Why does God allow us to go through hard times?

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

In 1983 a famous Rabbi in the US, Harold Kushner, published a book about the problem of suffering. In it he suggested that we should not blame God for sufferings (which is right); then he goes on to say that God is good, but that He cannot help it when evil befalls His people (which, of course, is a wrong thesis). Perhaps we may remind ourselves at this point of Romans 8:28, where we see the very opposite of Kushner's claim. God not only allows adverse circumstances, He is even in full control and uses them to form believers in His school' (Rom. 5:3-5; Jam. 1:3). His ways ultimately, and surely lead to the fulfilment of His purpose, that we should be conformed to Christ, the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). Why do we have sufferings? Is it not also, to make us realize that we are living in a world which is in direct opposition to God's will? (cf. 1 Peter 2:15).

The question has been often asked, Why does God allow the people on whom He has set His love to suffer in this way? and the answer is simple. It is because He loves them. There may be, there are, other reasons, but this is the chief. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and if the heart wander chastening is necessary. The wise man tells us, "By sorrow the heart is made better," and experience teaches us the truth of this. How readily will evil attach itself to the best of us! but in the furnace of affliction the dross is separated from the purer metal, and consumed. Moreover, when we endure chastening, God deals with us as with sons; and every trial which visits us, were we but patient under it, would be fruitful in blessing to our souls. True, the experience of passing through the trial is not pleasant; it would be no trial if it were; but a morning of joy succeeds the night of sorrow, and in the quiet after-time we say with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

We so often look at things from a "here and now" perspective while God works with eternal results in view. God may choose a hard road for us, not because He delights in our suffering hardship along the way, but because of the eternal blessing it will bring us.

The standard of God's holy government is fixed and sure, and can never be lowered. What a man sows, that shall he reap, and punishment for sin is judicially and divinely certain, but to limit God in His dealings with His children to that is to dishonour Him, and to miss the richest and choicest of His designs. In point of fact, it displaces Him, leading to the conception of Him as an arbitrary Being, as the book of Job shews, and, coming to men, it turns the moral order of society upside down, and is accountable for the cruellest sufferings inflicted by men upon their fellows. In Job we have a man whose sufferings might well melt the hardest heart: yet, his friends (and they were men of a very high standard of life), through missing this important link in the chain of God's dealings with His servant, were turned into the cruellest and bitterest of foes. Why? Because, by limiting God's dealings to the punishment of sin, and missing the educative and promotive character of the sufferings, they could only conclude that such a great sufferer must have been a great sinner. What a solemn position these good men were found in. Condemning Job, by attempting ignorantly to justify God, instead of sympathising with the needy, they fixed upon him the cruellest charges. The position became a kind of deadlock, and those who came to help were found to hurt. The basis of their argument was wrong, their premises were false, and making a wrong start, both as to God and to Job, instead of the good that the circumstances called for, the very worst that was in them came out. It was doubtless thoughts like these that led the poet to write that "Man was made to mourn," for indeed "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." Like the ecclesiastical tyranny of the dark ages of so-called "Church History," these men belied their messages, and were turned into despots of the inquisition. Thinking they were serving God by treating an unbroken sinner in faithfulness, they went all the length to recover him, and like many to-day, who conclude that THEY are the testimony, with hearts steeled against every human and tender feeling, persecute to the death those who may be like Job in the crucible of suffering, but, like him also, may be more in the thoughts and sympathies of heaven than themselves.

Yes, God in infinite and tender goodness can, and does, bring His children through sorrow and suffering. He did it with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and others, and He is doing it to-day. He may chasten for sin, as corrective, or He may discipline the soul as seeing danger ahead, which surely is preventive, and, as in the case of Job, He may put us through a good deal of trial, that we may learn ourselves, and enter better into the knowledge of Him — which is surely promotive.

Down the ages, God has often allowed His own to be evilly entreated, and it is not always possible for us to understand why He should allow wicked men to persecute and slay His saints and His servants. We do know that God allows these things for the purifying of His people, and that all His actions towards His own are in the perfection of His love and wisdom; and even if wicked men seem to prosper, and the righteous are put to grief, yet the day is surely coming when, at the judgment seat of Christ, we shall understand as we cannot now, the ways of God, which are past finding out.

While God uses sickness, accidents, and other trying situations to chasten His children, we must never conclude that God is disciplining us only because of sin. (This was the mistake Job's friends made regarding his suffering.) The Lord often uses sufferings and trials to draw us closer to Him. He may seek to strengthen our faith by putting us in situations where we have to depend upon Him.

When others are suffering, it is never wise to think that God is chastening them for wrong doing. We are not to judge; that's God's business. However, when we are being chastened personally, we should ask God whether He intends it as correction, training for usefulness, or character development. If we do not get in touch with Him about His purpose, and cooperate with Him, we will not gain the happiness and peace He intends for us. Remember, God's dealings are a reality, and we will suffer great loss if we pass over them lightly. On the other hand, they will contribute greatly to our peace and happiness if we take them seriously. We can brighten our testimony for Him by cheerfully accepting our trials.

Peter might have said to the Lord, Thou canst hinder my being thus sifted, as Martha and Mary thought Jesus could have hindered the death of Lazarus; and, truly, He who can give the crown of life can shelter us; but He does not do so, that we may be tried. Satan desired to have Job to sift him like wheat, and God permitted him to do so; and this happens to us also. We often say within ourselves, Why has He dealt thus with me? Why has He put me in such or such a crucible? Ah, it is Satan who desired, and God who permitted it. Things often. occur which we cannot understand; such things are intended to shew us what the flesh is.

Why did they suffer? Became they were God's sons. Men, the instruments for their sufferings, might seem to be dealing with them as they chose. It was not so. God indeed allowed it. He had His own purposes in it all for the rich blessing of His saints. He can even use Satan to carry out His ends on behalf of His people. He then was above it all, and was really by their trials training His children. Behind the hand that smote them was the Father, permitting it in His love to them and for their profit. "It is for chastening that ye endure," so wrote the Apostle; "God deals with you as with sons; for what sun is he whom his father chastens not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons" (12:7-8). It is of the training up of children that we here read. How stimulating was such ministry! To have ease in the midst of their countrymen, who were bitterly opposed to God and His Son, would indicate for them a state of spiritual bastardy. Which of them would desire that?

In this world everything is full of labour. The journey through it is a sore travail given by God to the sons of men, and in the end for their eternal profit, if they will commit the welfare of their souls and the disposal of their circumstances to Him, whose omniscient eye and almighty hand are over everything that He has made. The things that befall us on the way, the evils that beset us, the woes that come upon us with overwhelming power, the bewildering tangle of untoward events, the cruel thorns that seem to pierce through the centre of the very soul, have the tendency of giving us the impression that not in the whole universe exists one with love enough and power sufficient to minister to us the mercies that we feel we require. We are liable to think that no one cares for us, or that no one can render to us either sympathy or help. But all the exercises that we are thus passed through are, as I have said, for our eternal profit, if we commit the keeping of our souls to God in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19).