We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
C. S. Lewis
We’re going to lose this baby—I just know it,” I lamented to Ryan. This was our third pregnancy in a matter of nine months, after miscarrying the previous two pregnancies. Ironically, I was soon to leave for an out-of-state speaking trip on which I was going to speak on depression, anxiety, and the topic “Why God allows suffering.”
“Stop being so negative, Julia,” Ryan responded sternly. “You don’t know that is going to happen.”
“I’m not being negative; I’m being practical,” I protested. “I just know that I’m going to miscarry while I’m alone and out of the state this weekend. I need to be prepared, and this is God’s way of preparing me. He is telling me it is coming, so I can decide ahead of time how I’m going to handle it.”
As it turned out, I did lose baby number three the night before I left to go out of town.
What Do You Believe about God?
Three miscarriages were certainly not what Ryan and I had planned when we began our prayer journey that New Year’s Eve. Every miscarriage coincided with a huge spiritual milestone in our family. Our worst season personally was our best season in ministry. We lost our first baby during an event where I had one hundred teenagers in my backyard and spoke to them about how God had called them to live a legacy in their exact place in life. We lost our second baby right before the greatest evangelism initiative our student ministry had ever seen, when teenagers were witnessing on Friday nights in malls and stopping to share Christ with Muslims on the street, and we saw one hundred and thirty people witnessed to by teenagers on fire for Christ. We lost our third baby while I was teaching at a women’s conference on “Why God allows suffering.” On top of this, I had thirteen pregnant friends announce their pregnancies, post super cute gender-reveal videos, and invite me to their baby showers.
To us, this felt like another dagger in what seemed like an unending attack or attempt to mock our faith. Once the struggle starts, it’s too late to try to muster up spiritual thoughts and feelings. When the doctor’s bad report comes, when the job is lost, when the spouse leaves, we are running on spiritual fumes.
Theologian and author A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”1 We are all going to have times we question God. We will question His goodness. We will question His plan. We may even question His existence. The exciting thing about this truth is that we already know what we are to think about God. The questions are certain, but so are the answers. In the Bible, God has already told us who He is, what He thinks, how He acts, and how much He loves us.
So, why have so many of my counseling clients and teenagers in our student ministry become very angry upon hearing this Tozer quote? Why did you possibly stir in your seat as you read it? Perhaps it’s because we don’t want to believe that God has that much control over our lives. Maybe the unrest is because we don’t want to surrender to the idea that our lives are bigger than we are. Determining who we believe God is and how He works will determine how we handle tragedy, how we handle blessing, how we handle doubts, and how we handle life.
Hebrews 6:18–19 tells us, “So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast.” How wonderful that God cannot lie! This means we can trust Him even when we don’t understand why things are going on in our lives. Deciding who we believe God to be is the most important thing about us.
This choice has to be made before the tragedy, before the pain, before the questions, before the heartache. We must decide what we think about God and choose what we believe about Him before our beliefs are challenged, questioned, or threatened. This is the order that will help preserve your faith: decide what you think about God, then live it out when difficult times come. This firm foundation is vital for spiritual survival and for dream survival.
Deciding to hold on to the dreams God has given us even when we lose pregnancies, jobs, friends, or status is what sets dreamers apart. Refusing to let go when everything in and around us is tempting us to do so is what will ensure we experience the life we have always dreamed of. Anyone can quit, but dreamers persist.
I had to choose to believe that God is good, He is in control, and He loves me in order to keep going during our season of miscarriages and loss. This is also the choice you have to make to keep going.
The Necessity of Our Emotions
One of my favorite clients, who will forever hold a special place in my heart, is the first parent I ever counseled who had lost her child to suicide. Let’s call her Stacy. Stacy had what some people in the clinic were claiming was an unusual state of calmness and understanding surrounding the loss of her daughter. The staff decided she was probably overspiritualizing the tragedy, which was something we saw all too often, and we needed to get her to feel her pain instead of explaining it away. “She has to be mad at God,” the therapists reasoned in our weekly staff meeting. “There is no way she is that much at peace already.”
I remember sitting with her for many weeks as she explained how she still loved God and believed He was good, despite the unimaginable tragedy of losing her child to suicide. I tried to see if there was more to the story—more grief to process, more emotions left unturned—but week after week, nothing seemed to be surfacing.
One day I asked Stacy to write a letter to God. She was extremely reluctant to do so, which showed that I had stumbled upon the perfect assignment for her. For days, she claimed she’d forgotten to do the assignment, until one day she finally came in with her letter to God. Through tears in her eyes and lumps in her throat, she read the letter she wrote to her Savior. In the letter she admitted that she hated God for taking her daughter, but she knew God understood her pain because He had lost His child too.
Wow! What a perfect example of feeling pain while claiming scriptural truth. Yes, God understands our pain. He understands our questions. He even heard His own Son, Jesus, question Him as our Savior hung dying from the cross: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). God understands our hurt. He says to you and to me, I love you, and I understand.
Let me insert here that the point of this story is not to get you to be mad at God. The point is to encourage you to be honest with God about any anger, hurt, sadness, or disappointment you may have toward Him. He already knows if you are angry with Him. We rarely admit any negative emotion we feel toward God because it can seem sacrilegious. I admit I constantly waver between wanting to focus on understanding the spiritual “why” behind an incident versus actually allowing myself to feel the hurt, pain, and sadness it causes. I think as Christians and as humans, we are allowed to do both, and in order to thrive in our Christian lives, we have to do both.
God never tells us to avoid our emotions. On the contrary, God created our emotions. Psalm 62:8 encourages us, “Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.” It’s okay to cry out to God on the bathroom floor after another negative pregnancy test. It’s okay to scream in your car out of frustration over another year of watching a child rebel against God. It’s okay to tell God that you are overwhelmed and angry because you don’t understand.
I used to teach a class on emotions several times a week at the Christian psychiatric hospital where I counseled. I would draw a diagram explaining that all emotions originate from a thought. This is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy. The theory holds that in order to change your behavior and emotions, you must first change your thought pattern and worldview. The order of progression is Worldview → Thought → Emotion → Behavior. When we only recognize one of these influences on our behavior, we tend to ignore the rest. For example, it’s easy to know when we feel angry, but it’s sometimes difficult to know what our worldview and thoughts are that produce the emotion of anger.
We Cannot Separate Our Theology from Our Feelings
During my struggle with infertility, I noticed myself gradually reading my Bible less and less. I wasn’t too hard on myself about it—until I realized I needed to practice what I preached and figure out the thoughts and feelings that were leading to my action of not reading the Bible. As I reflected on my situation and my heart, I realized I was angry at God because I thought He had been unjust. Theologically, I knew God was not unjust. Romans 9:14 tells us, “There is no injustice with God.” But because I was unable to carry a pregnancy to term, I felt slighted by Him, and that feeling kept me from wanting to spend time with Him.
We cannot separate our theology from our feelings. I’m not saying that our feelings should dictate what we believe about God but rather, as humans, our feelings and thoughts about God go hand in hand.
Take, for example, the woman sitting in church who hears the pastor preach time and again that God loves her and cares for her. She intellectually believes this, nods her head as the pastor speaks, and may even whisper an “Amen” here and there. But in the back of her mind, she quietly wonders, If God really loves me, then why did He let me suffer abuse as a child? She doesn’t really spend much time with God outside of church services because her feelings and theology do not match. In order to totally heal from her past hurts, this woman has to adopt the “You have to feel it to heal it” mantra.
It was easier for me to keep God at a distance than to accept He was 100 percent responsible for the loss of our babies. I didn’t begin to experience emotional and spiritual healing until I finally told God, “I know You are good. I know You love me. But I’m mad at You for letting this happen. Please help me not to stay this way and to see things how You want me to see them.”
At the end of the day, we all want a God who is responsible, who knows what He is doing, and who has a plan in the pain. There is comfort in knowing we aren’t the victim of random circumstances but instead are important players in God’s ultimate story of redemption.
If you have wondered if God is up there, you aren’t alone. According to one Barna Group study, two-thirds of professing Christians have doubted their faith at some point.2 The study found that stopping spiritual practices such as attending church, praying, and reading the Bible was commonplace for those experiencing doubt. Yet when we experience the difficult circumstances that come into our lives and cause doubt, that’s when we need God the most. The truth is, it is always hard to do the things that help us the most: forgiving others, reading the Bible, eating vegetables. The temptation to openly run away from God or discreetly retreat from Him is real. We have to fight that urge. Our faith and our families depend on it.
As Henry Ford reportedly said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” To those who think this philosophy sounds overly simplistic, consider the following verse. The Bible tells us of the connection between thoughts and identity in Proverbs 23:7, which says, “For as [a person] thinks within himself, so he is.” What does this verse mean for Christians who believe that God has ordained every detail of our lives from the beginning of time? The connection of our actions and God’s sovereign plan is a mystery this side of heaven. God cares about what we think, and our thoughts influence the outcomes of our lives.
Joseph—An Example of Refusing to Let Go of God-Given Dreams
When I think of a person in the Bible who exemplifies refusing to let go of his dreams, even in the face of difficult circumstances, I think of the Old Testament character Joseph. Joseph was the great-grandson of Abraham and one of the twelve sons of Jacob.
In Genesis 37, God gave Joseph a dream that someday he would be a leader over his older brothers. As you can imagine, they did not respond well to the news that their little brother would eventually reign over them. The Bible says, “They hated him even more for his dreams and for his words” (v. 8). Then God gave Joseph another dream, this time making it clear that he would reign over not only his brothers but also his parents. In response to this dream, “his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind” (v. 11).
Joseph’s brothers mockingly called him a “dreamer” (v. 19) and conspired to kill him. While those closest to him hated him, mocked him, and planned to hurt him, Joseph clung to his dreams. And those God-given dreams sustained him through the next season of trials, abandonment, slavery, and rejection.
When we read Joseph’s story, it’s important for us to remember that Joseph heard from God before he heard his brothers plot to take his life. Joseph received his dreams before his slavery. And Joseph refused to let go of them when all evidence pointed to his dreams being over, done, and possibly the result of just having a lot of chocolate before bed.
God often gives us the dream first to help prepare us with hope for the future. The dreams are what sustained Joseph during extremely difficult circumstances. And your God-given dreams will sustain you too, no matter what your future holds.
Living between the Smile and the Frown
One of the worst tasks of adulthood is having to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and renew your driver’s license. The process takes forever. And then there is the minor detail of the picture for the license that you have to use and see and show to others nearly every day of your life.
I recently had to go in person to renew my license and was prepared to take a great picture—or at least, hopefully, one that I wouldn’t dread showing the cashier at Target. As the lady taking the picture started to count to three, I flashed my biggest and best smile. She stopped at the number two and said, “Hey, were you a cheerleader or something? Your smile is really fake!” In the split second it took for me to process what she was saying, my smile dropped to a frown and, yes, just in that moment she snapped the picture!
I think most of us live our lives between the flashy cheerleading smile that comes when we can see God moving and the frown that seems to be our pervasive disposition over the days, weeks, months, and even years as we search for God’s presence in the midst of our questions, suffering, and pain. Let’s be honest: it’s easy to smile and sing praises to God when things are going our way. It’s easy to proclaim, “God is good!” when we can see His tangible blessings and His work in our lives. But what are we supposed to do when things don’t go according to plan? When God doesn’t seem to be answering, when the diagnosis isn’t good, when our spouse isn’t repentant, when we are stuck in the same struggle—what are we to do?
Some Christians seem to adopt the Nat King Cole “Smile” philosophy and put on a smile no matter what, even though their hearts are breaking. If we follow that philosophy, we will smile our way right out of church, right out of our faith, and right out of our dreams.
How our prayers affect God’s plan is a mystery, but it doesn’t change the truth that our prayers do matter and affect the outcome of events in our lives. Even during the most difficult year of my life so far, I didn’t doubt God’s goodness. I refused to do so. Instead, I chose to stop treating the Bible as a book of suggestions and started claiming and believing it as the only way my life would ever work. It was the only choice I had, and it’s the only choice you have.
What would happen if we really believed the Bible—if we really claimed the promises and believed the verses we recite to others and post on social media? How much encouragement and strength and perspective would infiltrate our lives if we truly believed the childhood song “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so”?
Difficult times aren’t a matter of “if” but of “when.” In 1 Peter 4:12–14, the apostle Peter explains the certainty of difficult times:
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
The good news is that while hard times are certain, our spiritual growth can be just as certain. The most common outcome for Christians who are honest about their spiritual doubts is a closer relationship with Christ. Roxanne Stone, editor in chief of the Barna Group, explained it well:
Spiritual doubt has been a reality of the Christian journey since the disciples—and today is no different. . . . Just like first century Christians, their twenty-first century counterparts question aspects of their theology, doubt the existence of God and mourn his seeming absence during hard times. Doubt remains a flip side on the same coin as faith. For the majority of Christians, this inevitable doubt is a catalyst to spiritual growth. This should lead pastors and spiritual mentors to view seasons of spiritual doubt in their constituents as fertile soil—not as dangerous ground.3
Doubt is certain, but so are answers, both in this life and in the next. If we knew everything about why anything happened, we would have no interest in God. We would have no need to trust Him, no reason to spend time with Him, no reason to long for eternity. The mystery is part of the plan and part of the surprise.
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How do we stay devoted to our dreams, our family, and our faith when we are in the midst of our holding cell, like the one Joseph experienced?
Be Honest about Your Feelings and Questions
First, when we are experiencing doubts about God, we must be honest about our feelings and questions. While Joseph’s questioning of God is not recorded in the biblical account of his life, I’m willing to bet Joseph had more than one heart-to-heart conversation with God during his time in captivity, because while Joseph was a great biblical example of faith and perseverance, he was also human. I’m also willing to bet this because of where Joseph ended up. Being honest lets us move on in our relationship with God. Hiding our doubts and questions will keep us stuck and powerless. We will not reach our dreams by accident. We will not end up with a stronger faith after times of trial by default. This is an active stance—a battle.
Decide Who God Is and What You Believe about Him
Second, now is the time to decide who God is. I remember going to get a very important medical test done, a defining test that would basically tell my husband and me which one of us was to blame for our infertility issues. I remember God so clearly telling me I needed to write out a declaration of my beliefs before we got the results. I sat at the kitchen counter with my computer, and for about twenty minutes before the doctor’s appointment, I wrote out everything I believed to be true about myself, about my marriage, about Ryan, and most importantly about God. I did this so that no matter what the results were—whether I couldn’t have children, Ryan couldn’t have children, or there was some horrible illness to blame—I would be able to look back and read what I knew to be true before the other shoe dropped. Joshua 24:15 charges us, “Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve.” Today is the day to decide to be all-in for God.
Take Captive Thoughts That Suggest Otherwise
Third, in our seasons of doubt, we need to identify and deal with thoughts that are contrary to what we know to be true about God and His plan for our life. While he was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, after being sold by his brothers into slavery, Joseph continued to believe God was in control. When the cupbearer talked about his dream to Joseph, Joseph replied, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” (Gen. 40:8). Abandoned by his family, alone in a foreign country, and wrongfully sentenced to prison, Joseph certainly had an excuse to wonder if God was up there. Surely no one would have blamed Joseph if he had taken a hiatus from telling others about God. Yet, even in the midst of this difficult and unfair situation, Joseph remained faithful to God and confident in God’s power.
I’m sure Joseph had moments alone in his cell, feeling the exhaustion and isolation of prison, remembering his brothers’ betrayal, remembering his prophetic dream of ruling over his brothers, when he was tempted to doubt the goodness of God. But declaring God’s Word and His goodness to others can be great reinforcement of our faith in times of hardship. I’m not talking about empty platitudes. I’m talking about using the opportunity of our struggle to point others to Christ.
We are not responsible for how God looks. He has every right to remedy situations or to let our worst fears come to be. And even if He doesn’t answer how we want, God is still good and on His throne. We are responsible for our faith and actions. We know Satan attacks our thoughts. This was his primary tactic with Jesus in the wilderness—to get Jesus to question God’s goodness and God’s Word. Questioning these two pillars of the faith will be our primary temptations in times of trials as well.
The Bible commands us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh” (Rom. 13:14) and to take “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). God never asks us to do things that aren’t possible. He tells us to take control of our thoughts because we are, in fact, able to do so. Expressing our feelings is an important part of healing, but we cannot get stuck in our emotions. Feeling cannot replace thinking. We have no choice in our feelings, but we have great choice in our thoughts.
During my years in postgraduate work at the esteemed Meier Clinics, I would often hear psychologists affirm this phenomenon in research on brain function and intrusive thoughts, concluding that humans actually have 95 percent control over their thoughts. Let’s say the remaining 5 percent are spiritual warfare or automatic responses from trauma and triggers. The theology and psychology are clear: we have a choice in the majority of what we believe about our situation, about others, and about God.
Refuse to Give Up on Your Dreams and Prayers
Fourth, if we know our dreams come from God, and if our dreams have been confirmed by others who know us and love Jesus, then we must hold fast to them and refuse to give up until God fulfills what He has promised us. I’m willing to bet Joseph spent a considerable amount of time recalling his dreams. Dreams keep us going.
At every turn, we see Joseph looking for opportunities to be rescued and for his situation to be redeemed. He stayed faithful but also stayed active. We will look more at this in future chapters. The bottom line is that Joseph refused to give up.
There was a time in my graduate school years when every single morning seemed like a battle to go to class. I’m convinced even kindergarteners can relate to the struggle. It got so bad that every morning I would read this quote for motivation to keep going:
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.4
Persistence will set us apart and above the struggles that threaten our dreams.
Why Does God Allow Suffering?
“How can a good God allow suffering?” is a question that spans generations and centuries. While this question can seem unspiritual at times, even Jesus, the Son of God, cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46) as He hung dying on the cross. This makes questioning God’s presence seem almost fated for those closest to Him. After all, as children of God, we have tasted His goodness. We know His power. We have a relationship with Him—and so perhaps we are more likely to feel His perceived absence than those who do not?
I have seen Romans 8:28—“God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”—quoted at times that make people scream in outrage. It is a hard truth to accept and a verse that needs to be carefully and appropriately quoted. However, during times of tragedy, questions, and suffering, biblical truth is the only true comfort we have in this life.
There was nothing good about Jesus’s dying on the cross. The disciples were terrified, the cause of Christ was halted, and Jesus was dead. But that was the perspective of Good Friday. On Sunday morning, when Jesus rose from the dead, people finally understood that all things really had happened for a reason—Jesus had been murdered so that we could have eternal life.
God did not answer Jesus’s prayer before the cross to “remove this cup from Me” (Luke 22:42), but Jesus “learned obedience from the things which He suffered” (Heb. 5:8). As pastor F. B. Meyer states in his book Abraham or the Obedience of Faith, “Trials are, therefore, God’s vote of confidence in us.”5 Though our struggles often surprise us, they never surprise God. God is in heaven cheering us on and equipping us for every battle on the horizon. He knows we are more than capable to conquer the seemingly impossible quest set before us.
Running to God instead of away from God in the midst of suffering is not a natural response. It is the supernatural response that God equips His children with as we stare grief, uncertainty, fear, and sometimes Satan himself in the face. Warren Wiersbe reminds believers,
When God puts His own people into the furnace, He keeps His eye on the clock and His hand on the thermostat. He knows how long and how much. We may question why He does it to begin with or why He doesn’t turn down the heat or even turn it off; but our questions are only evidences of unbelief. Job 23:10 is the answer: “But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (NKJV). Gold does not fear the fire. The furnace can only make the gold purer and brighter.6
God never abandons us in our time of need. In times of struggle and heartache, He holds us more closely, speaks to us more loudly, and comforts us more deeply. God gives us the strength to pray big things even in the furnace so we can see our prayers, our families, and our souls brightened by the fire.