Why Does a Good God Allow Pain in Our Lives?

Basically we all want a pain free life if we are honest. Why doesn’t that seem to be God’s way? Especially if He is such a “good” God?

I’ve been hanging out in Isaiah a lot lately. The passage in Isaiah 48:10, “I have purified you by giving you troubles,” is a loaded statement.

What? God gives us troubles?

Later in Is. 66:9 we read, “ ‘In the same way I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born,’ says the Lord. ‘If I cause you the pain, I will not stop you from giving birth to your new nation.’ says your God.”

There are a couple of key parts to that verse.

1) Pain comes in birthing. (For sure!)

2) He will not stop us from giving birth. (That’s a huge relief, if you have ever been in   labor before!)

We often think life is supposed to be pain free if we are really walking with God, but clearly God doesn’t see it that way.

He always offers a plan in our pain. Not only that, He suffers with us in our pain.

And there’s more! He always offers to birth something that brings new life, if we don’t give up! Wow! That is amazing! Only God can bring life from death! And may I remind you, He has lots of experience and does it quite well!

God says He will not stop us from giving birth, but I wonder if we stop ourselves sometimes. We go out of our way to stop the pain, to stop whatever is happening from continuing, not realizing we are actually sabotaging ourselves by trying to stop a birthing process.

If we choose to see things our way, we risk the forward movement He has planned for us.

Is. 50:10-11 says, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys His servant? That person may walk in the dark and have no light. Let him trust in the Lord and depend on his God. But instead, some of you want to light your own fires and make your own light. So, go, walk in the light of your fires, and trust your own light to guide you.”

Once we pray and put something in God’s hands, He is at work, whether we can see it or not. We can trust Him, and depend on Him. God has never lost a battle He has entered, and He isn’t going to start with your battle.

Remember, God created Satan and his minions. They were flicked out of heaven because of rebellion and pride. Good and evil is not an even match. Sometimes we forget that, because of the result of evil affecting our lives. We think God and Satan have the same amount of power, and it is a wrestling match to see who wins.

God ALWAYS triumphs! We just have to let Him use His own battle plan, and surrender to it, instead of making up our own (because it doesn’t make sense to us in our painful situation). Starting our own fires and trusting in our own light to guide us will really take us off course, and make things even worse in the long run.

Let me just say, if I could make sense of God and figure Him out, I would actually be really disappointed and lost, because then He wouldn’t be big enough to be God!

Have you EVER asked God to cleanse and purify you? (That question makes a couple of worship songs come to my mind immediately, that I know I have raised my hands to and sung from my heart as a prayer to Him.)

Then guess what? As Isaiah 66:9 says, He doesn’t allow the troubles we go through to be wasted in our lives. He uses them to purify our hearts. Fire is a purifier. He is actually answering your prayer of purifying you.

I talk about this in my book Triple Crown Transformation.

For all my adult life, I have told God to do whatever He wants to do to get me where He wants me to be. Many years ago, I was praying about a situation I wanted God to fix.

He asked me, “Which prayer do you want me to answer?” I had to ask Him what He meant.

He replied, “You have always told me to do whatever I wanted to do, to get you where I want you to be. I want to use your situation to answer this prayer. So, do you want me to answer the prayer you have been praying for years, or do you want me to answer the prayer to fix this situation?”

I surrendered, and told Him to do whatever He wanted to do, to get me where He wanted me to be.

Surrender to His process. Surrender to His plan to birth new life through you. Don’t stop your birthing process because of the pain. Don’t make your own fires to guide yourself.

Allow God to use the pain you are experiencing to purify you, and to birth something new in your life.

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog from Crown of Glory Ministries to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God, especially in the areas of vision, authority, and identity. If you would like to have Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.