Guts
We were standing in line to board our flight from Atlanta to Memphis when I saw the t-shirt.
It was the end of a long week. We had said our goodbye’s to Kendra’s mother after her long battle with MS and cancer. We were returning from Arizona home to Memphis after the funeral. Standing in line ahead of us as we were boarding our final leg home was a young man with a t-shirt that read “Being human takes guts.” I thought, “Boy, that’s right.” Being human takes guts. It’s hard to be human. Life is hard.
- Just look at all of the deaths our Highland family has experienced in the last few weeks. It’s been a season of loss. Being human takes guts.
- Just look at the tough stuff going on around the world–the ongoing Syrian war, the fight with ISIS, the tensions over race in this country, the political divide in this country. Being human takes guts.
- We just got back from a family vacation in the Austin, TX area. While there, we stopped in to see a family member. She’s our age and has health issues, including a degenerative disease that’s going to rob her of her ability to walk in five years. Being human takes guts.
Side note–I was a bit chagrined when, a few minutes later in the boarding process as I passed the young man with the t-shirt, to see the back side of the t-shirt. It turns out he was a salesman. He was just marketing Renew Life Probiotics whose slogan is “Being human takes guts.”[1] His t-shirt wasn’t a philosophical statement. It was a marketing statement about the importance of a good digestive system.
Still, being human takes guts. Because pain and suffering is part of human life. And our text this morning addresses this:
5 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Rom. 5:1-5 ESV)
Joy in Suffering
Paul reveals in v. 3 that it is possible to rejoice in our sufferings. Paul’s no stranger to suffering. He describes some of what he’s endured in another letter:
24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Cor. 11:24-27 ESV)
Paul knows suffering. He’s not writing Romans as some ivory tower scholar who has no idea what he means when he says that it’s possible to rejoice in our sufferings. He’s done it. Acts 16 records Paul being tossed into jail and then singing hymns to God (Acts 16:25). Paul has rejoiced in his sufferings.
Maturity
But how? In what way would suffering still allow us to rejoice? Paul reveals here that joy is possible while suffering when we understand that adversity leads to maturity. Paul writes that “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.” Adversity leads to maturity. When approached correctly, suffering can lead to growth. And that’s why we can rejoice in our suffering.
Dallas Willard, a longtime author and speaker on the spiritual life, comments on Paul’s words in Romans 5 by describing something he calls “the golden triangle.[2] Ideally, Willard says, we are shaped into Christlike people by three things, like the three sides of a triangle.
- First, there’s the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit shaping us from the inside out. This is God’s work on us. We’ll look at that in more detail next Sunday.
- Second, there’s the impact of spiritual practices like prayer, fasting, and Bible study. This is our work on us.
- Third, there’s the formative work of suffering. This is life’s work on us.
In this text, Paul is pointing to this third side of the golden triangle. If we are truly interested in growth, in becoming like Jesus, in reaching our full potential as the beings God has created us to be, we have to make room in our theology, our philosophy, our worldview, for suffering. We actually grow through suffering. Adversity leads to maturity.
Last Monday I was sitting with a Christian who had endured a season deep and debilitating depression. It was one of the most excruciating times in his life. Thankfully, God brought healing over several months and now he’s on the other side of depression. And recently, God has brought into his life a person who is also struggling with depression. Because of what this Christian experienced and learned through his own struggle, he’s now able, he believes, to provide help and compassion to this person. That adversity lead to a new maturity which is now making possible greater ministry.
In her book The How of Happiness, researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky shows that people who find benefit from trauma and tragedy live longer and find more happiness than those who don’t.[3] She gives this example. In one study researchers interviewed men who had heart attacks. Those who perceived benefits in the event weeks after it happened— for example, believing that they had grown and matured as a result, or revalued home life, or resolved to create less hectic schedules for themselves—were less likely to have recurrences and more likely to be healthy years later. In contrast, those who saw no benefit in what they had gone through were poorer health years after the event.
A few years ago columnist David Brooks wrote a piece called “What Suffering Does.”[4] In it, he acknowledged Paul’s truth:
When people plan for the future, they often talk about all the good times and good experiences they hope to have. We live in a culture awash in talk about happiness…When people remember the past, they don’t only talk about happiness. It is often the ordeals that seem most significant. People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering. Now, of course, it should be said that there is nothing intrinsically ennobling about suffering. Just as failure is sometimes just failure (and not your path to becoming the next Steve Jobs) suffering is sometimes just destructive, to be exited as quickly as possible. But some people are clearly ennobled by it. Think of the way Franklin Roosevelt came back deeper and more empathetic after being struck with polio. Often, physical or social suffering can give people an outsider’s perspective, an attuned awareness of what other outsiders are enduring. [David Brooks]
In his autobiography Lucky Man actor Michael J. Fox writes about his struggle with Parkinson’s.[5] He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the midst of a stellar acting career. But he came to view the experience with the disease as a gift because of how he was reformed through it:
“That answer came from a doctor who would inform me that I had a progressive, degenerative, and incurable neurological disorder; one that I may have been living with for as long as a decade before suspecting there might be anything wrong. This doctor would also tell me that I could probably continue acting for ‘another ten good years,’ and he would be right about that, almost to the day. What he did not tell me–what no one could–is that these last ten years of coming to terms with my disease would turn out to be the best year years of my life–not in spite of my illness, but because of it…If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal … in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before—I would, without a moment’s hesitation, tell you to take a hike …. I would never want to go back to that life—a sheltered, narrow existence fueled by fear and made livable by insulation, isolation, and self-indulgence.” [Michael J. Fox]
Three Conditions
According to Paul, adversity leads to maturity. And this is why it’s possible to rejoice even in our sufferings.
But for Paul there must be three conditions in place in order for us to experience this. First, adversity leads to maturity when we stand in the grace of God. Paul writes in v. 2 that “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.” Earlier this summer I heard John Mark Hicks from Lipscomb University speak on this text. He shared what it was like to endure the death of his wife, who died shortly after giving birth to their son. He shared what it was like to endure the death of their son, who died years later because of a degenerative disease. John Mark said that one of the only ways he endured, one of the only ways suffering was able to mature him rather than mutilate him, was that he was firmly rooted in, standing in, the grace of God. For him, that meant he was rooted in the graciousness of God, a God who called him beloved, a God who valued him and treasured him. He was able to cling to that belief that even if things around him were crashing in, he knew that God loved him. That’s what it meant to stand in the grace of God. Adversity leads to maturity when we stand in the grace of God.
Second, adversity leads to maturity when we recognize the presence of God. Paul writes in v. 5 “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Paul mentions the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is how God is present with us. It is how God dwells with us. It is the manifestation of his love that has been poured into our hearts. And it seems that Paul raises this topic here to point to the fact that in our suffering God’s loving presence is with us. And when we recognize that presence, we we realize that in our suffering we are not alone, that God dwells with us, adversity is able to lead to maturity. We are not overwhelmed by our grief. We are not overtaken by our pain.
Third, adversity leads to maturity when we hope in the glory of God. Paul says we “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” This is Paul’s nod to the future. The phrase “glory” comes up again in chapter 8 where Paul writes this:
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Rom. 8:18 ESV)
Paul’s writing here of the glory of life with God in the heavenly future. Adversity in the present is easier to endure when we know there is a better future ahead, a future without pain and suffering. When we are able to live with one eye that future, adversity in the present can lead to maturity.
Highland Testimony
Moving is one of our greatest sources of stress and anxiety in life–we’re ripped from our safety and security. Especially when it’s a move of 5,000 miles. Pile on top of that the experience of complete and utter loneliness in a new culture. And oh, by the way, you’re only 9 at the time. Listen to this story from a Highlander of the way in which God used the adversity of one massive move to lead to maturity in her life:
Benediction
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Rom. 15:13 ESV)
[1] http://s3.amazonaws.com/abn-prod/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/06/Being-Human-Takes-Guts.png
[2] http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=105
[3] Sonja Lyubomirsky The How of Happiness (Penguin Press, 2007), 157.
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/brooks-what-suffering-does.html
[5] Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man (Hyperion, 2013), pp 5-6
