Adversity.

Why do we suffer?

Do we truly suffer?

If we have Christ are we ever really suffering?

These are hard. We humans know pain. We feel it in our achy joints as we age. We feel it in our first relationship heartbreak. We know it when we have a job or family loss.

We are all to familiar with adversity. This life as we know it is full of it from the international headlines to our own friends and family – we are a hurting society and a hurting people.

We watch others go through extremely tough situations where we want to give up or blame others or G-d.

And it is not if but when it will reach our own doorstep or our own bodies. It’s inevitable.

Suffering and adversity are two schoolmates egging each other to up the ante. They play in the same circles and affect similar behaviors.

Why do we suffer? Let’s dive a bit into the cesspool on this. Cesspool – yes. Sin is that cesspool. Nothing good about a real one and nothing good about a spiritual one either. Both stink and want to contaminate the good. We live in sin, we were born into it and will struggle with it until our final breath. That’s the main reason why we suffer yet most people focus not on this why but on another one – the who!

We can easily blame G-d for our suffering in a negative manner as He hates us or that He is cruel. The complete opposite is true. The pride that is causing the first thought is the reason why the opposite is true.

We need Him. He wants a relationship with us.

We should be surrendering to Him and allowing Him to carry us through adversity, through suffering.

We learn through pain and ask important questions.

We realize (if we aren’t prideful) that we are at our wits end and need His help and His comfort.

We lose ourselves into His arms.

For the second and third questions. These can become academic yet I will spare you the explanation mostly because I don’t have all the answers.

I do know this. If we are in His hands, he won’t allow us to have more than what He knows we can handle and He knows.

He is also with us so we are in good hands. Sorry Allstate your hands don’t compare – not even close.

True suffering, if I am honest, is hell – a total separation from Him for all eternity. No love, no protection, no sweetness of intimacy with a relationship with our true Father. That’s suffering.

Now adversity will come. In fact Jesus proposed it in Matthew 29 about how we will suffer for His namesake. That’s a fact. Yet what is also a fact is that He will be with us. From Psalm 73 to the promise of the Holy Spirit for believes in John 14, He is gracious to be with us and will help us according to His plan and for His glory.

Take rest in that.

Find peace in His arms.

We will go through adversity. We will struggle with suffering and why we (or a loved one) are going through it.

There will be tough days ahead.

In the end (or really the new beginning) there will be a better prize. Jesus.

Deuteronomy 31:6 (ESV) “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”