It has been said that the worst thing about going to the doctor is that you have to take off your clothes. In this situation we tolerate something we don’t like, such as taking off our clothes, to gain something that has a more ultimate good, such as medical care. I believe there are many causes of human suffering that God does not initiate, but He allows them in order to bring about a more ultimate good in our lives. Let’s look at how God uses our difficult situations for our profit.

God uses tribulation in our lives to help each of us in our own spiritual journey. Misery, grief, and pain are humbling experiences. They help us realize that we are inadequate to control our own destinies. They help us learn to trust in God for our security. Being in a world where things decay helps us to appreciate the difference between what is temporal and what is eternal. Life’s trials test us. Our response to them reveals our true spiritual condition. God uses difficult circumstances to discipline us, to train us, and to call us to Himself. God’s discipline is a call to holiness.

A Year of Trials

I experienced the Lord’s discipline in 1991. That year, I turned 48 years old. I thought that I had achieved all of my professional goals, and I felt pretty good about myself. I planned to take my son on a trip to the British Isles. A few days before we were to leave, I hospitalized a woman who needed to start dialysis. I attempted to insert a dialysis catheter into her right internal jugular vein in her neck to get an adequate amount of blood to run through the dialysis machine. Unfortunately, in this procedure she sustained an arterial puncture. The resulting hemorrhage and hematoma, or collection of blood in the tissues, grew so large that it pushed her trachea to the left. She required an endotracheal tube to maintain her airway.

When I realized the extent of what was going on and that it was happening right before we were supposed to leave on our trip, I said to myself. “Why did this have to happen?” I remembered how I had bragged to one of the nurses about how much better I was at that procedure than one of my younger associates.

The patient did fine overnight. The next morning we tried again to begin dialysis. But when she arrived in the dialysis unit from the intensive care unit, she looked much worse. A catheter was inserted into her left femoral vein for access. The dialysis was carried out with great difficulty. Her blood pressure was very unstable. and when she returned to the intensive care unit, she was in critical condition. Several consultants had been called in. That afternoon. as I looked at her, I realized she was too sick for what I knew was wrong with her. I thought that perhaps she was septic, that perhaps she had an infection in her bloodstream, but that her general condition was so poor that her immune system was suppressed, and she could not generate the usual fever. I ordered blood cultures and started high doses of penicillin and an aminoglycoside antibiotic, but she did not improve over the weekend.

Monday morning, I was in a real quandary. I did not know what to do about the trip. I felt I had followed the Lord’s leading when I initially bought the airline tickets. And I was afraid that canceling the trip would be an admission of “guilt,” that is, that the adverse result from the procedure was more than just an “expected complication.” I agonized about the decision, but finally decided we should go.

We flew out of Atlanta, to begin our trip, which initially took us to London, Dublin, and Belfast. While in Belfast, I found a copy of A. N. Wilson’s biography of C. S. Lewis.¹ I bought it and began reading it. A main theme of the book is growing spiritually through life’s trials. Eventually, we went to my brother’s place in Swindon, England. My brother John has a Christian bookshop. He was to have a bookstall in association with a concert to be given by Marilyn Baker at the Ellendune Centre in Wroughton. Marilyn Baker is a Christian singer who is blind. She has told her story in a book entitled Another Way of Seeing.² I went along to the concert.

Marilyn Baker’s testimony was very moving. She had a calm assurance of acceptance by Jesus Christ. It reminded me of my days at Children’s Bible Mission Camp, where at the age of 12, I received the assurance of my salvation. I realized that at the age of 48, with all I thought I had accomplished as a physician. I did not have any more to bring to my relationship with the Lord than I did when I was 12. If I had accomplished anything in life, it was the Lord’s gift to me. I repented of my sin of pride.

Somehow I knew the healing had begun. I thought of Hosea 6:1–2 as quoted in Evie and Pelle Karlsson’s album Restoration: “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.” I went up to Marilyn Baker after the concert and thanked her for her witness.

When I got back home to Knoxville, I found that my patient had died. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could have done. A postmortem examination had been performed, and the cause of death was listed as a heart attack. I spoke with the family, and everyone seemed satisfied that that all the right things were done.

A year later I was sued. It was alleged that I was responsible for a wrongful death. An announcement was even made over the radio, and one of the dialysis patients asked me about it as I was making rounds.

That lawsuit hung over my head for three years. It caused me to look back at her chart in more detail. I found reports of two blood cultures returned after the patient had died; they were positive for streptococcus pneumoniae. The patient had died of overwhelming infection in the bloodstream; it was not a wrongful death!

After all the depositions were taken, the suit was eventually dismissed. But during those difficult three years, the Lord taught me many things about humility. Many of the verses quoted in this book were marked in my Bible during those three years. The experience I had with that patient and her family was difficult, but I would not have missed it for anything. The discipline was a step in my spiritual development.

To Humble Us

In my judgment, a primary purpose of tribulation is to humble us.

We need to know that we cannot control our own fate. It is important for each of us to know that we are not in charge of our own destiny. Through tribulation, we learn that it is foolish to trust in our own strength. Deuteronomy 8 is a passage that is especially meaningful for me. God sent tribulation to the Israelites in the wilderness to humble them and to test them in order to know what was in their hearts, whether or not they would keep His commands. The Lord disciplined them as a father disciplines his son.

He humbled them and tested them so that in the end it would go well with them. At times, He allowed them to be hungry and thirsty, but He also met their needs.

God blessed them in special ways to let them know He was taking care of them. He fed them with manna to teach them that man does not live by bread alone. He brought them water out of a rock. Their clothes did not wear out. Their feet did not swell. God warned the Israelites that when they came to the Promised Land and were prosperous that they should not become proud, forgetting the Lord their God. They were to remember that it was the Lord who gave them the ability to produce wealth. If they should forget the Lord, they would be destroyed.

We need to realize that a time of accountability is coming. We are not promised tomorrow. “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow, What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say. ‘If it is the Lord’s will we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (Jas. 4:13–17).

“For he says, ‘In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.’ I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).

All people are participants in the warning of coming judgment. “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them; you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish’ ” (Luke 13:1–5).

This passage suggests to me that believers and nonbelievers alike have to participate in the warning about the brevity of life and the coming judgment. We all experience disease and death.

To Help Us Appreciate the Things of Eternal Significance

Physical sickness and death are a picture of how we are spiritually without Christ. Tribulation helps us appreciate the fact that we are mortal. It helps us grasp the significance of the difference between mortality and immortality. Appreciating our own physical mortality causes us to focus on spiritual things. We are to strive not for what is perishable but for what is imperishable.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.…No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matt. 6:19–21, 24).

When we were on a mission trip to the Ukraine, we informed the people helping us that we were interested in cultural exposure. One night we went to the ballet Don Quixote. As we were walking to the theater, we passed a very nice, large city park. The park was named after a general, one of the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution. As I looked at his representation in a large bust on a high pedestal, I thought it was impressive, but I also thought to myself, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

In 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul compares our bodies to jars of clay. As Christians, we are merely conduits for the power of God. As we bear fruit, we glorify God. The all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

To Test Us

The Greek word for temptation is peirasmos. According to Strong, it means “a putting to proof (by experiment [of good], experience [of evil], solicitation, discipline, or provocation); by implication, Adversity: temptation.”³ Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich include the meanings of test, trial, temptation, and enticement to sin.⁴

Tribulation tests our identity as Christians. Tribulation tests our identity. In the parable of the sower (Matt. 13:1–23), Jesus described several situations. The seed that landed on rocky places did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. When the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Jesus said that the one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. Since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution come because of the word, he quickly falls away. The one who received the seed that fell among thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.

The seed that fell on good soil produced a good crop. By implication, that seed that fell on good soil stayed connected to the source of its life and was not destroyed by trouble, persecution, the worries of this life, or the deceitfulness of wealth. When we deal with tribulation, as we should, it authenticates our true identity as believers.

Tribulation tests our faith. “These [trials] have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet. 1:7).

Tribulation tests our sense of purpose. When I was in my first year of medical school, I was about one minute late to histology class two or three times in a row. Our professor approached me in the laboratory and notified me that my tardiness reflected on my “sense of purpose.” I was never late again, because I realized how it would reflect on my character. As it says in James, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him” (Jas. 1:2).

Tribulation tests our obedience. “The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything” (2 Cor. 2:9).

We are tested to teach us to rely on God. “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many” (2 Cor. 1:8–11).

We are tested so that it will go well with us. “He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you” (Deut. 8:16).

Some people do not pass the test. In the New Testament, there is a Greek word, adokimos, that speaks of people who are tested but do not pass the test.⁵ It is used several times in the New Testament.

“No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (1 Cor. 9:27).

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless of course you fail the test? And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test. Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong” (2 Cor. 13:5–7; see Heb. 6:8; Titus 1:16).

Consider what 1 John 2:19 says about some who left the fellowship: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going out showed that none of them belonged to us.” As I study these concepts, I can only come to one conclusion: Salvation is a gift from God, but if your life does not show evidence of God working in it, you likely never received the gift.

To Discipline Us

God uses our difficult situations to discipline us. According to Vine, the original Greek word for discipline is sophronismos. Literally the word means “saving the mind.” It is an “admonishing or calling to soundness of mind, or to self-control.”⁶ According to Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, the word was used in secular Greek to denote “the teaching of morality, good judgment, or moderation; advice, improvement.” It has to do with “moderation, self-discipline, prudence.”⁷

Another Greek word, paideia, has to do with “upbringing, training, instruction,…of the holy discipline of a fatherly God.”⁸ The Hebrew word yacar is used for “discipline” in Deuteronomy 8:5. According to Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesemus, it means to “discipline, chasten, admonish.” It also means to “instruct, correct [the moral nature, with more or less severity according to circumstances].”⁹ “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5).

The Lord may use discipline in several different ways, depending on where we are in our spiritual walk.

Discipline is supposed to restore believers to fellowship. “But they were disobedient and rebelled against you; they put your law behind their backs. They killed your prophets, who had admonished them in order to turn them back to you; they committed awful blasphemies. So you handed them over to their enemies, who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them, and in your great compassion you gave them deliverers, who rescued them from the hand of their enemies” (Neh. 9.26–27).

Discipline is supposed to keep us from being proud. Consider the Apostle Paul’s humility. He received visions and revelations from the Lord. But God gave him a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him humble.

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:7–10).

Discipline brings us under conviction. God uses discipline to bring us under conviction. God used the tribulation I discussed at the beginning of this article to bring me under conviction, to expose the reality of my situation to me.

Psalm 51 was written by David after Nathan confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba. Verses 10–12 are especially meaningful to me: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”

Discipline helps us submit. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!” (Heb. 12:9)

Discipline purifies us. “Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:10–11).

Discipline makes us more fruitful. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes [cleans] so that it will be even more fruitful” (John 15:1–2).

God may allow tribulation in our lives for several reasons. If we are experiencing tribulation, we should examine our lives and ask the Lord how He will take the situation to turn it for our good.

Dr. Black is a nephrologist in Knoxville, Tenn. This article is excerpted from his new self-published book Finding Strength in Weakness: A Study of Tribulation and Our Appropriate Response. Dr. Black’s mother was raised in the RP Church in Winchester, Kan. He has an ancestor, David Farrie, who was martyred as a Covenanter in 1681.

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