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Humans are remarkably fearful of unknown futures while painfully rooted in the present.

We tread through life’s trials trying to maintain every sense of control and with a desperate desire to have all the answers.

If you’ve been a Christian for more than a month, you know that one of the more frustrating things about God is that He rarely lets us in on the details. 

God will comfort and assure us He’s with us, guiding us to where He wants us to be, but then withhold timelines and outcomes. All the dirty little details we want, He withholds. 

How infuriating is that? Very.

I am one of those Christians who wrestles with God — only to lose again and again — because, more often than not, I want immediate answers, not the Answerer Himself.

We become stuck in the space of believing two incongruent things: on the one hand, we believe God is good and faithful, and on the other, God sometimes sucks for the pain and suffering He allows in our lives because nothing makes sense to us.

We’re like the Prophet Jeremiah in the pit of despair, who, after doing all that God asked Him, says to the Lord: “O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed” [Jeremiah 20:7].

In our trials and trepidations, we rail against the Lord: God, where are you?! Do you even care what’s happening to me? If you’re good, why is ______ happening?! When will my suffering end???

Our natural proclivity in grief and pain is to seek clarity and certainty, to obtain understanding and direction. But what if God has something different for us?

What if God wants us to deal with our foggy and dark moments by putting our faith in Him, even when nothing makes sense?

How do we, as Christians, traverse through the fog of faith amidst all our unanswered questions, doubts, disappointments, and despair?

Pain and Praise

It is easy for our perception of God to be warped to believe that He is distant, disinterested, or deaf to our pain and problems. But the exact opposite is true.

God is present, deeply cares for us, and He actively listens. 

Our trials of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety invite us into a deeper stage of intimacy with a God whose faithful character is certain.

Tim Keller brilliantly preached that dark times allow us to become deeply intimate with a God who suffers with us, and by extension, it also enables and encourages us to become great people because of our dark days.

While this is good and true, sometimes this feels like cold comfort in our dark days. 

So, how do we connect head and heart? How is the gap between truth and practice bridged? 

Pete Grieg, founder of 24/7 Prayer, has a great analogy: 

It’s easy to spend most of our lives staring through a microscope, obsessing about ourselves and our concerns, but there’s a very big God out there. So when we worship, we swap the microscope for the telescope; we become small in realizing how big and awesome God is and that produces worship.

What device do we use most often? The microscope or the telescope? Do we fixate on ourselves and all our problems or failures? Or do we focus the eyes of our hearts on Christ and His peace and faithfulness?

What would life look like if we shifted our perspective from our situation to our Savior? 

As one of the Prophets of suffering, Job shows us that worship is a weapon in our favor: 

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” [Job 19:25–27].

My Redeemer lives. That is a powerful response of praise in a place of profound pain.

Mark Vroegop once said: “When God strips you of everything, and all you have is him, you have enough… It can remind you that God is everything you really need.” 

The one thing we can never lose in suffering — no matter how severe or prolonged the duration may be — is God Himself. And He is worthy of praise no matter what we’re going through.

God does some of His best redemptive work in the fog of uncertainty. And sometimes, the pathway forward through the fog of faith is praise — seeing Him as all-satisfying and all-sustaining.

Resting and Walking with a Limp

In her book, Even If He Doesn’t, Kristen LaValley postulates the idea that:

When our image of God is dependent on things going our way we believe they should, our image of Him is centered on us, not Him. But true faith isn’t believing God is good just because we have proof of it. Faith is believing that He’s good even when we don’t have proof.

She hits the nail on the head that sometimes there are no answers or tangible evidence to reassure us. So, we need a shift from what is seen to what is unseen. We need faith.

I’ve concluded that the why answers I so often seek are something meant for later months or years — if God even gives those answers at all. The gift of hindsight allows us a peek behind the curtain to see that God was faithful all along.

There has been a seismic shift in my suffering mindset. Instead of constantly asking why questions, I find myself asking who questions:

Who is God?

• God is good: Psalm 34:8
• God is steadfast love: Psalm 86:15
• God is all-powerful: Isaiah 41:10
• God is holy: 1 Samuel 2:2
• God give me perfect peace: Isaiah 26:3

Who am I?

• I am eternally loved by the Father: Jeremiah 31:3
• I am chosen in Christ: Ephesians 1:4–5
• I am baptized in Christ and united with Him forever: Romans 6:4
• I am adopted by the Spirit into God’s family and kingdom: Romans 8:15–17

Who is my enemy? 

• The Devil is a liar: John 8:44
• The Devil is an accuser: Revelation 12:10
• The Devil prowls around seeking to devour and tempt believers: 1 Peter 5:8–9
• The Devil is defeated: 1 John 3:8

These redemptive reminders keep our bearings straight in the storms of suffering and help us navigate the complexity of not knowing or understanding why God has allowed our pain to afflict us or how long we must endure.

Jon Bloom says, 

Faith is not a muscle we need to build up to be strong enough to trust Jesus. Faith is ‘resting on’ Jesus as the Faithful One because faith is our response to seeing Jesus as strong enough to bear our anxious burdens and meet our needs.

Bloom is right. Lean on Jesus and rest in Him; it’s the only way forward through the fog.

Like Jacob, we can — and honestly should — wrestle with God. He presses in and draws near to us with love even when we fight and rage against Him amidst our doubts and disappointments. 

After the wrestling comes the rest of His faithful presence. The beauty of the Christian life is that we endure no season of suffering alone. Christ is always with us — and He grieves our pain too. 

So walk with God through the fog — even if it’s with a limp.