Through Your Pain, We Love Him More

Have you ever been around some one who is going through something really hard. Like really hard. I’ve had the privilege of walking along side some friends in hard times and I’ve been walked beside and held up by some wonderful friends. In those times, if God gets the glory, doesn’t it just keep you coming back? Doesn’t it make you stop and wait and want to see more of God? As much as you don’t want those trials for the ones you love or for yourself…doesn’t it just make you thirsty? Doesn’t it just show you the most raw and gritty picture of the need and desperation in your own heart? Maybe I’m alone in this, but something about the closeness of Christ in those trials…it speaks to me.

When we go through trials, we find ourselves wanting to know that it’s going to help someone one day. We want assurance that God will actually be glorified. But the glory for God is already there. For those who are hurting and reaching and needing God, for those who are seeking and finding Him right where He promised He’d be…you’ve glorified Him. You have shown so much of the Gospel, you have magnified His name, you have helped us…by your pain. You have helped us by your steadfastness in the face of suffering. It wasn’t perfect or pretty, but it was real and it was honest and it was the widow’s mite. When you sought to love Him as life bruised and beat you, you showed us how desirable Jesus is for us everyday. When you were carried by God and rung out the tiniest bit of faith from your broken heart, you challenged us. Just because there are no speaking engagements or coffee dates or viral blogs to tell your story…you helped us still.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5, ESV)