Colleen Orchanian

The world is a place of suffering, and suffering is hard. Jesus told us to pick up our cross and follow Him. I would like to follow Him, but I'd rather not have to carry that cross. Romans 5:3-5 tells us to rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.

That is God's perspective of suffering. It's good. It can bear fruit. But it's a hard teaching.

Satan, on the other hand, will attack us in our suffering. He speaks into the suffering to distance us from God and from others who can accompany us on the difficult road of the cross.

The suffering is not the spiritual attack. The purpose of the attack is so that our suffering does not bear fruit.

If you have suffered in the past or are suffering today, you may be able to see how effective the attack was (or is) in your life. You may be able to differentiate between the suffering itself and how you thought about that suffering, what that suffering meant to you. It is an important distinction.

Types of Suffering:

Here are four kinds of suffering, and chances are you have experienced them all at some point in your life.

Physical suffering: our body is in pain. It can be a natural pain like childbirth, the pain of recovery from surgery, pain from a disease like cancer, migraine headaches, or any time when a part of your physical body is hurting.

Emotional suffering: our mind is hurting. It can include anxiety, panic attacks, mental illness, PTSD, effects of abuse as a child or adult, grief, or depression. We suffer because our mind is not at peace.

Spiritual suffering: our heart is suffering. We might feel spiritually empty and distant from God. Or we struggle with the sins of our past; they weigh on our conscience, and we cannot receive the forgiveness God desires for us. Or we struggle with repetitive sins in the present; we can't kick an addiction or stop an immoral behavior. We keep confessing the same thing, and we hate it. It disturbs our soul.

Material suffering: we don't have the means to provide for our basic needs or those of our family. It's not suffering because we can't buy a new car every year. Rather, it's that we don't know where our next meal will come from or if we will have a home next week.

Ineffective approaches to suffering:

Here are some common approaches that don't work. They feed into the spiritual attack:

• White knuckle it. Grit your teeth and get through it. That's how I handled labor pains, which is not how they teach you in childbirth classes; you're supposed to breathe through the pain. Instead, I braced myself and tensed up, which slowed the labor. Very ineffective.

• Be a martyr. That means we tell people about how bad things are. We don't just share with one person, but with anyone who will listen. We whine, complain, and bemoan the suffering we are enduring. Very ineffective.

• Lash out. We are easily irritated and short-tempered, speaking harshly to others. Something little that would not normally bother us becomes the source of an all-out verbal attack on another person. Very ineffective.

• Fall into despair. Suffering can bring us to a very dark place, a place without the light of Christ.

All of these ineffective responses to suffering are initiated by the enemy. They are ineffective because they don't ease or transform the suffering. That's what God wants to do—transform our suffering into something useful for the Kingdom, just as Jesus did with His suffering on the cross.

Spiritual attacks during suffering.

There is a lot written about transforming your suffering — offering it up. That's not our focus here. Instead, we will consider the spiritual attacks that block the transformation.

Each of those four types of suffering can have a different spiritual attack. Or you might find that Satan always attacks in the same way, no matter what you are suffering. It is helpful to look for a pattern in his attacks.

Remember the three core distortion attacks of the devil. He wants to distort our self-image, our image of God, and our image of others. Is there a pattern in the spiritual attacks you face when suffering? Does he go after your self-image? Does he target your image of God? Does he challenge your relationships with others? He could go for all three, but there is usually one that is predominant.

The enemy is the father of lies, so we must identify those lies before we can reject them. These are some of the lies you might hear when you are suffering:

If he wants to distort your self-image, you might hear something like this: You deserve this. You can't handle this. Suck it up. Stop being such a baby. Who do you think you are? You are broken beyond repair. Nobody loves you. Nobody wants you. God could stop this, but He doesn't want to because you're not worth it. This attack challenges your image as a beloved child of God.

If the enemy wants to distort your image of God, you might hear: He doesn't love you. He doesn't care. He isn't real. He is punishing you. You cannot trust Him; He has abandoned you. He is powerless to stop your suffering. This attack challenges your image of God as a good and loving Father. When it works, you grow distant from God.

If the enemy wants to distort your image of others, you might hear: They did this to you. Hating them is appropriate. They don't deserve forgiveness. They can't understand your suffering. They don't care about you. You don't need anyone else. You can only trust yourself. It's okay to yell at them because you're in pain. They need to understand how hard this is for you. This attack challenges the truth that we are in community with others, our brothers and sisters, who can walk with us and help us carry our cross. They can be our Simon of Cyrene. It challenges the teaching we hear from Jesus to love those who persecute us. When it works, our relationships break down, we don't have the strength of community, and we live in unforgiveness.

Think back to a time when you were suffering. What was going on in your head? What words were you hearing? As you remember, can you hear the lies? Can you see what the devil was trying to do? Can you see which image was being distorted the most? Take that into prayer and see if you can figure out what the devil has found to be your weakness so that you can work on healing in that area. It won't end the suffering, but it will make the attacks less effective and will allow you to bear fruit through the suffering you are enduring.

Suffering is a given in our fallen world. And we know that God can bring good out of evil for those who love Him. That's us. Suffering draws us closer to God in a way that easy times cannot. It's like a marriage. Most marriages have times of suffering. When the couple can resist the attacks of the devil together, their marriage becomes stronger. Without the suffering, they may not grow stronger.

Without our suffering, we cannot make spiritual progress. If we can be like Jesus and embrace our cross, imagine the good He can do through that suffering.

Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN, suffered greatly in her life. Father Joseph Wolfe shared that she had instructed her nuns to do everything to keep her alive, no matter how much she suffered, because every day she suffered, she suffered for God. This powerful woman embraced her suffering. She once lamented that there was so much wasted suffering in hospitals. Perhaps we can try to hold that same desire for suffering in our own hearts. I know it's not easy. At least not for me, but I will continue to make that effort. If we succeed, the spiritual attacks will fail. That's a good thing to pray for. Mother Angelica, pray for us!

Questions for Prayer:

1. Which type of suffering is most challenging for you? How does the devil attack when you suffer in that way? What lies are you hearing?

2. Which image is being attacked in your suffering? Is it your self-image, image of God, or image of others? Why is that the target? What healing might you need?