Growing up there was one day a year I dreaded in PE: the President’s Fitness Test. For the life of me, I always wondered why the President of the United States cared about my personal fitness enough to have it measured in inches and pushups. As a fairly athletic person, I did fine on most measures with the glaring exception of one: the Sit and Reach test.

Without fail, the teacher would draw attention to my rare level of inflexibility. Said teacher would press on my back, assuming that I wasn’t stretching to my fullest ability. Apparently my genes are strong, as my oldest son shares scarring experiences with me around the sit and reach test.

All that to say, I don’t naturally love stretching, neither physically nor spiritually. Yet, the Lord is deeply committed to stretching our souls to make more space for Himself, His Word, and His people. And suffering makes for good stretching.

Suffering Reveals Our Operant Theology

A.W. Tozer draws a helpful distinction between our avowed theology and our operant theology; suffering helps reveal the dissonance between the two. Even those who are most careful, thoughtful, and precise about their spoken theology have gaps in their gospel grasp. We might have all the correct explanations of salvation through grace alone by faith alone while practically living all the while by our own striving and strain. We might say correctly that God owes us nothing and that is all is grace while all the while living out of a transactional approach to God. Suffering exposes our operant theology, which is terribly humbling and uncomfortable yet necessary if we are to keep maturing spiritually. We might wax eloquent about gospel identity all the while standing upon idolatrous identities.

I love the raw honesty that Jeremiah offers in his famous lament found in Lamentations chapter three. He begins so steeped in suffering that it has become his identity: “I am the man who seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long” (Lamentations 3: 1–3). Eventually Jeremiah lands on his avowed theology, remembering what is true about God, but first he honestly addresses his false operant theology. He lands on “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness,” but first he wades through feeling like God’s target practice and God’s prey (Lamentations 3: 22–23; 10–13).

Suffering strips avowed theology, leaving operant theology exposed. But God only exposes us to clothe us, not to shame us. God intends us to live increasingly integrous (whole, not fractured) lives. In order for us to live whole lives, we need to recognize the dissonance that divides us.

Suffering Loosens Our Grip on Our Plans

I love planning, and, to be honest, I am pretty good at it. I had a great handle heading into our week last Sunday. We had plans for a two day retreat away as a couple. I bought all the groceries, pre-made all the meals, and typed up notes for babysitters! But a sudden bout of sickness made quick work of those well-laid plans. From my perspective, our whole week went sideways in disagreement with my carefully laid plans; however, from God’s perspective, our week marched along in exact accordance with His good purposes (Proverbs 19: 21).

Often we don’t realize how tightly we grip our plans until suffering starts to loosen our grasp. It’s not that planning is wrong; it is the insidious tendency towards prideful self-reliance underneath our planning that needs to be exposed. It’s not the making of plans, it is the grabbing tightly to the plans of our making that God opposes. James addresses this tendency in the early church:

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’.” (James 4: 13–15).

Suffering exposes and begins to remedy self-reliance and self-determinism. Received well, suffering can loosen our grip while softening our hearts and deepening our reliance upon God. Suffering, whether slight or significant, can serve as an invitation to be faithfully present with the Lord and others in the present. Trials can train us from getting ahead of ourselves and help us keep in pace with the Spirit. In season of suffering, we take things one day or even one hour at a time. Such God-dependence seems strange in a world where we plan years in advance, but it honors God who orders our steps according to his higher purposes (Isaiah 55: 8–9).

I may have graduated from Presidential Fitness tests, but I am still very much enrolled in God’s lifelong spiritual stretching plan of suffering. He is good, He does good, and He works all things together for good, even when we feels stretched to the point of strain (Psalm 119: 68; Romans 8: 28).