Can We Trust God While Suffering?

Anxious?

As Jewish people, we have had more than our fair share of suffering.

Our calendar has plenty of reminders of our plight throughout history. Passover retells the story of when we were slaves in Egypt. Purim reminds us of our near destruction in Persia. Hanukkah calls to mind how close we came to extinction at the hands of the Greco-Syrians. The saddest day on our calendar, the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Av, recounts the destruction of the First and Second Temples and many other tragedies we experienced on that day. It should not come as a surprise that some of our Jewish people considered abandoning God and hiding any public identification of being Jewish, especially in various countries in Europe where antisemitism is now on the rise.

An Ancient Question

We can ask, “What should our response be to this degree of targeting and the suffering that comes along with persecution?” Our own King David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), cried out, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? . . . How long will my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13:1–2).

Any time we think about being mistreated or question God’s care for us, our thoughts are almost immediately draw to the book of Job as he endured sickness and the loss of life and property, making him ask in agony, “Why did I not die at birth?” (Job 3:11). The book of Lamentations, contains countless questions about God’s love, power, and even existence. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Why do You forget us forever? Why do You forsake us so long?” (Lamentations 5:20).

Suffering and Hope

Suffering will undoubtedly challenge our faith in God, but we are not alone in battling our doubts. Many biblical kings and prophets of Israel also struggled, but they were able to push through and trust God despite their difficulties. David said, “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). Jeremiah prophesied to the people of Judah while in exile in Babylon, “For I know the plans that I have for you . . . plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

The words of Job inspire us in faithless moments: “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15).

For men like Job, David, and Jeremiah, suffering was not incompatible with God’s existence, compassion, or ability to intervene in human history, especially for those who invited His help.  

The words of the psalmist are profound and comforting as he both asks and answers a critical question about God in the most beautiful poetry, which has become a standard Hebrew-language folk song throughout the ages. He wrote:

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold,  He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:1–4)

They reveal that it is possible to have faith and question God’s seeming absence because they trusted in His promises. These men of faith understood that God does not always keep His promises how or when we anticipate. Nevertheless, we can trust in God’s promises, which is part of the mystery of faith. He is there, and as the great apologist Francis Schaeffer said, “He is there, and he is not silent.” ^[1]

We simply need to learn how to listen and hear His voice as Job did in the whirlwind. God speaks loudest to those who have open hearts and are willing not only to hear but to obey and follow His lead in their lives.   And sometimes He uses the difficulties of life to augment His voice and cause us to hear Him.  God often uses struggling and suffering as an echo chamber to speak to our hearts

The prophet Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, watched as the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE. He suffered alongside his people, yet he had a certain hope he expressed in these words, “Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me” (Micah 7:8).

Micah held on to hope while suffering: “I will watch expectantly for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me” (Micah 7:7). Ultimately, what provided hope for Micah in his suffering was the promise that God would return to save him and his people.

A Messiah Who Suffers and Delivers

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob offers the same promise to us today. He will meet us amid our suffering. One of the ways He does this is by entering the human experience, taking on humanity with all its weaknesses yet without sin, to “feel” what it is like to go through hard times. I love the passage in the New Testament where the great Messianic Jewish apostle Paul wrote,

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Our great prophet Isaiah painted a picture of this suffering servant, who was God Himself, who would take on the sins of our people, our iniquities, and our diseases to provide a means of healing and peace with God (Isaiah 53). This servant would endure hatred and betrayal on our behalf. All the suffering we deserve, He would take upon Himself to free us, deliver us, redeem us, and take us to be His people. Through the suffering servant, we would have hope.

Seven centuries after Isaiah penned this prophecy, God was born in the flesh of a Jewish virgin (Isaiah 7:14, 9:6–7), joining in the fullness of our human experience of both joy and suffering. He fully bore our sin and rose from the grave on the third day, conquering evil, sin, and death, proving Him, once and for all, to be the promised Messiah.

As Isaiah wrote in chapter 53:11–12, 

By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities. . . . Because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.

We will experience suffering—as October 7 and the increasing violence toward Jewish people since that tragic event demonstrate. Yet we can see His light in the present darkness when we use eyes of faith and embrace the triumph of our risen Messiah who conquered sin and death. He came to suffer with and for us, and when we believe in Him, He joins us by placing His Spirit in our hearts and walking with us through every betrayal and each pain of soul, body, or broken relationship. 

We never suffer alone when we know the Lord God of Israel through the work of His Son, Jesus the Messiah.

^[1] Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent: Does It Make Sense to Believe in God?, 30th Anniversary Edition (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1972), 16.