Purpose in the Pain: Genuine Faith

I remember a conversation I had with a woman in my church who mentored me in the early days of my young marriage. She had several young children at the time, and one of her sons had been diagnosed with cancer. As she described the sadness and difficulty of their situation, she commented that while it was painful, she and her husband were grateful for the opportunity for their faith to be proven genuine. As they pressed on through the difficulty, they knew that their faith and trust in God was pleasing to Him.

My friend was living and breathing 1 Peter 1:6-7, which says, “​​In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

A few years later when I found myself staring at yet another negative pregnancy test, the truth of her words and that Scripture were impressed on my mind and heart. I suddenly found myself in a foreign landscape of suffering and I was faced with the hard reality of a broken world and a choice to actually live out what I had claimed to be my foundation all my life. Did I really believe God was good when my circumstances screamed otherwise? Would I trust Him when it felt like He didn’t care? 

I had grown up in a loving Christian home where the good news of the gospel was taught and where I was nurtured in ways of the Lord. My church community was a second family. I thrived in my highschool and early college years as I pursued Jesus and surrounded myself with people who loved him. God brought me a godly husband and I was happily married at the young age of twenty. My life had been relatively easy to this point and obedience and following Jesus hadn’t been extremely difficult. I had thought that getting pregnant would be easy, and surely God wanted to give my husband and I children to raise to love Him.

I faced several years of being tested by the fires of infertility and then a miscarriage, and the loneliness, temptation to envy, the grief, and the sadness of hopes deferred drove me to find my comfort in Jesus. Lamentations 3 was often on my heart and lips: 

“My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happinessis; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD.” Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.  Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust— there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.”

Month by month, tear by tear, I found that my only hope was in the One who allowed these griefs. I clung to His promises that he would have compassion according to His steadfast love, and that it wasn’t from His heart that He permitted my pain and loss.  Charles Spurgeon once said, “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.”  Being thrown by the waves is not easy. It’s hard, and it hurts. But on the often rough seas of life, I knew that if I didn’t trust the Rock, the waves would not support me and would sink. My heart often cried out like the Psalm in Psalm 61:1-2 “Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer;from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I…” My only hope was to allow myself to be cast upon that Rock, who promised to be a compassionate safe haven for my storm-weary soul.

I found that it was the daily choices of obedience to God’s Word that I kept myself on that Rock that demonstrated the genuineness of my faith. Oftentimes it looked like rejoicing with others who found out they were pregnant and keeping myself busy serving others and being outward-focused. I learned to turn to God in prayer in my sadness and pain and search the Scriptures for the life-giving promises that were a balm to my soul. I also learned to share my tears and fears and sadness with trusted family and friends who not only would come alongside me in my grief, but who I knew would point me back to the tender mercies and character of the God we serve. It was in these seemingly small, yet significant choices, which the Holy Spirit gave me the grace to make, that the genuineness of my faith withstood the fire and resulted in the honor of my Savior. 

I may not have had much experience with the storms and fiery trials of life before my season of infertility and miscarriage. I was young, naive and mostly untested. But now, as I get older and the years march on and I see and experience more of the brokenness of these sin-cursed shadowlands, the more grateful I am for those first seasons of testing where the Lord gave me strength to cling to Him. And I know that as feebly as I clung, with the waters all around me, the whole time it was Him who was faithful to be the Rock who is trustworthy and true. The famous hymn, How Firm a Foundation, so beautifully illustrates the truths of 1 Peter 1, reminding us that not only will the deep waters and rivers of sorrow will not overflow, the Lord’s gracious design is that our faith is proven genuine as a result.  

“When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”

“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.”

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Lauren is an undeserving and grateful follower of Jesus, wife to her beloved Paul, adoptive and biological mom of four (+ 1 glory baby), suburban housewife turned farmer’s wife and COO of her family’s farming enterprise. She’s currently homeschooling three of her children and in her free time loves to read, write, and hang with her girlfriends.

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