Suffering And Pain: Unexpected UnhurrySample

Purpose Under Pressure

Often my own feelings of anxiety seem beyond my ability to endure. I’m sure that the pressure I feel is nowhere near the “great pressure” that Paul talks of in 2 Corinthians, but the very real pressure can seem to push me to my breaking point. I often, for instance, struggle to stand strong in the work God has given me. He has called me to proclaim the goodness of an unhurried way. So many of my brothers and sisters, trapped in a driven and draining way of life, need to hear this word of grace. No wonder I encounter evil opposition—an opposition that often feels beyond my strength to endure.

Why would God allow me to experience extended seasons of pressure that feels heavy enough to break me? What might be his purpose? Paul recognized and taught that the “great pressure” he felt taught him not to rely on himself but rather on the God who can raise the dead. May I, like Paul, let God use every dry season of life—every season I spend in the wilderness—to learn to rely more on him.

After all, the dry, barren landscape of Israel’s wilderness was an important but difficult place of formation for God’s people. They spent a lot of time there and, for generations afterward, were urged to “remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands” (Deuteronomy 8:2). 

Forty years! God did not have his people travel the shortest route to the Promised Land. God seemed in no hurry to give them the land if they weren’t ready to live in that land according to his ways.

Too often I fail to recognize the Lord’s training in the hardships I face. Instead, I often assume that the hard places are a result of my failures or an enemy attack. But God is bigger than both my failures and the enemy’s efforts. I’m never in a hard place because God is helpless against its cause. I am in a hard place for my good and his glory. 

I praise you, Sovereign Lord, for bringing good from life’s hard times and for allowing me to experience the wilderness for my good and your glory.

From An Unhurried Life by Alan Fadling