When I started working at Starbucks, I was very clear to the store manager that my church was my priority. Working Sunday mornings was not an option. Corri, the store manager, was very understanding and flexible, so we never had any scheduling conflicts. For that same reason, I knew I could never go into management. The church had to stay the main thing.
After I learned the ropes and God dealt with my bad attitude, I found myself enjoying my job at Starbucks—perhaps too much. Remaking a bad latte was easier than taking back a sermon that even my mom slept through. Issues at Starbucks stayed at Starbucks, but I carried church problems with me wherever I went.
As frustrations at church made retreating deeper into my second job easier, my resolve not to be a manager weakened. Then one day Corri asked me to consider a promotion. She understood my church would still have to come first, and she was willing to continue working with my schedule. In my own mind, I was able to come up with all sorts of reasons a promotion would be better for the church, so I accepted her offer. Somewhere deep inside, I knew that management couldn’t help but pull more of my heart away from the church, but I convinced myself and my leadership team that it wouldn’t. So did it? I never had the opportunity to find out. Not long after offering me the promotion, Corri had to leave our store unexpectedly because of some medical issues. In the disorder that followed, my promotion fell by the wayside.
God works in strange ways. After being offered a promotion and then having it taken away, I found myself becoming less satisfied with my Starbucks job (but for the right reasons). I didn’t realize it at the time, but God was preparing me to return to full-time ministry. He was also speaking to me through my daughters.
The hardest part of working at Starbucks was how much time it took away from my family. Every morning as I left for work, Sarah would pull back my coat to see what shirt I was wearing. A black shirt meant I’d be working at Starbucks that night, and she’d give a patently fake cry. She was mostly being silly, but she knew the black shirt meant she wouldn’t see me until the next morning. I’d tell her we needed to be thankful for the job, but she kept up the act. I finally had to tell her how sad it made me.
Not long before God brought me back to full-time ministry, someone asked me if I could switch shifts with them. I eagerly agreed because I would get off earlier and be home just in time to put Grace and Sarah to bed. I powered through my last tasks, hoping to gain just a couple more minutes with my girls. When I got home, I walked into a dark, silent house. No daughters rushing down the stairs to hug me, no wife greeting me. I trudged upstairs to find everyone already asleep in bed, worn out from a full day without me. As I stood in Grace and Sarah’s room, watching them lie there, I lost it. I told God I couldn’t do this anymore. I missed my family too much. This was too hard.
That was my darkest day at Starbucks.
Better than Laughter
I now understand what God was doing—he was pushing me out of Starbucks. There was nothing bad about working there. I still don’t believe that being a pastor is a higher calling than being a barista, but being a pastor is my calling. In an effort to avoid the pain of pastoring a struggling church, I had put my heart where it didn’t belong.
A couple of years earlier, during my word study on joy in the Bible, I was really puzzled by one passage.
It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth
(Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 ESV).
“Sorrow is better than laughter”? That seemed so out of step with everything else the Bible had to say about joy and happiness. But that dark night in my daughters’ room and other experiences like it helped me understand. Some things can be learned only through pain. As I thought about it, I realized that my greatest growth has been the result of suffering, whether caused by my own sin, the sin of others, or seemingly random events.
Like you, I am still in process. Even as I write this I’m on the tail end of a new trial, the greatest challenge I’ve ever faced in ministry. I never want to go through anything like it again, yet I wouldn’t be the person I am without it and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I finally understand what Ecclesiastes is saying. If we insist on trying to be happy and positive all the time, we’re being not only delusional but also foolish. Trying to skip past pain will ultimately deprive us of more joy down the road.
Songs to a Heavy Heart
Many years ago, my grandma Andrade passed away unexpectedly. The funeral was a mixture of shock, grief, and anger. At the reception, a pastor tried to comfort some family members by leading a little worship time in the corner. My thoughts toward her were un-pastoral to say the least. All I could think of was this verse in Proverbs: “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart” (Proverbs 25:20).
Grandma’s death was a painful, awful mess—that was all there was to it that day. Later there would be time for healing, but that was the time for mourning. I say all that to say if you are currently in the midst of suffering and this chapter feels like a song sung to a heavy heart, I am truly sorry. You may decide that it’s best to skip it for now. Perhaps some of the books listed in appendix 2 will be helpful.
Let me add that suffering is not simple. Some is good and some is bad. Some is mild and some is crushing. Some is self-inflicted, and some is inflicted on the innocent. Some people have had a reasonably good life, and others have faced great hardships. I don’t pretend to have walked through the same pain you have. My goal in this chapter is not to explain why bad things happen—other books address that. I begin with the assumption that God, in his goodness, allows suffering. Then I ask (as strange as it may seem), how can God use this suffering to bring me more joy?
Nothing Wasted
My goal is to help all of us make the best use of our suffering because suffering will come to all of us. The promise I see in Romans 8:28 is that no pain has to be wasted.
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified (Romans 8:28-30).
This passage is sometimes misquoted to say that everything is good. That is nonsense. The world is filled with pain, sorrow, and evil. These things are not good. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb because he knew death was an evil intrusion on the good world he made (John 11:33-37).1
Instead, Romans promises that God can transform these things into something good. I’ve found a lot of comfort and insight in these words from C.S. Lewis.
They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already confirms his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.2
Too often, discussions about Romans 8:29-30 are hijacked by arguments about predestination and free will. I think that misses the point. Paul wrote those words to encourage us—God is writing the story of your life, and he knows how it ends. He knows that your story is not a tragedy. He knows that it has a happy ending. Because of that, you can be assured that every scene will work to this end. He is a master weaver, working both the bright and dark threads together to make an amazing picture. The idea is not that suffering is good, but that God will transform your sufferings into something beautiful if you are in Christ.
When I started at Starbucks, I was given a copy of Onward by Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. One key lesson in the book is that success hides the cracks in the foundation. In their boom period, hundreds of Starbucks stores were losing money, the supply chain was bloated and ineffective, and millions of dollars were being wasted. But no one noticed because they were making so much money. Then the recession hit, and they either had to get healthy or risk being bought off. They finally made the painful decisions they should have made years prior. Could they have made these changes during their success? Theoretically, yes. Practically, no.
You and I can learn some things only when things aren’t going well. Next time you’re suffering, don’t focus on the symptoms. Prayerfully ask if you need to deal with cracks in the foundation. Don’t assume your suffering is your fault, but don’t assume it isn’t. Look for good counsel—and not just from friends who are eager to help you feel better as quickly as possible. Even if your suffering came through no fault of your own, you can learn important lessons.
Unfortunately, we usually short-circuit this process by trying to numb our pain. We take another drink, jump into the next relationship, or turn on the TV. But when we attempt to avoid suffering, we most often prolong it. I’ve witnessed far too many divorces and have noticed a trend among the spouses who were abandoned. Even if they responded to the divorce as righteously as possible, many of them did very unrighteous and destructive things afterward. Usually they jumped into ill-advised relationships with tragically predictable results. I understand that they were in terrible pain and wanted to stop it, but unfortunately, they only increased it.
The single greatest thing we can learn from suffering is to depend more deeply on God. In my recent trials, I held on to one passage more than any other.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
In times of suffering, we will either run to God or run from him. We deal with pain by either depending on his grace or rejecting it and trying to fix things our own way. I’ve seen people respond to the same hardships in opposite ways—some by drawing closer to God and some by pulling away.
When It Doesn’t Work
This leads us to the elephant in the room—can we really trust God?
According to the Torah and the book of Proverbs, we’re blessed because of our righteousness, and we suffer because of our wickedness. Most of the time, this is how things work. But the book of Job provides a vital balance—it reminds us that things don’t always work that way.
Job is as righteous as any human could possibly be, and God has blessed him tremendously. Job believes that righteousness equals blessing—until that system stops working. Then for 28 chapters, Job’s friends tell him, “You must have really sinned to be suffering like this.” Job counters, “No, I didn’t,” and they insist, “Yes, you did.” The longer the conversation goes, the more they panic—here stands one man who could bring the whole system crashing down. If Job can suffer innocently, so can they.
I once had friends whose child died in a car accident, and some adherents of the prosperity gospel told them it happened because of sin in their lives. How could anyone say such a horrible thing to grieving parents? Like Job’s friends, they were desperate to reassure themselves that it couldn’t happen to them.
Throughout the book, Job keeps demanding that God show up and explain himself. I’m with Job on this. I want to know why God allows the innocent to suffer. Just think of all the things God could have said.
• “It wasn’t me, it was the devil.”
• “Your standard of righteousness is way below mine, so you aren’t as innocent as you think.”
• “Don’t worry, I’m going to give you back double what I took.”
• “It was because you didn’t have enough faith and feared this would happen.”
Instead, when God shows up, he ignores Job’s questions and spends the next four chapters asking Job a withering barrage of questions (72 by my count), all of them with one basic point—“I’m God and you’re not. You aren’t capable of understanding everything.”
Is God’s answer satisfying? No. Somehow oddly comforting? I think so. I may not be able to understand how or why everything happens, but I trust God. I believe that he is good and that he loves me. And when I have a hard time believing in God’s goodness in the light of all the world’s suffering, I remember that he became a man and willingly suffered with us and for us. I look to Jesus and realize that I can trust the God who suffers with me.
What Now?
As I see it, complacent Christianity tries to avoid pain at all costs. Then it tries to numb whatever pain gets through even if the anesthetic of choice causes more damage in the long run. On the other hand, obsessive Christianity glamorizes suffering and even seeks it in order to gain a sense of spiritual superiority. Being radically normal means that you accept suffering and allow God to use it for your ultimate joy. I hate pain. I hate it so much that I don’t want any of it to go to waste. I want to see God wring the most possible good out of all suffering, even if it’s as trivial as a stubbed toe.
I’m not pretending that suffering is fun. But it is unavoidable. So what will you do with it? Helen Keller (who could speak with authority about suffering) said, “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.” So here is my encouragement. Next time you suffer, spend less time asking “Why me?” and more asking God to transform it into something good.
In addition to everything I’ve said, I also believe that pain reminds us that this world is not our home. And not just pain—I’ve noticed a very strange (and unexpected) phenomenon in my life. The more I enjoy this world appropriately, the less it feels like home.