Life is one long lesson in humility and surrender.

Things not going our way. Expectations unrealized. Promises broken. Delays and detours. Losses and lack. Troubles. Frustrations. Heartaches. Job challenges. Money problems. Marriages not delivering. Children disappointing. Health declining. Friendships fading. Plans flopping. Dreams ending.

You are tired. Trying to remain optimistic, but life is wearing you down. Anxiety is setting in. You are feeling alone. It is hard to wrap your mind around it all. So many questions, so much uncertainty. You cannot see your way out. Keeping faith is a daily battle.

The Apostle Paul knew this experience all too well. He writes, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. In our hearts we felt the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). One commentator notes that the word despaired when translated “points to the total unavailability of an exit from oppressive circumstances” while the phrase “sentence of death” may suggest a divine verdict rendered by God telling Paul, “You are going to die!”

Whether Paul’s set of afflictions had to do with a physical illness, financial stress, relational challenges, or a combination of these things and more, we cannot know fully. What we can be sure of is that Paul came to terms with the why behind his troubles. As undeserved and unexpected as these trials were, Paul makes a remarkable statement: “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).

Paul claims, in other words, that God had a purpose in all his suffering. It was to wean him from this world and all trust in himself and drive him to God as his one and only true security and hope. It was almost as if Paul was saying, “I’ve become too self-reliant. I’ve been relying too much on my abilities, my wisdom, my networks, my reputation, my integrity. So, God has knocked out every conceivable prop in my life to draw me into greater dependence upon him.”

Few of us can relate to the magnitude of suffering to which Paul was subjected (check out 2 Corinthians if you disagree), but we can all identify with the harsh reality that life brings its share of burdens, and it can sometimes feel completely overwhelming. And while our (and everyone else’s) pain can seem so senseless and random, we must cling to what Paul affirms here: “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God.” We must hold on to the belief that God has designs in our distress, with his ultimate intention being to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we look to him alone to find what our aching hearts most deeply yearn . . . happiness.

Yes, God’s prescription is a strange and bitter one. He hurts us to heal us of all pride. He humbles us to cure us of our illusions of control so that we might find rest in him alone. Author Sam Storms comments: “For in orchestrating these events to undermine Paul’s self-reliance, God made it possible for Paul to find satisfaction in the one who will never fail or falter or prove untrustworthy.” Self-confidence—our natural default—inevitably disappoints. God-confidence is the only pathway to true peace, strength, and wholeness. But the road to this bliss is hard and heavy. If the cross of Christ teaches us anything, it is that the way to joy is through suffering.

If Jesus’ scars became his glory, our wounds can become our victory if we allow them to do what God purposes—to deliver us from our inflated views of self and demolish any sense of independence, to expose our idols and shatter distorted views of what we have deemed important. God in his mercy is determined to save us from ourselves by revealing our fragility and helplessness in order to direct us to himself.

God certainly takes no pleasure in seeing his dearly loved ones suffer. He is unswervingly and eternally committed to our joy because of his unsurpassable love for us. He grieves and is pained when we hurt. He does not sit idly by, detached and unmoved, when we are afflicted. No, he weeps (see John 11:35)! But we must always remember that God has infinitely more in mind than our mere comfort. He is committed to our absolute good, both now and forever (see Romans 8:28). His love, accordingly, constrains him to hurt us (not harm us) in order to humble us. Storms remarks, “Whatever was done to wean Paul from himself and cultivate confidence in God alone must be regarded as the highest and most heartfelt expression of love imaginable.”

Humility and happiness, surrender and satisfaction, go hand-in-hand.

I am not celebrating suffering nor minimizing it. Suffering—whatever its shape, degree or duration, whether self-induced or irrespective of anything we have done (or not done)—is real, awful, and unfair. It is also inevitable. It is part of our lot as fallen creatures living in a broken world. The appropriate response to suffering is lament—grief, mourning, protest. We are not to dance around coffins, to make merry when a community has been leveled by some natural disaster, or to glibly boast of God’s goodness in the immediate wake of a mother losing her child to a drug overdose.

At the same time, we must be open to the possibility that many of the deepest pleasures of life are found in and through the greatest pains. That which brings the most discomfort to us can turn out to be the greatest carrier of happiness and comfort—an unusual joy found in God as we are brought to our knees. Sadness can be the stream where some of life’s sweetest satisfactions are found. As Paul reminded the Thessalonians, we do not sorrow as those without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). One of my favorite quotes comes from William Cowper (1731-1800), a contemporary of John Newton, the famed slave trader turned Christian who wrote “Amazing Grace.” What makes this poem even more incredible is that it was penned by a man who battled life-long depression and was committed multiple times to an insane asylum (the equivalent of a modern-day prison): “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face.”

But here is the catch. We must not run or seek to escape our suffering, whether by distraction or anesthetization. We must not attempt to subdue it by controlling it or solving it. These responses will only prolong the agony. It is only by submitting—falling into the arms of God and aligning ourselves with him—that we can glean from our hardships something of precious value and worth. Our discoveries of these joy-filled treasures will seldom be immediate, and none of these hidden joys will be fully realized until that great Day when we see him face to face and all is made well.

One of our goals at Life Challenge is to teach recovering addicts how to suffer and deal with loss, which means, most fundamentally, how to surrender into the loving and tender care of God. So that they can be happy.

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“One of the main teachings of the Bible is that almost no one grows into greatness
or finds God without suffering,
without pain coming into our lives like smelling salts to wake us up to all sorts of facts
about life and our own hearts to which we were blind.”
(Timothy Keller)