If asked, “Do you want to be closer to Jesus, and more like him?” we all know what we should say. Yet, if God answered all our prayers for relief from suffering, he would be delivering us from the very thing we say we want. Christlikeness is something to long for, not be delivered from. It’s not easy to pray, “Please do whatever it takes to make me more like Jesus.” But when he does whatever it takes, we should trust him.

Christian slaves in America sometimes were forbidden to sing — even to God. So when they went to the river, they would hang wet blankets around themselves, then sing into pots filled with water to absorb the sound. “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10), they couldn’t hold inside their songs of praise.

Perhaps what you’re facing makes you wonder if God has turned his back on you. Your trial may last a day, a year, a decade, or more. But I doubt your circumstances are worse than that of those Christian slaves, stripped of liberty and dignity, with families routinely torn apart. Yet they couldn’t force themselves not to sing.

Throughout the centuries and around the world, many suffering believers affirm that God uses hard times to draw us to him, to give us a profound happiness in him, and to build greater Christlikeness and dependence. We pray “bring me closer to you, Lord,” and usually in answer, our loving and sovereign God keeps trials coming our way — even sometimes when we beg him not to.

There’s no nearness to God without dependence on God. And nothing makes us more dependent on him than when the bottom drops out.

Inevitable and Purposeful

We Christians will be delivered from eternal misery. But God never says we’ll avoid hardships now. In fact, he specifically promises them, in verses we seldom post on the refrigerator. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12). I smile when I read this. It’s like God is saying, “Whatever gave you the idea you wouldn’t suffer?”

The apostle Paul told believers he was sending Timothy to them “to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this” (1 Thessalonians 3:2–3). If we don’t know this, we should! When we think of what God has destined us for, abundant life and resurrection come to mind, but trials rarely do. Yet God assures us that he himself — not the curse or Satan — has actually destinedus to suffer. Afflictions are not just inevitable; they’re purposeful. Though they may appear random, they are the product of God’s intelligent and loving design.

Read More