What to Run to When You're Suffering

If you’re in pain, whether physical, mental, emotional, relational, financial or spiritual, that pain can blot out everything else and become all-consuming. What can you cling to when you’re walking through the dark valley of pain and suffering? The most powerful thing you can cling to is the cross. When you’re suffering, run to the cross.

Why is the cross so powerful? Because it’s a picture of God’s love for us that is much more powerful than human words. Think about it: one of the biggest arguments against God is that if he was so loving, then why would he allow suffering in the world?

What does the most famous verse in the Bible say? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

We believe that God is not some cold and calloused Being far removed from all the pain and suffering in the world. He loved us enough to suffer with us, to suffer for us. If God loves us enough to suffer for us, there must be a good reason for it to go on, even if we can’t fully understand it.

When you’re suffering, cling to the cross where God suffered for you. That’s one of the things that makes Christianity unique among all the religions of the world. We believe that our God suffered for us. So when you hurt, know that Jesus hurt. When you feel abandoned, Jesus felt abandoned too. When you’re treated unjustly and unfairly, Jesus walked through that as well.

God loves us, he cares enough to embrace suffering on our behalf. Even if you’ve lost a child. God’s lost a child too. That’s why Jesus is called Immanuel, which literally means “God with us.” When you’re suffering, run to the cross.