself.

God often leads us through the limitations of life.

In Keeping Hope—Favourite Prayers for Modern Living, the French priest and theologian Michel Quoist writes: “Your limitations are not simply obstacles to your success—they are also indications from God of the path your life is to take.”

When I first read those words, lights flashed and bells rang in my soul.

I knew Quoist’s wisdom to be biblical. For example, the Lord used the hatred of Joseph’s brothers to lead him from slavery and prison into Pharaoh’s household as his prime minister. In this capacity, he was able to save the nation and his own family from starvation.

When his brothers finally admitted their sins against him and asked his forgiveness, he famously replied, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). The Lord clearly led Joseph through his limitations to his highest and best purpose.

We find a similar pattern in Paul’s second missionary journey, when he was “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” and not allowed by the Spirit to go into Bithynia (Acts 16:6–7). As with his “thorn in the flesh,” I would love to know the circumstances or events by which such limitations occurred. Were they medical? Relational? Persecution or calamity?

The apostle doesn’t say. But he does tell us their result: he and his team made their way to Troas, where he received a vision from a man of Macedonia that led them westward to Philippi and on into what we call “Europe” (vv. 9–10). Apart from this vision, Paul apparently would have turned east. As it was, he turned west, and the westward expansion of the gospel followed.

The reason that Quoist’s statement was so powerful for me, however, was that it came at a time when its truth was becoming even more personal.

When this truth became personal

My longtime ministry partner, Rev. Jeff Byrd, co-founded Denison Ministries with me in 2009. Our purpose was to equip Christians to change the culture by speaking biblical truth to the issues of our day. Prior to our ministry launch, we had served three churches, myself as senior pastor and Jeff in executive pastor roles. In these capacities, our work was fairly well defined each day.

When we began this ministry, however, we had no such guardrails. I also took on the (unpaid) role of theologian in residence for Texas Baptists. Accordingly, I wondered, was I to preach in our churches each Sunday? Was I to teach in our seminaries and colleges? Should I continue writing the daily devotional I had begun in our last church? Should I publish more books?

As we sought clarity with these opportunities, I began experiencing physical limitations on a level I had not known before. My voice became increasingly strained and painful when I preached and spoke in public. Spinal problems that started in college became increasingly painful and even debilitating, leading to a four-level spinal fusion and progressive neuropathy in my back and legs.

As my back and voice became worse, the one thing unchanged in my calling was my ability to type and write. In recent years, this has become the “one thing I do” (cf. Philippians 3:13), the way I fulfill my mission of connecting God’s word with the urgent cultural issues of our day.

In these years, God has blessed this calling in wonderful ways. He has given us an incredible team of colleagues to enlarge our platform and extend our audience and global impact, managing the organization in ways that free me more than ever before to pray, read, and write.

In this season, I feel wonderfully fulfilled in my calling. Though my voice is painful whenever I use it, and my back condition continues to worsen, God has led me through limitations in miraculous ways for which I give him thanks and praise.

I say all of that only to say this: Your Father loves you as much as he loves anyone he has ever created, and he has a “good and acceptable and perfect” will for your life (Romans 12:2). If he is using limitations to lead you into his best, I encourage you to follow his Spirit.

As Charles Spurgeon noted, “God is too good to be unkind and he is too wise to be mistaken.” Therefore, “When we cannot trace his hand, we must trust his heart.”

Faithful suffering can be our most persuasive witness before a skeptical world.

Shortly after I turned thirty, a large church in Texas graciously called me to be their pastor. I had served a small church for several years while teaching philosophy of religion at my seminary. Very little in my pastoral experience prepared me for this new opportunity.

God knew this, of course, which is why he led me to one of our members who was dying of cancer.

I know this sentence may seem nonsensical, but it’s true. This godly woman was in the last stages of her disease when I met her. Her suffering was immense. But I never visited her that she did not exhibit the joy of Jesus and the strength of the Spirit. Her passion for her Father and his church knew no bounds. And her compassion for me as her very young pastor was beyond gracious.

She became my first prayer partner in this congregation and a trusted confidant. Her wisdom in helping me handle the myriad challenges of my new role was indispensable. The day of her homegoing marked my soul for all time. I am so excited to see her one day in paradise.

One of the many gifts she gave me was the assurance that faithful suffering can mark others in ways other service cannot. People expect us to be happy about our faith when our circumstances are happy. But if we trust God when we are up against the hardest pain life brings, even the skeptics among us take note. When there is no explanation for our courage and confidence except Christ, those who witness our faithfulness are drawn to its source.

Many years ago I heard about a family who lost several children to an influenza epidemic. The next spring, the parents and their remaining children were in church for Easter Sunday. They sang the hymns of triumph and celebrated the resurrection along with the rest of their congregation.

When the services were over, a young boy pointed to the family who had lost so much and asked his father, “They really believe it, don’t they?” His father asked, “They believe what?” “Easter,” his son replied. “They really believe Easter.”

I don’t know if that family ever knew the impact their faithfulness made on that young boy. I can state with certainty that they never knew I would be telling their story generations later in this book. But I do know that they really believed Easter.

As they did, we can.