What to do with “Why Me?” Part Two
Life is hard. Why should I still believe?
My ongoing battle with cancer has been emotionally, mentally, and spiritually challenging. Every day brings about decisions that threaten to deplete your faith. When you’re facing the cancer, you often don’t have the time or energy to worry about tomorrow’s trials. The road in front of you takes every ounce of faith you have today, and it often leaves nothing for the next day. Battling cancer is truly a daily walk of faith.
At the time of my first diagnosis, I was told that because I was young and healthy, they were going to “throw the kitchen sink at me.” This meant they were going to use every medical tool at their disposal to cure me of my cancer.
Like many people who have been in my position, I have a complicated relationship with the tools used to treat cancer. Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful to be here. I am blessed to still be alive. At the same time, the treatment has made life difficult.
Chemotherapy does significant damage to your nerve endings.
Several months of chemotherapy caused significant damage to my feet. Most days, the pain is a nine on a scale of ten. The pain is an odd combination of feelings, including the type of numbness and tingling that you experience when your circulation is cut off. You know, the pins and needles feeling. It also feels like an intense burning, the likes of which most have never felt. This significant pain doesn’t just have an impact on my feet; it also impacts the way that my joints work because the pain has changed the way I walk.
One thing about suffering is that the pain of dealing with suffering, or illness, or grief can often change the way you walk out your faith.
Let’s be real, when trying times come it becomes tempting to walk away from your faith.
That’s because we all wrestle with questions about God and faith when facing difficult circumstances.
Questions like:
Does this mean that God is not listening?
Does this mean God is not really Lord?
Does this mean that God is not loving?
Does my suffering mean that God really doesn’t exist?
Dr. Peter John Kreft makes an insightful observation about our often-limited perspective of suffering. He writes “..most objections to the existence of God from the problem of suffering come from the outside observers who are quite comfortable, whereas those who actually suffer are, as often as not, made into stronger believers by their suffering.”
If it’s true that my struggle, my suffering, and my pain can make me a stronger believer, then what should I do to make sure that my faith walk remains strong?
In my last post we learned from the parable of the wheat and weeds that God is keenly aware of everything that we are facing. The weeds that attached themselves to the wheat didn’t surprise God one bit.
God is aware, but the parable also demonstrates that God is not alarmed.
When it comes to learning how to walk out your faith in times of suffering, knowing that God is not alarmed or anxious about your situation can give you the peace that you need to handle whatever trials come your way.
Now all that sounds great, but the reality is we all need a reason to keep hoping when suffering comes. We all need a reason to keep the faith when we are in pain. We all need a reason to believe in God when hard times get harder. Where do we find that hope?
I think we can find hope in the farmers response to his workers.
“‘Should we pull out the weeds?’ they asked.
29 “‘No,’ he replied, ‘you’ll uproot the wheat if you do. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.’”
Here’s the thing, even though the farmer knew the weeds were attaching themselves to the wheat, he still believed that the wheat could produce a harvest. In other words, he believed that the wheat would still produce something worthwhile.
So, here’s why we should keep believing in God in the midst of our suffering. We should keep walking out our faith, and we should keep believing in God because ultimately God believes in us.
Just like the farmer believed the wheat can produce a harvest know that God believes you can persevere. God believes you are strong. God believes you are resilient. God believes in you so keep believing in God.
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