What’s the good of trouble?
Can anything good come from it?
Difficulties, heartbreaks, setbacks, discouragements, shocks, surprises, disappointment?
Maybe.
It really depends on your attitude, doesn’t it?
“In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world,” is what Jesus says in regards to trials and tribulations.
That helps.
A little.
Strengths and Weaknesses
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how often our strengths can be our weaknesses and our weaknesses can turn into strengths.
It all depends on how we react to our circumstances.
I do not wear a halo.
I complain a lot.
I’m judgmental and irritable.
I don’t like it when bad things happen to either good people or bad ones.
Trouble makes me nervous.
But who is God?
But I worship a God who tossed the planets across the universe and spun them about their suns/stars. He knows how many hairs on are on my head and the circumstances in which he has placed me.
It’s not a surprise to God I live where I do today, that I’m tall and have issues. He’s the one who determined the sexes of my children and how their personalities would mesh–or not–with mine.
The troubles I’ve encountered, the joys I’ve experienced, have been for good, yes, but more importantly as avenues to see God’s glory in my life.
Yours, too.
The trick is in your willingness to consider what looks like trouble, feels like trouble, stings like trouble, and is very upsetting, may very well be a catalyst to change.
Oswald Chambers saw this clearly when he wrote:
“Trouble nearly always makes us turn to God. His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere.”
What’s the point of pain and suffering?
To take us back to God.
Does he relish our pain?
Of course not.
But ask yourself, what is God’s purpose in what has happened to me?
Over and over again as I look BACK on my life, I can see where troubles and difficult circumstances could have broken me–indeed, came close on several occasions–but were the turning points to who I am today.
Events that circumvented careers, destroyed possessions, broke hearts, and turned the course of our life in a different direction were painful.
I had a choice. I could condemn God, or I could turn my grief, fear, worry, and hurt over to him and allow him to do what he was going to do.
Some things were irreparable. I’ll never get my parents back.
Other things cost us money. In the grand scheme of life, the money was meaningless.
Several things cost me precious relationships. I’ll probably always grieve those losses.
But, if I keep bringing those hurts back to the God who allowed for them, who wept with me as I mourned, it helps.
God’s not magic. He doesn’t wave away the troubles or the consequences, but knowing I can dump all my emotions into his lap, helps.
I didn’t go through those tribulations alone. I won’t go through them alone when they hit again.
It may take me a while to process my emotions and my devastation, but if I turn them over to God time and time again, eventually I end up with “hope in God for I will yet praise him.”
We worship a God who gave us emotions.
We can pretend the disappointments and troubles that afflict us are ignorable and flit off into a happy land of “praise the Lord, anyway.”
I don’t think that’s healthy.
Instead, come to God broken. Give him the agony of my soul. Tell him of my disappoints and my anger.
Tell him I want to believe he knows what he is doing with my life.
Sometimes that takes a couple of days.
But for more than 40 years this exercise has taken me, eventually, back to the same place: hoping in God and that I will be able to praise him.
Even if it takes a while.
Good can come from my troubles if I will allow them to be gifts from God.
Tweetables
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Note: If you are experiencing some difficulties, troubles, now and are looking for some answers, may I direct you to the book of Psalms?
Lock yourself in the bathroom and scream your way through them–go ahead and shout at God. He wants to hear your heart. He knows you’re upset. Events don’t surprise Him. He knows the future.
Notice how often David starts out full of invectives and ideas about what God should do to his enemies. He vents those emotions and works through them he invariably gets to the end and a broken heart before God–a heart pliable and seeking comfort.
David knows comfort will come.
I’ve detested many of the troubles that have come my way. I’m thankful for them now. I never want to go through them again.
But in the end, if I stop and look from a different direction, with an open heart, and turn my head and mind to God, eventually, I’ve come through okay.
God be with you, this day, and every day.
Perhaps the hardest subject in Christianity.
I certainly agree with you that the “ignore it and praise God” attitude is unhealthy. Maybe it applies to keys lost in the great unknown, but that’s about it.
The assumption that trouble brings us closer to God – and it is allowed for that reason is troubling, because trouble can really make things go either way, depending on its severity.
The illness I’m dealing with has certainly increased my compassion for others, but what has made that possible is pretty extensive training on ways to circumvent pain. It has come close to making me drop in despair, and not to be arrogant, but I don’t think most people would be able to get through this.
And i would be white-hot with resentment, if I thought God was using it to bring me close.
I’d run from a God like that.
if it’s doing any good, it’s making me that much tougher, and quite a bit harder. It’s a dichotomy; I’m more sympathetic to real suffering, and utterly contemptuous of inconvenience. A good person to have around in a gunfight, but not much fun if the dinner party goes haywire.
Beyond my personal situation, I find it hard to imagine ANY salutary effect trouble had on the Jordanian pilot lately burned alive by ISIS. It goes beyond the pale.
My thought is that trouble is not allowed to bring us to God, but because it’s a necessary byproduct of a world in which the free will that allows us to become close to God is operative, and there’s an important distinction in that paradigm. It takes God out of the role of “trouble’s agent”, and places him in the position of a bystander, helpless to intervene because He can’t violate the internal consistency of the world He created, because to do so would render it meaningless.
He can thus be with us, and help us to grow with His love and support; but he’s not in the causal role. His hear can break with ours, all the more so because He has to stand and watch.
I should clarify – my concern with the “God allowing trouble” hypothesis is that for some trouble to be allowed to test or benefit us, ALL has to be allowed; God can’t say, “Whoa, I didn’t want THAT to happen!”
Thanks for your words, Michelle. We can allow our trouble to define us or we can seek higher ground (or lower in some cases) where God touches us with divine mercy. Our hearts will change even though our pain may not, a bit like saying that prayer doesn’t change God’s mind, but it does change us.