“Yet I find that events do not change souls. It is our response to them which finally affects us.”1
Elisabeth Elliot
What kinds of things in your life do you consider gifts from God?
Many people would answer things like family, health, food, money, a job, friends, answers to prayer… But the one thing that never seems to make the ‘blessings list’: suffering. Suffering does not make the cut. That is not a gift or answer to prayer. Suffering feels more like a curse. For my part, I try to avoid suffering at every opportunity, and for many years, the majority of my prayers were oriented toward that end.
The apostles, however, write very differently about the subject, repeatedly discussing the joy to be found in suffering2, an idea that is abhorrent and foreign to most of us.
Lashing out, raising our fist at God, giving up entirely…. That sounds a bit more like it.
Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliot, wrote an excellent book titled “The Path of Loneliness” that addresses this very issue: How do we approach suffering?
Initially, you may be thinking, “But the title says it’s about loneliness, not general suffering…” True, but she speaks here of loneliness on a deeper level than simply the lack of human companionship. She speaks of the loneliness that lies at the root of every human heart.
The Loneliness of the Soul
This then is not a loneliness of the body only, but of the soul.
Nothing in life truly quenches our human loneliness. Even marriage, as Elliot explains, does not fully satisfy this need. People expect that since dating reveals “an all-consuming, preoccupying, and exclusive phenomenon,”3 so will married life. But that feeling does not continue. Our hearts cannot find ultimate satisfaction in a partner. “Our hearts are lonely till they rest in Him who made us for Himself.”4 This is true.
Every heart has its own desires and thoughts, sorrows and joys, and we cannot completely communicate or share those with anyone else.
We try, and we certainly find finite comfort, support, and friendship in other people—especially in our spouse— but the reality is that at the end of the day, in the dark of the night, our soul is alone at its deepest level and does not desire to be so. Our heart is then, in essence, endlessly searching and yearning.
Why is that? Because we were made for unity with the living God, who is infinite and constant. We were made for a relationship with the One who designed our minds and bodies, and who knows our every thought and the depths of our soul. He is the one true, eternal friend and confidant we yearn for. And it is our loneliness of soul, indeed our suffering in this very way, that leads us back to Him time and time again.
Without suffering, we would stray far and wide. We would never return to the Lord. As Elliot writes, “In His mercy, God stands silently by and permits us to agonize. We simply cannot turn to Him until we have nowhere else to turn.”5 And if total comfort and understanding could be found outside of Christ, then even our suffering would not draw us any nearer to Him.
We are like a dog is shown a bowl of treats and a container of new toys. We become fixated on what is in front of us, caught up in the moment entirely. The material world is too exciting, and the anticipation of what may come too enthralling, so that even if the house were burning down around us, we wouldn’t notice until it was too late.
We are excessively focused on what is pleasurable and immediately gratifying. We are easily distracted from what is important.
Something must take our eyes off the immediate and force our attention to the reality of our situation. Some sharp pain, some discomfort, in order to shift our concern from our stomachs to our safety. We need to be so uncomfortable that we flee the oncoming disaster.
How We Respond to Suffering
The key, therefore, is not simply that suffering must come, but how we respond to that suffering.
It is our response that reveals the darkest, deepest truth beneath the facade of religiosity and zeal. It reveals what we think about God. Do we believe that He is truly all-good and omniscient, or do we think of Him more like a genie in a bottle, there to do our will when called for, so that when He does not do as we wish, we condemn and distrust Him?
That response reveals what is really going on in our heart of hearts.
The Father’s Purpose in Pain
And that’s the key. We are bound to have trials and tribulations of various kinds6, including an abiding sense of loneliness felt more intensely at different periods of our life—but what is the purpose of all of this? Is our God actively using our suffering, our loneliness, to bring us closer to Him—meaning, is He giving or allowing us difficult feelings and experiences because they are the best things that could happen to us on earth to confirm and grow our relationship with him— or is He denying us that which is best and good for us? If God allows us that which is not the best possible option for us, then He is not an all-good God.
To be clear, God never does evil. If something specifically evil happens to us, God is not to blame for that evil thing—it was the result of a fallen creation—but He has permitted it under His watchful eye, and He has done so with intense interest in our situation and concern for our souls. He has allowed it in order to orchestrate what is good and best for us. In other words, He uses that evil for our benefit, and He does so in every possible way. Within our experiences and trials, we find an active Father right by our side, helping us in every moment. In our suffering, we find a loving God preventing anything that would ultimately harm our souls. In fact, we find the only thing we need: Him.
Elisabeth Elliot writes, “There is no growth and no fruit apart from pain. Christianity is not for the weak, although the world would have us believe so. It is for those who find the courage to humble themselves.”7
Pain. This is not a word we want used in association with our experiences. We prefer the other “P” word: Pleasure. But God knows better than to simply give us what we want. Only He knows how things would turn out if we were not given our particular set of crosses. Only He sees the parts of us that need a surgeon’s knife.8
The operation is done to bring you to Him and teach you to trust Him fully, holding nothing back. God must be first in your life. As Elliot states it: “If God is not first, other loves, even those which are in no sense sexual, easily turn into self-gratification and therefore destroy both the lover and the beloved.”9 This is true, and something other saints before her have discussed at length. The first commandment is indeed the first principle. We must have no other gods before Him. When God is first, our loves, desires, and goals will be rightly ordered. Everything flows from keeping God first.
Our situations in life that hurt our hearts and bring tears to our eyes are precisely the situations we need.
Turning Loneliness into Prayer
Our soul is hell-bent, make no mistake. That is not an overdramatization, and it is not metaphorical. Our sinful nature is determined to flee from God and is at war with our spirit.10 Our nature is earthly-minded.
We must be encouraged daily, hourly, minute by minute to turn to the Lord. May we not become discouraged when we are chastened or imbittered when we are permitted suffering of various kinds. God help us take our suffering, especially our profound loneliness of soul, and turn it into prayer,11 allowing us to find comfort in our relationship with the living God and in the special gift of sonship we have received through Christ’s work on the cross.
May the God of the weak and lowly take us, as He promises to do, to Himself in heaven. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
✠
First published by ReformedDogmatika.com
Footnotes
- Elisabeth Elliot, “The Path of Loneliness.” 66 ↩︎
- Colossians 1:24, 2 Corinthians 12:10, Romans 5:3, James 1:2-4 ↩︎
- Elliot 90 ↩︎
- Elliot 90 ↩︎
- Pg. 61 ↩︎
- John 16:33 ↩︎
- Elliot 146 ↩︎
- C.S. Lewis writes in “A Grief Observed” of God as a surgeon who does not stop cutting at the cries and entreaties of the patient, knowing full well the need for the operation to be completed. The surgeon continues because that is in the best interest of the patient in the end. ↩︎
- Elliot 60 ↩︎
- Galatians 5:17 ↩︎
- Elliot 153 ↩︎
