If we listen to some teaching today, we might think that God’s greatest priority is our comfort. Above all things He wants us to be healthy and wealthy. If we think this, when life gets uncomfortable, we will think that God is not for us or that He has left us. Why would a God that loves us allow us to be uncomfortable? It is true that God loves us with a relentless love. However, His greatest passion is not our comfort but to give us Himself. All things work for that purpose—our pains, our sorrows, and even our greatest failures.

The question is how much do we believe in God’s love? Does our belief in God’s love end when our trials begin? What if our trials don’t end? The apostle Paul asked three times that his mysterious thorn in the flesh be removed. God said no, and that His grace was sufficient for Paul. Maybe the discovery of grace is what our sufferings are all about.

With these things in mind, we can begin to look at our troubles and even our failures in a whole new light. Our failures are only failures if we only see shame and not God’s relentless love. Likewise, our trials are pointless if all we see is the fire. The point of both of these is Jesus.