“You could be faithful with your frailty.”
I was walking the track at the gym like I do every morning before my workout, and the lyrics from the Christian hip-hop artist were so quick I almost missed them. You could be faithful with your frailty.[1] He’s speaking, I think, to our inability to make our own way to God. We can’t pay the debt that Christ paid for us, and if we understood that—really understood it—our dependency on God could produce something good. Pride and faithfulness cannot coexist.
There is much in the Christian life that demands us to be faithful with our frailty. Beyond admitting our weaknesses and inability to save ourselves comes the long charge to suffer with the glory of Jesus in view. A few scriptures come to mind:
“Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” -Revelation 2:10
“But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed.” -1 Peter 3:14
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” -1 Peter 2:21
“Not only that but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” -Romans 5:3-5
Scripture holds more promises than I have time to list of the certainty of sufferings in this life. We’re guaranteed to experience trials of various kinds, James assures us.[2] But trials are fertile ground for the fruit of perseverance to grow, thus they are also full of potential and good purpose. But, it’s hard, isn’t it? To look at trials as purposeful when mostly they feel futile and painful? I daresay my first reaction to suffering has never been to wonder how it might be grounds for faithfulness. Just before her second husband was diagnosed with cancer, Elisabeth Elliot wrote in her journal:
“How to deal with suffering of any kind:
1. Recognize it
2. Accept it
3. Offer it to God as a sacrifice
4. Offer yourself with it.”[3]
She was quickly tested to take her own words to heart. Well-schooled in the art of grief, she did seem to endure her second husband’s death with both sadness and submission. Most often my response to suffering of any kind goes like this:
1. Deny it
2. Get angry about it
3. Ask God why He doesn’t love me
4.Resist what He might be teaching me
And then, later, after much struggling and “kicking against the goads”:
5. Submit to God’s ways
6. Accept it (sort of)
7. Try to see how He carries me through it
8. Use it as a platform to encourage others
The longer I experience physical suffering, the more quickly I move through those first four steps.[4] My stubbornness has worn down a little over the years, thanks to the sandpapery effect of Scripture and God’s resolute pursuit of my faithfulness. How I long, as Elisabeth determined, to offer my suffering and myself as a sacrifice to honor the Lord. I wonder if I will ever truly live with open hands or if I will always hold tightly to my desires with such white, clenched fists. It seems the Lord pries back my fingers from my disordered loves with trials designed to put them straight.
You could be faithful with your frailty. Or—you could not. It might feel like a correction, like a rebuke for those who haven’t “suffered well.” But what does that even mean? I remember a conversation years ago with someone who was suffering deeply. “I wish people would stop telling me to ‘suffer well,’” she hissed at me, her words seething with bitterness. I didn’t know exactly what it meant to suffer well (and perhaps I still don’t), but I remember thinking, “Well, it can’t be this.” But who am I to judge how someone grieves? I certainly don’t want a trial by jury when my life falls apart. I’ve hissed so many bitter prayers to the Lord, I cannot point any fingers.
More recently, I remember the death of a dear friend. It was cancer. And it was suffering that would lead to death. The term “suffer well” absolutely applied here. It wasn’t that she was preaching sermons from her hospital bed or that her husband never wept or broke down with grief. She didn’t preach, and he regularly broke down. That wasn’t what made them faithful with their frailty. It was the perseverance that made it faithful. It was admitting that their suffering, though unwanted, was God’s and it was His to do with as He saw fit. It was a noticeable yielding. Humility. It was holding on to Him so tightly that even if He brought about the ending they dreaded most, He would still be “their hope and stay,” as my friend had voiced to a nurse in the hospital. She later bemoaned to me that she hadn’t taken the opportunity to explicitly share the gospel. “Why did I only quote the hymn lyrics?” she asked me. “Why didn’t say more about Jesus?” I told her she was a living proof of faith in Jesus.
That’s the thing, though. She wasn’t giving big gospel presentations in her chemo chair or from the hospital bed while the life slowly ebbed out of her. But she wasn’t bitter. And neither was her husband. And neither is her husband now, widowed these three years later. He loves Jesus more, better, deeper, louder. He talks to me at church about his wife because we both need to say her name, but there is always a “but Jesus is faithful” ending to our conversations. And it isn’t lip service.
I think about what made my friend’s suffering and death a faithfulness with her frailty, and I think I know what fed it. Daily faithfulness. For years. Both she and her husband had grounded their lives in Christ, in His Word, in worship, in prayer, in the church. Jesus wasn’t a portion of their lives but rather the whole purpose and meaning. And those years of living for Him and through Him and to Him prepared them to offer up their suffering as a sacrifice to Him. They would be the first to tell you He has loved them well.
You could be faithful with your frailty. I think about the things that hurt in my life. My body, mostly. All those sleepless nights, more than a decade’s worth. All those prayers for help, only God knows how many. All those desperate courses of treatments and supplements and strange herbal concoctions and needles and side effects and—realizing that this body will be raised, must be raised for my hope to mean anything at all. If it’s all a sacrifice, then isn’t my suffering His? Isn’t it His to do with as He pleases? Isn’t He trustworthy as the One who set His heart upon mine before He spoke light into existence? Can’t I trust Him with my trials and my weaknesses? Isn’t His grace enough for me?
You could be faithful with your frailty. I could be. And it wouldn’t be born of innate strength or evidenced by a brave face. It would be utter dependence on Jesus. It would be both tears of grief and eternal hope. It would be sorrowful yet rejoicing. It only makes sense because Jesus is faithful with our frailty. He will waste no sorrows.
You could be faithful with your frailty. Share on X
[1] “What a Day” as performed by nobigdyl. Songwriters: Dylan Phillips / Ryan Bert, © Soundrights Music, Indie Tribe Publishing.
[2] James 1:2-4
[3] Ellen Vaughn, Being Elisabeth Elliot (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2023), 177.
[4] Fourteen years with a painful inflammatory disease for which there is no cure.
Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.