This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “Receiving Yourself in the Fires of Sorrow”, promises that believers who embrace suffering will “receive the self God created them to be,” claiming that sorrow burns up shallowness and transforms people into trustworthy individuals who become “nourishment for others.”
Here’s what embracing the fires of sorrow actually delivered:
“Don’t ask God to save you from this hour,” his pastor counseled gently. “Receive yourself in the fires of sorrow. God will use this pain to burn up your shallowness and transform you into someone others can trust and turn to.”
David’s wife had died after eighteen months of brutal cancer treatment. The grief felt like drowning in acid, but his pastor offered this spiritual framework as the path through suffering. Instead of seeking ways to minimize pain, David should lean into the sorrow and wait for it to reveal “the self God created him to be.”
David tried desperately to embrace this teaching. He accepted his grief without resistance, believing that surrendering to suffering would fulfill God’s transformative purpose for his life. Months of “receiving himself in the fires of sorrow,” waiting for divine alchemy to burn away shallowness.
But the promised transformation was a vicious lie.
The sorrow wasn’t burning up shallowness—it was consuming his capacity for joy, hope, relationship. Rather than becoming someone others could trust and turn to, David found himself increasingly unable to connect with anyone or offer meaningful support.
Friends stopped calling because conversations had become exercises in managing his overwhelming, unprocessed grief. Instead of becoming “nourishment for others,” his raw pain made him emotionally unavailable to everyone around him.
Meanwhile, his brother-in-law Tom faced similar devastation when his father died suddenly. But Tom didn’t try to receive himself in fires of sorrow or wait for suffering to transform him spiritually. Instead, Tom sought grief counseling, joined a bereavement support group, gradually developed healthy ways to process loss while maintaining human connections.
Tom didn’t embrace suffering as divine tool for character development. He treated grief as difficult human experience requiring practical support, time, and intentional healing strategies. When acute grief began to ease, Tom volunteered with hospice, using his experience to help others navigate similar losses.
The transformation Tom experienced wasn’t mystical result of receiving himself in fires of sorrow. It came through professional help, community support, and deliberate choices to channel experience into service. People did turn to Tom during crises—not because suffering had spiritually transformed him, but because he’d learned practical ways to support others through loss.
Where was David’s promised transformation through embracing sorrow? Where was the divine purpose that was supposed to emerge from accepting suffering?
David’s breakthrough came when he stopped waiting for sorrow to fulfill God’s plan and started seeking actual help for his depression. Therapy, medication, grief counseling provided tools to process loss constructively rather than simply enduring it as spiritual trial.
The healing that eventually made David helpful to others came not from receiving himself in fires of sorrow but from learning healthy ways to honor grief while rebuilding capacity for connection and service.
The silence where God’s transformative purpose was supposed to manifest revealed the truth: suffering doesn’t automatically create wisdom or compassion. It just creates more suffering until we address it with human tools and community support.
Reflection Question: When has seeking professional help and community support been more effective than trying to embrace suffering as spiritual transformation?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 