Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

by Jerry Bridges

Can you trust God? Do you have such a relationship with God and such a confidence in Him that you believe He is with you in your adversity even though you do not see any evidence of His presence and His power?

It is not easy to trust God in times of adversity. No one enjoys pain, and when it comes, we want it relieved as quickly as possible. Even the apostle Paul pleaded with God three times to take away the thorn in his flesh before he finally found God’s grace to be sufficient. Joseph pleaded with Pharaoh’s cupbearer to “get me out of this prison” (Genesis 40:14). And the writer of Hebrews very honestly states, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful” (Hebrews 12:11).

I have spent a good portion of my adult life encouraging people to pursue holiness, to obey God. Yet, I acknowledge it

often seems more difficult to trust God than to obey Him.

it. The circumstances of our lives frequently appear to be dreadful and grim or perhaps even calamitous and tragic. Obeying God is worked out within well-defined boundaries of God’s revealed will. Trusting God is worked out in an arena that has no boundaries.

We do not know the extent, the duration, or the frequency of the painful, adverse circumstances in which we must frequently trust God. We are always coping with the unknown.

Yet it is just as important to trust God as it is to obey Him. When we disobey God we defy His authority and despise His holiness. But when we fail to trust God we doubt His sovereignty and question His goodness. In both cases we cast aspersions upon His majesty and His character...

In order to trust God, we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith, not of sense. And just as the faith of salvation comes through hearing the message of the gospel (see Romans 10:17), so the faith to trust God in adversity comes through the Word of God alone. It is only in the Scriptures that we find an adequate view of God’s relationship to and involvement in our painful circumstances. It is only from the Scriptures, applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that we receive the grace to trust God in adversity. In the arena of adversity, the Scriptures teach us three essential truths about God—truths we must believe if we are to trust Him in adversity. They are: • God is completely sovereign. • God is infinite in wisdom. • God is perfect in love. Someone has expressed these three truths as they relate to us in this way: “God in His love always wills what is best for us. In His wisdom He always knows what is best, and in His sovereignty He has the power to bring it about.”

Because God’s sacrifice of His Son for our sins is such an amazing act of love toward us, we tend to overlook that it was for Jesus an excruciating experience beyond all we can imagine. It was for Jesus in His humanity a calamity sufficient to cause Him to pray, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me” (Matthew 26:39), but He did not waver in His assertion of God’s sovereign control.

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men. (Lamentations 3:32-33)

Paul acknowledged what we must acknowledge if we are to trust God. God’s plan and His ways of working out His plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. We must learn to trust when we don’t understand. In subsequent chapters we will explore these three truths—the sovereignty, love, and wisdom of God—in greater detail. But the primary purpose of this book is not to explore these wonderful truths. The primary purpose is for us to become so convinced of these truths that we appropriate them in our daily circumstances, that we learn to trust God in the midst of our pain, whatever form it may take. It does not matter whether our pain is trivial or traumatic, temporary or interminable. Regardless of the nature of the circumstances, we must learn to trust God if we would glorify God in them.

But, note also, the twofold objective of God’s providence: His own glory and the good of His people. These two objectives are never antithetical; they are always in harmony with each other. God never pursues His glory at the expense of the good of His people, nor does He ever seek our good at the expense of His glory. He has designed His eternal purpose so that His glory and our good are inextricably bound together. What comfort and encouragement this should be to us. If we are going to learn to trust God in adversity, we must believe that just as certainly as God will allow nothing to subvert His glory, so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us.

I read a blasphemous statement by someone who said, “Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He’d rather not sign His own name.” A lot of Christians are doing that for God today. Often unwilling to accept the fact that God is working because they don’t understand how He is working, they have chosen to substitute the doctrine of chance for the doctrine of divine providence.

But, as so often has been observed, we are to establish our beliefs by the Bible, not by our experiences.

All people—believers as well as unbelievers—experience anxiety, frustration, heartache, and disappointment. Some suffer intense physical pain and catastrophic tragedies. But that which should distinguish the suffering of believers from unbelievers is the confidence that our suffering is under the control of an all-powerful and all-loving God; our suffering has meaning and purpose in God’s eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good.

It seems we will allow God to be anywhere except upon His throne ruling His universe according to His good pleasure and His sovereign will.

Undoubtedly, one of the reasons the book of Esther is included in Scripture is to help us see the sovereign hand of God at work behind the scenes, caring for His people. One of the more arresting things about the book is that the name of God is never once mentioned. Yet the observant reader sees God’s hand in every circumstance, bringing about the deliverance of His people just as surely as He brought about their deliverance from Egypt through mighty miracles centuries before. God was as sovereignly at work through ordinary circumstances in the time of Esther as He was through miracles in the time of Moses. The pivot point of the book of Esther is chapter 6. Prior to the events of the night recorded in that chapter, the lives of all the Jews in the entire realm of the Persian King Xerxes were in danger due to the diabolical scheme of one wicked man, Haman, who had recently been elevated to a position higher than that of all the other nobles in the kingdom. But in chapter 6, events begin to turn, leading ultimately to the downfall and death of wicked Haman, the physical salvation of the Jews, and the elevation of Mordecai (the hero of the story) to the second highest position in the kingdom.

The question naturally arises, however, “Does God always orchestrate the events of my life for my good?” If we grant that the unusual outworking of events in Esther was due to the sovereign hand of God, are we justified in concluding that God always orchestrates the events of our lives to fulfill His purpose? According to Romans 8:28, the answer is a solid yes. That verse says, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (emphasis added). It is this assurance that God works in all events of our lives that gives sense to Paul’s exhortation elsewhere to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, emphasis added). How could we possibly give thanks to God for all the circumstances of our lives if He were not at work in them for our good?

God has an over-arching purpose for all believers: to conform us to the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ (see Romans 8:29). He also has a specific purpose for each of us that is His unique, tailor-made plan for our individual life (see Ephesians 2:10). And God will fulfill that purpose. As Psalm 138:8 says, “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.” Because we know God is directing our lives to an ultimate end and because we know He is sovereignly able to orchestrate the events of our lives toward that end, we can trust Him. We can commit to Him not only the ultimate outcome of our lives, but also all the intermediate events and circumstances that will bring us to that outcome. Again it is difficult for us to appreciate the reality of God sovereignly doing as He pleases in our lives because we do not see God doing anything. Instead we see ourselves or other people acting and events occurring, and we evaluate those actions and events according to our own preferences and plans. We see ourselves influencing or perhaps even controlling or being controlled by the actions of other people, but we do not see God at work. But over all the actions and events of our lives, God is in control doing as He pleases—not apart from those events, or in spite of them, but through them. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery—a malicious act in and of itself—but in due time Joseph recognized that through his brothers’ actions God was acting. He could say to them, “So then, it was not you who...

I will say this next statement as gently and compassionately as I know how. Our first priority in times of adversity is to honor and glorify God by trusting Him. We tend to make our first priority the gaining of relief from our feelings of heartache or disappointment or frustration. This is a natural desire, and God has promised to give us grace sufficient for our trials and peace for our anxieties (see 2 Corinthians 12:9; Philippians 4:6-7). But just as God’s will is to take precedence over our will (in Matthew 26:39 Jesus Himself said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will”), so God’s honor is to take precedence over our feelings. We honor God by choosing to trust Him when we don’t understand what He is doing or why He has allowed some adverse circumstance to occur. As we seek God’s glory, we may be sure that He has purposed our good and that He will not be frustrated in fulfilling that purpose. A WORD OF CAUTION The material in this chapter is “tough stuff.” It should be read, studied, and prayed about when life is more or less routine. It should be stored up or hidden in our hearts (see Psalm 119:11) for the time of adversity when we must draw upon its truth. Above all, we need to be very sensitive about instructing someone else in the sovereignty of God and encouraging that person to trust God when he or she is in the midst of adversity or pain. It is much easier to trust in the sovereignty of God when it is the other person who is hurting. We need to be like Jesus, of ...

Rather, it happened in the plan of God so that God might be glorified. God was in control of that man’s blindness.

God does not willingly bring affliction or grief to us. He does not delight in causing us to experience pain or heartache. He always has a purpose for the grief He brings or allows to come into our lives. Most often we do not know what that purpose is, but it is enough to know that His infinite wisdom and perfect love have determined that the particular sorrow is best for us. God never wastes pain. He always uses it to accomplish His purpose. And His purpose is for His glory and our good. Therefore, we can trust Him when our hearts are aching or our bodies are racked with pain. Trusting God in the midst of our pain and heartache means that we accept it from Him. There is a vast difference between acceptance and either resignation or submission.

But to truly accept our pain and heartache has the connotation of willingness. An attitude of acceptance says that we trust God, that He loves us and knows what is best for us.

As we have examined the Scriptures to see what they teach us about the sovereignty of God, I have occasionally injected a word of caution about the dangers of misusing or abusing the teaching of His sovereignty. In this chapter, we want to address that problem in greater detail lest we unconsciously begin to think that God’s sovereignty negates any responsibility of ours to live responsible and prudent lives. There is an old story about a man who carried the doctrine of God’s sovereignty to such an extreme that he drifted into a sort of divine fatalism. One day, walking down a flight of stairs, he carelessly stumbled and fell headlong to the bottom of the staircase. Picking himself up, he gingerly felt his bruises and said to himself, “Well, I’m glad that one is over.” You and I, if we are not careful, can, like the foolish man in the story, drift into a fatalistic attitude about the sovereignty of God. A student who fails an important exam tries to excuse himself by saying, “Well, God is sovereign, and He determined that I should fail that exam.” A driver can cause an auto accident and, in his own mind, evade his carelessness by attributing the accident to the sovereignty of God. Obviously both attitudes are unbiblical and foolish, yet we can easily drift into them.

There is no question that God’s people live in a hostile world. We have an enemy, the Devil, [who] “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He wants to sift us like wheat as he did Peter (see Luke 22:31), or make us curse God as he tried to get Job to do. God does not spare us from the ravages of disease, heartache, and disappointment of this sin-cursed world. But God is able to take all of these elements—the bad as well as the good—and make full use of every one. As someone years ago said, “A lesser wisdom than the Divine would feel impelled to forbid, to circumvent or to resist the outworking of these hellish plans. It is a fact that often God’s people try to do this themselves, or cry unceasingly to the Lord that He may do it. So it is that prayers often seem to lie unanswered. For we are being handled by a wisdom which is perfect, a wisdom which can achieve what it [intends] by taking hold of things and people which are meant for evil and making them work together for good.”4 God’s infinite wisdom then is displayed in bringing good out of evil, beauty out of ashes. It is displayed in turning all the forces of evil that rage against His children into good for them. But the good that He brings about is often different from the good we envision.

HOLINESS OUT OF ADVERSITY Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose,” is an oft-quoted verse. But we often fail to note that the following verse helps us understand what the “good” of verse 28 is. Verse 29 begins with the word for, indicating that it is a continuation and amplification of the thought of verse 28. It says, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” The good that God works for in our lives is conformity to the likeness of His Son. It is not necessarily comfort or happiness but conformity to Christ in ever-increasing measure in this life and in its fullness in eternity. We see this same thought in Hebrews 12:10, “Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.” To share in God’s holiness is an equivalent expression to being conformed to the likeness of Christ. God knows exactly what He intends we become and He knows exactly what circumstances, both good and bad, are necessary to produce that result in our lives. Note the contrast the author of Hebrews draws between the finite, fallible wisdom of human parents and the infinite, infallible wisdom of God. He says, “Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best.” As a father, I can readily identify with the phras...

His discipline is always exactly suited for our needs. He never over trains us by allowing too ...

It is not only an irreverent act to question God’s wisdom, it is also spiritually debilitating. We not only besmirch God’s glory, we also deprive ourselves of the comfort and peace that comes by simply trusting Him without requiring an explanation. An unreserved trust of God, when we don’t understand what is happening or why, is the only road to peace and comfort and joy. God wants us to honor Him by trusting Him, but He also desires that we experience the peace and joy that come as a result. In researching the subject of God’s wisdom among the teachers of previous centuries, I came across the following paragraph, which so beautifully sums up all that I have tried to say on the subject. I append it without further comment, hoping that it will encourage you, as it has me, to trust God in all circumstances, whether private or public, and to believe that He is working all things out for our good as well as for His glory. It should fill us with joy, that infinite wisdom guides the affairs of the world. Many of its events are shrouded in darkness and mystery, and inextricable confusion sometimes seems to reign. Often wickedness prevails, and God seems to have forgotten the creatures that he has made. Our own path through life is dark and devious, and beset with difficulties and dangers. How full of consolation is the doctrine, that infinite wisdom directs every event, brings order out of confusion, and light out of darkness, and, to those who love God, causes all things, what...

We cannot keep from being tempted, but if we are to honor God by trusting Him, we must not allow such thoughts to lodge in our minds. As Philip Hughes again said, “To question the goodness of God is, in essence, to imply that man is more concerned about goodness than is God…. To suggest that man is kinder than God is to subvert the very nature of God…. It is to deny God; and this is precisely the thrust of the temptation to question the goodness of God.”

John said that God is love, and this is how He showed His love, by sending His Son to die for us. Our greatest need is not freedom from adversity. All the possible calamities that could occur in this life cannot in any way be compared with the absolute calamity of eternal separation from God. Jesus said no earthly joy could compare with the eternal joy of our names written in heaven (see Luke 10:20). In like manner, no earthly adversity can compare with that awful calamity of God’s eternal judgment in hell. So when John said that God showed His love by sending His Son, he was saying God showed His love by meeting our greatest need—a need so great that no other need can even come close to it in comparison. If we want proof of God’s love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God’s love for us.

Perhaps you wonder why, in a chapter on the love of God in adversity, I have seemingly digressed so extensively about our sinful condition. I have done so for two reasons: First, that we might see the depth of God’s love, not only in giving His one and only Son, but in giving Him to die for such people as Paul has described us to be. But I have dwelt on this point for another reason. When we begin to question the love of God, we need to remember who we are. We have absolutely no claim on His love. We don’t deserve one bit of God’s goodness to us. I once heard a speaker say, “Anything this side of hell is pure grace.” I know of nothing that will so quickly cut the nerve of a petulant, “Why did this happen to me?” attitude as a realization of who we are before God, considered in ourselves apart from Christ. We see then that God loved us when we were totally unworthy, when there was nothing whatsoever within us that would call forth His love. Any time that we are tempted to doubt God’s love for us, we should go back to the Cross. We should reason somewhat in this fashion: If God loved me enough to give His Son to die for me when I was His enemy, surely He loves me enough to care for me now that I am His child. Having loved me to the ultimate extent at the Cross, He cannot possibly fail to love me in my times of adversity. Having given such a priceless gift as His Son, surely He will also give all else that is consistent with His glory and my good. Note that I said we should r...

does it mean we should seek to bury our emotional pain in a stoic-like attitude. We are meant to feel the pain of adversity, but we must resist allowing that pain to cause us to lapse into hard thoughts about God.

It may seem cold and even unspiritual to seek to reason through the truths of God’s love in times of heartache, pain, and disappointment. But it is neither cold nor unspiritual. Paul himself, in one of the most ecstatic passages of Scripture, used a form of reasoning—an argument from the greater to the lesser—when he said, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Paul reasoned that if God loved us so much to give us the greatest conceivable gift, then surely He will not withhold any lesser blessing from us. Or to restate this truth in a way more applicable to our present theme: If God’s love was sufficient for my greatest need, my eternal salvation, surely it is sufficient for my lesser needs, the adversities I encounter in this life...

Just as God’s wisdom, like the height of the heavens, cannot be measured, so God’s love for us cannot be

measured. It is not only perfect in its effect, it is infinite in its extent. No calamity that may come upon us, however great it may be, can carry us beyond the pale of God’s fatherly love for us.

My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he

accepts as a son. (Hebrews 12:5-6)

The author of Hebrews concedes that the divine discipline is painful. It is intended to be. It would not accomplish its purpose if it were not. But God in His infinite wisdom and perfect love will never over-discipline us; He will never allow any adversity in our lives that is not ultimately for our good. We may be sure that we never suffer needlessly.

Are we willing to take our physical limitations, our learning disabilities, and even our appearance problems to God and say, “Father,

You are worthy of this infirmity in my life. I believe You created me just the way I am because You love me and You want to glorify Yourself through me. I will trust You for who I am”? This is the path to self-acceptance, learning to trust God for who I am. To do this, though, we must continually keep in mind that the God who created us the way we are is the God who is wise enough to know what is best for

us and ...

enough to bring it about. Certainly we will sometimes struggle with who we are. Unlike specific incidents of adversity, our disabilities and infirmities are always with us. So we have to learn to trust God in this area continually. To do this we have to learn to say with David...

One of the many fascinating events in nature is the emergence of the Cecropia moth from its cocoon—an event that occurs only with much struggle on the part of the moth to free itself. The story is frequently told of someone who watched a moth go through this struggle. In an effort to help—and not realizing the necessity of the struggle—the viewer snipped the shell of the cocoon. Soon the moth came out with its wings all crimped and shriveled. But as the person watched, the wings remained weak. The moth, which in a few moments would have stretched those wings to fly, was now doomed to crawling out its brief life in frustration of ever being the beautiful creature God created it to be. What the person in the story did not realize was that the struggle to emerge from the cocoon was an essential part of developing the muscle system of the moth’s body and pushing the body fluids out into the wings to expand them. By unwisely seeking to cut short the moth’s struggle, the watcher had actually crippled the moth and doomed its existence.

The adversities of life are much like the cocoon of the Cecropia moth. God uses them to develop the spiritual “muscle system” of our lives. As James says in our text for this chapter, “The testing of your faith [through trials of many kinds] develops perseverance,” and perseverance leads to maturity of our character. We can be sure that the development of a beautiful Christlike character will not occur in our lives without adversity. Think of those lovely graces that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. The first four traits he mentions—love, joy, peace, and patience—can only be developed in the womb of adversity. We may think we have true Christian love until someone offends us or treats us unjustly. Then we begin to see anger and resentment well up within us. We may conclude we have learned about genuine Christian joy until our lives are shattered by an unexpected calamity or grievous disappointment. Adversities spoil our peace and sorely try our patience. God uses those difficulties to reveal to us our need to grow, so that we will reach out to Him to change us more and more into the likeness of His Son. However, we shrink from adversity and, to use the terms from the moth illustration, we want God to snip the cocoon of adversity we often find ourselves in and release us. But just as God has more wisdom and love for the moth than its viewer did, so He has more wisdom and love for us than we do for ourselves. He will not remove the adversity until we ...

The Christian life is intended to be one of continuous growth. We all want to grow, but we often resist the process. This is because we tend to focus on the events of adversity themselves, rather than looking with the eye of faith beyond the events to what God is doing in our lives. It was said of Jesus that He “for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Hebrews 12:2). Christ’s death on the cross, with its intense physical agony and infinite spiritual suffering of bearing God’s wrath for our sins, was the greatest calamity to ever come upon a human being. Yet Jesus could look beyond that suffering to the joy set before Him. And, as the writer of Hebrews said, we are to fix our...

WE LEARN FROM ADVERSITY Because God is at work in our lives through adversity, we must learn to respond to what He is doing. As we have already seen in previous chapters, God’s sovereign work never negates our responsibility. Just as God teaches us through adversity, we must seek to learn from it. There are several things we can do in order to learn from adversity and receive the beneficial effects that God intends. First, we can submit to it—not reluctantly as the defeated general submits to his conqueror, but voluntarily as the patient on the operating table submits to the skilled hand of the surgeon as he wields his knife. Do not try to frustrate the gracious purpose of God by resisting His providence in your life. Rather, insofar as you are able to see what God is doing, make His purpose your purpose. This does not mean we should not use all legitimate means at our disposal to minimize the effects of adversity. It means we should accept from God’s hand the success or failure of those means as He wills and at all times seek to learn whatever He might be teaching us. Sometimes we will perceive quite clearly what God is doing, and in those instances we should respond to God’s teaching in humble obedience. At other times we may not be able to see at all what He is doing in our lives. At those times, we should respond in humble faith, trusting Him to work out in our lives that which we need to learn. Both attitudes are important, and God wants one at one time and the other ...

Rather, adversity enhances the teaching of God’s Word and makes it more profitable to us. In some instances it clarifies our understanding or causes us to see truths we had passed over before. At other times it will transform “head knowledge” into “heart knowledge” as theological theory becomes a reality to us. The Puritan Daniel Dyke said, The word, then, is the storehouse of all instruction. Look not for any new diverse doctrine to be taught thee by affliction, which is not in the word. For, in truth, herein stands our teaching by affliction, that it fits and prepares us for the word, by breaking and sub-dividing the stubbornness of our hearts, and making them pliable, and capable of the impression of the word.

In the spiritual realm, God must prune us. Because even as believers we still have a sinful nature, we tend to pour our spiritual energies into that which is not true fruit. We tend to seek position, success, and reputation even in the body of Christ. We tend to depend upon natural talents and human wisdom. And then we are easily distracted and pulled by the things of the world—its pleasures and possessions. God uses adversity to loosen our grip on those things that are not true fruit. A severe illness or the death of someone dear to us, the loss of material substance or the tarnishing of our reputation, the turning aside of friends or the dashing of our cherished dreams on the rocks of failure, cause us to think about what is really important in life. Position or possessions or even reputation no longer seem so important. We begin to relinquish our desires and expectations—even good ones—to the sovereign will of God. We come more and more to depend on God and to desire only that which will count for eternity. God is pruning us so that we will be more fruitful.

HOLINESS We have already seen in a previous chapter that another intended result of adversity is to cause us to grow in holiness: “God disciplines us [through adversity] for our good, that we may share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). But what is the connection between adversity and holiness? For one thing, adversity reveals the corruption of our sinful nature. We do not know ourselves or the depths of sin remaining in us. We agree with the teachings of Scripture and assume that agreement means obedience. At least we intend to obey. Who of us does not read that list of Christian virtues called the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23)—and agree we want all those traits in our lives? We even begin to think we are making good progress in growing in them. But then adversity comes. We find we are unable to love, from the depths of our hearts, the person who is the instrument of the adversity. We find we don’t want to forgive that person. We realize we are not disposed to trust God. Unbelief and resentment surge within us. We are dismayed at the scene. The growth in Christian character we thought had occurred in our lives seems to vanish like a vapor. We feel as if we are back in spiritual kindergarten again. But through this experience God has revealed to us some of the remaining corruption within us. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. … Blessed are those who mourn. … Bl...

You and I obviously do not seek out adversity just so we can develop a deeper relationship with God. Rather God, through adversity, seeks us out. It is God who draws us more and more into a deeper relationship with Him. If we are seeking Him, it is because He is seeking us. One of the strong cords with which He draws us into a more intimate, personal relationship with Him is adversity. If, instead of fighting God or doubting Him in times of adversity, we will seek to cooperate with God, we will find that we will be drawn into a deeper relationship with Him. We will come to know Him as Abraham and Job and David and Paul came to know Him.