Seeing Suffering Through the Lens of God’s Sovereignty
Suffering can be a gift of the most unexpected kind. It’s certainly not something I would put on a wishlist, but I’ve found the treasure it produces far exceeds anything this world has to offer. As my twenty-two year battle with Multiple Sclerosis steadily strips away layers of my freedom, independence, and dignity, it has granted me the rare opportunity to examine the affections of my heart. It allows me to take an honest inventory of what I really want. Do I desire the life I prefer, or am I willing to accept the life God has sovereignly purposed for me? Do I trust my heavenly Father enough to follow the example of Christ and say, “not my will but Yours be done”? There are so many things I desperately miss about having an able body. I miss walking. I miss being able to stand at eye-level in a crowd and be part of conversations. I miss being able to drive and go places independently. I miss being able to exercise hard enough to break a sweat and experience the release of endorphins. I miss the ability to relax in a body that is free from pain and constant discomfort. It’s hard to process the things I know to be true about God with my current reality. I know without a flicker of doubt in my mind that God is sovereign over all creation, and in an instant, He could restore the function in my body if that was His will. I also know to the depths of my soul that my heavenly Father loves me, and His heart toward me is kind and full of mercy and grace. Yet there is no end in sight of my affliction, but rather a grim prospect of continued decline. It’s difficult to put into words how the Lord is helping me make sense of these seemingly contrasting truths, but I’m going to try.
Some of you may recoil at the thought that God is sovereign over our suffering, but in my experience, the only true comfort I’ve found is knowing that the pain I’m experiencing had to first pass through the loving, sovereign hands of God before it got to me. As Jonny Ardavanis puts it so well in his book, Consider the Lilies,
“Maybe this is discomforting to you to hear that God is sovereign over suffering, but let me tell you this: there is no comfort in suffering unless God is sovereign over it. We must trust that God is working out His plan, even when we can’t connect the dots...Scripture says there is no trial, no tear shed, no diagnosis, and no unjust firing outside of a sovereign God who is also infinite in His wisdom and perfect in His love.”
When pain gets up in your face and obstructs your view, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Over the past five years God has opened up a whole new world for me as He has expanded my view of the grand scope of His predetermined plan of redemption revealed throughout the pages of Scripture. I used to see my Christian life in such a compartmentalized way. I was missing the beautiful, larger tapestry that sound doctrine weaves together. There is a cosmic reality to our salvation that is unnatural for our linear minds to comprehend; we are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. God is outside of the construct of time as we know it. What He sees and knows as accomplished, we have only experienced in part. Because of this, I believe God’s view of our suffering is much different than ours. God knows the outcome of our trials and how - if He were to deliver us from them prematurely - we would miss the far greater good He intends to accomplish through them. He actually tells us this repeatedly in the Bible. I never grasped the interdimensional truths of the “already not yet” that were right before my eyes for so many years. Now that I see it, I can’t unsee it.
The Apostle Peter explains it this way,
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love HIm. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” - 1 Peter 1:6-9
This passage gives me a glimpse of the ways God is using my suffering. As disability shrinks my world and I feel the waves of grief grip my soul, I have a choice to make. I can look at my circumstances and allow sorrow to suck me down a vortex of despair or I can fix my eyes on my Jesus and choose to believe that He is who He says He is. He is my Rock, my Redeemer, the Shield about me and the Lifter of my head. None of these characteristics of God suggest He will not let hard things happen to me, but rather they point to how He will help me in the midst of them. When I trust God to be who He says He is, rather than who I think He should be, I am forced to surrender my will and my faith is refined in the purifying furnace of affliction. Somehow this process of trusting God verifies to my own soul that my faith is genuine. Rather than doubting God’s love for me in the face of loss, I feel it more deeply. And someday all of this will result in resounding praise, glory, and honor when I see my Savior face to face. My heart feels like it could burst at the thought of it. I guess that is the inexpressible joy Peter is speaking of. And it makes so much sense, because at that moment I will get to experience the actual outcome of my faith: the salvation of my soul. It’s the greatest exchange imaginable. What is sown as perishable, God will raise imperishable; what is sown in dishonor, God will raise in glory; what is sown in weakness, God will raise in power; what is sown a natural body, God will raise a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44) When I feel afraid of how my disease will progress and the inevitable suffering I have yet to endure, I redirect my thoughts to who God is. I know that He is merciful. So no matter what my future holds or how this illness plays out, I know that God will be there and He will be merciful to me because that is who He is. When I consider these truths in light of my suffering, my soul is comforted. As my faith is fortified by affliction it gives me certainty of my salvation and the assurance that God is able to do far more abundantly than all I could ask, think or imagine in this age and the one to come. (Ephesians 3:20)
Paul affirms this idea in Romans 8:8-25 as well as in 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 where he details how the glory of God is put on display in the clay vessels of our lives. It’s not our prosperity or earthly success that glorifies God, but our brokenness and full surrender to Christ. Paul wraps up this section of Scripture with this powerful crescendo,
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” - 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
I’ve read that passage so many times and loved it, but reading it through the lens of suffering has allowed it to penetrate my heart on a whole new level. In the grand scheme of eternity my afflictions really are light and momentary, but they are not for nothing. Somehow, in ways I cannot fathom or comprehend, God is going to use the brokenness of my life here and now to bring Him glory for all eternity.
This hope of redemption is woven throughout all of the Bible. Even the prophet Isaiah foresaw a converging of the “already not yet” as these two dimensions collide and God’s Kingdom is unveiled. This is how he described it,
“On This mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’” - Isaiah 25:6-9
I want to be found trusting and waiting for God in such a way - that when He appears - my response will not be one that questions, “Where have you been?” or “What took You so long?” but one that declares with confident, anticipatory joy, “I knew You would come!”
“Maybe this is discomforting to you to hear that God is sovereign over suffering, but let me tell you this: there is no comfort in suffering unless God is sovereign over it. We must trust that God is working out His plan, even when we can’t connect the dots...Scripture says there is no trial, no tear shed, no diagnosis, and no unjust firing outside of a sovereign God who is also infinite in His wisdom and perfect in His love.”
