Questions In A Season Of Pain
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There are certain things we all go through. If you are reading this, then we share the common experience of being born and being alive. Our lives after that might look very different from each other. But there are still some common experiences we share. Pain is one of them. The degrees might vary as well as the details and circumstances. But we all experience pain in some form or the other. It does not matter if you are someone who is obediently walking with God or if you are someone who has decided this whole “God thing” is not really a thing. Pain comes at us anyway.
In those seasons of pain, our hearts and minds begin to ask questions. This is a human and natural reaction and there is nothing wrong with it. The Bible encourages us to come to God with our questions and be real before Him.
What I would like us to think about is the kind of questions we ask, and how helpful they are. This is not a write up pretending to be a recipe of how to ask questions and make your pain easier. But, hopefully you will agree with me and also see the beauty of the conclusion of this write-up.
Before we look at four questions and how they might help us in a season of pain, let me confess that I am writing from an experience of life that has seen more joy than pain. While I have seen and experienced deep pain and learned much through those seasons, I am aware that there might be those of you reading who have lives where pain is the most common experience. As I said, our life experiences and the degrees of pain we experience might differ, but I hope we can be blessed by the following thoughts.
1. Why is this happening to me/us?
This is probably the most common question we all ask. It is often the first question we ask. Towards the end of November 2024, my mother was hospitalised in India — a hospitalisation she never recovered from, one that ended with her in heaven a month later. I remember meeting a lady here in the UK who had met my mother a few months earlier. This lady had lost her father earlier that year and was still battling the grief of that. When she heard my mother was in hospital, she said to me, “Why does God do these things? Why do you think this is happening?” In that moment — not of my own wisdom, but purely a wisdom from God — I found myself saying, “Well, we might never know that on this side of the grave. So don’t waste much time on it, because there are so many things we do know and can know that we can spend time profitably meditating on and building our lives on.”
As I drove home, that nugget of wisdom from God kept playing in my head. Asking the question “why is this happening?” might sometimes get you an answer. God might choose to enlighten you as to why something happened. Sometimes we ask the question and use our own observations, knowledge, and logic to give ourselves an answer so that we can feel some sense of purpose in this pain and try to bear it. But for the most part, we don’t get an answer — or at least not one that satisfies our heart. Asking this question can often lead us running in circles trying to find some meaning. We use up countless hours looking for the “why.”
God is not angered by this question. He is not a distant God who does not understand our pain. He is loving and is not offended by our “why” questions. In fact, as we read the psalms and other books in the Bible, we find that we are encouraged to come before God and be real about ourselves and our struggles.
But might I suggest that as much as this is a question we will all inevitably ask in a season of pain, there is a deeper more helpful question to begin with. One that helps us set a strong foundation for all other questions.
2. What is God teaching me through this?
The other question some ask is slightly different from the first. Yet it is still a search for the purpose of this suffering. Our hearts desperately want to know the purpose behind this, because meaningless pain is unbearably and infinitely more painful. We often feel that if we can just know the lesson God is teaching us through this, it might make it easier to endure. Or maybe we feel that if we can just know what the lesson is and learn it quickly, the season of pain will pass as well.
We know that God is always building our character. That is a biblical truth. In fact, that is the invitation of James when he calls us to consider it pure joy when we face trials of any kind. His reasoning is that we know God is working on our character to make us perfect in Christ. So it seems perfectly biblical and even helpful to ask this question (or some version of it): “What is God teaching me through this?” But even though the building of our character is a biblical concept, this might be too small and not too helpful a question to be the first one we ask.
Let me give you one biblical example to make my point. The story of Daniel in the lions’ den always fascinates me. Daniel knew and trusted God. He knew there was a death penalty attached to his activity of praying, and yet he openly prayed three times a day. As the story goes, the king (who loved him and tried to save him) had Daniel thrown into the lions’ den. Now, did Daniel’s faith grow? I am sure it did. But did Daniel know beforehand that the God of the universe was capable of shutting the mouths of lions? I am sure he did. If Daniel had asked, “What is God trying to teach me here?” he might have missed the beauty of how God worked in the heart of the Persian king. The story tells us that the king issued a decree that all in his kingdom should fear the God of Daniel. Who knows — maybe it was this favourable view of the God of Israel that years later made it easier for King Artaxerxes to allow Nehemiah to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. We don’t know all the various things God brings about through one event, one season of pain. But asking the question about what God is teaching me narrows our focus to me, and we may miss out on so much of the story.
Once again, this is not a sinful question or one that angers God. But dwelling on this question alone, while not sinful might not be fully beneficial for us. Might I suggest again that there is a deeper question that can help us with a stronger foundation, from which to ask all other questions.
3. How can I bring glory to God through this season?
Now we are thinking bigger thoughts — as the old saying goes, “taking the bull by the horns.” We are now no longer asking for the purpose of the pain; we are now looking to bring purpose to it. Not in an egotistical way. We want to seek God and ask Him how we can use this to bring Him glory. We will probably also need to ask Him for the strength to do so, because a season of pain can rob you of strength like you never imagined. This is a much better question to begin with than the first two, because instead of running in circles of “whys,” or narrowing my view to myself, with this question I am thinking bigger things and asking the “what next” questions.
The present becomes the past really quickly. And the pain of the present becomes the painful memory of the past before you know it. Dwelling on it is not sinful. We learn from the things that happen to us. But setting up home in the past or present — and the pain we see there — is where we don’t do ourselves any good. That is where the power of the “what next” question comes from. It is proactive, and not just for our sake. It is proactive and aims to bring glory to God, even through its own season of pain.
Paul, in pain in a Philippian jail, must have at some point asked this question. And we see his attitude at work in Philippians 1:12, where he tells the church, “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.” Paul realised there was always a Roman guard chained to him. Their duty was to be there. They could not go anywhere. They were stuck with Paul. And history would tell us that the practice would have been to rotate these guards often so that no one became friendly enough with the prisoner to be convinced to plan an escape. What a perfect opportunity for Paul’s evangelistic heart. He says in verses 13 and 14, “so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.”
He leveraged the pain for glory. He struggled with the pain. To the Corinthians he writes about all his sufferings, and you can imagine the real pain they brought. It was not that God somehow miraculously allowed Paul to transcend the pain so that he never felt it while going through it. He battled it. But he also was aware that every season of pain came with its own unique opportunities to further the gospel or to build others up in some way. He must have asked the question “How can I bring glory to God through this?” multiple times.
Asking this question shifts the focus away from me to God and His purposes and kingdom. Asking this question reminds me that my purpose in this life is to bring Him glory, and so it helps me, even in a season of pain, to live a life of purpose instead of suddenly being buffeted by the waves of pain, losing focus, and floundering.
This is a great question to ask. But once again, please allow me to suggest there is still a question that is deeper and more helpful to us.
4. Who has allowed this to happen to me?
We believe in a sovereign God. If God is not sovereign, then He cannot be God. But that sovereignty does not automatically mean that everything that happens to me is an act of God. The book of Job shows us that it was the devil who inflicted unprecedented amounts of misery on Job. So what does God’s sovereignty mean in the context of the book of Job? It means that while God might not directly cause the things that happen in our life, without His permission nothing can happen in any corner of the vast universe, let alone my tiny life. Every single moment of history exists only because God has allowed it.
Now, this truth presents us with a dilemma. Because when we look at history, we see much pain and many things we think we could do without. It is why one of the first questions thrown at Christians is, “If God exists, why is there so much suffering?” There is a simple, logical, and beautiful answer to that question. But that is for another write-up. For now, let me get to the point I want to make. The Bible, read and studied, reveals to us that God is love. It is why, of all the titles He could choose to tell us to address Him by, He chose Father.
Michael Reeves, in his book Delighting in the Trinity, argues effectively that the most primary attribute of God the Father is love. Before He was creator, sustainer, ruler, or anything else, He was Father to His only begotten Son. And since we know from John 1 that the Son is eternal, we can safely say that God the Father has been loving from all eternity past.
The Bible explicitly says that God is love (1 John 4:8b). What does that mean? It does not merely mean that God does loving things. I also do loving things, but that does not make me love. It means that God, in His very being, is love. It means that everything He does is out of perfect love. It means that there is not one thing He does or allows that is not out of perfect love.
This truth, if we really believe it, radically changes how we read history and the circumstances in our own life. And this is where the cross speaks loudly and powerfully to us. For the cross of Christ is the most convincing evidence of the love of God toward us. Paul, writing to the Romans, says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The God of the universe, who owes us nothing and could wipe us all out with one thought — that same God chose to enter our existence, become our sin, our offence against Him, and become our atoning sacrifice to appease His own justice and wrath. That same God who in grace forgives us then also adopts us through faith in Christ, to belong and live with Him forever in glory. He has truly lavished His love on us (1 John 3:1), and we see it all in the cross of Christ, without which none of this is possible.
When we ask the question “Who has allowed this to happen to me?” we give ourselves the gift of looking at our season of pain and trusting that, as painful as this might be, it is the most loving way God could have worked out my life. Any other option would have meant God had to be less loving — less Himself — to allow it. When we realise that this is the most loving choice, we will be grateful for all the other snares and dangers that God protected us from on those other paths we might have wished He chose.
We begin with a question whose answer is all about the Father’s love toward us in Christ, where we are sealed in the Holy Spirit. Paul again, writing to the Romans at the end of chapter 8, says that nothing can separate us from this love of God in Christ.
Asking this question is not some magical moment that lessens our pain or makes it go away. But while it does not do that, it does help us see love no matter what our circumstances. And as we are warmed by the amazing love of God, it gives us a solid foundation, built on His character, to ask and receive answers for all other questions and to find what the Lord God has to say about those as well.
Conclusion:
As I said at the start, seasons of pain are common to all. We differ in how we handle them. This write up is not some legalistic list of how to’s. It is not a recipe of how to order and ask your questions so that God will explain your situation or make it easier.
My hope is that it is a collection of helpful thoughts to help us through the seasons of pain we experience. There is no sin in asking one question before the other. The bible does not give us an order in which to bring our confusions before God. But as we read the stories and psalms of those who did bring their questions and confusions before God, we see that during those seasons, they were most blessed when they remembered and returned to the character of God and His amazing love.
My prayer is that whatever season of pain you go through, however intense, that you might ask the right questions and grow in your understanding of the incredibly loving Heavenly Father.
Amen
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