“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. ….” Col 1:24.
A ministry leader came to me saying “I can’t believe these people never reply to my texts. Do they know how much time I’m sacrificing for them to organize this event but they show no appreciation.” Another said “I’m ready to give up on her. It’s the same sin repeated again and again and again. I’ve told her a million times not to go near that guy but she never listens. What’s the point in trying?”
If you’ve ever invested time and energy in anybody, especially with a gospel motivation, you will know that sooner or later they frustrate, annoy and test your patience to the limit. We didn’t think serving God was supposed to be this hard. And yet, sometimes it can be. We want to give up. Quit. Vent. Ignore.
But consider this question. What is the goal of the Christian life? Is it not to be like Christ and in so being to glorify him? But in what ways are we to be like Christ? In every aspect of our lives. In our thoughts (Rom 12:2), in our desires, in our words (Eph 4:24), in our actions, but also in our experience of his suffering.
“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:8,10-11).
How do Christians grow to be more like Christ? How does the gospel go deeper into our hearts so like Paul we can say I count everything else as rubbish? Many of us would say through teaching and learning. And that is true. Paul tells the Romans that he wants to come to them to impart more of the gospel to them (Rom 1). But have you considered that those who’ve been in churches a long time and who know all the right doctrines can also be those for whom the gospel has stayed only in their heads and not dropped to their hearts. Teaching and learning is not enough. There is another way according to Paul. To ‘share his sufferings’.
Paul is not here talking about the sufferings of having a cold or a boss who makes you work late. He’s talking about sufferings for God’s kingdom. He’s talking about the cost of investment. And what is the fundamental nature of kingdom investment – people.
If you want to grow in Christ, you need to invest in people. If you never invest in people, you will always be a superficial Christian with as much depth as a puddle. You may give the right answers, but you will be a fool not wise.
So to grow we must invest in others. We must seek to disciple others to love Christ through investing in them. More than that – you need to be disappointed by the very people you’ve been investing in. Why? You will never understand the depth of the cross until you have experienced a glimpse of its pain; until you have experienced in your flesh the cost of the kingdom.
That may not be the message you wanted to hear, but many parents I know tell me that in having children, they began to understand more of the Fatherhood of God. They began to see their selfish hearts played out in front of them in their children. They saw the long-suffering nature of a parent who loves their rebellious children. And the theory of God’s love for them – grew into a much deeper reality. It is the same for us. Christlikeness involves experiencing the father’s heart of love for people and the father’s broken heart for the wayward, those caught in sin, those who throw your love back in your face, those who reject your kindness.
And at that moment, the temptation is to forget that that person’s behaviour is an image of your own – a mirror revealing the way we’ve treated God year after year. The pain we feel when the porn addict fails again or the person you have poured your life into just walks away is tangible. This is not a theory. We can get frustrated. We desire to fix. To find quick and easy solutions. But when these do not seem to work at that point, we have a choice: to let the gospel drive us to Christ remembering his mercy and patience towards us or become bitter and discouraged. If we do the former – the gospel becomes sweeter to us. We realise the pain I feel now is but a tiny fraction of what God must feel when I turn from him and reject his loving commands. We discover a life in him which is not dependent on whether things worked out the way I wanted them to. We see how much of our hearts are doing things for God to earn things from God, serving him because we want results in our timing – not simply to give him pleasure. And we fight again for the truths of the gospel that we thought were already deeply embedded in our souls.
I prayed with a lady recently who prayed this prayer: “Father, I’m so grateful that I have learnt more about your afflictions through this pain in my life. It’s been so hard but thank you that you took me through this.” I was shocked by her prayer. But afterwards, I thought to myself – that’s what Paul was talking about when he prayed that he might share in Christ’s sufferings. Let us not despise the sufferings of ministry.