What Suffering Reveals

Most of us can accept the idea of suffering in general, especially when it comes as a consequence of bad behavior. We don’t have a problem with that.

What we do have a problem with is when bad things happen to people who are godly. It is not suffering that troubles us; it is undeserved suffering.

Job was not doing wrong; he was doing right. In fact, he was doing so well spiritually that God actually was bragging on him up in Heaven. Then one day, without warning, the bottom dropped out. The problem for poor Job was that he had never read the book of Job. He lived it in real time. And all he knew was that one day he woke up, and everything bad that could happen happened—and then even more bad things happened.

Sometimes God will use the worst to accomplish the best. It is then that we must trust Him. When the worst thing imaginable happened to Job, he fell down on his knees and said, "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord " (Job 1:21).

We admire that, and we should. If you have faith, your faith will get stronger when things get harder. If your faith doesn’t get stronger, then I wonder what kind of faith you have. A faith that cannot be tested is a faith that cannot be trusted. If your faith cannot survive adversity, then your faith isn’t real. It is through adversity that real faith grows stronger.

Job showed that he really was everything God said he was: a man of integrity, a man whom God could brag on. When the worst things happened, he stood tall.