I’ve been thinking about the concept of steadfast faith in God despite suffering. I am beginning to see that there is a deepened level of trust in God you come into when you still choose Him amidst things you do not completely understand. I’d say this is not a type of trust you might get from reading a book or listening to someone else’s story on how they came into total trust in God. This is the type you build in the place of relationship with God. It is the type where you keep going back to Him even when the promises are not forthcoming, because He is both the promisor and the source of perfect comfort. I think it’s important that I put a disclaimer here that I’m not writing this with the intent of glorifying suffering. Suffering is never a desirable thing, and shouldn’t be something we desire. But when life and chance happens to us in this fallen world, it can be an opportunity for growth in unexpected ways, especially for people who put their trust in God.
'These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' John 16:33
Let’s start with the story of Abraham in the Bible. The Lord had promised him a son when he was 75 years old, he received the promise when he was 100 years old. That is a whole 25 year gap before the fulfillment of the promise. Imagine waking up everyday for 25 years being reminded that you do not have the promised son yet, and at some point you present Ishmael to God as if to say “don’t worry God, I still trust You, this is enough for me”. But God insists that you would have an heir through your wife. For 14 years after Ishmael was born, Abraham was still believing God for THE son.
Take a moment to think about it,
25 years is a lot of time to wait for something.
It makes me wonder what must have been going through Abraham’s mind on certain days.
I’m sure some days were harder than others for him, and that’s the reality of the human nature. I’m also sure his ability to wait for that long and not despise the promise was not outside of the strength he drew from intimacy with God.
To know God is to love Him more, to know God is to trust Him more.
That particular process must have stretched Abraham’s trust in God in such a way that it made it easier for him to obey when God instructed him to go sacrifice Isaac.
It takes a huge amount of “crazy” to follow that type of instruction, and the preceding years of waiting were part of what made him have that amount of crazy in him.
So I’ve come to the conclusion that in life there are certain sufferings God would allow us go through and would give us the grace to go through because He has a better end goal in mind. This is not to minimize the weightiness of the pain, but to point us again to the comfort that can be found in God; the God of all comfort and the progenitor of all.
'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. ' 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Resting my pen here for now,
À tantôt 👋
A lil’ music rec🙃: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=HGEfCusba34