Rejoice in Suffering
by Robert Krumrey
Experiencing joy while suffering is something that most Christians believe is a biblical concept. They can remember a verse or two back in the recesses of their brain that seem to claim this. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,” from James 1:2 is an all time favorite on this topic. This sounds good, but how can this actually be experienced in the life of the Christian?
WHAT IT’S NOT
One thing to consider is what these kinds of verses are NOT saying. They are not saying to pretend that you are not suffering. Enough of the prosperity gospel has leaked into today’s church, that many of us think that joy in suffering is merely some version of the power of positive thinking. This way of handling suffering is more akin to someone practicing New Age spirituality. We think God is organizing his activity around our positive thoughts. As long as we ignore our pain and fear, we can wish the bad things away in Jesus’ name. This couldn’t be further from Christian truth. The Bible is filled with what is often called “lament” - bringing one’s emotions to God no matter what they may be. There is lots of this in the Psalms. Agonizing prayers being lifted up to God like:
and “Be not far from me for trouble is near, and there is none to help.”
So much for stuffing my “negative” emotions and thinking only positive thoughts!
WHAT IT IS
There are a number of truths in scripture that help us understand how God gives us joy in suffering. One is that suffering in and of itself is something that God uses to accomplish his purposes. This must be true if we believe that God, who is all powerful and good and wise, is allowing suffering into our lives. There are many places in scripture where this is explored. One of the most helpful is a passage in Romans chapter five:
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Paul writes to the church at Rome that we “rejoice in our sufferings” because these sufferings activate a process. A process that starts with an experience he labels (and the ESV translates) as “endurance”. Most of us think of a very stagnant experience when we hear the word endurance. We are told just to “endure” something until it passes. This is not the way that Paul is exhorting the Christian to deal with suffering. The greek word being translated here is “hupomone”. The word communicates an active bearing up under the weight of suffering that looks more like a weight lifter pushing against the force of the weights on a squat bar.
This is something that can only be done in the strength that is provided by God through his Spirit. Again, we don’t want to slip into believing that positive thinking and the determination of one’s will cures all. We are able to hupomone in the midst of suffering because God gives us grace to do this. We lament and pray and get others to pray and encourage us in this faith filled struggle. When we do this, according to Romans 5, something happens. We experience character formation.
We know some version of this happens even when not taking the spiritual dimension into account. Every post Super Bowl speech by the Patriots has gone something like this - “We had a tough season but we pulled together and persevered as a team. We got better through all that hardship and tonight we got to see the fruit of what’s been happening in our team over this entire season”. Or something like that. Adversity can produce results even apart from some kind of vertical dimension. The problem with this kind of perseverance, is that it’s done without being aware of the aid that God provides and can result in something other than an improved character. Namely human pride.
When endurance is accomplished by grace through faith, it produces Christlike character in us. It softens our rough edges, deepens our capacity to love others, and stirs our appreciation for the goodness of God and his gospel. This is the kind of person we say we want to be, but haven’t been able to arrive at through singing praise songs and giving right answers in Bible study. Often times it takes an experience of suffering to see ourselves truly changed from the inside out.
This leads to HOPE! Paul ends his logical progression of what can happen in times of suffering with hope. Hope is assurance in the certainty of who God is and what he can and will do. Those who have walked through suffering and seen it further conform them to the image of Christ, walk away with a reservoir of hope that they can draw from for future suffering. A big part of that hope is a pouring out of God’s love into the heart or inner most being of the sufferer through the work of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Paul lets us know that as we lament and pray and seek encouragement in times of suffering, God shows up and does so in a way that is so intimate that it’s experienced as a filling up of God’s love. This is more than a "what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” kind of character building. This is an experience of God that changes us forever.
You may be thinking, “That all sounds great, but I’m just not ‘feeling it’! No subjective experience of love being felt here in the midst of suffering.” If that’s the case, don’t give up. Keep lamenting. Keep praying. Keep going to God’s word for encouragement. Also keep looking at the gospel. A few verses later in Romans chapter 5 we see this verse:
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Whether we are feeling the pouring out of God’s love in our hearts or not, we can know for sure that God loves us because of what he demonstrated for us at the cross. You may not have realized it, but the examples of lament from the Psalms in the beginning of this article are all from one Psalm. Psalm 22. It begins with the words “ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” You may recognize that phrase as being in the mouth of Jesus on the cross. Read the rest of it and be amazed at all of the parallels there are in that Psalm to the events of the crucifixion. As Jesus is quoting this Psalm, he is probably not just thinking of the first line but the entire Psalm which is one of the Psalms of lament. It’s one more reminder of what Jesus did for us through his suffering and death on the cross. He took on all the shame and guilt and despair of sin and all of its effects. All those things that elicit suffering in our lives and lament in our heart. Because of Jesus’ suffering, he has opened a door for all of us to suffer while still maintaining hope. A hope that is in the now. A hope that is in the not yet. A hope that is cause for great joy!
Picture by Victor Freitas