Showing Suffering

Sometimes we need to see someone else’s private struggles to understand that we are not alone in ours. Sometimes we need to hear someone else’s private prayers so we know how to shape our own. Sometimes we need to bear witness to someone else’s humiliation to understand that we must face our own. Discipleship is to show someone Christ being worked in you, it is to show them what our walk looks like. But we must show them the truth, all of it. Therefore when I share private, intimate moments from my prayer time, I do so reluctantly.

If I am brutally honest, I wrestle with Facebook and the desire to walk away and leave it be. More often than not, I ask God, “Can I be done now?” I think to myself, “This is the last post I will make for a while, I will take a break and sit in my comfortable solitude.” Sometimes I wrestle with thoughts like, “You shouldn’t have said that, you shouldn’t have shared that.” I understand what Paul meant when he said, “We have become a spectacle to the whole world, to angels as well as to men” (1 Cor 4:9).

Maybe this is what people need to see. Brokenness. A Christian who doesn’t have all the answers. I keep wondering if my heart will be strong enough to carry me through the days ahead, and I keep coming to the conclusion that it won’t. My heart cannot withstand the force of the enemy, no one’s heart can withstand the force of the enemy, that is why we need Jesus Christ. We mustn’t fool ourselves with romantic notions of our own strength. You need Jesus Christ, I need Jesus Christ, and if me sharing my struggles and my doubts and my intimate times with God, even against the screaming reluctance of my flesh, will help someone see Him, then it is a price I’m willing to pay.

Today, I am tired of this world. Today, I give no romantic illusions of valor in my stand for Christ. Will I stand? Yes. Will I endure? Yes. But today, I just want to go home. Here I am, here is what is real in me: outside of Jesus Christ I am nothing, I am a coward and a fool and I am ignorant. The only thing I truly know is that I need Jesus Christ. The only thing I can bring Him day after day is my need and my longing as His Spirit does the work of forming Himself in me in ever-increasing glory. That is what I have to share. I would rather not, I would rather just be alone in my barn and keep all those precious moments to myself, but I can’t because God keeps dragging me back here, day after day. The Spirit keeps compelling me, “Share your journey, even the ugly parts.”

Beloved, sometimes our walk hurts. But trust Him always, even through the ugly parts because it is a walk worth making.

(Heb 12:1-3) Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.