May 2024 Word Prompt
When Overcoming Looks like Failing
Overcoming
Forty-plus years into my life, I now know for certain that the Lord allows suffering so that we can identify with Him and others and vice versa. That is, He is with us in our pain, and through suffering we can become closer to Him as well as others who are in similar pain.
Suffering is one of the best ways to really know and experience what Jesus teaches:
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one, as we are one; I in them and you in me. (John 17:22, NIV)
Glory and suffering are linked in Scripture. II Corinthians, in particular, is a wonderful book that depicts this clearly. For example,
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (II Corinthians 4:17, NIV)
Prior to serious suffering in my life, I honestly glossed over these passages. I merely equated them to Christ’s suffering on the cross and didn’t think much about why Jesus and Paul talk so much about our sufferings and how they connect to Christ’s.
I did learn early on that a Christian worldview was essential for coping with suffering. As a young college student, I visited the hospital bedside of our next-door neighbor, who was a Hindu from Pakistan.
She was so very sweet and kind, allowing me to roam all around her yard in the summers and sun myself on her warm paved driveway after a swim. I’d bring a blanket and picnic with me while reading my favorite books, like the Mary Poppins series or Wizard of Oz.
How strange she must have found her blonde next-door neighbor who liked to read and picnic by herself when she wasn’t roaming the woods with her friends (this was back when kids were allowed to roam!). When she traveled, she’d hire me to water her indoor plants.
I’d enter in and see the iconography above her front door and smell the unfamiliar Pakistani spices in the house. I attended her granddaughter’s wedding, which was a blast. They were beautiful people, inside and out.
But when my neighbor’s diabetes grew more severe, she needed to have a leg amputated. I have never seen such bitterness on anyone’s face than when I visited her. In her words and attitude, she clearly expressed bitterness and anger over how a good person could have this consequence happen.
I observed this and held it in my heart, even when I didn’t understand anything about suffering. Now I do, and then some. Cancer, job loss, unbelievable betrayals. It’s been nearly a straight decade of one crisis after another.
And yet, even in my lowest, I’ve never felt the bitterness that my neighbor exuded. I do not believe that I am owed good things as a consequence of good behavior. Suffering still came as a shock, however, and took much processing, in various waves. It’s an ongoing journey.
Still, I found that I had a secret weapon: Scripture. In fact, immediately after my daughter’s cancer diagnosis, I started quoting Scripture at a level that I never had before. Verses came unbidden at all hours of the day and sometimes in the night. Truths about suffering that I didn’t think I knew or understand were there all along. Suffering unlocked them.
This is how I know that suffering can equal overcoming — for the Bible tells me so.
I may look like a failure right now. My health is going haywire, my daughter’s health is dependent on prayers and immunotherapy, and we’re experiencing great uncertainty regarding next steps in life. Yet we are filled with joy. Even when we are unhappy about something and perplexed, we are still filled with joy. I have held onto II Corinthians 4:8–10 for quite a while now, ever since I found myself speaking it without even knowing that I had it memorized.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. (NIV)
I think I’ve experienced each phase in this passage, and it brings the entirety of II Corinthians 4 to life for me in a way that I never have known. We have treasures in jars of clay. Treasures! As a teen, I focused on the “jars of clay” part of this passage of scripture, probably because I enjoyed listening to the music group with that name. But the whole point is the treasures inside!
Inside of the unassuming exterior, inside of the suffering, inside of the brokenness, we have “all-surpassing power” from God (verse 7). We identify with Jesus’s death through our own suffering. This is what “achieves” for us an eternal glory. We don’t earn our salvation, but our suffering nonetheless matters significantly. It is the mechanism and means by which we can be positioned to be transformed.
I have learned in my life that whenever I am too complacent, I stay stubbornly static. I think that I’m OK and become lazy and self-satisfied in my faith, thinking that I’ve figured something out. Suffering unravels all of that, and I’m plummeted into unknowing; that is, knowing that I do not know, and that I do not have all the answers, but that I know Who does.
And this points me to glory. An overcomer is not someone who has never suffered and goes from strength to strength. An overcomer is someone who has something to overcome!
Romans 8:35–37 is a favorite passage for many.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (NIV)
Lest we overly spiritualize and miss what the Apostle Paul says, look at the list of troubles, hardships, persecution, famine, nakedness, and swords in this passage. These are things that specifically hurt the body and the mind. These aren’t mere concepts; they are the terrible lived experiences of so many of us. But, in all of these things, we are more than conquerors — we are super conquerors in all these things! And all of it is covered over by the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (verse 39).
When your spiritual life and your physical reality look like failure, take heart! Christ has overcome the world (John 16:33) and, in Him, we will as well.
