What God Is Doing When You Suffer

Suffering is not random, not punishment for hidden sin, and not evidence that God has lost the plot. Here is what it actually is.

First, Kill the Dangerous Assumption

There is a theology of suffering that is old, deeply intuitive, and profoundly wrong. It goes like this: if bad things happen to you, sin is involved. You haven't believed hard enough. You've been disobedient. God's itchy trigger finger finally caught up with you. Jesus confronts this head on. 'Do you think,' he asks, 'that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? No, I tell you.' ^[12]

The belief that the prerequisite for suffering is always sin is, as one sermon puts it, 'a fundamental and profound misunderstanding of the gospel itself.' ^[12] It is 'owing to a view that God is perpetually angry.' ^[12] And here is the real damage it does — beyond impugning God's character, it cuts you off from the comfort God actually wants you to experience. ^[12] Sin certainly has consequences, and the book of Proverbs makes that clear. It might be that suffering is the result of sin. But it is not a guarantee. ^[12] The constant refrain of the Old Testament is not that God is 'just waiting to blast us.' ^[12] Receive that. It matters before you can receive anything else.

Any Harm That Reaches You Has Passed Through His Hand

Here is the next category to build: nothing arrives in your life randomly. 'Any harm that does befall us is allowed to befall us from the hand of the Lord.' ^[1] Couldn't God stop it? Yes. He could stop harm from the sun and harm from the moon. 'But yes, at times, God does allow seemingly bad things to happen to us.' ^[1] The question is why.

Job asked that question longer and harder than most of us ever will. And the answer the book of Job gives is not a tidy explanation — it is a pulled-back curtain showing a sovereignty we hadn't seen. 'The whole point of the story of Job is Job is sitting there going, Why? Why is this happening? And God says, Who are you? Who are you, O man?' ^[16] In Psalm 88, the curtain doesn't even get pulled back. There is no revealed purpose, no divine explanation. What that psalm teaches instead is how 'to acknowledge His sovereign hand in all our hardships, even and especially when His purpose and hope seemed to remain hidden.' ^[16] That is a harder assignment — and a more important one.

The practical anchor here is this: 'nothing, and absolutely nothing, comes our way that has not first passed through the mind of God. God remains in control in the midst of our trials.' ^[13] You can say with Job, 'The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.' ^[13] That is not resignation. That is the first move of faith.

God Appointed These Trials Before the Foundation of the World

Before you were born, before you sinned, before this particular season of pain arrived — God had already prepared it for you. 'Before the foundation of the world, God appointed seasons of suffering for us that are perfectly prescribed in dose and duration.' ^[17] Charles Spurgeon wrote it plainly: 'Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. He bears a cross not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. Christ exempts you from sin, but not from sorrow. Remember that and expect to suffer.' ^[17]

For the believer, suffering is not something that may possibly be avoided. 'For the believer, it's inevitable.' ^[18] Paul tells the Thessalonians they 'were destined for affliction.' ^[18] The New Testament does not gloss over it. 'In the providence of God, suffering is often the means used by God to work out His purposes in His people. He uses it to teach us valuable lessons and to develop in us character and faith and perseverance.' ^[18] And Romans 8:28 does not say some things — 'not some things, not just the good things, but all things work together for good.' ^[18]

But — and this is the pastoral note that belongs here — in the middle of it, 'the dose always seems too strong and the duration always seems too long.' ^[17] That is not unbelief. That is honesty. God 'means to break through the mere idea, the mere facts of spiritual poverty, and restore to us a sense of felt spiritual poverty. God is letting us taste the truth. It's just a little bit stronger than we would like it to be.' ^[17]

God Will Qualify You for Glory Through the Grind

Here is what God is actually doing in the suffering: 'God will qualify us for glory by putting us through a grind.' ^[3] 2 Corinthians 4 puts it directly — 'this light and momentary suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory.' ^[3] The grind is not punishment. The grind is production.

Patience is a necessary virtue, and problems are the only school it grows in. 'The only way a person learns patience is through pain. We don't learn patience if we don't have problems.' ^[4] The kid who needs to learn how to swim to become a Navy SEAL has to get in the water. You, in order to learn how to be patient, have to have problems. ^[4] And when he allows these trials into your life, he is 'only doing so because there are certain blessings that we cannot obtain without those trials.' ^[4]

Romans 5 traces the whole arc: 'suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.' ^[5] The chain is deliberate. God is building something durable in you — something that a comfortable life simply cannot produce.

Your Suffering Is Telling the World a Story About God

'My suffering is telling the world a story about God. That's what my suffering is for.' ^[14] The key to thinking rightly about suffering is to remember what you were put on this earth to do — 'to display, to teach, to tell, to bear image.' ^[14] Your salvation displays the goodness of God. Your glorification displays the goodness of God. 'And the key to this passage is just that, your tribulation also displays the goodness of God.' ^[14]

What are you showing in your hardship? You are showing 'a strength that is not your strength' and 'a hope that does not disappoint.' ^[5] That is not a minor thing. Charles Spurgeon again: 'If you do not sin while under the stress of heavy trouble, God will be honored. He is not so much glorified by preserving you from trouble as He is by upholding you in trouble.' ^[13] Satan's real agenda in your suffering is not the pain itself — 'Satan did not care what Job suffered or what we suffer. His hope, Satan's hope, is to make us sin or to curse God, to become discouraged, to doubt God's goodness, to lose our faith and hope and our confidence in God.' ^[13] Foil him, and God is glorified. That is the assignment.

And there is this: the same suffering that destroys an unbeliever will deliver a believer. 'If you place your faith in Christ, the same pain that judges and destroys the unbeliever will deliver and purify the believer.' ^[9] When the waters rise, if you are not truly in Christ, 'the suffering, the hardship, the calamity, it will destroy you.' ^[9] But if you are in Christ, what do the waters do? 'They transport you to the mountaintop. They move you to the next stage.' ^[9] Same waters. Entirely different outcome.

The Center of the Problem of Evil Is a Crucified God

If you want to have the conversation about suffering and evil at its deepest level, you have to go to the cross. 'He who knew no sin was treated like the worst cretin on the face of the earth. He was scorned and rejected and scourged. It was the Father's good will to crush him so that through that he would make atonement for our many sins.' ^[2] The Bible takes the problem of evil seriously. It just says that 'the central figure of the Bible is the one to whom the most injustice has occurred — namely God.' ^[2]

That changes everything about how you bring your suffering before God. 'God crucified his only begotten son who deserved nothing of it to set this world right.' ^[2] That is not a glib explanation for your particular pain. It is not a tidy answer that makes the hurt stop. The honest pastoral word is simply this: 'if something terrible has happened to you, I am sorry. I will not give you some kind of glib explanation as to why. I wouldn't dare to do that.' ^[2] But what can be said — what must be said — is that 'God does care about pain and that he has a purpose for it and that that purpose is sometimes hidden from us.' ^[2]

The basic math for enduring all of this well is not a technique. It is a person. 'The basic math of contentment, the basic math of enduring suffering well, is to have treasured Christ before the trial.' ^[11] You do not want to wait for the trial to teach you how to treasure him. 'I'd much rather have you learn to treasure Christ before the next trial.' ^[11] Because when something is taken from you — and something will be taken from you — the question is what you console yourself with in that moment. If you have a deep love for Jesus, you still have Christ, and you can never lose him. ^[11]

This page synthesizes what Chris Oswald has preached on suffering at Providence Community Church. Every claim above traces to the cited sermons — follow any citation to read the full sermon, listen to the audio, and see the surrounding context. Minute marks are approximate, estimated from each sermon's transcript.