If you’re suffering right now, it means God loves you.

If you’re suffering right now, it means God loves you.

That seems like a contradictory statement. We have a hard time accepting what the Scriptures really say about suffering being allowed out of love because we forget what real love is.

Love isn’t just giving someone what they want. Love is doing what is best for that person. Not only that, true love is doing what’s best for someone no matter the cost to yourself (John 15:13). Thus, when we know what true love is, we can better understand how God uses suffering for our good. Perhaps the clearest passage in all of Scripture on this topic is Hebrews 12:5-11. It reads:

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.”

In the NIV, verse 7 states, “Endure hardship as discipline . . .” Scripture is clear that pain is meant to develop us for our purpose. Suffering is meant for our sanctification. And discipline is meant to shape us into what God desires.

But all this begs the question, “If God uses suffering to shape us out of love, why don’t all those who suffer experience the benefits God intends to give through this pain?”

While Scripture is clear that God intends for pain to be used for our good, Scripture also points out that we have a choice in how we allow pain to shape us. In other words, many people miss the blessings God wants to give through suffering because they refuse to be shaped by it.

Instead of turning towards the Father when he allows us to go through pain, they turn away from him. Instead of suffering softening their heart, they allow it to harden their heart. Pain is not optional. But how pain will affect you is!

Not every person who goes through pain will accomplish God’s purpose for them. But everyone who accomplishes God’s purposes for them had to go through pain to get there. There are no useful saints who have not been shaped by God with the chisel of suffering.

A.W. Tozer said, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”

C.S. Lewis wrote, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

And as Tim Keller taught, “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”

As Christians, we have a choice to make: How will we use our pain? It will shape us. But how it shapes us will be determined by what choices we make. Will we allow our pain to push us from God’s presence or towards it?

May we echo the words of Paul, God helping us, in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, which state:

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

So why must you suffer? Because God loves you. The question is: will you let him love you? Will you turn to him, so that you too might be able to say, “His grace is sufficient”?

I pray we all do.