Worth The Pain

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2–4

ONE OF THE BIGGEST TEMPTATIONS I FACE ON THE ROAD IS MY ATTITUDE TOWARD worship leaders. I’m ashamed to say I have a running feud with these servants of God. While I do my best to fight my negative attitude, it’s still difficult for me not to think, as they are being introduced, So there’s the enemy.

Whence cometh this sinful disposition?

So many times a pastor has told me I’ll have thirty minutes to preach, but because there’s a second service, I need to make sure I quit speaking at, say, 10:10. I then watch as the worship leader goes from chorus to chorus, and then, just in case he thinks we didn’t get the message the first thirteen times we sang an earlier song, goes back to it yet one more time for the grand finale. Suddenly my thirty minutes has shrunk to twenty. On the way to the podium I have to mentally cut out a third of my sermon, frantically trying to manufacture new transitions to cover over the points that now will never get delivered.

Recently, I was told I’d have about thirty-five minutes because, the pastor said, “I told the worship leader I want you to have all the time you need.” As the service wore on, I looked at my watch—already past the point where I was supposed to be up there—and thought, Well, I can drop the opening; that’s just humor, and it’s not really that relevant to the point. As the music kept going, I decided I could drop the point about how this truth related to marriage. Another song dragged on, and I thought, Well, I can also drop the point about how this applies to parenting, and just make it about our relationship with God. Yet another round, and I thought, I’ll have to drop the second passage from Matthew—I hope the PowerPoint guy can make the jump and skip those slides. Unbeknownst to me, the pastor had been trying to signal “cut” to the worship leader, but she felt so “inspired” she never saw it. When I got behind the pulpit, I looked at the clock and realized I had just fourteen minutes before I was supposed to stop.

That day the church got a sermon summary.

Afterward, I could actually laugh about it with the pastor. God seems determined to make me confront my bitterness over this, and until I do, I fully suspect he’s going to “inspire” many other worship leaders to commandeer the service and keep my guest sermons short. Some people may chuckle when I call this a temptation, but it is. My attitude is wrong, and it needs to change. That’s a painful and soul-wrenching process.

It’s easy to romanticize spiritual growth. It sounds so clean and fulfilling—but the process can actually feel exhausting, frustrating, and very painful. To grow in grace, I have to face ugly realities that truly irritate and inconvenience me—like tyrannical worship leaders! But not just once; it seems God is determined to make me face the same situation again and again and again until his work in my heart gets perfected.

Put in the context of marriage, spiritual growth can even be excruciating. I returned home after that same trip where I had delivered my fourteen-minute sermon summary, and my wife and I faced an issue we’ve discussed three dozen times if we’ve discussed it once—but still no progress. Once the issue came up, I became depressed, discouraged, and even more exhausted. Especially coming home from a long trip where God had worked on my attitude toward worship leaders, I wanted to return to a refuge, not a battlefield—but here I was regardless.

It took me two days to break through my funk. Even though the issue never got resolved, I could move past it, following a generous move by Lisa.

But it took two days.

I reveal this because I don’t want to imply that the principles put forward in my book Sacred Marriage or in Devotions for a Sacred Marriage are easy to apply. My wife and I struggle as much as, if not more than, any other couple in living out the truth that is greater than us. Our sinful failings make us just as miserable as they make anyone else. We become just as frustrated, just as exhausted, and just as tired. We think, Can’t we ever move past this?

But these tired moments are the seedbed of growth. I don’t like them, but I need them—and so do you. If there were another way, I’m sure God would let us walk it, but there must not be. You will grow so familiar with certain struggles in your marriage that the bad spiritual taste they leave behind can be brought up by memory! It’ll help you remember that such problems aren’t a problem just between you and your spouse; they represent the problems of marriage in general. Some issues aren’t easily resolved, and some desires may never be fulfilled for the simple reason that even the best marriage cannot erase the effects of humanity’s fall into sin. It is asking too much to live with another sinful human being without experiencing any tension, any frustration, and any reason to ever practice forgiveness.

Even the best marriage cannot erase the effects of humanity’s fall into sin.

Don’t kid yourself. Spiritual growth is not easy; it is about the most difficult exercise known to humankind. But please, don’t give up! Seasons of struggle are not the time to evaluate your marriage; they are the time to evaluate yourself. The perseverance these seasons produce is worth it.

The catchphrase that helps me press on is this: “I don’t like this, but I need it.” Repeated often enough, I can even make myself believe it. And sometimes I can even thank God for its truth—though more often in retrospect than in the moment itself.

Marriage can be difficult; spiritual growth can be exhausting—but they are worth the pain. In the end they produce a far deeper life and a much richer existence than living in a world of superficiality and throwaway relationships.