I have been reflecting on suffering lately, and what follows are some thoughts on how God might use the hard things in our lives. I won’t address why we suffer, since there could be hundreds of reasons why. Rather, I’ll focus on what God could be doing in us through suffering.

Imagine you had an infection or some other physical ailment that required surgery to remedy. Now imagine that we live in a world in which anesthetics do not exist and you had to feel every incision.

It would feel like the doctor hated you and was trying to torture you. You might wonder, “How long will I have to go through this? When will this be over? Would it be better if I was already dead? Is the ‘cure’ actually worse than the infection?” Meanwhile, the surgeon would be saying, “I know this hurts, but if I don’t remove this sickness you will die. I want you to have a full life. Just hold on a little longer, I promise there is purpose in the pain.”

Sin is the infection that lives in all of us, even if you have been walking with Jesus for many years. Because we are fallen people living a fallen world, the selfish and wicked tendencies will remain in us until the day we die or the day Jesus comes back. God’s desire for us is that we would turn from our sin and be made holy (1 Thessalonians 4:3), but sometimes it is hard to see our own sin- the ways that we are trusting in things other than God for our hope and purpose. It often takes a hard situation to open our eyes to the brokenness in us and our need for God.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that our suffering is God punishing us for our sin. If you have trusted in Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, he has already taken the punishment for your sin. If you are in Christ, the reason for your suffering is never because God is mad at you. However, because Jesus is the Good Physician, he can use difficult or genuinely bad things for your healing. As Joseph said in Genesis 50:20, “You planned evil against me; God planned it for good.” If you are in a season where it feels like God is against you, first spend time to mourn and grieve what was lost. It doesn’t do anybody any good to pretend like things don’t hurt, and it separates us from our own humanity. After giving yourself space to grieve, consider, “If God is still for me (which he is (see Rom 8:38:39)), how might he be using this difficulty to heal and restore me? What might be the new birth that comes from this death?”

Remember, the scalpel is only an instrument of healing in the hands of a capable surgeon.