Soul-Making and the Vale of Tears

Today's Scripture

Romans 5:3-5 — "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

James 1:2-4 — "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

2 Corinthians 4:16-17 — "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

The Big Idea

The Bible really does claim that God grows something in us through suffering — endurance, character, hope. But that promise is medicine, and medicine has a right use. Spoken from inside the pain, it is hope. Flung at a sufferer from a safe distance, it becomes a weapon. Today is about holding the promise without making it glib.

Reflection

The verses people throw

There is a whole family of New Testament passages that say something startling: suffering does something. It is not just a thing to be endured. In God's hands, Paul says, it produces endurance, then character, then hope. James says trials test faith the way fire tests gold. These verses are not a side note. They are one of the most consistent threads in the whole New Testament.

They are also among the most misused words in the Bible. Picture it. A family loses a child, and at the funeral someone leans in and whispers, "Everything happens for a reason." A marriage collapses, and a small group leader says, "This will produce endurance." A teenager gets a diagnosis that will not go away, and a well-meaning adult texts her Romans 8:28 — "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good" — like a bandage slapped on a wound that needed surgery.

The verses are true. The use is often miserable. C.S. Lewis, writing in the rawness of his own grief after his wife died, put his finger on what goes wrong:

"What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?" — C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Read that line until it lands. Lewis is not denying that God is good. He is saying that even good things can hurt. The dentist is on your side. The dentist is also holding a drill. A child is not wrong to be afraid in that chair, even if the dentist is, in the end, her friend. Any account of suffering that forgets the drill has stopped being honest.

Written by hands with scars

So how do we keep these verses from turning into slogans? Start with who wrote them.

Paul wrote 2 Corinthians 4:16-17 — "this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" — from a life that included beatings, shipwreck, prison, hunger, and constant danger. When he calls affliction "light," he is not minimizing yours. He is weighing his own, which was heavy, against a glory he believed was heavier. James wrote "count it all joy" to scattered believers under real pressure, not to comfortable people having a bad week. And Peter wrote to refugees driven from their homes: 1 Peter 1:6-7 — "you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Notice that Peter says they have been grieved. The Bible never asks you to pretend the trial does not hurt. It asks you to believe that the hurt is not wasted. John Newton — the former slave-trade captain who wrote "Amazing Grace" and spent decades writing letters to suffering friends — used a doctor's image for this:

"Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires." — John Newton, Letters of John Newton

Medicine is not candy. It can taste terrible and still be from a good hand. Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish pastor who wrote his most beloved letters from exile, compressed the same idea into five words:

"Grace grows best in winter." — Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford

He did not say winter is pleasant. He said something grows in it that does not grow in summer. These men are not theorizing from a safe distance. They are reporting from inside the cold.

The megaphone and the drill

There is another piece of this we would rather skip. Scripture says God does not just use suffering after the fact — sometimes he is at work in it on purpose, the way a parent disciplines a child they love. Hebrews 12:6 — "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." Discipline here is not punishment for punishment's sake. It is training — the kind a coach gives an athlete he believes in.

And Hebrews refuses to pretend training feels good. Hebrews 12:11 — "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Mark the two time words: for the moment and later. Both are real. The Bible never asks you to skip from the first to the second. It asks you to trust that the second is coming.

Lewis, in his earlier book on pain, described why suffering sometimes does what nothing else can:

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

When life is comfortable, most of us live half-asleep toward God. Pain wakes us up. It strips away the illusion that we were ever in control. A.W. Tozer, a plainspoken pastor of the last century, said the hard version out loud:

"It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply." — A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

That sentence should never be tossed at someone else. But many believers, looking back over their own lives, will tell you quietly that it was true of them. The seasons that made them — that softened their pride, deepened their prayers, taught them compassion — were almost never the easy ones. Lewis admitted the fear this raises in all of us:

"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." — C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

That is the honest sentence. The Christian cannot promise that the best will not hurt. He can promise that the One bringing about the best is here, and is for us.

The thorn, the grace, and the God who stayed in the chair

Now watch how Paul lived this, because it keeps the whole teaching from floating away into theory. Paul had what he called a thorn in the flesh — some tormenting affliction he never names. 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 — "Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'"

Paul asked for the thorn to be removed. The answer was no. What he received instead was not an explanation but a presence — grace, sufficient, day by day. That is what soul-making actually looks like from the inside. Not a lesson plan you can read in advance. A companionship you discover in the dark. Tim Keller, who taught this for years and then walked it through his own cancer, named the hinge everything turns on:

"Suffering is unbearable if you aren't certain that God is for you and with you." — Tim Keller, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering

Notice what changes and what does not. The suffering stays hard. What changes is the company. For you and with you — those two small phrases are the difference between pain that crushes and pain that, somehow, shapes.

And here is where the gospel turns everything. How can you be certain God is for you, when the thorn stays and the prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling? Look at Jesus. He told his friends plainly, John 16:33 — "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." Then he went out and overcame it not by avoiding suffering but by entering it — praying three times in a garden for a cup to pass, hearing his own no, and carrying the cross anyway, for us.

The God who says "my grace is sufficient" is not a dentist who waves at you from the hallway. He is one who has sat in the chair. He took the drill. The scars in his hands are the proof that Romans 5:5 is telling the truth: "hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts." Elisabeth Elliot — widowed twice, the first time when her missionary husband was killed at twenty-nine — spent her life saying one stubborn sentence about all of this:

"Suffering is never for nothing." — Elisabeth Elliot, Suffering Is Never for Nothing

She could say it because she had paid for it. So has Christ. When Romans 5 comes to you, let it come like that — not as a slogan from a stranger, but as a letter from a man with scars, pointing you to a Savior with scars, who is for you and with you in the chair.

Going Deeper

Take 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 and read it slowly, as if Paul were sitting next to you. Notice that he prayed three times — like Jesus in Gethsemane — and the answer was no. Notice what he was given instead: "My grace is sufficient for you." Then write one sentence of your own: name the thorn you have asked God to remove, and ask him — honestly, without pretending it doesn't hurt — for the grace to keep going while it stays. That one prayer is most of what soul-making turns out to be in practice.