Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

The Bible’s answers are never to be separated from the God of the Bible.

There have been some hard things in my life, of course, as there have been in yours, and I cannot say to you, I know exactly what you’re going through. But I can say that I know the One who knows. And I’ve come to see that it’s through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons. And if we’ll trust Him for it, we can come through to the unshakable assurance that He’s in charge. He has a loving purpose. And He can transform something terrible into something wonderful. Suffering is never for nothing.

The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.

And I realized then that God was not telling me that everything was going to be fine, humanly speaking, that He was going to preserve my husband physically and bring him back to me. But He was giving me one unmistakable promise: I will be with you. For I am the Lord your God. He is the one who loved me and gave Himself for me.

And we will never understand suffering unless we understand the love of God.

We may often hear Job called a patient man but if you read the book of Job you won’t really find a lot of evidence that he was patient. But he never doubted that God existed and he said some of the very worst things that could possibly be said about God. And isn’t it interesting that the Spirit of God preserved those things for you and me? God is big enough to take anything that we can dish out to Him. And He even saw to it that Job’s howls and complaints were preserved in black and white for our instruction. So never hesitate to say what you really feel to God because remember that God knows what you think before you know and certainly knows what you’re going to say before you even think it.

You see Job here dialoguing with God. There is no question in Job’s mind throughout this entire book of the existence of God. He knows that it is God with whom he has to reconcile his circumstances.

And then Job asks God question after question after question. And at one point he says if I ask Him a thousand questions, He won’t even answer one of them. And he was right. Remember that when God finally breaks His silence, God does not answer a single question. God’s response to Job’s questions is mystery. In other words, God answers Job’s mystery with the mystery of Himself.

Now if I had had a faith that was determined God had to give me a particular kind of answer to my particular prayers, that faith would have disintegrated. But my faith had to be founded on the character of God Himself. And so, what looked like a contradiction in terms: God loves me; God lets this awful thing happen to me. What looked like a contradiction in terms, I had to leave in God’s hands and say okay, Lord. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But I only had two choices. He is either God or He’s not. I am either held in the Everlasting Arms or I’m at the mercy of chance and I have to trust Him or deny Him. Is there any middle ground? I don’t think so.

If we learn to know God in the midst of our pain, we come to know Him as one who is not a High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He is one who has been over every inch of the road.

But I can look back over these forty-five years or so and see that God, in fact, is in the process of answering those prayers. Teach me what it means, that cross lifted up high. What is this great symbol of the Christian faith? It’s a symbol of suffering. That is what the Christian faith is about. It deals head-on with this question of suffering, and no other religion in the world does that. Every other religion, in some way, evades the question. Christianity has, at its very heart, this question of suffering.

The fact that He does love us, that means He wants nothing less than our perfection and joy. The fact that He gave us the freedom to choose and man decided that his own idea of perfection and joy was better than God’s and believed what Satan told him, therefore sin and suffering entered into the world. And now we’re saying, why doesn’t God do something about it? And the Christian answer is, He did. He became the victim, a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

He comes to you and me in our sorrow. And He says, “Trust Me.” “Walk with Me.”

Acceptance, I believe, is the key to peace in this business of suffering.

Not that we loved God here in His love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave Himself, no, here in His love that Christ laid down His life for us.

The love of God is not a sentiment. It is a willed and inexorable love that will command nothing less than the very best for us. The love of God wills our joy. I think of the love of God as being synonymous with the will of God.

Well, that’s what faith is about, isn’t it? If you really believe that somebody loves you then you trust them. The will of God is love. And love suffers. That’s how we know what the love of God for us is, because He was willing to become a man and to take upon Himself our sins, our griefs, our sufferings.

These are mysteries. Creation, Redemption, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection—these great key words of the Christian faith are mysteries.

So that to me is the key to acceptance: the fact that it is never for nothing.

Now faith, like love, is not a feeling. We need to get that absolutely clear. Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a willed obedience action. Jesus said again and again, “Don’t be afraid.” “Fear not.” “Let not your heart be troubled.” “Believe in God. Believe also in Me.” “Accept, take up the cross and follow.” Do the next thing. That has gotten me through more agonies than anything else I could recommend. He said if you want to be My disciples, there are three conditions. First, you must give up your right to yourself. Second, you must take up your cross. Third, you must follow.

“The Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (kjv).

Chaos is the Greek word for disorder. Cosmos is the word for order. We either live in an ordered universe or we are trying to create our own reality.

So, when the answer was no about the thorn in the flesh, and was the answer of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, we know that there’s nothing wrong with praying that God will solve our problems and heal our diseases and pay our debts and sort out our marital difficulties. It’s right and proper that we should bring such requests to God. We’re not praying against His will. But when the answer is no, then we know that God has something better at stake. Far greater things are at stake. There is another level, another kingdom, an invisible kingdom which you and I cannot see now but toward which we move and to which we belong.

Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I’m willing to take it because I trust Him. Because I know that what God wants for me is the very best. I will receive this thing in His name.

at the promise of God. He looked clearly at the facts. And Christians ought to be people who are prepared to look most steadily at the facts, the awful facts. And then look at the other level on which those facts may be interpreted and stagger not at the promise of God. So that was chapter one.

But when we’re talking about the gifts of God, we’re talking about gifts that come from One who knows exactly what we need even though it is not necessarily to our tastes and preferences. And He gives us everything that is appropriate to the job that He wants us to do. And so, understanding that, then we can say yes, Lord. I’ll take it. It would not have been my choice but knowing You love me, I will receive it and I understand that someday I’m going to understand the necessity for this thing. So I accept it. And then I can even go the step beyond and say thank You. Thank You, Lord.

And the response of a Christian should be gratitude.

Good and peaceful. Does that make any sense from any other standpoint except the perspective of eternity? It can’t possibly make sense to anybody else. That’s why it isn’t explanations that we need. It’s a person. We need Jesus Christ, our refuge, our fortress, the stronghold of my life. It takes desolation to teach us our need of Him.

And Jesus comes into our lives in these places of need. And if we recognize Him because of our need, then we can receive whatever it is that He is prepared to offer us whether it’s the grace of forgiveness or the patience to wait for the answer to that prayer or healing or serenity in the midst of the worst times of your life. Whatever it is, you can receive it and say, “Thank You, Lord.”

Yet, Joseph was able to say, when he named his son Ephraim, “God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Gen. 41:52 kjv). It’s not the experience that changed him. It was his response. Joseph trusted God. Now what is God’s intention when He gives you and me something? He is giving me something in my hands with which I can turn to Him and offer it back to Him with thanksgiving.

That’s the way it is with us with God, isn’t it? We are totally destitute. Everything that we have comes from Him and we have nothing to offer except what He has given us.

Ugo Bassi said this, “Measure your life by loss and not by gain, not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, and he that suffereth most hath most to give.”21

Isaiah 58:10–11, “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not” (rsv).

We know that the cross does not exempt us from suffering. In fact, the cross is a symbol of suffering. In fact, Jesus said you must take up your cross.

If your faith rests in your idea of how God is supposed to answer your prayers, your idea of heaven here on earth or pie in the sky or whatever, then that kind of faith is very shaky and is bound to be demolished when the storms of life hit it. But if your faith rests on the character of Him who is the eternal I AM, then that kind of faith is rugged and will endure.

The first principle is that of the cross: Life comes out of death. I bring God my sorrows and He gives me His joy. I bring Him my losses and He gives me His gains. I bring Him my sins, He gives me His righteousness. I bring Him my deaths and He gives me His life. But the only reason God can give me His life is because He gave me His death.

So the principle of exchange is the principle of the cross. And that principle goes all the way back to before the foundation of the world. The Lamb was slain. The blood sacrifice was made in the mind of God before there was such a thing as sin. Sacrifice and suffering and glory. There is no getting away from them.

There is, in fact, no redemptive work done anywhere without suffering. And God calls us to stand alongside Him, to offer our sufferings to Him for His transfiguration and to fill up in our poor human flesh.

In Revelation 7:16 and 17 we read, “They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (nkjv).