God Can Bear Your Doubt

[Ben Light] Has God ever felt distant to you?

Maybe it's a a difficult situation that you're enduring, a a job loss, a significant health issue. The Bible refers to these types of things as trials. Despite praying intensely, you don't hear an answer.

If God loves me, why does He allow me to suffer? How could a loving God seemingly turn His face away from one of His children when I'm struggling to make ends meet? Why didn't He prevent me from this diagnosis? Why hasn't my deliverance come? These are timeless questions that many have asked amid difficult trials.

Many people wrestle with the question, how can a loving God allow suffering? And for some, that question becomes a reason to pull away from God or to deny His existence. After all, if God truly is a loving creator, why doesn't He remove all pain and fill life with constant happiness and bountiful blessings for everyone?

It can be easy to become discouraged and to lose hope when it feels like God, the one who should care for us the most, is allowing for us to struggle. But what if suffering doesn't mean God has abandoned us? What if even in our darkest moments, God is not absent, but present? What if our suffering becomes one of the ways that we can come to understand His purpose and His care for us?

Apostle John records a particular point that Christ makes to His disciples in John 16. On the night that Christ was betrayed, knowing His crucifixion was near, He took the time to encourage His disciples. After spending more than 3 years with them, He knew that His impending death would deeply shake them. And instead of sugar-coating the situation or filling them with false hope, He spoke plainly to them.

Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? Indeed, the hour is coming, yes, has now come that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I'm not alone because the Father is with me. These things I've spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Despite the forthrightness of His statement, He didn't leave it there. He provided a word of encouragement to His disciples that He has overcome the world, that He was victorious regardless of the events that were soon to take place. Christ didn't promise His followers an easy life, but through the life that He lived, He shows us a way through our trials.

During the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero, the Christians in the Roman Empire began to experience increasing persecution. Roman officials who had largely protected Christians against aggression from the people of Judea in the early years of the first century church began to see them as a convenient scapegoat for the empire's problems came to a head during Nero's reign. During the time in which Peter wrote his first epistle, the brethren began to face increasing challenge. Some at times even face torture and death for their beliefs. Does that mean that God somehow abandoned these brethren or that they sinned and they received the punishment due their sins?

The Apostle Peter in an effort to comfort the people of God experiencing these things wrote, "We shouldn't find it strange when we face extremely challenging times." He described how these trials are a normal part of life, especially for Christians who are truly following God. He not only admonished them to expect these trials, but he also encouraged them to rejoice in them. For if they suffered for the name of Christ, they glorify Him through their suffering.

Trials and suffering will take place. And sometimes, despite prayers for deliverance and supplications to God, the trial is not removed in the way or the timing that we hope for.

Hebrews 11 provides a beautiful and somber example of this. Throughout the passage, we find a description of God's faithful through the years. We see the heroes of faith outlined. And the author of Hebrews describes how through faith in God, these incredible things were done. "And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barack and Samson, Jeep of David and Samuel and the prophets - who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women receive back their dead by resurrection."

These incredible miracles are what we think of when we think of deliverance. And when we consider their strong example of faith, we we see the dramatic escape and we see God's protection.

But if we read on, we see that there are others in this passage who instead of receiving the deliverance that they prayed for, instead experienced suffering. It continues, "Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mockings and floggings and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. All these all these though commended through their faith did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better for us that apart from us they should not be made perfect."

These followers were no less faithful. God didn't love them any less. As hard as it can be to experience and to accept sometimes God's answer is no. There can be purpose and intention in our suffering.

Paul writes in Romans that all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. Everything that we experience in the end works out for good. Even if that good is not seen in this life. The believers listed in Hebrews 11 all died in the faith not having received the promise. that promise was coming and it was coming in the Kingdom of God.

So how do we actually deal with suffering with that concept in mind? At times you may feel that life has given you more than you can endure and yet it can still be used for good.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians of his own experiences. "For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despared even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us, in whom we trust that he will deliver us. You also helping together in prayer for us that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many."

Our human strength, our human capabilities will fail. God never fails. When we rely on Him, He will see us through. But it's critical that in that experience, we gain His perspective and that we understand that this life isn't all there is. The goal is the Kingdom. The character that we develop here in this life prepares us for that eventuality.

So what role does God actually play in our suffering?

You know, He's not maliciously putting stumbling blocks in front of us to see if we'll fall. That's what Satan does. But God may allow trials. And when He does, He remains sovereign. He can use that hardship to deepen our faith, to build our character, and to prepare us for His Kingdom.

God allowed Satan to test Job. But He told Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power. Only do not lay a hand on his person." God put specific boundaries around what Satan was capable of doing. And despite the intense and traumatic trials that Job experienced, God remained in complete control of the situation. Even in what He allowed, He set boundaries and He sustained Job through a trial that Job could not have endured by human strength alone. In the end, God used Job's trials for good. Through these trials, Job came to understand God's character more, which strengthened his relationship with God. By the end of Job's story, he was more blessed than he was at the beginning.

Here we see the primary takeaway. Though it may seem like God has turned His back on us in the midst of our sufferings, the opposite is actually true. He is right there in the middle of our tragedy. And the presence of trials in our life doesn't mean God has abandoned us. Even in suffering, He can work out some greater purpose, shaping our character and drawing us closer to Him.

God often uses hardship to shape righteous character so we can take comfort in our trials knowing that God is working in us.

The next time you face a difficult circumstance and you feel tried beyond your strength, it is not wrong to cry out why. But don't stop there. Ask, "Father, help me trust You. What do you want me to learn? How can I draw closer to You through this particular trial?" He's never far away and He wants each of us to call out and to rely on Him.

To learn more, check out our Beyond Today video, Why Do Good People Suffer? And be sure to follow and subscribe to Beyond Today for more scripturally based content.