The Art of Suffering Well

A couple of weeks ago, I bent down to put my son into a hot tub and felt something happen in my lower back.

There was no warning. No dramatic accident. No car wreck. No fall. I simply bent down, felt a pop, and suddenly I couldn't stand up.

Within hours, I went froAm going about a normal day with my family to being taken by ambulance to the hospital. A CT scan showed a herniated disc. Before long, I was in another ambulance headed to Miami for an MRI and the possibility of back surgery.

The neurosurgeon determined that I wouldn't need surgery at the moment. It was a herniated disc, and I would need rest, medication, light duty, and time to heal.

But lying here in pain almost two weeks later I have been reminded of something I already knew but usually forget:

Suffering rarely asks permission before entering your life.

One moment everything is normal. The next moment everything has changed.

Sometimes it's your back.

Sometimes it's your marriage.

Sometimes it's your finances.

Sometimes it's a diagnosis.

Sometimes it's a phone call in the middle of the night.

And sometimes it's standing beside the bed of someone you love, knowing you are about to have to say goodbye.

I've learned over the years that following Jesus does not make us immune to suffering. In fact, Scripture never promises that it will. The Bible doesn't teach us how to avoid every painful season.

It teaches us how to suffer well.

And there is a difference.

Suffering Well Doesn't Mean Pretending It Doesn't Hurt

When I talk about suffering well, I don't mean smiling through pain and pretending everything is okay.There is nothing particularly spiritual about acting like something doesn't hurt when it does.

Jesus wept.

David lamented.

Job grieved.

Paul spoke openly about being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.

Christian maturity doesn't mean becoming emotionally numb.

Suffering well means that while I am honest about what hurts, I refuse to allow what hurts to determine what I believe about God.

That's much harder.

Paul writes in Romans 8:18:

Paul isn't saying suffering is insignificant.

This is the same Paul who was beaten, imprisoned, rejected, threatened, shipwrecked, stoned, and left for dead.

Paul knew suffering.

Yet somehow this man could look at everything he had endured and say, “It doesn't compare.”

How could he do that?

I am convinced it is because Paul wasn't measuring his suffering only by what he could see in the moment.

He was measuring it against eternity.

And when you measure it like that it changes everything.

You couldn't intimidate Paul!

I love thinking about what it must have been like trying to intimidate the Apostle Paul.

Paul was a problem.

Imagine telling him, “Paul, if you keep preaching Christ, we're going to make you suffer.”

Paul could essentially answer, “I've already thought about that. The sufferings of this present time aren't even worth comparing with the glory that's coming.”

Fine.

“We'll put you in prison.”

Great. Paul will preach to the prisoners, convert the guards, write letters to churches, and some of those letters will eventually become books of the Bible.

“Well then, Paul, we'll kill you.”

His response?

“To die is gain.”

Fine. Then we'll let you live.

“To live is Christ.”

What do you do with a man like that?

Fear couldn't get a handle on Paul because Paul had already settled the question of whether Jesus was worth suffering for.

He had budgeted suffering into his Christianity.

Paul wasn't shocked that following a crucified Savior might cost him something.

He knew there would be losses.

He knew there would be pain.

He knew there would be persecution.

And he had already decided:

Jesus is worth it!

Maybe part of our problem is that we sometimes treat suffering like evidence that something has gone wrong with God's plan.

Paul saw it differently.

Sometimes suffering wasn't an interruption to the plan.

Sometimes suffering was part of the plan.

God Doesn't Waste Pain

We have heard it said and quoted a million times but do we really believe that God does in fact not waste our pain?

Let me remind you of what Paul said in Romans 8:28

We put that verse on coffee mugs and wall art, but Romans 8:28 was written in the context of groaning, weakness, suffering, and hope.

Paul doesn't say all things are good.

There are things that happen in this broken world that are genuinely awful.

Death is not good.

Disease is not good.

Betrayal is not good.

Pain is not good.

But the promise of Romans 8:28 is much stronger than pretending those things are good.

It says God is so sovereign, so wise, and so powerful that He can take even the things that are not good and work them toward His good purposes.

Joni Eareckson Tada, who has lived for decades as a quadriplegic after a diving accident as a teenager, held on to these words as her lives mantra:

I preached a sermon a few weeks back and told that story and since then that sentence has stayed with me. And then by God’s providence here I am with a herniated disc.

If I’m being honest, it’s easy preaching but hard living. 

There are things God has permitted in my life that I would have never chosen for myself.

And losing my dad is near the top of that list.

My dad passed away in 2024. Cancer had only been discovered about a month before he died.

It happened fast.

There are moments from that season that I will no doubt carry with me for the rest of my life.

And I hated it.

I hated watching someone I loved die.

I hated knowing there wasn't something I could do to stop it.

I hated knowing there would be conversations we wouldn't have, days we wouldn't share, and moments with my children that my dad wouldn't be there to see.

Romans 8:28 does not require me to call that good.

Cancer wasn't good.

Death wasn't good.

Losing my dad wasn't good.

But God is good.

And because God is good, I can trust that even what I hated losing is not outside His sovereign hand.

I can look back and see grace woven throughout even one of the darkest seasons of my life. In the final years of my dad's life, God restored our relationship in ways I am incredibly thankful for. Most importantly, before my dad died, I had the joy of hearing him profess faith in Christ.

I would never choose the suffering.

But I can worship the God who refused to waste it.

Romans 8:28 Doesn't Mean Everything Works Out the Way We Want

This is where we have to be careful.

Romans 8:28 isn't God's promise that the surgery will always be successful.

It isn't a promise that the cancer will disappear.

It isn't a promise that the relationship will be restored.

It isn't a promise that the financial problem will resolve itself.

It isn’t a promise that my back will ever heal.

It isn't even a promise that we'll eventually understand why something happened.

The “good” of Romans 8:28 is defined by the next verse.

Romans 8:29 tells us that God's purpose is to conform His people “to the image of his Son.”

In other words, God's definition of good is often much bigger than ours.

I usually define good as comfortable.

God often defines good as Christlike.

I want relief.

God wants transformation.

I want the situation to change.

Sometimes God intends to change me through the situation.

And that means the question in suffering eventually has to move beyond:

“God, when are You going to get me out of this?”

Sometimes the better question is:

“God, what are You producing in me while I'm here?”

Maybe patience.

Maybe dependence.

Maybe humility.

Maybe compassion.

Maybe an eternal perspective.

Maybe He's loosening our grip on a world we were never meant to call home.

The Hospital Bed Has a Way of Clarifying Things

That's one of the things my recent injury has reminded me of.

Pain has a strange ability to expose how little control we actually have.

One minute you're making plans.

The next minute you're lying flat on your back in a hospital room.

One minute you're worried about tomorrow's schedule.

The next minute you would just like to be able to stand up without pain.

Suffering rearranges priorities quickly.

But suffering can also become sacred ground if we allow it to drive us toward Christ rather than away from Him.

I'm not saying I enjoyed lying in a hospital.

I didn't.

I'm not saying I enjoy dealing with a herniated disc.

I don't.

I'm saying that even here, God is not absent.

And if Romans 8:28 is true, then this isn't wasted either.

That's the confidence Christians have that the world cannot offer.

We don't know everything God is doing.

But we know God.

And sometimes that's enough.

There Is a Glory Coming

Romans 8:18 has become increasingly precious to me because Paul doesn't merely tell us to endure suffering.

He gives us somewhere to look while we endure it.

Glory.

There is coming a day when every Christian will understand that Paul wasn't exaggerating.

Every hospital room.

Every funeral.

Every diagnosis.

Every betrayal.

Every sleepless night.

Every tear cried where nobody else could see it.

Every painful goodbye.

Every aching body.

Every grave.

Put all of it on one side of the scale.

Then put the glory of eternity with Christ on the other.

Paul says they don't compare.

Not because the suffering wasn't real.

But because the glory is that great.

That means Christians grieve differently.

We hurt differently.

We suffer differently.

We bury people differently.

We face uncertain diagnoses differently.

Not because we feel less pain than everyone else, but because pain doesn't get the final word.

Jesus does.

Learning the Art of Suffering Well

I'm still learning this.

I don't write these words as someone who has mastered suffering.

I write them as someone lying a little more carefully on the couch these days because one wrong movement reminds me very quickly that my back isn't completely healed.

I write them as a son who still misses his dad.

I write them as a husband and father who knows there will probably be suffering ahead that I cannot predict or prevent.

But I also write them as someone who has seen enough of God's faithfulness to know that when suffering comes, He will already be there.

Maybe that's the art of suffering well.

It isn't pretending you aren't hurting.

It isn't understanding everything God is doing.

It isn't forcing yourself to call something good that Scripture itself recognizes as broken.

It is looking through tears and saying, “God is still good.”

It is lying in the hospital and saying, “God is still sovereign.”

It is standing at the grave and saying, “Christ is still risen.”

It is facing an uncertain tomorrow and saying, “My future is still secure.”

It is looking at the worst this broken world can throw at us and remembering Paul's words:

“The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

And when we cannot understand what God is doing, Romans 8:28 allows us to rest in what we know about the One doing it.

He wastes nothing, not the pain, not the loss, not the hospital room, not the tears, not even the grave.

And one day, when faith becomes sight and suffering gives way to glory, I believe we'll finally see just how true that was.

Until then, we trust Him.

We hurt…we grieve…we hope…

And by His grace, we learn the art of suffering well.