In the face of suffering, why do we struggle to apply to ourselves the proclamation of the cross — that our God is good and trustworthy and will go to any length to secure what’s best for us (Romans 8:32)? Why does a gulf span the distance between our fear of suffering and the rock-solid proof that God will meet us in our deepest distress, just as he did on the cross? 

A group of women recently gathered in my living room for a Bible study on the Lord’s Prayer. The words “Your will be done” sat on our tongues like cough syrup that wouldn’t budge (Matthew 6:10). We had numerous objections.

One of us admitted, “I feel like if I pray those words, I’m going to bring on what I’m trying to avoid. I know I don’t have that kind of power, but it just feels like it.” Another agreed: “His will scares me. I want my will — it feels safer.”

Among us was a mom worried about her newborn baby’s poor hearing tests; another mom whose young boy had been harming himself; a woman who recently lost her job; a third mom waiting on a new son to come home from China; a wife whose husband doesn’t believe; and myself, a daughter whose terminally ill father has rejected the gospel time and time again.

The room was full of reasons to have a white-knuckle grip on the future.

Our Comfortable Illusions

Rather than pray, “Thy will be done,” we prefer to beg God to do things our way. “Please, please, Lord,” we say, “just don’t let that happen. I could never handle it.”

In the face of suffering, why do we struggle to apply to ourselves the proclamation of the cross — that our God is good and trustworthy and will go to any length to secure what’s best for us (Romans 8:32)? Why does a gulf span the distance between our fear of suffering and the rock-solid proof that God will meet us in our deepest distress, just as he did on the cross?

Maybe it’s because we control so much of our lives. We have dominion over the temperature in our homes, the schools our kids attend, the quality of food we buy. We enjoy the repeated and predictable fruit of our labor. We are tempted to boast and say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” (James 4:13). We grow accustomed to the illusion of control.

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