The Fellowship of the Suffering

How Hardship Shapes Us for Ministry and Mission

Paul Borthwick, Dave Ripper

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780830887743
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Ministère chrétien

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings." Philippians 3: 10 (ASV) If we follow Jesus, we will experience pain. It comes with the territory. We might face hardship because of our Christian commitment, or we may have challenges just from living in a fallen world. Either way, Christians follow in the footsteps of our suffering Savior and participate in his suffering. But that's not the whole story. MissionaryPaul Borthwick and pastor Dave Ripper show how transformation through our personal pain enables us to minister faithfully to a hurting world. They candidly share about their own struggles and how they have seenGod's kingdom advance through hardship and suffering. Though we naturally avoid suffering, Christians throughout church history have become powerful witnesses to Christ as a result of their brokenness. Life is painful, but pain need not have dominion over us. Instead, it can propel us in missional solidarity with our suffering world. Come find comfort and renewed purpose in the fellowship of the suffering.

Suffering Comes with the Territory

Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo . . . the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE,
A TWENTIETH CENTURY TESTIMONY

SUFFERING FINDS US ALL. Every last one of us. Its forms are as varied, numerous, and unique as the very people on earth who experience its consequences. There is no getting around the reality that to be alive is to experience suffering.

But what actually is suffering? We know its causes: disease, disappointment, and death, to name a few. We know its effects: despair, distress, disillusionment, and desolation, to provide a far-from-complete list. But what is suffering in its essence?

For me (Paul) the person who has personally and through her writings had the greatest impact on my perspective on hardship and suffering is Elisabeth Elliot. Though many younger people don’t know her story, it bears summarizing—if only to her establish her credibility related to the subject.1

Born into a missionary family with five siblings, Elisabeth Howard grew up a shy, awkward introvert demonstrating what we might identify today as some of the challenges of being a “Third-Culture Kid.” Her first boyfriend, Jim Elliot, professed his love for her while they were students at Wheaton College, but he decided to leave her behind and go as a single man into missionary service.

Elisabeth also went to serve in Ecuador as a single woman missionary in the early 1950s. After months of translation work, all her research was destroyed by fire, a story related in her book These Strange Ashes: Is God Still in Charge? This was her first and earliest written reflection on suffering and disappointment.

Jim eventually pursued her, and they married. She knew Jim as a passionate man, and his zeal for Christ attracted her. She also knew that Jim and four others had set their hearts on reaching the Auca tribe (now called the Huarani, Waorani, or Waodani people) in Ecuador’s eastern Amazon region. Jim and his colleagues worked for months to establish contact with these remote people. Finally they set a time to meet them.

Upon their first encounter, Jim and his colleagues were speared to death, leaving widows and single-mother families behind.2 A year later, Elisabeth and her one-year-old daughter, Valerie, joined with a single woman missionary, Rachel Saint, to live with the Auca people.3

After completing her missionary service, Elisabeth Elliot (she kept Jim’s surname as her pen name) married Addison Leitch, a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Soon after, Dr. Leitch was diagnosed with leukemia and died after a long and painful ordeal. Her deep reflections on suffering became the subject of many books, and in the latter twentieth century Mrs. Elliot became a prominent voice of understanding and comfort related to suffering.4 Elisabeth would later marry Lars Gren and continue writing, speaking, and hosting a radio program called “Gateway to Joy” into the early twenty-first century. She died in 2015.

If anyone has earned the right to offer a definition of suffering, Elisabeth Elliot surely has. She provides what may be the most all-encompassing, all-inclusive definition of suffering, which has helped us understand both the expanse and subjectivity of suffering: “Suffering is having what you don’t want, or wanting what you don’t have.”5

Who on earth doesn’t have something they don’t want? Cancer or some other chronic disease. Infertility. Depression. Indebtedness. The experience of domestic abuse. Suffering as a result of systemic racism. A drug- or alcohol-addicted child. The sudden loss of a spouse. Traumatic memories of a family tragedy.

Or want something they don’t have? A loving spouse. Reclaiming wasted years. A home in a peaceful neighborhood. Family members who follow Jesus Christ. A disabled child healed.

Who do you know who doesn’t wish they could make something in their life either go away for good or appear with permanence? Ponder this for a moment yourself: What do you have that you don’t want? What do you want that you don’t have?

The bottom line: your personal and particular kind of suffering counts as suffering. Some things (like being ostracized from your family) might be specific sufferings for Jesus, but suffering in all forms draw us into the fellowship of those who suffer. Whatever kind of pain or suffering you’re experiencing, it’s real, it’s acknowledged, and God stands with you and is present with you.

You suffer. We all suffer. Forgive our bluntness, but suffering—in so many forms—sucks!

Those of us who consider ourselves Christians are no exception either. In fact, we are not only included in the human experience of suffering but are given widespread biblical witness to prepare us for suffering that might have been avoided had we chosen not to follow Christ: persecution, hardship, relational turmoil, loneliness, confusion, seasons of spiritual darkness. The suffering Christians experience is as varied as the suffering all humans experience. And often just as unpredictable and every bit as painful.

The witnesses to Christian suffering seem relentless. Jesus was explicit: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24 ESV). “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).

James was insistent: “Count it all joy . . . when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2 ESV). Not if but when.

Paul was unapologetic: “There’s a lot of suffering to be entered into in this world—the kind of suffering Christ takes on” ( Colossians 1:24 The Message).

Scripture is emphatic: suffering, in all its forms, is an unequivocal, inescapable part of not only the fallen human condition but the Christian life. Given this reality, we must ask, How can we learn to live as fully and faithfully as possible, despite the unavoidable, unwelcome presence of suffering? This is the driving question of the book.

The Territory of Ministry

A couple of years ago my wife, Erin, planned the ultimate thirtieth birthday present for me (Dave). She arranged for us to travel from Boston to Montana to meet one of my favorite writers, Eugene Peterson, and his wife, Jan, at their home on Flathead Lake. Peterson has written close to three dozen books on spiritual theology and pastoral ministry, but is best known for his translation of the Bible, The Message. Pastor Pete, as many of his former congregants called him, is a pastor’s pastor who has spoken most honestly about the challenges and temptations that come with pastoring in the late modern world. For those tempted to do God’s work the world’s way, Peterson’s words resound piercingly and prophetically like a “voice calling out in the wilderness.”

Over lunch Erin spoke very vulnerably about just how tough her life as both a mental-health therapist and pastor’s wife can be. She described her experience as feeling like she walks around with a constant weight that’s heavy, isolating, and even sickening at times. She admitted that she wasn’t prepared for this—even with an excellent seminary education.

As Eugene listened compassionately to Erin’s words, he leaned across the table and said something we’ve never forgotten. “Suffering comes with the territory.” And then after a long pause, “Loneliness comes with the territory.” Through the well-worn expressions on the Petersons’ faces, they made it clear that behind the bestselling books and outward ministry successes were many dark, lonely, and painful seasons of life. They made no effort to pretend otherwise. To follow Jesus is to endure hardship. It doesn’t matter what our role or vocational calling is, or even how outwardly successful we might seem. The same thing is true for everyone who follows Christ: suffering comes with the territory.

Accepting the Unwelcome Reality

The day we spent with the Petersons has taught us two indispensable things about living fully and faithfully in a suffering-filled world. In spite of our human desire to run from or anesthetize ourselves from hardship, we must first accept the reality of suffering. It comes not only with the terrain of being human but with the territory of following Christ. There is great power found in coming to terms with this. As we learn to understand that suffering will be a significant factor in our lives, suffering loses its power to take us by surprise.

Personal experience teaches us that often the more pain catches us off guard, the less capable we are of enduring it well. In other words, the pain we never see coming seems to be the hardest for us to overcome. Yet by learning to accept suffering’s unwelcome presence in our lives, we can weaken its capacity to catch us by surprise. As suffering’s ability to surprise us decreases, our ability to withstand hardship often increases. We see this reality forcefully at work in the life of the apostle Paul.

In several portions of Paul’s writings, he outlines what have been referred to as his “catalog of afflictions” (see Romans 8:35; 1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 6:4-5; 11:23-29; 12:10). These hardships included imprisonments, beatings, a stoning, three shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, nakedness, sleepless nights, anxiety for the churches, “a thorn in the flesh,” and all the accompanying dangers of traveling in the ancient world. Yet despite all these horrific experiences, Paul’s letters do not seem to suggest that any of these things came as a great surprise to him. He seemed ready for them. While his readiness didn’t diminish the pain of such persecution and hardship, we believe it made them more endurable. His durability might be what enabled him to live as fully and faithfully to Christ as he did in the face of such hostile opposition.

How did Paul come to be so prepared to experience hardship? Perhaps his readiness for all the suffering he experienced in following the call of Christ came from his earliest moments as a Christian. We learn in Acts 9, during Paul’s conversion to Christ, that God would “show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” ( Acts 9:16 NRSV). While we cannot say this with total certainty, it seems possible that this vision of suffering for the sake of Jesus’ name came to be something Paul not only regularly accepted but continually expected. Suffering would always accompany his ministry. If this hypothesis is true—that Paul’s readiness to suffer diminished suffering’s dominion over him—then Paul’s example potently demonstrates that the effect of suffering can be weakened as we come to accept that suffering should be expected.

Accept the Unexpected Invitation

The second lesson we learned from the Petersons was more implicit but every bit as important. If we are first to accept the unwelcome reality of suffering in order to live more fully and faithfully, then we must accept the unexpected invitation of suffering: fellowship. Suffering invites us to forge a kind of fellowship we never could have cultivated any other way.

Generally speaking, when friendships and new relationships are made, they’re ...