No one wants to suffer. While small trials are sometimes welcomed, because of what they will do for us, we can count them as joy, no one invites life-altering pain. No one wants to lie awake with a pit in their stomach, agonizing over where a disastrous situation is headed. No one wants to experience a loss so deep that we wonder how to even go on.
We all understand that rain falls into everyone’s life, no one wants an upheaval. We don’t pray for it, we don’t seek it, or welcome it. We want relief, which is why we cry out to God for reprieve, rescue, and deliverance from it.
We can look at the Book of Job and discover sometimes deliverance comes by affliction.
“He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity” -Job 36:15
This statement seems to make no sense at first. How can affliction deliver the afflicted? We want to be delivered from affliction, to have whatever is troubling removed, and we pray and work to get the end. If we want to be rescued and relieved from our affiliation, how can we possibly find it during an affliction?
To be delivered from affliction, what we are being delivered from must be worse than the affliction itself. Since affliction is unpleasant at best and crushing at worst, what we are being delivered from must be evil. The affliction must be producing something that is far more precious the immediate relief.
What is more precious than relief from our deep pain.
What indifference do we need to be delivered from? Whatever it is, God needs to open our ears through adversity. Our struggles make us listen more clearly to God. What does God want us to learn through any afflictions?
Like Samuel, we need to learn to recognize God’s voice. (1 Samuel 3:4-14). We can learn to find God’s comfort is His presence, and His direction in our afflictions (trials) because we are actively looking for it, with our eyes and ears open.
I like how the prophet Isaiah puts it,
Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” -Isaiah 30:20-21
Listening to God, recognizing His voice and heeding it above the competing voices around us will radically transform us. It will give us supernatural wisdom and clear direction, it will ultimately reshape who we are.
Our afflictions draw us to the things of God because we realize the things of this world are broken.
Psalm 119 shows us that affiliation can make the Word of God more effective in our lives. David wrote, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I know Your Word” (Psalm 119:67), and “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I light learn Your Statutes”(Psalm 119:71).
Because we can draw close to God during our trials or afflictions, we can realize that nothing is as it should be, sin has marred everything and all creation is grounding because of it.
Pain spurs us to search for meaning and hope beyond our present circumstances, which can open our eyes to the power and beauty of God’s Word. His Word can reframe our world, bringing light to our eyes, opening our ears, and feeding our souls. God’s Word and His presence become sweeter in our suffering as we taste and see for ourselves His goodness and grace.
At first, in my struggles, I didn’t love God’s Word or listen to Him until it became too unbearable for me to go any further. I had to hit rock bottom until God’s Word became My hope, and it was only then that God opened my ears to hear Him speaking through my despair. I had to become attuned to His voice and strained to hear it above the sin I put myself in. When I decided to pour myself into the Bible in my pain, that God opened my ears. It was there I found an unexpected delight in fellowship with God and His Word.
Afflictions make us aware of our sins by bringing our buried struggles to the surface. When we are satisfied with life we are not able to see our sins closely. But, when our lives fall apart and we can’t depend on ourselves anymore, we learn to cling to God,
When despair sets in and we are burdened beyond its reliance on God when things take on a new meaning. When He rescues us from bad situations we learn to trust Him more in our next affliction or trial.
God is able to deliver us from every situation when we rely on Him, and not our own abilities.
Humans think they can take care of themselves, needing help from no one. But God has a way of refining us and softening the rough edges that we would have never discovered without or afflictions or trials.
Suffering, just like discipline is never pleasant at the time, but later it yields a peaceful fruit of righteousness. Our suffering will never be wasted. It produces a lasting endurance, character and hope.
But we must remember that in any affliction not everyone turns to God. Both God and Satan have purposes in our affliction.
Satan likes to use our suffering to try and turn us away from God. It’s important to recognize God always has a plan and a purpose.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future” –Jeremiah 29:11
God had life giving purposes in affliction when to turn to Him. In the hands of our loving God, affliction rescues us from evil. God uses affliction to deepen our faith and drive us towards Him, and directs our path.
From Pity to Praise 