Are you in trouble? The most important thing to know is that God has a plan. Our trials are not random events outside of his control. Where the enemy has attacked us and caused us harm and pain, we need to know how to work with God in it.
What is he teaching us? Why has he allowed us to go through this? How is he refining us? How is he drawing us closer to himself? Is he dealing with wrong dependencies on people or things other than himself? Are there areas of disobedience in which we have opened ourselves to attack?
Maybe, as with Joseph, there is a greater plan involving more than just our individual lives, in which our testing is a positive part of something wider God is preparing.
Let’s get one thing straight, though. God is not the source of suffering. Our rebellion, which allowed sin and death into the world, is leveraged by Satan for his purposes, and that is the culprit. However, God uses even the plans of the enemy for good.
Suffering becomes the occasion of God’s fatherly and constructive discipline, and thus an opportunity for a deeper understanding and receiving of his love. God’s discipline is not punishment. It is a loving drawing of us toward him through his teaching us and holding us in adversity. Though painful, it is always for our good (Heb. 12:5-11). It yields the “peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). It brings peace with God, maturity and fruitfulness in God’s service.
Often we put up walls and hide behind them, because we are afraid of a greater demand of God on our lives or families. God graciously uses suffering to tear down those walls. His goal is to make us more fearful of disobeying him than of any possible personal challenges.
Other times we are just scared of going through things because we don’t really have the assurance that God will show up for us. God will use trials to enable us to discover that he does keep us in the midst of them. Overcoming fear through suffering is often the beginning of our usefulness for God.
It can be hard, especially when things are difficult, to discern what God is doing. But with a right heart, solid friends around us and lots of prayer, and sometimes after the dust has settled a little, we can usually begin to see his hand at work. How many times have we looked back and said something like this, “I wouldn’t want to go through that again, but I am glad somehow that it happened. I’m stronger, not weaker, because of it.”
Even if we can’t see his plan, he still has one and he’s working it out. If times are tough, hang on, get help and trust in his goodness. He will not fail you.
