How to Find Gratitude in Suffering

Want to find gratitude in the midst of your suffering?

Over the last 12 years or so, I’ve been blessed to see several people be miraculously healed of various ailments by the grace and power of God. The first guy I knew who had the spiritual gift of healing was a South African college student named Jaco, who was on the same mission trip as me to Swaziland, Africa in 2004. Jaco and I were frequently partnered up throughout that month in service, and we became fast friends. 

One of the last nights there in Swaziland, I was hanging out in Jaco’s dorm room. He asked if there was anything I wanted to be healed of, and I immediately said, “Asthma.” I’ve been in the ICU because of that disease, and it’s plagued me since early childhood. Jaco prayed just like he always did, but nothing happened. 

I thanked him for the prayer, but on the inside I was upset. Why would God heal so many people all around me, even use me to pray for people and them get healed, yet not heal me? 

Fast-forward about 7 years. I was about 31 years old, on staff at a Southern Baptist church, and had seen even more Americans healed since that first Africa trip. One night after a gathering at the church, I locked the gate and headed home around 9:15pm.

Near the feeder road of the freeway, I saw a young Hispanic man standing by his stalled old car. I pulled over and helped him push his car what felt like about half a mile to a gas station. Once we got there I began having an asthma attack, though I tried to keep my new friend from noticing. 

It was a long, difficult walk back to my car. I flung open the door and lifted the console, but there was no inhaler in sight! Struggling to take a breath, I speedily drove back to my house, confident that there I’d find relief. Alas, when I got home all I found was one empty inhaler! 

Now I was starting to freak out a bit. I got a glass of water, sat on top of the kitchen table, turned on the fan and tried my best to chill out. However, thoughts of bitterness swept through my mind as I sat there. And I asked God why He would let me have an asthma attack I couldn’t fix, immediately after helping some stranger out in the middle of the night. 

But just then, a picture of the crucifixion scene from the Passion of the Christ entered my head. It hit me that when someone dies from crucifixion, they die from asphyxiation, just like when someone dies from an asthma attack. It hit me that Jesus knows exactly what it's like to be me, but more so. I suddenly had this realization that the very thing I was bitter about God not healing me of, Jesus chose to take upon Himself… for me… for us. 

And right there, wheezing on my kitchen table, a different kind of wind started to fill me. A wind of gratitude. I began to thank God for not healing me of asthma. Why? Because I may never be tortured for the Kingdom. I may never be martyred for the Kingdom. But every time I wheeze, I get to experience a minuscule taste of the unmatched love Jesus poured out for six hours one Friday.

Maybe you've been abused. Maybe you've recently lost someone close to you. Maybe people have started malicious rumors designed to destroy you. Maybe you've been betrayed. Maybe your own family has turned against you. Maybe your closest friends turned their backs on you when you needed them the most. Maybe you feel like no one has ever understood you. 

Be encouraged. Jesus comes to you now, wraps His arms around your neck and says, "Me too."

There on my kitchen table, God started to change my view of asthma and change my view of suffering. And I pray that if one day I am taken away in chains to my execution like Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, I would learn to see those chains as spiritual jewels like he did. For what a spiritual blessing it is to partake in the sufferings of Christ!

He is my hope; He is my boast; He is my never-failing riches, on whose account I bear about with me these bonds from Syria to Rome, these spiritual jewels, in which may I be perfected through your prayers, and become a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, and have fellowship with Him in His death, His resurrection from the dead, and His everlasting life. – Ignatius 105CE, Volume 1, p. 91 [CD-ROM]