I
n a world ravished by sin, no one is free
from troubles. What can we relate to? Pain.
Waiting. Despairing. However, it’s this
brokenness to which we never grow accus-
tomed. After all these years, I am still not
used to pain. In moments when heartache
seems crushing, I must confess, sometimes
I selfishly fantasize about running away
from my problems. For a fleeting moment, I
imagine the relief of escaping the hurt and
making others sorry for the part they played
in it. A godly response? Hardly. In fact,
God’s way is on the very opposite end of my
tangled rope of self-absorbed desires. He
pulls me back towards himself, calling me to
consider my troubles pure joy. Not because
suffering is inherently a good thing, but
because with God, we find great value in the
fruit that he brings forth from it.
As a mom of two sons who were born
when I was an unwed teenager, I have been
asked whether I regret my choices, since
now so much good has come out of my
mistakes. My response is this, “The sin is
always a terrible thing. I always regret the
sin. But I am thankful for the beauty that
God brought out of the sin.” This is one of
the glorious gifts of suffering. Repentance.
The blessing of my teen pregnancies and
the difficulties that accompanied being a
young single mother, beautifully and pain-
fully contrasted the messiness of my own
ways and the perfection of God’s ways. My
misery lead to my repentance and God’s
glory. In a similar way, Moses warned the
Israelites about the suffering that they
would endure if they turned away from
God, but he also painted a vivid picture of
how their agony would lead to their repen-
tance and redemption:
When you are in tribulation, and all these
things come upon you in the latter days, you
will return to the LORD your God and obey his
voice. Deuteronomy 4:30
And again, we see repentance born
of anguish in the words of an unnamed
psalmist:
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now
I obey your word. Psalm 119:67
However, there are often times when it
is not our sin, but the sin of others for which
we suffer. Albeit, God’s sovereign power is
at work, even when we are utterly helpless
to control the howling winds produced by
the actions or neglect of those around us.
As we relent to his will, he takes our heart-
break stories and uses them to pick up other
wounded souls around us. Even in my own
life, the times that made my chest ache
from all the tearing, have brought comfort
to women whose hearts are also being
pulled apart. And this too is a reward of
enduring trials, that adversity often enables
us to comfort others with the comfort we
ourselves have received from God (2 Corin-
thians 1:3-7).
Another gift that is birthed from
suffering, is the way in which we learn to
know God in a much deeper way, when we
choose to seek after him in our despair. Joni
Eareckson Tada* is famous for how she has
faithfully followed Jesus after becoming a
paraplegic at a young age. In her booklet
Hope . . . The Best of Things, Joni expresses
www.himpowermagazine.com 9