Does God really have a purpose for your pain?
Have you ever found yourself wondering in the middle of your pain if God has a purpose for all you’re enduring? Sometimes, it can feel as if the hurt we face is completely meaningless as we look around and see nothing but the carnage and despair that’s been left in its wake.
But the truth is, God is a redeemer of all things, weaving together every painful detail of our story into a beautiful tapestry that we cannot fully see here on earth. When we look for the purpose in our pain, Scripture reminds us of four ways the Lord is producing something good in all of our suffering:
1. Pain produces genuine faith
Faith is refined by the fires of trials. When we encounter heartache and struggle, God can use the hurt to slowly untangle any false ideas we have about Him. He can use our pain to slowly whittle away the unimportant and unnecessary in our lives, bringing forth a beautiful, pure understanding of who God is.
Peter said it this way, “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold -- though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.” (1 Peter 1:6-7 NLT)
2. Pain produces perseverance
In the book of James, the author and brother of Jesus, encouraged believers facing persecution, losses, and hardships with these words, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” (James 1:2-3 NIV)
To persevere means to persist in spite of any obstacles or distractions that may come. Pain can teach us how to continue on in our faith, even when the brokenness of this world enters into our view. Like a muscle, our faith is strengthened when it is put under duress. Some fruits, such as grapes, actually produce sweeter, more delicious fruit when they are grown in difficult conditions. Likewise, the people with the deepest faith, that has endured a lifetime, often belongs to those who have learned to persevere despite their pain.
While it is undoubtedly hard to “consider it pure joy” when hardship comes our way, thinking about the growth of perseverance in our faith that can be a sweet harvest to come out of all the difficult soil of our life.
3. Pain produces compassion
In 2 Corinthians, there is this moment in which the apostle Paul praises God for His compassion. He says this, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:3-5)
The word compassion literally means to “suffer with.” The suffering that Christ endured on the cross made Him a compassionate Savior to us in our own suffering. And because we can feel the comfort He gives, we in turn can become compassionate comforters to others in pain, even when the sufferings we have gone through are different. As you look at all the hurt in your life, think about how God is wanting to use them to make you into someone who can walk alongside another in the valleys of life. The world is full of people who are longing for someone to simply bear witness to their pain and let them know they aren’t alone in it. Oftentimes, as you start to do this, God will reveal how he wants to turn your misery into a ministry.
4. Pain produces hope:
While a genuine faith, perseverance and compassion can be outgrowths of our greatest pain, it is hope bred in our sufferings that can produce the greatest result in our life.
The apostle Paul said, “...we glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5 NIV)
Hope, true Biblical hope is birthed in our suffering. It is what orients our gaze heavenward and gives us the right perspective as we begin to see things through a bigger lens, a Heavenly Kingdom one, rather than from our circumstances here below.
As you look back in your life and think about the points on your timeline where you were wounded and brokenhearted, where can you see glimmers of hope? In what ways has your pain transformed your faith into a deeper expression of your trust in God? How have you learned to persevere in spite of all the hurt in life? In what ways have you grown in compassion for others as you’ve walked through the valleys of suffering? With reflection and prayer, you can start to reveal all the ways God has moved in your hurt, reminding you that your pain has a purpose.
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