Seth Barnes posted this great blog today:
One of the toughest questions in life is the problem of pain. Why does my loved one struggle so? Why do we have to go through hard times?
Sometimes, I’ve had so much pain in my life, I’ve just wanted to howl at the moon. No great answers, just a kind of continual struggle. You can get depressed. People go neurotic. People get mad at God and reject him. They give up. And the philosophical answers often don’t connect with our heart.
That said, there are answers. Joy Dawson describes God’s seven purposes for allowing difficulty or pain:
1)To melt hard substances and produce brokenness.
2)To destroy anything in our lives that is useless.
3)To reshape us and make us pliable for more use.
4)To make us more like Jesus, who is our example.
5)To endow us with more power. “Fire, glory and power are always linked.”
6)To experience for ourselves the “fellowship of His sufferings.”
7)To teach us how to mentor and help others, by learning more about ourselves and our own responses to the night seasons.
Mighty Anchor 