Growing Like Jesus: No Pain, No Gain

By LeRoy Lawson

(LeRoy Lawson was among eight Christian leaders asked to share what helps them mature just as Jesus did. Lawson is international consultant with Christian Missionary Fellowship International, a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and a member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee.)

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“No pain no gain, Dad. No pain no gain.” Our son Lane was in his teens. Both grandfathers had bequeathed good genes, and he was making the most of them. (I resent how those genes jumped right over my generation and landed in his.) He wasn”t tall but he was muscular””and eager to become even more so.

Hence his demanding bodybuilding regimen. The result was amazing. As I watched him work out, and saw its toughening effects, I decided he was onto something worthwhile.

So I worked out with him. Well, alongside him. I was so impressed with his determination. He was so not impressed with my lack of it. That”s why to this day when I think of him I still hear, “No pain no gain, Dad.” The result? Well, he strained and gained. You wouldn”t be interested in my results.

We preachers urge our congregations to become serious disciples (disciplined ones) of Christ. We prescribe a program of prayer and fasting and Bible study and worship attendance and tithing and committee serving and . . . and . . . and. . . . All these things, we promise, are calculated to help them “grow like Jesus.” And they do help.

There is one important element of spiritual growth we seldom invite our flocks to consider. Yet this one, more than any other, feeds spiritual growth. We are virtually silent on the theology of suffering.

Anything but Suffering

We Americans, after all, dwell in the land of plenty. We are the most pampered and perfumed people on earth. We put up with anything but discomfort. Check out our medicine cabinets, add up the nostrums designed to clear a headache, banish sleeplessness, settle an upset stomach, calm jittery nerves, and in general give us a pain-free existence. We will suffer anything but suffering. Our prayers implore the Lord of the universe to use his great powers to free us from all hurt. It”s the prosperity gospel we want””let somebody else “endure suffering like a good soldier.”

If you take your current malady to your physician, and if he or she is genuinely interested in your welfare and not just your payment for services, the doctor will ask you what medicines you are taking and then probe deeper. What”s beneath the symptom? What change in lifestyle should you make so you can be healthier? Masking the source beneath the pills does not grow good health. No cover-up will heal you. Only learning from the pain will grow health.

In 2009, I reached the 50th anniversary of my ordination. When reflecting on these decades, I conclude that on balance there”s been some growth. Not great growth, you understand, but some. I am not now what I was when I began. Some growth””and considerable heartache.

Whatever gain there has been, in fact, I can trace back to its source. Lane was right, with the pain came the gain.

If my experience can be trusted, then it”s fair to say success doesn”t really do much for us. We enjoy our little triumphs. We protect them. We try to repeat them. Unfortunately, we tend to get stuck in them. Pretty soon we merely perpetuate the same old same old. We cherish the status quo, trying to keep everything as is. We think what we”ve already thought””we don”t go where we haven”t already been; we fight any change to our normal routine. We want things to be as they have always been.

We stop growing.

My Pain, My Gain

Two events affected my ministry more than any others, deepened my spiritual life and forced me (against my will) to change my attitudes, prejudices, and mindless routines.

These two events were my most painful. The first was my parents” divorce, which came during my senior year of high school but was the culmination of years of unhappiness. Seeing their pain and their tentative rebuilding of their shattered lives prepared me for the pastorate and for building my own family as nothing else could have.

Many other building blocks went into the construction of this minister””college and university education, youth ministry, church planting, marriage, parenthood, high school and college teaching, three senior pastorates, travel, and so on.

But when Mark Taylor asked me to write something about spiritual growth, I knew I”d have to tell you about the second event, the cause of so much grief””and so much growth.

Remember the boy who tried to teach his flabby father about pain and gain? He built a beautiful body and lived a beautiful life. But he was the victim of neurochemical depression and Lyme disease. At 26 years of age, he concluded there was too much pain. He couldn”t see any gain. So he quit growing. Permanently.

His mother and I would do anything we could to bring Lane back to us. Oh, how we miss him. But I must confess, I would not want to go back to being the person I was before he died. That horrible experience changed me forever. When I read that “God so loved the world he gave his only Son,” I wonder how he could do it. I wouldn”t have given mine, not willingly.

My son”s pain gave me new lenses for reading the Scripture. He ripped away some old certainties, but in their place gave compassion, tolerance, appreciation, and a perspective to see the things of this world (especially “prosperity”) for the illusions they are.

So what has produced the most measurable growth “like Jesus” in my life? Unfortunately the very thing I would avoid is exactly what I had to have. I still can”t pray, “Lord, let me hurt so that I may gain.” I can”t pray it, but when the pain has attacked without being invited, when I wonder whether I can survive it””but do survive””the growth has come as well.

Whether I like it or not.