Sustaining, Not Obliterating, Grace
Written by Jared Burkholder | Pastor of Outreach and Connections
I seem to write and talk a lot about enduring amid trials. I never set out to be that guy in ministry. I had ambitions to be the pastor known for courageous conviction, inspiring vision, and powerful oration—something to be proud of. We like to fancy ourselves strong and capable, robust people who can overcome any hurdle. There’s a reason that “Has-Anxiety-Baggage-Laden-Man” never really took off as a Marvel hero. But the fact remains, I’ve got problems. I’ve got more baggage than a Victorian Socialite. The trials of life rarely slow to allow us to address the backlog of suffering in our life. The pile seems to grow, with little relief in sight.
The pressing thing about trials and baggage and conflict, though, is that they demand things of you. Experiencing real struggle forces us into a binary we don’t want; we will either overcome it or it will overwhelm us. And the pressure of trials overwhelms in all kinds of ways. It shapes the urgency with which we reach for something to numb the pain (cake or otherwise), it squeezes an over-the-top response to someone we love, it leads to escapism or hyper-control or sometimes both. And the enduring question I can’t seem to shake, for myself and for others, I get to sit with, is: Why does God allow some people to suffer so acutely?
There are theological and apologetic approaches to that question. But from a more existential standpoint, how are Christians meant to endure when, in lots of little ways and sometimes some really big ones, God doesn’t remove the trial from our life? We know the Sunday School answer to that question—that God is up to things that are too big for us to understand and we should just hold on to learn the bigger picture. And that’s right and beautiful and also deeply unsatisfying in certain seasons. We would expect, I should think, that the Grace of God that can bring Jesus back from the dead and sinners back into relationship with God could also make that health issue, that financial struggle, that marital conflict go away.
In grappling with some of these questions, I’m beginning to realize that the struggles that I have in my life now will likely still be there in 30 years. God never promises to systematically and regularly improve my circumstances and if the Bible and my ministry experience are any guide, the problems that you and I had when we started adult life will likely exist, in some form, when we end it.
We can see this reflected in the life of Paul. He asked the Lord to remove his unnamed thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12, but God had other plans for him. We see indications of this throughout the books of Ecclesiastes and Job—suffering and futility are endemic to human existence in a fallen world. Sin has broken God’s perfect world and now suffering isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of fallen human life. Yet I’m realizing more fully how God’s grace meets me in my trials, even when that grace doesn’t ever make the trial go away. This reframes the struggles in our lives from something that predominates and controls to something that doesn’t ultimately matter. On the face of it, perhaps that sounds callous. Of course, our sufferings matter to God. Beautifully, Psalm 56:8 describes a Father who counts our tears. And if you are suffering, your suffering matters very much to you. It matters that your kids are difficult or have walked away from the faith, it matters that your body is failing you, it matters that your spouse lives in selfishness and not love, it matters that each month represents not enough to cover expenses. But perhaps the ending of our trials doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.
If I know that my sufferings will not end in this life but if I also know that God meets me and sustains me in the midst of those, is it enough to walk daily, in struggle, depending on his grace and hoping for his kingdom? We can, at times, want from God now what God has promised for the future. We can easily find ourselves holding God captive here on a Tuesday to promises he has made about eternity. I want God’s obliterating grace now. I want him, now, to wipe away tears, abolish death, eradicate conflict, eviscerate selfishness, and fulfill all needs.
And yet, what God has promised me now is not this obliterating grace — it’s his sustaining grace. He has not yet brought the eradication of trial to his people—that’s to come later. But he has brought the fullness and realness of his daily grace to sustain me in the midst of the trial. While that doesn’t feel as miraculous or as immediately enjoyable, it is no less a supernatural grace than what is to come. It might be, that like Paul and lots of other people the world over, what God has for me is daily suffering sustained by supernatural grace. Wake up, suffer, cry out, go to bed.
This doesn’t sound like a very hope-laden perspective of the Christian life. But I would offer that for those who are truly suffering and have been suffering for a while, trying to put a shiny bow on the trash heap of our circumstance adds only insult to injury. What can be freeing for many is understanding the calling to suffer paired with the sustaining mercy that God grants us.
All this beckons us to take God at his word in 2 Corinthians 12:9:
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
This requires not only recognizing the potency of God’s grace to us but also letting God determine the way he enacts that in our life. A sufficient grace that does not obliterate our struggle, but sustains us in it. So we cling to the Father at the start of every day and cry out for more grace every night. And the Father, in his immense kindness, sustains us one minute, one hour, one day, one week at a time. It’s not easy and it’s certainly not glamorous, but the sustaining grace of the Father is real and sufficient.
So how do we cling more closely to the sustaining grace of God? Let me propose three possible steps:
1. Embody Transparency
The Psalms model what crying out to God really and truly can look like.
Psalm 6:2–4
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing;
heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O LORD—how long?
Turn, O LORD, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
Psalm 34:4
I sought the LORD, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
Psalm 56:3–4
When I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
What can flesh do to me?
Psalm 61:1–4
Hear my cry, O God,
listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you
when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I,
for you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the enemy
Let me dwell in your tent forever!
Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings! Selah
These represent a much wider body of the psalmists crying out to God with specificity, emotion, honesty, and need. Whitewashing over our struggles blocks our ability to ask for and experience the sustaining grace of God. Our prayers should reflect the intensity of our questions, the urgency of our doubts, and the immediacy of our need for his mercy. God is not troubled by our honesty; he beckons us toward it.
2. Embrace Community
This transparency extends not beyond the merely personal to the corporate. One of the ways God mediates his sustaining grace is through his people. While vulnerability with others feels frightening, transparent living allows others to minister God’s comfort to us.
2 Corinthians 1:3–5
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
One of God’s beautiful purposes for the church is a family community where struggle is expected, not shamed, and mercy and comfort is mediated. We miss out on the sustaining grace of God when we suffer quietly in isolation.
3. Enact Dependence
Familiar verses are familiar for a reason. In Matthew 11, Jesus calls us to come find rest in him.
Matthew 11:28–30
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Those who know they are carrying heavy burdens are called to stumble into the arms of their Savior and there, in great need and fatigue, to find rest and healing. Admitting the depth of our need creates a context for us to experience the fullness of God’s provision. And God’s sustaining grace is always greater than the chasm of our weakness.
My struggles aren’t going away and you will probably hear about them again real soon. But would you join me in seeing, clinging to, and delighting in the sustaining grace that God ministers to us each day? And then, let’s plan on finding each other in heaven and having a cosmic high-five celebrating how God has removed our suffering. All forms of his grace are beautiful.