Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

by Jerry Bridges

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 ...