Suffering can actually produce more flourishing people
Published: Fri, 10/10/25
Updated: Fri, 10/10/25
Sessions Include:Lesson #1 Lesson #2 Lesson #3 Lesson #4 Lesson #5 Lesson #6 Lesson #7 Lesson #8 Lesson #9 Lesson #10 Lesson #11 Lesson #12 Lesson #13 Lesson #14 Lesson #15 Lesson #16 Lesson #17 Lesson #18 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #19 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #21 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #22
|
Imagine you have a child and you are handed a script of her entire life laid out before you. Better yet, you are given an eraser and five minutes to edit out whatever you want. You read that she will have a learning disability in grade school. Reading, which comes easily for some kids, will be laborious for yours. In high school your child will make a great circle of friends, then one of them will die of cancer. After high school she will get into the college she wanted to attend, but while there she will lose a leg in a car crash. Following that, she will go through a difficult depression. A few years later she will get a great job, then lose that job in an economic downturn. She will get married, but then go through the grief of separation. With this script of your child’s life before you and five minutes to edit it, what would you erase? That is the question psychologist Jonathan Haidt asked in this hypothetical exercise. Wouldn’t you want to take out all the stuff that would cause them pain? We live in a generation of “helicopter parents” who constantly swoop in to their children’s lives to make sure no one is mistreating them and that they experience one unobstructed success after another in school, sports, and relationships. Whoa! If you could wave a wand and erase every failure, disappointment, and suffering, are you sure it would be a good idea? Would that enable your children to grow into the best version of themselves? Is it possible that in some way people actually need adversity and setbacks—maybe even something like trauma—to reach the fullest level of development and growth? Paul believed that as we live in the flow of the Spirit, suffering can lead to growth. Suffering can actually produce more flourishing people.
John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 12–13. If you would like to explore this new study, it is available on Amazon, as well as part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Why Study Books?My church recently transitioned to using books as curriculum in our Sunday School. The reason is simple. My life has been profoundly influenced by the reading of books. I don’t think my life has ever been changed by any curriculum piece I have ever read. Ever. I have actually surveyed a number of groups I have taught over the years, asking: Has your life ever been changed by any curriculum? The most common response is for people to laugh out loud. Our first study was the Bless book by Dave and Jon Ferguson. It is a great study on relational lifestyle evangelism. About half-way through the the study, we did a survey to help determine what we would study next. No one wanted to go back to the curriculum. Not. One. Person. The #1 choice for what to study next was a tie:
We will be studying these two books over the next year and a half or so. Here is what Amazon says about Ortberg’s book: The Me I Want to Be will help you discover spiritual vitality like never before as you learn to "live in the flow of the spirit." Why does spiritual growth seem so difficult? God's vision for your life is not just that you are saved by grace, but that you also learn to live by grace, flourishing with the Spirit flowing through you. And this book will show how God's perfect vision for you starts with a powerful promise: All those who trust in God "will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Pastor and best-selling author John Ortberg first helps gauge your spiritual health and measure the gap between where you are now and where God intends you to be. Then he provides detailed tasks and exercises to help you live in the flow of the Spirit, circumventing real-world barriers - pain and sorrow, temptations, self-doubt, sin - to flourish even in a dark and broken world. As you start living in the flow, you will feel:
God invites you to join him in crafting an abundant and joy-filled life. The Me I Want to Be shows you how to graciously accept his invitation. I have just completed a new, 22-week study of John Ortberg’s book, The Me I Want to Be that we will be using in my church. (I had previously done a 7-week study.) I have always thought that using books as a curriculum would be a good idea, and I have written a lot of book studies over the years. One of the things that actually using books as curriculum caused me to realize has to do with cost. By writing a study on every chapter of this book, instead of my previous study that had a lesson for every section, the cost drops to below what we were paying for curriculum. Better curriculum. Cheaper cost. Win. Win.
|
