Does God Care about Our Suffering?
Every Christian has experienced times when trials seem overwhelming. We naturally wonder: Where is God? Is God letting us down? Does He care? If God is good, then why is He allowing evil to triumph?
In the process of living and dying in a sin-cursed world we experience distress, agony, and misery due to pain, disease, loss, and damage. We call it suffering. Everyone experiences it sooner or later. It is part of the human condition. Some of it we bring on ourselves. Some of us suffer through no fault of our own.
Besides being difficult physically, emotionally, and spiritually, the fact that suffering often appears to have no rhyme or reason, and appears meaningless adds a measure of psychological suffering. Suffering is easier to endure if we can attach some meaning or purpose to it.
While we can't often control the sources of our suffering, we can control our response to it. God gives us direction as to how to respond so as to make it meaningful. We hope these resources help you turn suffering into a situation to praise God for His strength amid your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9b).
Every Christian has experienced times when trials seem overwhelming. We naturally wonder: Where is God? Is God letting us down? Does He care? If God is good, then why is He allowing evil to triumph?
You’re not very far along in life before you struggle with tough questions. It’s at times like this we really need hope.
Tough and bewildering stuff will keep happening in this life. But let’s not lose hope.
The Nazis stripped Victor Frankl’s life down to almost nothing. Once a renowned psychiatrist, Frankl was reduced to being a slave labourer at the notorious death camp Auschwitz. He could have seethed with hate and self-pity but, instead, Frankl realized that the Nazis could never steal, shape, or dictate his attitude.
Grieving is a journey, and even with God’s comfort, it’s normal to feel stuck. Here are some suggestions to help you move through long-term grief.
If Jesus promised an abundant, rich and satisfying life, how could He also promise many trials and sorrows? Aren’t those opposites? Why is the Christian life abundantly difficult at times?
It’s easy for us, living in the “civilized” 21st-century, to think that the persecution of Christians was merely a reality in ancient times. It was—but it’s as much a reality today as it was yesterday.
No matter how hard we work to attain a life of ease an avalanche of losses may wipe us out at any moment. How do we spiritually prepare for disasters that we don’t see coming? To what hope do we cling to when calamity crashes in?
Study Job 1 and 2 with Pastor Chuck Swindoll, and grasp how the assaults on Job’s family, health, and belongings threatened to pull him away from God.
It is time we speak up in defense of the helpless. The innocent victims of sexual abuse need a safe place to share their stories...and they need direction toward the emotional and spiritual healing found in Jesus Christ.