The Road We Must Travel: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven (#23)

[A note from our Managing Editor: Tim Shorey, pastor and author, is one of our Gospel-Centered Discipleship staff writers. Tim is also currently battling stage 4 prostate cancer. On Facebook and CaringBridge, he’s writing about his journey. We’re including some of his posts in a series on our website called “The Potter’s Clay: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven.” To preserve the feel of a daily journal rather than a published work, we have chosen not to submit these reflections to a rigorous editing process.]

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The Road We Must Travel

October 18, 2024

Dear Journal,

I’m fighting for faith these days. To hear my doctors tell it, my jawbone disease and its hoped-for remedy is going to go on for a lot longer and be a lot more painful before they get any better. It’s hard to have faith that I can endure ever-escalating pain when I feel already that I can endure no more.

My Prayer: “Lord, you have promised grace for every need. But I am already at my breaking point, with the worst yet to come. To keep your promise of grace, I need you either to heal me or to prove the doctors wrong (by making it not as painful as predicted) or to infuse me with super-abounding grace upon grace, far more than I now have. I am desperate, O God.”

My Encouragement and Hope: In my desperation, the Lord has reminded me of Acts 14:22, where Paul prepares some brand new believers for the normal Christian life: “[Paul strengthened] . . . the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

To continue in the faith, we must know three things:

1. Tribulations are a normal experience. I say “normal” because Paul says that our troubles will be “many,” not few. Tribulations will be frequent and regular, not occasional and sporadic. They should be an expectation, not a surprise. As the ancient put it, “Man is born for trouble as [surely] as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). For all that Job’s friends got wrong, they got this right.

If you doubt this, here are numerous passages that tell us that tribulation, sorrow, and persecution—not  health and wealth, or freedom and prosperity, or popularity and success—are the normal Christian experience (Matt. 5:11; 10:16–25; Luke 6:22–26; John 16:33; Acts 14:22; Phil. 1:29; 3:10; 2 Tim. 3:12; 1 Pet. 1:6–7; 4:12–19; 5:2–10).

2. Tribulations are a must experience. Tribulations are a must experience because God has ordained that it is only through them that we can reach the eternal Kingdom. What Paul means is that there is only one way to the Kingdom, it is through the shadowlands of suffering and sorrow. This is the road we must travel. There is no easier, smoother, or safer way to get there. In fact, there is simply no other way at all to get there. Every other road either dead ends or leads straight into impenetrable and inescapable darkness or off a cliff into ruin.

If we had a map of every Christian’s journey to the Heavenly City, we would note many rugged mountains, many deep ravines, many precipitous cliffs, many foreboding shadows and prowling beasts. But only one road. And that one road would be marked by trial and tribulation for each believer, which we willingly travel out of love for Jesus, who himself suffered much to atone for our sins and gain our entrance into that City. There is but one road to the Kingdom, and if you and I want that Kingdom, we must be willing to take “the road marked by suffering.”

3. Tribulations are a reward-able experience. Those who suffer willingly and well will enter the kingdom of God and inherit their eternal reward. If we humbly walk the Kingdom road of suffering, seeking to honor our dear Savior through all that we are called to endure, we will reach the Kingdom gates that open up into eternal glory (Matt. 5:11–12; Rom. 8:17; 2 Cor. 4:16–18; 2 Tim. 4:6–8; 1 Pet 1:6–9).

Conclusion

Surprisingly, according to this passage in Acts 14, it is soul-strengthening and encouraging to know that you will go through many tribulations before you reach your glorious destination—the eternal Kingdom of God. How is that encouraging?

First, it strengthens and encourages because it sets the right expectations and minimizes disappointments along the way. Knowing that trials will come helps us when they do. It helps us not to be surprised, disappointed, or tempted to forsake the narrow and dangerous way.

And second, it strengthens and encourages by reminding us that if there is a hard path appointed, there is also a glorious destination awaiting, one that issues into an eternal and triumphant Kingdom, a Heavenly City that will make it all worth it.

All this matters immensely to me as all my afflictions keep sinking their claws into me and as my jawbone disease and painful surgery keep creeping closer and closer, not to mention my cancer.

I must travel this road appointed for me, and I will enter the Kingdom and inherit my reward.

God has promised.

* You can read all the posts in this series here.