Where Is God When You’re Suffering

This study will not solve your suffering. The blog makes the case for where God is in pain. This is for the person already inside it, who does not need another argument so much as a way to keep walking with God through the wilderness without pretending the wilderness is a garden.

Go slow. You do not have to arrive composed. Hagar didn't. Neither did the people who wrote the Psalms. Read it alone over a week, or work through it with a small group across a few sessions. Either way, let the silences be real.

Part 1: Name the wilderness

Read Genesis 21:14-19 out loud, slowly. A used and discarded woman is dying of thirst in a desert with her child, and the first thing the text says is that God heard them weeping. Not that He scolded the tears. Not that He told her to be grateful. He heard, He drew near, and He opened her eyes to a well that had been there all along.

Sit with the story before you sit with the lesson, then write:

• Where are you in a wilderness right now? Name it in one honest sentence. Not the polished version you would say in church. The real one.
• What have you been scanning the sky for, the rescue you keep waiting on? Write it down.
• Now read verse 19 again. The well was already there. Where might God already have placed water near you that you have not had the eyes to see yet? Do not force an answer. Just ask the question and leave it open.

Part 2: Say the true thing to God

Lament is not the opposite of faith. It is faith refusing to pretend. Priscilla Shirer put a fence around it that keeps it from tipping into something corrosive: there is a way to ask questions of God without questioning God's character. You can say "I don't understand" and still hold that He is who He says He is. Jennifer Lucy Tyler says the same thing wider, that "God can handle our questions, our concerns, our fears, and our doubts, our anger."

Read Psalm 56:8: "You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?" Lisa Fields heard in that verse a God who collects the tears you cried and forgot. Read it again, slowly.

• Write your own honest prayer, the "I don't get this" prayer, in your own words. Do not tidy it.
• Then, in the same prayer, name one thing about God's character you still believe is true, even if you cannot feel it today. Hold both in the same breath. The ache and the trust.

Part 3: Scripture to sit in, not solve

These passages are places to be near God, not problems to crack. Read each one and stay with the question under it.

• Luke 22:31-32. Jesus tells Peter that Satan has asked to sift him, then prays "that your faith may not fail." He does not pray Peter out of the trial. He prays him through it. What changes for you if God's goal in your suffering is not your escape but your faith holding? What would it mean to pray that way for yourself this week?
• 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. God comforts us in affliction so that we can comfort others with the comfort we received. Lisa Fields noticed God often leaves the comfort even when He removes the pain. Who comforted you in a past wilderness with comfort they had clearly been given themselves? Who might you be able to sit with now?
• Judges 11:37-38. Jephthah's daughter, under an unbearable sentence, gathers her friends rather than facing it alone. Dr. Cynthia James saw the Holy Spirit's presence pictured in those companions. Where do you pull away from people when life gets hard, and why?

Part 4: A practice for this week, opening your eyes to the well

Shirer named the western reflex to pray our way out of discomfort as fast as possible, and contrasted it with the prayer "Lord, help me to see you in this." This week, trade speed for sight. Each night before sleep, write down two things:

• One place the pain was real today. Be specific. Do not minimize it. Honesty is the point, not composure.
• One well, one place God was near, however small. A text from a friend. A meal. Five minutes you could breathe. Do not invent it. Some nights you will only find the first thing, and that is honest too.

Then do one harder thing once this week. Pick a moment you would normally push through alone, and instead tell one person you are struggling and ask them to stay with you. Not to fix it. Just to be a presence that does not leave. Dr. Cynthia James called that an Old Testament picture of the Spirit who walks through trouble with us. Let someone be that for you.

Part 5: Voices to discuss together

If you are working in a group, read these aloud and let people respond before anyone tries to resolve them.

• "God's sovereignty is so complete that He's got wells of water in those wilderness experiences, that He sat there well before I even arrived, knowing that I would need those to sustain me and refresh me even as I walked through it." Priscilla Shirer
• "I don't have to suffer alone. There are people I can invite into that space of pain, that space of dire desperation." Dr. Cynthia James
• "He bottles our tears. He is aware of the pain that I'm in, and He cares about the tears that I forget about." Lisa Fields
• "If I know who, I do not have to know why." Dr. Robert Smith Jr.
• "Biblical lament is lament with hope." Jennifer Lucy Tyler

Discussion questions

• Shirer says God prepared the well before Hagar ever arrived. What are you walking through right now where you have been waiting for rescue from the sky? What would change if you believed water was already nearer than you can see?
• Where do you tend to pull back from people when things get hard? What makes it difficult to let someone into your pain, and what would it cost you to try this week?
• Dr. Robert Smith Jr. says if he knows who, he does not have to know why. Is that a comfort to you or a frustration? What part of your suffering is really a hunt for an explanation, and what would it mean to want the person instead?
• Shirer says the abundant life is not the absence of pain but the Holy Spirit in the middle of it. How would your prayers change if suffering well, not suffering less, became the goal?
• Both Shirer and Dr. James described suffering as something God trusts us with. Does that framing help or burden you? What would have to be true about God for it to be a comfort?

Leader notes

Your job is not to land the plane. It is to keep the room honest and safe. A few things that help:

• Do not rush anyone to a verse or a silver lining. Lisa Fields said Job's friends were helpful right up until they started talking. Let silence sit longer than feels comfortable.
• Watch for the person who has gone quiet. Grief often hides in the corner of the room. A gentle, private check-in after is worth more than calling on them in front of everyone.
• Resist fixing. If someone shares a raw wound, the most faithful response is often "I don't know why, and I'm not leaving," not a Scripture reference.
• If grief in the room turns into something heavier, hopelessness, talk of not wanting to be here, take it seriously and stay with the person. In the United States you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Pastoral care is not a substitute for professional help, and pointing someone toward both is an act of love, not a failure of faith.

A blessing to close

May you be honest enough to lament and held enough to stay. May you find that the God who heard Hagar in the desert has heard you too. And when no explanation comes, may you stop scanning the sky and finally see the well He set in your wilderness long before you arrived. It is already there. Open your eyes.