When Suffering Comes, Lean on What You Know
November 11, 2021 • by Kristen Wetherell
Will God heal me? Will we be able to have kids? And if so, would our kids deal with sickness because of me?
After six years of mysterious symptoms, eight visits to specialists, and zero answers, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. It was a harrowing, confusing time. The muscular pain and chronic fatigue continued as I began an intense season of treatment. With an unknown path ahead, my newlywed husband and I were struck with fear and filled with questions about the future. We longed for stability and answers.
Suffering may cause us to look apprehensively to God with our questions. But what we need more than answers is confident assurance in who he is.
When the disease pains us, our prodigal child grieves us, our friend betrays us, or our marriage is tested, it is natural to wonder what God is doing. Many of us ask, “Why, God?” and our question isn’t wrong in itself. But perhaps the better question is, “Why am I asking God why?”
“Suffering may cause us to look apprehensively to God with our questions. But what we need more than answers is confident assurance in who he is. ”
Beware of Pride and Presumption
Two heart-postures are worth examining: pride and presumption.
Pride demands answers, and presumption assumes it knows those answers. Neither are helpful or fruitful, and both can lead us into dangerous territory (Prov. 16:18). When it comes to thinking about suffering, the question isn’t, “Can I figure out precisely what God is doing?” but rather, “What would it look like to trust God when I can’t figure out what he’s doing?”
Lean on What You Know
God is bigger and wiser than any of us can comprehend. Just as a tiny flea can’t begin to grasp the ways of human beings, so we can’t begin to fathom the will of our almighty, infinite Creator. Scripture attests to this:
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable. (Is. 40:28)
The secret things belong to the Lord our God… (Deut. 29:29)
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Rom. 11:33)
We aren’t meant to grasp everything about our great God. That is what makes him worthy of fear, reverence, and worship. In seasons of suffering, then, it is better for us to lean on what we know than to question what we may not ever know.
What Do We Know Is True?
Perhaps your suffering involves the daily hardships of a broken world—annoying little people, toilsome work, or ever-aging bodies and minds. Or maybe you’ve gone through a life-altering affliction: the loss of a parent or child, a terminal diagnosis, a tragic accident.
In every degree and kind of suffering, when we can’t understand why we must fix our minds on Who.
Here are three faith-fortifying, stabilizing realities I have leaned on in my own pain. I hope they’re a comfort to you.
“In every degree and kind of suffering, when we can’t understand why we must fix our minds on Who. ”
God is For Me, Not Against Me
“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:31–32)
If Jesus has rescued you from your greatest problem—the sin that once enslaved you—will he not now provide all you need to honor him in your earthly troubles? Rest assured, God is on your side. Since Jesus has reconciled you with the Father through his sacrifice, there is nothing that can keep you from his love.
You are God’s blood-bought child now, and who gives a child what is bad for him? Certainly not a perfectly good heavenly Father.
This doesn’t mean we will be spared pain; rather it means we have solid hope in our pain. Nothing—not even the worst suffering—will derail God’s good purposes for his people. He intends to bring you all the way home and to make you more like his Son in the process.
God is Good, Only and Ever Good
“Truly God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.” (Ps. 73:1)
Everything God does is right, praiseworthy, and blameless. When in doubt, we look to the cross. The greatest good the world has ever seen came through the deepest darkness the world has ever known. God’s own Son hanging upon a tree of suffering is the climactic display of his goodness.
We may know this, but how do we become convinced of it? Asaph, who wrote Psalm 73, gives us a clue: “But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge” (v. 28). Asaph had been struggling with envy (v. 3), doubt (v. 13), and bitterness (vv. 21–22), but he chose to stay near God, “[making] the Lord God [his] refuge.”
We stay near to God through his Word, where he reveals himself. As we humbly and prayerfully steep our minds in Scripture, our hearts soak up God’s heart—his character and his goodness—and we find our faith strengthened like Asaph’s: “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end” (vv. 16–17, italics added).
As we make the Lord our refuge, we will be able to say, “Truly God is good.”
This Comes From My Father’s Hand
“[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will…” (Eph. 1:11).
In his boundless wisdom, God has a good and gracious plan for his children and for the world. One day, when Christ returns in power and glory to take his people home (1 Thess. 4:16–17), creation will be transformed, brokenness and sin will flee (Rom. 8:18–20), and God’s people will bask in his beauty forever.
God’s good pleasure in the everlasting joy of his people is the goal of all things, and the “counsel of his will” always works toward this end. Even in suffering.
But how? Once again, we lean on what we know, looking at the cross and the empty tomb where Jesus was plunged into pain, death, and the wrath of his Father only to defeat evil from the inside out: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col. 2:15).
A once-dead man walked out of his grave. And so the darkest day in history meant the brightest future for God’s people. All of this came from “the counsel of [God’s] will” (Acts 2:23), which is also at work for you, even in your own darkness.
Fix Your Mind
So when your suffering comes—the bad news, the last paycheck, the anxiety, the unclear future—when you can’t understand why, fix your mind on Who. Lean on what you know:
“This comes from my Father’s hand. He is for me, not against me. For my God is good.”
Kristen Wetherell is a wife, mother, and writer. She is the author of Fight Your Fears and co-author of the award-winning book Hope When It Hurts. She writes regularly for digital publications and enjoys teaching the Bible to women at conferences and retreats. Read Kristen’s writing on her website and connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
MORE FROM JOURNEYWOMEN
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen articles are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select writers each week, articles shared on the Journeywomen website do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the authors or any other resources mentioned.
