Over the years, I have had many people reveal to me a terrible trial or sickness they’re facing and the sickening feeling they have that God has cursed them or punished them for some unknown sin they have committed. People brought those same kinds of assumptions to Jesus, and He opened their eyes to the many ways that God redeems the trials we face for our good.
1. God may want to show His power in healing
Jesus and the disciples spent a lot of time walking, and it allowed them to observe people from all walks of life. One day, they passed a man who had been born blind. The disciples assumed that either he or his parents must have sinned. Jesus corrected them, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). Jesus went on to heal him (John 9:7) and show His power over the sickness and pain that is such a huge part of our world. Revealing God’s power in healing is just one of the ways that He redeems our trials, however.
2. God may be maturing our character
Have you ever considered how impatient, self-absorbed, and ungrateful we would all be if we never faced difficulties? The Bible says that we ought to celebrate our suffering – not because we enjoy it – but because we welcome what it can do in our lives. In Romans 5:3-4, Paul says, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Show me someone who is unusually patient, compassionate, and grateful, and chances are they have been refined through suffering.
3. God may be teaching us to rely on Him
Some of the Bible’s most faithful individuals suffered the most. The apostle Paul discerned that one of the ways that suffering was being used in his life was to teach him to rely on God. He described one such incident: “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). When times are good, we tend to forget God and rely on ourselves, but difficulties can remind us how much we really need God.
4. God may be equipping us to comfort others
Even though God didn’t always spare the apostle Paul from his trials, and He doesn’t promise to do that for us either, Paul did experience God’s comfort in His suffering. And he could see that it enabled him to minister to people he might otherwise have been unable to help. He wrote, God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:4). There’s a unique impact we can have when we’ve sat in people’s shoes and have firsthand experience of the kind of trial they’re walking through.
Couldn’t God have come up with an easier way, though?
Reflecting on some of the ways that God redeems the pain in our lives can be encouraging. But usually, people ask some version of the question, “Yeah, but couldn’t God have come up with an easier way to show His power, mature our character, teach us to rely on Him, and equip us to comfort others?”
It’s at that point we need to step back and remember how we found ourselves in this mess in the first place. According to the Bible, God put us in paradise to enjoy Him and a life of perfect love, goodness, and peace, but we had a better plan. Despite God’s warnings, we wanted to taste the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Ever since then, pain and death have been part of the package of human experience, and God has been working to make the most of the hand that we’ve chosen for ourselves. And He keeps inviting us to the paradise that He’s prepared for those who trust in Jesus.
Be encouraged that there’s a good God at work in your life even when bad things are happening. As you cooperate with the good that He’s seeking to do, you can see your suffering result in greater maturity, trust, and effectiveness. Look to Him for strength and wisdom today!
In awe of Him,
Paul
P. S. If this is new to you and you think it’s something you’d like to explore, I’ve written a free, 12-week course called The Unstuck Life that walks you through the essentials of Jesus’ teachings in daily, bite-sized messages that you can read or watch by video. To learn more, click on the image below.
