If God is Good, why do I suffer?

Come on, be honest. We've all asked ourselves that question at least once in our life. Most of us hate to suffer. And it is understandable since we are not masochists.

But sometimes the very suffering we hate is God’s blessing to us.

Let me share with you a story I heard from Briege McKenna. Briege was given the gift of healing by God.

So here is the story.

A man came to Briege to ask to be prayed over for the healing of his cancer. So Briege did so. Months have passed and she saw the man again. The man thanked her for her prayers. She then asked if he got healed. The man said no. But he was grateful to God for receiving a better miracle.

So Briege was a little bit confused so she asked why.

The man told her that before he came to her, he and his wife were distant from each other. His kids were distant from him as well. Sometime after being prayed over by Briege, he was rushed to the hospital.

It was there that miracle happened.

While he was in the hospital, he and his family got close again. It was his hospitalization that healed his family. It was at that painful moment where they became a real family once more.

For the man, to see his family united in love was more important than his health. For him, to feel loved is far more important than to be physically healed.

God used his cancer to unite his family.

So the man thanked God for the miracle he did in his life. He was not healed of cancer but his heart and his family were healed.

Sometimes God permits suffering for the greater good. God does not cause evil, he permits it. God makes straight using crooked lines. We can only look at Jesus on the Cross. The worst thing man did in all of history, we killed God. Yet, it was that very evil that brought our salvation.

Sometimes God blessings can take form of suffering. It is like a child, who has cavities, being taken to the dentist by his father. He trusted his father only to end up in the dentist chair in pain. But the pain is necessary to take the away the cavities.

The father does not enjoy seeing his son in pain, but it is a process that his son needs to take. At that moment the child feels betrayed by his father because he does not understand what is going on.

So are we.

When suffering hits us we feel abandoned or betrayed by God. But like little children, we do not see the whole picture, the whole movie of our lives. We see that painful moment at the whole of life itself. God looks out not only for our present, but for our future as well.

Painful as it is for God to see us suffer, though the only way to save us, He will endure it.

At the end of our life, when we are facing almighty God, we will see that all our sufferings made sense. And we will even be thankful for those sufferings because it brought us to where we we ended up....

Heaven.

Hmmmmm?
SO- no matter what trials, sufferings, tribulations you face today, remember God has a plan and purpose for them. Don't question him, though it may be hard. Instead remember that they are a necessary scene in your "movie" of life in order for you to reach the credits, your eternal destination.