Why Does God Allow Hard Times? Finding His Goodness in Suffering

When I’m driving alone, I tend to talk out loud to God. At least I’m talking. He’s usually doing the prompting.

Today, on the way to the airport, we had a little conversation about the word good.

For me, good usually means everything is lining up nicely.

My plans are working.

My people are happy.

My workouts are consistent.

Work is smooth.

I’m feeling great.

You get the idea.

But life doesn’t stay in that sweet spot. And God nudged me to rethink what I even mean when I call something good. If I’m His child, and I am, then He’s directing my life. And if He works everything for His glory and my good, then maybe everything He allows really is good, even when it absolutely does not feel that way.

Cue the uncomfortable shift in perspective.

Good isn’t just circumstances cooperating with my plans. Good is God loving me so fiercely that He molds me to look more like Jesus. Sometimes gently. Sometimes with the spiritual equivalent of a power tool. I often ask why the lesson had to be so hard. And every time, what I sense back is pretty simple. If there had been an easier way for me to learn it, He would have used it. The gap isn’t in His kindness, it’s in my stubbornness.

I get this more clearly as a parent.

When my daughter was about twelve, she hit a serious back-talking streak. I warned her she was heading toward being grounded. She kept going. Two weeks. She kept going. Another two weeks. By the end of the day she had earned herself an entire month of lockdown. No friends. No TV. Nothing but school and reading, because even with discipline, I wasn’t about to commit the war crime of taking books from a child.

Did I enjoy grounding her? Not at all. My heart hurt. But I needed her to learn that disrespect wasn’t an option in our home. I would have loved for her to just stop when I asked. She didn’t. So I had to do what would actually teach her.

And that’s what I think God does with us.

He gives us His Word. He invites us to trust Him. And when we don’t listen or when we need to grow, He teaches us in the way we will truly understand. If He could do it another way, He would. I’m convinced of that.

We see His character most clearly in Jesus. Losing a child is one of the deepest pains a human can experience. I know. I lost my son at 38 weeks, and I still can’t put that kind of grief into words. But God willingly sent His only Son to die for people who might not even accept Him. There is no universe where I would say yes to that. Even if everyone promised they would accept Him, I couldn't do it. But God did it because it was the only way.

That truth still leaves me speechless.

Hebrews 12:2

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

We are that joy.

The cross was the only path to our salvation, so Jesus took it.

So if God offering Jesus as a sacrifice is called good, then maybe everything God allows in our lives can be seen as good too. Not because it feels good, but because it produces good. And if there were another way for us to grow, God would use it.

I know that perspective is hard. Really hard.

But it shifts how I see both the small annoyances like hitting every red light and the deep heartbreaks like losing my son. Good doesn’t always mean pleasant. But it always means purposeful.

And even then, I still get to choose how I respond. I can stew in frustration, or I can trust that God sees what I can’t. When life gets heavy, I don’t need a spiritual pep talk. I need someone willing to sit beside me and let me breathe. Then later, when my heart finally has room to see clearly, I can look back and notice how God used my own loss to comfort other women. The pain stays real, but so does His purpose.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

There’s purpose in it. Always. And when we trust that the Creator of the universe is intimately involved in our lives, we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death with confidence because Jesus is guiding us for our good and His glory.

Finally, yes, I’m speaking as a Christian. Before someone knows Jesus, I believe God places situations and people in their life so they’ll see Him and recognize their need for salvation. And after they accept His gift, He begins shaping them into who He has called them to be so they can walk out the purposes He designed for them long before they were born.