First and foremost, in order to get the right answer you must start with the right question. What is God’s plan and purpose? What did God originally want for you? So before we can say, “If God is all powerful and He could make bad things not happen and bad things do happen, then maybe perhaps, God is not all-powerful or maybe He is not all-loving.” On the surface that sounds logical - with one exception: it doesn’t tell the truth about who God is. So we have to go back to the original plan for man, and that is found in the Book of Genesis.

God created a perfect paradise for us, free from suffering and free from sin. There was nothing bad. So His original design was not for us to live in a world that is going through the chaos, the cancer, and the confusion. So if we are going to answer the question, let’s be honest about what He wanted, which was to fellowship with us daily in a place that never had any of this nonsense.

So then why is there suffering? Someone posed the question “Why do the righteous suffer?” once to C.S. Lewis and he said, “Well why not? They are the only ones who can take it.” Because of what Adam and Eve chose to do, God gave all of us what we wanted because of the free will He allowed us to have. This is not what He chose for us.

He gave us His Son to redeem us. We now have someone who can take our suffering and bring comfort in the suffering. In fact Romans 8:28 says if you are a follower of Christ, He can take the very bad thing that Satan meant to destroy us and turn it into something that actually strengthens us.

“God had one Son on Earth without sin, but He has never had any sons or daughters without suffering.”

“When God wants to do an impossible task He takes an impossible man or woman and crushes them until there is no longer any of them but all of Him to accomplish what He wants.” -Redpath

Do we trust God enough to be able to take what the enemy wants to harm us, and use it to equip us?