Suffering

Romans 5

That's pretty much it, we suffer because God deems us able to endure and continue to improve in all things beneficial unto ourselves. What I mean here is one of two types of suffering. There is one that you can experience and then learn to live with in the future and then there is the one that is solely destructive of a person. Non-Christians and Christians alike are often confused as to this sort of dichotomy as if God wouldn't want people to go through the second type of suffering. Often we as Christians are all too eager to defend the first kind because we can "see it coming" or at very least we can "explain it away." But honestly, isn't that the same sort of thing that James talks about when he says even demons believe in God? Even the most hardened atheist can attribute good things to be taken from hard experiences. What the hardened atheist can not reconcile is what happens when a love one dies or when an individual learns of a terminal condition. To this they can only shrug their collective shoulders and chalk your situation up to Darwin being a jerk. Love God for the hard times, for it is there that he is at his closest. You may not feel it, and if that's the case I kinda want to blame you but compassion is something that I already struggle with anyway.

God is there! He wants you SO much to love Him. He's there in the troughs and valleys of life! Oh...my gosh [insert Ross Dixon's voice]. I'm yelling now because this is my prayer as well. It's my prayer recently to pursue God in a way that shows how I'm relying on him when I face struggles. But yeah, it's not easy. God supposedly gets this rap as being unapproachable and there's this book called God's Way of Peace by Horatius Bonar that takes this problem and discusses this beautifully. Because what we don't want to realize is that it's our fault, or at least Adam's. Sin distances us from God and creates strife in our lives. God says that we can find rest in him but this thing called sin has distanced us. Christ and his work on the cross is THE way and THE truth and THE life for peace in a world that's too messed up for any other explanation.