I remember once being told that what a person does with suffering and success will truly reveal their character. They were correct. Both of these extreme states have the ability to show us at our best and at our ugliest. Both of them will expose the roots of our character. Show me someone who has suffered greatly but still has a softness and tenderness in their demeanor, and I’ll know they are someone of good character. Show me someone who is successful in their life but remains humble and interested in others, and I’ll equally be able to see good character. Both of these states provide a test for us. They test and prove what is really in there, what we are truly about. This is terrifying in many ways, as they are both unavoidable realities in our lives; we will all experience measures of success and suffering along the way.

I want to look at an example of this in the Scriptures today. The journey of the Israelite nation starts in a place of suffering. They have been slaves to the Egyptians for generations. The Bible doesn’t give us a full rundown of how they were treated as slaves in Egypt, but the glimpses we do receive show us that it wasn’t a time of success. It was one of suffering. Slavery is one of the most dehumanizing states we can face. Then God enters the story through Moses, and we see the beginning of a turnaround. There is the promise of blessing, of success. God will deliver them from one state to the other—from suffering to success. It won’t be immediate, but it will happen. As we’ll know, if we’ve read the book of Exodus, that journey takes a while—40 years to be exact—and it wasn’t a simple journey. However, in the book of Deuteronomy, we hear their leader, Moses, summarize their journey and talk to them about what is ahead.

GOD is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills. Deuteronomy 8:7-9

This is good, right? This is a blessing; this is success. These people are about to walk into a successful life where they receive the things they had dreamed about. The next point is pretty important, though. What’s important to realise here is that the people who are about to inherit these successes are not the ones who directly suffered in slavery in Egypt. They are the sons and daughters of those who were enslaved in Egypt. These people were born on the journey out of true suffering toward true success. The reason the generation before them didn’t get to see the success that would lie before them was that the suffering they had experienced revealed something about their character that wasn’t good. They were unable to move out of their slavery thinking and into the abundance God wanted to give them. God sees that suffering hurt them and knows that success would kill them. The next generation, who would only have heard the stories of suffering, would be the ones to taste the success. They didn’t have slavery in their bones and were technically more ready for the success.

But there is a danger in that too, right?

The problem is that if you have never known any kind of struggle or fight at all, then ‘success’ could easily turn into entitlement. A kid who has known what it is to go without will treasure anything they receive, whereas a kid who always receives could become spoiled and not be grateful for what they have. God is aware of this, and so while in the wilderness, He ensures that they get some taste of what it is to suffer, to wait, to be patient, and dependent upon Him. Moses summarizes it like this;

Remember every road that GOD led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from GOD’s mouth Deuteronomy 8:2-3

Moses is starting to tap into something here. He is not just telling them a story; he is revealing a clue to them regarding how to avoid suffering or success corrupting their character.

Make sure you don’t forget GOD, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up— make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget GOD, your God, the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery; the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions; the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock; the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you. Deuteronomy 8:11-16

Failing to remember God is a fatal error at any moment in our lives, but in success and suffering, I believe it becomes even more paramount. Forgetting God in suffering removes hope and promotes disorientation. I think of the times in my life when I have suffered, and I think: “What would I have done without Jesus? What hope would I have found in the world around me?” God is hope. The knowledge that He is God is our foundation. The awareness of God and His Kingdom purpose is what we build our life upon. He and His purposes cannot fail and cannot be removed; therefore, in times of suffering, He is all that we cling to. Forgetting God in times of success removes gratitude and promotes selfishness. When I forget His breakthroughs and deliverances in my life, I begin to believe that it was down to me and my ‘brilliance.’ Remembering that it is Him not only makes me humble but also sets me up to receive more of His blessing as I depend on Him again and again.

Let’s not be people who forget God, whether we are high, low, or somewhere in between. He is our everything. Let’s allow suffering and success to reveal deep character that is formed on the foundation to Jesus.