Compassionate Counselor, or Stumbling Block?
by Nancy Guthrie
(March 6, 2006)

“This baby will be fine. God would never ask you to go through this again!” our godly friends said. We told only a handful of close friends that I was pregnant as we waited for the prenatal test results that would reveal whether or not our third child would have the fatal syndrome that had cut short the life of our second child, Hope. These were mature believers who loved us, and they just couldn’t imagine that we might have to endure the heartbreak of loving and losing another child.

I think they must have felt similar to the way Peter felt when Jesus told the disciples that he was going to Jerusalem where he would be killed. Matthew records that “Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him. ‘Heaven forbid, Lord’, he said. ‘This will never happen to you!’ ” (Matthew 16:22, NLT). I think he was saying, in essence, “Don’t even say it! Surely God’s plan for you could not involve a cross!” Peter loved Jesus, and he didn’t want him to suffer.

But far from appreciating Peter’s compassion, Jesus said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God’s” (Matthew 16:23, NLT).

And although I appreciated the compassion of my well-intentioned friends who were confident that God’s plan for me could not include the death of a second child, I also realized that perhaps they were seeing our situation from a human perspective, and not from God’s perspective. I recognized that perhaps God was calling me to go to the cross—a painful place of self-surrender, a place where the plan of God is welcomed more than my own preference, a place where God can use even death for his life-giving purposes. And I wanted to be willing to go.

After Jesus rebuked Peter he looked to the rest of the disciples and continued, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24, NLT).

The disciples knew well what taking up a cross meant. They had seen condemned criminals compelled to carry their instruments of suffering and death. They had heard the cries of agony from those who hung on the crosses that lined the roads into the city. We want to say to Jesus on their behalf and our own, “Surely God’s plan for my life does not have to include a cross!”

By the time the doctor’s call came weeks later, informing us that pre-natal testing revealed our son was already suffering the effects of the fatal syndrome, we were sad, but we were prepared. We had been preparing ourselves to turn our face toward the path of surrender where we would lay down our own pre-conceived notions about what God owes us and wants for us. We wanted to take Jesus at his word that real life comes in giving up our plans and agendas so that we can embrace his. We wanted to trust him with the suffering that we knew was ahead for us.

Our son, Gabriel, was with us for just six months. And in that time, he had much to teach us, perhaps nothing as significant as the vast difference between the human perspective and God’s perspective of the cross.

Nearly every day as a pastor, you deal with people who are facing significant suffering. Is it your first response to commiserate with them and commit to pray—to pray that the suffering will be removed, that the problem will be solved? I wonder if, when this is our first and only instinct, do we, like Peter, have in mind the things of men and not the things of God?

Perhaps we have in mind comfort and security, success and satisfaction, and we’ve forgotten that “if you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” Perhaps out of what we would describe as compassion, we are actually become a stumbling block to what God wants to do in and through the suffering in the lives of our friends.

Perhaps, if we had in mind the things of God, our prayers would be slower for healing and quicker for heeding God’s call to the crucified life. Perhaps rather than praying for the difficulty to go away, we would pray for self-denial to take root and grow, so that those we counsel and guide might discover the deep joy found only in taking up the cross and following Jesus. Perhaps we would welcome Christ into our suffering and ask him not to remove it, but to redeem it.

Nancy Guthrie is the author of Holding On to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God, as well as One Year Book of Hope, a year-long scripture-focused daily devotional for those who are hurting, available from Tyndale House Publishers.