He Has You

There will come a time for each of us in which we must learn to reconcile our suffering with an all-powerful and loving God. It will be here that the fork in the road of your faith will be, and the path you choose in your suffering will forever matter.

Suffering either drives a person to God or away from Him. “Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19 NKJV).

The path of suffering is a path ordained by God in which He allows us to go through things that we would never choose to go through if it were up to us. We need never pray for a trial, for they will most certainly come without asking and often when we least expect them.

In your suffering, look forward to what God is trying to teach you. “He delivers the afflicted in their affliction and opens their ears [to His voice] in adversity” (Job 36:15 AMPC).

One of the most difficult doctrines to embrace when we are suffering is that God is sovereign and nothing happens to us without His permission. And the hardest part that we must go through is when God is silent, and we don’t know why we are suffering.

We seek God the most in our troubles and then wonder why He allows them. “I will abandon my people until they have suffered enough for their sins and come looking for me. Perhaps in their suffering they will try to find me” (Hosea 5:15 GNT).

This past weekend, I was praying to God and talking to him about how He has allowed three rare conditions for me to have that have caused much suffering in my life. Yet, where I am in my faith journey, I trust Him with whatever I am going through.

Let your trials prove your faith. “…Even though it may now be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many kinds of trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine…” (1 Peter 1:6-7 GNT).

I was born with a cruel suffering caused by my broken sensory system, where I have one foot in the autistic spectrum. Next, God allowed me to have a back condition where hooks never formed on my L5 vertebrae, causing significant lower back pain for most of my life.

The Lord is more interested in changing the man than his circumstances. “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace [who imparts His blessing and favor], who called you to His own eternal glory in Christ, will Himself complete, confirm, strengthen, and establish you [making you what you ought to be]” (1 Peter 5:10 AMP).

I got back surgery and now can stand and walk without pain. But just a few years later, God allowed me to get an autoimmune inflammatory disease that has been inflaming my tendons and ligaments and damaging my joints and bone marrow. It’s called psoriatic arthritis.

Pray that your suffering accomplishes His will for your life.

Before a man can change people, the Lord must change the man. The Lord said regarding His servant Paul, “For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:16 NKJV).

This psoriatic disease I have has been very aggressive, spreading very quickly in just a few months. Several areas of my body hurt very much, and I have been losing the ability to do many things. My wife commented to me recently that God must have some big plans for me coming up. I’m blessed by her prophetic words.

Learn to let suffering complete its work in you before God might remove it.

I finally got through the diagnosis stage this last week, so I am getting approved for some medicine that can slow the disease down. It will take some months, but my doctor is confident he can help me. I am confident God can help him.

Jesus had faith that the Father could save Him from suffering. He also had faith that Father would help Him through it. Jesus prayed, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39 NKJV).

The path of suffering will either make the saint or break the saint, and the choice is up to you. You will either draw near to God or turn away from Him. You will either get sweeter in your soul or bitter in your heart. It all comes down to this: “Will you trust God?”

It’s in the bitter trials where the Lord makes the sweetest saints. “My brothers and sisters, you will have many kinds of trouble. But this gives you a reason to be very happy. You know that when your faith is tested, you learn to be patient in suffering. If you let that patience work in you, the end result will be good. You will be mature and complete. You will be all that God wants you to be” (James 1:2-4 ERV).

The greatest test of our faith is found on the path of suffering. When you can suffer much and praise God through it all, then you know your faith has grown. God can change you more in your suffering than in your pleasure, and that is why He allows the trials.

God makes His best saints in the worst of circumstances.

You can’t see the value in suffering, focusing on only the costs and not the return. “These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won’t last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God’s richest blessing upon us forever and ever! So we do not look at what we can see right now, the troubles all around us, but we look forward to the joys in heaven which we have not yet seen. The troubles will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18 TLB).

Nowhere in all of Scripture can we find a greater trust in God than in the words from Job while he was in the midst of tremendous suffering. We would all be most wise to read through the book of Job and learn the lessons God was teaching him.

Until you learn to trust God in your suffering, the lesson is not yet over. Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15 NKJV).

Child of God, no matter what type of suffering you are going through right now, God is with you. Don’t lose hope, but have hope in the Lord who has you for all of eternity. You may not know why God is allowing your suffering, but learn to trust Him all the same.

Your deepest hurt will be where God does His greatest work to make you useful for the kingdom.

Sometimes your suffering is a blessing. “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed” (1 Peter 3:14 NIV).

Don’t squander the cost of your suffering by being bitter towards God. Instead, let the cost of your suffering purchase all the changes that God wants to bring about in your heart and deep within your spirit. Trust God even when you don’t understand Him.

Don’t squander the cost of your suffering by being bitter. “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…” (Romans 5:3-4 ESV).

My prayers are with you in your suffering, that the  Lord would comfort you and help you to grow in your faith and become the man or woman of God that He wants you to be. May your suffering draw you closer to God each day.

There are some lessons that can only be learned through suffering. “Although Yeshua was the Son of God, he learned to be obedient through his sufferings” (Hebrews 5:8 NOG). How much more do we need to learn how to be obedient?

Blessings to you always,

Paul Balius