Suffering

They say that the two certainties of life are death and taxes but I would argue there is a third, and that is that each and every one of us will suffer at some point, and probably at many points during our lifetimes.

We will all face disappointments, we will lose people we love, we may suffer ill health – it won’t look the same for each of us but suffering will be part of all our stories. We live in a sinful world, we are sinful people, so suffering is inevitable but it is never the end of the story.

I don’t have the answers to the whys and the wherefores but I do know that one of the mysteries of God is that he uses the hurts and struggles that we face to bring a beauty and a hope that can come no other way. I am more and more convinced that it is one of the most powerful ways God uses to allow us to truly know Him and to become who He longs for us to be.

We need to feel it, to wrestle and struggle with it – I have spent many hours of my life railing at God, screaming and doubting and angry. He is big enough, He knows it all and He understands. It is such important part of processing the things we go through but we also have a choice as to whether we stay in those places of bitterness and pain or whether we chose to lean into God, trusting Him to take the shattered pieces and build something beautiful.

Our suffering is never wasted with God. He may not prevent it but He always repurposes it.

He gives us a choice to respond in trust and surrender to Him, to allow Him to redeem, restore and transform. His promise is that He will never leave us, and that He will use our sufferings to do a deeper work in our characters and our stories but also to bless others. 

If you are there right now I know how hard it is, to feel like you only barely holding on but hear right now that He is fighting for you, He is intimately involved in the detail, that nothing comes to you that doesn’t first pass by Him. You are safe in His arms – He is your refuge and your shelter. He promises to be near to the broken-hearted. He will always make a way even when it feels like there is no way. I could go on and on.

And if you aren’t there right now be training for the trials that will come.

Get on your knees – talk to Him, listen to Him. Open His word – the truth will be your hope in those hard times. Be in community - He never meant for us to do this on our own. Keep asking Him what He is saying and what He is doing.

“Great faith is a product of great fights. Great testimonies are the outcome of great tests. Great triumphs can only come out of great trials.”

Smith Wigglesworth.

BLOG AUTHOR: BECKY FORDER

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash