Worship through Suffering | Justin Barns

Joy. I know. It’s a little strange to start off a post about suffering with that word. Here’s the thing: it hasn’t been a word that I’ve been focusing on, or experienced in a long time. I’m not talking about joy like when you come home and an Amazon package is sitting on your front porch. That’s merely happiness, there one minute and gone the next.

I’m referring to JOY. I’m talking about the Greek word CHARA. That deep-rooted, inner gladness, delight in knowing your Lord and Savior, not based on circumstance, taking off your clothes and dancing with all your might for your King because you’re his child, JOY! And yes, if you’ve forgotten, King David (a man after God’s own heart) did just that.

In 2002, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. The simplified version that was told to me was that it’s an overactive immune system. If my body has no disease to fight, it’ll fight itself. At first that might sound like a cool superpower. I can never get sick, right?

Wrong. Turns out, the part of the body that it attacks is the digestive system. So what does that mean? Well, the disease causes inflammation. Inflammation leaves scars. This process repeats itself until that portion of intestines closes up. So as you can imagine, it’s very important to keep that under control. For eighteen years, I thought I had this under control.

The trigger

Most of my church family knows I was in a car accident in 2019. And not just some fender bender, but a full-on, hit-from-behind-at-50-mph-while-I-was-stopped, flipped-over, totaled-car kind of accident. The next two years would be filled with doctor visits, lawyers, and physical therapy.

As you can imagine, I was a little stressed. Stress can be a major cause for a Crohn’s flare-up. For the next two years, I was in and out of the hospital more times than I had been in the previous eighteen. With so many flare-ups, it finally happened.

The result

It was two days before Christmas—December 23, 2021. I was still in the hospital when a doctor told me that I seriously needed to have a section of my intestines removed. In fact, he was the second one to tell me that. 

I don’t trust the doctors at this particular hospital, so I go home to enjoy Christmas with my family. A week later, I’m back in the hospital. Once again, I hear the same thing: “You need to have this surgery.” The operation I’ve been avoiding all my life has finally become something I can no longer ignore. I speak with someone who has gone through something similar. He says, “If you were my blood brother, and I knew you were putting this off, I’d throw you in the car and drag you to Cleveland Clinic myself. Get the surgery.”

January 17th. I make the call. On the other side of the line, I hear, “We want to schedule the consultation for Thursday, and we’ll schedule the surgery for Wednesday.” I’m in shock. I thought we’d meet in February and talk about the surgery in March. I haven’t had time to prepare for this. At the consultation, I hear, “If you want to wait until March, you’re going to be in the hospital 3–4 more times.”

The disease has finally won.

Even so, we keep our eyes on Jesus

How can something so dark have any light at the end? I’ll tell you what, when you’re in the storm, it’s easy to look at the waves. And therein lies the problem. I was looking at the waves instead of looking at the one who controls the waves. The light isn’t just at the end of the tunnel. He’s at the beginning. He’s in the middle. He’s at the end.

I watched a movie while I was recovering that wasn’t necessarily biblical. But a line stuck with me: [“God” speaking] “I can work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies. But that doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies.”

I know who holds my future

I’m still not 100 percent sure what God’s plan is for me, but I know it has to be great. It’s his plan, after all. I’ve survived a snowboarding accident—and I don’t even remember what hill I was on when I crashed. I nearly, accidentally, killed myself because I didn’t know about a perforation in my intestines. That’s another incredible story for another time. And I survived a car accident that was so bad, I didn’t recognize my own car that I’d been driving for eleven years. Something is definitely planned for my life.

I’ve written songs in my quiet time. Some may never be sung in front of an audience and some of them definitely won’t be sung in front of an audience. One of them jumped to mind during this time. It’s a song about Ecclesiastes 3. Yes, there is a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time to lose, a time of silence. But there is also a time to laugh, a time to dance, a time to embrace, and a time to HEAL. “To everything there is a season.” 

I remember all the seasons when God was still there, and joy started coming back. I’ve been feeling a call to ministry, and that call is stronger now than ever. I’ve been reading a book that is warning me of the road ahead. The more I read it, the more joy I experience, knowing that God has prepared every moment leading up to this point as well as those going forward. 

As we worship together on Sunday mornings, I am less focused on the music and more focused on what is being said. Do I truly believe these words? Yes, because they remind me of how much my Father cares for me. It can be difficult to see past the waves of your tragedy, but trust me, the more you exalt Christ, the smaller the waves become.

—Justin Barns