Nobody wants to suffer. No one likes to experience pain. No one wants to hurt or have difficulty, and in fact, we frequently build our lives in such a way as to avoid suffering in any way that we can.
We seek a good paying, stable job. We have insurance for our houses, for our cars, for our health, for our lives, for the possibility that we get hurt, for the possibility that we lose our job…and so much more. Why pay all of the money for all of this insurance? It is so that we can avoid the suffering that would come if we were to have a problem in any of these areas.
Going further, we hear a similar attitude to avoid suffering even in the church:
It isn’t God’s will for you to suffer.
It isn’t God’s will that you would be sick.
It isn’t God’s will that you would go through this difficult time.
And yet Paul says that our suffering can actually produce immeasurable good within us:
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
Paul believed, in the first place, that a disciple of Christ’s hope is to be placed in the glory of God. This is what he was referring to when he said “Not only so…” in the quote above. Their boast, or in other words, that new reality upon which they have placed their hope, was in God’s glory. God receives glory through the salvation of many as a result of his love, his mercy, and his grace toward his people because he sent Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice as a payment for our sins, redeeming us out of the kingdom of darkness so that we can enter the kingdom of God. Therefore, our hope is in the glory of God. God saved us for his glory, so that is the only thing in which we can boast.
But Paul says that they also, beyond having hope in the glory of God, glory in their sufferings.
Wait, what?
Paul says that we glory in our sufferings because of what it does within us. When we suffer, we learn to persevere. We learn to walk through the suffering toward the goal of finishing the race, finishing the life’s work that God has for us. We can either suffer and subsequently walk away from what God sent us to do, or we can suffer and walk forward in perseverance.
This is the key that I now tell people that is required to learn if we are to live in another culture, in another country, learning the language, learning their way of life for the sake of the Gospel. It is all about perseverance. Either you prepare to suffer and embrace the pain that is about to come, or you leave. One or the other. Embrace the suffering or leave it behind.
Why? Because it hurts. It makes a mess of your life. It is expensive and will cost you all that you have.
You will suffer, and you will either embrace it and learn perseverance, or you will move on.
But as you learn perseverance, Paul says that you will build the character that God wants from you. And the character that is built within you will, in turn, produce hope.
It is difficult to explain this to people outside of the experience of having gone through suffering so as to learn perseverance, so as to build our character, and ultimately to develop the hope that Christ has placed within us. If we have ever gone through any difficult time and found that we have been made stronger as a result, we know that what Paul is saying is true. However, if our lives, and especially if our lives lived out as Christians, revolve around the avoidance of suffering instead of embracing the risk that is inherent in the need for the world to hear the Gospel, we also avoid the opportunity to learn perseverance, and the opportunity to build character beyond that which we have ever known, and we miss the opportunity to build our hope in Christ.
To be clear, I don’t look for opportunities to suffer, and I don’t believe that we should go looking for those opportunities. Far from it. But to be sure, if we are risking for the sake of the Gospel, suffering will find us, and we should embrace that suffering because of how God will use it to teach us perseverance, character, and a great hope in Christ.
