How we can believe that God is good when we go through hard times

Have you ever wondered:

Where is God when I am hurting? I can’t see Him, I can’t feel Him, He doesn’t seem to answer my prayers.

Why doesn’t He just stop my pain NOW and relieve me of it?

When is He going to release me from this?

When something like sickness happens (usually from our own neglect or abuse of the body) or we make bad decisions in some area of life, or others make bad decisions that impact on us, we suffer.

We suffer either the consequences of our mistakes, of our faults or the consequences of the faults of others on us.

This is a time when you want to pray to God to keep you sweet, as you don’t want a root of bitterness and dissapointment to create a wedge between you and God. I would make that my daily prayer.

It is not God’s fault that those bad things happened to us. Usually when a bad thing happens to us, then we end up being jumped on by the devil as well, as he always seeks an opportune time. He can’t wait to hit us when we are low, fragile and vulnerable, because that’s his character.

So, as we find ourselves in this problem, we want God to rescue us. We want Him to take us out of it as soon as possible and not let us suffer one more day with it. And because He isn’t doing it when we want, we start blaming Him that He is not loving or good, that He has forsaken us, that He is indifferent and is not answering our prayers. But it is not His fault that we are not yet healed. He has already provided the healing. It is not our job to appropriate that provision by fighting against our own discouragement, bad thoughts about God, and also fight the devils that tell us God is not going to help us.

He tells us that He has already given us the healing (or what we need) through the finished work of Jesus at the cross and we are to believe it before we see it. In order to make this promise our own, we need to enter the promise land He promised to give us, fight the giants in there (the devils), overcome them and take the land, just like the children of Israel. In the case of healing, that would look like this:

God said that:

By His stripes we were healed. (Isaiah 53)

As you can see, the Word speaks at past tense, it is something that has happened when Jesus suffered and died for us on the cross, it is a fact in history.

Since it has already happened, our question now is how do we appropriate it so it becomes a reality in our lives? How do we get anything from God, it is all ‘by faith’ – ‘the just shall live by faith’ says God three times in the New Testament.

Just like the children of Israel, we have received a promise from God. Even then God spoke at past tense to the children of Israel, saying: ‘I have given you the land’. How were they to enter in actual possession of it? They had to go and fight, overcome the giants in the land and take it for themselves, with God’s help. They had to believe that they can do this, with God’s help, even though the giants were pretty huge and it looked impossible.

How are we to overcome the impossible before us, the giants that look invincible? What are we to do?

Let’s look at the attitude of the only 2 men who made it out of almost 1 million: Joshua and Caleb. They are the only 2 of that generation that entered the promised land, not even Moses got to enter.

And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. (Numbers 13:30)

This is the attitude we need to have. God said the promise is already given to us (as it happened at the cross – by His stripes we were healed) and we need to believe that it is ours and have the attitude that we will beat this, we are well able to overcome the problem by the help of God and by choosing to fight the fight of faith.

This is a fight of faith, because the devils will try to taunt us that we are fools to believe, when nothing is happening yet. They will insist to say that God is not good and try to put a wedge in between you and God – that is their ultimate purpose.

But we need to persevere in faith, as through faith and perseverance we inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:12)

That true fight of faith is the persevering while our faith is being tested while nothing is yet happening. The Bible talks about the testing of our faith – the faith that is much more precious than gold. If our faith is so precious, it means that God values it a lot and therefore will allow us at times to go through a time where our faith needs to be exercised in order to grow and develop, in times of great difficulty.

Jesus never promised us an easy ride in this world, without difficulties. In fact, the opposite is true, He warned us saying: ‘In this world you will have tribulations. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33) The word ‘tribulations’ in greek actually means to be squeezed like grapes in a winepress. Jesus told us how it will be, but He gave us the hope that with Him we can overcome all we might go through.

Even the apostle Paul warned the new believers:

“Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22)

So, it should not be of any surprise to us if we go through things in this life.

How are we to rule and reign with God if we are never to go through something that grows us. We need to overcome something to be prepared for such positions of authority in eternity. God does not want whimps and lazy people to rule and reign in eternity. Just like He says it in Hebrews 6:12:

“We do not want you to be lazy, but imitators of those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.”

So, how are we to be in faith and stay in faith, while all our feelings and circumstances say the opposite of what we are believing for and stays that way for quite a while?

First of all, we need to realize that we have God by our side and on our side to help us through the whole fight of faith. He is our protector, our comforter, our teacher, our strength, our wisdom, our life, our joy, our everything. He is on our side and against our problem. We are not fighting alone, we have a strong ally who overcame all that this world throws at us. We have the winner of impossible circumstances on our side, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, He always leads us in triumph. This is very important, without this, we will end up fighting in our own strength and with our own endurance and our own resources are not enough. We need to rely fully on God’s ability to win the fight. He is the author and the finisher of our faith, and He will help us on our journey in between beginning and the end with our faith. He will increase and strengthen our faith if we ask Him.

We need to make a quality choice of will to believe what the Word of God says inspite what our feelings and circumstances say. We need to believe that the Word of God is truth even when we don’t see it manifested yet. We need to set our face like a flint and not accept any other suggestions coming to our mind from ourselves, others or from devils and choose to only believe His Word.

We then need to be stubborn in this over time and trust the One who made a COVENANT with us that He will not let us down ever and He is faithful to fulfil His promises, no matter how long it takes.

We can ask in vain: Why do I go through this? Usually God does not answer such questions. Neither will He usually answer: When will I be healed? type questions.

The children of Israel asked lots of ‘Why did God bring us here in the desert, etc, etc – and God never once answered them. He already told them in the past that He is bringing them to a promise land. The desert was just a passing through to the promise land, but they still questioned God on the truth of His promise when they were on the way to it.

Gideon asked God: ‘Where are your miracles and why has the Lord forsaken us?’ but God’s only answer was: I will use you and you will beat the enemy as one. He did not explain why, He just told him to go and fight for God will be with Him and give Him the victory. And the victory came as they listen to how God led them to win it. God will guide you to specific Scriptures and maybe specific actions that will bring the healing as a reality in your life.

So, as we can see from Scripture, God does not answer Why and When type questions. Therefore, get on with the job of fighting the fight of faith by holding on to what you believe regardless of what it feels or look like. And be open to God’s Spirit to direct you in any actions He might choose.

While doing this, do everything you can to strengthen your faith by giving heed to the Word of God and by meditation on the Word.

Ask the Lord to strengthen your faith and increase your faith.

Pray a lot in tongues, as that build you up on your most holy faith.

Speak with strong believers who have been through things and have overcome a few things in order to be encouraged.

Keep on asking in prayer. God says:

“Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and everyone who seeks finds and everyone who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man is there among you, when his son asks him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give you a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7: 7-10)

The tense for the verbs here are at present continuous, which translates to: Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. And it is then followed by a promise: FOR EVERYONE receives. And then He gives us the reason we should believe that it is so, that we will indeed receive: because He is OUR GOOD FATHER, better than any good human father. We believe that He will keep His promises and will be faithful as we persevere in believing based on His character and He who is to us. He is good and He is our father.

We do not always get instant miracles, but God says: ‘they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover” . The greek word there for ‘recover’ means exactly this – to recover, which is a gradual healing, a recovery. Sometimes God does instant miracles, but we cannot demand that of the Lord, that is all up to Him how He chooses to administer His provisions.

I, myself, am in the middle of the fight of faith for myself. I wrote this first to encourage myself to keep believing and I will update it when the Lord has given me the answer to my prayers and my believing. But until then, please pray for me that I stand the test of faith and apply this in your life where you need it and comment below on the victories God gives you for the encouragement of other believers, so they can see examples that this is not just theory, but it really works.