Struggle Comparison

I ask others how deep seated their fears are, how crippling their anxiety is, and how deep their depression is because it gives me hope. If their struggle is worse than mine and God helped them, then surely God will help me, whose fear is less. But what happens when my fear feels like more? When no one I know has gone two days straight without sleep because of anxiety or when no one feels so deeply called to public speaking and yet so wholeheartedly terrified by it?

There is such joy in sharing the same struggle with someone and knowing you are not alone. There is joy when you find someone you feel safe enough with to share your struggles. Someone who will not look down on you in pity, but encourage you in hope. Someone who won’t say, “Wow you’re really screwed up.” But will say, “I’m really screwed up too and God’s grace is big enough for us.”

It is a gift of God to see someone walk through deep suffering and to see how God’s grace was sufficient for them. We are supposed to be encouraged by this. The problem is when we start using the intensity of their struggle as a measuring stick to tell whether God will be faithful to us. If our struggle is equivalent or less, God will help us; if our struggle is more, he may not. Let us not compare our struggle to another’s and conclude that because ours is greater, God won’t meet us where we are. We don’t have to clean ourselves up to the point where our struggle is equal to the other person’s before God will help us. He does not have a standard of sinfulness where he will drop us when we fall below the line. That person may not struggle with anxiety more than you do, but they may struggle with depression more. They may not struggle with legalism more than you do, but they may struggle with lust more. It’s okay if we can’t fully identify with every struggle of every person, and it’s okay if no one can fully identify with us. We have a spectrum of struggles and we only must know the gospel well enough to say to our brothers and sisters and ourselves, “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve struggled with x, how deeply it cripples you; God’s grace is sufficient.”

The truth is, Jesus has identified with all of us. He knows our every thought, every tear, every temptation. But he did not sin. He did not identify with us by joining us in our sin. He did not show us we had hope by sinning more than us so we could feel better about ourselves. He identified with us by becoming human like us and taking our sin upon himself. In love, the Father sovereignly ordained the Son to be nailed to the cross on our behalf. That means we are not only forgiven of our sin, but given power to overcome it. Sometimes that power looks like complete victory and sometimes it looks like the grace to keep enduring. Either way, Christ shows us that his grace is sufficient not because everyone understands us, but because he died and rose again.

“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” -Corrie Ten Boom