Have you ever encountered someone who asked this question: “If God is real, why would he allow suffering?” Or maybe you haven’t encountered someone, but it is you who asked that very question. I don’t know the standpoint of where you are in today. You may be a believer who has a growing relationship with God or maybe someone who’s skeptic of this faith or an atheist. But no matter what we believe in, we all, for once in our lives, have asked this question: “If God is real, why would he allow suffering?” This is the very thing that this particular video points out: God reveals himself in some of the most unbelievable ways, and Yes! That includes sufferings. This is the answer that blows the mind of the skeptics and atheists!
We all have our concept of who God is. Some view God as loving, all-powerful, mighty, great, and for some non-existent. These concepts that we believed in actually shape the way we view God, our God for those who believe, and your God for those who don’t.
Why would a loving, all-powerful, and mighty God allows suffering? Pain? Disaster? Hunger? Diseases? Poverty? And the list goes on to our personal struggles. Why would this loving, all-powerful, mighty, the author of relationship God allowed my parents to separate? Why would this loving, all-powerful, mighty, the God who heals, allowed me to go through this series of chemotherapy? He could heal me in a snap of a finger, in fact, he created the world by saying a word, but why am I still suffering? Is God really real?
The world that we live in is a fallen world, and that goes back when sin entered through the first man in the Garden of Eden. Because of sin, there’s now suffering, pain, disaster, hunger, disease, poverty, and even death.
In Ephesians 6:12 it says there: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
We live in a dark world but the amazing thing is that the victory is no longer in the rulers, the authorities, or in the powers of this dark world, but the victory against sin was already won in the cross by Jesus. Yes. We live in a sinful world. Sufferings, pain, disaster, hunger, diseases and poverty is present but God is still in control. These things are not from God, for the Bible tells us that he loves to give good gifts to his children, but definitely, he allows it for a reason. May it be to teach you something, or to discipline you because he loves you. But the point is at the end of the day, for his people to get to know who he is. The amazing thing about God is that he is incomprehensible yet he is knowable. In fact, no matter how incomprehensible he is, he wanted us to get to know who him. Isn’t that amazing! God longs for us to get to know him that even in our sufferings he is there.
God can and will use your sufferings for other people to get to know who he is. He will one day use your testings to become a testimony of who he is. He will one day use the mess that you made to proclaim the message of the gospel. God is there in every suffering. God reveals himself in some of the most unbelievable ways; all you just need to do is pay attention.