You may sometimes struggle with your faith — not by questioning whether Yeshua is the Savior who died for your eternal healing, but in an hour of testing, when you feel exhausted by pain, when you pray for relief, seeking God in your cries and tears, but the pain continues, and then you are left rationalizing why you were denied your supplication, why your suffering has been prescribed — for surely, you believe, God can heal you by simply saying the word – and then you wonder to what extent you need to be broken in order to be fully remade… As C.S. Lewis once said, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be” (Letters of C.S. Lewis, 1964). There is a trust issue in suffering, and an intimacy that comes through its fires. As Kierkegaard reminds us, “It is one thing to conquer in the hardship, to overcome the hardship as one overcomes an enemy, while continuing in the idea that the hardship is one’s enemy; but it is more than conquering to believe that the hardship is one’s friend, that it is not the opposition but the road, is not what obstructs but what develops, is not what disheartens but ennobles” (Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844).
The difficulty of intense personal suffering is deeply existential: how do you keep hope in the midst of this tension? “Lord I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). How do you affirm that your heavenly Father will heal you but at the present hour you must continue to endure suffering? Do you then devise a “soul-building theodicy” to explain your struggle – providing a narrative to answer the “why” of your suffering — or do you attempt to sanctify suffering as a means of healing others by the grace of the Messiah (Col. 1:24)? When Yeshua victoriously proclaimed, “It is finished” just before he died on the cross, he foreknew that his followers would experience a “purging process,” a “refining fire,” and time on the “potter’s wheel” to perfect their sanctification. At the cross of Yeshua death itself was overcome – and all that it implies – and yet it is nevertheless true that we will suffer and die ourselves and that death persists an enemy (see 1 Cor. 15:26). While we celebrate the reality of the final redemption, the “instrumentality of our sanctification” needs to be willingly accepted and endured. I say “endured” here because I don’t think we will ever have a complete answer to the question of “why” we undergo the various tests we face in this life. Our disposition in the midst of this ambiguity, in the midst of seemingly unanswered prayers, is where our faith is disclosed: will we despair of all temporal hope or not? Will we console ourselves with the vision of a future without tears and loss – a heaven prepared for us — or will we resist the present darkness and seek to find deliverance in this hour? Do we trust God with our pain and submit to his will, or will we “curse God and die” inside – losing hope and despairing of all remedy?
As King David once wrote, “At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness. Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me. Answer me, O LORD, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me” (Psalm 69:13-16).
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- Psalm 69:16 Hebrew Card (pdf)
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God sometimes allows difficulties in the lives of those whom He favors in order to ultimately reward them. Why were Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel barren for so many years? So that God would hear their prayers and reward them for their steadfast faith. Why was Leah more fruitful than the other wives of Jacob? Because she was “hated” and subject to unending gossip that she tried to steal her sister’s husband, yet she persevered in hope. In this connection, some of the Chassidic sages render Psalm 118:21 as, “I thank you that you have pained me (עֲנִיתָנִי) and have become my salvation.” The pain that I regarded as punishment became the means by which I obtained the salvation of the LORD. Similarly, “It was good that I was afflicted (עֻנֵּיתִי), that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).
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- Psalm 119:71 Hebrew Card (pdf)
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