A Purpose in Suffering

<p>&ldquo;So what you&rsquo;re saying is, it may not be my fault.&rdquo; The woman&rsquo;s words took me by surprise. Having been a guest speaker at her church, we were now discussing what I&rsquo;d shared that morning. &ldquo;I have a chronic illness,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;and I have prayed, fasted, confessed my sins, and done everything else I was told to do to be healed. But I&rsquo;m still sick, so I thought I was to blame.&rdquo;</p> <p>I felt sad at the woman&rsquo;s confession. Having been given a spiritual &ldquo;formula&rdquo; to fix her problem, she had blamed herself when the formula hadn&rsquo;t worked. Even worse, this formulaic approach to suffering was disproved generations ago.</p> <p>Simply put, this old formula says that if you&rsquo;re suffering, you must have sinned. When Job tragically lost his livestock, children, and health, his friends used the formula on him. &ldquo;Who, being innocent, has ever perished?&rdquo; Eliphaz said, suspecting Job&rsquo;s guilt (Job 4:7). Bildad even told Job that his children only died because they had sinned (8:4). Ignorant of the real cause of Job&rsquo;s calamities (1:6&ndash;2:10), they tormented him with simplistic reasons for his pain, later receiving God&rsquo;s rebuke (42:7).</p> <p>Suffering is a part of living in a fallen world. Like Job, it can happen for reasons we may never know. But God has a purpose for you that goes beyond the pain you endure. Don&rsquo;t get discouraged by falling for simplistic formulas.</p>