Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

My heart grieves with parents who have lost children, for innocent children who suffer, with friends suffering through emotional and physical pain, with families agonizing through loved ones in torment. I have been approached by friends in a variety of places struggling with a question that goes something like, “If God is truly all loving, if God truly loves me, how can He allow me to suffer the way I’m suffering?” Some pose the question as sincere faithful inquiry. For others, it is more of a statement suggesting that either God does not exist or He is not all loving or He does not have the power and authority He claims to have, and if any of that is true, He is not worthy of their worship. 

I know in my heart that God is who He claims to be. He is omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign, holy, pure, and divine.  He is love and I know He loves me, you, us. We cannot define love apart from Him because it is His essence. He is the standard by which love is defined. He is awesome beyond our ability to imagine. He is worthy of our worship. All that is true; yet He allows us to suffer.  

He could easily make it so nothing bad ever happens, but creation suffers while separated from God. We experience pain from flawed choices, from sickness, from loss, from trauma, and countless other sources. Ideally, our pain drives us forward on our path towards God, causes our faith to grow, prepares us for unique opportunities to serve, and is a means through which God reveals His wondrous mercy.   

But how do we move from questioning God (or His existence) because of our pain to seeing God and His mercy through it? Through God’s holy word and experience, I am convinced our encounters with God affect our view of everything we experience. Every encounter with God recorded in Scripture was a life-changing experience, and as we encounter God our lives are forever changed.

As one example of many, think about the apostle John. The gospels reveal (and in his first epistle he explains) that John knew Jesus personally, he learned under Jesus, he lived with Jesus, he shared amazing experiences with Jesus, he saw, touched and ate with Jesus, and he was compelled to proclaim what he saw and heard and to describe his fellowship with God the Father and Jesus Christ – he had to tell everyone to make his joy complete. He was compelled to tell everyone about his personal encounters with Christ Jesus (see 1 John 1:1-4).  

And as John prayed in a cave on the island Patmos, God granted him a glimpse of heaven, and John tried desperately to describe the amazing scene that he witnessed writing, 

“Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.” Revelation 1:12-17

John struggled to describe the brightness and the colors and the sounds and the purity of heaven and the awesomeness of Jesus Christ in the fullness of His heavenly glory using our limited language and worldly images. He did the best that he could. He described blinding white beyond earthly comparison as “white wool” and “white as snow.” He described the bright colors as “flame of fire” and “burnished bronze.” He compared the roar of Jesus’s voice to “many waters.” And he struggled because earthly comparisons simply do not exist and our language is not designed to communicate heavenly glory. 

John had known Jesus as a man, he had dedicated his life to following Jesus and to being His disciple, but when he saw Jesus Christ in the fullness of His heavenly glory, John collapsed at Jesus’s feet. His reaction to suddenly finding himself in the presence of Christ Jesus in His heavenly glory was very similar to others described in Scripture. When they experienced God, when they saw His indescribably awesomeness, they fell to the ground, they were afraid, because they knew that they were nothing compared to the awesome being they were encountering. And their lives were forever changed. They lived to tell everyone about their experience, and the only thing that mattered was serving God.

They knew that God is so awesome that He is worthy of everything they had to offer, including their trust. When we mere humans encounter Christ Jesus, falling at His feet is the natural reaction because we suddenly realize how small and filthy and unworthy we are.  

He calls us to be humble. When we encounter God and see His glory and realize who He is, how can we be anything else? When we see His glory and realize how far apart from His glory we are, we realize that the distance separating us from our brothers and sisters here on earth that we have once looked down upon is nothing compared to the distance between our sinfulness and God’s purity.

God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is all. He could easily snap His spiritual fingers and eliminate all suffering yet He chooses not to do so and we cannot help but ask, “why?” But we know, we trust, we believe, we have faith that God is who He says He is, and He will reveal His mercy, His love and His glory through our pain and the new creations we are in the process of becoming.

I know I am nothing, made something through Christ Jesus. So God, if you want me to suffer, to experience pain, to discover new brokenness, I trust you, but please use me and everything I am experiencing for your glory.

I pray that through the situation you are facing, may God grant you new, life-changing encounters with Him, and may He reveal His mercy, His love and His glory through your pain and through the new creation you are in the process of becoming. I pray that we each encounter Him in a real way, in a way that fills us with reverent awe, in a way that causes us to fall at his feet because we truly recognize who He is, we finally see, and know, and experience the fullness of His glory, and we finally see ourselves as who we are knowing that we are nothing, but made something through Him. God is love. “Love never ends… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”