His feet they hurt with fetters; he was laid in chain of iron and his soul entered into the iron.
Psalm 105:18 (AMPC)
Joseph was a young man with a dream of doing great things. His brothers hated him and were jealous of him because he was the youngest son of Jacob and was favored. Their hatred became so intense that they took him out one day and sold him to slave traders, and then they brought back a blood-soaked piece of clothing and lied to their father, saying that he had been killed by a wild animal.
Joseph went through many years of tragic, unfair situations that caused him a great deal of suffering, and yet he remained faithful to God and continued to trust Him. God gave him favor wherever he was and eventually positioned him as second in command under the pharaoh of Egypt. As a result, God used Joseph to save many people—including his own family—from starvation during a severe famine in the land. It’s amazing to see Joseph’s response to his brothers when they discovered that he was in a position of power and could pay them back for all the pain and suffering he had unjustly endured because of their cruel treatment of him all those years ago:
Then his brothers went and fell down before him, saying, See, we are your servants (your slaves)!
And Joseph said to them, Fear not; for am I in the place of God? [Vengeance is His, not mine.]
As for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are this day.
Genesis 50:18–20 (AMPC)
These Scriptures are quite wonderful if we ponder them carefully. After all Joseph had been through, instead of being bitter, he saw God’s hand working good out of the entire situation. Now, rather than be bitter, he was prepared to help his brothers. This is the rest of what he said:
Now therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for and support you and your little ones. And he comforted them [imparting cheer, hope, strength] and spoke to their hearts [kindly].
Genesis 50:21 (AMPC)
Joseph is my hero when it comes to someone who experienced tragic, unjust treatment and handled it exactly the way God wants us to. No wonder he was a powerful man. He lived to be 110 years old and appears to have enjoyed many more good years in his life than the ones that he suffered through. Joseph enjoyed great victory on the other side of his suffering. We might say that his suffering promoted him to a better life. If we can remain stable and continue trusting God, even in our suffering, then we show ourselves to be the kind of people that God can trust with great responsibility and great blessings.
When we are willing to forgive those who have hurt us, we are actually doing ourselves a favor, because it is impossible to enjoy life and be filled with bitterness at the same time. This example we see from the life of Joseph is one that we should follow.
During the years after Joseph was sold into slavery, he went to prison for thirteen years for something he was not guilty of. He was in chains of iron, and in Psalm 105, which I quoted earlier, we are told that “his soul entered into the iron.” What does that mean? If we think about it on a practical level, it would seem to me that if his soul entered into the iron, it made him stronger. In other words, his suffering actually made him a better person and helped equip him to rule over Egypt.
We often hear the phrase “Our troubles can make us better or bitter,” and it is very true. Trusting God all the way through painful situations always carries with it a reward and pays dividends in the end. One of the rewards is that it makes you stronger.
In the book of Isaiah, we see God speaking through the prophet to the people and encouraging them not to fear what they were going through because He was making them stronger:
Fear not [there is nothing to fear], for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will help you; I will hold you up and retain you with My [victorious] right hand of rightness and justice…
Behold, I will make you to be a new, sharp, threshing instrument which has teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shall make the hills like chaff.
Isaiah 41:10, 15 (AMPC)
This is another example of God’s promise to use what we go through to make us stronger and better than we were before. But this all hinges on whether or not we are willing to put our total trust in God concerning the painful things we encounter in life. Whatever you might be going through right now, this promise is for you. Your enemies may mean harm, but God will work it out for good, and in the process, He will make you a better person. When life is painful and hard, remember that God loves you, and because of that you don’t have to be afraid. Here is a short story I once heard that makes this point in a cute way:
A man had just gotten married and was returning home with his wife. Part of their journey required that they cross a lake in a boat. While they were doing so, a storm arose that caused the boat to toss about vehemently, and the woman became afraid. Her husband, however, seemed very calm, and she kept asking why he wasn’t afraid.
He smiled and withdrew a knife from its holder, and held it close to the woman as if he was going to harm her. She didn’t even flinch, and when he asked her why she wasn’t afraid, she said, “Why should I be afraid? I know that you love me, and it would be impossible for you to hurt me.”
The man said, “That is why I am not afraid in this storm. I know that God loves us, and that no matter what happens, He will work it out for our good.”
No matter how many storms we encounter in life, we are always safe in God’s loving hands.
I have found that my own suffering in life helped me gain much greater compassion for those who are also suffering in some way. If we have not experienced the pain of being mistreated or encountered loss, it is very difficult to relate to what others are going through.
It is easy to give advice, but without some experience, our attitudes may be a bit dismissive. Let’s pretend that I am twenty-five years old and life for me has been pretty easy up to this point. I had great parents who always provided for me and gave me most of what I wanted. I am intelligent, so getting good grades came easy for me in college. My father secured a dream job for me from one of his business associates even before I graduated from school. Life is good! Now an associate at work whom I’ve gotten to know quite well seems to be discouraged and even depressed and I wonder what is wrong, but I don’t bother to ask. Eventually my friend tries to tell me about some serious financial struggles that she is having. I quickly suggest that she call her parents and ask them to help her, because that would be what I would do. She informs me that her parents were abusive to her as she grew up and that they are estranged. She assures me that getting help from them is not even possible. Since I cannot even imagine parents abusing their children, or not helping them, I dismiss her problem with an insensitive statement. I say, “Don’t worry, something will work out,” and I walk away.
My friend is left feeling empty and lonely. The really sad part is that I am so blessed financially because of the generosity of my parents that I could easily have given her some help myself, but my lack of experience with suffering has left me unsympathetic toward those who are hurting.
There are lots of people like this in the world. They are not bad people, but they are inexperienced. They will eventually encounter some difficulty in life that, hopefully, will change them for the better.
I am not like the twenty-five-year-old who had an easy life. I never had parents who really loved or helped me in any way while I was growing up, and they were abusive. My childhood was filled with fear, suffering, and loneliness. I would like to say that I came out of my childhood with a lot of compassion for those who are suffering, but instead I only had a hard heart. It took a deep relationship with Christ, and several years of gaining more experience through personal pain and suffering, before I changed.
When I had cancer, I gained a lot more compassion for those who receive such a serious diagnosis. After having migraine headaches for ten years, I have faith now to pray compassionately for the healing of people with headaches. Through the grace of God and His Word, I was finally able to forgive my father for sexually abusing me, and I know firsthand how much better it is to forgive than to be filled with hatred and bitterness. I began a ministry with nothing but God and a dream, and I am still at it forty years later. I have learned a lot by experience, but it has been costly. I experienced many people who judged and criticized me and felt that I was unfit for the ministry for many different reasons, but I also experienced the comfort of God in those situations, and I am now able to comfort others. God teaches us the grace of bringing comfort to those who are suffering by comforting us Himself when we are suffering.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of sympathy (pity and mercy) and the God [Who is the Source] of every comfort (consolation and encouragement),
Who comforts (consoles and encourages) us in every trouble (calamity and affliction), so that we may also be able to comfort (console and encourage) those who are in any kind of trouble or distress, with the comfort (consolation and encouragement) with which we ourselves are comforted (consoled and encouraged) by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3–4 (AMPC)
I vividly recall how often I tried to share with other people what I was going through, and they simply did not know how to help me. They could not relate to my pain because they had none of their own. They could not comfort me because they had never needed God to comfort them, or perhaps they needed it but did not know how to ask for and receive it. I often say that we cannot give away what we do not have. First we must receive from God, and then what He has given us can flow through us to others.
When people come to us with their problems, most of the time they already know that we cannot solve them. What they really want is understanding, comfort, and compassion. On the other side of suffering, we can become softer, more tender, gentler, and more compassionate and empathetic. These qualities are some of what we admire in our Lord and they qualify us to minister on His behalf.
Developing compassion and empathy for others is one of the blessings we end up with on the other side of suffering. The simple gift of compassion is very valuable to someone who is hurting!
It is not our suffering alone that qualifies us to be used by God to help others. Certainly, God can and does use people mightily who had great parents, a good childhood, no financial struggles, and every other advantage. However, there are very few such people, simply because life happens to us all, and it is not always kind.
One of the benefits I have found on the other side of suffering is a deeper relationship with God. When we are put in a position where we have no one who can help us except God and we put our trust in Him, we experience the many wonders of who He is and how good He is. We experience His faithfulness, His justice, kindness, mercy, grace, wisdom, and power, to name just a few. Paul said that his determined purpose was to know Christ and to become more deeply and intimately acquainted with the wonders of His Person. He said that he wanted to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, and then he said, “[that I may share] the fellowship of His sufferings” (see Philippians 3:10).
There are several powerful points in this Scripture:
Determination is required if we want to accomplish anything in life. It is not what we do right once or twice that brings victory, but what we do right repeatedly that gets us the desired result.
He did not merely want to know about Him, he wanted to know Him! He wanted to have an intimate, personal relationship with Him. This is available to anyone who desires it and is willing to seek Jesus wholeheartedly.
Paul knew Christ. He had an amazing encounter with Him on the Damascus Road, and yet he was searching for more. We should never be satisfied if we are not growing spiritually. There is so much more to learn about how amazing Jesus is, and we will know more if we seek Him more. As we make our journey in life with Him, we find that He is with us in all kinds of situations. He never leaves us or forsakes us.
When we truly know Jesus deeply and intimately, we can have peace and joy even during difficult times. We trust Him to work good things out of whatever we are dealing with no matter how painful it is. We don’t have to live a defeated life when Jesus’ resurrection power is available.
When we have experienced God’s power in our lives, it becomes easier to trust Him the next time we have a need. God wants to show His power in us and through us. He not only wants to deliver us, but He wants to use us as ambassadors to draw people to Christ.
If you or I are going through some serious difficulty and other people see that we continue to trust God and maintain a peaceful and joyful attitude, it witnesses to them about the keeping power of God. When we wait patiently, no matter how long it takes, it witnesses to them about the stabilizing power of God. Then, when we experience deliverance and they see that God is faithful, it witnesses to them of His presence and power, as well as His desire to help us. Our personal example may be the tipping point that causes a person to surrender his life to Christ.
That doesn’t mean that we need to hang on a cross as Jesus did. It simply means that we should be willing to go through whatever we need to in order to be like Jesus and see Him glorified through us.
Does this mean that God gives us suffering and trials in order for us to learn things that will benefit us later? He is not a God who takes His children out behind the woodshed to give them a thrashing in order to teach them.
I prefer to say that once we have a problem or difficulty, God may well use it to further His purpose in our lives. If we are going to suffer, why not get some benefit from it? I have suffered without God in my life, and I have suffered with Him, and I can firmly say that with God is always better. I believe that God always has a plan for our deliverance, but He may delay it for a time in order to use it for our growth and character development. His timing is perfect in our lives, and while we are waiting, we have the privilege of trusting Him.
Jesus said that even though He despised the shame of the cross, He endured it for the joy of obtaining the prize on the other side of it (see Hebrews 12:2). Numerous people have told me that they wouldn’t trade what they went through for anything, simply because of how it changed them and brought them closer to God.
We may despise what we are going through while we are going through it. No one enjoys any kind of pain or suffering. But if we can set our minds on the prize, on the other side, we will be able to endure it more joyfully. If we continue having faith that we will see the goodness of God no matter how badly we hurt or how long it takes, we will taste the sweetness of breakthrough and victory.
I often say that we have to “go through” to “get through.” Don’t be afraid of difficulty, because God will not give you more than you can handle with Him in your life helping and guiding you.