Sound of Surviving Blog

It often seems to me, that when we first start out on our journey with Christ, we are in the romanticized teenage version of our relationship with him. We recite Psalm 23 over and over again, not really knowing yet what the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” actually looks like. We haven’t had our faith tested yet, and we trust that God will not let us down and lean into him fully.

But then, just as we are fully comfortable and trusting in God’s goodness…. BAM! The difficult part of following Christ bursts through our door; the trials, the loneliness, the pain, and heartache, and the wondering where God is as this tornado hurls itself through our lives, seemingly taking apart everything in its path, including us. And suddenly, instead of repeating Psalm 23, we find ourselves backtracking to Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We question God’s sovereignty and his righteousness.

It is funny, because even as new believers in Christ, we understand that Jesus, God’s own son, suffered and died on the cross, but we don’t ever expect that God would allow us to suffer as well. If God’s plan for Jesus, his son, and the only perfect human being to ever walk the earth, was to suffer, why do we act so surprised when his plan for our lives entails suffering?

I don’t know that any of us will ever truly know the reason for our suffering this side of Heaven, but I know that God doesn’t let anything enter into our lives that he doesn’t ultimately use for our good. God isn’t just allowing hardship into our lives for nothing; he uses it to bring glory to his name, so that all would know him, and have eternal life. Joseph was literally sold into slavery by his own brothers to bring others to God. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”-Genesis 50:20.

When God allows the wrecking ball of pain and heartache and suffering of endless trials into your life, smashing down every inch of your storybook cottage, he will not leave you in ruins.  No, he is transforming you into something so marvelous that you never in your wildest dreams could imagine it. God is transforming you into a beautiful palace that He, Himself, can dwell in. He is refining you so that we can be made new in Him. So that through you, others would come to know him, and have eternal life. He uses our suffering to draw us, and others closer to him, and without us ever knowing, uses our trials to save the lives of those around us.

In Zechariah 13:9, God declares, “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” As believers, we may despair, but our despair drives us to call on God, and luckily for us, the Lord himself states in Psalm 91:14-15, “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.”

God doesn’t always put out the flames surrounding us, but he does send Jesus to walk with us through them. So just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked out of the fiery furnace unscathed, without a singed hair or even the scent of smoke on their bodies, we too will rise from the fire, if we can just keep on trusting God. Not only that, but just as King Nebuchadnezzar saw Jesus walking in the flames with these three men, others will see Christ in us.

We will come through the fire. After all, if God is for us, who then, can be against us?