Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense

by Paul David Tripp

Envy robs you of hope and destroys your ability to trust.

When you’re tempted in your suffering to look around and calculate, you must determine to look up and celebrate.

But rather than letting what the Bible says about God help him interpret the overwhelming circumstances he was facing, he let his circumstances redefine his view of God.

Doubt in the middle of suffering has the potential to radically change your life but not for the good.

I’m persuaded that there are many more sufferers in this place than we tend to think. I am also convinced that many of them don’t know that they’ve reached these conclusions. The reason so many sufferers aren’t aware that they’ve given up on God is that the process of theological change hasn’t been self-consciously philosophical; it’s been much more of a traumatic emotional-situational process. The surprise of situational distress has produced deeply emotional questions that have led them to deeply theological conclusions, but it’s been nothing like the sort of theological debate found in a classroom.

“What has my suffering done to my theology?

What has it done to the way I view God and his presence, his promises, and his power? Do I still believe that God is the definition of what is loving, good, wise, and true?”

He is saying, “Look around. Your suffering has nothing to do with God singling you out, turning his back, ignoring your need, or forgetting your plight. Your brothers and sisters around the world all carry their own package of difficulty.

Your suffering is not a sign that you’ve been forsaken; rather, it’s a sign that you live in a world that doesn’t function the way God intended and is in need of complete renewal.”

Peter knew that the core attack against us in our suffering is not the attack on our bodies, our relationships, our possessions, or our circumstances, but the attack on our hearts.

“Has my suffering caused me to begin to believe things that are not true and therefore say things that are not true to myself?”

A thankful heart is the best defense against a doubting heart. Recounting evidences of God’s presence, his grace, his faithfulness to his promises, his provision, and the reliability of what he’s told you in his Word reminds you of God’s goodness, and because it does, it protects you against the lies that tempt you to judge him as less than good.

When you humbly confess your struggle to believe in the midst of your suffering, God welcomes you with arms of love and blesses you with his presence, power, and sustaining grace.

Sympathy is an appropriate response to suffering, but the danger there is that too much focus on suffering has the potential to magnify its impact on the way you think about yourself, God, and your suffering. So it’s wise and loving to encourage sufferers not to let difficulty define them and the way they live.

Has suffering robbed you of your enthusiasm to do the good things God calls all his children to do?

Your battle is not just the difficult thing you’re facing but the impact of the difficulty on your heart.

Denial had let her suffering fester

In suffering, denial is more of a temptation than what many of us think, while it’s a response that never goes anywhere good.

The Bible presents a broken world populated by fallen people where nothing or no one functions in the way that God intended.

Biblical faith never, ever requires you to deny harsh and dark realities. Biblical faith never asks you to minimize your suffering. Biblical faith never makes you put a happy smile on your face and act as if things are okay when they’re not okay at all. Biblical faith never asks you to defend God’s reputation by acting as though you’re doing better in your suffering than you are actually doing. God’s honesty about life in this broken world is a welcome to each of us to be just as honest.

Not only can your Lord handle every bit of your honesty, but his Word is a welcome to be honest.

You see, the message of the Bible is that the arms of God’s power, presence, and grace wrap around the deepest and darkest moments of human suffering. God wants you to know that it’s impossible for you to go through anything outside his understanding and care.

All today’s sorrows, disappointments, weaknesses, unexpected dilemmas, and the suffering that results have been addressed by his grace.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Our motivation to stand firm in faith, even when we are going through things that we don’t understand, is found in one thing: God’s declaration of his intention toward us.

Suffering always exposes our weaknesses.

Suffering doesn’t make us weak; it simply exposes the weaknesses that have been there all along. It exposes the delusion of our sovereignty and independent capability.

Jesus was born into the toughest of conditions; he was misunderstood, mistreated, and rejected throughout his life. His closest friends forsook him when the going got tough. He was betrayed by those he should have been able to trust. He was regularly hungry and knew what it was like to be homeless. He felt the sting of the worst kind of injustice. He endured torturous physical suffering. From birth his life was never easy, and his death was marked by public shame. No one rose to his defense. He not only suffered; he suffered alone. Even his Father turned his back on him in his deepest moment of agony. He did not use his power to make his life easy or to escape injustice and torture. He came to earth knowing what he would face, and he faced it all for us.

Don’t let the fact that Jesus went through all of this without sin negate for you the real agony of what he suffered. He felt the full force of the same kinds of travail that you and I now face. And he didn’t just live through this hardship; he lived through all of it for you, so that in your travail you would have a place of comfort and refuge to run to when there seems to be no one or nowhere to run for help. The One who took on weakness is for you in your weakness, and that is the best of news!

Perhaps what once seemed solid and permanent has eroded like sod on a wet hill.

The opposite of denial is not honesty but confidence. Hebrews 4:14–16 is meant to fill you with redemptive confidence, because it is only that confidence that can give you the courage to be honest with God and others in your time of need.