Finding Peace
July 10, 2023 — Gary and Laura House
One of the most prevalent apologetic issues that causes people to question the reality of the existence of God is this: Why would a loving God allow pain and suffering?
If you believe that God is omnipotent, then you know that His power is unlimited and He can do anything. Rather than allow it, He could stop our pain and suffering at any time. He could have intervened at the moment of death and saved our children. He is the only One who has the power to do that. He could have intervened in any painful situation that you have faced. Why didn’t He?
We’ve all heard the stories of people who were just on the brink of taking their lives and someone came across their path. They ended up living and sharing their story with everyone of how God saved them. When we finally knew that Nathan was really in trouble, someone told us that they were certain that the Lord would rescue him. They said, “what a testimony he will have! Just think of the impact his story will have on so many people!” Of course, that is not what happened at all.
Looking back, we wonder how many times the Lord must have intervened in Nathan’s life. We saw how hard he worked and we saw the courage he exhibited to face each difficult day. While God may have intervened other times in Nathan’s life, why didn’t He intervene during that final battle he was fighting? That is the question.
If you are a bereaved parent, you likely have reasoned that God could have done something different with your child’s story too. So why didn’t He? We wrestled with this question for a very long time, as you may have also done, and ultimately came to a final conclusion.
We don’t know! And we simply are not going to know.
We don’t know why God didn’t intervene in the last battle to keep Nathan here. No amount of questioning, no amount of detective work, will ever give a definitive answer. Our choices were clear. We could continue asking the “why” question for the rest of our lives, or we could place our trust in the Lord.
“Trust the Lord” may sound like a trite saying when grieving the death of your child or experiencing intense suffering. What exactly does it mean? If you ask multiple people, you’ll likely get a variety of answers of what the phrase means to them. Recently a friend was wrestling with a dire physical situation and questioning why God didn’t intervene. We encouraged him to “trust Jesus.” He countered with the confusion of why God would allow this to happen, and what exactly was he supposed to trust Him to do? God evidently wasn’t going to heal him, so what was he trusting?
While walking this grief journey over the past seven years, we have determined what “trusting the Lord” means to us. If you are going through a painful time of loss, physical pain, or emotional pain, you can trust the following:
Trust that God loves you with an unconditional, immeasurable, unending love.
Our children are God’s creation. We can trust that He loves them infinitely more than we do.
When we study God’s character, we see that we can trust that He is always good. His intentions toward us are always, only, good.
Trust that He will carry you through this trial. He may not remove the situation, but He will carry you through.
Trust that He will never leave you.
Trust that God will use your suffering to mold and shape you.
Trust that even though you don’t know “why” and your prayers aren’t being answered the way you want them to be, God hears you and cares. He grieves when you are grieving, and He wants you to continue to cry out to Him. He wants to comfort you in your affliction.
As you read these words today, you might still be in the investigation stage, trying to figure things out and explain the “why” of your situation. Or, you may feel angry at God, or feel alone. When you are suffering and walking through grief, those feelings are all valid. But we want to encourage you, that when you emerge on the other side of those emotions and are able to truly trust Jesus, you will find peace that passes understanding.
Pour your pain out to the Lord. Let Him comfort you. Trust Him. You will find peace.
