Joy In The Midst of Suffering
Written by Dustin Aguilar, published January 2021
I got to preach back on December 27th (which you can watch here), and I felt like the Holy Spirit put something on my heart at the end of my sermon that I haven’t been able to shake. I’ve felt like I need to reach out to say one or two more things about it. It has to do with joy in suffering.
At the end of my sermon, I felt compelled to say, “It’s okay to rejoice when you’re suffering.”
Maybe that seems like a strange thing to say. Doesn’t it seem more appropriate to say, “It’s important to rejoice in suffering” or “It’s good to rejoice in suffering”?
I felt, however, like I should specifically say that it’s okay to rejoice. I think it’s because many of us feel like rejoicing in the middle of a difficult time is being false or disingenuous. We feel like we’re lying or trying to “fake it till we make it.” The truth is, however, that even if you don’t feel thankful or joyful, rejoicing is always okay.
God is always worth loud shouts of joy and deep rejoicing. When you feel happy, he deserves our rejoicing and praise. When we feel bad, sad, sick, overwhelmed, God is still just as deserving of our rejoicing and praise. That means that you can wake up feeling terrible, as I often do during this cancer journey, and decide to joyfully praise God, and it’s not false. It’s not a lie because he’s worth it no matter how we feel.
So I want to invite you to join me in another discipline, but this one is sort of a booster discipline that you can do in a minute, and it will make any other discipline you’re striving for that much better. I call it “one minute of gratitude.”
It’s simple. Set aside one minute either by yourself or in your city group. It also works wonders to do with your spouse and even your kids. Yes, a discipline you can do with kids! You just set aside a minute that you and whoever you’re with to just thank God for whatever you can think of. Maybe you thank him for something he has done, or maybe you thank him for something about who he is, one of his many attributes.
It can sound like, “Thank you for being a God who loves us and wants us to love each other.”
With your kids, it might help to spell out the “rules” just to make it clear what you’re doing. You can say, “For one minute, everything we say to God will start with ‘God, thank you for...’”
Set a timer. Try it for 5 minutes. Try it before you start reading the Prdx 365 plan. Thinking of spending a little time in silence and solitude? Kick it off with one minute of gratitude.
As I’ve been navigating the hardest and worst several months of my life, going through chemo, I have realized that I’ve been well trained in the art of gratitude. Before all this came crashing down on me, I already had a good discipline of rejoicing and thanking God for who he is. That discipline has been something of a lifesaver.
The moment that they looked me in the eyes and told me I had cancer, I felt something well up in me. I’m sure it was the Holy Spirit, and he said, “Now is your chance to praise me as your first response.” The muscle I had been working out by having a discipline of gratitude was suddenly being strained, but it was there!
After the doctors left the room, my wife and I grabbed a bible, read a psalm, and praised God. I’ve told the youth group since then not to wait until difficulty comes to learn how to rejoice in difficulty. Learn it now!
Maybe you’re already in the jaws of suffering, and you haven’t been able to rejoice or find joy. maybe you’ve been jealous of others who aren’t suffering. Maybe you’ve been angry at God. it’s not too late to turn back toward gratitude. Start with one minute. That one minute has a pesky tendency to grow and spread like a weed. The next thing you know, your life could be overgrown with thanksgiving and gratitude regardless of your suffering.