“Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.”
Psalm 31:9-10
One of the most amazing things about Scripture is the honesty of its writers. David, in particular, seems to hold nothing back in the Psalms. There is a whole book called Lamentations.
“For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed. Zion stretches out her hands, but there is none to comfort her; the Lord has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should be his foes; Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.”
Lamentations 1:16-17
Job gets increasingly intense with his emotions even though he is exposed and confronted by God in the end. Jeremiah and the other prophets call on the Lord to work on their behalf in spite of Israel’s unworthiness.
All of this encourages me that it must be ok to express our hearts honestly to the Lord regardless of what we are feeling: fear, anger, disappointment, sadness, pain, confusion, bitterness, doubt…
Matt Chandler was succeeding in every way as a young pastor in Texas. His church grew from 160 to 3,000 in just a few years. He was married, with three small (healthy) children. In terms of Christian ministry, he was literally living the dream. In order to grow as a pastor, the Lord led Matt to deepen his theology of suffering, so he studied passages like the ones above and spent a year helping his church wrestle with God’s goodness in the midst of our pain.
“The Bible isn’t full of clean, happy living. You could argue that it’s a book more full of tears than smiles. It’s full of God working for the good of his people in the mess brought about by sin and death. God is with his people through sufffering and through difficulty, so that they come out on the other side as a picture of grace and glory, and he uses them in their pain and changes the world through the results of their trials.”
Joy In the Sorrow, p. 10
Then on thanksgiving day 2009 Matt collapsed in his home with a grand mal seizure. He woke up in the hospital to learn that he had a malignant brain tumor and would need surgery very soon. Patients in a case like his had a life expectancy of only two or three years. So Matt, his church, and his friends and family called on the Lord in prayer.
The surgery was successful but since the tumor was cancerous he needed a full eighteen months of aggressive chemo and radiation treatments that took an increasing toll on his body.
In the midst of all of that, Matt announced in 2010 that he believed God had healed him from the cancer. A prognosis of 2-3 years was undone by the combination of prayer and good medical treatments. Here is how Chandler summed up the story in an interview. And this video is a promo for Matt’s book.
The beauty of the book Joy In the Sorrow is how it weaves together the experiences of ten different families. Matt’s story runs through the book and has a happy ending. The other families include some miraculous interventions from the Lord but are mostly stories of sadness and loss, and how to find God in those dark valleys.
“It is by suffering that God has most nearly approached to man; it is by suffering that man draws most nearly to God.”
Joy In the Sorrow, p. 23
Etched into a church pulpit these words convey the gospel of the eternal Son of God drawing near to us in great suffering. And it communicates how we connect with our suffering and sympathetic God through our own pain and sorrow. “Only when the gold has been purified can it reflect the Refiner’s face.”
“When we suffer, we have a choice: turn our focus inward and be consumed with self-pity and bitterness or lift our eyes and watch the Redeemer make all things new.”
Joy In the Sorrow, p. 31
That sentence would have meaning for any follower of Jesus. But in this book it comes from a mother whose son drowned on a youth ministry lake day and was resuscitated but never recovered full brain function. A key principle from the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada is that, “Suffering will either make you bitter or it will make you better.”
A man at Chandler’s church had three young daughters when his wife died suddenly. As he began to rebuild the ruins of his life he found himself at a crossroads. Would he retreat inward, seeking ways to escape the sadness and pain or would he move forward, seeking God in the midst of the sorrow?
“Through suffering, God calls us out of our own little lives and their dreams and hopes and concerns, to transcend earthly things and know him… God is enough. God is constant. God is present.”
Joy In the Sorrow, p. 47
Every story is unique. This book weaves ten stories together around the central threads of faith in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God of love. It does not deny or downplay the realities of death and suffering in this dark and fallen world. But it shows followers of Jesus fighting for faith in the goodness of God together.
Kristin and I have already experienced this reality through you, our church family. Your love for us, your prayers, your commitment to walk with us whatever happens – has built up our faith and shown us what the love of our suffering God looks and feels like. We are borrowing faith from you, our brothers and sisters, whom we have watched and walked with through your own valleys of sadness and loss. And now we take our tentative steps into the darkness knowing that we are not alone on the journey because human hands remind us of the Divine Hands that are really holding us up.
So whatever your sorrow; whatever your pain; know that you are not alone. The Bible is filled with men and women of faith who suffered and struggled and cried out in confusion, fear and doubt. And so is our church. So is every church.
The passage I keep coming back to is at the end of 2 Corinthians.
“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ 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.”
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
I have never felt more weak in my life. I have been blessed for 49 years to have very good health and memory and mental clarity and energy. These last six weeks all of that has been stripped away and I feel nothing but daily weakness, fatigue and mental fogginess. And I have no guarantees as surgery looms next week.
But this we know: God’s power is perfected in our weakness. And His grace is sufficient. Because HE is sufficient. So we cling to the Lord, we hold fast to His goodness, we trust in His sovereign plans. And we give thanks for each of you, that we don’t walk this path alone.