During my years of ministry as a pastor and emergency services chaplain, I’ve had the privilege of bringing comfort to many whose lives were suddenly turned upside down by tragedy.
A dreamhouse burned down in a matter of minutes. A loved one ripped away by a fatal accident, a homicide, or a suicide. A sudden diagnosis of a terminal illness. Just to name a few. Events leading to overwhelming shock, pain, and grief.
Many, whether they were church-going Christians, believers, or unbelievers grapple with similar questions: Did I sin? Is God punishing me? Does He not love me anymore? How can a loving God let this happen?
Those questions express some deeply held notions about God. Notions that seem logical but are dead wrong and can lead us astray from faith in His love.
Notions like:
“I deserve better than this.”
“If God loved me, He’s supposed to keep my life free from pain and problems.”
“Allowing someone to suffer isn’t love, but cruelty.”
Pain causes grief – grief over the loss of property or life. Grief over the loss of peace and happiness. Grief over not knowing how to handle such pain and adversity and where it will lead to. Grief over watching others suffer. And grief leads us to a fork in the road.
One direction takes us down the path of destructive grief. That’s where we begin to feel sorry for ourselves. We resent having to suffer. We may get angry at the ones who caused it, upset with God for allowing it, and with ourselves for not being able to prevent it or not knowing what to do with it. Satan sits at that fork, stirring it up: ” See? God doesn’t love you! If you hadn’t been such a sinner, He would not have allowed this to happen. Might as well stop trusting God since He let you down. Maybe you’re not even saved.”
Start agreeing with those lies and you’ll descend into resentment, bitterness, depression, mistrust, anxiety, and loss of hope and confidence. They are prisons that are not easy to get out of.
The other fork leads you onto the path of constructive grief. Grief that asks, “What can I learn from this and how can I become a better version of myself as a result of this painful experience?”
God is waiting for you at that trailhead. He doesn’t shield you from pain and adversity but offers His hand to guide you through it with the fullness of His strength, wisdom, and understanding. The peace you can’t find inside of you or in your circumstances He’ll pour out into your heart and mind.
Soon you find out why His love sometimes hurts. It is the love of a father who disciplines His children. Hebrews 12 explains it well:
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5-11, ESV)
No child likes discipline. No human being likes to hurt, be confused, or feel that they have more pain and adversity than they can handle.
But for a Christian, pain has a purpose. God does not waste a single sorrow, pang, or tear. If we walk down the path of constructive grief with Him in the faith that He wants us to grow through our pain, we soon find out that He has a lot to teach and show us. He does not bring you back to the way things were – your life is never the same after a great loss. Instead, He leads you to a new normal filled with deeper understanding, stronger faith, and deeper compassion.
He uses pain to perfect us. In it we learn that God’s love is not giving us what we want, but what He knows we need. Beware of any notion that our material and emotional comforts are the result of God’s love. When those are rudely disrupted, it will cause you to question His good intentions toward you. Remember, instead, this promise from Jesus: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33, ESV)
Your peace does not come from a trouble-free life. It comes from Christ within us giving the strength and serenity that comes from faith in Him seeing us through. Your trouble may range from “first-world” hassles of dealing with bad customer service to being terminally ill, from being laughed at for believing in Jesus to being tortured and imprisoned for it. In all those things, and every degree of adversity, count your trouble as joy:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4, ESV)
When God’s love hurts, don’t go down the path of resentment. Take the road less traveled and let Him make you a better you in the image of Christ.