MARISSA HENLEY|GUEST

“I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us.” (Habakkuk 3:16)

When I battled a rare cancer in 2010-2011, the effect of the chemotherapy on my platelets caused me to need a clinical trial and receive treatment hundreds of miles away from my home and my young family. I was suffering in a way that I never had before, and I was completely powerless to change my circumstances.

A friend of mine read about a study in Greece that found that eating purple grapes would boost your platelets. It was on the internet, so it was probably true, right? I started eating large amounts purple grapes. You can probably guess how much impact it had on my platelets. That’s right—none at all. It was one more reminder of my weakness. I was suffering, everyone I loved was suffering along with me, and there was nothing I could do but sit in a beige recliner, passively receive the chemotherapy that made me feel awful, and beg God to heal me.

When we’re in a winter season of suffering, we often feel weak and powerless to fix our circumstances. If we could change things and get ourselves out of that season, we certainly would. This feeling of weakness is an unavoidable part of our experience of suffering.

And yet, when we consider God’s faithfulness to us in suffering, we can start to view our weakness as one of His gifts in our winter seasons. It might sound strange to call this a gift. But when we feel weak, it teaches us to depend on the Lord in deeper ways. We know how much we need Him. We have nowhere else to turn for the strength we need to persevere.

Habakkuk knew this feeling of weakness in suffering, too. In Habakkuk 3:16, he was trembling and felt rotten to his very core. He was scared and grieving the suffering that he was already enduring as well as the greater suffering God told him would come upon Judah. Habakkuk knew there was nothing he could do to fix the idolatry of God’s people or prevent the Babylonian invasion.

In his weakness, Habakkuk waited on the Lord (Hab. 3:16). He knew God’s promised justice would come on His enemies. Habakkuk also knew that God was his strength when he was weak: “God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (Hab. 3:19).

How can you wait quietly in God’s strength today? How are you trying to grasp control and fix your circumstances, like I did when I kept popping purple grapes in my mouth? How can you accept God’s gift of weakness and learn to depend on Him more deeply in your winter season?

Apart from God’s strength, we can’t say, “yet I will rejoice in the Lord” (Hab. 3:18). Apart from God’s strength, we can’t see the light of God’s faithfulness through the darkness of our suffering. Apart from God’s strength, we can’t trust in His promises and enjoy the gift of wellness in our souls.

But God, the Lord, is our strength. When we walk through suffering, we may feel like a deer who can’t quite get her footing on the edge of the cliff. But when God takes us to those high places, He makes our feet secure by His Spirit and His strength.

In those first few hours after my diagnosis, I kept repeating out loud: God is good. God is faithful. God doesn’t change. This was one of those moments when God’s strength was put on display in my weakness—I don’t generally respond to hardship well, but God’s Spirit was at work in those moments, reminding me what was true about God and reminding me that everything that had been true before that phone call was still true after the phone call. It would be true if I lived, it would be true if I didn’t. God is faithful.

I know someday I could be right back in that winter season of cancer. I’ve walked through other types of winter seasons in the past 14 years, and if God allows me more years on this earth, I’m sure I’ll walk through more. In this fallen world, suffering is unavoidable.

But for those of us who have been redeemed by Christ, adopted as God’s children, and given His Spirit as a guarantee of our eternal inheritance, we don’t have to fear the winter. Our Father is faithful. All His promises are true in every moment, through every season. Even in the darkest winter of suffering, He will give good gifts to His children.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a three part series. To read part one, click here. To read part two, click here.

 

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash