Finding Hope in Suffering
“Having the right perspective makes all the difference in the world. Take two people and put them in the exact same situation, like a concentration camp. That situation will break one person and the other person survives. Why? One word: Perspective. The ‘problem’ is not your problem. Your problem is how you look at your problem – and that’s your problem. Suffering and pain are inevitable, but misery is optional.” – Tony Walliser
Read Romans 8:18-27
Finding Hope in Suffering
“Why does God allow suffering?” How often have you heard someone ask this? How many times have you wondered it yourself?
Hundreds of books have focused on this subject. C.S. Lewis wrote The Problem of Pain, and Christian author Philip Yancey has written numerous books about suffering, including Where Is God When It Hurts? and Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants. Yet the question remains – why does God allow suffering?
Suffering is an everyday reality. All we have to do is watch the evening news to confirm this. At least half of each broadcast is dominated by reports about various forms of suffering – violence, serious traffic accidents, fires, natural disasters, wars.
What about for us as believers? I’ve heard people – even some preachers – say things like, “God wants you to be happy” and “You’re a King’s kid. He wants you to be healthy and to prosper!” Only problem is, we can’t find statements like that anywhere in the Bible. If anything, it’s just the opposite.
The apostle Paul knew this all too well. He said, “…there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me” (2 Corinthians 12:7). As we read through the Bible and scan the list of people in the Hebrews 11 “hall of faith,” we realize that every one of them endured various forms of suffering.
Suffering seems to be an integral part of our ‘job description’ as followers of Jesus. One of my favorite Bible verses is Philippians 3:10, in which Paul wrote, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.”
Interestingly, when I’ve heard people recite this verse, they’re all about knowing Christ and experiencing the power of His resurrection. We all want that, right? But when it comes to the part about “sharing in His sufferings,” their voices seem to trail off, as if to say, ‘I’m not too sure about this part.’
That’s understandable. Who intentionally seeks suffering? I’ve often told people, ‘I wouldn’t mind pain – if it didn’t hurt so much.’ But the truth is, there can be much to be gained from suffering, even if sometimes we can only see the benefits after the pain has passed.
Have you ever looked at the rings of a tree after it’s been cut down? The rings aren’t uniform. Some are wider than others. There’s a reason for this: the narrower rings represent years when growing conditions were poor and the tree grew more slowly. And yet, carpenters will tell you the hardest, strongest wood comes from these narrow rings. During times of adversity, the tree actually grew stronger.
For most of us, looking back on the pace of our spiritual growth we’ll realize a similar principle. We grow stronger and deeper in our faith during times of pain and suffering. That’s because adversity strips away our sense of self-reliance, helping us realize how desperately we need to depend upon the Lord.
In the passage about his ‘thorn in the flesh,’ Paul went on to say, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me…For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).
Considering Tony’s quote above about the importance of perspective, that’s the key to enduring – and even thriving through – whatever suffering God allows to come our way. When we’re going through hard times, all we can see is what’s happening right now. But if we strive to gain God’s heavenly perspective, we can have the hope – the confident assurance – that He has a purpose behind the pain. When we’re weak, then He is strong.
This is why Paul, who endured being beaten, stoned, surviving shipwrecks, and other kinds of adversity, could declare, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). It wasn’t that he enjoyed suffering, but he looked ahead to learn how God would use it.
Even in the hardest of times, he knew that something much better was awaiting, a time when “…the whole creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
We might not have an answer or a reason for every instance of suffering we or people we know confront, but we can be assured of this: God doesn’t waste pain.