Why Am I Going Through All This Pain, God?

Are you in a desperate place right now? It can be tempting to think of God as the villain, when tough circumstances are hitting you like wave, after wave.

"God, You must not care about me to let me go through all of this."

"I want to believe You are a good Father, but my circumstances are telling me a different story."

"Why haven't You rescued me yet, God? Don't You love me?"

"Do You love others more than You love me? If not, why am I hurting so much?"

God's Word says that He is GOOD. But the circumstances you are going through are telling you a different story. How on earth do you reconcile the two when they are both telling you something polarly opposite?

Will the Real Villain Please Stand Up?

Since the beginning of creation, the enemy has been trying to sell his lies as truth to God's creation, including you, and painting your thoughts to believe that God isn't who He says He is.

In the Garden of Eden, you can hear the voice of the enemy slyly asking Eve, "Did God REALLY say...?" He put a question mark where God had already put a period.

Why does the enemy cause you to question what God has already said? In John 10:10, Jesus answers this when He said that "the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy."

That means the intentions of the enemy's heart is to destroy you and those you love. He knows that if he can get you to think wrongly about God, you will stop trusting Him and reaching out to Him for everything you need and the relationship will be broken or severed as you turn to other answers.

The devil hates you. Vehemently.

He is the one who hands you a rose that's been dipped in poison.

The enemy wants nothing more than to destroy you and make it seem like God is the bad guy, when the enemy is acting as the instigator of those bad things in your life.

Revelation 12:17 says, "Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus..."

The enemy is furious. The Bible says he makes war with you. He is not your friend. He is truly your enemy.

But he doesn't just stop at being your enemy. Because he is so mailicious and vicious and covert in his operations, he hides in the shadows. 

Instead of exposing himself as the thief he is, he blame-shifts his evil deeds to God and tries to paint a bad picture of who God is.

Why does he do this? To make you doubt Him. The devil is so filthy, he is trying to scapegoat both you and God and get you to do his dirty work so he doesn't get caught.

If the devil can plant a thought in your mind by presenting it and you accept it, it will grow in your heart and eventually come out of your mouth.

"Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." (Luke 6:45).

Rather than force you to say something contrary to who God is, the enemy will plant thoughts about your situation and questions about God's goodness, so you believe his lies and so that you say bad things about God.

The enemy is trying to "sink the ship from within" so you'll no longer trust God and part ways with Him, wanting nothing to do with Him.

God is always pursuing you in love. That was proven at the cross. But if they enemy can get you to believe that God isn't loving you, you'll start to push back and run away from The One who is pursuing your heart in love.

God is Not the Villain!

Hear this--even though hard circumstances can make you feel like God is witholding something from you, God is not the villain.

In the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:4-5, the enemy twisted and posed God's command to Adam and Eve in such a way that it made it seem like God was witholding something good from them.

But that wasn't true! He was twisting God's truth to paint God as the villain, when the enemy was the one that was really holding the vile of poison.

He will take the vile from his jacket pocket and pour it over a situation until all you see is the poison and not the God who is working all things together for your good.

A Broken World

Why is there suffering in the first place?

Because the world is broken from sin. Isaiah 24:5-6 says, "The earth suffers for the sins of its people, for they have twisted God's instructions, violated His laws, and broken His everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse consumes the earth. Its people must pay the price for their sin."

That is you. That is me. That is everyone here on planet earth. ALL people, like sheep, have gone astray (Isaiah 53:6). Every one of us is reeling from the effects of living in a broken world, which God will one day make into a new world untainted by sin (Isaiah 21:1).

Jesus said in John 16:33, "...in the world you WILL have tribulation."

An Amazing Promise

But with tribulation, God also says that it's temporary: "He will wipe away EVERY tear from their eyes, and death shall be NO MORE, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

The trouble you face here on earth is temporary. It's painful, but one day, it will be completely eradicated from even your memory--He will wipe it all away. 

Pain is not fun though, right? But just like a Mama giving birth to a baby, the time of "tribulation" that she is going through during birth is nothing compared to the joy that she will experience with that baby is in her arms as John 16:21 refers to.

And one day, all this pain and suffering you are going through will be completely eradicated and wiped away and you won't even remember it.

The Bible calls for endurance instead of escape. Revelation 14:!2 says, "This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep His commands and remain faithful to Jesus."

Why Does God Feel Like the Bad Guy?

Jesus already established that you and everyone else will go through tribulations while you are here on this sin-stained earth--that's why sticking close to God and doing what He says matters so much.

When you disobey God, it ushers in the opposite of His goodness and it brings death instead of life. You make yourself vulnerable to even more pain because you put distance between you and God--your very life line.

He is always pursuing your heart, but any distance from Him will bring unwanted pain and sorrow.

There is pain in suffering, but there is even more pain in being distant from Him.

The temptation comes when you start to believe the lies of the enemy and see those circumstances through the lens of lies of the enemy and how they have affected your feelings, rather than relying on what God's Word says about who He is.

It's like the enemy has a pair of glasses that have had hate words written on them about God.

When bad circumstances happen (as they will to everyone), rather than going through those tough things as part of the effects of the fall, but knowing that God is working all things (even those tough things) in your favor, you start to fixate on those lies:

"Maybe God really does hate me. If He loved me, wouldn't He have rescued me from this by now?"

Instead of seeing through God's lenses that say, "..Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for The LORD your God will be with you wherever you go" (His faithfulness), the lens of the enemy will say, "Did God really say that He loves you and is going to be with you? He must actually hate you because you're going through all this right now, but your sister in Christ isn't. He must love her more than He loves you."

Well, your feelings are saying that God has left you. I mean, others have left you before, so it must be true, right? 

Wrong.

The enemy will capitalize on human failure and weakness as a way to keep you down.

The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34) and that He does not show favoritism (Romans 2:11). 

There is no comparison with others because everyone has trials and hard things they walk through. Jesus gives you grace to go through what you are walking through and gives others grace for the suffering they are walking through. 

Another's burdens may seem light to you until you try to carry what they carry, sometimes publicly and sometimes in private. 

Jesus said in 2 Corinthians 12:9, "...My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness..."

But, My Feelings Feel So VALID.

Your feelings are still attached to your flesh (Galatians 5:17), which is still tied to the decay of this world. That is why you need The Spirit's help to put the flesh's desires to death (Romans 8:13) and also why you need God to give you a new body one day (1 Corinthians 15:50-53).

Your feelings can feel so convincing because they are still attached to your flesh and your flesh can still be tempted by the enemy and his lies. 

Instead of relying on your flesh and feelings to decipher the truth, you have to lean on God's Word and not your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6).

How Can I Do This?

In John 15:4-10, Jesus said you can only bear fruit by abiding in Him and His love as you keep His commands and by Him remaining in you. If you have surrendered your life to Jesus and The Spirit of God has made you born again, your spirit man is alive, even though your body (and the fleshly feelings attached to it) are dead because of sin (Romans 6:11). 

So freedom from lies can only be found in spending time with God in His Word to get to know Him. If not, then cleverly crafted lies from the enemy might sound like truth. God will never contradict His Word, even if your feelings do.

For example, if your feelings are telling you one thing is "true," but God is telling you another (real) truth in His Word, then you can know your feelings are wearing the tainted, poisonous glasses that they enemy has handed you and seeing the wrong thing. 

Your feelings and thoughts are out of calibration with God's Word, not your circumstances. 

So How Can I Know If It's God or the Enemy at Work?

The first step in deciphering whether a thought is from God or the enemy, is to first get to know what the Bible says about God's character and satan's lack of character so you can have knowledge to separate the two.

The enemy's lack of character and his resulting works are in opposition to who God is. In John 14:6, Jesus said, "I am...the truth." Jesus also said in John 8:44 that satan is the father of lies and that when he lies, he is speaking his native language.

So, what can you conclude from that? What God says can be trusted. It's the devil who is a liar, and anything that is not God's truth is a lie, even if it may come packaged with heavy feelings attached to it.

If a circumstance is causing you to question something God has already said in Scripture is true, you can know it's a lie and not from God, even if it feels like it.

For example, do you feel like God has abandoned you? It may FEEL like God is the villain if the enemy's lie is presented to you, but that is where you need to resist him (James 4:7).

What does His Word actually say? Hebrews 13:5 says that he will never leave you, nor forsake you.

I Want to Stand Firm In Truth, But It's Hard!

The Bible encourages you to not be overcome by evil, but to over that evil with good (Romans 12:21).

How do you do this?

You replace the lies by knowing the Truth (Jesus) and refuse to listen to anything but Him (His sheep hear His voice and He knows them and they follow Him - John 10:27-28), even if your feelings tell you otherwise.

It is a battle of spiritual warfare as Ephesians 6:10-18 details. Every believer of Christ will be engaged in it in one form or another. 

I know it is hard. But remember this, dear loved one:

It is temporary. 

You are on earth only for a short time and will be in eternity with Jesus for forever. Jesus set the example all believers by bearing up under pain and tribulation as He submitted to The Father.

Be encouraged by Hebrews 12:10 that says God is using those difficult things in order for you to share in His holiness.

The pain in life on this earth reminds all believers of why God wants everyone to live holy lives--because His way brings the fruit of The Holy Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy peace, etc.

In contrast, sin truly ushered in pain and terrible things in this world. Even if it's not a sin you have directly done to experience what you are experiencing (a lot of times it can actually be because someone else caused it), the pain you are experiencing should make you want to run to The Father who is holy.

His holiness works with the painful things of this world in such a way that it ends up protecting His children from the eternity of pain in hell because it draws them closer to holiness and away from sin.

Temporary pain here on earth makes us see why we so desperately need God in our lives and makes us shun the very thing that would bring us pain for all of eternity.

God is a GOOD Father and will help you through what you are going through; love you what you are going through; and encourage you what you are going through.

Hang in there! It may be a long season, but it's just a season--you will get through this...and one day, He will wipe away every tear from your eyes. Keep going--His grace is sufficient for you in your time of weakness and when you cannot take another step, He will carry you through.

Isaiah 43:2: "WHEN you pass through the waters, I WILL be with you; and WHEN you pass through the rivers, they will NOT sweep over you. WHEN you walk through the fire, you will NOT be burned; the flames will NOT set you ablaze."

Rest assured in the strength of your God. He will see you through. 

God is not the villain.

God is your Hero.