Ifeyinwa gave her life to Christ at a women’s outreach in March. She had gone because a neighbour kept inviting her, and she had stayed because something in the preacher’s words reached a place in her that nobody had touched for years. At the end of the meeting the evangelist laid hands on each woman who had come forward. When he reached Ifeyinwa, he prayed loudly and confidently: “From today, sorrow is finished in your life. Every attack is cancelled. You will not cry again.”
She held on to those words. She began attending church every Sunday and the women’s fellowship on Thursdays. She took her Bible to her shop, a small fabric stall in a crowded market, and read it between customers.
In December, in the dry heat of the harmattan, a fire started in the next line of shops a little after midnight. By the time the fire service arrived, her stall and everything in it was ash. Lace she had bought on credit. Ankara she had not yet paid for. Her ledger. Her Bible.
Her husband’s aunt came to the house two days later. She sat in the parlour, looked around and said, “So this is what your new God has given you.”
When Ifeyinwa came to see me, she did not ask whether God existed. She asked something harder. “Pastor, I did what they told me. I gave my life to Jesus. They said sorrow was finished. Why did this happen to me now?”
It is one of the oldest questions in the world, and many believers ask it silently. Why do people who belong to God still go through hardship? Did something go wrong? Did God fail to protect them? Did they fail to believe properly?
Jesus told them before it happened
On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus spent hours preparing His disciples for what was coming. He told them He was going away. He promised them the Holy Spirit. He warned them about hatred from the world. And near the end of that long conversation, when they finally thought they understood, He said this:
Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Look at the setting. The disciples had just declared their confidence: “by this we believe that thou camest forth from God” (John 16:30). Jesus did not flatter them. He told them that within hours they would be scattered and would leave Him alone. Then He gave them the reason for the whole conversation: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.”
Jesus told His friends about trouble in advance so that the trouble would not destroy their peace when it came. A disciple who has been warned is not ambushed in the same way. The disappointment of unexpected suffering is often worse than the suffering itself, because it raises the terrible question: has God abandoned me? Jesus answered that question before it could be asked. The trouble was coming, and it was not a sign that He had failed.
“In the world ye shall have tribulation.” The Greek word is thlipsis. It describes pressure, the kind of crushing weight you might feel if something heavy were pressed down on you. Jesus did not say might. He said shall. Tribulation is part of the ordinary experience of His people in this present age. Paul and Barnabas taught the same thing to young churches in Galatia, “exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
But notice the two locations in the verse. In me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation. The believer lives in both places at once. The world presses. Christ holds. And then the command: “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Jesus spoke those words before the cross, as though the victory were already settled, because it was. The pressure of the world is real, but it is pressing against people who belong to the One who has already overcome it.
The wise man’s house also faced the storm
There is a common assumption in many churches, often unspoken, that faithfulness is a kind of insurance policy. If you serve God properly, the theory goes, nothing serious will go wrong. When it does, either you did something wrong or the devil has outwitted God.
Jesus challenged that assumption in the story that closes the Sermon on the Mount:
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Read the two descriptions side by side. For the wise man: “the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house.” For the foolish man: “the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house.” The words are almost identical. The same storm hit both houses.
The difference between the wise and the foolish was not whether the storm came. It was what happened when it came. The house on the rock stood. The house on the sand fell. Obedience to Christ’s words does not keep the weather away. It gives you a foundation that holds when the weather arrives.
None of this denies that God blesses, protects and delivers His people. He does, constantly, and often in ways we never notice. We are right to pray boldly for protection, healing and provision, and to thank Him when He answers. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19). That is a magnificent promise. But look at its shape. The righteous have many afflictions, and the Lord delivers them out of those afflictions. Deliverance assumes there was something to be delivered from. The psalm does not promise an untroubled life. It promises a faithful Deliverer within a troubled one.
PunchlineThe evangelist who prayed over Ifeyinwa meant well. But he promised her something Jesus never promised His own disciples.
A world that groans
Why does trouble fall on God’s people at all? Part of the answer lies in the condition of the world we live in. Paul explains it in Romans 8:
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
“The creature was made subject to vanity.” The word creature here means the whole created order. Paul is describing a world that has been placed under futility and decay because of human sin. Since the fall in Genesis 3, creation does not function as God first made it. Bodies grow sick and old. Weather turns destructive. Accidents happen. Fires start in markets in the dry season. This is the “bondage of corruption” under which the whole creation now labours.
Believers live in that same creation. We breathe the same air, drive on the same roads and catch the same diseases as everyone else. Jesus said that the Father “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). The blessings of common grace fall on everyone. So, in a fallen world, do many of its sorrows. The preacher in Ecclesiastes observed that “time and chance happeneth to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). He was not denying God’s rule. He was describing how life looks under the sun.
Paul goes on to say that believers share in this groaning: “even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). We have the firstfruits of the Spirit. The new creation has already begun in us. But our bodies have not yet been redeemed, and we still feel the weight of a world that is waiting for its liberty.
This is why Paul’s perspective is so important. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” The word reckon is an accountant’s word. Paul has done the calculation. He has set the sufferings on one side and the coming glory on the other, and the glory outweighs them beyond comparison. He is not minimising pain. He suffered more than most of us ever will. He is placing it within a story that ends in the “glorious liberty of the children of God.”
Notice also the word hope in verse 20. Creation was subjected to futility “in hope.” Its present condition is not its final condition. Paul returns to the theme a few verses later: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it” (Romans 8:24-25). Christian hope, by definition, concerns what we cannot yet see. If every difficulty were removed the moment we believed, there would be nothing left to hope for and no room for patience.
That is one reason Ifeyinwa’s aunt was wrong when she pointed at the ashes and said, “So this is what your new God has given you.” What God had given her was a Saviour who would walk with her through the loss, and a future in which nothing would ever burn again. The fire belonged to a groaning world. The aunt was reading the story from the middle. Paul invites us to read it from the end.
Your difficulties do not mean God has abandoned you. They mean you are a child of God living in a creation that has not yet been set free, and its liberty is coming with yours.
Not every difficulty has the same source
NuggetThe Bible does not give one single explanation for every hardship. It describes several different sources of trouble, and wisdom lies in not confusing them.
Some difficulties arise simply from living in a fallen world, as we have just seen. Illness, natural disaster, accident and death come to believers as well as unbelievers.
Some difficulties come from the sins of other people. Joseph was sold by his brothers, falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and forgotten in prison by the butler he had helped. None of this was his fault. Later he could say, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). The brothers’ evil was real and it was theirs. God’s purpose worked through it without excusing it. Many believers today suffer because of a dishonest business partner, an abusive spouse, a corrupt official or a reckless driver. Their suffering is not a judgement on them. It is the result of someone else’s wrongdoing.
Some difficulties are the consequences of our own choices. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). If I spend carelessly, debt may follow. If I neglect my health, my body may pay the price. If I deceive people, trust may be lost. Grace forgives the sin completely, but it does not always remove every natural consequence in this life. Honest self-examination is wise when we can see a clear connection.
Some difficulties involve spiritual opposition. Peter warns that “your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Jesus said the thief comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10). We should not see a demon behind every flat tyre, but neither should we pretend the enemy is not real. Peter’s instruction is to resist him “stedfast in the faith.”
Some difficulties come because we belong to Christ. “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). The believer who refuses to falsify the accounts may lose the promotion. The young woman who will not compromise may lose the relationship. The convert from a hostile background may lose family support.
And some difficulties are part of the Father’s loving training. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11). A loving Father shapes His children, and that shaping is not always comfortable.
These categories often overlap. A single trial may involve several of them at once. The point is not to diagnose every painful event precisely. The point is to stop assuming that every difficulty has the same cause, and above all to stop assuming that the cause is always the sufferer’s failure.
Do not blame the sufferer
When Jesus and His disciples passed a man who had been born blind, the disciples immediately reached for an explanation:
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
The disciples’ question assumed that suffering must be traced to someone’s sin. Either the man had sinned, perhaps even before birth, or his parents had. They could not imagine a third option. Jesus refused both. “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents.” Then He turned their attention from the cause of the blindness to the purpose of God in that moment, and He healed the man.
On another occasion, people brought Jesus news of Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. Jesus asked whether those victims were worse sinners than everyone else in Galilee “because they suffered such things” (Luke 13:2). He answered His own question: “I tell you, Nay” (Luke 13:3). Then He mentioned eighteen people killed when a tower in Siloam collapsed, and asked the same question again. Again His answer was no. Victims of violence and victims of accidents were not worse sinners than anyone else.
The book of Job is a long warning against blaming the sufferer. His friends came to comfort him and stayed to accuse him. Eliphaz asked, “who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?” (Job 4:7). Their theology was tidy. Good people prosper and bad people suffer, so if you are suffering, you must have done something bad. At the end of the book, God said to Eliphaz, “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath” (Job 42:7).
This needs to be heard in our churches. When a believer’s child dies, or her business collapses, or his marriage is betrayed, the quickest religious response is often a hunt for the hidden cause. Was there unconfessed sin? Was there a curse in the family line? Did they miss a prayer meeting? Did they fail to sow the right seed? Sometimes these questions are asked out of genuine concern. Often they add a crushing weight of guilt to a person who is already on the ground. Job’s friends did their best work in the first seven days, when they sat with him in silence. They did their worst work when they started explaining.
Do not lay every pain at God’s door
There is an opposite error, equally damaging. Some believers, in their desire to honour God’s sovereignty, describe every painful event as something God directly sent. A child dies, and someone says, “God needed another angel.” A house burns, and someone says, “God has taken it to teach you a lesson.” These words are usually meant kindly. But they can leave the sufferer believing that God is the author of every evil that touches them.
James, writing to believers in the middle of trials, guards against a closely related mistake: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13). He is speaking there about the inner pull toward sin, but the principle behind it reaches further: evil does not originate in God. Then he describes what does come from God: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). James wants his readers to be very clear about the character of the God they are dealing with in their trials. He is the source of good.
Sincere believers describe God’s sovereignty over suffering in different ways. Some emphasise that God has decreed all that comes to pass. Others emphasise that God permits much that He does not desire. Both traditions affirm that God reigns over all things, that He is never the author of sin, and that He is able to work His good purpose even through the evil others intend, as He did with Joseph. We do not need to settle every question in that discussion to say this with confidence: you are not required to call evil good, and you are not required to believe that your Father delighted in sending the thing that broke your heart. Jeremiah, weeping in the ruins of Jerusalem, wrote that God “doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men” (Lamentations 3:33).
Counting it joy and asking for wisdom
James opens his letter with a word to believers under pressure:
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this , that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” The word temptations here means trials of every kind, testing circumstances that come upon us. And the word fall suggests that we do not choose them. We fall into them, the way a traveller falls among robbers.
James does not say feel it all joy. He says count it. Like Paul’s reckon in Romans 8, it is a deliberate judgement of the mind. You do not enjoy the pain. You assess the situation in the light of what God is doing in it. “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” The word trying describes the testing of metal to prove that it is genuine. Your faith is being proved, and the proving produces patience, which in James means steady endurance, the ability to remain standing under a load.
“But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” God’s purpose is maturity. He is not trying to break you. He is building a person who is whole, complete and lacking in nothing.
Then comes verse 5, and it is wonderfully practical. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.” In the middle of a trial, the thing we most often lack is wisdom. What should I do now? How do I speak to my family? Should I rebuild, or move? James does not promise an explanation for the trial. He promises wisdom for living through it. And he describes how God gives it: “liberally, and upbraideth not.” God does not scold you for asking. He does not say, “If you had more faith you would not need to ask.” He gives generously, without reproach.
PunchlineThat is a word for anyone sitting in the ashes of something precious. You may never know exactly why the fire started. But you may ask your Father for wisdom about tomorrow, and He will give it freely.
Think it not strange
Peter wrote to believers scattered across what is now Turkey, many of whom were facing hostility because of their faith:
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.
“Think it not strange.” Do not be shocked, as though something foreign had invaded your life. Peter is saying exactly what Jesus said in the upper room. Trouble is not a sign that the Christian life has malfunctioned. It is part of the normal path of those who follow a crucified Lord.
And Peter offers a remarkable perspective. Believers who suffer are “partakers of Christ’s sufferings.” The One who walked this road before us walks it with us. The apostles in Jerusalem, after being beaten by the council, “departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41). Their joy did not come from the beating. It came from their union with Christ, and from knowing that His glory would one day be revealed and their joy would be complete.
How then should a believer respond when difficulty comes? Begin by refusing to be surprised. Jesus told you ahead of time. Then ask, without panic, whether there is anything clear for you to learn or change, while refusing to manufacture guilt where Scripture gives no reason for it. Resist the enemy where he is at work. Ask God for wisdom about your next step. Let the church carry you practically. And keep your eyes on the glory that will be revealed, which outweighs every present sorrow.
I wish I could tell you that Ifeyinwa’s shop was rebuilt within a month. It was not. The market was closed for some time while the authorities investigated, and it was many months before traders were allowed back. In the meantime she sold fabric from a table outside her house.
But the women from the Thursday fellowship came. One brought a bag of rice. Another lent her money to buy new stock, with no interest and no deadline. A third simply sat with her in the evenings while she cried. Nobody told her that her faith had been too weak. Nobody blamed a curse.
When she finally reopened in a temporary stall, she pinned a piece of cardboard on the wall behind her counter. On it, in marker, she had written John 16:33. A customer asked her about it one day. She told me what she said. “The first preacher told me I would never cry again. Jesus told me I would have tribulation. Jesus was the one telling me the truth. And He also told me that He has overcome.”
You may be sitting in the ashes of something you built with your own hands. Hear the word Jesus spoke before the storm: these things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. The trouble is real. It is not the final word. Be of good cheer.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What assumptions about suffering did you receive when you first came to faith? How do they compare with what Jesus said in John 16:33?
- Of the different sources of difficulty described here, which have you experienced? Have you ever confused one source for another?
- Have you ever been blamed for a hardship, or blamed someone else? How do John 9 and the book of Job speak to that experience?
- What does it mean for you to “count it all joy” without pretending to feel happy about pain?
- In your present situation, what wisdom do you most need to ask God for?
This Week
Write out John 16:33 on a card and put it where you will see it every day this week: at your desk, in your shop, or on the dashboard of your car. Each morning, read it aloud and then pray James 1:5 by name over one specific decision you are facing: “Father, I lack wisdom about this. You give liberally and do not upbraid. Please give me wisdom today.” Before the week ends, reach out to one person who is going through a difficult season. Resist the urge to explain it. Sit with them, and help in one practical way.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You for telling me the truth about this world before I needed to hear it. Forgive me for the times I assumed that following You meant I would never face trouble, and for the times I blamed others, or myself, without cause. When the storm hits my house, let it find me standing on the rock of Your words. Give me wisdom for the trials I am facing now, and help me count it joy, not because I enjoy the pain but because You are at work in it. Keep my eyes on the glory that will be revealed. In You I have peace, because You have overcome the world. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.