A few years ago, my ministry partners in Asia invited me to speak about the J-Curve with leaders in the persecuted church. While I was confident that the J-Curve’s teaching about how the normal Christian life retraces Jesus’ dying and rising journey would encourage these leaders, I felt paralyzed by the prospect of sharing my own comparatively light and momentary “suffering” with them. All of them had been interrogated or arrested for their faith. I was wrestling with taking out the trash without grumbling. How does trash compare to jail?
“Don’t be afraid to teach us about suffering. God allows different kinds of suffering for each person. The details are different but the purpose is the same: Christ-formation.”
During one of the sessions on that first teaching trip, I confessed that I felt ill-equipped to share about suffering with them because I have not endured the hardships they have. At the break, one brother told me, “Don’t be afraid to teach us about suffering. God allows different kinds of suffering for each person. The details are different but the purpose is the same: Christ-formation.”
My friend’s encouragement freed me to be myself and drew me closer to these brothers and sisters in friendship. And what I have found over the past few years of ministry is that we are far more alike than we are different.
For example, for one of the assignments in a discipling cohort, I asked participants to write up a personal J-Curve story. One pastor wrote about struggling to visit his mom. He loved her, but every time he planned to make the two-hour journey, she’d ask him to teach a Bible study for her and her friends. After a long week of church ministry, the thought of teaching a group of elderly ladies was not his idea of a relaxing visit to his home town.
After a few intentionally missed visits to his mom, the pastor began to rethink his situation through the lens of dying and rising with Jesus. He felt convicted of his selfishness, but also inspired to follow in the path of his Savior by humbling himself and serving his mom and her friends. On his next visit, the pastor not only taught the Bible study – he enjoyed it. Since then, he has taught many more studies on his frequent visits home.
What surprised me about his story and the others shared in the cohort was that they could have been told by any believer anywhere in the world – the challenges of parenting, marriage, finances, and church. Not one of their stories was about their adversarial government. Dying to self is a relentless challenge to the will. The stories they chose underscored for me how daily personal struggles are often the most difficult to faithfully endure.
At the same time, a recent trip gave me a glimpse of how profound the struggles are for these leaders on a larger level. I met people who’ve had fellow church leaders shot to death in front of their families. It is hard to imagine the level of pressure and suffering that is “normal” in their ministry. Never has each step of the Apostle Paul’s journey in Philippi – falsely accused, slandered, beaten, arrested, imprisoned – been as real to me as it was reading through it with those who have walked the same path (Acts 16:16-40). Their tear-filled eyes and nodding heads made Scripture come alive.
Later, one of the leaders, a lawyer who advocates for Christians in prison, told me that the Acts 16 story is one that Christian prisoners often retell and hold onto dearly. The story reminds them that they are seen and that others have walked this path before them – which brings biblical hope in the midst of deep suffering.
While our individual suffering may vary in detail and depth, at both levels, dying with Christ challenges our will.
Reflecting on the trip as a whole, I was struck by how the J-Curve addresses both everyday, common-to-man suffering and larger scale suffering. While our individual suffering may vary in detail and depth, at both levels, dying with Christ challenges our will. Will we go our own way? Or will we submit to the path that Jesus has set before us? It is not an easy journey, but it is one that draws us into knowing and becoming more like Jesus, and bears witness, in ways large and small, to the goodness of our Savior.
If you’re unfamiliar with seeJesus’ J-Curve discipling material, you can read more here.
