In suffering, we tend to draw inward and isolate to protect ourselves from further pain. Satan preys on that instinct, convincing us that we don’t need anyone else, and that others will only add to our grief, rather than easing it. He wants us to feel alone and self-righteous in our pain. Yet as we lean into God and his people, the Lord can transform us into humble servants, sanctified and shaped by our suffering.

One of my dearest friends lost both parents to suicide. Her father died when she was a teenager, and her mother passed away more recently. I was stunned and speechless when she told me about her mother’s death. How does anyone endure that kind of loss?
I was sure my words would be inadequate and unhelpful, yet my friend kept calling, asking my advice, letting me minister to her. She humbly shared both her pain and her struggles. She confessed her anger at her siblings’ callous response and asked me to pray for her. When she told me that our conversations had helped her, I was convicted by how rarely I let people into my pain. I had often assumed that if they hadn’t experienced what I had, they wouldn’t be able to understand it.
Rather than inviting others into my pain and grief, I’ve often pushed them away. I’ve felt a vague sense of self-righteousness, confident that no one could speak into my life except God himself. I’ve dismissed others’ experiences, even the comfort of friends, because they couldn’t fully relate to my suffering.
Temptation to Isolate
Right before my son’s death, my husband and I had worked through a significant marital struggle that intertwined with my grief. Messy and muddled, there were parts of my pain I felt I couldn’t share with others, so I was sure that no one could know how I felt. I withdrew from fellowship, hesitant to share deeply with others—it felt too vulnerable to be that exposed. Besides, I looked stronger and more spiritual when I didn’t let people in.
My attitude unknowingly intensified my pain, cutting off an important means of God’s grace and rescue: his people. My grief isolated me, ushering me into a silent silo in which I felt compelled (or perhaps entitled) to deal with my struggle alone. I said I was tired of hearing platitudes, but in truth, I was tired of hearing anything. I had closed everyone off, and no one dared to enter in.
This temptation to isolate, to pull away from community, assuming no one can help, is common in suffering. So how do we fight this temptation to pride—to believing that no one understands us and therefore no one can help us?
Pain and Loss and Sin
As someone who has dealt with layers of losses, I have seen this temptation to pride and isolation more than once. Pain, like sin, has a way of hardening my heart and blinding me to my real need.
When I was a single parent dealing with a significant physical disability, I was less concerned about being rescued from my sin than I was about being commended for my faith. In fact, I saw myself as a righteous victim in anything related to my suffering. Yet even those commended by God for their righteousness were not sinless, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). For instance, while Job was a righteous man, his suffering humbled him, and he repented in dust and ashes for pridefully speaking of what he did not know (Job 42:5–6).
I hadn’t fully considered my own sin as it related to my suffering until I heard Joni Eareckson Tada share about how pain and loss had sanctified her. She was paralyzed in a diving accident at age 17 and often spoke about how God changed her, transforming her once-sour and peevish disposition as she submitted daily to Jesus. Most of us would expect, or at least excuse, a quadriplegic with an irritable attitude, but Joni was determined to let God use her disability to refine her character. She writes in Lost and Found:
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Students contribute to the family of God as gifted brothers and sisters. Within the local body, seminary students may participate in a scaffolding of opportunities for leading, teaching, and serving in all sorts of capacities…local church participation coheres seminary coursework with the Great Commission.

For many pastors, time spent in formal seminary training is one of the most joyful seasons of life. Most seminary students are in their twenties or early thirties, learning God’s Word and how to walk by faith in all spheres of life. Toward that end I offer here six steps for maximizing the seminary experience.
Be ready to repent. Seminary brings fleshly thinking and habits to the surface. If it is the case that the Word exposes sin, the more time we are around the Word, the more we are exposed. And this is good news! Can you imagine how fleshly our churches would be if we did not have seminaries as spheres of learning where we might discover and deal with fleshly thought patterns? Since the Word is central to all courses at MBTS, a school like ours is a place where students and faculty are confronted about all sorts of fleshly living. It may be that seminary uniquely exposes areas of prideful comparison and competition. When students receive graded papers, they are tempted to ask how fellow students scored; when grading a Hebrew grammar quiz in class, students are tempted to score themselves as highly as possible; when sharing about the number of evangelistic encounters they have had, seminarians want to be sure that their efforts do not go unnoticed. Faculty are tempted to use their platform for self-glory or academic posturing when they get noticed for this or that speaking event or publication. So, the Spirit confronts these fleshly thought patterns and empowers the seminary community to repent and walk in the humble power of the gospel.
Prepare for financial struggles—and miraculous provision. The records of heaven are filled with accounts of God’s faithfulness to young men and women, sometimes with children tagging along, who step out in faith to attend seminary. Most seminary students begin the journey with little cash to spare, initially seeking God to provide a job. And He does. I meet student after student who notes how God provides flexible work through which they can both make it to class and make ends meet. During seminary, most students run into a financial bind—or two. This is part of God’s curriculum for pastors: in leading a church post-seminary, men of God will need to personally know of God’s faithfulness if they will lead the flock to walk by faith. Upon graduation, seminary students, often with tears, detail how God provided through extra work, an anonymous gift, the kindness of their local church, or a generous family member. God has yet to be unfaithful to meet the church’s or her leaders’ needs in training.
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Joseph Hart spares no one’s feelings when he surveys the mass of humanity, men and women and boys and girls, and analyzes people in their natural condition apart from Christ. And it is not just that men are merely defective or slightly ill-adapted, or that they just need a little bit of tweaking. No, Hart paints a picture of our condition that aligns with the Holy Scripture: we are poor, wretched sinners. But right away, consider the good news in that opening stanza: “Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, joined with power.” And that’s a marvelous, balanced, biblical portrayal of the Savior.

This is an absolutely lovely hymn. The tune to which it is paired in the Trinity Hymnal (Selection No. 472) is called BRYN CALFARIA, which is one of those stirring, minor-key Welsh hymn tunes (of which there are so many). The tune is so full of pathos and is well-suited to the hymn text here. That Welsh tune name, by the way, in English means “Calvary’s Hill”[1]—a very apt name for the tune, especially when it is wedded to this text.
The Tune
Now, this tune is not the easiest to sing. It’s a little tricky, but I think that a determined congregation could learn and master it after singing through it just a few times. I have a Welsh pastor friend who has said that it is not uncommon for the Welsh to sing tunes like this when they come together at rugby matches. And, as he says, if 50,000 inebriated Welsh sports fans can learn a complex tune and sing it with some cogency, so can an average congregation!
The fundamental underpinning theme of this hymn is that it does not congratulate the sinner on his ability; it recognizes that all the ability belongs to Jesus Christ alone. Notice that the first refrain is, “He is able, He is able, He is willing, doubt no more.” No emphasis falls on the sinner’s power and ability; it’s all on the Savior’s power and ability.
The BRYN CALFARIA tune was originally composed by a Welshman named William Owen. Owen, born in 1813 and lived through 1893, was a publisher of several hymnals using Welsh tunes. He was born in Bethesda in Northern Wales, and he worked in a slave quarry as a young man at the age of ten. That gives us something of the historical context: both awful child labor and slave labor were alive and well at this time in early 1800s Wales.[2]
Owen lived near a church called St. Ann, and he loved to hear the organist playing there. He became a good musician himself and started composing. Some of his tunes at the time were very popular, but the style of these tunes fell out of favor years later. However, this tune has survived partly due to the efforts and interest of Ralph Vaughan Williams — the great English hymn collector, hymn publisher, and composer of symphonies. Vaughan Williams gave us that majestic tune to which we sing “For All the Saints,” for example (SINE NOMINE).[3]
Well, Vaughan Williams took Owen’s BRYN CALFARIA tune and tamed it so as to make it easier for congregations to sing it. He then published his arrangement of the tune in the English Hymnal. He also did an organ prelude on this tune.[4] If you are a classical music lover, you might have heard that organ prelude, and it is a lovely arrangement of this tune. So, it’s thanks to Vaughan Williams (at least in part) that this tune has been preserved in English hymnody.
The Text
Well, that’s a little about the tune and its composer (and popular arranger). How about a little bit about the man who wrote the stirring lyrics? Joseph Hart was born about a dozen years before John Newton. John Newton (the former slave-trader-turned-abolitionist who gave us hymns such as “Amazing Grace”) was born in 1725, and Joseph Hart was born in 1712. Hart was converted to Christ under George Whitefield’s ministry in the late 1750s, some ten years after the close of the “Great Awakening” (denominated the “Evangelical Revival” in Britain).
After his conversion, Hart went on to become a pastor and preacher for an independent chapel. He wrote a number of hymns and was later buried in Bunhill Fields in London, which is famous for being the final resting place of the likes of John Owen, John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Susannah Wesley (mother of John and Charles), and other notables.[5]
The hymn “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched” was first published in 1759 in a collection of English hymns, and the original title given to this hymn was “Come, and welcome to Jesus Christ.” As an aside, that is one of my absolute favorite phrases in the English language. It’s also the title of one of John Bunyan’s little works. Read that book if you can. It expresses his delight and joy in the free and gracious welcome given to sinners by Jesus Christ. Some have suggested that that little book even helped pave the way for the modern missions movement.
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