I’m a good person. I try to do the right things. Good grief, God, I’m serving You! I don’t deserve to be in pain like this! This shouldn’t be happening to me! I’ve had those thoughts. Maybe you have, too.
Right now, there is a young family in my church that is going through an incredibly overwhelming and difficult season. They love God passionately. They are always serving others. Several years ago, they added two boys to their family of four through foreign adoption.
After two heart wrenching years—filled with family counseling sessions, individual therapy and much prayer—one of the boys was unable to bond with their family. The reasons were complicated and not the fault of the parents or their new young son. Though it ripped their hearts out, they felt God’s unmistakable leading in placing him with another family where he is now doing well.
Shortly after this season, their biological son had a retinal detachment and lost most of his sight in one eye. A few months ago, their oldest daughter was diagnosed with a very rare form of pediatric thyroid cancer—prognosis unknown at this time. And as I write, the mother is awaiting surgery to remove her own thyroid, as the doctors suspect she may have cancer as well.
Humanly, our first thought is to ask, “What? Why?” From our perspective, this family does not deserve this. Shouldn’t their good deeds and faith in God inoculate them from this kind of relentless, overwhelming pain and suffering?
Now here is a hard truth, friends. One of those that we’d rather conveniently forget: Living a good life, believing in God is not a “get-out-of-suffering” free card. We don’t deserve anything. We aren’t entitled to any certain outcome. We aren’t entitled to a life without pain and suffering. We deserve death. We deserve nothing.
While we can cling to the belief that our suffering and pain is unfair, let’s consider what true fairness would be. True fairness would be eternal separation from God. After all, from the beginning of time, that is what we’ve chosen: “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23 NLT).
But a loving God gave us another choice through the brutal death of His Son Jesus Christ. It is only by the mercy of a loving, compassionate God that we have the hope of redemption:
Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus. (Romans 3:24-26 NLT)
It’s a Matter of Trust
God loved us enough to send His Son to die for us. He is worthy of our trust. As we choose to believe God’s Word and trust His character, even when we don’t feel like it and our circumstances tell a different story, we open the door for the Holy Spirit to do a transforming work in our hearts and lives. Psalm 13 gives us a beautiful picture of what this looks like:
O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever?
How long will you look the other way?
How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
with sorrow in my heart every day?
How long will my enemy have the upper hand?
Turn and answer me, O Lord my God!
Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die.
Don’t let my enemies gloat, saying, “We have defeated him!”
Don’t let them rejoice at my downfall.
But I trust in your unfailing love.
I will rejoice because you have rescued me.
I will sing to the Lord
because he is good to me. (NLT)
The questions, “Does God really love me?” and “Is God really good?” demand satisfactory answers. I’ll never be able to explain them in a way that completely addresses all situations and removes all doubt.
We can learn about the goodness of God intellectually. It’s important for us to continually seek Him and build a solid foundation of truth that we find in His Word. However, these questions can’t be fully settled in the mind.
A rock-solid trust and assurance of God’s goodness is found most powerfully when our growing knowledge of God is confirmed in our experience—when He meets us powerfully and sweetly in the midst of our suffering.
As strange as it sounds to us, the darkness of our circumstances reveals the light of God’s hope, love, and goodness.
© Melinda Means. This post includes an excerpt from Invisible Wounds: Hope While You’re Hurting. Used with permission.
Invisible Wounds: Hope While You’re Hurting is currently available on Amazon Kindle for $2.99 for a limited time. It’s also available in paperback for $8.99.
About Invisible Wounds:
So many of us walk around looking fine. Hidden beneath the surface, however, are deep, painful physical, spiritual and emotional wounds. We feel isolated in our pain. We feel guilty about the private doubts we have about God and His goodness. We live alone with our invisible wounds.
In this book, Melinda draws from her long history with chronic illness—hers and her son’s—and also shares the stories of seven brave, beautiful women who reveal their hidden hurts. Throughout its pages, she tackles the tough spiritual questions and dark, raw emotions that accompany suffering and illuminates the path that leads to hope that heals.
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