Every generation has asked the same question, “Why is there suffering?” There's disease and war everywhere, many are starving. Why must it be so?
Some say there can't be a God of love, because He would never allow it.
Yet, one of the reasons God gives for suffering is to wake up those who have rejected Him, to realize they need His help. That they need Him to forgive their sins. If we can see no way out of our suffering, we should turn towards God, not away from Him. We should ask Him for help.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.“ (Psalm 139:23-24 NLT)
In today's verse God sent famine to direct the Israelites back to Him.
“I kept the rain from falling when your crops needed it the most. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another. Rain fell on one field, while another field withered away. People staggered from town to town looking for water, but there was never enough. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD. (Amos 4:7-8)
C. S. Lewis commented once that pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. He was right.
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” C.S. Lewis
“At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.“ (2 Chronicles 7:13-14 NLT)
Some of our suffering is a result from living in a broken, fallen world. Some suffering comes because we made a choice to go down the wrong path.
“No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.“ (Hebrews 12:11 NLT)
“I believe that God never expects us to feel no suffering or pain when it pleases Him to visit us with affliction. There are great mistakes upon this point. Submission to God’s will is perfectly compatible with intense and keen suffering under the chastisements of that will. Troubles in fact not felt, are no troubles at all. To feel trouble deeply, and yet submit to it patiently is that which is required of a Christian.“ J.C. Ryle
