When a Believer Suffers

The book of Lamentations is a poetic cry as the prophet Jeremiah watches the destruction of the city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. It was a time of horror, of death, and of destruction. Jeremiah hurt, and he hurt deeply, personally.

 

Lamentations 3:1-3

 

1 I am the man who has seen affliction

under the rod of his wrath;

2 he has driven and brought me

into darkness without any light;

3 surely against me he turns his hand

again and again the whole day long.

 

Jeremiah knows that he is suffering. And he knows that he is suffering because the Lord is judging Jerusalem. The prophet knows that the Lord is doing rightly, but that does not stop the pain.

 

Does the pain cause Jeremiah to turn away from the Lord? Will his suffering and the sufferings of his people lead him to hate the God who would judge them?

 

Lamentations 3:21-24

 

21 But this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

his mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

 

Great is your faithfulness! Have you ever stopped to think that the hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” is based on a biblical cry from a desperately suffering prophet? Jeremiah does not declare that God is faithful only when things are good and easy. Jeremiah sees pain, sees no way out, sees struggles, and still knows that the Lord is his only hope. Only God is faithful. Only God’s love is enough to sustain Jeremiah, a love that never ceases.

 

Do you hurt? Of course you will in this life. Maybe this is an easy season. Maybe things are going well. But we live in a fallen world. We see evils perpetrated all around us. We are disappointed by friends and opposed by enemies. WE long for revival, restoration, rejuvenation. We want to see Jesus return and set right what is wrong in this world. And we still know that our job is to live in the here and now no matter how easy or how hard things get.

 

So what do we do? We need to speak truth just like Jeremiah did. WE need to tell God what is on our hearts; he already knows anyway. We need to then speak words of truth about the character of God. His love never fails. His mercies are new every day. Great is his faithfulness. And the Lord, in his perfect character, is our hope. Speaking those truths and believing them is how we make it in a fallen world.