Would You Take the Trials or the Cash?
by Joe Leavell
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
Pretend with me for a moment that you are on a reality TV show. This is a game where you get to make a simple choice. On nation TV, viewers watch as a crew member brings in a wheelbarrow stacked high with $100 bills into your living room. The man dumps the entire hoard of cash into a nice pile at your feet. The celebrity host explains the game so that everyone understands what is being offered. You, the contestant, must choose whether you will trade in all of the struggles and the difficulties that you have gone through throughout your life in exchange for all of the money piled on your floor. The only catch is that you for the rest of your life, Jesus would be a complete stranger to you, and you would lose your hope of heaven. Option two is to reject the deal entirely and walk away. In this option, the cash is forfeited, and you simply hang on, endure the seemingly endless struggles of life. Yet, you continue to live at whatever level of joy that your faith is building through the trials in making you to be more like Jesus.
Which would you choose?
Think about it a moment before giving what you think is the ‘correct’ answer. We tend to do this – minimize pain through ‘churchy’ answers we know are expected, but don’t give us time to consider our actual heart. Some of you reading this have faced real loss. Others have faced seemingly more than their fair share of pain. Countless believers have faced rejection and even physical persecution for their faith. Others have lost loved ones to illness or even suicide. Many have endured domestic struggles and the pain of a broken heart. If they could trade in all the pain and sorrows for those things to be erased, and in exchange, they become instantly wealthy?
For others, there really isn’t much to lose with Jesus anyway. He is already a virtual stranger and thoughts rarely drift towards eternity. Is there really all that much being given up in choosing the cash?
From God’s perspective, which option is more valuable? Biblically, whichever selection produces the purified faith that is demonstrated to be genuine is most precious. 1 Peter 1:6-7 puts it this way: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, 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.” James even goes so far as to tell us to “count it all joy…when you meet trials of various kinds.” Why would he say that to those who were suffering persecution? It is because the endurance through suffering would produce a steadfast patience.
C’mon! Really?! Are these guys sadistic?! What kind of a person would look at suffering and jump up and down for joy and say that it produces something more valuable than gold? Who would look at suffering and call it a season of “joy?”
Laboring for Joy
Think with me of a woman who is nearing her due date in her pregnancy. Is there a woman alive, who, when they think of going through labor, celebrates with a happy dance when thinking through the pain that she is about to bear? Unless they are mentally unstable, I would think not. Even if there is an epidural in the picture, I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who looked forward to childbirth. Yet, when women think of the emergence of their precious baby that they will soon snuggle, nourish, and love, women instinctively know that enduring the pain of labor for that baby is worth more than a pile of cash dumped on the floor of their living room. Why? It is because of the joy of the coming baby. It is certainly not because of the pain of labor. In this way, a woman knows that when the first labor pains begin to come that the baby will soon be born. It is that understanding of pain that gives a woman anticipation and endurance, not because she enjoys the unspeakable pain, but because she knows that on the other side of the pain she will hopefully hold her precious baby in her arms.
Romans 8:22-23 uses this same analogy when talking about our suffering. It says,
“ For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
It is in this light that the pain we endure in our lives produces a precious endurance of faithfulness within us that money cannot touch. The genuineness of knowing from experience that Jesus is better than anything else is worth far more than all the wealth this world could offer!
Jesus Chose His Path
If a baby could be born without an ounce of pain or the effects or recovery of childbirth, there’s not a woman I know would turn that down. Similarly, if we could willfully choose, there isn’t a one of us who wouldn’t choose to take away our pain while retaining our relationship with God. We would want to gain the wisdom, perspective, and hope that trials teach us that shapes us into the image of Christ without having to actually go through them. Oh, could we have the pile of cash too please?
Yet our Savior knew the pain that awaited Him and did not shy away. Jesus willfully chose the cross. He did not to simply give up a wheelbarrow full of money, but the glory and majesty of Heaven itself. The Son of God did not simply live a truly human life full of trials, but He did it all with the intense suffering of the cross for your sin and mine at the end. Yet Jesus, the one described as the “man of sorrows” and the one who is “acquainted with grief” looked beyond His own suffering. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…”
Looking Beyond the Suffering
Jesus did not look at the cross itself as joy. He despised the shame of the cross that He was to endure. Yet it was for the joy that awaited Him beyond the cross that He persevered through the anguish of crucifixion. In the same way, it is not the sorrows and difficulties of our lives that we are to look upon with joy. It is when God demonstrates His close presence amidst our pain, when our faith in Him is demonstrated to be genuine, and when we move closer to the arms of Christ that they become truly priceless. It is what lies beyond our suffering that we are to look to with anticipation.
This doesn’t mean that we should look fondly at our suffering, or worse, that we would foolishly go looking for suffering.
“Going out of our way to experience pain does nothing to move us towards our God any more than trying to get an upset stomach produces a baby.”
Purposefully seeking suffering reflects a belief that we can eradicate evil from within us through forms of self-mutilation. This is not the God we serve. God does not hand out suffering for its own sake but rather allows it to be brought into our lives from a loving heart to show Himself better than anything else that would seek our affections. It is in this way that we can see suffering as valuable. It is because we know that if we trust Him, God promises to use our painful experiences to produce a steadfast patience, a deep reliance on Him, and to show us that our faith in Christ is genuine. That is truly a priceless gift from a good and loving God.
If you are interested in hearing more, below is a sermon version of what we’re addressing here in this article.
