I heard an ad on the radio for a physician with a solution for people suffering from nerve pain in their hands and feet. The tag line for the ad was: "Imagine living pain free for the rest of your life." If you're struggling with chronic pain, you're ready to pick up the phone. You'll do anything to escape the gnawing ache, the needling discomfort.

We have a mantra for the staff here at Kensington Church. Whenever we gear up for our weekend services, and when we debrief conversations with people in crisis, we remind one another: "Never underestimate the pain in the room." On any given Sunday, the odds that one person in your sanctuary is struggling with loss, heartache, rejection, loneliness, or failure is 100%. The husband who wandered in because his wife just served him with divorce papers is yearning for consolation. A young man was recently arrested for his second DUI, scrambling to escape the maze of addiction. A couple who lost their infant daughter to SIDS. The grief is suffocating. Every single week, they come. Familiar faces with old wounds. New faces with fresh scars. And almost everyone pushes the pain just deep enough below the surface to hide from the most discerning eyes.

Even the most broken preachers step into the pulpit with the desire to serve brokenhearted people well. No one would ever confuse me for the most empathetic person they know, but I cling to the truth of Psalm 34:18: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." My great hope is that those who are emotionally, physically, and spiritually injured would find healing and encouragement in real-time encounters with Christ. I come from a faith tradition where we believe that God can and does dramatically heal people. I still believe this. At the same time, I've seen Jesus-honoring, Bible-believing, Spirit-led, faith-filled people breathe their last breath with their healing prayer unanswered. So how, in our preaching, do we reconcile the wish for pain-free living with the ever-present weight of suffering?

Three approaches to human suffering

At the risk of oversimplifying a complex issue, allow me to present three approaches to human suffering: escape, tolerate, and redeem. The escapist rejects suffering in all its forms. They don't deny that pain exists; they discount it as a constant for a person of faith. The argument goes: "Christ healed the sick, diseased, and oppressed in his time and also does it in ours. God's intent for us is pain-free living and if we're stuck in some kind of agony something is broken on our end, not God's. Increased faith and an upward tick in moral performance insures a pain-free existence." If you've been in church circles long enough, you've heard a version of this view.

The second approach avoids the aforementioned escapism. The adherents of this view consider themselves realists. This theory contends: "The Fall introduced brokenness in the world. We are living in the midst of that fallout. Death, tragedy, disease are the natural consequences of humanity's first and subsequent rejection of God's will. Followers of Jesus will eventually move beyond this system, either at the point of death or at Christ's return. Nobody's excited about the reality of suffering. It's just something we're stuck with in our current state."

Scripture offers a third way. The writer of Hebrews contends "For the joy set before him he endured the Cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (12:2). It's a position on suffering rarely modeled in a pain-avoidant society.

'Joy set before us'

Maybe it's because we don't have a solid grasp of what the "joy set before us" might look like. This last spring our church did a seven-part series on the life of Paul during our capital campaign. In one of the messages, we focused on Paul's understanding of suffering as it shapes the life of the disciple and the church. The apostle Paul had a crystal vision—which is why he appears so reckless in the face of very real threats. If anyone has a resume with exhaustive suffering credentials to tout, it's Paul. And he reluctantly declares them in 2 Cor. 11:23-33.

Have you ever truly stopped to reflect on this? Five times Paul gets forty lashes minus one. He's beaten with rods three times, survives a stoning attempt, and is shipwrecked three times. Apparently, he keeps signing up for this. I got punched in the face in eighth grade. I needed five stitches over my eye. Unfortunately, the incident had nothing to do with me being a voice for the gospel, so there wasn't much joy to be had in it.

Our culture is committed to protection, security, and pain-avoidance. The recent debate between the FBI and Apple centers on two deeply held American rights: privacy and security. Paul's solution in such conundrums is simple: surrender both. "I only have one goal: spreading the gospel. You can take everything else."

Look at how Paul suspends his rights in Acts 16. After he and Silas deliver an unnamed slave girl from a demon, her owners incite a riot. Paul and Silas are beaten and imprisoned without due process. But being in jail isn't necessarily a setback, it's an opportunity. Their midnight worship service declares their faith in Christ to a captive audience. You know the rest, there's an earthquake, a jailer gets converted, and there's a family baptism in the early morning hours. If Paul and Silas had lawyered up, there never would have been this dramatic jailhouse evangelism moment.

The rest of the story is a moving snapshot of what redemptive, gospel-oriented suffering can do. The morning after their stint in jail, the Philippian magistrates order Paul and Silas' release. Oddly enough, Paul won't leave (Acts 16:37-40).

My friend Steve Andrews took a group from our church to Greece last fall. Their guide on that trip, Kostas, had some fascinating insight on this episode. He contends Paul knew that the judges and jailers didn't have legal standing to arrest, punish, or imprison them. But he let them beat him and hold him anyway. Why? Because Paul knows the fledgling church in Philippi needs all the help it can get. It's small and fragile and needs time and freedom to establish roots. So instead of advocating for his own rights, Paul embraces a punishment he doesn't deserve. Then, rather than suing the municipality for damages, he asks for an escort. In so doing, Paul "buys" political protection for his friends—Lydia, slave girl, unnamed jailer. The unspoken exchange between Paul and local branch of the Roman Empire goes like this: "I'll leave quietly and you'll leave my friends alone." Paul risked his wellbeing and personal safety to go to the mat for those he loves. So Paul's list of horrible experiences isn't a tirade about the nature of evil, the miscarriage of justice, or a quest for self-vindication. It's a celebration of a bold love that embraces suffering for the glory of God and the good of others.

More than one message

It would be easy to touch abstractly on the theology of suffering in an overview of Paul's life. But the pain in a congregation, and the prevalence of tragedy in the world, is a daily reality. How do we touch on God's capacity to redeem our personal heartaches and broken dreams for our good and his glory on a regular basis?

Because our church is multi-site with live preaching at all locations, our teaching team circles up every spring to pray and brainstorm about the preaching series calendar for the next year. When we did this last year somebody floated the idea of a series on suffering. One of my colleagues pushed back. A whole series on pain? It feels like kind of downer, doesn't it? Will people come? Would they be open to inviting their friends? After brief debate we tabled the idea.

Somehow, over the last ten months though, the idea resurfaced. As I write this, we are getting ready to wrap up a five-part series on hurt and doubt entitled: "Where Is God When … ?" The sermons included: When Bad Things Happen, When I've Messed Up, When I Feel Overwhelmed, When Bad People Prosper, and When the Answer is No. One of the threads we're trying to follow through the series is this: How can I experience God in the midst of my struggle in a fresh way, rather than only looking to God to deliver me from trouble?

Three Circles of Suffering

As a preacher, my job is to champion the value of redemptive suffering at three levels: societal, congregational, and personal. I was just starting to discern my ministry calling in the late 80's and early 90's. At that time there was much discussion about the church's need to be relevant to culture—to see, identify, and relate to the average person's experience and felt needs. It was, and remains, a valid argument. If we can't contextualize our sermons to our audience, there's no incentive for them to listen. But globalization has changed the way people see the world. A generation ago, traditional print and broadcast news limited what messages we received about what was happening in the world. Today, with a 24 hours news cycle and social media, I can hear bad news from any corner of the world in an instant. The challenge for the preacher then, is how to acknowledge the current events people are struggling to process without only regurgitating bad news.

When the Charleston shooting happened last year, I had to mention it. That horrific event included multiple issues the people of God are called to address: race, hate, violence, forgiveness. Then came Paris, San Bernardino, Brussels, and Kalamazoo. Here's the tension: How do we address events that instill fear in the hearts of some of our members and, at the same time, declare God's power, love and sovereignty in a broken world. I don't know that I have great answers now. But I'm convinced that if we don't regularly admit the prevalence of hurting in our society, our preaching feels tone deaf to anyone who's paying attention to the world.

In addition to the broader conversation about suffering, I need to find anchor points for the conversation in our own pews. As shepherds who preach, we have the immense privilege of walking with our people through some of their darkest moments. I recently met with a woman and her ninety-two-year-old father. He asked for prayer as he faced his end of life fears: the meaning of life, the uncertainty of death, unresolved conflicts among his adult children, and his professional legacy. I woke up one morning to an email informing me that a staff member's mother passed away. If I care for these congregants, and dozens like them, then how do I use the pulpit to mourn with those who mourn (Rom. 12:15)?

Again, I don't claim to have an airtight answer on this. However, there was an occasion recently when I was in the middle of a message when I saw a family who had recently undergone a terrible loss. I don't remember the exact sermon, but I remember that I needed to slightly alter my verbiage to honor their situation. When I preach hope or courage or even blessing, how do I frame it in a way that isn't oblivious or contrived to the pain in the pews?

Honest, culturally aware preaching recognizes heartache in the world at large, the church family and ultimately, in the preacher's own life. I know there's an ongoing debate about how much self-revelation is appropriate in our preaching. I'm not convinced that we need to share every setback, slight, and heartache from our personal lives in real time or in full detail. Sometimes, if our tragedy is public, the best approach for ourselves, our families, and our churches is to let other church leaders share difficult news while we take time to process. Rick Warren modeled this well in the extended leave he took from Saddleback after his family's loss.

But there are other moments where the congregation won't know of particular struggles unless we choose to share them. A few months ago, my wife lost her older sister Kathleen after an extended battle with cancer. She was only 49. For our family, it was important to share our grief with our larger church. It was a unique opportunity for us to invite them into our struggle. Over the next few weeks and months we were stunned by their compassion and generosity. To share our own hurts, when appropriate, allows the people we lead to see that we are preaching from our suffering, rather than around it.

Conclusion

Suffering is constant reality for preachers: in the world, in the church, in our own lives. Our instinct is to avoid it at every turn, insulating ourselves and those we love from the anguish. But Scripture reminds us that self-protection is rooted in fear. Redemptive suffering is firmly anchored in faith and love. So let the pulpit be a mirror—a reminder that people don't have to live in denial of brokenness—and a beacon—pointing to Christ's faithfulness and care as we navigate dark valleys together.

Steve Norman is a preacher and writer residing in western Michigan. Over 25 years of ministry, he's served as a church planter, teaching pastor, and lead pastor within local churches in the Detroit and Grand Rapids areas..