The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Tag: capacity

Suffering and resilience
Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

Suffering: God’s method of developing resilience

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On January 24, 2022

In Resilience, Character, Hardship

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Missionary resilience

For several months now, I have been thinking about this topic of resilience in cross-cultural workers. I admit that I have been somewhat troubled by what the Scriptures tell me about God’s method of using suffering to develop resilience. As I have said in previous posts on this topic, the Scriptures do not use the word “resilience”. But the word “perseverance”1 in the Greek, “hupomone” is found repeatedly in Holy Writ. It seems to capture the idea of resilience.

So what do I find troubling in Scripture? In my thinking, the logical way to strengthen a missionary’s resilience is to:

  1. provide them with good training to prepare them for hard times
  2. ensure that they have excellent member care when they go through hard times.

From a human perspective, I struggle to see how suffering in any way contributes to the development of resilience. Isn’t our goal here to minimize the suffering?

Resilience comes from suffering

But what do the Scriptures say about how God produces perseverance in the believer? Look at what Paul says in Romans chapter 5.

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Romans 5:3–4

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Stress: Too Much and Too Little – Part Two

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On October 26, 2015

In Stress Management, Training

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of maintaining margin.    Too much stress for too long a period is unhelpful and destructive.

But as I also demonstrated from the life of Paul, we must not avoid all stress at all costs.   I am afraid that far too often I have said “no” to an opportunity simply because it would have stretched me beyond my comfort zone.   But I need to be stretched if I am to grow.

I see many parallels to physical training.   When I started running (again) in 2009 after knee surgery, I was not able to run more than a kilometer before being totally exhausted.  Over the period of a couple of months, I was able to extend that to almost 5 km, a distance with which I was quite satisfied.   After all, I was not a serious runner, and already in my late 40’s, and this was already further than the distances that I had run in college.  So I plateaued at that distance for about 4 years, running 5-6 km three times a week, just to keep in shape.

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Crucibles Develop Our Capacity

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On July 9, 2015

In Training, Growth Plans

These days, I am following a training plan to prepare for a half marathon that I would like to run in September.  The training plan is progressive.  You start with running 4.8 km, then after a few weeks, you move up to 6.4 km.  When running 6.4 km is no longer a big challenge, then the training plan asks you to run 8 km.   A few weeks later, when 8 km becomes relatively easy, then you are asked to run 10 km, and so on.

There are no shortcuts. This is a 20-week plan and slowly builds capacity up to 21.1 km as you faithfully follow the plan.   Other training plans for half marathons may be shorter, but they all follow the same principle. You run longer and longer distances as your capacity increases over time.

I have also been reading the book of James these days and reflecting on the relationship between crucible experiences (trials) and our personal growth. James 1:3-4 reminds us that “the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

James clearly says testing produces perseverance. But then just a few verses later, he seems to contradict himself by saying that perseverance is required to stand firm in a time of testing.

 

 

“Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:12)

So, which comes first – the perseverance or the trials?    Do we need trials to develop perseverance, or do we need perseverance to withstand trials?

The answer is “yes!”. I believe that the biblical pattern is that trials develop our capacity to withstand harder trials in the future.  What was overwhelming for me as a young man (preparing a message, leading a ministry) is no longer as intimidating. But God has other challenges before me, stretching me and building my capacity.   Just as in physical training, we experience the training effect in our spiritual lives as we follow God and his personal training program of problems, challenges, opportunities and suffering, carefully and uniquely designed for us. The program, if we follow it, will bring us to an ever-higher level of maturity and fruitfulness.

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Training to Increase Capacity

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On October 9, 2013

In Training, Teaming

Earlier in the year, we featured a number of posts by Philip Jackson, a colleague of mine from Macedonia, on the parallels between running a marathon and the Christian life.   In that same vein, I would like to reflect on my own recent experience of training for a half marathon.

This has been a huge learning experience for me. I have never been an athlete or competed in any individual athletic competitions since I was required to participate in kids races at Sunday school picnics in my childhood. I jogged in college and in the first years in the Philippines but never ran a single kilometer all those years in Far East Russia. Then about the time that we began serving with SEND U, I started again, simply for the sake of getting some exercise, running 5 km three times a week. That was hard enough, and even last summer, I found that I often could not finish the 5 km without walking partway. When a friend suggested that I should sign up for a longer race, I quickly dismissed the possibility. But this spring, through the repeated encouragement of Phil Jackson, I decided that maybe I should try a half-marathon. I was willing, but I knew I wasn’t even close to being ready to run 21 km. I found a 16-week training plan designed by a running coach and basically followed it from June until the race in Vilnius, Lithuania on September 15. And I finished the race in just over 2 hours, about 13 minutes faster than I had expected!

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