Sometimes it can be difficult to trust the Lord when you are going through hardships. Whether it be financial, health, car or relationship troubles it can be hard to trust in the Lord. You may ask “why?” or “How am I going to get through this?” People may even get angry at God but please know that He is with you through it all. God is with each of us as we go through the struggles in our lives. God will guide us as we go through our ordeals. We need to lean on Him and pray harder. I could be angry at God about my having a hysterectomy and still having health issues afterwards but I’m not. I know that He’s beside me and that God knows all that is going on with me. I feel God like never before. Everything happens for a purpose. God needs me to go through this bit of suffering for one reason or another. When God’s plan for me is apparent I’ll know. God always has something good come from bad so I am trusting in the Lord.
I get emails from GodTube and am sharing this reflection:
Suffering with God
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. (v.3).
Pain. We take pills to ease it, hold prayer meetings to heal it, develop strategies to avoid it, and think up philosophies to explain it. We rarely, however, consider suffering as part of God’s plan for our lives.
Classic spiritual authors take a different approach to suffering. Take the 17th-century monk Brother Lawrence, for example. Lame in one leg and acquainted with illness, in The Practice of the Presence of God,he says: “I have been often near expiring, but I never was so much satisfied as then. Accordingly, I did not pray for any relief, but I prayed for strength to suffer with courage, humility, and love. Ah, how sweet it is to suffer with God!”
“The heart is stretched through suffering, and enlarged,” wrote renowned Quaker teacher Thomas Kelly. He believed that suffering helps us feel God’s burden for a world in pain and encourages us to respond.
Or let me give a more recent example. In 1967, a diving accident left Joni Eareckson Tada a quadriplegic. She told me this during a radio interview: “Christians sometimes want to erase suffering out of the dictionary. [But] if you read the Bible, you’ll see that it is often God’s best tool to make us more like Jesus.”
There’s nothing wrong with visiting a doctor when we’re sick, and we should pray when we’re ill (James 5:13-18). But Brother Lawrence, Thomas Kelly, and Joni Eareckson Tada discovered something deeper about suffering: God wants to use it to transform our character (Romans 5:3-5), make us mature (James 1:2-4), give us empathy for others (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), prove our faith (1 Peter 1:7), and make us like Jesus (Romans 8:28-29).
“How sweet it is to suffer with God!” are the words of people who can rejoice in suffering (Romans 5:3), because God’s purposes in it are their priority.
—Sheridan Voysey
In our suffering we can become closer to Christ. We can offer our suffering in union with the Cross. We can become more like Jesus.
During one of my major trials in my life a friend of mine said to me that you are like Jesus. I thought to myself “Am I like Jesus?” My friend said you are being wrongly accused and persecuted so you are like Jesus. I realized that Yes, I was like Jesus in this way. But I asked myself, “Do I really want to be like Jesus if this is what it takes?” Back then as I was going through my ordeal I said “no”. But now that I look back and have grown in my faith I say “Yes, this is what we are called to be, called to be Christlike.” Being like Christ means being wronged and persecuted just as He was. We are all called to be martyrs for Christ. Going through sufferings during our lives is like us becoming martyrs little by little.
Great post Teresa, and thanks for sharing so much information on “suffering.” You know Teresa last year I thought mine would never end. Some still have not, but I have finally reached that place of peace with it all, that I have searched for all of my life. I can handle the “daily” ones so much better because of them. I am in pain every single day of my life. I have learned that is not the important thing in my life. Jesus is and how I handle it. That is why I try and start my day knowing how I want it to end spiritually now. It has made all the difference in my life. Again thanks for sharing this. God Bless, SR
Thank you so much for your comment, SR. Being at peace is wonderful and I am so glad that you have reached a place of peace in your life. Jesus being at the center of our lives is the most important thing. In some ways I feel at peace and other I don’t. My new health issues have made being at peace very challenging. I didn’t realize it was going to be like after the hysterectomy. My options were few and neither were good but I just wish I had a better idea of what life would be like after the hysterectomy. There is more I would like to say but for some reason tears are coming up and I’m having trouble thinking because of lack of hormones so if I think of what I’m trying to say or something more than I’ve said here I will leave another response later. God Bless.
Teresa,
I know throughout the short time we have had discussions via blogs we have had disagreements regarding the Church, but believe we have had none regarding Faith.
That said, I myself have lost many, too many in my youth including my Mother, that I am almost numb to death and illness until I lost my Dad.
I neither know the reason for losing either or at the times, but do know that both, and yes their passing, made me a better and stronger man. I speak not of testosterone but rather humility and Faith, both test us.
We are but on limited time here on Earth and events have guided me to make the very best of it. What else can we do?
Christopher,
First I want to say thank you for your comment. I agree with you about our Faith. Even with our disagreements on the Church, which has been few, we probably agree more on the Church than we disagree as least as far as our beliefs go.
I’m sorry that you lost your mother at a young age and your dad later on.
Trials sure do make us stronger in faith and humble. The only thing we can do is make the best of it.
I haven’t written much on Teresamerica about my having a hysterectomy, at least near as much as I have here, but even with the struggles before, having the hysterectomy, and afterward I have become stronger in my faith and more humble in trusting in God’s will for me. Believe me it was extremely hard for me to have the surgery because of not having any children but beforehand I talked and listened to God a lot. He told me, “Teresa you have gone through enough pain. It is time for you to be rid of the pain. You need to do this for you so you can live a fruitful life.” While my recovery hasn’t gone exactly as planned I know that God is having me go through this period for a reason. I am closer to God now than I have ever been at any other point in my life. God Bless.
I find that the closer you become to Jesus, the more your suffering will increase. Maybe he is doing this to make us a more discipline follower.
I can understand the importance of suffering to a certain point. Everyone has a threshold and constant pain takes a toll on someone’s overall well being. Life can’t just be about suffering, for how can serve God fully if we are depleted by pain?
Hi Jade,
“For how can we serve God “fully” if we are depleted by pain?” I live in daily pain and it pretty much depletes me of my “energy” mainly, not to even mention the physical limitations. I still believe though I “serve God fully.” Even though I have limitations I serve Him within these “physical limitations” and at times “emotional.” I offer it for others, who are suffering much greater than myself. I unite them with the sufferings of Christ, which gives a whole new meaning to them. Our physical and emotional limitations, does not mean we have “spiritual limitations.” Job suffered greatly but never once betrayed God in them. Jesus suffered greater then any of us, but through His sufferings “He served God fully.” Good question. God Bless, SR
That was a very wise answer SR. Thanks for answering Jade’s question so beautifully. God Bless.
You are welcome. I think we all need to know, life changes and we all change with it. God knows this more then anyone. Just because we get older, handicapped, or sick, does not mean His plan for our lives stops. We just have to serve Him in a different way. Today I asked God, “God why was I born?” The Holy Spirit said, “Because you have something to give.” You know Teresa, we all have something to “give.” That is why we were born. No matter how much pain we are in, or what life has brought to us, God’s will, will be completed if we have a “willing heart.” It does not matter much about the body.
Love ya and God Bless, SR