When I was a fairly young Christian, I had the idea in my mind, however subconsciously, that being a Christian meant that God was obligated to protect me from suffering. If he didn't, either he didn't love me, or I had failed him somehow. When I went through suffering, I quickly and easily questioned my faith and my relationship with God. I withdrew from him and grew angry and bitter. Sometimes I cursed him.

I don't think I'm alone in that. I believe my experience is common to many Christians, as well as unbelievers. The biggest reason many people give for not believing in God is suffering in the world. People are slow to thank God for their blessings, quick to blame him for their agonies. God could have prevented this, they cry. If he is good, why would he allow this to happen?

Those are difficult questions. I know, because I've asked them myself. I don't pretend there's an easy answer. I believe there is an answer, but not the one most people want to hear.

The reality of the Christian life is not triumphalism: protection from all suffering, failure and pain. The reality of the Christian life is grace in the midst of suffering.

God did not spare his own Son from pain. Jesus was called "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3). The man whom many consider the greatest Christian who ever lived, the Apostle Paul, lived closely with suffering throughout his career (2 Corinthians 11:23-29). Jesus and Paul both warned us that suffering would be a normal part of the Christian life.

Paul was tormented by a "thorn in his flesh", from which he cried out that God would deliver him. God's response, however, was: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

A good summary of the Christian life: God's power in human frailty.

A striking apparent contradiction hit me when I was reading Luke recently. Jesus is warning his disciples about coming persecution:

But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you....You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. (Luke 21:12, 16-18, emphasis added)

Some of you will be put to death? Not a hair of your head will perish?

The thing is, God's idea of deliverance looks very different to ours.

Our idea of deliverance is cessation of the trial, the temptation, the persecution.

God's idea of deliverance is his strength given to us to enable us to endure and to overcome. God's idea of deliverance is his grace, peace, and comfort in the middle of trial. God's idea of deliverance is standing fast, holding firm, remaining faithful to him despite the temptation to deny or abandon him. God's idea of deliverance is resisting sin and turning to him for the grace to obey instead.

Paul summed up this paradox well:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)

Especially in charismatic circles, we love teaching about grace. We love teaching about the Father's love. We love hearing that God loves us no matter what, and that he will forgive us no matter what. We often hear that there is nothing we can do to make God love us less, and nothing we can do to make him love us more.

All of this is true. But it is impossible to truly behold God, and to remain the same. As we gaze at his beautiful face, we are transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, by the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).

When we see God, we no longer want sin. When we look upon his beauty, we no longer desire anything else. It is impossible to truly see him, and still want to hold onto sin and the world.

Our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). He is both more loving and more holy than we can possibly imagine. It is impossible for him to tolerate sin. Even in his beloved children, his purpose is to purge it away with the fire of his holiness until we begin to resemble his likeness.

He does this so we can live in his presence. Nothing sinful or evil can live with him. We are purified so that we can be ready to hold more of his presence inside us, to carry that presence to the world around us, and eventually, to see him face to face. In heaven there will be no sin. In this life, we are on a journey toward that destination. As we grow closer and closer to him, he will cleanse away everything that does not resemble his holiness and righteousness.

This process is sometimes more difficult and painful than we can imagine. But once we have drunk of the waters of bitterness, he will give us the waters of his peace and his joy. We will rejoice in what the trials accomplish, for even when we cannot see his purpose, he is guiding us with his loving hand into and through them. When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us. His hand holds ours the entire way.

I have known more of his presence, more of his joy, and heard his voice most often and most clearly, when I have gone through the deepest suffering.

Coincidence? I think not. And truly, in the end, it makes it all worth it. I wouldn't trade what I have gone through with God, what I have learned of him, and the closeness I've gained to him, for freedom from the suffering and pain. Even if sometimes in the middle of it, I've prayed for it to be taken away. He knows better, and he sees the end from the beginning.

This paradox is captured perfectly by Peter:

"In this [salvation] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." (1 Peter 1:6-7)

"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:7-11)

This is an incredibly important and comforting passage, one that I return to again and again. (Actually, I'd recommend all of verses 1-13). It sheds light on the purpose for our suffering: it is not because God hates us or we are rejected by him, but rather the opposite: we are his chosen and dearly loved sons, and he is committed to doing whatever he can to deal with the sin in our lives and bring about his righteousness and holiness.

Just a quick list of some of the results of God's discipline:

• To deal with sin in our lives
• To make us more like Jesus
• To cause us to rely on him more
• To cause us to know him more

However, this doesn't have to happen. The difficulties in a non-believer's life don't have these results, and they don't have to in our lives either. The key factor is our response to God's discipline.

How do we respond to suffering in order to produce godly results?

The key really is faith. Here are some thoughts:

• Remember the Father's love. Remember Romans 8:28. Remember that he loves us deeply and that he has PROMISED to work everything out for our good, including this trial. His heart does not change when we go through suffering. Nothing can separate us from his love.
• Refuse to give in to the temptation to grow bitter and to blame God or grow angry at him. Trust his heart. Thank him, as much as you can, even for this trial. Worship him, as much as you can. Worship is a powerful force against the enemy. This doesn't mean denying the pain, it just means telling him you still believe he is good in spite of it. You can be honest with him about how you feel, and about how it doesn't seem to make sense. He is your Father.
• Don't give in to the temptation to believe that your suffering is random and/or meaningless. You are a child of the living God. Your trial has been ordained by his sovereign hand, for your good. It is not random, it is not meaningless, it is not purposeless. He knows the end and the beginning.
• Don't give in to the temptation to think "what if" or fantasize about how things could have been. Accept it as it is. Face it realistically, and don't attempt to numb the pain (an ungodly response). Grieve if you have to.
• Submit to God and resist the devil (James 4:7) Wait with patience for the trial to be over.
• Remember that it WILL have good results. Remember that no matter how painful it is now, the pain will pass and you will look back, understand it better, and thank God for it. Remember that the end result, should you choose to trust God and obey him through it, will be "a harvest of righteousness and peace".

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." (The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 1:8-9)

Abraham is called in Scripture "the father of all who believe" (Romans 4:11-12). What kind of faith did Abraham have?

He had faith that God would raise the dead. First of all, he believed that God would bring life from his and Sarah's dead and barren bodies, to give them the son that God had promised (Romans 4:19-21). Later, after that son had miraculously been born, he faced an even greater test when God demanded that he sacrifice him. Still, he didn't waver in his faith but believed that if necessary, God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19).

God tells us that this is the faith that saves us. When we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, he credits us his righteousness and our sins are forgiven (Romans 4:24, 10:9).

However, this faith goes far beyond salvation, as the example of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1 tells us.

Many times as Christians we are faced with situations in our lives that seem like death. In fact, they are death: the death of our hopes, our dreams, our desires, our loves, our flesh. Many times they can seem excruciatingly painful, "far beyond our ability to endure," as Paul put it.

There is a Christian aphorism that goes like this, "God will never give you anything that you can't handle."

I don't believe that is true.

I believe that very often, God can and does allow things in our lives that we cannot handle, that are "far beyond our ability to endure," that could easily crush us to death.

And why?

He does it so, as Paul says, "that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."

When you are faced with a situation that you simply cannot handle, that is impossible for you, that in your strength cannot be moved, this happens so that in your manifest weakness you would cry out to God, who is your only hope. It happens so that when you have put your hope in him, confessed to him that he alone is your refuge and your salvation, and that if he does not raise this thing from the dead there will be no life, you will see his deliverance.

Paul went on to say,

"He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers." (2 Corinthians 1:10-11)

Are you faced with a situation that is impossible? Does it seem like there is no hope, no end in sight, no deliverance that you can see? Your hope is in the God who raises the dead. Your salvation is in the God who does the impossible. Turn to him, trust in him, so you can see his salvation.

I believe that is why James can tell us, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds." Though the trials themselves are not joyful, there is joy in the opportunity to cast yourself on the God who raises the dead and see what he will do. There is joy in the opportunity to grow in your knowledge and trust of him, and to prove yourself faithful through the testing rather than abandon God.

He will be faithful to us.

One of the main objections I come across when talking to non-Christians is the problem of evil (or The Problem of Pain, as C.S. Lewis termed it).

The argument is this: if God exists, and if he's good, then why is there so much evil in the world, particularly in the lives of those who love God? If God is both all-powerful and good, then surely he both can and ought to stop suffering. Because he doesn't, or doesn't seem to, then there must not be a God. Or not a good God, anyway.