Suffering

The Doctrine of Suffering

Suffering and pain are a natural part of life. The human body experiences pain as a signal that something is not right. In a broader sense, human suffering reveals something not right with our world. And what is not right? Sin shattered God’s perfect world and complicated our lives with brokenness and pain (Genesis 3; Revelation 21). By nature, suffering is difficult. As humans, we like to avoid the difficult. So how do you process a life and world so filled with suffering? Even when you accept the good purposes of God in what feels bad, what if no relief is in sight? What if there are never answers for your hard questions in this life?

Joseph (Genesis 37-50) suffered very deep pain for a very long time. He lived in dark places with little hope of the light of deliverance. Perhaps you are waiting for deliverance from suffering. Maybe you have become weary bearing burdens that feel too heavy to bear. God did not leave Joseph in his suffering without His tender daily provisions. While he waited for deliverance, Joseph carried on in God’s strength. What helps you keep going when everything in you wants to quit?

Bad things in the world or in your life do not change the goodness of God. God will deliver His people from sin and suffering. Our timetable for deliverance is not synchronized with God’s. The challenge is that believers must wait for full deliverance – the final defeat of sin, suffering and death. But while we wait, we gain the opportunity to trust God and find Him faithful. We should expect trouble in this life. We should expect bodies that age, people who fail us and constant hard work among the thorns. The suffering here makes us long for the deliverance there – when God brings his eternal plan to its glorious completion. When our burdens are more than we can bear, our blessed Savior provides what we cannot provide in our own strength. We learn to trust God because we need to trust God. God is worth trusting.

Suffering can make us feel abandoned or alone. However, believers are never alone. Your God will neither leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). To suffer long and not seek God’s higher purposes can distort your understanding of God’s permeating and proactive goodness. To focus only on the suffering leaves you to only endure pain and miss how God is “with you.” To interpret your suffering by only what you understand is to miss the benefit of trusting God for the greater things He seeks to accomplish. Suffering can be profitable, but we can fail to reap its benefits and waste the pain when we focus only on ourselves.

God is with you in suffering and uses it to tenderize your heart and draw you to Himself. To understand that God loves you enough to allow suffering in your life, even the long and hard kind, brings perspective on the roughest days. God’s ultimate purpose is not in the pain, but in what it produces. Romans 5:3-5 says: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” God’s purposes for your life are never thwarted by suffering or loss.