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, “The Suffering of the Saint,” promises that believers who “choose God’s will even if it means suffering” and avoid sympathy that “saps energy” will be strengthened and matured by God, claiming that God “puts his saints where they will glorify him” even in places “the world considers useless,” with believers needing to trust that their suffering serves divine purposes they cannot judge.
Here’s what trusting that God gives suffering to saints for divine purposes and glory actually delivered:
“Healthy saints choose God’s will whether it means suffering or not,” Pastor Rodriguez declared with spiritual authority. “Don’t seek sympathy—it saps your energy and fills you with self-pity. God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, even in places the world considers useless. Be merciful to God’s reputation and trust that your suffering serves purposes you cannot judge.”
Maria had been battling stage 3 breast cancer for eighteen months, enduring chemotherapy, radiation, and multiple surgeries while trying to care for her two young children as a single mother. The promise that choosing God’s will through suffering would strengthen and mature her while serving divine purposes seemed like the spiritual perspective she needed to find meaning in her overwhelming medical crisis.
Maria desperately wanted to believe that accepting her cancer as God’s will would result in spiritual strengthening and divine glory through her suffering. For months, she avoided seeking emotional support or practical assistance, believing that accepting sympathy would sap her energy and demonstrate self-pity rather than trust in God’s purposes. She practiced what she called “saint-like suffering,” trying to see her cancer as divine placement where she could glorify God even though the world might consider her situation useless, trusting that her illness served purposes beyond her understanding.
Week after week, Maria endured chemotherapy sessions alone, refusing offers of help from friends and family because she believed that avoiding sympathy would demonstrate healthy sainthood and trust in God’s will. She tried to find divine purpose in her exhaustion, nausea, and fear, waiting for the spiritual strengthening and maturity that choosing God’s will through suffering was supposed to produce. When concerned friends suggested cancer support groups, counseling services, or even practical help with childcare, she declined, believing that seeking human comfort would interfere with God’s disciplinary purposes and demonstrate insufficient trust in divine will.
But the promised spiritual strengthening through chosen suffering was isolation disguised as saintly endurance.
Maria’s desperate attempts to choose God’s will through cancer produced no spiritual strengthening, no sense of divine purpose, no indication that her suffering was maturing her or glorifying God in any meaningful way. Despite months of avoiding sympathy and trying to trust divine purposes, no spiritual growth emerged, no divine glory materialized, no sense that God was using her illness for higher purposes developed. The silence grew more devastating each treatment cycle as her physical condition worsened while she waited for the spiritual benefits that choosing suffering was supposed to provide.
Meanwhile, Maria’s neighbor Lisa approached her own cancer diagnosis through immediate support network activation. When Lisa was diagnosed with similar breast cancer, she joined support groups, accepted help from friends and family, and focused entirely on evidence-based treatment while building comprehensive emotional and practical support systems.
Lisa’s approach came through oncology teams, support groups, and community assistance. She navigated cancer treatment successfully through sustained human care rather than waiting for spiritual strengthening through chosen suffering.
When Maria finally abandoned her search for divine purpose and joined cancer support groups, she discovered that serious illness required understanding treatment options and building support networks. The months she’d spent avoiding sympathy had been months she needed human comfort and practical assistance during medical crisis.
Where was the spiritual strengthening that choosing God’s will through suffering was supposed to provide? Where was the divine purpose and glory that should emerge from trusting God’s placement in useless circumstances?
The support that actually worked came from cancer counselors and support groups. The silence where God was supposed to be using her suffering revealed the truth: there was no divine purpose in her cancer, no God placing saints in suffering for spiritual glory.
Only a serious medical condition that required professional treatment and human support, not spiritual endurance seeking divine purpose in an illness that served no higher purpose beyond the random cellular mutations that cause cancer.
Reflection Question: When has joining support groups and accepting human comfort been more effective than trusting that God gives suffering to saints for divine purposes and glory?
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? 