Suffering: An Avenue for Grace

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: My friend Sarah Walton and her family suffered a series of trials over a period of years—more than a decade, in fact. There were chronic health challenges, job difficulties, and parenting problems.

All of it combined affected Sarah’s emotions, at times in some serious ways.

Sarah Walton: It just started to feel like, “What is there to enjoy in life? Lord, You’ve taken it all! I mean, how am I supposed to walk through life and have what You call ‘joy’ if you’ve taken everything I enjoy?” I was struggling to grapple with those things.

Nancy: But now, a little further down the road, Sarah’s perspective has changed.

Sarah: This is the road God has chosen for me. He’s called me to walk it, and He promises to give me the grace and strength to walk down it—not because I’m strong enough, but because my weakness makes me lean into His strength and my grief makes me lean into His comfort.

Nancy: Today, we’ll hear how we can move from the place of, “Lord, I’m feeling joyless,” to “Lord, I’m trusting You!” Stay with us.

Dannah Gresh: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for October 23, 2023. Our host is the co-author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Nancy: Suffering is never something we would choose for ourselves. But today we’re going to hear how God can use the hard things in our lives to grow us, change us, and shape us. Sarah Walton and her husband, Jeff, are originally from the Chicago area and now live in Colorado Springs. They have four children.

I want you to listen to this list of just some of the challenges they faced: 

• An ongoing battle with chronic illness, Lymes disease for Sarah and the kids 
• A neurological disorder and mental health challenges in their oldest son have affected everyone in the family.
• They’ve had drained finances, because most treatments for Lymes are not covered by insurance. 
• An injury in Sarah’s late teens led to five ankle surgeries, to the point that she now has difficulty walking.
• In order to be able to be home more, Jeff quit his job. He was an orthopedic trauma consultant that was constantly on call. He took a 70 percent pay cut. 
• Then not many months later, Jeff was laid off. 
• Their marriage has suffered, to the point they wondered if they were going to make it. 
• And that’s just a partial list.

As I’ve watched Sarah on this difficult, painful journey, I’ve seen her learn some things about suffering and loss. And today I want to share with you some thoughts that she shared with a group of women who are ministry leaders at a gathering we hosted here at Revive Our Hearts called The Sisters in Ministry Summit.

So now if you have a Bible nearby, let me encourage you to turn to the New Testament book of Philippians. We’re picking up where Sarah is talking about lessons that she has learned from the apostle Paul. Let’s listen.

Sarah: Paul knew loss in so many ways. We’re all familiar with Paul and his writings. He knew loss in ways that most of us probably will never know, Lord willing. But somehow he could confidently say that knowing Christ and being found in Him was well worth the cost!

Now, I want to be honest with you. There have been a lot of days—from the beginning all the way until now—that I really struggled to understand how Paul could say these things. I mean, to me, the paralyzing pain that I have felt so many days, to understand how there could possibly be any good in it, has just felt hard for me to grasp.

I knew Scripture said it, I believe Scripture’s true, but I was struggling to put the two together with real life. I’m sure many of you have felt this before, and I know that I am not alone. But over these past twelve years, I will say that God has really patiently and graciously grown me to resonate with more of what Paul’s words really mean.

As my suffering has become an avenue that God has used to make me know His comfort and His presence and His strength like Christ more than ever before. It has not been overnight, and it has certainly not been easy! But boy, has it been worth it!

So I would like to encourage you to press on by sharing just a few things that I have learned through these verses over the years. There are three ways that I would like to encourage you. First of all, it is okay to grieve our losses.

Paul wrote in Philippians 3:4-11:

If anyone . . . thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and [I] count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith hat I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share [in] his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

What I find amazing and what has kept me going in the darkest of days is that for those of us in Christ, these losses don’t tell the whole story, and the apostle Paul knew this so well! He was this once well-respected Jew. He had every reason to be confident in his accomplishments, his abilities, his heritage.

But somehow, his miraculous conversion changed his entire perspective on what was truly valuable. So it’s as if he’s saying, “You see this list of all that I once valued, all that gave me identity and purpose, all that gave me confidence. It’s all a loss if it keeps me from knowing Christ! All that I thought profited me was actually to my detriment because it gave me confidence in myself and it kept me from knowing true life!”

So, the first thing that has really stuck out to me through the years in these verses is that Paul says in verse 8, “For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things.” It’s okay to grieve our losses, and I’ve needed to learn this over and over again.

Though Paul saw Christ as greater gain, he still suffered his losses. Like David, Job, Paul, and so many other believers in history who have gone before us, we’re still going to feel the pain of our loss when it comes.

We’re given permission to grieve, to lament, to cry out to the Lord in our sorrow and to take our grief, trusting that ultimately He can handle the weight and the complexity of it. But we just can’t get stuck there!

As John Piper says, that I find so helpful, 

Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped you would be, grieve the losses. Then wash your face, trust God, and embrace the life you have. 

Avoiding grief is not actually a sign of strong faith. 

Instead, our faith grows strong as we draw near to Christ in our grief, lamenting our pain and then choosing to trust and worship Him within it. So, it kind of has helped me to think about it this way. In Paul’s words in Romans 5:3–5, he writes: 

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 learned to rejoice in his sufferings. He does not say that he rejoiced about his sufferings. It wasn’t as if his trials were to be glorified, as though that made him more worthy. Over time he experienced the joy as God used his suffering to teach him endurance. And that endurance produced hope and joy as it revealed the character of Christ in him. 

Do I rejoice when I see the pain and the devastation from my son’s illness? No! I grieve it so deeply, and I wrestle with questions and confusion that I may never understand in my lifetime.

Do I rejoice that I can no longer do a lot of what I enjoy? Do I enjoy that I can’t enjoy a stress reducer and just the fun aspect of life by using my ankle and going for walks, or exercising, or playing with my kids? No! I battle fresh disappointment over how that loss affects me every single day, increasingly as I lose more of it.

But as I look back, I see the grace of God equipping me to endure more than I ever imagined possible. Every time I feel that fresh wave of grief and disappointment, I’m so much quicker to run to Christ for His comfort and His strength in faith that somehow He’s still good and at work in these losses, even when I can’t see it. 

And then, as I see evidence of Christ’s faithfulness and His presence in me—and a greater desire growing in me for Him than what I’ve lost—I just begin to experience these glimpses of joy within the sorrow and a greater longing for eternity with Him!

It’s gradual, and it is a glimpse. It’s not something you just suddenly achieve. Sometimes I feel that fresh wave and I lose it. I’m like, “Lord, I can’t go on!” And then He’s so faithful to bring me back to that place.

So, friends, I just want to encourage you that it is okay to grieve your losses, and that grief will come in waves at different stages and with different intensities. But trust that Christ grieves with you, and as you do, let your grief drive you to Him, not away from Him.

As you do, He will equip you to endure, He promises that He will. As you endure, He will gradually produce glimpses of joy as you come to know Him in so much of a deeper and sweeter way!

The second thing that has really stuck out to me that has not been an easy thing to learn is that loss can help us grasp the gospel in a really new way. Paul said in Philippians 3:8–9, 

I have suffered the loss of all things and [I] count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. 

All that Paul lost he considered as rubbish in comparison to being found in Christ and being covered in His righteousness, rather than being blinded by his own perceived goodness. 

Similarly, when life was going relatively well for me, I knew I was a sinner. I knew I needed a Savior. But what loss and suffering have done is they have drawn my sin to the surface in a way that has just made me understand the magnitude of my need for the gospel and for a Savior!

See, the pain of loss is not the only thing we suffer; we suffer our responses to that loss. For example, I have suffered watching my son struggle, but seeing my sinful, icky responses to him has made me grieve in a completely different way.

Experiencing the pain in my body has been incredibly difficult, but seeing the impatience and the anger and the self-pity that comes out of me has increased the pain of that struggle. And while living in an extremely stressful home environment is certainly difficult, my attempts to escape my discomfort through social media, phone, TV, any possible distraction I could come up with (and I’ve come with a lot of them!), it’s only created new struggles rather than freeing me from the ones I was actually trying to avoid. So my losses haven’t made me more sinful, they have just simply revealed what was already inside of me.

And as hard as that is, it has been God’s severe mercy to show me that my need for the gospel is not only for eternal salvation, but it’s for the power to live in a way that honors Him, that glorifies Him, and is dependent on His Spirit to give me everything that I need to walk that faith.

Apart from Christ I can’t produce a faith of my own. I have understood that in a whole new depth as I have battled depression. Things that I’ve struggled to feel, feelings for Christ that I’ve wanted to feel, it has made me realize even the simplest basic part of my faith is dependent on Him. If it were not for Him, I would not be following Him. And that continues to be the case until the day I see Him. 

As much as I’ve disliked my suffering, it’s caused me to grasp the gospel and my need for it in a whole new way, realizing that my suffering is actually not my biggest problem . . . my sin is.

But the amazing news, ladies, is that Jesus experienced the greatest loss possible! He died the death that I deserve, you deserve. He took on the wrath of God, being separated from His Father, defeating death and sin. But that means that you and I will never have to experience the greatest loss possible, being separated from Him.

I will be the first to admit that this is not an easy path! I fall, and I fall apart. I don’t grasp this as much as I want to every day, but the Lord is sowing it deeper and deeper and deeper as He so faithfully carries me. God loves us enough at times to remove these good things in our lives that don’t seem to make sense at the time. Like, “This isn’t a bad thing, Lord. I wasn’t serving it. It wasn’t like it was an idol in my life.” 

 

But sometimes He chooses to remove things that are good things just to make us be able to see more clearly our need for Him and to believe that life in Him. Do I really believe life in Him is greater than anything that I can gain in this world or that can be taken from me? Theodore Kyler, a preacher from the 1800s, wrote this sweet little book (it’s really short), God’s Light on Dark Clouds. And he says, 

For those who suffer the sharpest sorrow for their own sinfulness and guilt, the height of their joy is proportioned to the depth of their distress. Christ is all the more precious to them for having painfully felt the need of Him.

And lastly, loss is a pathway to experience the presence and comfort of Christ. Paul went on to say in Philippians 3:10, 

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share [in] his sufferings.

In other words, he was saying that he experienced greater intimacy with Christ knowing that Jesus could comfort him in his suffering because Christ had already experienced that suffering and far more!

For me, knowing and experiencing the comfort of Christ has been my lifeline! It has been what has carried me through this long hard season. I remember actually talking to my mom one day; she has been such a sweet gift to me, to be able to come honestly. She has a sweet balance of encouraging me and keeping my eyes on the truth while grieving with me.

I remember talking to her and just sharing how difficult it is to serve and to care for my son after episode after episode of really difficult, scary things that I don’t know how to handle and that leave me feeling very hurt. I don’t know how to continue to care for him when after that he comes and says, “Mommy, can I have a snack?”

In my emotions I want to say, “No! I don’t want to see you right now!” And so I asked her with weariness and discouragement, “How do I sacrifice for and love someone who so often treats me like an enemy, when I’m pouring myself out and I’m giving everything I have . . . and then that’s what I receive back?”

And she looked at me with this sweet compassionate look and she said, “Sarah, because Jesus knows what that feels like. He endured it all for you and me. You are being given such a tangible opportunity to walk in the comfort and strength of Christ to love and serve your child even at great cost to yourself. You are sharing in Christ’s sufferings! He promises to walk with you through it, and because of His sacrifice, He will redeem it all!” 

Ever since that day that truth has just stuck with me and comforted me and encouraged me more times that I can count. It has helped me rely on the strength of Christ in those moments where I think, Everything in me wants to respond this way, but I can resonate with Christ in this moment. And He was able to faithfully respond to His enemies in a way that can empower me to do the same and help me love my child in this situation.

On days when I’m struggling to walk, or I can’t participate in activities with my children, and I see that awful face of disappointment, I allow myself to acknowledge that, “This really stinks! This is hard!” 

I’m sad and I can struggle with it, but then I remind myself that this is the road God has chosen for me. He’s called me to walk it, and He promises to give me the grace and the strength to walk down it. It’s not because I’m strong enough, but because my weakness makes me lean into His strength, and my grief makes me lean into His comfort.

In the moments that I feel so helpless, as I watch my son struggle and my other kids struggle in ways that just feel so devastating to a mom who wants to help and wants to help relieve things, I have to remember that Christ is there with me. 

He knows and He loves my son and my other children more than I ever could. He knows my pain; He knows their pain. And even in the chaos, somehow He is in control. He has carried me through moments that have left really deep painful scars and memories, but I am so comforted by the fact that He’s at work in ways that I can’t see!

And so frequently He gives me nuggets of, “This is what I’m doing. I may not be answering your prayers in the way you’re asking Me right now, but I have something greater for you.” He so frequently does that and is so faithful in it.

Andrew Murray said, 

In Him you see a thousand times more giving you than you have lost. See how God took from you only in order that you might have room to take from Him what is so much better! 

So, sisters, what pain or loss are you facing right now? I just want to encourage you that Christ has been there and He will walk with you through it. The pain of loss can feel really crushing at times. I’m not going to deny that.

But there’s nothing greater in those moments than the comfort of Christ, who is the only One who can fully understand what you’re walking through, what you feel like, and He is the only One who can provide what you actually really need!

Paul knew this from experience, and I am learning it more and more every day. Would I like to have my health, see my child free from the illness that causes so much pain in his life and our lives and others’ lives? Yes!

Do I wish I could wipe fleas off the face of this planet? You bet I do! Do I desire for my children to not have to suffer at such a young age? That grieves me. Yes, of course I do. But I can say with Paul, “Whatever gain I had I count as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:7).

I grieve my losses often, but Christ’s presence has become so much sweeter. My sin is a daily battle, but I now grasp the gift of the gospel in a whole new way. I feel my weakness and pain of what may never be in my life, or what I’ve lost, but I have experienced the strength and comfort of Christ like I never would have otherwise! I’ll close with one of Charles Spurgeon’s favorite quotes:

Your faith prospers when everything is against you. Your faith increases with every trial. No flowers wear so lovely a blue as those that grow at the edge of a glacier, no stars shine so bright as those that glisten in the polar sky. No water is sweeter than that which springs in the desert oasis. No faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs in adversity.

Friends, eternity is coming! Amen, right!? It’s where all of our tears are going to be wiped away and every loss we’ve experienced in this life will pale in comparison to the eternal riches and glorious presence of Christ!

But until then we can trust that God will take what is meant for our harm and use it to make us know and to reflect more of Him. And we can praise God that He can take even our most painful losses and He can turn them into eternal gain.  Let me just close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, You are so good and kind in all Your ways, but we confess that we are so prone to fix our gaze on our circumstances rather than You. Thank You that You don’t allow anything past Your hands that You won’t faithfully use for Your good purposes in our lives.

Father, teach us to grieve in light of eternity. Gently open our eyes to see the sin that arises in our lives and the strength to turn from it as the truth of the gospel washes over us. And Lord, as we live in the land between these unmet expectations, these longings, these painful losses and all that threatens to turn our eyes from You.

Father, draw us ever so closely into Your presence, Your comfort, Your strength. May we sing a song of joy-filled children of the King, even as we await Your eternal home! In Your name I pray, amen.

Nancy: Oh, thank you Sarah. Two or three of you? What is something that you heard that ministered grace to you, or some way that you would affirm out of your own journey what that passage in Sarah’s life has spoken to us?

Portia: I, too, deal with chronic illness. I have fibromyalgia among other things. And life can be so hard! It’s like literally one thing after the next. God is always prompting me to remember that there is joy in the midst of suffering and all the things that we deal with in life. 

What you shared just reminds me, “Hey, I’m not the only Christian woman going through these things! We both have the same hope that we cling to.” And so, God’s Word is just so beautiful! I just thank you for sharing it, and I pray that it blessed everyone in here as much as it blessed me!”

Erika: We kind of went through a similar season of loss—not as long as you did Sarah, bless your heart—several years ago. I call it our “year of death.” In thirteen months we lost Bryan’s dad to cancer, his grandma, and two babies. And in the middle of that he said, “I want to change jobs and work for Revive Our Hearts!” 

And I was like, “What?! I can’t take this anymore!” It was a period of intense grief and mourning for me, especially the second baby we lost. I was sixteen weeks pregnant . . . and you give birth at that point. So I could hold the baby and see him. You still fall in love, even when the baby is dead.

And in those periods there were moments when I never felt that God was there. I remember one day just raising my hands to the heavens and saying, “God, where are You?! You’re near to the brokenhearted but I don’t see You, and I don’t feel You!” 

But after continuing to walk it out and just, “Lord, I need You! I need You!” I was able one day to look back, and I saw Him carrying me! I didn't see His fingerprints in the days when I was there, but I looked back, He was carrying me through the whole thing!

And it was such a blessing to realize He was so faithful even when I felt He was absent. We’re kind of entering another period. Bryan’s mom was just diagnosed with ALS. And my fear has been that once we open the door to death again, it will walk through and I will lose another child or Bryan or something else.

And so I appreciated, Sarah, your honesty, that it’s okay to grieve and that God is faithful, that whatever losses He provides and He allows, He is still good, and He is still faithful, and He will carry me no matter what’s coming in the future. So thank you for your faithfulness to share with us and your honesty.

Mary: Sarah, you used the term “severe mercy.” C. S. Lewis’s term, one of my favorites. I think that each person who has been called to leadership goes through severe mercy, and it’s God’s severe mercy, because it hurts, it costs. It costs so much, and yet what God gives us in return is precious!

And so it ends up being His mercy, it is a mercy that He spreads His fingers and allows suffering to get through so that we can share in the sufferings of Christ. Sharing in those sufferings is what makes us like Christ and brings up all the stuff in our lives that needs to be dealt with.

It also is what turns us into leaders. It is what allows us to walk the path as an example—not because of what’s in us, but because of God’s mercy towards us. And because of His severe mercy in dealing with us, in allowing us to have to pay the price and yet giving us the resources in order that we may do that, because we don’t have it on our own. So I just appreciate that, and the reminder that suffering is a mercy. 

It’s not God’s judgment against us or His anger against us, but in our suffering and in a broken world where we deal with evil and abuse and horrible things, that God can take what is meant for evil and turn it and produce good in our lives! 

Paula: Sarah, I’m not in a [hard] season. I feel like an outsider sitting back, looking at you and not being able to comprehend what that kind of loss and suffering is like. But I just want to encourage you that I think your voice is so needed today!

As you were speaking, I thought you are a modern day Job. I was just thinking about how Job said things like, “Let the day perish on which I was born.” “It would have been better if You had killed me.” “Just take my life now!” And he was a righteous man, and he was not suffering for anything that he had done wrong.

I think that I and probably a lot of other Christians do not have this balance of knowing how to grieve the absolute tragedy of our fall and all the effects of that while simultaneously seeing how that connects to the gospel and to cherishing Christ above all. 

So, I just want to encourage you that God has you fulfilling a very important role in this time right now. 

Sarah: Thank you so much. Actually, what’s funny is my husband and I just wrote our marriage book through Job, which is not the book you’d think you would write a marriage book in! That may deter some people. But that’s been the reality, that’s where we’ve been led over and over and over and over again. 

That just goes against this whole idea of this “prosperity gospel.” It’s like, “No, we’re going to hit this right where it hurts!” We don’t want to just cover it with like the pretty stuff that makes us think we’re going to feel better. We want to have some meat as to, “How do I actually walk through this?” And, “How could Job walk through that?”

And there is such a richness there. I certainly would never want to do it again! But I'm so thankful for it. It’s such a strange place to be, but thank you for that encouragement!

Nancy: You’re reading, as I am, and experiencing with people in our lives the spike among Millennials and Gen Z-ers of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. I’ve been just pondering this, just people close to me and the statistics and saying, “Lord, how do we minister grace to these women?”

And, Sarah, I think you’ve touched on some things here that have got to be part of our DNA and part of our understanding and part of our message to bring hope—not just Bandaids but true hope.

A lot of those struggling with anxiety and depression, going through a lot less circumstantially than what you described, but still, it’s the Creation groaning and travailing in pain. How does the hope in Christ, how does the gospel, speak peace and courage and faith and the ability to get up and go into the next day . . . and joy, even? I mean, Philippians—the book of joy—how is this even possible?! 

We believe that it is; we know that it is, but we’re going to have to grapple with these things if we’re going to minister meaningfully in our writing, in our speaking, and not just giving pious platitudes or smooth words. Because some of the words we’re speaking I think are not really helping. 

A person has got to have a heart to receive, but how do we move into the space of their lives and their doubts and their fears and minister meaningfully? I think a lot of ministry is not doing that today. And we want to! That’s why we’re here, because we want to do that!

Dannah: That’s the host of Revive Our Hearts, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, speaking to women who all lead ministries of their own. The book Sarah mentioned that she and her husband Jeff wrote is called: Together through the Storms: Biblical Encouragement for Your Marriage When Life Hurts.

You’ll find more information on how you can get a copy linked in the transcript of this program; that’s at ReviveOurHearts.com. This program is listener supported, and that means we depend on prayers and donations from people just like you to produce this program and to sustain the different outreaches of Revive Our Hearts.

So thank you for praying for us, and thank you for giving. It means more to us than you can imagine! And right now, as we thank you for your donation of any size, we’ll send you a set of thirty-one cards for you to display in your home or your office this coming December. There will be one for each day.

They’re square cards about the size of a CD case, and they are beautifully designed! Each card contains a Scripture verse or a passage along with a quote from Nancy’s Advent devotional Born and Child and Yet a King.

Again, the set of thirty-one Advent cards is our way of thanking you for giving to support Revive Our Hearts. To make a donation, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Today we heard how trials and suffering can be an avenue for God to show us His grace. Tomorrow my good friend Chizzy Anderson will help us see that God’s grace is something we need to both receive from Him and give out generously to others. I hope you’ll be back for Revive Our Hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to show you even in suffering, your freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ!

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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