If my agenda becomes the avoidance of suffering, then my agenda is the avoidance of Christ.

I had a conversation last night that helped me see something about myself.

Patrick is a young man in South Africa who believes he is called by God to serve him and make a difference for young people in that country. Patrick has no money and his family want him to go an get a real job.

As I spoke with Patrick last night, I wanted to save him from the position he found himself in. I wanted to find some scheme that would give him all the money he needed, look for an educational process that would help people take him more seriously or tell him to forget what God was saying and start to look after himself. His place of powerlessness left me feeling powerless.

I realised how much I don’t like being alongside people who are in a place of suffering. I usually have one of two responses: fix it or avoid them.

The journey I am on at the moment is leading me to the unfortunate conclusion that suffering is actually an essential part of discipleship. Jesus exhorts us five times to be ready to take up our crosses.

I am discovering that I am ok (kind of) with my own suffering, but I find it very difficult to watch someone else suffer.

The reading I did for my book that is about to be launched (by the way you can now pre-order the book here) showed me that whenever God was moving through the history of the church, the people at the centre of what he was doing were enduring personal suffering. Whether it be Basil the Great, John Wesley or even Mother Theresa, they all paid a significant personal cost in order to follow Jesus. Another thing that emerged from my reading is that, almost without exception, the generation that followed them sought to find a way to continue the ministry without the suffering, and every single time this resulted in the decline of the ministry.

With all this going through my mind, it was interesting to read Paul’s letter to the Philippians this morning, and in particular Philippians 1:29 (in the Message):

There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting. You’re involved in the same kind of struggle you saw me go through, on which you are now getting an updated report in this letter.

Paul was able not to try to fix the suffering of the Philippians or avoid them, but to be with them in it, helping them know that suffering was simply a part of life for anyone who professes to follow Jesus.

I am still chewing over N.T. Wright’s insight that the only real way to seek first the Kingdom of God, is in the shape of a cross. I don’t like it but more and more there is part of me that knows it is true.

For a long time I have wrestled with this passage from Romans:

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:2-5)

The reason I have wrestled with it is the idea of rejoicing in suffering, and the link Paul makes between that suffering and our capacity to produce hope. I have to confess that I am not at a point where the idea of rejoicing in suffering is something I am able to do, or even really want to do. I am however coming to the alarming conclusion that suffering is an essential part of Christian discipleship that is fundamental to being shaped into the character of Christ.

I am also seeing more clearly that each one of us has a unique cross to bear, and saving someone from their own cross is actually doing them a disservice. If my agenda becomes the avoidance of suffering, then my agenda is the avoidance of Christ.

I hope one day I will be mature enough to be able to rejoice about this… Honestly I’m not so sure.