Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot knew that true maturity, joy, and contentment has less to do with a mechanistic assessment of God’s plan, and more to do with being pushed and, at times shoved, against the breast of your Savior. Not a tidy, orderly list, but an earnest grappling with the angel of the Lord. When affliction decimates you, then you understand Elisabeth’s doctrine: The Bible’s answers are never to be separated from the God of the Bible. That rich truth then guided me through more than fifty years of paralysis, pain, and cancer.

We are invigorated by Elisabeth’s no-nonsense, go-out-and-die way of living the Christian life. She made us see that we are on a fierce battlefield upon which the mightiest forces of the universe converge in warfare.

What was extraordinary about her was the light of Christ that showed through all the cracks created in her by the extraordinary experiences she suffered. But it was never for nothing.

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.

Suffering is a mystery that none of us is really capable of plumbing.

“Suffering is having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.”

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.

The gifts of love have been the gifts of suffering. Those two things are inseparable.

And it has been out of that very measure of pain that has come the unshakable conviction that God is love.

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 so, we come back again to the terrible truth that there is suffering. The question remains, is God paying attention? If so, why doesn’t He do something? I say He has, He did, He is doing something, and He will do something. The subject can only be approached by the cross. That old, rugged cross so despised by the world. The very worst thing that ever happened in human history turns out to be the very best thing because it saved me. It saves the world. And so God’s love, which was represented, demonstrated to us in His giving His Son Jesus to die on the cross, has been brought together in harmony with suffering.

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.

He said it is now my happiness to suffer for You, my happiness to suffer. It sounds like nonsense, doesn’t it? And yet this is the Word of God. Janet Erskine Stuart said, “Joy is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God.”

And I can’t answer your questions, or even my own, except in the words of Scripture, these words from the apostle Paul who knew the power of the cross of Jesus. And this is what he wrote: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:18–19 kjv).

And when Job finally broke silence, he howled his complaints at 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.

We would never ask the question why if we really believed that the whole of the universe was an accident and that you and I are completely at the mercy of chance.

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.

here’s a man whose faith rests in the character of God.

Why? And God is saying, trust Me. If your prayers don’t get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be, what happens to your faith? The world says God doesn’t love you. The Scriptures tell me something very different. Those “blesseds” of the Beatitudes. Paul’s word, it is my happiness to suffer for You.

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.

Acceptance, I believe, is the key to peace in this business of suffering. As I’ve said, the crux of the whole matter is the cross of Jesus Christ. And that word crux means cross. It is the best thing that ever happened in human history as well as the worst thing. Here in His love, the Scripture tells us. 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. Love is always inextricably bound with sacrifice. Any father knows this. Any mother knows this.

And it’s sacrifice, day in and day out, night in and night out. But it’s not something about which you sit down and feel sorry for yourself. It’s not something you moan and groan about, except perhaps once in a while. But it is very real, isn’t it? It is my life for yours. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the principle of the cross. That’s what Jesus was demonstrating. My life for yours.

Suffering is a mystery. It is not explained, but it is affirmed. And we must remember that all of Christianity rests on mysteries.

We are not explaining anything. We are simply affirming. And that’s what Christianity is about. God is God. God is a three-personed God. He loves us. We are not adrift in chaos. To me that is the most fortifying, the most stabilizing, the most peace-giving thing that I know anything about in the universe.

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.”

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.

Although we think that the situation is worse than it is, what we can never visualize is the way the grace of God goes to work in the person who needs it.

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.

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.

In other words, if they were arrested for being Christians, would there be sufficient evidence to convict them?

I said in my book, Let Me Be a Woman, that I’m not a different kind of a Christian because I’m a woman. But I most certainly ought to be a very different kind of a woman because I’m a Christian. Do you know people to whom you can point and say, look at him? There is a Christian. Watch that woman’s life. She is a Christian. What kind of evidence would your friends see in your life?

acceptance and gratitude.

And He gives us everything that is appropriate to the job that He wants us to do.

Paul says that in everything we ought to give thanks. It’s not the experiences of our lives that change us. It is our response to those experiences.16 And that should be a very noticeable distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian.

And you remember my basic definition of suffering: having what you don’t want and wanting what you don’t have, which covers the whole gamut from the smallest things like a toothache or taxes to a tumor.

I come from a long line of pessimists on both sides. Champion pessimists.

And I’m here to suggest that gratitude is one of those shortcuts. Just start thanking God in advance because no matter what is about to happen, you already know that God is in charge. You are not adrift in a sea of chaos.

And so I thought of a little Chinese song, not that I speak Chinese but I heard that this song was sung by Chinese refugees in World War II. “I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid. I will look upward and travel onward and not be afraid.”18 Then God reminded me of Psalm 56:3 where He said, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in You” (kjv). And Psalm 34:1 that says, “I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (kjv).

The doctor’s verdict was fact. I had to believe it. But God’s Word was also fact.

But I do need to thank God that in the midst of that very situation the world was still in His hands. The One who keeps all those galaxies wheeling in space is the very hand that holds me. The hands that were wounded on the cross are the same hands that hold the seven stars. The hands that were laid on old John when he was there on the Island of Patmos, and the voice that was like the sound of many waters said to him, don’t be afraid. I AM. I have the keys.

To my amazement and delight I discovered that that word burden in the Hebrew is the same word as the word for gift. This is a transforming truth to me. If I thank God for this very thing which is killing me, I can begin dimly and faintly to see it as a gift. I can realize that it is through that very thing which is so far from being the thing I would have chosen, that God wants to teach me His way of salvation. I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will say yes, Lord. I will say thank You, Lord.

And you and I should be prepared, also, to be broken bread and poured out wine for the life of the world.

apartment. That gift is for the sake of the world. And I believe that that’s true of every gift that God gives to us in some way, which is not always apparent right at the beginning.

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.

Romans 12:1, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (kjv). I particularly like the KJV translation as it translates that last phrase as “an act of intelligent worship.” Now if I present to God my body as a living sacrifice then that includes everything that the body contains—my brains, my personality, my heart, my emotions, my will, my temperament, my prejudices, my failings, all the rest of it—is presented to God as a living sacrifice. God has, after all, given me a body to live in. Everything in my life I begin to see as a gift and I do mean everything.

And third, the greatest, is the offering of obedience.

And it’s always a good exercise for me to remember that my poor husband is also married to a sinner.