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A while ago I shared\u00a0a great article<\/a>\u00a0by Ray Ortlund about how God will use time and trials to accomplish His purpose for you. Ray writes,<\/p>\n Only men with scars can preach a Savior with scars to sinners with scars. So, in addition to the many insights and skills God will impart to you, he also will wound you. A.W. Tozer wisely said, \u201cIt is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n At some point in your life, God will injure you so extremely that the self-reliance you aren\u2019t even aware of, the self-reliance you\u2019ve been navigating so consistently by that it feels natural and innocent, will collapse under the loss and anguish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A commenter wrote in response, \u201cGod uses trials to help us become like Him. I don\u2019t believe that He purposely wounds us. No loving father would do that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I understand this person\u2019s objection. At first glance, \u201churt,\u201d \u201cwound,\u201d and \u201cinjure\u201d seem contradictory to the truths God is our loving, good, tender, and caring Heavenly Father. But the problem is that we often define \u201clove\u201d and \u201cgood\u201d in superficial and trivial ways, setting us up to question God\u2019s heart and purposes in hard times. Yet notice how our spiritual forebears saw His love:<\/p>\n The LORD\u2019s unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him. (Psalm 32:10)<\/p>\n Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. (Psalm 51:1)<\/p>\n Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. (Lamentations 3:32)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Our problem is not that we make too much of divine love, but too little. God does not love us on our preferred terms, but on His own. We think to \u201clove\u201d means to \u201cdo no harm,\u201d when it really means \u201cto be willing to do short-term harm for a redemptive purpose.\u201d A physician who re-breaks an arm in order for it to heal properly harms his patient in order to heal him. C. S. Lewis wrote in\u00a0A Grief Observed<\/em>,<\/p>\n But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless\u2026. What do people mean when they say \u201cI am not afraid of God because I know He is good\u201d? Have they never even been to a dentist?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If cancer or paralysis or a car accident prompts us to draw on God\u2019s strength to become more conformed to Christ, then regardless of the human, demonic, or natural forces involved, God will be glorified in it. A friend whose husband died wrote,<\/p>\n One thing that I\u2019ve become convinced of is that God has different definitions for words than I do. For example, He does work all things for my eternal good and His eternal glory. But his definition of good is different than mine. My \u201cgood\u201d would never include cancer and young widowhood. My \u201cgood\u201d would include healing and dying together in our sleep when we are in our nineties. But cancer was good because of what God did that He couldn\u2019t do any other way. Cancer was, in fact, necessary to make Bob and me look more like Jesus. So in love, God allowed what was best for us\u2026in light of eternity.<\/p>\n We cannot see the end God has in mind. If we could, we would likely see that the hardships God allows prevent even more debilitating hardships\u2014the by-products of the diminished character that results from a life of ease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Samuel Rutherford wrote these profound words in the seventeenth century:<\/p>\n If God had told me some time ago that he was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and then had told me that he should begin by crippling me in arm or limb, and removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing his purpose. And yet, how is his wisdom manifest even in this! For if you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ll close with a story I share in my book\u00a0If God Is\u00a0<\/em>Good<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about Mary, who did not know Christ and was dying of cancer. One day she seemed perfectly healthy, the next she found herself in unending chemotherapy. She asked my wife why, if a loving God existed, He had let her life fall apart.<\/p>\n Nanci shared with Mary an analogy of a three-year-old boy who swallows poison. The father calls poison control, and they say, \u201cYou have to get him to the hospital. And whatever you do, don\u2019t let him fall asleep. If he falls asleep, he\u2019ll die.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a cold winter night. His father rushes the boy to the car, sits beside him in the front seat, and rolls all the windows down. The boy\u2019s head starts to drop. His father slaps him in the face. The boy cries. His head starts to nod again. The father slaps him again and again, all the way to the hospital.<\/p>\n Can the child understand why his father is slapping his face?\u00a0<\/em>Of course not. He\u2019s only three years old. His father, through tears, says, \u201cI love you, son.\u201d But if this is love, the boy doesn\u2019t want any more of it.<\/p>\n Even though the child cannot understand, the father is acting in his son\u2019s best interests. The father is doing good. What the child considers cruelty is actually kindness. Is it possible that God shows His love for us in the midst of human suffering and, like that three-year-old, we sometimes don\u2019t understand?<\/p>\n (By the way, Nanci\u2019s story touched Mary. During her illness, she came to faith in Christ. A short time later she died. We look forward to seeing her in Heaven and hearing her tell of God\u2019s bountiful love, including how He used her illness to draw her to Him.)<\/p>\n Photo by\u00a0Jake Melara<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A while ago I shared\u00a0a great article\u00a0by Ray Ortlund about how God will use time and trials to accomplish His purpose for you. Ray writes, Only men with scars can preach a Savior with scars to sinners with scars. So, in addition to the many insights and skills God will impart to you, he also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2661,"featured_media":3650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[182,44,673,3055,3052,646,3058,172,110,344,71,192,3049],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suffering-and-evil","tag-father","tag-god","tag-good","tag-hard","tag-heal","tag-hurt","tag-injure","tag-jesus","tag-love","tag-pain","tag-suffering","tag-trials","tag-wound"],"yoast_head":"\n