In John Ortberg’s book “The Life You’ve Always Wanted” he tells the story of Mabel. It’s a story I return to mentally and in print from time to time because it’s so powerful. To me the story communicates two seemingly contradictory things: the surest, most gospelly, most biblical path to transformation and the mystery of election.

Churches, “ministries” and Christian bookstores abound with programs that promise spiritual transformation for those who would dedicate themselves to these programs. Recently a friend sent me a link to a new program promoted by Rick Warren: https://www.lifeshealingchoices.com/. The introductory video offers dramatic results for those who devote themselves to its process. I have no reason to question the truthfulness of Warren’s claims. I’m sure this program has helped many men and women find sanity and healing. This happens every day for millions of people around the world in many many recovery programs. I don’t want to take anything away from that. But I wonder if we’re looking at the wrong thing. Maybe it’s not the program that produces the saints as much as it is the suffering that gets re-contexted.

Almost everything I read from Jesus or the rest of the New Testament tells me that the path to spiritual transformation is obvious and universal on planet earth, it is suffering. Even though Jesus seems to say it again and again we only tend to highlight it when we read him in the Beatitudes or his statements about cross bearing. It is also highlighted in numerous other New Testament books, especially the book of Revelation. The righteous get crushed to powder by the devil, the age of decay and the flesh but out of that crushing God brings about the new creation. It can’t be more plain.

What isn’t plain is why some who are crushed sink into bitterness, self-pity and despair, while others come out shining like the sun, like Mabel. The story of Mabel wouldn’t be spectacular if it wasn’t so uncommon. Visit a nursing home and you’ll find what many who live there are nursing are resentments. Nursing resentments is the broad path, the one that leads to destruction. Mabel walked the narrow path and it was her joy.

Why was Mabel different? Ortberg notes the spiritual disciplines she cultivated in her hours of what is labeled by us as incapacity. Certainly others don’t lack the opportunity to practice such things, they simply don’t. A couple of months ago I conducted a worship service at a nursing home, just a few poor souls showed. In my experience that is the norm. There is no question that the spiritual disciplines strengthened Mabel and turned her into the spiritual athlete that she became, but it seems her practice of them was a symptom of a deeper health rather than simply the cause of it.

The most convincing experiential artifact for confirming the doctrine of election by general revelation is the mystery illustrated by Mabel. Suffering comes to us all, and the resurgent Reformed preachers that exhort us to “not waste your sufferings” are exactly right, yet the reality is that most of us do. In some, however, something remarkable grows from the inside and bears the kind of dramatic fruit that Jesus describes as “30, 60 or 100 fold”.

Suffering is obviously NOT a prescription for spiritual growth that pastors should start dispensing. “You’d like to grow? I can help you with that. Give me your ATM card and car keys…” Pastors don’t need to artificially generate suffering for their people, the devil, the age of decay and our broken natures are all too happy to oblige. Yet we as pastors perhaps should note that most of the packages available in the Christian market place are good advice that are either knock offs (or have been knocked off by) nearly every other “self-help” or religious self-improvement outfit around. The tried and true, going back to the life of Jesus himself (and further back as can be read in the OT) is the cruciform way.

We go to God and ask to become a saint. What if God says to us “OK, but I’ll have to crush you into powder first, but from that powder I will remake you into the kind creature that makes the language of “creation 2.0″ look weak.” What would we say? What do we say as we begin to realize that the crushing process takes place over time and that all along the way we are offered “outs” and exits to escape the pain and nearly everyone one around us tells us that the crushing isn’t necessary and that creation 2.0 is too much to hope for?

Maybe what Jesus said in his beatitudes (and in how many other different places and ways) is true, that the truly blessed have fewer “outs”, but in fact find joy even in the midst of crushing and that joy simply grows louder, deeper and longer as they travel from the foothills further up and further into the holy mountain.

I think we pastors are cowards. We dare not say these things because 1. we have not necessarily traveled far in it ourselves 2. because it sounds so absolutely crazy and what we’re seeking is acceptance and respectability.

The good news is that the good news is just as real today as it has always been. God creates for himself Mabels and saints using even the worst the devil can dish out. In a Tim Keller sermon kicking off a series on Job a bit ago Keller says that God allows the devil to just enough to undo his own schemes. I think about that a lot and sometimes kind of believe it. It rings true to the book of Revelation.

In Revelation 14, after the dragon and his beasts have been allowed to make war on the saints and defeat them the Lamb is seen to be standing on Mount Zion with his holy army of 144,000 saints who have conquered in the fashion of the Lamb. It makes me think of the scene in the LOTR movie “The Two Towers” when Gandalf finally appears in the east on his white horse with his army to save the defeated huddle in Helm’s Deep. I cry every time I watch that scene.

Every person in our churches and communities, has suffered or will suffer. The ground work is laid for the most biblical, the most proven spiritual growth plan we have. Do we have the courage to name it?