Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

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.

I’m convinced that there are a good many things in this life that we really can’t do anything about, but that God wants us to do something with.

And let’s never forget that if we don’t ever want to suffer, we must be very careful never to love anything or anybody. The gifts of love have been the gifts of suffering. Those two things are inseparable.

sobbing.

There would be no intellectual satisfaction on this side of Heaven to that age-old question, why. Although I have not found intellectual satisfaction, I have found peace. The answer I say to you is not an explanation but a person, Jesus Christ, my Lord and my 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.

It’s only in the cross that we can begin to harmonize this seeming contradiction between suffering and love. And we will never understand suffering unless we understand the love of God.

“Joy is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God.”

When we speak of love as the Bible speaks of love, we’re not talking about a silly sentiment. We’re not talking about a mood or a feeling or warm fuzzies. 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.

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.

We’re not adrift in chaos. We’re held in the everlasting arms. And therefore, and this makes a difference, we can be at peace and we can accept. We can say yes, Lord, I’ll take it. The faculty by which I apprehend God is the faculty of faith. And my faith enables me to say, “Yes, Lord. I don’t like what You’re doing. I don’t understand it. You’re going to have to take care of those poor people at the other end that thought I was coming to speak on this particular day. But God, You’re in charge.” I know the One who is in charge of the universe. He’s got the whole world where? In His hands. And that’s where I am.

Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a willed obedience action.

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.

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.

It’s not the experiences of our lives that change us. It is our response to those experiences.

How to deal with suffering of any kind. Number one, I wrote, “Recognize it.” Number two, “Accept it.” Number three, “Offer it to God as a sacrifice.” And number four, “Offer yourself with it.”

It is in these very situations which are so painful—having what you don’t want, wanting with all your heart something that you don’t have—that thanksgiving can prepare the way for God to show us His Salvation.

Similarly, you and I have no idea of the things that are going on in the unseen world, except we do have an idea that they are for our perfection, for our fulfillment, for our ultimate blessing.

But these, also, that I think of as my own, must be held with an open hand and offered back to God along with my body and all that I am.

First, everything is a gift. Second, there are several kinds of offerings that I can make to God. Or, we could say that we want to think about an offering as a sacrifice, and when I use the word sacrifice with regard to my own life, the emphasis is not on loss and desolation and giving up. The emphasis is on the fact that God has given me something that I can offer back to Him. We’ll come to that a little bit later. And third, the greatest, is the offering of obedience.

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.

The Old Testament also speaks of the sacrifice of thanksgiving in Psalms. The verse that came to me in those hours of fear was a broken and a contrite heart, I will not despise. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, I will not despise. I’m sure some of you have a broken spirit, a broken heart. God will not despise that offering if that’s all you have to offer

Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together. And love invariably means sacrifice.

You and I have no idea what God has in mind when we make the offering. But everything is potential material for sacrifice.

They return, “Well how did you handle it?” To which I reply, “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I have to turn it over to Somebody who can handle it.” In other words, my loneliness became my offering.

“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy.”

But the word ministry just means service. And service is a part of our offering to God. People would think of my ministry as being my missionary work, my writing, my speaking. But you know, I don’t spend most of my life standing at a podium. I spend most of my life sitting at a desk, standing at a sink, standing at an ironing board, going to the grocery store, sitting in airports, doing a whole lot of things which are not anything for which I expect to get medals. They are moments to be offered to Jesus. Do the next thing.

And so I say to you today, God has put something in your hand that you can accept. You can say, thank You, Lord. And then you can offer it back to Him.

“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.”

The idea of transfiguration follows very naturally and logically from acceptance, gratitude, and offering. If we receive the things that God wants to give us, if we thank Him for them and if we make those things an offering back to God, then this is what’s going to happen—transfiguration, the great principle of exchange that is the central principle of the Christian faith—the cross. 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.

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.

Our perspectives need to be transfigured, changed into something that has glory in it.

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. If I’m not given the privilege of being crucified, if I’m not given the privilege of being martyred in some way, some literal way for God, I am given the privilege of offering up to Him whatever He has given to me. I offer to Him all that I am, all that I have, all that I do and all that I suffer for His transformation, transfiguration, exchange for the life of the world. That is what it’s all about.

“My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me; I do not choose the colors, He worketh steadily. Oft times He weaveth sorrow and I, in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the under side. Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly, shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver’s skillful hand, as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.”