I wrote this several years ago and just reread it. I needed to be reminded of all of this. Maybe you do too...
Sometimes bad things happen to us that we do not cause. That is when it is tough to trust that a caring God has our best interest at heart. We wonder about the compassionate missionary who had to return from the field because of debilitating cardiac problems. We question when the sixty-year-old pastor with the heart of a twenty-year-old from playing handball on his lunch hour still dies young from prostate cancer. Or we see the innocent child who was damaged by the father who was supposed to love and protect her. When we are not the cause or at fault of the dysfunction, but instead we are the victim of it, our hearts break and cause us to question, Hey, God are you up there? Don’t you care?
Half a century of existence has proven to me that God does intervene. He is all-knowing and all-powerful, and He loves us perfectly. So if bad things are happening to you that are not of your making, please hear me on this. It is because God trusts you with them. He trusts that the situation will make you better not bitter. He trusts that you will remain faithful, that you will use what you have learned to help others. You may not trust you. Your palms are sweaty and your heart is pounding. You may be convinced that you don’t have what it takes to get through this, but the Creator of the Universe is persuaded otherwise!
It’s important to recognize that God is not the cause of our pain. James informs us James 1:16-17, “So, my very dear friends, don't get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle” (The Message).
While God doesn’t create our hardship, we read in The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren that, “Nothing happens to us that is not God-filtered.” He is not unaware of our trials, and Scripture is clear that He can use them to bring good into our lives as we learn from Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
He has brought good out of the pain in my life again and again. He has allowed me to comfort other people and offer the hope in the midst of the pain that they are going through. There is no rush better than feeling used by God to make other people’s burdens lighter. If you are going through tough times right now, I pray that He will send someone your way for you to help—as only you can because of what you have been through.