Wouldn’t it be nice if, just for once, everything in life went perfectly according to plan? What if there were no more accidental injuries or unkind and prejudiced people? Better yet, what if there were no more life-changing illnesses, loved ones didn’t die, and depression, wars, and natural disasters didn’t claim thousands of lives every year? What a world that would be, eh?
Sadly, though, life rarely works out just like we plan for. People are unkind, loved ones die tragically, and events far beyond our control steal away many promising lives. Nowadays, we’ve almost come to expect setbacks, heartbreak, difficulties, and trauma as a part of life.
It’s in these times when everything falls apart that it’s easy to ask why a good God even allows heartbreak and setbacks to be so commonplace in His world. Is that His plan for us? Jeremiah 29:11 strongly disproves that claim, saying, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” God doesn’t create trials to come upon His people. On the contrary, “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.” (Jas. 1:17) So then, if God doesn’t create trials for His people, why would He allow the evil of this world to affect His children? What reason could He possibly have to allow suffering to come unjustly to good people?
Let’s see what the Bible has to say about this in the book of Genesis, specifically chapters 37 to 50. Here we find the story of Joseph: a story marked with years of undeserved pain and hardship. Growing up as the second youngest in a family of twelve brothers, we quickly learn two things about Joseph: he was his father’s favourite son and was hated by the rest of his family. While Joseph was still a child, his father Jacob had given him a special coat of many colours, the kind of coat that a prince would wear (Gen. 37:3).
Since none of the boy’s older brothers had ever received such a coat, Joseph’s daily use of the coat was an obvious and aggravating show of favouritism that angered his brothers. To make things worse, around that same time Joseph started having dreams of his family bowing down to him, further angering his brothers and even getting his father angry at him, too.
It seems that neither Joseph nor his father realized how mad the boy’s brothers were with him, though. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong to specifically aggravate his brothers, the next time Joseph was alone with them, the men started plotting to get rid of their younger brother. Throwing him into a well and taking away his special coat, they first debated killing him but eventually settled on selling the pampered son as a slave to some passing merchants.
I can only imagine what Joseph must have felt as his brothers handed him over in chains to strangers to be taken and sold as a slave. How terrifying to be betrayed by the very people he had grown up with! What had he done to deserve such rough treatment? Forsaken by his own family, separated from all that was familiar, and unjustly enslaved, I’m sure Joseph must have wondered why the God of his fathers was allowing this to happen to him.
Have you had a similar experience in your life? Even though you probably haven’t been sold into slavery before, we’ve all experienced things that leave us confused or devastated by something life’s thrown our way. You may feel betrayed by God because what you got isn’t what you deserved. In the midst of such suffering, it’s easy to question whether God’s plans for you are actually good.
Thankfully, though, God does not stay silent on this issue. He has given us direct assurance in His word that His plans for us are always made with our best interests in mind (Rom. 8:28). God loves all His creation, and nothing that happens to you escapes His notice (Ps. 139; Ps. 121:3-4). Everything that happens to you happens because God specifically allowed it to happen. God is all-powerful, and nothing can hijack His plans for your good (Is. 14:27; Jer. 32:17). Nothing happens to you outside of His plan.
But how is that even possible? If God’s plans for us are always good and will always come to pass, then why are there times of suffering in our lives? What good could possibly come from so much heartbreak?
Well, back in Joseph’s story, despite being sold as a slave and having to endure many more trials and hardships throughout the years (read more in Genesis 39 and 40), Joseph chose to remain faithful to God, and God richly rewarded his unwavering faith. Through a series of miraculous events, Joseph eventually ended up going from being a worthless slave to being chief prime minister of Egypt—second in authority to Pharaoh himself!
Oddly enough, all the pain and suffering in Joseph’s life was actually the means God used to prepare him for the responsibilities that would one day be his. You see, because Joseph trusted God and His good plans for him, no matter what situation he was in, God could bless him. Every setback and less-than-ideal situation was used by God to prepare him for something good.
At the same time Joseph was being promoted to second in command of Egypt, a famine was starting to spread over the land of Canaan, where the rest of his family was still living. This famine was so severe that the once prosperous family of Jacob was now struggling for even the barest of necessities. Things were taking a turn for the worst, and many countries in that area were in danger of starvation.
Joseph, though, had been shown by God how he could prepare the country of Egypt for this famine. Because of this divine warning, Egypt had been able to store up more than enough food to weather the coming catastrophe, even being able to sell their excess supplies to other nations for a profit. When Joseph’s family eventually came to Egypt to buy food, completely unaware of Joseph’s new position, God worked wonders to bring the estranged family back together again. Because Joseph had remained faithful to God and trusted God’s perfect plans, he was able to use the power and position God had given him to save his family from certain death and provide for them through the famine.
Even though his life had been one of trials and betrayal, Joseph could look back and be thankful that he’d trusted God’s perfect plan at every step of the journey. Because God could see the end from the beginning, He’d allowed uncomfortable things to happen to Joseph for the man’s greater good. You see, not only did He want to save entire nations from starvation in the coming famine, but God also wanted to reconcile Joseph with his brothers and bless him beyond what he could have ever imagined as a slave.
That’s why, at the end of the story, Joseph couldn’t hold a grudge against the brothers that had cruelly betrayed him. Instead, the prime minister, looking back over the trials and hardships of his life, said, “Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? …You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Gen. 50:19–20).
Friend, God’s ways are so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). Like we saw in the story of Joseph, He desires us to be blessed and to achieve greater things than we can possibly imagine. If we trust His plan, we can know that every trial, every struggle that comes our way is not caused by God but is used by Him as the preparation time for great things.
Ellen White, a 19th-century Christian writer, wrote this about God’s plans for us: God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led if they could see the end from the beginning and discern the glory of the purpose which they are fulfilling as co-workers with Him. (Ministry of Healing, p. 479)
No matter what, God’s big plan for us will always be for our good. Nothing can circumvent His plans to bless you. God promises to never waste your pain. That’s because He loves you so much, enough to overrule what Satan means for evil to bless and grow you.
Friend, are you willing to trust His perfect plan for your life today? Are you ready to let Him bring beauty out of brokenness and hope to your heartache? Won’t you let Him be your “Redeemer of the rain?”