Suffering

​Some of you know, many don’t, that I have a tattoo on my ankle that has references for several verses. These are the verses that shaped my life or have a special meaning to me. One of those verses is Philippians 1:29. It says, “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” I remember clearly the first time I read this verse. I knew I was called to missions in some form or fashion, but this really drove home the idea for me. It doesn’t say, well some of you are going to have to suffer, sorry. It says it has been granted to us, this holds the idea of honor. Being able to believe in Jesus is a gift, and this verse shows us that so is the chance to suffer for Him. It has been GRANTED to us to suffer for Him. I was blown away at the idea that suffering for Jesus could be a gift. 

There’s a great book called Kisses from Katie by a young woman that God is using mightily in Uganda. She states in that book, “I believe with all of my heart that nothing is a sacrifice in light of the promise that one day I will get to live with Him forever. I want to obey, I want to give my life away.” Give my life away. This is an interesting idea because in many ways Jon and I have given our life away (or sold it in a garage sale). Yet there isn’t sorrow in it. We don’t feel jipped, or like God is asking too much. On the contrary, God is giving us a life we couldn’t have dreamed of in exchange for the one we had. Jon taught the high schoolers in our youth group on Friday about dying to ourselves to live to Christ. It is a theme that has come up a lot for me.

In one of the Bible studies at church we are reading through Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 24, the prophet is told he will lose his wife, and later that night she dies. Then God tells him not to mourn outwardly, not to cry, or eat the normal foods, or wear the normal dress for mourning. And here is the really amazing thing,  “So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died; and the next morning I did as I was commanded (Ezekiel 24:18- emphasis mine). Ezekiel believed and lived out that nothing was too high a cost for serving God, even the person he loved most in the world. This is a very hard-hitting idea for me. 

Elisabeth Elliot has long been my missionary hero. I’ve always been amazed that she lost her husband at the hand of a violent people, and then chooses to walk back into the same place and share the gospel anyway. She believed that God wanted the Auca people reached, and that she was called to it, no matter the price. (For more information on that story, I recommend Through the Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot). I have asked myself many times this week, and in times previous, if there is any cost too high to serve God. Is the risk of having Jon die on the field for the sake of the gospel too high? I don’t think I can answer that question with confidence until (God forbid) the situation arises, none of us could. But I pray everyday in preparation for leaving that God would affirm the answer in my heart that no, there is no cost too high. And I can say with total confidence that I am assured that though Jon loves me dearly, he does not consider my life too high a price to pay for the sake of the gospel. And I would not want it any other way. But maybe that doesn’t just mean the risk of martyrdom…
Suffering is the cost of discipleship in one way or another. It means killing your flesh, walking by faith, risking it all for the sake of being a bondservant of Jesus Christ. In my case, it means giving up toilets, pizza, A/C, my king size bed, our beautiful home, our big ol’ truck (which sold, by the way, praise God!), it means giving up having my family 10 minutes away, and having our friends over on a regular basis, it means taking my life as I know it and giving it away.And right now you may be sitting there thinking ‘well that sounds awful’. And you’d be correct if it weren’t for one thing: love. I love Jesus, I love the lost of Uganda, and I love giving of myself to serve both. The suffering of this life is temporary, but NOTHING can replace the new life given when we give ours up. It is not painful to give up our life for the sake of the gospel, because our life isn’t ours anyway. I guess I’ll finish up with this quote that Jon really likes; it’s from a missionary headed to a group of cannibals. When James Clavert was begged by his ship’s captain not to go to the cannibals insisting they would surely die, he responded with “we were dead before we came here”. While there may be suffering in this life to follow Jesus, it is but a fleck of dust compared to the wonder and majesty of seeing souls saved and being able to worship in eternity with those same souls.