Elisabeth Elliot defined suffering as “having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.” All who are familiar with her story know that being a widow twice over was part of the suffering God entrusted to her—a suffering most of us can hardly imagine.
While that may not be the suffering you and I have walked through, I think it’s helpful to ask ourselves what sufferings have been entrusted to us. What do I have that I don’t want, and what do I want that I don’t have?
In recent years, some of my seasons of suffering have been as major as a freak accident, where I lost an organ and stayed in the ICU for ten days, and as “hidden” as the desire to have a fourth child but being limited by life circumstances. Other seasons include losing both of my parents in one month’s time and times of deep loneliness on the field. Our family longed to be known and loved for who we were, not what we could offer. Our suffering spans both the slander and betrayal we experienced from leaders we thought were supposed to be our biggest supporters and days when sweat, humidity, mosquitoes, and cancelled plans seemed to be all we knew.
But the reason I have found it helpful to understand life’s circumstances through the grid of this definition of suffering is because of the even-more-significant question it leads me to ask: How am I being invited into a deeper level of intimacy with Jesus in this?
Is there a way in which whatever I don’t have but want, or don’t want but have, can be a place for me to meet Jesus in a new way? In all of my sufferings, however “big” or “small”—after I have cried my tears, poured out my lament before God, and finally come to a place of surrendered acceptance—what has brought the most comfort time and time again is what Paul calls the “fellowship of his sufferings.” Here’s how he describes it in Philippians 3, which I especially love in the Amplified translation:
“I count everything as loss compared to the priceless privilege and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord [and of growing more deeply and thoroughly acquainted with Him—a joy unequaled] . . . that I may know him [experientially, becoming more thoroughly acquainted with Him, understanding the remarkable wonders of His Person more completely] and [in that same way experience] the power of His resurrection [which overflows and is active in believers], and [that I may share] the fellowship of His sufferings, by being continually conformed [inwardly into His likeness even] to His death [dying as He did].” (Phil 3:8,10)
Everything in me shirks thoughts of death, of loss, of lack. But, when I see those deaths—everything from the actual physical deaths of people I love to the seemingly unseen deaths of my desires for comfort or approval or safety—as opportunities to know my Savior more deeply, I can see them as beautiful invitations, “priceless privileges.”
My eyes are opened to know him experientially as the Wounded Healer, who intimately knows pain and death. I get to know him as the Righteous Judge, who not only has tasted the bitter cup of betrayal but will one day right every wrong and uncover all that is hidden by darkness. I am invited to sit with him as my refuge and sanctuary from a world that is filled with loss and loneliness and unmet longings. The way of victory and exaltation for my King was one of seeming defeat and shameful death. How can I expect to truly know him on a path of only success, ease, and triumph?
Though it’s painful, the Savior who invites me to come and really know him—to see the tears on his face, to listen to the sound of his voice, to feel the warmth of his embrace in my darkest moments—is inviting me to do so in ways that will most often feel like death.
What painful parts of your story have actually been the places where you’ve come to know Jesus more deeply? Are you currently in a painful season that might be an invitation to “share in his sufferings”?
