When Hard Times Hit How Do you Find the Hope to not just Survive but to Overcome even Triumph? Here's How

It makes me wonder.   What was the difference?  They both had the same mom.  They both had tough childhoods.   They both even got involved with drugs when they were young.   Yet one sister struggles with addiction for years and dies at 43 of a drug overdose.  The other goes on to appear on Time Magazine’s most influential list ten times, more than any other person ever.    One sister makes $19,000.00 by selling an ugly story about that sister to the tabloid.   And the other sister goes on to become the richest self-made woman in American history.

Have you guessed who I am talking about?   I am talking about two sisters, one was named Patricia, and the other named Orpah after a character in the Bible.  But since no one could pronounce it, they ended up just calling her Oprah.    How does that happen?   How does one sister never get beyond the demons that plagued her, while the other not only goes beyond them, but beyond them to become an extraordinary success.  

I was thinking about that question because again and again in life, you can find that pattern.  You see two folks encounter similar hardships and setbacks.   Yet one overcomes, even grows stronger through the tough times.  But the other, the other never gets past them.  Instead he falls further and further behind.    How do you become the one who overcomes rather than the one who falls behind?  How do you find the resilience, the strength to make it through the tragedies, the injustices, the losses that life brings you?   As one preacher put it, when hard things happen, you have two choices.   You can become better or you can become bitter.    How do you move towards the better?  In these words, written to followers of Jesus going through their own trials, God shows the way.  Let’s hear what God has to say.

Romans 5:1-5      

When hard times hit, how do you overcome?   How do you find the hope to carry on, to even move forward even in the face of tremendous suffering, of heartbreaking loss?   In these words of Paul’s, God shows the way.   God shows us that hope ultimately lies not in what we feel.  It lies in what we know.   And when you know the truth of who you are, of who God is, that truth, that knowledge will bring you through anything.  

But before we look at what that truth is, we need to see clearly what it is not.  You cannot overcome the suffering and setbacks of life by deadening yourself to them.   And you can’t overcome them by celebrating in them either.   What do I mean?  

Many years ago I met the father of a friend.  Bob was his name.  I noticed that one of his fingers was only partially there.   And once I saw it, I couldn’t help but ask.  How did that happen?   Then the story came out.   Bob had been changing a tire with a friend on the side of the road one day when the jack dropped.  And when it did, so did his finger.   And all Bob said to communicate that loss was.  “Oh, it got my finger.”   And then calmly with his friend, they found the missing piece, put it on ice and headed to the hospital.  Needless to say, they didn’t make it in time.  But what struck me was, at least as they told the story, that was pretty much all that Bob had to say about the thing.   Just, “Oh, it got my finger.”    I kind of admired that reaction.   It seemed so tough, so strong, but more and more I wonder if it was.    

A certain school of thought says that you deal with pain by not allowing yourself to feel it, by deadening yourself to it.   You keep the stiff upper lip.   You toughen up and live on to fight another day.    And as tempting as all that sounds, it leads to a seriously disturbing downside.  You can’t deaden yourself to the dark withoutdeadening yourself to the light.   The more you work at finding ways to deny the pain, to numb it, the more you numb the exuberance, the delight, the sheer joy that life can bring.    When Paul talks here about boasting in suffering, he is telling you that in your suffering God can bring good, endurance, character, hope.  But you don’t get that by acting as if the suffering isn’t really suffering, by denying the pain and hurt you actually feel. 

But not denying suffering doesn’t mean you celebrate it either. Paul doesn’t say we boast because of our suffering, as if suffering somehow qualifies you as a Christian.   Yet still many religious folks think it does.   

Have you ever heard that knock on your door, and seen some folks standing there and smiling, holding a copy of the latest edition of the Watchtower?  Do you know what I’m talking about?  How many here have had Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on their door?   Now before I go any further, let me say.   That sort of door knocking takes some guts, and as someone who has done it on occasion, God can use it in neat ways.   I’m might even do a little door knocking around the church in the coming months myself.   But what I’ve learned about the Witnesses is that the hard core ones get almost as excited as when you shut the door on them as when you let them in.  And if you happen to be rude, well, that really rocks their world. Why?  They figure that they’re getting to suffer for Jehovah, and that’s an awesome thing.  Some of them even look forward to the rejection.   And often lots of Christians have had the same attitude. 

Yet, in spite of what many Christians have thought over the centuries, Jesus didn’t celebrate suffering of any sort.   He didn’t avoid suffering, but he never thought it was good or right.   It’s why he spent so much of his ministry easing it, from feeding the hungry to healing the sick to freeing the spiritually tormented.

So if numbing yourself to suffering won’t help you and if celebrating it won’t work either, then what does Paul mean by boasting in it?   Paul is telling you.   You triumph through suffering not by not feeling it nor by welcoming it.  You triumph through suffering by knowing it never will have the last word. 

Many years ago, I read about something called the Stockdale Paradox.   It got its name from Admiral Jim Stockdale.   During the Vietnam War, Admiral Stockdale became the highest ranking officer in the infamous Vietcong prison known as the Hanoi Hilton.   In that role, he created ingenious ways for the prisoners to stand strong, to keep their dignity in the face of humiliating and devastating suffering.   For his efforts, our nation gave him the Medal of Honor.  And Stockdale went on with his wife to write a moving book of the experience called In Love and War, and become a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and for those who might remember even a candidate for Vice President.    

The business writer, Jim Collins, became intrigued by his story.  He wondered.  How did Stockdale and the other not only survive but triumph through years and years of torture and starvation?   Stockdale simply said. “I never lost faith in the end of the story.  I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail to the end and turn the experience into the defining moment of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”  

Then Collins asked.  “Well who didn’t make it out?”    Stockdale said.  “Oh that’s easy.  The optimists.”  Puzzled, Collins asked. Why?   “Well, they’d say, Oh, we’ll be out by Christmas, and then Christmas would come and go.  Then it would be Easter, and Easter would come and go.   Then it would be Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving would come and go.  And eventually, all that optimism led to utter despair.    

And with that Stockdale presented the paradox.   “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you cannot afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your reality, whatever those facts might be.”

What Stockdale was saying is what God is telling us here.   You can boast in your suffering not because it’s easy or even because God is going to get you out of it.   It’s not easy, and you don’t know if God will deliver you out of it or not.    But this you do know.  You know that because of what God has already done for you, your suffering, no matter how severe, can never have the last word.  

That’s why Paul begins what we just read the way he does.  How do you know your suffering will not have the last word?   Because, Jesus in his suffering and death guaranteed it won’t.  That’s what it means when Paul says that you and I are justified.   It means, all our suffering, even the suffering we bring on ourselves, on that cross, God made right.  God rectified it. God resolved it.  God paid for it.    In Jesus, God took on the full force of evil with all the senseless and unjust suffering it brings, and he did it for us.    And did evil get the last word there?  Was Jesus’ death the end of the story?  No, Jesus’ story did not end there.   It didn’t even end at the empty tomb.  It still hasn’t ended.   And it will not end until evil is totally banished and broken.  

You can know that your suffering is not the end of your story, because Jesus’ suffering was not the end of his.   And his story is now your story.   His glory is now your glory.   His love has now been poured into you.   And when you know that, then you know a truth that will empower you not simply to survive suffering, but to triumph in the midst of it, to even boast in it. 

Whatever suffering you face, you can know it will not write the end of your story.  God on that cross in his suffering wrote that.   And the more you know that, the more you will find in your suffering, endurance and character, and a hope that not even death can defeat.