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Suffering doesn't mean God has
turned against us
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We can pour out our deepest pain and darkest questions to God. We can weep and mourn and lament the reality of our sufferings. We can lament while at the same time trusting in our future hope.
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When circumstances are bleak, it can feel like God has turned against you. We are waiting eagerly for the redemption of our bodies, but it hasn’t come yet. Our pain isn’t meaningless, nor a sign of God’s displeasure.
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Kimi Harris
“You are my strength; come quickly
to help me” (Psalm 22:19).
Perhaps
you can relate to my experience: I found myself walking out of the hospital
with a cloud of fear hovering over me after initial testing for cancer didn’t
look good.
When
I got home, dazed by potential worst-case scenarios, I climbed into my soft bed
with my Bible and opened it.
What
comfort does the Bible have for us when we are facing difficult times?
Could
Scripture drive away my fear?
Could
it breathe life back into my numbed brain?
I
was only 16, but this experience grew my desire to draw peace from the Bible
through difficult times — a desire that continues to this day.
While
my cancer-scare ended up being a false alarm, since that day I have experienced
great loss, suffered from a chronic illness, and walked through the valley of
death.
In
all of it, I have wrestled through the Bible and not found it lacking.
The
Bible is rich with complex truths that we could spend a lifetime unpacking, but
here are four truths that can help you trust God through your trials:
1.
Lamenting is biblical.
Too
often we assume that trusting in God means hiding our pain and putting on a
cheerful face.
This isn’t more spiritual, necessarily. It can actually be a form of spiritual denial. We don’t win brownie points for hiding our pain.
In Matthew 27:46,
Jesus cried out on the cross, “God, why
have you forsaken me?” echoing Psalm 22 which gives us a beautiful picture
of what it means to lament while calling out for help from God.
The
psalmist starts with honesty, asking God why he is forsaken, why he finds no
rest, and why he hears no answer from God.
As
the psalmist continues, he recounts God’s faithfulness to Israel in the past.
He also trusts God even while experiencing agony.
Then the lament
turns to hope and praise: “For he has not
despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his
face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” (Psalm 22:24)
This
Psalm not only gives honest expression to the psalmist’s personal pain and
prophesies about Jesus’ experience on the cross, but it also gives us insight
into how to pray to God during our own trials.
We
can pour out our deepest pain and darkest questions to God.
We
can weep and mourn and lament the reality of our sufferings.
We can lament while
at the same time trusting in our future hope, whether that hope is in a better
tomorrow, a blessed eternity, or both. We can cry out like the psalmist, “You are my strength; come quickly to help
me” (Psalm
22:19).
This
concept helped me when grieving the devastating loss of our firstborn.
It gave me comfort
when I cried out in physical pain, “God,
where are you?”
It
gave me perspective when sorrow over the brokenness of this world threatened to
overcome me.
Trusting
in God may not always look like being dressed in our “Sunday best,” with a smile on our faces.
It may look more
like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. There he anticipated his death on the
cross and became “sorrowful and troubled”
(Matthew
26:37).
Jesus told his
disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed with
sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38).
Jesus
felt the grief of this world, so how did he prevail?
Hebrews 12:2 tells
us that, “…for the joy set before him he
endured the cross.”
This
reminds us that while it took endurance, Jesus walked toward certain death
because of the joy he knew was coming.
We
have that same hope in future joy even during the darkest nights of our lives.
2.
We can lament and rejoice.
True
hope comes from Jesus’ work on our behalf.
1 Peter 1:3 reminds us we have a “living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and we have received a heavenly “inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.”
This
is the type of hope that can get us through hard days and nights.
Peter continues by
making a surprising claim: “In all this
you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer
grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of
your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by
fire — may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
(1
Peter 1:6-7)
This
short passage has a lot of truth to chew on, including the fact that suffering
can help prove our faith, resulting in something more precious than gold.
But
perhaps Peter’s most controversial claim is that we can actually rejoice in the
midst of suffering.
There
is a paradoxical truth in the Bible that our pain is very real, but our joy is
as well.
This
deep joy comes when we look forward to the fruit that God will bring about in
our lives — including the deep joy of a rooted faith that has been refined
through suffering.
Peter continues, “Though you have not seen him, you love him;
and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with
an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your
faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)
While
our earthly pain is great, the joy of our salvation is greater still.
This
isn’t always an easy concept to understand. I’ve felt a conflict within my
heart in moments of overwhelming grief or deep physical pain.
Jesus
used the analogy of a woman giving birth to explain to his disciples how pain
can turn to joy.
He pointed out that
“when her baby is born she forgets the
anguish because of her joy" (John 16:21).
This analogy struck me after the birth of my fourth child.
While I handled my
labor and deliveries fairly well, there was a moment right before giving birth
where I thought, “Nothing can be worth
this amount of pain.”
Moments
later, with my child on my chest, I realized (yet again) how wrong I was.
No
one would deny that a woman’s labor can be painful — sometimes extremely so — but
that doesn’t mean that her joy isn’t real too.
Like
a laboring woman, we can endure in suffering because of the joy set before us.
3. Suffering doesn't mean God has turned
against us.
One
fear that clouds the minds of many suffering believers is that God is punishing
them.
When
circumstances are bleak, it can feel like God has turned against you.
In
the book of Job, Job’s friends make this mistake as well as they look on the
devastation of Job’s life.
He
had lost his wealth, his children, his social standing, and his health.
They were certain
that if Job would only “seek God
earnestly and plead with the almighty” (Job 8:5) that his troubles would go away.
They
said so in ignorance, not knowing that Job had been declared by God to be a man
of “perfect integrity” (Job 1:8).
While
certainly suffering gives us another opportunity to seek God and repent of any
known sin, it would be unwise and unbiblical to assume that suffering means God
has turned against us.
When
explaining “the sufferings of this
present time” (Romans
8:18),
Paul returns to the analogy of a birthing mother.
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as
in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we
ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait
eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this
hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what
they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it
patiently.”
(Romans
8:22-25)
Again,
a birthing mother groans in pain, but also in hope and expectation for the
coming joy.
We
are waiting eagerly for the redemption of our bodies, but it hasn’t come yet.
This is why a few
verses later Paul tells us, “And we know
that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been
called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
Our
pain isn’t meaningless, nor a sign of God’s displeasure.
We
can trust that every tear, every groan, every hardship will be redeemed.
This is why Paul
can so confidently say, “I consider that
our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be
revealed in us” (Romans
8:18).
Paul continues, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:31-32)?
Paul
reminds us that through Christ, we are no longer condemned. No trouble,
hardship, persecution, or danger can separate us from His love (Romans 8:37-39).
4.
God won’t forsake us.
Our
hope pushes us to look forward, despite our suffering, to the day when Christ
returns (Psalm
22:27).
Meanwhile, we
remember that God has promised, “Never
will I leave you, never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
Or again, as Jesus
said, “...surely I am with you always, to
the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
Then, redeemed
humanity will “be his people, and God
himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3)
This
is the great hope we have in Christ, deeper and wider than all of our dark
days, for we know of the joy set before us.
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” (Revelations 21:4-5)
Kimi Harris is a writer, mother
of three, and wife of a pastor. She and her husband serve in the Midwest. Learn
more about her writing at KimiHarris.com. You can also find her on Instagramand
Twitter.
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